Chapter XII

It was an elaborate, brass bed enclosed on three sides and heaped with bright satin quilts. Megan had been in it all the afternoon of her arrival and all the next day. Now it was morning again. She had wakened to a tumult of birds but they had quieted now and in spite of certain small noises about the house the underlying stillness struck her as remarkable. She moved her arms and legs tentatively and as she held up one arm the white-silk sleeve of a Chinese coat fell back from it, showing an ugly green bruise reaching almost from shoulder to elbow. She examined her hands. They looked veined and tired.

She could not distinctly remember how she had got here. Only a vague impression of a station in which throngs of clamoring Chinese were pushed aside to make way for her chair, a closed car with the curtains down where she leaned her head on the shoulder of the lady with the green coat. And they had driven perhaps half an hour, perhaps less. Then she had stepped out before a gate in a red stucco wall, had insisted she could walk and fainted. Since then she had dozed or slept, waking to sip tea brought her by the amah and sometimes by the lady. Now for the first time her head felt clear and the pain in it was almost gone.

She turned on one side and looked curiously at the room she was in. It was rather bare. There were a few pieces of blackwood furniture, differing at once from the blackwood pieces of the missionaries by an air of unmistakable sophistication. By the octagon-shaped window, in a dark blue bowl, bloomed a twisted miniature tree bearing translucent yellow Chinese plum flowers. On the wall across from her bed was a hanging painting on brownish silk of two dark, furry monkeys eating orange-red persimmons. Megan looked at this a long time. It was impossible not to feel in sympathy with these monkeys; they pecked at the fruit so absently, they were so distrait, unable to concentrate on anything, forever vaguely and obstinately pursued by some great, mysterious sadness in all things, a sadness that not caperings, malice, nor a full stomach could quite take away. It was a true portrait, delicately executed, precise but summary; it gave character to the whole room, making unimportant the offense of the brass bed, the phonograph and records piled on a table, a gilt clock and candlesticks empty of candles, such as one sees on the mantels of cheaper French hotels. Yes, in spite of these things the room had an appearance of style in the sense that a defective work of art may still have style because whoever created it has been able to set on it the seal of a superior personality.

Megan liked the room, her father she thought would like it. And suddenly she realized that her father at this very moment must be believing her dead. Her parents' grief, Bob's grief, struck her too vividly, with too strong an implication of reproach, to be endured. Her headlong rush into this disaster blazed itself like a trail from the moment when she had sat with Bob's letter on her knee and told her parents that she had to go to China come what might, down to the moment when she had demanded a miracle from God. The miracle had come but already it had lost its sheen, as though it had been tossed to her carelessly by One who knew that miracles are not always of very great account. A depression began to settle over her because she felt that she had been humiliated by something more profound even than fear. Then she thought, "Well, perhaps it is all of no importance, I am not dead. I will let them know it in the quickest way possible. As soon as I can get a paper and pencil, write a note, have a telegram sent. And after all, I am in China, where I felt I had to be, and maybe I was even right."

She thought of the General and his concubine, of all Doctor Strike had told her about the General. Apparently for all the Doctor's ardor, his knowledge, he had never been able really to touch the General. And how much he had wanted to! All the time he had been talking of him Megan felt she must have been half aware that she herself had already touched the General's life by the mere brushing of a wing and that she would inevitably touch it again more deeply. Perhaps this was to be the miracle.

She was too recently humbled to be willing to dwell much on this, but in spite of herself vague and glorious pictures began slowly to flood her mind. A Chinese man. A Chinese woman. Truly that was all of China. Her pictures merged into sleep and she awoke again, determined at once to get up. She sat on the edge of the bed and waited until the dizziness and slight pain in her head passed. She sat there wondering if the house she was in could possibly be in the midst of a city. It was so quiet. In the early morning there had been so many birds and even now the air coming in the open octagon-shaped window was fresh and there was about it some indefinite coolness, an aroma, as of water near by. Occasionally she heard soft slippered feet cross a tiled or brick pavement outside her window, and there was a telephone somewhere in the house that rang at intervals, answered by a Chinese voice, monotonous and persistent. But the telephone was not ringing just now. From a greater distance she heard on a soft road the march of feet, then a staccato command. The footsteps halted and at another command she heard the muffled clatter of rifles as the company came to rest Bugles sounded and the notes dissolved instantly like bubbles in the tranquillity of the air. And from somewhere a cock crowed. Certainly she was not in a city.

