When the moments were over they got into their rikshas again, and when Clem got back he went aside with Mr. Fong and tried to tell him his gratitude.
“You have kept the graves of my parents as though they were your own family,” Clem said.
“Are not all under Heaven one family?” Mr. Fong replied.
Nevertheless he perceived thereafter Clem’s restlessness. One day he invited Clem to come into his private office, a small square room behind the shop, with enclosed shelves upon which were the old account books of five hundred years of Fong shopkeepers.
Mr. Fong closed the door carefully and motioned Clem to a seat. Then he opened a drawer of his desk and took out a slip of paper upon which an address was brushed in Chinese characters.
“Go to this place,” Mr. Fong said. “You will find the one you seek. Give him my name to send you in, and if he asks for further proof, describe this room. He has sat upon that very chair where you sit.”
Clem looked at the paper. It bore an address in San Francisco.
“You had better go at once,” Mr. Fong said. “He comes back soon. Something will happen this very month here in this city. Whether it fails or succeeds he will come back. If it is successful he will take power. If it fails, he must come to comfort his followers.”
Clem got up. “Thank you, Elder Brother,” he said to Mr. Fong. “I hope I can repay you for your faith. I hope he’ll listen to me.”
The next day he left Peking, Henrietta with him, but not yet understanding why he must go away so quickly.
“I’ll tell you, hon,” Clem said. “I’ll tell you as soon as I have time.”
There was time only when Clem was imprisoned by the sea. In Shanghai he spent money like the rich man he was that he might get berths upon an Empress ship leaving the dawn after they had arrived. He could haggle over the price of an overcoat and he had never worn a custom-made suit in his life, but when it was a matter of getting what he wanted, money was only made to be used. They caught the ship and Clem, studying timetables, planned the swiftest route from Vancouver to San Francisco. The English ship was still the most swift.
“One of these days we’ll fly, hon,” Clem said to Henrietta. “Before I die, that will surely be.”
“We’ll fly in heaven, I suppose,” Henrietta said now with her small smile.
“Long before that,” Clem said. “It’ll be a sorry thing for many if they have to wait for heaven!”
At last, almost reluctantly, on the second day out, he told Henrietta why it was he wanted to see that man, Sun Yatsen.
“He’s going to get China, see, hon? I can feel it in my bones. The people there are just waiting for somebody to save them and he has risen out of nowhere, the way savior men always do. They come up out of the earth, see? They get an idea, a big idea—just one is enough. He’s got the idea of giving the Chinese people their own government. Well, he’ll do it if he can get them to believe in him. People got to have faith, hon. He’s got to have faith, too. Everybody who does anything has got to have faith in a big idea. So I’m going to him and I’m going to say, look, if you give the people food, they’ll believe in you. Now how are you going to give your people food? Some men do it one way, some another, but nobody ever got people to follow him without giving them food. People have got to be fed. Remember Jesus and the loaves and fishes.”
He was standing against the rail, his back to the sea, and Henrietta was lying on the long chair he had lugged here by a lifeboat on the highest deck, away from everybody as she liked to be. By squinting a little she gazed at his face, and imagined that the bright sea shone through his eye sockets, so blue were his eyes this day. The color of his eyes was a barometer of the measure of his hope. When he was on the crest of a new hope, his eyes were sea blue, and when he was cast down, as sometimes he was, they were almost gray.
“He’ll listen to you,” Henrietta said. “I’m sure he will listen to you.”
The train from Vancouver reached San Francisco just after sunset. Clem deserted Henrietta at the station.
“Hon, you can get yourself to the hotel, can’t you? Hop into a hack with our stuff. I guess the Cliff House is all right. Wait there for me—don’t go out walking by yourself or anything!”
It was Clem’s fantasy that Henrietta must not walk out alone after dark lest she be molested.
“You’d better tell me where you are going,” Henrietta said. “If you don’t come back I’ll know where to look for you.”
“I’ll get back all right,” Clem said. “Chinese all know me, I guess.”
He hurried off, too busy to do what she asked, jumped into a horse cab and gave directions. Then he sat, taut, leaning dangerously forward while the cabman drove him over the rough streets. He sought the Chinese rebel in one of the miserable tin shacks which had sprung up in the ruins of old Chinatown after the great fire. The old dark beautiful city within a city, small and close, set like a gem within San Francisco—the haunted narrow streets that were the center of Chinese life transplanted and nourished by generations of homesick Chinese—had been wiped out. Those living creatures who remained alive had made such shelters as they could, and they walked the streets, still dazed and lost. There was no beauty springing new from ashes.
Clem, however, did not include beauty within the necessities. Oblivious to ugliness, he dismissed the cab and walked briskly through the dim streets to the address he had memorized, so often had he read it. Even the smell of old Chinatown was gone, that mingling of herbs and wine, that scent of sandalwood and incense, that sad sweetness of opium and the lusty reek of roasting pork and garlic and noodles frying in sesame oil. The sound of temple bells was gone, and the venders were no more. The clash of cymbals from the theater was silenced and the theater itself was still in ruins. Instead the night air was weighted still with the acrid smell of ash and seaweed and charcoal smoke from the braziers of families cooking in the open.
