When he and Wallace silently resumed walking back toward the mission once more, Robbie did so with a noticeable trembling in his knees.
57
Whither Thou Diest
The days following his affirmation of commitment should have been wondrous and challenging for Robbie. But for a time he lost all sight of God’s call on his life and the steadily growing commission he felt toward China.
Hsi-chen’s health worsened. Robbie feared that she would not even make it to the holiday season. But Hsi-chen prayed earnestly that she would be allowed to see her daughter’s first Christmas. The rest of the mission staff did their utmost to make the place festive, though none had the heart for it. Yet for Hsi-chen’s sake they wore smiles, made and bought presents, and Robbie even found a tree that, when decorated, resembled an evergreen. It was Hsi-chen who continued to remind them all that, though the celebration was of Christ’s birth, it was through His death that new life was given to the world. “Death is not the end,” she said, “but only the beginning of new and even more wonderful life. When I am gone, remember me as dying into life, not dying from it.”
A week before Christmas Hsi-chen was finally confined constantly to her bed. Most of the time she had not even the strength to hold her two-month-old baby—but she rejoiced that she had been allowed to live so long into Chi-Yueh’s life. Though her face was pale, her eyes were alive with the life she would sense gradually stealing over her, the life of the world to which she was bound. For hours on end Robbie lay next to his wife, with the child nestled between them so Hsi-chen would not miss the nearness of her child and her husband for a single moment.
Christmas was celebrated around the bed. Much laughter, and many tears and prayers were exchanged, along with presents among the small group of missionaries. When the last of the simple packages had been opened, at Hsi-chen’s leading, each person went around the room and gave all the others the “gift” of their personal prayer for each loved one. There was not a single dry eye in the room by the time Hsi-chen’s turn came; for she had intentionally asked to be allowed to go last.
“To my mother,” she said in a soft voice, “I give my prayer of thanksgiving to the Lord. She gave me life, and endured much that I might find new life here at the mission. May God’s blessings always be yours, dear mother!”
Hsi-chen turned next toward Wallace, down whose face were by now streaming tears of sorrowful joy. “And to you, dear Fu-ch’in; had you been my real father I could never have loved you more. To you also I owe my undying thanks. You took us in like the Christ whose servant you are. You showed us the Master’s love by the example of your life, and thus you led us into His kingdom. I will always thank my God upon every remembrance of you, Fu-ch’in. Because of you, I am not now afraid, because I am about to go to the Father of us all, and I know His love because of yours.
“Oh, Thomas,” continued Hsi-chen, twisting her head slightly toward the other side of the bed where Coombs sat, “for you I pray for a rich life serving our Savior. Godspeed to you, Thomas, as you join Dr. Taylor. You have been a true help to my father here, and I know you will be an invaluable servant of Christ at the Inland Mission as well.” Hsi-chen paused, took a breath, then went on.
“Ying, faithful friend of my father and this mission, you and I have nearly grown up side-by-side. But now the Lord has marked out different paths for us. Yours, I know, will be a significant one for the future of this work. God’s best to you! Know always what a blessing your faithfulness has been, and will be, to my father.
“Dear Miss Trumbull, your servant heart has truly made our lives both richer and easier. I know my father and mother could not have made it through the years of ministry here without your support and help. I know that blessings of Christ are upon you for the practicality of your service to His little children.”
Here Hsi-chen paused for several moments. No one dared interrupt, for each sensed that these were sacred moments, anointed by the Spirit to knit their hearts together for all time. At last she spoke:
“Dear Robbie Taggart, my friend, my husband, Feng-huang, father of my daughter, the swan sent by God from over the water to share life with me . . . dear Robbie, man that I love!”
