The Bitter Tea of General Yen Read online

  “To love my neighbor as myself has always seemed to me a very disgusting injunction. I can only say that you don’t usually carry it out. You personally perhaps, but then you are strangely sincere. To you the important thing seems to be a certain generosity. You are willing (you must forgive me this, Miss Davis) to be generous at nearly any one’s expense. Most people are not. Your tenet, if carried out, would lead to an inconceivable state of disorder. It is possibly the theory most dangerous to humanity at large that has ever come into the world. It is fortunate, perhaps it was inevitable, that it should have been accepted by races gifted with an ability to think one way and live another. The Ideal. Yes. To them that remains sufficient in itself. They hold it up in one hand, as if it were a great crystal ball, and they say to others, ‘See, this is what I aspire to. Isn’t it beautiful of me!’ And with the other hand they quietly pick the purse of an admiring listener.”

  Megan burst out laughing, partly at the droll twist of his eyebrows as he said this, and the sly gesture of the hand delicately picking an invisible pocket.

  “It isn’t fair to judge a man by what he succeeds in accomplishing,” she said. “Your theory of social relations, you admit, doesn’t work out perfectly.”

  “No, it does not. But taken purely as an ideal of conduct, tell me why I should be expected to love an aged beggar, who sits outside my gate, who is a congenital scoundrel, and who is loathsomely afflicted with elephantiasis?”

  Megan, at the risk of being inept, decided to answer him seriously. But it was something of a strain to do so and she spoke with none of the heat that had formed her words to Mah-li.

  “Why, to help him, of course. I believe that only through love can people be saved. And your beggar must be saved, must become conscious that he too is a creature of God.”

  “But he knows already that he is a creature of God. And I cannot save him. Elephantiasis is incurable, so is old age, so, I believe, is even rascality.”

  “Really!” Megan laughed, abandoning seriousness, “you almost make me despair of you. Do you consider then that between you and that beggar there exists no relationship whatsoever?”

  “Certainly. But it is a very simple one. Mine to him is to toss him the coins on which he sustains his life. His to me is a lively gratitude for my bounty. In this way each of us is satisfied. But it would be as horrible for him as for me should I undertake to love him. Indeed, when you insist on that you can really put no limit to what I must love. You will end up by insisting I love things of which I can’t even speak.”

  “You are reducing it to the absurd and that isn’t fair. Just tell me one thing. You call yourself a Communist, don’t you?”

  “No, no,” protested the General.

  “Well, a Republican then. Does a beggar at your gate fit into that picture?”

  “Oh, politics!” The General shrugged and made a little half-turn with his fingers, dismissing politics like so much dust. “Every one must have a label. Almost any label will do.”

  Megan felt too languid to continue. Beauty rising from the grove and from the figures carved in the rock seemed to coil like delicate smoke through her brain. They sat without speaking for several moments and then by unspoken agreement got up and walked farther along till they came to the temple, containing a vast wooden Buddha whose head touched the ceiling. Priests were chanting in voices pitched on a low note which mounted and descended as in a Catholic vespers. One sounded, at intervals, a little muffled drum. A young acolyte brought them tea, which they drank on a wooden bench against the temple wall. They wandered afterward into a dusty hall full of gilded lohan standing in rows in the gloom. But there was little beauty in the temple, the great Buddha or the lohan, and Megan’s eyes returned to the hill outside, feathery with bamboos and mounded with graves. Soft white clouds rested on it. The temple lacked utterly what she had already found in the grove, a sense of mystery.

  They walked slowly back to their waiting car, and as they drove along the General pointed to an island in the lake.

  “To-morrow if I am free we must visit that island. There are pools and pools of lotus there, crossed by red causeways. I will have them forbid the landing of any visitors for the whole day and we will take tea undisturbed in one of the pavilions. You will imagine that you are in old China, not the China of temples but the China of gardens.”

