The Bitter Tea of General Yen

by Grace Zaring Stone

  Megan looked at her wrist-watch.

  “Quarter to four.”

  “I don’t want to cut too close on time. If I can have that coffee I’ll get right along.”

  “You aren’t going there now, are you?” asked Mrs. Jackson, and without waiting to hear his answer she went out to hurry the preparations.

  “I must leave as soon as I can,” said Doctor Strike. “You see, it is like this. I did not feel myself that a safe-conduct pass alone in times like this would be much of a help. I spoke of this to the General, asking him if he couldn’t let me have one or two of his men as a body-guard. He hesitated about this, said he was leaving himself on a special train at six o’clock from the North Station and would have to take all his guard with him. I told him the orphanage was so near the station I could get my friends out and have his guard back by six o’clock. He said his guard were already at the station and unless I could get that far there was no way he knew of to communicate with them. ‘Then give me an order to them,’ I said, ‘I’ll pick them up there.’ He still hesitated, and then a peculiar thing happened. There was a young woman with him, one of his concubines, I suppose. While I was talking I saw her looking at me in an interested way, and at last she leaned over and spoke to the General in a low voice. I could not hear what she said but finally she said to me, in excellent English too, ‘Doctor Strike, the General will do what you ask.’ I believe she had something to do with persuading him. Before I left I managed to have a few words with her. I thanked her. She told me, here is the remarkable part, that she was educated in the Presbyterian Mission School in Soochow. I was in Soochow, you know, for years and she said she knew me as soon as I came into the room.”

  “Extraordinary. It seems like a real providence working out,” exclaimed Mr. Jackson.

  “But how does a Mission-reared girl become the concubine of a general?” asked Megan.

  “I don’t know. It distressed me. I must try to learn more about her.”

  Mrs. Jackson and the number one boy returned with coffee and sandwiches, and the Doctor began to eat and drink hungrily.

  “There is one thing that worries me now,” he said, “and that is my driver. He has a Chinese license but I know he will balk at going into Chinese territory. I have a short distance to go between the barricade at Range Road and the North Station, but anything may happen in it. And further, there is the possibility of my not making contact with the guard. He may give me trouble or at the least desert. I think two of us, Jackson, would be better than one.”

  Mr. Jackson’s face showed utter misery and deep humiliation.

  “He cannot possibly go,” cried Mrs. Jackson. “He has a temperature of one hundred and two. He oughtn’t to be up here now. You know he almost died of pneumonia two years ago.”

  “Oh, I think I can manage it,” said Mr. Jackson.

  “No, no,” cried the Doctor emphatically, “don’t think of it. It is cold outside and raining, it would be suicide.”

  “Let me come,” said Megan, “I can drive a car. I would be able to do that while you do whatever else is necessary.”

  Every one turned to look at her and Megan felt her face flush. Her words had come without her mind having consciously prompted them or her will consenting, but now that they were spoken they suddenly crystallized into her intention.

  “You say you can drive a car,” asked the Doctor, “a Ford?”

  “Yes.”

  His eyes turned a current into her so that all her weaknesses seemed to jangle out audibly like electric bells. But she bore his scrutiny as well as she could and after all, she thought, perhaps the keenness of his vision is inward, not for what is about him. Some instinct even told her that he was often blinded by the reflections of his own qualities and that the last thing to surprise him in another would be courage. Of Mrs. Jackson however she was more afraid. But when she glanced at her Mrs. Jackson was not looking at her, and it was Mr. Jackson who uttered a protest.

  “But Miss Davis, I don’t believe you realize the possibilities. Remember, I feel a great responsibility for you.”

  “I really insist on going,” said Megan, “if Doctor Strike thinks I can be of any help.” She spoke so emphatically that her voice sounded disagreeable, and Mr. Jackson sank back in his chair looking quite ill and sadly worrying the end of his mustache.

  “Have some sandwiches and coffee then,” said Mrs. Jackson; “you ate no dinner, I noticed.”