Beside her bed on a small table was a wicker basket. She opened it and found silver tea things kept warm by the wadded lining. She poured herself a cup and drank it. When she put her feet to the floor she had another moment of dizziness, but she was stronger than she expected. She had to wait a moment until her head grew steadier. Then she moved slowly and with shaking knees but she managed to reach the window.

It opened on a courtyard where flower-beds were set in patterns among tiled walks. Willow trees, fragile and green, posed with an air of artifice against the opposite wall, and there were three gray boulders fretted by water into curious hollows and contours that were placed like statues on gray stone pedestals. Over a low wall curving like a dragon's back Megan could see another garden with a pine tree in the center, growing in dark scaly strata, and beyond more tiles and ornamented roofs of buildings. A round moon doorway led from her court into the next and Megan decided it was all one estate, a series of small houses connected by courts and gardens. Over one more distant roof rose the bold, smoky blue outline of a low mountain, giving a final secretiveness and intricacy to the small hidden gardens. Megan leaned her elbows against the window and looked as far around as she could.

A servant crossing the court looked up and saw her, turned and ran back into the house. In a moment the door behind her opened and the lady who was the concubine of the General came in. She stood on the threshold, holding her hands in a little conventional gesture of surprise at seeing Megan up and about.

"But you feel so well?" she asked.

Megan said that she did.

"Then you must have something to eat. You must be very weak. And please sit down. Don't tire yourself."

Megan sat down by the center table and the lady rang a bell near the door. A servant appeared.

"What would you like to eat?" the lady asked. "We can give you some foreign food. Would you like ham and eggs and some fried potatoes and toast? We can give you coffee too, if you prefer it to tea."

"I'll have it all, please. I do feel rather desperately hungry."

"Perhaps you would like to dress. I can only offer you my clothes. Yours are very nearly ruined, though I have had amah mend them as well as she can."

"I believe I would feel better if I dressed. It is very kind of you to offer me something of yours."

The lady rang again and spoke to her amah. Presently the amah returned with clothes and a toilet box which she and the lady set on the table. They opened it and arranged its folding-mirror. There were foreign brushes inside with silver backs.

"You must use this box," said the lady. "I will leave it here with you. And I will send you some soap. When you feel stronger and want a bath, amah will help you, though we have only a Soochow tub. But the coolie will bring all the hot water you want. You must ask for anything you want."

She stood behind her and watched attentively while Megan brushed her hair into shape till it fitted her head like a thin dark cap. Then she and the amah dressed her in a stiff coat of sulphur-yellow brocade with a little Chinese collar and loose sleeves, the hybrid dress of the treaty port. The amah put silk stockings on her feet and slippers of satin, very pointed, with soft felt soles, a little too small for comfort. The lady offered her the use of various powders, eye pencils and lipsticks of French make, in all colors--almond, rose, blue lilac and geranium--but Megan refused. When they had finished with her she looked at herself, and the amah and the lady peered over her shoulder into the glass. The long white face and eyes heavily shadowed, the body enclosed in a rigid tube of shining yellow, gave her a hieratic, Byzantine look.

When the food came she ate ravenously, and the lady sat beside her, her shell-like hands crossed neatly in her lap.

"That is very good, that will make you strong again," she said.

"Yes, it is delicious. I feel strong already."

"I am so glad you are well again," and she added, "The General wants to know when you are feeling well enough to receive him. He wants to talk to you."

The faint chill she felt at these words surprised Megan. She looked about her. This room with the old painting, the blossoming plum, the garden outside, herself in a costume for a fantastic portrait, these were all still vaguely dreamlike. The General would instantly introduce the note of reality and of struggle. She felt a reluctance to take up life again. But she forced a little enthusiasm, because the whole significance of things now lay in the General's being, in a sense, delivered into her hands.

"I suppose I feel well enough now, but don't go yet," she added hastily, as the lady made a movement of rising. "Do stay and talk to me. Tell me your name so that I will know what to call you."

The lady sat back again, folding her hands in her lap with the instant acquiescence of one accustomed to obey.

"My name is Mah-li," she said.

"Doctor Strike told me he had known you years ago in Soochow and that you were brought up in a Mission school. Is that so?"

