Thank You, Mr. Moto

by John P. Marquand

  In that hour of early darkness certain repressions seemed to have been set free in the Major’s house, as watch dogs are unchained to roam at night about estates at home. They made the Major’s courtyard sinister. My footsteps clattered hollowly as the servant in his white cotton gown led me through the deserted dining room of the small outside court and the front gate. I could swear that something was walking just behind me, that something was ready to touch my shoulder. I am quite sure now that if I had whirled about suddenly I should have seen something peculiar. If I had turned then, I wonder occasionally what might have happened. It is one of those useless speculations which the mind can run over vainly on wakeful nights. I did not turn around.

  The gates creaked open. The doorman and the Major’s number one servant stood on the threshold calling for my ricksha coolie, who appeared at almost the same instant. I was just about to step in my man-drawn vehicle when I saw the lights of another ricksha moving up the alley. Before I knew who was in it, I knew that the Major had been lying.

  “It is a caller for your Master?” I said to the Major’s servant.

  “No caller,” the man said hastily. “The Master is expecting no one.” I recognized that he was lying deliberately with the hopeful mendacity of his race, which permits a Chinese to tell a blatant untruth even though he knows his falseness will be discovered a moment later.

  “There must be some mistake,” I said pleasantly, for the ricksha had already halted and its puller had lowered the shafts.

  Then for the first time that evening I was really startled. I could see well enough who was getting out of the ricksha, for the glow of carriage lamps encircled it with a halo of yellow light. It was Miss Joyce. I could see her green dress, yellow-green in the light of the lanterns, but she did not see me until I spoke. Until I saw her I believed that I might be relied upon to be suave and immune to such surprises. I was proportionately surprised at myself to discover that a part of my character which I thought had been entirely eliminated had come back. It was some conservative instinct; it was a desire to protect which was devoid of self interest.

  “Miss Joyce,” I said. “What are you doing here?”

  Chapter 6

  She was startled when she saw me, exactly as startled as I was. We stood there eyeing each other, in front of the Major’s door.

  “Don’t you think it’s rather obvious?” she inquired. “You said I’d never dare to see the world. Well, I’m going to see it.”

  I moved toward her, “Don’t be a fool,” I said.

  Miss Joyce took a step toward the door. “You’re the one who is being a fool,” she answered. “What difference does it make to you?”

  I had no adequate reply to the question, although I knew that it made a difference.

  “You don’t know what you are doing,” I said.

  “I’ve read books,” said Miss Joyce. “I have a rather accurate theoretical idea.”

  For the first time in a long while I felt genuinely angry. “Get back into your ricksha,” I said. “Go back where you belong. You don’t belong here.”

  And then she was angry too.

  “You’re a good one to talk,” she said. “I’ll ask your advice when I need it. In the meanwhile I’ll look out for myself.”

  “You can’t,” I began. “You don’t know how.”

  She walked past me, her chin in the air.

  “You don’t know Best,” I called after her. “Eleanor! Miss Joyce!” But she was inside. The servants had already closed the door in the wall.

  We must have made a delightful exhibition for the Chinese servants and one which would doubtless be retailed in all the kitchens of Peking. I had made a fool of myself. I had lost that oriental attribute called “face” before Best’s servants and before my own ricksha coolie. I walked toward the closed door with some idea of banging on it, but had the sense to check myself. My ricksha coolie was watching me indifferently but I knew that not a single gesture had escaped him. I shrugged my shoulders and told him to take me home, but I could not get the thing out of my mind. It ran through my thoughts like the patter of the boy’s feet. It was not right. When we had been gone for five minutes I knew that I could not leave it that way.

  “Turn back,” I said to my boy. He stopped and stared at me stupidly, half unwilling to understand.

  “You heard me,” I said. “Turn back to Major Best’s.”

  I had no idea what I was going to do. As it turned out, there was no need for me to do anything. When we got back in the alley I saw Eleanor Joyce standing there alone. Her ricksha was gone. She was the only living soul visible on the street. She was walking slowly, blindly, regardless of the mud and ruts.

  “Stop,” I said to the ricksha boy, and got out and walked toward her.

  “Well,” I began, “so you saw the world, Miss Joyce? Are you ready to go home?”

  Then I saw that she was frightened, deathly frightened; her face was chalky even in the dark.

  “Don’t,” she whispered, “don’t.”

  I put my arm around her shoulders. My touch steadied her, I think. “Get into my ricksha,” I said. “I’ll find another at the corner. Do you want to tell me what happened?”

  “No,” she whispered. “No. Nothing happened. Only don’t go away. Walk beside me. Take my arm.”

  “Perhaps I’d better have a word with Best,” I suggested, “before we go.”

  “No,” her voice came back clear and sharp and frightened. “You mustn’t. Don’t go in there. Stay here. Please, please don’t leave me. He—You mustn’t go in there!”

  “You know I’m not afraid of Best,” I said.

  She clung to me, her voice was urgent. “No,” she said. “You mustn’t. Take me home. Please, please take me home.” And then she began to cry.