  It seemed to be settled, though Doctor Strike had not yet definitely accepted her. Megan ate some sandwiches and drank heartily a cup of coffee to demonstrate that she was not at all nervous.

  “I don’t believe we’ll have any trouble,” said the Doctor. “I have a permit from General Duncan for the Settlement and one from the French Commandant of the Defense for the Concession. We can only of course go through the Concessions. That leaves us a minimum of Chinese territory to cross between Range Road and the North Station, only several hundred yards as I remember it, and from there on we have the guard of General Yen.”

  He said the last words with a smile; he was happy, Megan saw, actively happy and even a little triumphant.

  “What time is it?” he asked again.

  “Four o’clock.”

  “Then if you will get a warm coat, Miss Davis, we had better be starting.”

  Megan ran up-stairs and returned with a coat.

  Outside in the thin rain stood a Ford car, the curtains down and a Chinese driver huddled at the wheel. He did not even look at them and Megan was sure the Doctor was right in believing he could not be depended on; he was sullen or frightened or both. The Doctor got in beside him and Megan got in the back. The driver climbed slowly out and cranked. Mrs. Jackson stood by the car talking to Megan:

  “You had better button up your collar,” she said, “these nights are raw and you don’t look too strong. You’ll be in luck if you don’t catch your death of cold.” And she added with an unexpected satisfaction, “Miss Reed will certainly be surprised when the Doctor turns up with a lady.”

  The car jerked forward before Megan could answer.

  VIII

  They entered the Concession at the Avenue Joffre and drove down it at tremendous speed. At this hour it was empty of people, and seen in the half-darkness and misty rain, it looked like any street in an American suburb except that at the corner under the lights stood the motionless Annamites in their peaked hats, as sinisterly irrelevant as if they were part of a bad dream. They turned into the winding Avenue Foch, which marked the boundary between the French Concession and the International Settlement. At the Bund they showed their passes, a green laissez-passer from the French Commandant of the Defense and a slip of typed paper from the Shanghai Defense Force, and entered the International Settlement. They passed along the Bund under the staring eyes of the war-ships and crossed Soochow Creek at the Garden Bridge, where they again showed their passes to marines from the Blas de Lezo. They turned left along the creek, up North Szechuen Road and into Range Road. It became a longer ride than Megan had expected.

  Once or twice Doctor Strike leaned back and said a few words, but it was so obviously to give the illusion of a casual ride that she did not bother to play up to it. She was too intensely preoccupied. The sudden opening of a channel for her energy and will made her a little giddy. And this giddiness, this feeling of an uncontrollably quickening rhythm, mounted alarmingly. Megan tried to put a check on it by holding up for examination each fragment of sensation as it passed. But everything remained as blurred as it had been before. She was only sure of that released energy flowing strongly and now so inevitably forward. This release gave an amazing sense of freedom, for a moment too vertiginous a freedom. The exquisite poise of free will in the midst of the ordered progress of the will of God seemed to have been jarred, suddenly to vary wildly. Megan jerked it sharply back.

  She sat staring at the back of Doctor Strike’s head. He wore no hat and his great bony skull was flanked by two prominent ears. His ears were vag
uely and irritatingly amusing. That was because they were so obviously a vulnerable mechanism. What a long way from the flawless intrepidity of the Doctor’s spirit to the imperfection of those ears. It is with instruments such as these that we go armed. Megan was overcome by their inadequacy, she found them lamentable and all at once heroic, as though they stood for all of our weakness, for our glory.

  The car reached the Range Road barricade where they had been a few hours before. It stopped and Megan admitted she was now thoroughly afraid. Perhaps she had been so ever since arriving in China. But in naming fear it seemed to lose some of its importance. It took its place among such things as heat, cold, hunger and stomache-ache, one of the lower, more elemental ills. Her teeth chattered and she felt a definite cramp. As she put up her hand to tighten the collar of her coat she was relieved to find her fingers articulating.

  Doctor Strike leaned out and presented their passes to the sergeant and she heard him explain what their errand was. The sergeant was sympathetic.

