Chapter VI

But when Doctor Strike and Mr. Jackson returned about six o'clock they brought the disquieting news that they had been unable to get into Chapei and to do so it would be necessary to get permits from so many authorities, English, French and Chinese, that they would be obliged to wait till the next morning. All evening they talked about it off and on, and Megan saw it was greatly on their minds, though no one seemed to think the orphanage was in any immediate danger.

The next day was a typical one of the lower Yangtze Valley, an enclosed day of gray, low-hung sky, rather warm. Doctor Strike and Mr. Jackson left the house early. As they did not return or even telephone at noon, Megan after tiffin persuaded Mrs. Jackson to go into town with her. They walked down Nanking Road through dense crowds. It was easy to see that something was hanging over the city; the streets were thronged but the shops were empty, even the drums beating and the screech of mechanical pianos in the cheaper shops could not draw any one from the streets. Rickshaws passed, their air of gliding swiftness an illusion created by the angle of the coolies' bodies, and more coolies carried a heavy piano by on bamboo poles. "He, ho, he, ho," they sang as sweat streamed into their eyes. Megan stopped to watch the skirted Chinese dart through the crowds between crossings. She saw that they never looked at what was coming toward them but only at what had already passed. They were saved by auto horns and shouts of coolies. At one crossing came an old man with a venerable thin beard and a big blue smocked apron swinging from his hips. As the Sikh policeman gave the signal for traffic to swoop down once more upon him he stopped, held up one hand admonishingly and looked about with an air of pained surprise. Then he sneezed twice, and having done so, with dignity moved on. It became difficult to move among so many people.

"Let us go to the Astor for a cup of tea," suggested Megan. She was touched to see by Mrs. Jackson's expression that she considered this casual invitation an occasion of social importance and that in the crowded lobby she lost her air of assurance and became suddenly a timid, badly dressed woman, but one who is nevertheless enjoying herself. They found a table wedged close to others where they could see through a window the Soviet Consulate across the way and a corner of the Garden Bridge.

It was not five o'clock, yet because of the grayness the lights were on. Three men and a woman sat at the table closest to them. They were leaning forward and talking confidentially, but they had to raise their voices. Their words came over the hum of the tea-drinkers and the clink of crockery, and Megan, hearing them, became gradually aware of their stinging, their fantastic incredibility.

"--spent bullet came into her room, right here. The clerk at the desk just told me."

"Who is she, do I know her?"

"--they say the whole of Chapei is on fire now. You know what those Chinese houses are. It is one fiery furnace."

Mrs. Jackson and Megan looked quickly at each other.

"--Yes, a shambles too. Full of cornered Northern troops, fighting from house to house. They are so desperate they'll probably try to break into the Settlement for safety."

"--But the worst is those Russians. You know, White Russians in Northern pay. They are in an armored car on a siding over by the North Station, they are shelling everything around till their ammunition gives out. They're doomed and they know it. What will happen to them?"

"I hate to think."

Megan leaned toward Mrs. Jackson.

"Do you hear what they say?"

Mrs. Jackson nodded absently.

Megan felt her heart beating faster. She could not drink her tea and wondered how Mrs. Jackson could go on eating large cream cakes and toast with jam. But war was a commonplace to Mrs. Jackson, while tea in a hotel lobby was not.

"Can't they do something about it?" Megan asked.

"Oh, no, that is all Chinese territory."

Megan took out her leather cigarette case and put it back again.

"I see," said Mrs. Jackson, "they are wearing lots of red fox. And it used to be so out of date. Isn't it funny how things always come back?"

And she continued to look around her with a politely furtive greediness at this delightful world which she knew only too well she would shortly have to leave.

"Isn't that Mr. Jackson?" asked Megan.

Mrs. Jackson turned. "Why, so it is."

He was talking to a man who, Mrs. Jackson said, was one of the American consuls. Presently he saw them, nodded absently, and in a moment came over and joined them. His face was very flushed, his eyes looked heavy.

"Doctor Strike is still trying to get his pass," he told them. "He has been trying all afternoon to reach General Hsu at the Nantao Yamen. I don't know with what success. I advised him if that failed to try to get hold of General Yen. You know, the paper said he was somewhere in the French Concession. I have just been trying to get the Orphanage by telephone but can't get it. The whole district is a blaze of fire, it seems."

"Well, you've done all you can. Sit down and have some tea."

"Yes, do have some tea," said Megan.

Mr. Jackson sat down heavily with a sigh. Megan poured him a strong cup and he drank it without saying a word. Then he made an effort to recover his cheerfulness.

"Well, I've always been a little afraid of Miss Reed," he said; "maybe the Cantonese will feel the same way."

"It seems to me I smell smoke," said Megan.