Hsi-chen was weeping now, yet she struggled to continue. “Never in my dreams did I think the Lord would allow me to be loved by one so tender as you. Though our love has been brief, it has been more rich than anything I dreamed of ever having. Such a man you have become, Robbie. Such a man of God! In my flesh I never dared to hope that I might be allowed to live my life out with you. Yet in the Spirit I have known that God’s best is not measured in hours or years. We will not be parted, my dear Robbie. The Lord’s life will live on in both of us. Our love has been good; it will never die. My prayer for you is that you will never forget how much I love you, and that you will love and serve the Lord mightily all your days. I love you, dear Robbie . . . how I love you!”
Finally Hsi-chen took little Ruth in her arms. “My Chi-Yueh, little one whose life is a covenant of love, for you I pray that you will know all the goodness of life with God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. May you strengthen your father in my absence. Remind him of me, little one. Remind him of the love that will always bind the three of us together. May you look out upon him through eyes that assure your father, through all the hardships of the life of faith, that he is loved by your mother, and by the Father of us all.”
Hsi-chen then gazed around the room at the weeping faces of all her family. “I will miss you all,” she said gently, through her tears, “though perhaps not as you will miss me, for I will be with our Lord. But I will be waiting for the day when He allows me to rejoice with you again in our new home.”
The yuletide meal that followed was subdued, yet peaceful, resembling a quiet celebration of the Passover rather than a holiday feast. Much of the remainder of the day was spent in prayer. Hsi-chen had said her farewells and seemed prepared to go.
The following morning dawned with a bright sun shining in a pale winter’s sky. The day would have been crisp and invigorating, but Robbie awoke with a heaviness upon him. Even before he came fully awake he noticed that Hsi-chen’s breathing was shallow and strained. He turned sharply toward her and saw that she was already awake.
She smiled a weak greeting, then nodded her head as if in answer to his unspoken question.
“I’ll get your father!” said Robbie in a ragged voice as he jumped out of bed.
“Please don’t go, Robbie,” she said, each word now an effort. “I am suddenly a little afraid.”
Without hesitating, Robbie turned back to her, and taking her frail hand in his, bent down and kissed her cool lips. He had said goodbye to her a hundred times in his thoughts, but not one of them had prepared him for the real thing. He had wanted to be so strong for her, but he now knew that would be impossible. He only wanted to lay his head on her breast and weep.
“I am the phoenix now,” she said. “I will miss you, my dear Robbie . . . but I had a dream last night, and I was away from you. Then there came a rich, warm light and it took me to it, Robbie, and I was not so very sad anymore. I have known for many years that heaven would be a joyous place. Now God has reaffirmed that belief. But it is still hard to leave—”
“My love . . . !” was all Robbie could utter, though there was so much he wanted to say—so many years worth of things he wanted to share with her. Now all he could do was dumbly grip her hand in his.
“How much I have wanted to do for you, how much I would give to you if I could,” Hsi-chen went on.
“You have given me yourself, Hsi-chen . . . and Ruth,” said Robbie. “What more could I ever want?”
At that moment the door opened quietly and Wallace and Shan-fei came softly into the room. Immediately they perceived what was happening by the stricken look on Robbie’s face. He motioned them to her, then stepped back, and for several moments looked on as the daughter said her final goodbyes to her parents. Shan-fei’s poised reserve broke down
at last, and Hsi-chen spent a good while comforting and reassuring her mother.
Wallace wept freely as he spoke his final farewell. “My dear daughter, my true daughter. I have never ceased to be proud of you, and God has used you to touch my life in so many ways. I give praise to our Father that you will soon have the pleasure of seeing Him face to face!” His final words were spoken through such tears that an onlooker would have attributed to them anything but the praise he spoke of. But Hsi-chen understood what was in his heart, for she knew well what was awaiting her in the life that was about to break in upon her.
At last the two parents stepped back. Wallace lifted little Ruth from her cradle and laid her in her mother’s arms. Hsi-chen kissed her for the last time, murmured some soft words in Chinese into her ear, then laid her down on the bed beside her.
“Robbie, hold me,” she said in a bare whisper. “I am trembling.”
Robbie eased his large frame onto the bed beside his wife and tenderly took her in his arms. “I love you, Hsi-chen . . . I love you!” he whispered.
