Where the twain met

Chapter I

A coffin almost new, stained by the recent rain, stood out beside the yellow plastered wall of a tiny house on the river bank. Far off, across vivid green fields and low brown hills, a pink pagoda tapered upward in seven graceful stories. The gentle lapping of the great Yangtze River murmured against a sloping bank.

The afternoon sun was shining bright and warm, though March was not yet come, and the river had only just begun to rise, to regain the forty-six feet of depth which it had lost in the dry half-year. Now, a very proper stream, it was confined between definite limits. Another six months and it would spread far off into the low country to the North and to the South.

Therefore the coffin and the little yellow house stood on a ridge of high ground well above the river, where scattered mounds told of other coffins finally covered with earth only when they had begun to fall to pieces.

It could not have been because of the heat of the day, for it was only comfortably warm; no living thing was in sight, nothing to suggest life, save only these poor habi-

i tations so near together, these dwellings of the living and the dead.

Yet, if one had ascended the slope to the open door, a voice might have been heard, musical, low pitched, the voice of a woman still young. One need not have seen the speaker; the quality of her voice told that she was young. Something proclaimed also that she was well bred, educated; what she said told moreover that she was in a reckless mood, her temper quite out of hand, that she was taking particular pains to wound the person to whom she spoke.

So it would not have been necessary to approach to the very door to hear what was said; nor would the listener, though he had stood an hour, have heard a word in reply.

“ 'Carried about of winds/ ” said the voice. "Do you remember that verse of Scripture? It describes us per¬ fectly: the winds blow two dry little lives into the same corner where they whirl together, they and the dust of the streets and bits of soiled paper. So they were joined, fitly or unfitly, and what chance hath joined together let no man put asunder.” Silence for a time, broken only by that soft lapping of the river yonder, and the distant creaking of a water wheel. Then, in a tone of banter that was full of bitterness:

"Slow; that describes you. Slow, old fogy; stodgy; that is a faithful portrait of you! Why should a girl be such a little fool as to throw away her life for the honor of taking your poor name in place of her own which was a perfectly good specimen of English!

“Oh, you needn’t say it. I know what’s on the tip of your tongue, but you musn’t forget I was fifteen years younger than you, and a girl of four and twenty doesn’t know the difference between infatuation and admiration. Well, a year in this God-forsaken country has opened her eyes.

“Last night, that line ran in my head all night long: ‘Cabined, cribbed, confined.’ It seemed to point directly to me—partly in derision, partly in warning. Cabined, I said to myself; that was my poor little suburban make¬ shift life: while other girls were castled I was cabined. Then I married you, thinking to better myself, and for a year I’ve been cribbed out here halfway between nothing and nowhere. Thank Heaven, I haven’t yet been con¬ fined ! So there’s something to be thankful for. A girl never knows when she’s well off. If Father hadn’t been such a fool as to forbid it, I should never in the world have done such a thing. The cow isn’t the only creature who spends her spare time reaching over into the next pasture to try the grass over there. It isn’t because it looks any better over there. It’s just because there’s a fence.

“Hm! I used to tell the girls, when they asked what you did for a living, that you were a writer. I blush to think of it. A writer! I should have said you were an observer. There is always a crowd of observers on the opposite sidewalk when a safe is being hoisted into an office window. They always think the men doing the job are lazy or timid.

“It would be laughable if it weren’t tragic. What can you give a woman? What have you ever given me? What could one expect from your puny income?

“And then, when I do get a chance, when you manage to take me for a treat to Shanghai—why, you don’t know anyone; you can’t even dance! You might as well be fifty, and done with life!

“If you could even play cards, like other people—but you’d have to stop to count the spots on any card above a three spot! All you can do is look and talk. I admit I used to flatter you and think what you said was wonder¬ ful, but I was young then.”

A gust of wind, chill and raw, ruffled the surface of the river, following along its course from the mountains far to the west. It tossed the bright green grass in long billowing waves. An aged sycamore felt its breath, and flung his giant arms high in the air. A little column of black smoke that rose and spread into a pall preceded by a little space the throb of engines far upstream sig¬ nalling the approach of the Siang Yang from Hankow.