"You probably do. Chapei is not far."

Megan looked out of the window. She could see the patrols on the Garden Bridge, Spanish marines from the _Blas de Lezo_. In the ballroom of the hotel the orchestra was tuning up for the tea dance which began at five.

"Do let us go and walk a little," she said. "If you are not too tired, let us walk toward Chapei."

Mr. Jackson thought they would not get very far, but he got up and Mrs. Jackson reluctantly followed.

They walked along North Szechuen Road. There were so many Chinese on the sidewalks, they had to elbow their way through. The Chinese stood about not moving, not even talking much. There was none of the nervous activity of Nanking Road. They stood looking dully at the passing motorcars, wheelbarrows, rickshaws, loaded with the refugees pouring in from Chapei. Several stretchers passed, carried by coolies. On one a Japanese child in a gaudy kimono lay face downward, joggling helplessly.

"Most of the Japanese live this way," Mr. Jackson called over his shoulder. He walked ahead of them, elbowing his way along. "There must be sniping going on."

A Sikh stopped them and told them by signs that they could go no farther. He held out his arms and made a pantomime of shooting. "Click, click," he said, "plenty shoot." His face crinkled into smiles, his eyes nearly shut, his teeth and tongue showed in the midst of his handsome black beard; his smile was so infectious they could not help smiling with him and liking him. They stood for a moment, feeling friendly but not knowing what to do.

Then the Sikh moved off and they turned up Range Road, a street of red brick houses with small garden plots in front behind brick walls, like a street in an English Midland town or in a London suburb. The street was nearly empty and instead of sky a great cloud of smoke rolled up from behind the roofs. There was an all-pervading acrid smell of charred wood and burning paints and varnish. At the far end was some sort of barricade with a few people standing before it. They walked down toward it, wondering why the street was so empty and hearing every now and then a soft spat on the walls of the opposite side.

Suddenly Megan almost tripped over a bundle that looked as if it might have been dropped from a passing truck, and saw other bundles lying about, gray, the color of the road itself. They were Northern soldiers in gray woolen uniforms. One lay with his head hidden on his arm as if asleep; another, his face turned toward the sky, was as livid as though a green light had been turned on him, and still another had his arms stretched out in an arrested, a histrionic gesture of abandon. Megan noticed his hands, which were very plump and delicate; they reminded her of the hands of the man in the wrecked car.

Mr. Jackson shook his head over them.

"Poor fellows," he said, "they were trying to get in here to save their skins."

At the barricade a few British soldiers, Durhams, stood by a machine-gun, and just outside, about fifty yards farther on, a hundred or more Northern soldiers sat about on the ground, their arms in a pile in front of them. Like school children they were waiting to be told what to do next. But there was no one to tell them. A few civilians, Japanese and European, had gathered around the barricade, and a good-looking young Jew in riding clothes came up to Mr. Jackson and began to tell him what had happened.

"I came along just here like this and I say to myself, these boys are going to make a rush for it. There were some on the roofs firing into the street,--they are still there, better keep close to the wall. They came in a rush, and they scared the daylights out of me, I'll tell the world." But he moved on, leaving unexplained what a young Jew in riding clothes, without a horse, was doing in that galley.

Mr. Jackson spoke to one of the young Durhams. The cornered Northern troops had tried to break into the Settlement for safety, so they had had to kill about sixteen of them. The rest had thrown down their arms. He himself was nineteen years old and had never been under fire before. His eyes were shining, his voice cracked a little, and when a Japanese wishing to hear pushed too near him, he kicked him violently away, not because he was brutal,--his face was that of a good-tempered child,--but because he was excited into a state bordering on exaltation.

A car came along Range Road and with a sharp scream of brakes stopped at the barricade. It carried a Japanese flag and Japanese Marines on the running-board. A British car followed it. Three British officers, among them General Duncan's Chief-of-Staff, got out and walked through to where the Northern prisoners sat about waiting for something to happen. Fifteen or twenty Sikhs on horseback trotted along the road, at the end a magnificent one who rode thoughtfully, stroking his gray beard, deep in contemplation of some private matter, neither hurried nor indifferent but as obviously made for war as the Chinese are for peace. An ambulance came with great honking, for the road was becoming crowded. An army doctor and several hospital corpsmen got out and bent over the bodies. Over one who was alive they held a consultation. The Chief-of-Staff came back and gave orders for the road to be cleared. The Durhams began to push people along.

As Megan turned, she saw one of the doctors light a cigarette and put it in the mouth of the Chinese soldier. She held back long enough to be sure that a faint breath of smoke drifted between his colorless lips. She walked along content that at least one of these hunted creatures had escaped, that in the midst of all this defeat she might identify herself with one tangible victory.