Kitabı oku: «In Red and Gold», sayfa 7

It is to be doubted if even Doane gave regard at the moment to the possible origin of the fire. It had spread through two or three of the upper cabins by way of the ventilating grills and was roaring out through a doorway by the time he heard the new outcry and ran to the spot. The white men were rushing about. Rocky Kane, collarless, disheveled, was fumbling ineffectually at the emergency fire hose; him Doane pushed aside. But the flames spread amazingly; worked through the grill-work from cabin to cabin; soon were licking at the walls and furniture of the social hall.

Doane left Dawley Kane and Tex Conner – an oddly matched couple – manning the hose, others at work with the chemical extinguishers, while he went forward through the thickening smoke to the bridge.

Captain Benjamin said, huskily, almost apologetically – his eyes red and staring, his face haggard: “I’m beaching her.”

And in another moment she struck, where the channel ran close under an island.

Lowering the boats without a crew proved difficult. Already the fire had reached those forward. Doane, the other mate and MacKail did what they could. The Chinese women crowded hither and thither, screaming, rendering order impossible. In the confusion one boat drifted off with only Connor, the Manila Kid, and Miss Carmichael.

Captain Benjamin was cut off by the quick progress of the flames. The whole forward end of the cabin structure was now a roaring furnace, fortunately working forward on the down-stream breeze rather than aft. The flames blazed from moment to moment higher; sparks danced higher yet; the heat was intense. Doane sent the viceroy and his suite below, aft, where the deck was still strewn with bodies and slippery with blood. With three available boats, fighting back the crowding women and the more excitable among his excellency’s secretaries, he sent ashore, first the women, then his excellency and the men. Hui Fei – she had slipped hastily into the little Chinese costume she wore at their midnight talk, and had thrown about it an opera cloak from New York – went in one of the first boats; Doane himself handed her in. The two teachers, pale, very composed, followed. At the oars were two of the customs men, faces streaked with grime and sweat.

To his excellency, as the last boats got away, Doane said: “I will follow you soon. I must look once more for the captain.”

“I will send back a boat,” said the viceroy.

Doane ran up to the upper and promenade decks. There was no sound save the roaring and crackling of the fire. There seemed no chance of getting forward. In the large after cabin stood the six-fold Ming screen. Quickly he folded it; there seemed a chance of getting it ashore. He thought, with a passing regret, of the pi of jade; but there was no reaching his own cabin now. He stepped out on deck. There, clear aft, leaning against the cabin wall, stood Rocky Kane, like a man half asleep, rubbing his eyes; and crouching against his knee, clinging to his hand, was the little princess in her gay golden yellow vest over the flowered skirt and her quaint hood of fox skin.

Doane caught the young man’s shoulder; swung him about; looked closely into the dull eyes with the tiny pupils.

“So!” he cried, “that again, eh!”

“I can’t understand” – thus Rocky – “I don’t see how it could have happened. It couldn’t have been my fault.”

Doane saw now that his head had been burned above one ear; and the hand that pressed his face was blistered white.

“It wasn’t my fault! I found myself out on deck. I tried to get the hose.”

“Yes, I saw you. Quick – get below.”

Doane tenderly lifted the little princess.

Rocky was still incoherently talking; promising reform; blaming himself in the next breath after hotly defending himself. His voice was somewhat thick. He was drowsy – swayed and stumbled as he moved toward the stairs.

Doane, speaking gently in Chinese to the child, stood a moment considering. The heat was becoming intolerable. It wouldn’t do to keep the little one here. He carried her down the stairs.

Below, the boy faced him. “I’m no good,” he whimpered. “I can’t wake up. Hit me – do something – I won’t be like this.”

Doane considered him during a brief instant. They were standing under a light, their feet slipping on the deck, bodies lying about. With the flat of his hand, then, Duane struck the side of the boy’s head that was not burned; struck harder than he meant, for the boy went down, and then, after sprawling about, got muttering to his feet.