  “What a delicious phrase!” and she repeated it in a whisper. “ ‘The China of gardens!’ You must not think,” she said dreamily, “that I don’t realize what charm your life had at its best. The truth is I scarcely dare to think of it. The faintest fragrance of it would seduce any imagination.”

  Megan looked toward the island the General had indicated and thought of a red pavilion over pools of still lotus, and she suddenly thought of the tea the General would pour for her as having the power to steal away the soul. A slight shock as if something had fallen seemed to vibrate warningly through her nerves. She turned to look curiously at the General. He returned her look blandly, a little absently. Perhaps he also was thinking of the pavilion. Megan’s eyebrows gathered in a frown.

  “But the trouble with that life was,” she said severely, “it was enjoyed by far too few. Such a tiny per cent of your countless millions ever knew it.”

  “And what difference does that make? Undoubtedly the quality of it was such that only a rare few could appreciate it. Who wants a civilization that would seem satisfying to your beggar with elephantiasis? But how you struggle, Miss Davis, against the idea of your own pleasure! Your plan is to diffuse it over the whole world, share it with the whole race. I am surprised at this in one of your incomparable distinction. Don’t you know that the more concentrated pleasure becomes the keener it is? I sometimes feel it is at its best when tasted by oneself alone.”

  “You are a poor Republican. You don’t dare admit your ideas to many people, do you?”

  “To practically no one. I know I am a poor Republican. Whenever a good Republican becomes really necessary in China, I will go under.”

  “You hate all this change then?”

  “Not entirely.” He smiled at her. “Certain new combinations seem to rise out of it occasionally that make it worth what is lost.”

  Megan exclaimed, “It is not possible that you are being gallant, is it?”

  “Why not? How very unflattering you are! Do you think we have never been gallant to women?”

  “Well,” Megan laughed with a touch of constraint, “I somehow never pictured a Chinese gentleman as being anything but subdued by his mother and tyrannical to his wife. But I suppose that is an absurd injustice. You must have had generations of women with beauty and wit and of course goodness. And then in modern China,—I should think you would enjoy these astonishing changes that must have come about in educated women.”

  Megan realized that the comradeship they had managed to arrive at so suddenly and without effort had vanished at the first mention of women. They were once more on their first uneasy footing. Why? Because such a comradeship was fundamentally unnatural to him, or because she was thinking again of Mah-li? With a sudden compunction she forced Mah-li to the foremost position in her mind. Until his responsibility to Mah-li was settled, she told herself, there could never be real friendliness between them. She said decidedly:

  “And even among those not educated in the modern way, one has only to look at their faces to see how many of them have good temper and a keen sense of humor.”

  He bowed his head toward her.

  “I thank you on their behalf.”

  “For instance, Mah-li,” she insisted, “I find her full of all sorts of possibilities.”

  The General did not answer. He turned half-way toward the window.

  “I have grown very fond of her. She struck me as a child who has for the time more or less lost her way. She is only a child, you know.”

  But the General evidently meant to discourage her. He did not answer, and Megan felt alternately hot and cold with the desire to urge him to some decl
aration of his intentions and the fear that he would only continue to be baffling. She turned from him and saw on the hill, outlined against a white cloud, the pagoda with tufts of foliage sprouting from its top. It recalled the General’s phrase about the China of gardens and she regretted that the illusion of their sympathy had to be lost so soon. In helping people, she thought, one foregoes such a great deal of their charm, one even at times voluntarily destroys it. She permitted herself one final pang that this must be so, and because of this weakness returned with even greater insistence and fervor to her determination that the General should face the issue on Mah-li. But before she could speak again the General said to her:

  “Please let us never talk any more of Mah-li. I respect your feeling toward her, but she is worthy of none of it. You do not understand.”

  He spoke in his rather curious high voice, what she thought of as his official voice, and his rebuke gave the final spur to her ardor. She saw that the car had reached the gate of the yamen and it was slowing down to stop.

  “But I do understand,” she cried, “I do. Don’t stop here, please, drive on a little. I have to talk to you.”

