Chapter XI

The circles that whirled around Megan's head came dangerously close, but there seemed to be no way to stop them because she floated on darkness unsupported. Then something else touched her, harsh and ugly even in darkness, and on consideration she found it was within her and it hurt. But that was exactly it, it was pain. And pain made her aware of a body that seemed to form sluggishly about her once more, out of uncertain elements.

The circles swung past, widening, they slewed off, whirled more remotely. But the pain became something that had to be handled. It was punctuated by a joggling movement, irritating, persistent. It was like tiny jets of flickering light.

The last of the circles throbbed dimly a long way off, vanished, and the joggling went on. Something must be done. An effort of some sort must be made. But where was the spring of action? In the arms, in the legs, in the eyelids? Push somehow. And it was easy after all. It was done.

Megan saw that it was raining again. Another rainy day. She seemed to be caught in one great, gray, endless spider-web of a rainy day.

But the pain was only a pain in the head, over the eyes, making it difficult to keep them open.

The joggling went on, modified now and unimportant.

Directly ahead was a little half-moon shining agreeably in the grayness, a little half-moon of lime-green satin supporting another moon, full, round, traced with benevolent, surprised eyebrows.

"Do you feel better?"

Some one had said that.

"I believe I do," said Megan and saw a train moving, rain streaming down a pane, a Chinese face over a collar of lime-green satin.

"Then I want you to drink some tea."

A hand like a curled shell held a glass over which hung steam in a small fog, with an odor of aromatic flowers.

"I don't think I can drink it."

"Please try."

"I think it will make me sick."

The eyebrows lifted now with such a delicate insistence, not really eyebrows, only painted lines done with one stroke on a powdered forehead.

Some one came up from behind and held a hot, wet towel on her forehead. Surprisingly, it felt well, seemed to dissolve most of the pain and made her conscious of other lesser pains in the back, shoulders and arms. But the head was the real pain in spite of towels.

"You must not be frightened," said the lady, "no one will hurt you."

Suddenly a vista clicked open. She saw the face of the coolie with the cue wound round his hat, four rickshaws fleeing from her down a dark street, and she felt again the last draining of strength as she lifted Doctor Strike into the rickshaw, felt also the humiliation of her terror which had permitted her to shriek for help in the midst of a crowd. This last became physical.

"I'm afraid I'm going to be sick," she said.

"Try to drink some tea."

A cool hand slipped under her head. Megan looked into a glass and saw little tea flowers swimming in it upright like weeds on a river bottom. They moved up to her and a heat that was pungent flowed down her throat direct to some center of weakness which was instantly fortified. She was not sick.

"The General thinks it will do you good."

"The General!"

In the corner of the carriage nearest the window sat a man in a gray uniform. His prominent eyes held the reflection of some incomprehensible amusement. As he saw her looking at him he rose out of his seat and bowed.

"I am so sorry for you," he said. "I am not responsible for what has happened. But I am charging myself to take care of you and you will not be harmed." He made a slight gesture with one hand, expressing an apology more delicate than his words. Megan stared at his hand. The beauty of it was strangely familiar.

The amah put another towel on her head, and the lady in the green satin coat at intervals held the tea to her lips. Megan sipped it slowly. There was a significance to all this which escaped her.

"Haven't I seen you somewhere before, or am I imagining----"

"No," said the General, and he smiled outright, "you do not imagine. You were kind enough to offer me a handkerchief."

"But of course. You were going into the Concession. The wrecked car."

He and the lady nodded.

To decide what she was doing in a train with the man of the wrecked car, with the lady of the green coat, was too much for her. To ask them did not occur to her. But she had seen them before. That made the situation reasonable enough that she was able to accept it for the time being.

"Oh, I guess it is all right," she said vaguely.

They nodded again, both smiling to reassure her. Megan closed her eyes. She heard them murmur to each other in Chinese. When she opened her eyes the lady was sitting across from her, over her knees the amah had spread an embroidered towel and she was feeding herself with chopsticks out of little bowls, held close to her mouth, which the amah handed her in turn. The General was not eating. He smoked a cigarette and, his head leaning back against the cushions, blew smoke rings toward the ceiling. Megan studied the amazing, wasteful beauty of the hand with the cigarette. She remembered its inefficiency when touching a bleeding forehead, when holding open a car door, yet it remained an exquisite instrument.

