The Bitter Tea of General Yen Read online

  “Miss Davis!” he cried.

  Megan went to him and took both his outstretched hands.

  “Don’t get up, you are still ill. Were you badly hurt?”

  “Yes, hurt,” he repeated.

  A little red plush stool, with a book on it, stood by his feet. Megan pushed the book off and sat down. He still held her hand, gripping it with nervous bony force, not taking his eyes from hers.

  “I’ve prayed for you, my child,” he said, “every hour since. I thank God.”

  “It’s all right,” said Megan, “I’m quite safe.”

  “And you saved me!” he cried. “Yes, I know that. I can’t forget it ever. You saved me.”

  “Don’t,” said Megan, pained by his intensity. “Don’t. What does that kind of saving mean?”

  “It means life,” said Doctor Strike roughly.

  His eyes searched her up and down, seeing her Chinese dress, even the jade rings on her fingers.

  “Did you get the General’s telegram?” she asked.

  “Three days ago.”

  “He picked me up at the station and took me on a train down to his capital. I was very kindly treated.”

  “Good, good.” The Doctor’s eyes softened. “You were well treated. That’s good.”

  “Yes, very. He meant to return me. But trouble broke out there. An uprising. We were trying to get away and just at the last moment he was killed. An American who was with him, a Mr. Shultz, brought me back.”

  But Megan saw that at the word of General Yen’s death Doctor Strike had ceased to listen to her. His eyes looked beyond her to take in a greater perspective. She stopped and waited for him to speak.

  “It is hard to believe,” he said at last, “hard to believe. I’ve known him to be in danger so often. But he has always got through. Now he is actually dead. Well, then it is all over. It is finished. That is what your gift of life means, my dear, it means we can still go on, that the final reckoning, when our successes and our failures are summed up, is not yet upon us.

  “But he is dead and we can’t do anything more for him, we can’t help him, we can’t save him. It looks as though we had failed.” The Doctor stopped and his mouth of an old man trembled. “Perhaps we can’t be sure,” he said in a lower voice. “Perhaps we can’t be sure. He said, ‘I am the Way.’ The way may stretch farther than we think. It may not end here with the end of life. The General too believed in a Way, another Way. Perhaps they meet.” Doctor Strike dropped his head in his hands. He had forgotten Megan. “We must trust to the mercy of God,” he said.

  They sat in silence, both thinking of the General and of that mercy to which they at last so unwillingly relinquished him, both only fearful that since it must recognize justice, it might be less perfect than their own.

  THE END