On the old Street of Gamblers, its iron gates a ruin of twisted rust Clem found the place he sought. The door was locked, a flimsy partition of wood, and he knocked upon it. It was not opened at once and he heard the sound of voices within.
“Open the door!” a strong voice said. “Of whom am I afraid?”
Then it was opened, and a cautious yellow face peered into the twilight.
“What thing you want?” the face asked.
“I am looking for the Elder Brother,” Clem said in Chinese.
Clem held up his left hand and on the palm he traced with the forefinger of his right hand the ideograph of Sun.
“Come in,” the face said. The door opened widely enough to let Clem in. The shack was one room, partitioned by a curtain, and it could be seen that it belonged to a laundryman. The face belonged to the laundryman and he went back to the table piled with the clothes he was ironing, paying no further heed to Clem.
Two men sat at a small table scarcely larger than a stool. One was Sun Yatsen, the other was the cramped, humped figure of an American.
Clem spoke to Sun. “I am sent here by Mr. Fong, the bookseller on Hatamen Street, in Peking.”
“I know him,” Sun replied in a quiet voice.
“I have come with an idea which may be useful to you,” Clem said.
“I have no seat to offer you,” Sun replied. “Pray take mine.”
He rose, but Clem refused. The laundryman came forward then with a third stool and Clem sat down. Sun did not introduce the American.
“Proceed, if you please,” he said in his strangely quiet voice. “I am to set sail shortly for my own country, and these last days, perhaps hours, are valuable to me.”
“Has the news been good or bad?” Clem asked.
“It is bad,” Sun said. “I am used to bad news. But I must get home.”
The hunchback interrupted him with a high sharp positive voice. “The news will always be bad unless you have an army. No revolution has ever succeeded until there was an army.”
“Perhaps,” Sun Yatsen said, without change
in voice or face.
“I haven’t come to talk about an army,” Clem said. He felt uncomfortable in the presence of the white-faced hunchback. He hated intrigue and he did not believe revolutions were necessary. People fought when they got hungry. When they starved they were desperate. But after it was over everything depended again on whether the new rulers fed them. If not, it all began over again.
“I want to talk to you about food,” Clem said abruptly. “I want to tell you what I believe. People will never be permanently at peace unless the means of getting food is made regular and guaranteed. Now I have worked out a plan.”
He leaned forward, and began to speak in Chinese. Thus he shut out the hunchback. He had a feeling that the hunchback was an enemy. That small bitter white face, tortured with a lifetime of pain and misfortune, spoke cruelty and violence. But if he had thought by speaking in Chinese to drive the man away, he failed. The hunchback waited motionless, his eyes veiled as though he were asleep. The laundryman stopped ironing and listened to Clem’s quick, persuading words.
“True, true,” he muttered, to no one.
Clem’s eyes were fixed upon the face of the revolutionist. He studied the high forehead, the proud mouth, the wide nostrils, the broad and powerful skull. He could not tell whether or not he was impressing his own faith upon this man.
Sun Yatsen was a good listener. He did not interrupt. When Clem had made plain his desire to organize in China a means of food distribution that would guarantee the contentment of the people, Sun Yatsen shook his head.
“I have only so much money. I can choose between an army which will fight the enemies of the people and set up a righteous government for the people by the people and of the people, or I can, as you suggest, merely feed the people.”
“Your government will not stand if the people are not fed,” Clem said.
Sun Yatsen smiled his famous winning smile. “I have no government yet. First must come first, my friend.”
“Only if the people have food will they believe in you,” Clem said. “When they believe in you, you can set up what government you choose.”
“It depends on one’s point of view,” Sun Yatsen said suddenly in English. “If I set up a government then I shall be able to feed the people.”
The hunchback came to life. He opened his narrow and snakelike eyes.
“Exactly,” he said. “Force comes first.”
Clem got to his feet. “It is a misfortune that I didn’t find you alone,” he said to Sun Yatsen. “I guess I have failed. But you will fail, too. Your government will fail, and somebody else will come in and the way they will get, in is just by promising the people food. Maybe they won’t even have to deliver. Maybe by that time the people will be so hungry that just a promise will be enough.”
Sun Yatsen did not answer for a moment. When he did speak it was to say with the utmost courtesy as he rose to his feet:
“I thank you, sir, for seeking me out. Thank you for caring for my people. I am touched, if not convinced.”
His English was admirable, the accent faintly Oxford. It was far better, indeed, than Clem’s American speech, tinged with the flatness of Ohio plains.
“Good night,” Clem said. “I wish you luck, anyway, and I hope you won’t forget what I’ve said, even if you don’t agree with me, because I know I’m right.”
7
CANDACE FELT THAT WILLIAM was annoyed. He stooped to kiss her as usual but she was sensitive to his mood after these years of marriage and she saw a wintry stillness gathered about his heavy brows and firm mouth. When he spoke his voice was formal.
“I am sorry to be late.”
“Are you late?” She yawned nicely behind her hand. “Then I’m late, too. I was tired when I came home from the matinée.”