She turned her head a little. The corridor behind the glass-topped door was crowded with soldiers in gray. One leaned with an air of privilege against the glass. Around his neck he wore a salmon-pink silk cord attached to a Mauser from which hung a salmon-pink silk tassel. The other soldiers carried small bath towels and tin cups. This grander one no doubt was the General's orderly. Megan turned to the window, trying to raise her head a little, and the amah at once lifted her, supporting her against a cool linen shoulder. The train was cutting across a land spread out in the greenness of young rice and mulberries beginning to leaf, a land webbed with canals bringing water to the endless fields, on whose muddy shallows fringed with water hyacinths the laden, unhurried processions of sampans wove great slow patterns of movement about the arrow-like flight of the train. The train passed relentlessly the small half-naked men carrying loads swung from their shoulders, who stepped with the jogging trot of the heavily burdened along stone trails already pressed deep into the sod by the weight and weariness of endless feet. A hill rose and disappeared, carrying on its crest a pagoda, an unstable shape of inverted bell-flowers stacked one on top of another, surely a deliberate note of the purest frivolity against the fatigue, the solemn fertility of the land.

Megan closed her eyes and the amah gently let her slip back on the seat. She opened her eyes to be sure that nothing had changed, for already the train, the General, the lady, the door against which leaned the orderly with the pink-silk cord, the window opening into China, had become the accepted reality to which she clung. She tried to stay awake.

The General leaned back, blowing smoke rings, looking up meditatively at the ceiling; the lady sat beside him, silent because he did not wish to talk, but with an air of readiness as though her own possible meditations were held only at his pleasure, never quite losing, even when he was not looking at her, the lightly seductive smile with which she turned to him when he spoke or even made a movement.

Megan closed her eyes, opening them suddenly again. The General was handing his cigarette to the lady to extinguish for him. He leaned his head more firmly on the seat-back and closed his eyes. The lady watched him and, seeing he did not appear comfortable, slipped an embroidered satin pillow back of his head. He did not thank her, his eyes remained closed and his head slipped forward slightly. Apparently he was asleep. Megan watched him without restraint. His hair, growing in a peak from the well-modeled forehead, was smooth and black as a Spaniard's; with his eyes closed, their prominence, the effect of the Mongolian slant, were exaggerated and some of the masculinity of the face was lost, so that he looked like one of those sculptured heads of androgynous Eastern deities. The lady also watched him for a time to be quite sure he slept. Then she put a smaller pillow behind her own head and closed her eyes. Even in her sleep her smile, fragile and seductive, hovered on her lips.

Megan slept and awoke with the certainty that she had slept long.

"Oh, yes, that Chinese train." She was for a moment even frightened. Some quality of the light had changed, it must be afternoon. Very close to the window and throwing its shadow into the compartment passed a great crenelated wall hung with tattered vines. A towered water-gate made a fantastic opening in it. The lady had covered her satin coat with a darker one trimmed with fur. The General with her help was putting on a military overcoat. Then he bent down to look out the window, yawned copiously and smoothed back his hair before putting on his cap. The orderly came in to assemble the luggage. In the corridor the soldiers were standing at attention, flattened against the wall to make a passage. Seeing Megan was awake the lady leaned over her.

"We are here now," she said. "Your tiresome trip is over. Do you feel well?"

"Not too well."

The General spoke to her in Chinese and after a few words she turned again to Megan.

"The General thinks it will be better for you not to walk through the station. He will arrange to have you carried out in a chair. You must be very quiet."

"Where are we going? What general?" Megan was suddenly angry. "Who is this general?"

The lady's reply meant nothing until she had repeated it several times over. Finally she penetrated the unfamiliar pronunciation, "General Yen Tso-Chong."

Doctor Strike's General.

And the concubine.