“It’s all right!” he cried unsteadily. “I asked you to do it. I’m going to get hold of myself. I’ve been no good – rotten. I’ve touched bottom. But I’m going to fight it out – get somewhere.” His egotism, even now amazingly held him. Even as he spoke he was dramatizing himself. But his pupils were widening a little; he was in earnest, crying bitterly out of a drugged mind and conscience. And Doane, looking down at him, felt stirring in his heart, though curiously mixed with a twinge of jealousy for his youth and the hopes before him, something of the sympathy his long deep experience had instilled there toward blindly struggling young folk. Boys, after all, were normally egotists. And Heaven knew this boy had so far been given no sort of chance!

Doane led the way clear aft. The heat was terrific. From a row of fire buckets he sprinkled the little princess; bathed her temples. The water was warm, but it helped.

Young Kane, with a nervous movement, suddenly picked up one, then another, of the buckets and dashed them over himself. Distinctly he was coming to life. “We may never come out of this, Mr. Doane,” he said. “It’s a terrible fix.” More and more, as he came slowly awake, he was dramatizing the situation and himself. “But I want to say this. I’ve never known a man like you. You’re fine – you’re big – you’ve helped me as no one else has. I’ll never be like you – it isn’t in me. I’ve already gone as close to hell as a man can go and perhaps still save himself – ”

“Can you swim?” asked Doane shortly.

“I – why, yes, a little. I’m not what you’d call a strong swimmer.”

Doane was wetting the princess’s face and his own. There would be little time left. There was smoke now. He found a slight difficulty in breathing; evidently the fire had eaten through, forward, to the lower decks.

“They won’t be able to get a boat back here,” he said, and quietly pointed out the still blazing pieces of board that, after whirling into the air, were drifting by. A terrific blast of heat swept about them, indicating a change of wind.

“Wait here a moment for me,” he added. “I must make one more effort to find Captain Benjamin. If that fails, we can swim ashore.”

He tried working his way forward when the heat proved too great in the corridor, climbing out on the windward side of the hull. But the flames were eating steadily aft; he could not get far. Beaten back, he returned to the stem to discover that the child and Rocky Kane were gone. After a moment he saw them in the water, a few rods away, first a gleam of yellow that would be the jacket of the little princess, then their two heads close together.

He lowered himself down a boat-line and swam after them. In the water this giant was as easily at home as in any form of exercise on land. Within the year he had swum at night, alone, for the sheer vital pleasure the use of his strength brought him, the nine miles from Wusung to Shanghai – slipping between junks and steamers, past the anchored war-ships and a great P. & O. liner from Bombay. The water was cool, refreshing. He stretched his full length in it, rolling his face under as one arm and then the other reached out in slow powerful strokes.

Young Kane was having no easy time of it. He was clearly out of wind. And the child whimpered as she clung tightly about his neck.

“I gave you up,” he sputtered weakly. Then added, with an evidence of spirit that Doane found not displeasing: “No, don’t take her, please! Just steady me a little.” He was struggling in short strokes, splashing a good deal. “We ought to touch bottom now pretty quick.”

Sampans and the boats of the cormorant fishers were edging into the wide circle of light about the steamer. Along the shore of the island clustered the groups of mandarins, their silk and satin robes forming a bright spot in the vivid picture.

Doane found the sand then; walked a little way and helped the nearly exhausted boy to his feet.

“They’re coming down the shore,” said Rocky, trying, without great success, to speak casually.

Doane looked up and saw them running – white men, Chinese servants, mandarins holding up their robes, women, and last, walking rapidly, his excellency.

It was Hui Fei, throwing off her cloak and running lightly ahead, who took the frightened child from young Kane’s arms and carried her tenderly up the bank. There as the attendants gathered anxiously about them, she tossed the child high, petted her, kissed her, until the tears gave place to laughter. The tall eunuch wrapped the little princess then in his own coat; and Hui Fei accepted the opera cloak that transformed her again in an instant from a slimly quaint Manchu girl to a young woman of New York.

Doane stood by. Toward him she did not look. But to Rocky Kane, who lay on the bank, she turned with bright eagerness. He got, not without effort, to his feet.

Smiling – happily, it seemed to the bewildered, brooding Doane – she gave him her hand; led him to meet her father.

“You have met Mr. Kane,” she said. “It was he who save’ little sister. He risk’ his life to bring her here, father.”

Rocky, throwing back his hair and brushing the water from his eyes, stood, his sensitive face working nervously, very straight, very respectful, and took the hand of the viceroy.

