The Bitter Tea of General Yen Read online

  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 be
en 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.

  XIII

  Some one knocked at the door. Megan said, “Come in” several times before it was opened. The young orderly with the salmon-pink silk cord about his neck stood in the doorway. He said something she did not understand, stood aside, and after a perceptible moment the General came into the room. He walked over to her and, clicking his heels together in the proper manner, bowed. He carried his cap under his arm.

  “Good morning,” he said. “I hope you are better.”

  “Yes, much better.”

  He drew up another chair to the window and when he was seated took out a gold cigarette case. He was smiling in a conventional manner with little nods of the head as he offered her a cigarette.

  “I have Turkish and Virginia tobacco.”

  It had occurred to her that this meeting might be to him as startling in its novelty as to her. The assurance gave her more confidence. She took a cigarette from him and the General snapped a gold briquet (he was really most opulently provided), lighting first her cigarette then his.

  “Are you quite comfortable here?” he asked. “Do you like this room?”

  “Yes, it is very nice. I have been enjoying the view of the garden. And that painting on the wall, I admire that very much.”

  “Do you? I am glad, because I like it too.” The General turned in his chair to look at it. “It is by an artist of the early Ming dynasty. It is not very old as things are old here in China. But I always take it with me. It possesses a great variety and excellence of brush stroke.”

  They smoked in silence, neither looking directly at the other. A large ash fell on to Megan’s lap.

  “I will send you ash-trays,” said the General. “You must excuse this house. I use it now as my yamen, but it is not my house. It is the pleasure house of a friend of mine.”

  “Is it in town?”

  “No, it is on the lake. You will see by and by, it is a very beautiful location.”

  There was another silence. The General looked so fixedly at the end of his cigarette that Megan was able to look at him. He was smaller than she realized, his gray uniform fitted dapperly over a shoulder too plump, there was a smoothness about his skin and hair that was unpleasant to her, and even his hands were faintly repellent by their abnormal delicacy.

  He said suddenly, as though he had been turning it over and had come to a decision, “I want to assure you again that you are quite safe in my house. I don’t want you to feel that you are in an equivocal position.”

  “Why insist so?” thought Megan. “I would have felt no concern over my safety if he hadn’t brought it up.” She looked at him more sharply and was disconcerted to realize she could be so affected by a physical repugnance. She was quite unprepared both for the repugnance and its effect.

  “I feel,” she said, “I am in a position requiring an explanation.”

  The General raised his eyebrows a little and his eyes appeared absurdly prominent.

  “But your position is very mysterious to me! I myself don’t know why I should find you in Chinese territory, early in the morning, surrounded by an unfriendly crowd, from whom incidentally I saved you.”

  “I know you saved me. I am grateful to you for that, but I had a perfect right to be in Chinese territory. I had a safe-conduct pass signed by you.”

  “By me!” The General’s eyes began to show amusement and astonishment. “By me! Then is it possible Doctor Strike was with you?”

  “Yes, we were together. He was struck on the head by a coolie with a carrying-pole. I got him in a rickshaw and it went off with him. I was left behind but it was not his fault, he was unconscious. We also had with us five children and two women from St. Andrew’s Orphanage in Chapei. But Doctor Strike explained all this to you. We were relying, as I said, on a safe-conduct pass signed by you.”

  “Ah, these safe-conduct passes!” The General waved them aside with one hand. “You people expect too much of them. Do you suppose the coolie who struck Doctor Strike knew of your pass, or would have respected it if he had?”

  Megan waited to see if he would express any concern over Doctor Strike’s fate, but that aspect of it did not seem to occur to him. She said rather bitterly:

  “I see now your safe-conduct was worthless. But I did not know at the time. You see, I have lived all my life in a country where if a situation comparable to this were possible, such a pass would be effective. The whole training and temper of the people would make it so.”

  The General looked at her, doubtful how to take this.

  “Do you speak seriously?” he asked. “Where is this country you are talking about that has no mob spirit, no race hatred, but only a perfect respect for law and authority? I had supposed you were an American.”

  Megan realized too late that she had been carried away, and simultaneously that she must not be carried away again. It was she and not he who had given way to a sense of antagonism.

  “I am sorry,” she said hastily. “I am afraid I was too rhetorical. Yes, I am an American.”

  He acknowledged her withdrawal with a nod, slight enough not to attach undue importance to it.

  “I have never been to America,” he said gently, “but I have lived in England for a time and in France and Germany. Are you also, like Doctor Strike, a missionary?”

  “No. But I came out to be married to one of the doctors at Changsha, at Yale-in-China.”

  “Ah, yes. Well, I am glad you are not a missionary, even if you are to become one.”

  “Why?” said Megan. “Do you dislike them?”

  “No,” said the General. “Only I have found few agreeable friends among them.”

  “Doctor Strike however admires you greatly.”

  “I greatly admire Doctor Strike, though I must say I was rather relieved when he decided to leave my province. He was too much like an atom of radium locked in a desk drawer. Yes, I had been wondering all along if you were not with Doctor Strike or in some way connected with that orphanage. But what did you go with him for? I don’t understand it. For the excitement perhaps?”

  Megan did not answer and he shook his head, smiling as if he found her an impossible subject for analysis.

  “When Doctor Strike asked me for the famous safe-conduct pass,” he continued, “I didn’t want to give it to him because I felt sure he would put too great a strain upon it. He found me,
as perhaps he told you, in a Shanghai hotel dining with some friends, and he urged me at a time when I could not well refuse. You see, I was not supposed to be in the European sections of Shanghai. At the time you saw me I was going in under a false name as a prominent official of the Northern government, a man who, unknown to the authorities, was at that moment actually dead. When Doctor Strike found me I had completed the negotiation I came for, but it would still have been very unpleasant for me to have been obliged to explain my presence to the foreign authorities. Of course as soon as the Doctor began to urge me, I thought of the position I was in. But I am quite sure it never occurred to the Doctor to make use of it to get the pass. No, I am quite sure he never thought of it for a moment.” The General stopped to smile at this further aspect of the comedy.

  Megan looked at him intently. “Yes,” she said, with an insistence on each word, “I am sure he was not only unwilling but even incapable of betraying you.”

  The General’s smile became inquiring; he looked at her a moment, then let his gaze wander toward the ceiling as he did when he wished to withdraw his attention from the more immediate considerations. He grew deeply thoughtful and she had the satisfaction of seeing his urbanity appear to be invaded by a sudden, sharp uncertainty. But he dismissed that.

  “When I spoke of the situation in which I could not very well refuse,” he went on to explain, “I meant that Doctor Strike was in a fair way to spoil the gaiety of the party my friends were giving me. He is the sort of man who would infallibly respect one’s grief but be incapable of respecting one’s gaiety. That would have been regrettable. I wanted very much to get rid of him. I wrote him the pass on the back of a menu card. It was the only paper available except a bill from the hotel and I chose it because it had a design of Kuomintang flags at the top. Yes, my host is very Europeanized. He not only believes that menus are desirable as stimulating the appetite and perhaps falsifying the origins of certain dishes but he believes in the sacredness of a flag. And I too at that moment, perhaps under the influence of a beneficent champagne, believed that if my safe-conduct pass were to have any efficacy, it would be due to those flags!”