  The General looked at her blankly; astonishment seemed always momentarily to paralyze his initiative. Then he leaned forward and spoke to the driver. The car moved slowly along the road. For a moment Megan tried to think clearly what to say to him, but could not and decided to trust to an onrush of emotion.

  “You and I will never be friends,” she said, “till we settle this about Mah-li. It is just like a wall between us. I must make you see it as I do. I must make you feel your responsibility to Mah-li. She is a creature dependent on you, so much less intelligent than you, so simple, so uncomplicated, that she is like a child beside you. You can do anything you want to her, make nearly anything you want of her. Your responsibility is simply limitless. You feel she has deceived you, sold information about you to your enemies, perhaps even been unfaithful to you. All that is dreadful, and if it is true you have a certain justification in crushing her. She is probably helpless to prevent you. I want you to think of all these things and then forgive her. I don’t know exactly how you feel about her. I mean whether you love her—as—well, as a lover. But that is of no importance.”

  Though Megan said this she saw on the contrary that it was of tremendous importance, that perhaps it was the key to everything, and her attack took a slightly different direction. “I want you to see the beauty of giving love where it isn’t returned or merited, isn’t even understood. Any man can give love where he is sure it is returned. That perhaps isn’t love at all. But to give it with no thought of return, of merit, of gratitude even, that is ordinarily the privilege of God. Now it is your privilege.”

  Megan watched him anxiously for a visible effect of her words, saw none in his profile and lowered eyes and became more warmly personal.

  “Oh, General, with all you have, and you have so much—yes, I appreciate your real superiority—it hurts me to see you blind to the possibilities that are in you. You are thinking of yourself always as a man. Think of yourself as a child of God’s love. Of Mah-li as a child of the same love. Yes, and of me too, all of us His creatures. Then there is no barrier between us. Do this thing I ask you. Do it even blindly if you must, and I promise you, I am so sure of it, I promise you you will know for the first time what happiness is. You will know——”

  Words failed her suddenly and she turned her head to hide tears starting from her eyes. She wiped them away with her finger-tips and leaned her head against the glass, feeling in waves that exultant happiness she had promised the General.

  The General did not speak nor even turn his head, and after a few moments Megan began to sense an awkwardness in his silence. She had been carried so far beyond the prescribed limits that the question of whether she had been splendidly justified or only ridiculous now seemed to hang on the result in him.

  “Please go back,” she said unsteadily.

  The General leaned forward and gave the order. The car stopped, made the turn and went back toward the yamen. They did not speak again. Megan was afraid to add a word. As his silence continued she was further convinced that she had said all there was to say, and moreover that what she said had been justified.

  At the gate of the yamen the guards on the running-board jumped off and held open the car door, standing at attention on either side. The General got out and held his hand to help Megan from the car. Still not wishing to look at him she looked only at his hand. She saw it for the first time palm up, the fingers curled slightly toward her in a gesture that seemed like a gracious according of mercy. As she fleetingly touched it, she gave it a sudden involuntary pressure, a pressure that was quickly returned. Then she walked hurriedly past him, so hurriedly that it became almost flight. No one joined her, and she reached her room alone.

  XXI

  Back in her room, Megan sat by the window and watched the daylight slowly fade into a twilight opalescent with mists from the lake and mountains. The essential lines of the roofs, of the moon door and the rugged stones on their pedestals, stood more firmly revealed in the slightly blurred atmosphere. Against the opposite wall the downward spray of the willow trees had a grace too rarefied, too apparitional, for earthly things of sap, leaf and bark. The yamen was more than ordinarily quiet, drilling had stopped, the telephone no longer rang, slippered feet no longer passed in the court. Megan sat quite still, looking out on the ideal province, the province of low blue mountains, of rice and mulberry, glimmering canals, of a lake with islands for pleasure houses, lotus gardens, little pavilions of red lacquer, all bathed in the moist air, freshness of space and silence. And she saw even more clearly the ideal ruler, a hieratic figure sculptured from the Eastern rock, wise, subtle and patient, from whose hands, stretched toward his people, streamed enlightenment and mercy. Megan knew that such a province, such a ruler, can have no existence in this world, yet the capacity for holding these images in her spirit filled her with a sense of power and of rest. A knock on her door sounded sharply in the stillness.