There was, then, manhood in him. The viceroy recognized the fact in his friendly smile. Hui Fei plainly recognized it as she walked, chatting brightly, at his side, while he bent on her a gaze of boyish adoration.

As for Doane, he moved away unobserved; dropped at length on a knoll, rested his great head on his hands, and gazed out at the blazing steamer. She would soon be quite gone. Poor Benjamin was gone already; a strange little man, one of the many that drift through life without a sense of direction, always bewildered about it, always hoping vaguely for some better lot. It had been a tragic night; and yet all this horror would soon seem but an incident in the spreading revolution. It had always been so in China. In each rebellion, as in the mighty conquests of the Mongols and the Manchus, death had stalked everywhere with a casual terribleness. Life meant, at best, so little. Genghis Khan’s men had boasted of slaying twenty millions in the northwestern provinces alone within the span of a single decade. The new trouble must inevitably run its course; and what a course it might prove to be! From the mere effort to face this immediate future Doane found his mind recoiling; much as strong minds were to recoil, only three years later, when the German army should march through Belgium.

He gave up that problem, came down to the particular thought of this swiftly growing new love that had stolen into his heart. The hope of personal happiness had passed now. Self seemed, like the life to which it so eagerly dung, not to matter. Instead that hope was growing into a profound tenderness toward the girl. She was, after all – the thought came startlingly – about the age of his own daughter, Betty, whom he had not seen during these three strange years. Betty and her journalist husband would be somewhere in Turkestan now; he was studying central Asia for a book, she sketching the native types. For a long time no letter had come… It was a fine experience, this unbidden stir of the emotions, this thrill. There was mystery in it, and wonder. Merely to have that almost youthful responsiveness still at call within his breast was an indication that life might yet hold, even for him, the derelict, rich promise. And it was a reminder, now, to his clearing brain that his life must be service. He must find terms on which to offer himself, his gifts. His spirit had been molded, after all, to no lesser end.

The viceroy drew away then from the group about the child; came deliberately along the bank. The increasing tenderness Doane felt toward Hui Fei reached also to her father, who was facing with such fine dignity the grim ending of a richly useful life. Now, perhaps, he could plead with him for the daughter’s sake. Somehow, certainly, happiness must be found for her. In pleading he would be serving her.

His brain was swinging into something near balance; it was, after all, a good brain, trained to function clearly, mellowed through patient years of unhappiness. It would help him now to fight for the girl, to save her, if he might, from the dark ways of the Forbidden City. She called herself so naively an “American.” The West had thrilled her. She must not be given over to the eunuch, Chang.

So, even as he contrived a sort of self-control, even as he determined to forget his own little moment of romantic hopefulness, the lover within him stood triumphant over all his other selves.

CHAPTER VII – THE INSCRUTABLE WEST

DOANE knew nothing of the dignified figure he presented as he took the viceroy’s hand, a profoundly sobered giant, his huge frame outlined beneath his wet garments like a Greek statue of an athlete.

“You have helped to save the life of my child, Griggsby Doane” – thus his excellency, in what proved to be a little set speech – “and with all my heart I thank you. I am old. Little time is left to me. But life follows upon death. Death is the beginning of life. It has been said by Chuang Tzü that the personal existence of man results from convergence of the vital fluid, and with its dispersion comes what we term death. Therefore all things are one. All vitality exists in continuing life. And I, when what I have thought of as my self arrives at dispersion, shall live on in my children. My words are inadequate. My debt to you is beyond my power to repay. Command me. I am your servant.”

Doane bowed, hearing the words, catching something of the warm gratitude in the heart of the old man, yet at the same moment flogged on to action by the sense of passing time and present opportunity. It was no simple matter, it seemed, to approach this seasoned, calmly determined mind regarding the final personal matter of life and death. But he plunged at it; stating simply that he had heard the gossip of the impending tragedy, and that in conversing with the lovely Hui Fei, who was in obvious difficulty in existing between the two greatest civilizations without a solid footing in either, he could not bear to think of her possible fate.

Rang Yu listened attentively.

