by A. J. Cronin
There was a pause. The priest said stiffly: ‘Suppose it were possible to capture the gun?’
‘No. Do not entice me.’ Shon shook his head with concealed bitterness. ‘But if ever I get near that dishonourable weapon I shall finish it for good.’
‘We can get very near the gun.’
Shon raised his head deliberately, sounding Francis with his eyes. A glint of excitement enlivened him. He waited.
Father Chisholm leaned forward, his lips making a tight line. ‘This evening under threat of shelling the mission, the Wai officer who commands the gun crew ordered me to bring food and money to him before midnight …’
He went on, gazing at Shon, then abruptly broke off, conscious that he need say no more. For a full minute nothing was said. Shon was thinking, behind his careless brow. At last he smiled – at least the muscles of his face went through the act of smiling, but there was nothing of humour in his eyes.
‘My friend, I must continue to regard you as a gift from heaven.’
A cloud passed over the priest’s set face. ‘ I have forgotten about heaven tonight.’
Shon nodded, not thinking of that remark. ‘Now listen and I will tell you what we shall do.’
An hour later Francis and Shon left the cantonment and made their way through the Manchu Gate towards the mission. Shon had changed his uniform for a worn blue blouse and a pair of coolie’s slacks, rolled to the knee. A flat pleated hat covered his head. On his back he carried a large sack, tightly sewn with twine. Following silently, at a distance of some three hundred paces, were twenty of his men.
Halfway up the Brilliant Green Jade road Francis touched his companion on the arm. ‘Now it is my turn.’
‘It is not heavy.’ Shon shifted the bundle tenderly to his other shoulder. ‘And I am perhaps more used to it than you.’
They reached the shelter of the mission walls. No lights were showing, the outline which compassed everything he loved lay shadowy and unprotected. The silence was absolute. Suddenly, from within the lodge, he heard the melodious strike of the American chiming clock he had given Joseph for a wedding present. He counted automatically. Eleven o’clock.
Shon had given the men a final word of instruction. One of them, squatting against the wall, suppressed a cough which seemed to echo out across the hill. Shon cursed him in a violent whisper. The men were not important. It was what Shon and he must do together that mattered. He felt his friend peering at him through the silent darkness.
‘You know exactly what is going to occur?’
‘Yes.’
‘When I fire into the can of gasoline it will ignite instantly and explode the cordite. But before that, even before I raise my revolver, you must begin to move away. You must be well away. The concussion will be extreme.’ He paused. ‘Let us go if you are ready. And for the love of your Lord of Heaven keep the torch away from the sack.’
Nerving himself, Francis took matches from his pocket and let the split reed flare. Then, holding it up, he stepped from the cover of the mission wall and walked openly towards the cypress grove. Shon came behind him, like a servant, bearing the sack on his back, as if groaning beneath its weight, taking care to make a noise.
The distance was not great. At the edge of the grove he halted, called into the watchful stillness of the invisible trees:
‘I have come as requested. Take me to your leader.’
There was an interval of silence; then, close behind them, a sudden movement. Francis swung round and saw two of Wai’s men standing in the pool of smoky glare.
‘You are expected, Bewitcher. Proceed without undue fear.’
They were escorted through a formidable maze of shallow trenches and sharp-ended bamboo stakes to the centre of the grove. Here the priest’s heart sharply missed a beat. Behind a breastwork of earth and cedar branches, the crew dispersed in attitudes of care beside it, stood the long-muzzled gun.
‘Have you brought all that was demanded of you?’
Francis recognized the voice of his visitor earlier that evening. He lied more readily this time.
‘I have brought a great load of tinned goods … which will certainly please you.’
Shon exhibited the sack, moving nearer, a trifle nearer, to the gun.
‘It is not so great a load.’ The captain of the gun crew stepped into the light. ‘Have you brought money also?’
‘Yes.’
‘Where is it?’ The captain felt the neck of the sack.
‘Not there.’ Francis spoke hurriedly, with a start. ‘ I have the money in my purse.’
