Chapter XIV

Megan spent the rest of the day on the bed or sitting by the window. She felt no desire to leave her room to see what was beyond the tiled roofs, to meet half-way any new experience. The peace of the General's yamen began to act as a soporific on her nerves. The one sound that persisted, the distant ringing of the telephone and the Chinese voice, became part of the silence. Only once she heard violent noises outside, which proved to be the amah hysterically haranguing one of the servants, but seeing Megan looking at her from the window the amah smiled as if to assure her that it was nothing serious, and the quiet became even deeper than before.

Late in the day they brought her some Chinese food, rice and concoctions of meat and fish, bamboo shoots, cabbage, bean sprouts and soy sauce, served in delicate bowls veined like thin flesh. Megan ate adventurously and found it represented a whole new scale of flavors, as outside her experience as the tones of a Chinese musical scale, so that her hunger remained mysteriously unsatisfied.

She was lying on the bed when a knock at the door made her sit up. The orderly with the Mauser on the salmon-pink cord opened the door but instead of the General a much younger and smaller man in the uniform of an officer came into the room.

As without a word he walked over to the table, Megan looked at him with astonishment. She saw that his body and hands appeared to belong to a very young girl, his face suggested the texture of _pâte tendre_ and his black eyes and eyebrows were outlined with exaggerated precision above cheeks that surely had a trace of rouge. If he had been an actor, he would have excelled as an impersonator in female rôles. Evidently he spoke no English for as he put down on the table a roll of papers, a carton of cigarettes, a box of matches and an ash-tray, he said something in Chinese, then bowed and with a smile of thin sweetness turned and went out. If the papers and cigarettes had not been there to prove his reality, Megan would almost have believed him to be an apparition.

They were the Shanghai papers promised by the General. She lay back on the bed to read them. There were pages about the Nanking incident, but for fear she might become angered again, Megan looked only at the head-lines. It was when she saw her name at the head of a column that she felt a sudden sharp excitement.

TRAGIC INCIDENT IN RESCUE OF ST. ANDREW'S
ORPHANAGE. YOUNG FIANCÉE OF DOCTOR
LOSES LIFE NEAR NORTH STATION.

She read an account of what had happened, what had so nearly happened.

"... The last of the four rickshaws contained Doctor Strike, who
was unconscious when they reached the Range Road Barricade. He
remembers only being hit on the head, as he was about to put Miss
Davis into the fourth rickshaw. He is convinced that she
sacrificed her life to save his as only she could have got him
into the rickshaw. The other members of the party were unaware
of what had happened to Miss Davis and they only discovered at
the Range Road Barricade that she was not following them. On
hearing their story five Durhams, who were among the guard at the
barricade, made a hasty impromptu raid into Chinese territory.
But when they reached the North Station there was no trace of
Miss Davis. They spoke no Chinese and could get no information
from the bystanders. They were reluctantly obliged to return.
It is almost certain that she was killed and that the crowd,
through fear or anger, made some immediate and unthinkable
disposition of the body. Every effort is being made to recover
it however, through the Nationalist authorities, who disclaim all
responsibility and knowledge of what occurred."

Megan put down the paper, feeling that she had perpetrated a fraud on the world. Still, death had come very close to her, and if she were not actually dead and no longer in danger, she was at least alone as she had never been. Unlike the bewildering loneliness one feels in the midst of crowds, or the terrible loneliness one feels at times with those one loves, this loneliness was profoundly exhilarating. It meant that she had been, for the time, stripped of her tradition and her place in the world, cut off from the physical support of her parents' love and of Bob's. It was not the eerie loneliness of the spirit. It was a challenge.

Megan lay back, her hands clasped behind her head, and the Shanghai papers slipped one by one to the floor. Half asleep she dreamed of a golden province, a province of peace, order and universal happiness, ruled over by the heroic image of General Yen Tso-Chong.