Chapter III

When the Jacksons returned for tea she told them all about the wrecked car, which they said they had seen as they came in, and particularly about the extreme callousness of the owner of the car. Mr. Jackson did not seem to think that was anything out of the ordinary.

"It was probably some rich man taking refuge in the Concession," he said. "They tell me the Cantonese are at Sunkiang, only about thirty miles away. Lots of Chinese are making for the Settlement."

Mrs. Jackson held her cup in one hand and the _North China Daily News_ in the other. She read:

"'Over a hundred executions of Communist sympathizers took place yesterday and the heads of some of the more prominent agitators were put in cages over the gates of the native city.' That ought to be a lesson to them. Will, why don't you go and take snap-shots of them to send home?"

Megan involuntarily raised her eyebrows and Mrs. Jackson saw her.

"But it does them good to see what goes on out here! They ought to see it with their own eyes. Why, I've seen plenty of executions at Shasi, and sometimes they hung them alive in chains on the city wall. And I'll never forget seeing heads there one rainy evening with birds pecking at them. Yes, it would do them good to realize some of this at home. No one knows what we go through out here. It is the fashion nowadays to accept everything, but it is a whole lot easier to accept things at a distance than close by. And the only way to accept calmly what happens in China is to stay at home and believe nothing any one tells you."

"It is the only way, my dear, to maintain any pleasant international relations."

Mr. Jackson smiled under his long mustache at Megan as he spoke. Megan did not have a very keen sense of humor, and unlike most people who lack it she knew that she lacked it. She considered it the refuge of those who dare not look facts in the face, but she saw that Mr. Jackson possessed a sense of fun arising from fundamental good temper, which he took to be humor, and it was a great comfort to him. As a boy she was sure he had put wet newspapers in the beds of his school fellows, and still remembered it with a wistful smile.

"Besides," he said, "you mustn't try to frighten Miss Davis."

"I'm not being frightened. I want to know what is actually happening. Whatever it is I want to know."

Mrs. Jackson returned to the _North China Daily News_, which she laid on the arm of a chair while she buttered a scone.

"'It is rumored,'" she read, "'that General Yen Tso-Chong is in Shanghai in one of the Chinese hotels of the French Concession. Not long ago the General successfully completed negotiations with the Nationalists which resulted in the turning over of his province with practically no shedding of blood. The General has a well-organized army and maintains an arsenal under the management of a European, which turns out among other things a trench mortar said to be the equal of any. His province is one of the most prosperous in China. He is particularly able and astute, and despite his unfriendliness to the Hankow faction (his own capital has lately been the scene of numerous Communist executions) he is regarded by many as one of the coming leaders of the Nationalists, among whom he represents the more sane and anti-Bolshevist element. The purpose of his alleged presence in Shanghai, at a time when it is held by the troops of the Northern party, is unknown.' Will, isn't that Doctor Strike's General? But of course it is. Yen Tso-Chong, that is the name. He is the one who turned the Doctor out of his college."

"Doctor Strike," explained Mr. Jackson, "is a very good friend of ours. He is a very learned man, belongs to all sorts of scientific societies and is a great Chinese scholar. He has written a textbook on the Chinese language and translated the Odes. Besides that he is a man of amazing power, spiritual and physical as well, though he is not as strong as he used to be. His life of labor is beginning to tell on him."

"Is the Doctor in town?" asked Mrs. Jackson.

"I don't believe he is in town. He was to get in touch with me as soon as he got back. Yes, General Yen must be the Doctor's erstwhile friend. I believe he did use to think very highly of the General, who they say is a well-educated, intelligent man. He didn't seem to change his mind about the General even when he turned him out of his college. But the Doctor isn't one to give up hope of a man easily, not when he has set himself to save him."

"They say the General is very dissolute in his private life," said Mrs. Jackson. "I am surprised the Doctor would overlook that. They say he never travels without special trains for his concubines, and when you read in the French papers (they publish such things) that his concubines are sent away from a city, it means that city is about to fall."

"Is a Chinese dissolute because he has concubines?" asked Megan.

"He isn't considered so by the Chinese. But then that really isn't the point, is it? We have to apply our standard to them, don't we, and make them accept it?"

Megan sipped her tea and considered this last remark, coming so flatly from the apologetic little Mr. Jackson. It is always so easy to mock at intolerance because quite naturally each one of us would prefer to be treated with tolerance. In fact, we much prefer tolerance to mercy. Mercy is forced to recognize that justice exists; tolerance is indifferent to it. As to Mr. Jackson's statement, obviously they were here to enlighten China. To assume the apologetic attitude, the humorous, the tolerant attitude, would in his case be merely a flabby cowardice.

"Of course, that is what we are here for," she repeated staunchly, feeling however that she had not entirely clarified the issue in her mind.

Mrs. Jackson complained of a headache and took the paper over to a sofa, on which she took a slightly reclining attitude.