The captain gazed at him, diverted from his examination of the sack, his expression lit by a sudden cupidity. A group of soldiers had collected, their staring faces all bent upon the priest.
‘Listen, all of you.’ Francis held their attention, with a desperate intensity. He could see Shon edging imperceptibly into the fringe of shadow, closer, still closer to the gun. ‘ I ask you – I beg you – to leave us unmolested in the mission.’
Contempt showed in the captain’s face. He smiled derisively. ‘You shall be unmolested … until tomorrow.’ Someone laughed in the background. ‘Then we shall protect your women.’
Francis hardened his heart. Shon, as though exhausted, had unloaded the sack under the breech of the gun. Pretending to wipe the perspiration from his brow he came back a little towards the priest. The crowd of soldiers had increased and were growing impatient. Francis strove to gain one minute of extra time for Shon.
‘I do not doubt your word but I should value some assurance from General Wai.’
‘General Wai is in the city. You will see him later.’
The captain spoke curtly and stepped out to get the money. From the corner of his eye, Francis saw Shon’s hand go beneath his blouse. It is coming now, he thought. In the same moment, he heard the loud report of the revolver shot and the impact of the bullet as it struck the oil tin inside the sack. Braced for the convulsion, he could not understand. There was no explosion. Shon in swift succession fired three further shots into the tin. Francis saw the gasoline flood all over the sacking. He thought, with a kind of sick disillusionment yet quicker than the thudding shots: Shon was mistaken, the bullets won’t ignite the gasoline, or perhaps it is only kerosene they put inside the tin. He saw Shon shooting into the crowd now, struggling to free his gun, shouting hopelessly to his own men to rush in. He saw the captain and a dozen soldiers closing on him. It all happened as swiftly as his thought. He felt a final, devastating wave of anger and despair. Deliberately, as though casting with a salmon rod he drew back his arm and threw his torch.
His accuracy was beautiful. The blazing flare arched like a comet through the night and hit the oil-soaked sacking squarely in the centre. Instantly a great sheet of sound and light struck at him. He no more than sensed the brilliant flash when the earth erupted and amidst a frightful detonation a blast of scorching air blew him backwards into crashing darkness. He had never lost consciousness before. He seemed falling, falling, into space and blackness, clutching for support and finding none, falling to annihilation, to oblivion.
When his senses returned he found himself stretched in the open, limp but unhurt, with Shon pulling his ear-lobes to bring him round. Dimly he saw the red sky above him. The whole cypress grove was ablaze, crackling and roaring like a pyre.
‘Is the gun finished?’
Shon stopped the ear-tweaking and sat up, relieved.
‘Yes, it is finished. And some thirty of Wai’s soldiers blown to pieces with it.’ His teeth showed white in his scorched face. ‘My friend, I congratulate you. I have never seen such a lovely killing in my life. Another such and you may have me for a Christian.’
The next few days brought a terrible confusion of mind and spirit to Father Chisholm. The physical reaction to his adventure almost prostrated him. He was no virile hero of romantic fiction but a stubby, short-winded little man well over forty. He felt shaken and dizzy. His head ached so persistently he had to drag himself to
his room several times a day to plunge his splitting brow in the tepid water of his ewer. And through this bodily suffering ran the greater anguish of his soul, a chaotic mixture of triumph and remorse, a heavy and relentless wonder that he, a priest of God, should have raised his hand to slay his fellow men. He could barely find self-vindication in the safety of his people. His strangest torment lay in the stabbing recollection of his own unconsciousness under the shock of the explosion. Was death like that? A total oblivion …
No one but Polly suspected that he had left the mission grounds that night. He could feel her tranquil gaze travelling from his own silent and diminished form to the charred cedar stumps which marked the remnants of the gun emplacement. There was infinite understanding in the banal phrase she spoke to him:
‘Somebody has done us a good turn by getting that nuisance out of the way.’