  I remembered that I was to see Best at nine in the morning, and the morning would be time enough.

  “Yes,” I said. “I’ll be glad to take you home. Don’t be frightened. Don’t say a word. Everything is quite all right.” I walked beside the ricksha wheel and held her hand. “Don’t be frightened,” I said again. “Everything’s all right.”

  Then she began to laugh.

  “Stop it,” I said. “Stop that. Everything’s all right.”

  Her fingers tightened on mine.

  “What made you come back?” she whispered.

  “Lord knows,” I said. “It doesn’t matter, does it?”

  She was silent for a while but I knew she felt better holding my hand and hearing me talk.

  “You’re wrong,” she said. “It matters.”

  I did not want her to explain what she meant because it was none of my business, and because if I had heard from her what had happened I knew that it might make me unnecessarily angry. Besides she was in no condition to speak. Whatever had occurred had frightened her severely. I recall that it surprised me at the time that she should have been so frightened by anything that Best might do.

  I found a public ricksha for myself on Hatamen Street. It was one of those conveyances that was a North China substitute for a night owl taxicab in New York, which was drawn by a ragged, hungry looking coolie, who probably paid a high rental for his two wheeled carriage out of the casual fares he gathered. He represented some point close to the social bottom of China, being a sort of human horse only a few steps above the burden bearers, the water, and the nightsoil carriers. His life in almost any other country or compared with any other living standards would have seemed impossible. Nevertheless, he was courteously polite. His manners reminded me that Peking had been an Imperial Capital for two dynasties, a long enough time for a trace of the meticulous manners of the Court to have left a universal impression.

  I explained some of this to Eleanor Joyce, as we travelled side by side in our rickshas, toward her hotel, because it did her good to hear me talk. I spoke casually and impersonally, as though we were acquaintances who had been out for a pleasant evening.

  “The Peking coolies are gentlemen,” I said.
“It’s different in the South and in the Ports. The people there have a way of being quarrelsome, but up here they are generally well disposed. One is safe in almost any corner of this city, at any hour of the day or night. Don’t think China is always dangerous.”

  She did not answer, but I talked on, until we trotted up a shady avenue and stopped at her hotel. I helped her out of her ricksha by the hotel steps. She was still pale and looked very tired but her voice was steady.

  “Thank you,” she told me, and held out her hand. Her hand seemed to have shrunk. It was small and cold, and her self assurance was gone. She looked like a little girl who was afraid that I might scold her.

  “You’ve been very kind,” she said.

  “We’ll forget about to-night,” I answered. “It’s over, isn’t it?”

  She nodded and said again “Thank you very much,” and then she added: “You understand things very well. We have the same instincts, the same background, haven’t we?”

  “What makes you think that?” I asked her.

  “If we hadn’t,” she said, “we couldn’t have talked the way we did at the party. It would not have been possible. Good night!”

  I had not thought of the affair from exactly that angle, but when I did I knew what she meant. It was probably true that instinct had made me behave as I did. The desire I had to protect her had probably arisen from an unconscious realization that she had been brought up as I had been, in a similar tradition. This discovery was disturbing, because I had tried for a long time to break away from tradition. I thought I had convinced myself that tradition held all the elements of emptiness and now that I was going home through the warm darkness I was not sure. I had no definite conviction just then except about one thing. I would see Best in the morning and tell him what I thought of him. Although I knew my impulse was illogical, I knew that I would do it.

  My household was waiting up for me when I got back. The interests of Chinese servants necessarily revolve around the Master’s doings. The gate opened promptly. Yao hurried to help me down, so assiduously that I knew something had happened. Yao followed me to my bedroom, as he always did, to fold my clothes and to talk with me as I undressed.

  “Does the Master wish anything?” he inquired.

  “No,” I said.

  “If you will sit down,” said Yao, “I will take off your shoes, and here is a letter for you, a letter from America.”

  He called it the “Excellent Country.” I understood at once the reason for his interest, when he held out the letter. He knew well enough that money and good news, and bad, came from America; and that such a letter might have an important bearing on events for several days. It might make me morose, as other letters had, and therefore its content was logically his business and the business of every servant in the household. The corner of the envelope bore the name of my former law firm, Smythe, Higgins & Satterswaith; and Yao probably knew without my ever having told him the significance of the inscription. The letter was from old Mr. Smythe himself. I did not want to read it, but I did.

  Dear Tom: We all think about you a good deal and wonder if you aren’t about ready to come home. I have pointed out to you before that you were never asked to resign your partnership. It was your idea, not mine or that of any of my partners, that the circumstances demanded it. The mistake you made was negligible; anything you did was for the best interests of the firm, a fact which is now generally recognized, even by our clients. You were one of the most promising junior partners we have ever had in the office. Your partnership is still open to you and we shall be glad to consider an increase in percentages and the same seniority which would now accrue to you had you stayed in the firm for the past three years.

  You have too much ability to waste your life. Anyone grows maladjusted who stays in the Orient too long. In another year you will not be able to acclimate yourself to the changes in your own country. Believe me, it is changing more rapidly than I have ever known it.