“Was the play good?”
“You wouldn’t think so.”
She rose from the chaise longue where she had been drowsing and looked from the window. Far below the vast park lay in shadows, pricked with lights. “I do hope the children are home. Nannie keeps them out too late. She is a fiend for fresh air.”
“There was a strong draft along the hall from the nursery door and so I suppose they are home,” William replied.
“Why do you think her first impulse upon entering a room is to open the windows?”
She asked the useless question while she was pulling on the satin slippers she had kicked off when she threw herself down. William seated himself in a chair and took his characteristic pose, his small dark hands gripped together, his legs, long and thin, crossed. Whatever the fashions for men, he wore his favorite gray, dark with a faint pinstripe, and his tie was dark blue. He did not answer his wife. This, too, was usual. Candace asked many questions she did not expect to have answered.
They were the queries of her idle mind. He had once given them thought until he discovered them meaningless.
She straightened her skirt and sauntering to her dressing table she picked up a brush and began smoothing out her short curls. Something was wrong but if she waited William would tell her. It might be anything, perhaps that he did not like the odor of food floating upstairs from the basement kitchen. The maids left the doors open in spite of her orders. Perhaps it was only while watching her as she brushed her hair he was reminded that she had decided to have her hair cut against his wishes.
“I had a letter from my father today,” William said abruptly.
“I thought something was wrong,” she said, not turning around but seeing him very well in the mirror. His face, always ashen, was no more so than usual. Something in his Chinese childhood, a doctor had said, perhaps the dysentery when he was four, had left his intestines filled with bacteria now harmless but more numerous than they should be.
“They have decided to take their furlough, after all,” he said.
She went on brushing her hair, watching his face. “That’s good news, isn’t it? I have never seen your father, and the boys have never seen even your mother.”
He frowned and the thick dark brows which always gave his face such somberness seemed to shadow and hide his deep-set eyes. “It is a bad time for me, nevertheless. I’d just decided to launch the new paper at once instead of waiting until spring.”
She whirled around. “Oh, William, you aren’t going to start something more!”
“Why not?”
“But we don’t see anything of you as it is!”
“I shan’t need to work as long hours as I did with the others. I’ve made my place.”
“But why, when we’re making money? You sacrifice yourself and us for nothing, darling!”
She let the brush fall to the floor and flew to his side and dropped on her knees, leaning her elbows on his lap and beseeching him. “I have always to take the boys everywhere without you. All last summer at the seashore you only came down for week ends, and scarcely that! It isn’t right, William, now when they’re beyond being babies. I didn’t say anything when you were getting started, but today, just when I was thinking we might go to the theater sometimes together!”
He was entirely conscious of her beautiful face so near his, and he would have given much to be able to yield himself to her but he could not. Some inner resistance kept him even from her. He did not know what it was, but he felt it like an iron band around his heart. He could not give himself up to anyone, not even to his sons. He longed to play on the floor, to roll on the carpet as Jeremy did with his little daughters, but he could not. He was most at ease when he sat behind his great desk in the office giving orders to the men whom he employed.
“I went to the theater with you only last week,” he reminded her.
“But that was an opening night and you know what people go to that for—to see and be seen. I want us just to go sometimes all by ourselves, and only for the play.”
He did not enjoy the theater but he had never told her so. He could never forget that it was only a play. No stage excitement could reach him when he was fed daily by the excitement of his own
life, his secret power which he felt growing beneath the power of the printed words he set upon his pages. He alone chose those words. What he did not want people to know he did not allow to be printed. They learned only what he selected. Sometimes, meditating upon his responsibility, he felt himself chosen and destined for some power over men which he had not yet reached. He had been reared in Calvinism and predestination, but in his rebellion against his childhood he had rejected all that his father taught him. He had become almost an atheist while he was in college. Now he was made religious by his own extraordinary success. In the few years since he had put out the first of his newspapers, their sales had soared into millions. Yet he was not satisfied. Even now, traveling upon a train, he could feel vaguely hurt that on every other seat there should be lying the crumpled sheets of a paper thrown away. People ought to keep what he had so carefully made. Then his mood changed to pride. There were two of his papers to one of any other. Such colossal success meant something. There was a God, after all—and predestination.
“What are you thinking about?” Candace asked.
The question slipped from her tongue and she wanted it back instantly but it was too late. William disliked to be asked what he was thinking about. It was an intrusion and she knew now that he guarded himself even from her. It had taken her time to learn this and meantime she had wept a good deal alone. Tears, she had now learned, only irritated him. She shed no more of them.
“No—don’t answer me,” she said and impulsively she put her crossed fingers on his lips.
He took her hands rather gently, however, and did answer her. “I was thinking, Candy, that it is a great responsibility for one man to know that he feeds the minds—and the souls—of three million people.”
“Three million?”
“That is the number of our readers today. Rawlston gave me the last figures just before I came home. A year from now he says it will be twice that number. I suppose I am worth more than a million dollars, now.”
She was used to her father’s joking, “A millionaire? Nothing to it. Just keep ridin’ high and never look down.”
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