“Your Excellency,” Doane pressed on, “it is not right that you should listen to the command of a decadent throne. Forgive my frankness, my presumption, but I must say this! True, you are a Manchu. While this revolution continues it will be difficult for you. But before another year shall have gone by there will be a new China. The bitter animosities of to-day will pass. Though a Manchu, your wise counsel will be needed. Your knowledge of the Western World will temper the over-emphatic policies of the young hot-heads from the universities of Japan.”

The viceroy considered this appeal during a long moment; then, soberly, he looked up into the massive, strongly lined face of the white man and asked, simply: “But what would you have me do, Griggsby Doane?”

“Your Excellency knows of the plan to seize your property?”

Kang inclined his head.

“If you go on to your home, it may be that everything will be taken, even the money on your person.”

Kang bowed again.

“Then, Your Excellency, why not now – while you yet have the means to do so – escape down the river with your daughter and myself? Can you not trust yourself and her in my hands? I will find means to convey you safely to Shanghai – perhaps to Japan or Hong Kong – where you will be secure until further plans may be laid.”

“Griggsby Doane,” replied the viceroy with simple candor, “you speak indeed as a friend. And I would be false to the blood that flows in my veins did I not prize the friendship of man for man, second only to the love of a son for a parent, above every other quality in life. Friendship is most properly the theme of many of the noblest poems in our language. It is to us more than your people, who place so strong an emphasis on love between the sexes, can perhaps bring themselves to understand. And therefore, Griggsby Doane. your feeling toward myself and my daughter moves my heart more deeply than I can express to you.

“It is not surprising that news of my sorrow – of this sad ending that is set upon my long life – should have reached you. But since you know so much, I will tell you, as friend to friend, more. Do you know why this sentence has been passed upon me? It is because I could not bring myself to obey the order of the throne that the republican agitator, Sun Shi-pi who had sought sanctuary at my yamen in Nanking should be at once beheaded. Instead I sent for Sun Shi-pi to counsel him. I permitted him to go to Japan on condition that he engage in no conspiracies and that he remain away. Instead of complying with my condition he hastened to organize revolutionary propaganda. He returned to China, appeared in disguise on the steamer that is burning out yonder, and is now dead, there, in his republican uniform.”

So his information was complete! A picture rose in Doane’s mind of the headless trunk of Sun Shi-pi amid the horrors of the lower deck.

His excellency continued: “I was denounced at the Forbidden City as a traitor. The sentence of death followed, in the form of an edict from the empress dowager in the name of the young emperor. Were I now to follow Sun Shi-pi into exile in a foreign land I would mark myself for all time as a traitor indeed; as one who, while sharing as an honored viceroy the prosperity and dignity of the reigning dynasty, conspired toward its downfall.”

“But, Your Excellency, the empress dowager and the young emperor no longer speak with the voice of the Chinese people.”

“That could make no difference, Griggsby Doane. By edict of the Yellow Dragon Throne of Imperial China I have been instructed to go to my ancestors. My allegiance is only to that throne. I will obey… Already, Griggsby Doane, you have done for me more than one can ever demand of a friend. And yet one more demand I must make upon you. There is no other to whom I can turn. I have no other friend to-night. Within a short time my secretaries will secure a launch or a junk to convey us to my home near Huang Chau. Will you come with us there?”

Doane, surprised, bowed in assent.

“Thank you. The gratitude of myself and all my family and friends will remain with you. You are a princely man… Until later, then, good night, Griggsby Doane.”

He was gone.

Doane walked farther along the bank; stood for a time absorbed in thought that led, at length, to what seemed a new ray of light in the darkness that was his mind. And he strode back, hunting in this group and that for Dawley Kane. That man had offered help. Now he could give it.

Dawley Kane, fully dressed, unruffled, quietly smoking a cigar and looking through a pocket notebook by the light from the river, seemed a note of sanity in an unbelievably confused world. To him, apparently, the nightmare of fighting and slaughter on the steamer, like the fire, were but incidents. The only evidence the man gave out of quickened nerves was that he talked a little more freely than usual. To Doane he presented a surface as clear and hard as polished crystal, impenetrable, in a sense repelling, yet, as we say, a gentleman.