“Oh, Robbie,” she cried out, clutching her arms around him tightly, “Robbie . . . I love you.”
Robbie glanced quickly down to where Ruth lay, then back to Hsi-chen as he opened his mouth to speak to her again. But as his glance fell upon her face, he knew from the peaceful closing of her eyes, even as her arms relaxed their hold on him, that she was gone. Yet about her face there seemed to linger a faint glow, as of a presence of angels come to take Hsi-chen to her new home.
Robbie lifted his head, still gazing at the peaceful face.
“Then it flies westward toward the K’un-lun Mountains . . .” he murmured. “And who knows whether it will ever return? Now a great regret seizes upon my mind—if only I have my home in a different place!”
For an instant, all Robbie’s faith and hope fled him. He was suddenly alone! Desolate! He wanted only to run . . . to die, that he might be where his dear Hsi-chen was! What was there left for him in this world any longer? He had said many farewells in his life as a wanderer. But this was one too many!
All at once little Ruth stirred on the bed where she was still gently pressed between Robbie and the lifeless form of her mother.
The Spirit of God moved through the tiny child to remind Robbie that he was not alone. He had a heavenly Father and would never know true desolation again. And as they were one in the presence of God, Hsi-chen was as much his at this moment as she had been before.
Robbie picked up little Chi-Yueh deftly with one hand and held her close, looking at her tenderly through tear-filled eyes. Suddenly he knew that everything mattered. Now perhaps more than ever! Hsi-chen had left him with a high calling—fatherhood! He would fulfill that calling honorably through the loving direction and wisdom of his heavenly Father. His hope was not gone! He held a reflection of it now in his arms. For he had taken the reality of that hope, the Spirit of Jesus himself, into his heart some sixteen months earlier, on a small hill near that Chinese village that had become his home.
Part V
Return
58
A Man and His Daughter
A gentle breeze played against the sail of the old junk, pushing it steadily along the Chai-chiang.
A man who looked to be about forty was hitching the yard a few degrees astern to gain the best of the wind, but the eastward current of the stream itself was so strong now in May that he hardly needed the aid of the spring breezes. He seemed to be enjoying himself, however—the sort of man who would be fiddling with the sails even if the air was completely void of movement. A Westerner by the look of him, and oddly out of place on the traditional Chinese craft, the man’s dark windblown hair was streaked with the beginnings of gray, and a lively smile of pure delight illuminated a face still boyishly handsome. He was clearly at home on the water, though the junk did not appear to be a vessel worthy of his skill.
As he looked over the starboard rail he noted they were drifting out of the current.
“A bit more to port,” he called astern.
The child at the tiller had the whole of her small body pressed against the wooden mechanism, but the boat seemed reluctant to respond. An Oriental by the look of her face, the slant of her eyes, and her dark black straight hair, the girl yet contained characteristics of physique and manner that only Western blood would explain—of mixed parentage, no doubt; an uncommon thing in this region of China.
“I can’t get her back, Papa,” she answered in perfect English, notable not only for its lack of Chinese accent but also for the hint of Scottish brogue. The girl was indeed a puzzling mix.
The sailor smiled proudly at his daughter. She is quite a helmswoman even at nine, he thought, even if she hasn’t the strength to fight against this deceptively strongly currented river.
With the rapid movement of skilled fingers, he deftly tied off the rope he had been working on, using only his right hand, then strode to the poop, where he added his strong arm to the process of steering the boat, and together they maneuvered the junk back into the center of the current.
“It was my fault,” he said. “I didn’t get the yard adjusted soon enough. You must be tired,” he added. “I’ll take the tiller for a while.”
He sat down on the thwarts between his daughter and the mechanism, and placing his right hand on the tiller, he put his left arm around her. She snuggled up closer to him, giving not the least notice to the maimed arm that held her. She had grown up accustomed to it from birth, and for all she knew in her first years perhaps all men had but one hand. When several years later she learned how he had lost his left hand, it only raised her loving and devoted estimation of her brave father.