The coffin, standing clear, unprotected, lonely, trembled in the cold wind as though its occupant were stirring. A cloud obscured the sun. The door of the little yellow house blew shut with a bang.

Chapter II

Twelve hours later, in the half light of early morning, a slender white figure scrambled up out of the river, stood for an instant a gleaming statue of a nymph, then hastily donned a few clothes, and sauntered back to the house for tea and rolls.

She wore what appeared to be a suit of pyjamas, the jacket of a gray brocade, the trousers of sky blue, short enough to reveal white socks and black silk shoes without heels—a native costume common enough among city girls. Her hair hung in a thick dark braid, which, had she been Chinese, would have advertised that she was unmarried.

As she was English it advertised merely that she was a rebel, for her husband stood in the doorway waiting for her, despite his irritation smiling to see her swagger with hands tucked halfway into her trousers’ pockets, after the manner of the best society of China.

“Don’t look so scornful, Peter,” she called. “One doesn’t need a bathing suit where nobody ever comes, except now and then a stray coolie. I think there’s some¬ thing very charming about the Japanese method of bath¬ ing —Vox et praeterea nihil —nothing but conversation. I tried it yesterday on that smug missionary who came along the opposite bank.” By this time she had come quite near and answering the question in the man’s eyes, con¬ tinued :

“But when the test came I lacked courage; convention was too strong for my principles, and I told him to go on his way, or I couldn’t come out of the water. At that he tried to flirt with me—in the missionary way—like a cow doing the fox trot.”

“You speak of a coolie as you would of a collie,” said the man.

“Shows how honest I am,” she answered. “That’s just the way I think of them. And the missionary—I’d have had more respect for him if he had taken a seat and refused to budge. He walked off quoting a text of Scripture and trying to see me over his shoulder in a little pocket mirror.”

As the man turned to reenter the house his eye was attracted by a bit of paper stuffed into the wooden latch of the door. Scrawled on it in his wife’s girlish hand he read: “If anyone calls for me direct them to St. Luke xxiv, 5.”

She followed him in, saw him without a word get down his Bible from the book shelf which it shared with the “Arabian Nights,” Pepys’s “Diary,” “Isaak Walton,” “Grimm’s Tales,” and a dozen modem English novels. Finding the verse he read it aloud:

“ ‘Why seek ye the living among the dead ?’

“I see,” he said, scarcely above a whisper, “this is a continuation of yesterday’s invective—so it wasn’t mo¬ mentary but momentous.”

A little twisted smile, relic of sensitive childhood, lifted one corner of his mouth. Had he been seven instead of thirty-five, you would have called it a brave attempt to keep back the tears. If the girl saw it she ignored it. She was looking only at that coffin that stood beside the house. Following her gaze his own also rested upon the long yellow box, so familiar a sight in that country, then slowly rose to meet hers. Finding there no sympathy or tenderness, only derision and impatience, the wry smile came again and disappeared, but a wistful appeal lingered in his eyes, a slight trembling of the lids. The whole subject treated by her so lightly, so disdainfully, was to him a vital issue fraught with tragedy.

“Shall I serve Amah first?” she asked when, seated at the little teak table, she had begun to pour the tea that her husband had prepared in her absence. “If you’re bound to respect these heathen customs, why don’t you keep tea and food on her altar as long as her body is above ground ?”

“Please don’t!” he answered. “She was very dear to me, ever since I was a small boy. I suppose it’s because Mother had to be away so much. But I loved Amah, and it’s only a little thing to respect her wish that her body might have the usual honors paid it.”

“You must have made a great pair, you and your hob¬ bling nurse; you two paralyzed at the extremities by the bonds of convention! And now I’m launched on the nar¬ row way, the matrimonial path which leadeth unto life everlasting. I understand the everlasting when I look back over my one year of it. Don’t try to turn away. I see the color in your face that confesses you know exactly what I mean!”