  As this offer cannot stay open indefinitely, I should like to hear from you by return mail. A cable might be better. Don’t be a fool. Come home.

  I wrinkled the sheet between my fingers. It was a sheet of fine heavy Bond, so essential to indicate the conversatism and solidity of a corporation law firm. The sheet snapped like vellum between my fingers and Yao stood looking at it, without trying to conceal his curiosity.

  “It is a good letter, I hope,” he said.

  “It is from my old Master,” I told him. “I was a servant in his household. He used to make me work day and night and he paid me very badly.”

  Yao looked politely interested. Doubtless he was thinking of the perquisites and the percentages which he drew as a servant in my own house, and I satisfied his curiosity.

  “The old Master was very close with his expenditures,” I said. “Not like me, in the least. You may take this letter and burn it.” I knew that he would not burn it. I knew that he would take it out and have it read, but it did not make much difference. “You may bring me my breakfast at eight o’clock to-morrow morning.” I added, “I know the hour is early for me, but I have business. And now you may turn out the lights.”

  I lay a while staring into the dark. A year ago Mr. Smythe’s letter might have disturbed me, not at present. The idea of returning was utterly distasteful and impossible. I felt no interest in the involutions of corporation law, nor was there anything in the memories of it that held me, although I had been a bright boy once. The letter was proof enough that I had been a bright boy, in an arena where competition implied the survival of the fittest. The back offices of a New York law firm was as gruelling as any apprentice room in a Chinese street. The hours were as long and the conditions nearly as bad. I was pleased with the letter, only because it reminded me of what I had escaped instead of its implied compliment. I wished idly that I had saved it to show to Eleanor Joyce. She said that I was finished, but the letter had not said so.

  I remembered what I had decided to do, as soon as I awoke in the morning. When I opened my eyes the whole chain of events which formed my conscious life came back, just as though everything had stopped until I might be ready to go on. As usual I had no great desire to go on with anything. My one wish was to sit quietly beneath the tree by my bedroom door, to read the papers perhaps, and to translate painfully some pages from the Chinese Book of Rites. Instead I had done what I had determined never to do again. I had become involved in something which was none of my business. I dressed slowly and looked at my breakfast with distaste.

  “I want the ricksha ready,” I said. “I am going to go out.”

  Please,” he said. “I would not go.”

  What followed gave me a firsthand demonstration, if I had not known it, of how news travels in Peking. Yao stood beside me, pouring out my coffee.

  “Go where?” I said. “What are you talking about?”

  There is no race as perfectly endowed with the spirit of service as the Chinese, but there is a disconcerting strength in that ability to serve. Now and then there comes a faint hint that the servant is actually the master.

  “Where were you last night?” said Yao. “There is trouble there, trouble.”

  I never asked him how he guessed that I was going back to the Major’s house but accepted his guess as part of his ability.

  “What sort of trouble?” I asked.

  Yao folded his hands impassively. “The hard-eyed soldier is dead,” he said. I knew that he was referring to Major Best, for we all had our nicknames in the Chinese servants’ quarters. I set down my coffee cup, unable for a moment to grasp the potentialities of the news.

  “You’re wrong,” I said. “He is not dead.”

  “He’s dead,” repeated Yao. “He was shot last night while in his room of books. His servant found him at two o’clock this morning.”

  I pushed my chair back slowly from the table where my breakfast had been laid. I was careful to make each of my motions weary and deliberate, because I did not wish Yao to perceive how hard t
he news had struck me.

  “Get my hat,” I said.

  “Please,” said Yao, “it would be much better not.”

  “Get my hat,” I replied. I was uncomfortably certain that Yao knew something more but I did not wish to risk my prestige in asking him what. The thing which was uppermost in my mind was the obvious fright of Eleanor Joyce the night before. It was distinctly possible now that her fright had something to do with the death, and not the impetuous life of Major Best. Had she seen him dead? Had she seen him murdered? Had she—? There was a possibility that she might have done it herself. Who had last seen Major Best alive? I wondered. Had it been I or had it been Eleanor Joyce?

  Chapter 7

  It never occurred to me until I reached Major Best’s door that Yao’s judgment was better than my own and that I was acting impulsively without any good reason. My legal training should have been strong enough to have kept me away that morning. It had never occurred to me to inquire how the sudden death of a British citizen might be handled in Peking under the various Treaty Laws, but I was surprised that there were no police waiting at the gate. There were no police in the little outer courtyard either. A look at the servants’ faces was what told me Yao had been right. The Major’s boys were exhibiting marked evidences of a passive, hopeless sort of terror that is characteristic of China.

  “I am told the Major has met with an accident,” I said to Best’s chief servant. “I am very sorry.”

  The man’s face was a trifle off-color. His smile indicated that he was not distressed because of the tragedy as much as because of the consequences.

  “Will you show me, please?” I asked.

  He nodded and led the way toward the second court.

  “The Major was very well when I left,” I said. “You will remember that, I hope.”