Fighting continued in the outskirts of the city and in the hills to the eastward. By the fourth day reports reaching the mission indicated that the struggle was turning against Wai.
The end of that week came grey and overcast, with heavy gathering clouds. On Saturday the firing in Pai-tan dwindled to a few spasmodic rattles. Watching from his balcony Father Chisholm saw strings of figures in the Wai green retreating from the Western Gate. Many of these had thrown away their arms in the fear of being captured and shot as rebels. This Francis knew to be an indication of Wai’s reverses and of his inability to effect a compromise with General Naian.
Outside the mission, behind the upper wall where some bamboo canes screened them from observation from the city, a number of these scattered soldiers had collected. Their voices, indeterminate and plainly frightened, could be heard inside the mission.
Towards three o’clock in the afternoon Sister Clotilde came with renewed agitation to Father Chisholm as he paced the courtyard, too disturbed to rest.
‘Anna is throwing food over the upper wall.’ She wailed out the complaint. ‘I am sure her soldier is there … they were talking together.’
His own nerves were near to breaking point. ‘There is no harm in giving food to those who need it.’
‘But he is one of those dreadful cut-throats. Oh, dear, we shall be murdered in our beds!’
‘Don’t think so much about your own throat.’ He flushed with annoyance. ‘Martyrdom is an easy way to heaven.’
As twilight fell, masses of the beaten Wai forces poured from all the city gates. They came by the Manchu Bridge, swarming up the Brilliant Green Jade road past the mission, in great confusion. The dirty faces of the men were stamped with the urgency of flight.
The night that followed was one of darkness and disorder, filled with shouting and shots, with galloping horses and the flare of torches on the far-off plain below. The priest watched with a strange melancholy from the lower mission gate. Suddenly, as he stood there, he heard a cautious step behind him. He turned. As he had half-expected, it was Anna, her mission coat buttoned closely to her chin, a cloth-wrapped bundle in her hand.
‘Where are you going, Anna?’
She drew back with a stifled cry, but immediately regained her sullen boldness.
‘It is my own affair.’
‘You will not tell me?’
‘No.’
His mood had fallen to quieter key, his attitude was changed. What was the use of more compulsion here?
‘You have made up your mind to leave us, Anna. That is evident. And nothing that I can say or do will change it.’
She said bitterly: ‘You have caught me now. But the next time you will not do so.’
‘There need be no next time, Anna.’ He took the key from his pocket and unlocked the gate. ‘You are free to go.’
He could feel her start in sheer amazement, feel the impact of those full sultry eyes. Then without a word of gratitude or farewell she gripped her bundle and darted through the opening. Her running form was lost in the crowded roadway.
He stood, bare-headed, while the rabble swept past him. Now the exodus had turned to a rout. Suddenly there was a louder shouting, and he saw in the bobbing glare of upheld torches a group of men on horses. They approached rapidly, beating their way through the slow unmounted stream that hindered them. As they reached the gate one of the riders wrenched his lathered pony to a stop. In the torchlight the priest had a vision of incredible evil, a death’s-head face, with narrowed slits of eyes, and a low receding brow. The horseman shouted at him, an insult charged with hatred, then raised his hand with immediate deadly menace. Francis did not move. His perfect immobility, uncaring and resigned, seemed to disconcert the other. While he hesitated for an instant a pressing cry was raised from behind. ‘On, on, Wai … to Tou-en-lai … they are coming!’
Wai dropped his hand, holding the weapon, with a queer fatalism. As he spurred his beast forward he bent in the saddle and spat venomously in the priest’s face. The night enclosed him.
Next morning, which dawned bright and sunny, the mission bells were ringing gaily. Fu, of his own accord, had clambered to the tower. He swung on the long rope, his thin beard wagging with delight. Most of the refugees were ready to go home, their faces jubilant, waiting only to have the mission Father’s word before departing. All the children were in the compound, laughing and skipping, watched by Martha and Maria-Veronica, who had patched up their differences sufficiently to stand no more than six feet apart.