"Will, do you remember Mrs. Walsh's headaches?" she said. "Well, do you know how she finally cured them? She knew an old country woman back in Wales who kept a special flock of sheep and a special bed of saffron. I can't remember what this old woman did, but it seems she gathered this saffron, and then sheared the sheep from whatever part of the sheep you had the pain, all at a certain period of the moon. Then she tied this wool around the saffron and sent it to you. Well, Mrs. Walsh got some from the sheep's head and she has never had a headache since. I wanted to send for some myself," she turned to Megan, "but Mr. Jackson wouldn't hear of it. Of course he was right, but I still have headaches."

Mr. Jackson was worried that this story had been told before Megan. He looked at her a little anxiously as he said to his wife:

"It would have been an outrage for a woman of your training to consider such a thing. If I were you I wouldn't think anything more about it."

"I'm not thinking about it, I only said I still have headaches."

"I'd rather you had a headache than indulge in a gross superstition."

"Yes, I'm sure you would," said Mrs. Jackson, "but then of course, it is my headache."

Megan had finished her tea and had just lighted a cigarette. As she blew the first smoke through her lips, she was reminded of the tea hour at home, and the cigarettes she and her father enjoyed together when he came in from his study, tired and sometimes harassed. She was not listening very intently to the rather involved conversation, except to say to herself that Mrs. Jackson was displaying considerable skill in muddling things, when she noticed they had both stopped and were looking at her. They seemed a little embarrassed, as simple people are when what they consider an impropriety has been committed in their presence. In the place where there were so few white ladies it had evidently not been brought to their notice that a lady could smoke a cigarette. Because she was their guest Megan crushed it out on the rim of her cup, but she was annoyed with them nevertheless; it seemed to her they carried intolerance a little too far.

"Did you have a nice afternoon?" she asked.

"Well, we had a rather trying one," said Mr. Jackson. "We were obliged to go way over to Chapei to see about a friend of ours, a Miss Reed, who is in charge of St. Andrews Orphanage. She has a number of Chinese Christian orphans and some little Russians. There were two ladies helping her, a Miss Minton and Miss Soames. Miss Soames has appendicitis and is in the Shanghai General Hospital (that reminds me, dear, we ought to go there to-morrow). You see, Chapei is Chinese territory and a very rough section; lots of workers in the mills live there, and it has always been very labor-ridden. We tried this afternoon to get Miss Reed to move into the Settlement, but she couldn't be persuaded it was necessary."

"Persuaded!" exclaimed Mrs. Jackson. "You couldn't persuade that woman. It is a pity, I think, to feel you know everything in this world."

"Well, dear, I shouldn't say her disagreeing with me constituted a claim for universal knowledge. Should you, Miss Davis?"

He smiled again under his long mustache, and Megan smiled back at him. She felt sure he had had a hard afternoon with Miss Reed.

"Is the orphanage in any real danger, do you think?" she asked.

"It is hard to say, but it very well may be. There seems to be no doubt that the Chinese will take Shanghai. The Concessions are too well defended to be harmed. That is, they are now. If this were happening two months ago it would be a different story. But I feel sure it will go hard in the Chinese city and the outlying districts. If Miss Reed and her orphanage were in my charge, I'd order her to leave."

"I wonder why she won't come."

"She won't come," said Mrs. Jackson, "because people have told her it is unsafe and she loves to disagree with them. She loves nothing better than being in danger and then saying, 'Oh, it was nothing, it was nothing really.'"

"My dear, you must not be so bitter and critical. Miss Reed is a good woman."

"Well, so am I a good woman," said Mrs. Jackson emphatically, and Mr. Jackson said nothing but sighed and twisted a little sadly the drooping ends of his mustache.

"Besides," said Mrs. Jackson, "I don't see why you insist she is as good as all that. She loves making herself and every one around her miserable. She has put herself and another lady and a lot of children in danger of their lives and she puts you to no end of trouble."

"Oh, come, come," said Mr. Jackson, and he went over to his wife, awkwardly patting her shoulder. "Suppose I get you an aspirin," he said.

The classification of a good woman, surely a classification that was now fairly obsolete anyway, disturbed Megan, but she knew he meant it only as testifying that Miss Reed was unquestionably physically pure. She thought perversely of the concubines of General Yen Tso-Chong and wondered if intolerance sometimes fails because even though honorable and vigorous it can often overlook an essential point. Miss Reed made every one miserable. Perhaps the concubines did not. What was the essential point? Megan gave it up.

After dinner Megan went to her room early, and read in bed for some time. She had a book of Papini, Perugia's _Peintres Chinois_, and an old book on Jesuit missions in China and Japan full of old engravings. But she could not concentrate on any of them. She wrote a long letter to Bob telling him of her arrival, of the Jacksons, of the episode of the wrecked car. Then she turned off her light. Her open window now was only a square in darkness but it brought her the odor of the night. She wondered if there could really be a difference between this smell and that of rainy nights at home; this too was herby and clear, a new smell, but into the room crept a strong under-taint of fertilizer suggesting sickness and age. It came somewhere from the great plain beginning outside her window, a plain that has supported life for such countless ages one wonders it has any power left to force out a single fresh shoot. Megan, already tired, felt the oppression of such a burden; on her relaxing consciousness the sheer immobility of it pressed heavily, pierced through now by the young, quickening jets of rain.