Mah-li's eyes opened a little wider.

"_Aiya!_ So you were with Doctor Strike, who wanted the body-guard!" And she looked at Megan with an obvious wonder. Apparently she could not imagine what had made Megan go into Chapei but was too courteous to press the point, and Megan thought that to tell her it was to rescue some women and children from the inhumanity of her countrymen would be rude and slightly ridiculous. She felt already that her relations with Mah-li would have to be conducted with more care than she had so far been accustomed to expend on any one. There was a line stretched between them that it was imperative neither should cross, but whereas Mah-li saw the line clearly, Megan did not.

"Yes, I remembered Doctor Strike," said Mah-li. "He is a very good man. Every one in Soochow said he was a very good man."

"He is a great friend of China," said Megan; "he admires China very much."

"Yes, he is a very good man," Mah-li repeated politely and indifferently, and Megan was annoyed to see that measured on some invisible scale of hers Doctor Strike did not weigh very heavily. She would have liked to force an appreciation of Doctor Strike on Mah-li but instead she said:

"You must have learned your excellent English from the Mission. Did you?"

"Yes, I learned to speak English and to embroider and to cook and to use a typewriter."

"Really? That is splendid. I can't use a typewriter myself. Do you--that is--do you do any typing ever?"

"No. And I don't embroider." After a moment she added, "I don't cook either."

"Well, you speak English anyway!" Megan smiled heartily, a little disconcerted by the apparent uselessness of Mah-li's foreign-learned accomplishments. "It seems to be one of the benefits of education that one learns a great deal for which one has no use. But it is all training. It develops one, makes one more efficient."

"More what?" said Mah-li.

"Well, more able to handle whatever comes up. One doesn't always know what one's needs are going to be. I don't think any training is ever really lost."

"No," said Mah-li and added, from pure politeness apparently, "A Christian education is very nice."

Megan was sure Mah-li was finding this conversation hopelessly dull, her look of pleased curiosity had gone. She looked a little sleepy, like a child.

"Have you ever been to Soochow?" Mah-li asked.

"No, I've just come to China. I've only been here a few days. I came here to be married."

"_Aiya!_" A gleam of interest returned to Mah-li's eyes. Her eyebrows lifted perceptibly. "To Doctor Strike?" she asked.

"No, no," Megan laughed. "Doctor Strike is old enough to be my father!" It was the first reason she had thought of but she realized at once it would be the least effective to Mah-li. And she again felt a necessity for explaining her presence with the Doctor at the North Station. But she gave it up. They would have plenty of other times to talk and she sighed from sudden physical weariness. Mah-li got instantly to her feet. A flicker rather like vexation crossed her face.

"I am afraid I tire you. I had better go." She spoke a little stiffly and Megan had an impression of vanity revealed for a moment, an attribute so unsuspected in Mah-li that she could not take in its quality or extent.

"I wish you wouldn't go," she protested. "You have been so kind to me and I have had no chance to thank you properly."

Mah-li smiled a little constrainedly and stood by; the table, resting her finger-tips on it lightly, poised between going and staying.

"Please do not thank me. I would be lacking in politeness to have done otherwise. Besides," she added, "it was the General's wish. It is he you must thank."

Megan looked at her, surprised at the touch of malice in her voice. It pleased Mah-li for some reason that she should now be dependent on the General, even to a slight and fortuitous extent; not in any sense comparable to Mah-li's dependence, which had the weight of five thousand years behind it. For five thousand years there had been Mah-lis, with fragile hands, with silks, with eyebrows in an imposed line of fixed decorum. For what a short time indeed had there been Megans, whose independence was so new, so slippery, and perhaps even a little unstable. Megan took one of Mah-li's hands and pressed it warmly.

"I hope you will come and see me again," she said.

Mah-li murmured, "Thank you," and went out.

The servant came in and cleared away the remains of her breakfast. Megan took a chair over by the window and sat where she could look out.

Her interview with Mah-li had not been satisfactory, but it was the first she had ever had with a Chinese and it would have been foolish to expect much from it. Soldiers were drilling on the road somewhere beyond the walls, in the house the telephone rang and the Chinese voice answered it monotonously and persistently. Perhaps an hour passed, but Megan was scarcely conscious of it; the minutes passed over her like soundless waves that never break, flowing from an unimaginably distant source.