“How far are we from home, Papa?” asked Ruth, with just a touch of disappointment in her voice. A whole day alone with her father was wonderful, and though, not rare, it was still an experience she was not anxious to have end.
“Not far; perhaps a mile or two,” answered Robbie. “As soon as we get around that next bend, you’ll be able to see the mission off in the distance.”
“Will Grandfather be pleased that we handed out all the tracts?”
“I’m sure he will be, and he will be especially pleased to hear what a diligent worker you are, my little missionary!”
They laughed together, and Robbie marveled again, as he had so many times in the past, at how Ruth’s laughter reminded him of the girl’s mother’s—so musical and merry, yet deeply sincere. If there was any difference between them when they laughed, it was that it occurred more often in the girl, for Ruth was a lively child, energetic and ebullient, high-spirited like her father.
Robbie saw Hsi-chen so clearly in his daughter, particularly at moments like this, as her merriment quieted and she sat pensively gazing out upon the rippling water. Her silky black hair shone in the sunlight of the afternoon, her delicate Oriental features and her fluid grace clearly visible even at such a young age. The girl possessed an unusual capacity for quietude and reflection, often displaying a maturity beyond her years—noteworthy, perhaps, because of how smoothly this contemplative side of her nature intermingled with the vivacious side she had inherited from her father. Yet as seemingly opposite as the distinctive sets of attributes were at first glance, in this particular youngster they blended into a harmony as pleasantly as did the mixed heritage of her Scottish and Chinese blood. She had already committed her life to Christ. It still could bring tears of quiet fulfillment and joy to Robbie’s eyes when he recalled that day a year and a half earlier when she had come to him.
“Papa,” she had said, “I love the Lord and want to live my life for Him.”
“Do you know that means your whole life, dear?” he had said.
“Yes, Papa. It doesn’t seem like so very much when I think of all He has done for me,” she answered.
Yes, she had inherited her mother’s depth and spiritual sensitivities. Sometimes, Robbie thought, she had a deeper sense of what it meant to serve God than most adults. She’s further along
the true road of life at nine than I was at twenty-nine!
Yet despite all this, there were times when the differences from her mother seemed more pronounced than the likenesses. On the physical level, her Western heritage would have been especially evident to any discriminating Chinese. Her eyes were paler and rounder than Hsi-chen’s, and she would undoubtedly grow to be taller than most of her Oriental ancestors; already she was nearly as tall as her grandmother Shan-fei, and her graceful figure was more willowy and agile. She was more apt to climb a tree than any village girl in Wukiang, and she often scandalized the sedate Chinese neighbors with her tomboyish behavior. Like father, like daughter! Robbie had said to himself more than once, and he could not have wished it otherwise. The balance of Shan-fei’s faithful training in proper decorum for a Chinese girl, along with the occasional ring of Scots that rolled off her tongue, brought about such an enchanting interweaving of her diverse character traits that even the Chinese matrons smiled when the girl passed by. She was so delightful, despite all the cultural idiosyncrasies that clung to her, that they could not help following her growth with the keenest of interest.
As thankful as Robbie was for every reminder of Hsi-chen, he had not cared to artificially try to create a duplicate of his wife in his daughter. Therefore, he was in no way disappointed as these differences gradually revealed themselves. On the contrary, he relished them, praising God that she was a unique individual all her own, praying constantly for the wisdom to keep her so.
He had required a double portion of that wisdom in those early years, and still did for that matter. The grace of God and the love of his mission family had enabled him to bear his grief over the loss of Hsi-chen victoriously. His sorrow was no less painful but infinitely more endurable in that it was a grief shared universally by all. Occasionally self-pity had displaced the victory of his still-young walk of faith when a crying infant, who should have had her mother, felt like an awful burden for him to bear. Many times in the middle of changing a soiled diaper or during an all-night vigil walking a sick baby, he’d think fleetingly of the men who had wives to do such things.
Robbie Taggart Page 46