  “I’d like to go along, sir,” he said wistfully. He put his head inside the car to look at Megan. “Good evening, miss,” he said.

  “Good evening,” said Megan.

  They drove slowly on. It was a dark street sewn with barbed wire, and because Megan knew it to be a sort of No Man’s Land between both territories its very emptiness was a menace. She smelled smoke again. The roofs of the houses ahead blackened against a dull glow. They made a swing to the right and stopped before another barricade. It was guarded by Chinese soldiers. As the Doctor showed his pass, Megan saw ahead, across an open space, the whitish lights of the North Station, and beyond, a confusion of black lines traced against the heavy smoke of half-quenched fires. She saw directly at her left, a yellow wall with a large advertisement, partly in English, partly in Chinese characters, “Ruby Queen Cigarettes,” and below, a small white sign “Boundary Road.” They passed through and along Boundary Road toward the station. They drove very slowly, and as they crossed the open space between two barbed-wire entanglements the Doctor leaned out, peering ahead for signs of the promised guard. The enclosure of the station, surrounded by a high iron fence, was crowded with troops standing about under the arc lights. On the ground lay row after row of men in gray uniforms, roughly laid out, filling all the available space. Megan did not know whether they were dead or had dropped there in exhaustion. The car stopped by a gate and she heard the Doctor speaking to a soldier standing there. They appeared to be having an argument and the car, while they talked, punctuated their words with its senseless rattling and chugging. Then the Doctor turned his head a little toward her and said:

  “The guard is not here.”

  She saw his face was rigid but not with fear or even anxiety. It struck her that the General had failed him again.

  “Really?” she said.

  He would not even look at her. “Yes, but I think we had better go on anyway. Are you willing?”

  “Certainly.”

  Suddenly the engine stopped. The driver began to shout excitedly at the Doctor, he flung out his hands, addressing every one, especially the soldiers crowded around the station gate, then he jumped out of the car.

  “Well, I expected this,” said the Doctor. He got out after the driver and Megan closed her eyes, her mind going blank for a moment at the idea that the Doctor would be dragged off and she left alone in the car. Fear is a concentration so intense that of necessity it occasionally snaps into moments of unconsciousness. The Doctor cranked the car and when he climbed in again Megan felt such relief that she broke into a light sweat. They drove on, leaving the driver and the crowd at the gate. They passed on the right the smoldering ruins of godowns and station sheds, then turned abruptly to the left across the car tracks and down a narrow street.

  “I think this is the place,” said the Doctor.

  They were in a close, dark street of shops with overhanging galleries. After the fire-wasted section they had left behind them it was strangely intact. It seemed safe. The shops were shuttered and closed, no light showed in the houses, and it was dark except for a low glow reflected from the fires behind them which occasionally intensified into a momentary brilliance and died again. Farther along it became quite dark. They went slowly because of the rough, cobbled road. Ahead they saw a light shining from a flat, bland surface set in the midst of the tortuous curves of Chinese buildings. It was an oil lamp burning over a doorway and just beneath it was a slab of white stone with the words “Saint Andrew’s Orphanage.” There was something very bald and innocent about these words but the brick orphanage was dark and apparently deserted; the windows made a thin glimmer like new ice over dark water, and Megan saw that some of them had been broken and were starred with long cracks like broken ice. Across from the orphanage was some sort of eating-house with one narrow door open. There was a dim light inside and when the car stopped Megan heard Chinese voices and smelled the rancid odor of Chinese cooking oil.

  “Here we are,” said the Doctor and climbed out.