They even chatted casually, as men will, standing there looking out at the fire (which now had reached the stem and eaten down to the lower decks, incinerating alike the bodies of men who had died for faith and for lust) and at the wide circle of light on the rim of which floated the vulture-the boats of the rivermen. Doane forced himself into the vein of the man’s interest; riding roughshod over a desperate sense of unreality. For he knew that the great masters of capital were often proud and even finicky men who must be approached with skill. They were kings; must be dealt with as kings.

Kane was interested to learn what relation the fight below decks might have to the rebellion up the river. That, clearly, was characteristic of the man – the impersonal gathering in and relating of observable data. His interest was deeper in the agriculture and commerce of the immense Yangtze basin, to which subject he easily passed. His questions came out of a present fund of knowledge – questions as to the speed, cargo-capacity and operation-cost of the large junks that plied the river by thousands, as to the cost of employing Chinese labor and the average capacity of the coolie. He knew all about the slowly developing railroads of North and Central China; commented in passing on the surprising profits of the young Hankow-Peking line… He seemed to Doane to have in his mind a map or diagram of a huge, profitmaking industrial world, to which he added such bits of line or color as occurred in the answers to his questions. But he gave out no conclusions, only questions. Famines, other wide-spread suffering so tragically common in the Orient, interested him only as an impairment of trade and industrial man power. The opium habit he viewed as an economic problem.

Doane, settling doggedly to his purpose, found himself analyzing the power of this quiet man. It lay of course, in the control of money. And money would be only a token of human energy. The religion of his own ardent years had taken no account of earthly energy or its tokens; it had directed the eyes of the bewildered seeker toward a mystical other world. Yet human life, in the terms of this earth, must go on. To this point he always came around, of late years, in his thinking, just as the church had always come around to it. Money was vital. The church was endlessly begging for it; in no other way could it survive to continue turning away the puzzled eyes of the seekers.

And the immense energy created in the human struggle to live and prosper must continually be gathering up, here and there, into visible power that shrewd human hands would surely seize. He felt this now as a law. Religion had not left him. He felt more strongly than ever before that this miraculously continuing energy implied a sublime orderly force that transcended the outermost bounds of human intelligence. Religion was surely there: it only wanted discovering. It had, as surely, to do with primitive energy, with the heat of the sun and the disciplined rush of the planets, with the tragic struggle of human business, with work and war and sex and money… And then he indulged in a half-smile. For this primitive undying energy could be no other than the Tao of Lao-tzu and Chuang Tzü. And so, after all these groping years of his errant faith, he had fetched up, simply in Taoism.

But that law seemed to stand. The human struggle created power that tended to gather at convenient centers. And here beside him, smoking a cigar, stood a man whose uncommon genius fitted him to seize that power as it gathered and administer it; a man to whom money came – the very winds of chance heaped it about him. And to Doane, just now, money – even in quantity that would be to Kane hardly the income of a day or so – meant so much that the grotesque want of it (the word “grotesque” came) stopped his brain.

For it was coming clear to him how completely the throne could at will, obliterate the worldly establishment of Kang Yu. That throne, however politically weak, yet held the savage instruments of despotic power. Kang’s sad end would come within the twenty-four hours, perhaps; certainly he would wait only to prepare himself and to write his final papers. The eunuch’s men would be everywhere about the household; nothing could be hidden from them, or from the spies among the servants… With money – a little money – Hui Fei might be saved from an end as tragic as her father’s… The thing, surely, could be managed. For the moment it seemed almost simple. She could he spirted away. There might he missionaries to escort her down the river on one of the steamers.

It was then, while Doane’s thoughts still raced hither and thither, that Kane himself broached the vital topic.

“This viceroy” – thus Kane – “seems to be quite a personage. He’s been a diplomat, I believe. And Kato tells me has an excellent collection of paintings.”

Doane felt himself turning into a trader. “You are interested in Chinese paintings, are you not, Mr. Kane?” he asked guardedly.

“Oh, yes. I have something of a collection. And now and then Kato picks up something for me.”

“I don’t know, of course, how far you would care to go with it Mr. Kane” – Doane was measuring every word as it passed his lips – “but there is a possibility that a bargain could be struck with his excellency at this time.”

“Indeed?”

“It would be advisable to act pretty quickly, I should say.”

“Well! This is interesting. You are informed about his collection?”