Even Clotilde was playing, the gayest of all, bouncing a ball, running with the little ones, giggling. Polly, upright in her favourite place in the vegetable garden, sat winding a new skein of wool as though life were nothing but a round of calm normality.
When Father Chisholm came slowly down the steps of his house Joseph met him joyfully, carrying his chubby infant on his arm. ‘It is over, Master. Victory for the Naians. The new general is truly great. No more war in Pai-tan. He promises it. Peace for all of us in our time.’ He bounced the baby tenderly, triumphantly. ‘ No fighting for you my little Joshua, no more tears and blood. Peace! Peace!’
Inexplicably, a shaft of utter sadness pierced the priest’s heart. He took the babe’s tiny cheek, soft and golden, between his thumb and finger, caressingly. He stifled his sigh and smiled. They were all running towards him, his children, his people whom he loved – whom, at the cost of his dearest principle, he had saved.
X
The end of January brought the first glorious fruits of victory to Pai-tan. And Francis felt relief that Aunt Polly was spared the sight of them. She had departed for England the week before, and although the parting had been difficult he knew in his heart that it was wiser for her to go.
That morning as he crossed to the dispensary he speculated on the length of the rice line. Yesterday it had stretched the whole length of the mission wall. Wai, in the fury of defeat, had burned every stalk of grain for miles around. The sweet potato crop was poor. The rice fields, tended only by the women, with men and water-oxen commandeered by the army, had produced less than half the usual yield. Everything was scarce and costly. In the city, the value of tinned goods had multiplied five times. Prices were soaring daily.
He hastened into the crowded building. All three Sisters were there, each with a wooden measure and a black japanned bin of rice, engaged in the interminable task of scooping three ounces of the grain, running it into the proffered bowls.
He stood watching. His people were patient, quite silent. But the motion of the dry kernels made a constant hissing in the room. He said in a low voice to Maria-Veronica: ‘ We can’t keep this up. Tomorrow we must cut the allowance in half.’
‘Very well.’ She made a gesture of acquiescence. The strain of the past weeks had taken toll of her, he thought her unusually pale. She kept her eyes on the bin.
He went to the outer door, once or twice, counting the numbers. At last, to his relief, the line began to thin. He recrossed the compound, and descended to the store cellars, recasting the inventory of their supplies. Fortunately he had placed an order with Mr Chia two months ago and it had bee
n faithfully delivered. But the stock of rice and sweet potatoes, which they used in great quantity, was dangerously low.
He stood thinking. Though prices were exorbitant, food could still be purchased in Pai-tan. He took a sudden resolution and decided, for the first time in the mission’s history, to cable the Society for an emergency grant.
A week later he received the answering cable:
Quite impossible allocate any monies. Kindly remember we are at war. You are not and therefore extremely lucky. Am immersed Red Cross work. Best regards Anselm Mealey.
Francis crumpled the green slip with an expressionless face. That afternoon he mustered all the available financial resources of the mission and went to the town. But now it was too late – he could buy nothing. The grain market was closed. The principal shops showed only a minimum of perishable produce: some melons, radishes, and small-river fish.
Disturbed, he stopped at the Lantern Street mission, where he had a long conversation with Dr Fiske. Then, on his way back, he visited Mr Chia’s house.
Mr Chia made Francis welcome. They drank tea together in the latticed little office, smelling of spice and musk and cedar.
‘Yes,’ Mr Chia agreed gravely, when they had fully discussed the shortage. ‘It is a matter of some small concern. Mr Pao has gone to Chek-kow to endeavour to procure certain assurances from the new government.’
‘With some chance of success?’
‘With every chance.’ The mandarin added, with the nearest approach to cynicism Father Chisholm had heard from him. ‘But assurances are not supplies.’
‘It was reported that the granary held many tons of reserve grain.’
‘General Naian took every bushel for himself. He has gutted the city of food.’
‘But surely,’ the mission Father spoke frowningly, ‘he cannot see the people starve. He promised them great benefit if they fought for him.’