  Megan got out and as her feet touched the ground, as she saw that she was able to respond to the necessity of moving, her fear suddenly, perceptibly lightened. It passed like pain, leaving her weak-kneed but with a calm that can come sometimes from exhaustion. She looked up at the white slab set over the door and the words graven on it. A thin rain began to fall in slanting lines across the light of the oil lamp and but for that light she would have believed the orphanage to have been long abandoned. Not a sound came from it. As they moved toward the steps a soldier suddenly stepped into the radius of light. He wore a dirty gray uniform and had a fat face pitted with smallpox which had blinded one eye. He was followed by several soldiers who came out of the door of the eating-house and two or three other men in nondescript clothes only a little better than a coolie’s. The Doctor fumbled in his pockets for his pass and spoke to the first soldier in a voice which because of its totally unexpected hail-fellow joviality struck Megan as a little shocking. He was making, she was sure, some jest about his inability to find anything, and the very falseness of his air of good fellowship told her their attempt had become desperate. The failure of the guard to be at the station had weighed down the danger side of the scale and what might be behind the walls of the orphanage held the other side in uncertainty. She stood quietly holding her collar across her mouth while the Doctor produced all his passes, Chinese, French and English. The group pressed closer around them, close enough to brush her shoulder. They seemed profoundly stupid but obstinately insistent on being in on whatever was to happen.

  “Why don’t they go on?” thought Megan. “Can they possibly care what we do!” And their motives, so impossible to clarify, represented still another element in their present problem. But the most important was the dark and apparently deserted orphanage.

  Megan dropped her eyes to the ground; she could not bear to look at the Chinese, nor at the Doctor who was flourishing his passes under the eyes of the sullen soldier, joking and even laughing in his unnaturally cheery voice. She could not bear to take part in his humiliation; she was ashamed at even feeling it to be humiliating. It was courage of a sort for which she was too petty.

  Suddenly Doctor Strike changed his tactics.

  “Well, well,” he said abruptly but still jovially, “we will just have a knock at the door and see who is in.”

  He caught Megan’s arm and pushed her ahead of him up the five steps to the door. He rapped on it with his fist and called not loudly but with sharp insistence, “Miss Reed!”

  Not a sound came from behind the door. They stood directly under the oil lamp. In its shadow, and from the slight vantage of the five steps, Megan, watching the upturned faces of the group below, saw in them some indefinable change as if the Doctor’s movement had stirred in them a necessity for action. She knew she and the Doctor would never be allowed to come down the steps, get into their car and drive off,—not without some other event, perhaps a mere trifle, coming to change the course of the accumulating determinati
on of the group. The Doctor knew this too, but he only stood looking down at them with an expression of intense thoughtfulness.

  “I don’t think there is any one inside; they must be gone,” murmured Megan.

  The Doctor did not answer.

  “Maybe they are dead,” added Megan.

  The Doctor shook his head. He rapped on the door once more, and raised his voice to a shout, “Miss Reed! Miss Reed!”

  Suddenly the door opened before them. They stepped inside and it was closed behind them with a firm and reassuring bang.

  They stood in complete blackness in which Megan heard heavy breathing and felt the nearness of human bodies.

  “Just a moment,” a whisper sounded close to her ear. There was the scratch of a match and a nimbus of yellow light appeared on the dark in which, as in a fluid, was caught the small, lined face of a woman with large pale eyes. It was the redoubtable Miss Reed, who would not take any advice and whose obstinacy had brought them all to this predicament. She held a candle in her hand. Behind her stood another woman, a sturdy, sandy-haired girl, stout and asthmatic. It was she whose breathing Megan had heard. Miss Reed looked at them a moment and then exclaimed in a singularly sweet, low voice:

  “Oh, Doctor Strike, is this really you? How like you to come, how like you!”

  The Doctor nodded and said brusquely: “I have Miss Davis with me.”

  His air of good-fellowship had vanished, he looked sterner than Megan had ever seen him.

  Miss Reed smiled gently at Megan and said, turning to her companion:

  “This is Miss Minton. I am sorry we have no lights, but we didn’t want to provide a target and besides the electricity is cut off. We have been staying in the back of the house. That is why we didn’t open the first time you called. We came as soon as we could.” She apologized as if she had said, “The butter is not so fresh to-day.”

  “Are you all here?” asked the Doctor.

  “Only Miss Minton and myself and five Russian children. The rest were all taken away by Chinese friends. I couldn’t find refuge for the others so I stayed with them, and Miss Minton very generously preferred to stay with me.”