  “Come in!”

  It opened and she saw Mr. Shultz standing outside.

  “Come in,” she repeated and pointed to a chair opposite her by the window.

  Mr. Shultz came toward her slowly, but instead of sitting down he leaned over the back of the chair. In the twilight his face had none of its ruddy look and was even more formless, his blue eyes were almost invisible, only his teeth gleamed in a smile. The sound of his heavy hands falling on the back of the chair suggested fatigue and strain.

  “Tired?” she asked.

  “You bet,” he answered wearily.

  “Don’t you want to sit down?”

  “Haven’t time. I just wanted to be sure you were all right. Been out to-day?”

  “Only with the General.”

  “The General go out?” he exclaimed in surprise.

  “Yes, we drove over to see a temple in the hills.”

  Mr. Shultz gave a low whistle and after a pause devoted to astonishment said:

  “Seen Mah-li to-day?”

  “I saw her this morning; she came in here. The General had sent her away evidently, and she was on the point of leaving.”

  “Did she try to get you to go along?”

  “Me! Of course not. Why should she?”

  Mr. Shultz made no reply.

  Megan said, “I was very worried about her. I am sure the General sent her away because of what you said last night.”

  “Maybe so,” said Mr. Shultz, and a sardonic inflection to his voice stirred her a little.

  “You shouldn’t have turned him against her, you know. It really wasn’t for you to protect his domestic life.” But Megan stopped at once; the question of interference was one he might too easily seize and retaliate on, and it had not been only a question of the General’s domestic life. “It wasn’t very chivalrous of you,” she said rather weakly.

  Mr. Shultz thought.

  “No, it wasn’t,” he admit
ted, “but I said a little more than I meant to when I got to talking. It made me so sore to think she would double-cross him like that. She would just as soon see him shot in front of her, so long as no one took her jade rings off her. Yes, it made me sore all right. I think she had it coming to her.” And he murmured reflectively, “The damned little tart.”

  “No, I don’t think she did,” said Megan. “And I don’t believe a Western man like yourself can have any conception of her position or what her chance has been to be anything else.”

  “Maybe not,” said Mr. Shultz. “I suppose it is true the kid never had much chance. Anyway, it does my heart good to hear one woman stand up for another. But I guess,” he added, “she don’t seem much like a real woman to you, more like a doll.”

  Mr. Shultz was as ready to sentimentalize over Mah-li as to condemn her. He seemed to think her as delightful as she was dangerous and, except for moments when he was stirred to real anger, would no doubt treat her with a leniency amounting to weakness.

  “How are the Communists getting on?” asked Megan lightly. “Will they keep us awake tonight?”

  To her surprise, Mr. Shultz answered more gravely. “I’m afraid they will.” But he said no more, perhaps not wishing to frighten her.

  Megan wondered why she wasn’t frightened. Because it seemed unreal, and unlike the capture of Shanghai, it was an affair between Chinese. How strange that even though these people now held all her interest they still lacked some essential reality for her. She puzzled over this but the possible night of alarms remained chimerical and apart from herself.

  “Mist’s clearing,” exclaimed Mr. Shultz.

  She looked out the window and saw that in spite of the gathering darkness the garden stood out more distinctly, as though breath had evaporated off the surface of a mirror. Above the black carved ridge-line of a roof she saw in a green sky a sharply burning star.

  “Wind from the bay,” exclaimed Mr. Shultz, but Megan was not listening. In the same way had the relations of the General and Mah-li been essentially unimportant, the vital point being that the General should show mercy because Megan asked him to. Having acknowledged this she allowed herself to go no further. But she turned to Mr. Shultz with an anxiety in her eyes that made them, for the moment, starry.