“In a general way. It is very well known out here. His collection of landscapes of the Tang and Sung periods is supposed to be the most complete in existence, with fine works of Ching Hao, Kuan Tung, Tung Yuan and Chu-jan. The best known paintings of Li Chang are his. He has several by Kao Ke-ming, and, I know, an original sixfold landscape screen by Kuo Hsi. Then there are works of the four masters of southern Sung – Li Tang, Lui Sungnian, Ma Yuen and Hsia Kuai. You would find nearly all the great men of the Academy represented.”

Doane stopped; waited to see if this list of names impressed the great American. If he knew, in his own person, anything whatever about Chinese painting he must exhibit at least a little feeling. But Dawley Kane said nothing; merely lighted, with provoking deliberation, a fresh cigar.

“It is commonly understood, too” – Doane could not resist pressing him a little further – “that he has authentic paintings by Wu Tao-tzu, and Li Lung-mien.” Surely these two names would stir this man who seemed at moments no more than a calculating machine with manners. But Kane smoked on… “And I understand that he has a fairly complete collection of portraits by the men of the Brush-strokes-reducing Method.”

He finished rather lamely; fell silent, and looked out over the still brilliantly lighted river; the river of a hundred thousand dramatic scenes – battles and romances and struggles for trade – the great river with its endless memories of gold and bloodshed – the river that for a brief day was running red again. The fire out there, though red flame and rolling smoke and whirling sparks still roared upward, was consuming now the lower deck and the hull. Within the hour the Yen Hsin would be no more than a curving double row of charred ribs; one more casual memory of the river.

Still Dawley Kane smoked on. He clearly knew no enthusiasm. He was an analyst, an appraiser, a trader to the core. He felt no discomfort, even in friendly talk, in letting the other man wait. But Doane would say no more. And finally, knocking the Ash off his cigar with a reflective finger, Kane remarked; “You really think that this collection would be a good buy?”

“Unquestionably.”

“Have you any idea what he would ask?”

“I don’t even know that he would consider selling it.”

“But if he were properly approached… there are reasons____”

“You know of his predicament?”

“I gather that there is a predicament.”

“Oh… well, yes, there is. But I don’t know how even to guess at the value. Many of the paintings are priceless. In New York, at collector’s prices, and without hurrying the sale…”

“A hundred thousand dollars?”

“Many times more.”

“But if he is anxious to sell – must sell”

“There is that, of course.”

“A hundred thousand is a good deal of money. If I were to place that sum to his credit to-morrow, for instance, by wire, at a Shanghai hank, don’t you suppose it would tempt him?”

“It might. Though Kang knows the value of every piece.” Doane was finding difficulty in keeping pace with the situation. Kane would shave every penny, as a matter of principle. That, of course, explained him; was the secret of his wealth and power. Paintings, after all, mattered to him only in a remote sense; you could always buy them if you chose, if people would, as apparently they did, think better of you for buying them. It came down to the desirability of building up and solidifying one’s name, of what Doane had heard spoken of everywhere in America during his last visit as “publicity.” The word irritated him. It suggested that other word, also heard everywhere in America, “salesmanship.” These words, to the sensitively observant Doane, had connoted an unpleasant blend of aggressive enterprise with an equally aggressive plausibility.

But his wits were sharpening fast. If this man was a buyer, he would be a seller.

“His excellency has another collection that might or might not interest you – the value of it would be only slightly artistic – his precious stones.” Doane threw this cut carelessly. “There is no estimating the value of those. It might run into the millions…” He saw Kane’s eyes come to a sudden hard focus behind the veil of smoke. He was really interested at last. And Doane, with mounting pulse, quietly added, “He has historical jewels from many parts of Asia – head ornaments, bracelets, ropes of matched pearls from Ceylon, old careen jade from Khotan, quantities of the jewelry taken from Khorassan and Persia by Genghis Khan and his sons, including a number of famous royal pieces, and some of the jeweled ornaments brought from the temples of India by Kublai Khan.”

This, Doane knew, was enough. He waited, now, himself. Waited and waited.

“Mr. Doane” – Kane, at last, was speaking – “I would be glad to have you approach the viceroy for me. To-night, if you think best. I will be glad, of course, to pay you a commission.”