Then to herself this strange young wife continued while she watched him narrowly for sign of the reply which she could not force him to utter:

“How I wish he would turn on me in a perfect fury; denounce me for the mean little cad I am; then kick me out until I should have to come crawling back for forgive¬ ness. He doesn’t understand women, and he’s just about suffocating trying to consume his own smoke.”

Peter’s face was indeed a revelation of Peter’s charac¬ ter, for, while his eyes were dark, flashing fire beneath a frowning brow, his mouth betrayed a desire to give way to the grief and disappointment which so soon had come to mar the happiness of his married life, a life which six months ago he had characterized as an ideal existence. And because of this contest between two opposing emo¬ tions Peter was silent and thoughtful. It seemed to him that never before had he so thoroughly appreciated his wife’s beauty and charm. What wonderful dark brown eyes, full of laughter and mystery, hinting all sorts of things half hidden behind those lids always threatening to close, shutting you out—or in! He had never begun to fathom those eyes, never expected to fathom them. Her mouth was large but well shaped. After all, he de¬ cided, it was in her clear complexion that you found her exquisite charm. No, it was the natural wave of her black hair growing so low on a broad forehead.

“How silly I am,” he said at length, though not aloud. “Her beauty is merely the result of health and bodily grace. It’s the beauty of the perfect animal. Only one could never find in the animal’s eyes what one sees in hers: the spirit, the soul. That’s what refuses to be fettered.”

He had forgotten to drink his tea; it was growing cold, untasted while he sat there pondering the woman now seated before him and indifferent to his thoughts as to his silent presence. She seemed to enjoy her tea and bread and jam, but her eyes, ignoring all that was near, looked directly over the yellow coffin outside and fol¬ lowed the course of the river up stream, where a great flat house boat had just turned into it from one of the many canals towards the south.

“What pleases you so, Esther ?” the man asked, for the sight of the house boat had wrought an instant change in her whole expression.

At the sound of her own name she turned suddenly to exclaim: “Why, Peter Landon, that’s the first time since we were married that you haven’t called me Vashti or V.”

“So it is”; he assented. “Don’t know how it happened now.”

“I do. You’re angry. You’ve lost your temper.”

“You never took the trouble to analyze that nickname,” he answered her. “Esther was the girl who supplanted Vashti.”

“Well, then, why did you begin by calling me Vashti ?”

“Because she was the lady of whom it was written that she was fair to look upon; but she wouldn’t come when the king sent for her.”

“And a year ago—when I didn’t know you at all—only barely enough to marry you—you selected that insulting nickname.”

At this point she chanced to spy just rising above the river bank and approaching the house a tall distinguished man, a Chinese gentleman of wealth and position as one could see at a glance. His clothes were simple but elegant, his manners less simple but equally elegant. He was used to deference and admiration, had tested the power of great riches and knew that all other powers were puny beside that so berated by the politicians, so derided by the poets.

“It is Ko-Yiang,” Esther said, watching her husband’s face narrowly to learn there how the news impressed him. Seeing neither scowl nor frown she turned to welcome her distinguished guest, at the same time speculating whether Peter was actually blind to events or so occupied with his own visions that he only asked to be undisturbed. Could he have failed to see that this Chinese dilettante, this young man who had travelled all over the world, a linguist, a scholar, a patron of the fine arts, had been laying siege to the heart of the charming English bride; and not without some encouragement from the young lady herself?

Peter, far from indifferent, was occupied with his own thoughts.

This, then, explained her language yesterday, that cuii rious mixture of irritability and self-consciousness. It wasn't natural; that interlarding of invective with quota¬ tions showed that she was playing a part. Now it was plain enough; she was groping for righteous indignation to justify her conduct with her Chinese admirer.

Did she think for an instant that he, Peter Landon, was asleep; that he didn’t know what was going on; that he hadn’t heard of Mr. Ko’s frequent visits for the past two months?

What of that visit only three days ago when in his presence she and Mr. Ko-Yiang had discussed at length the propriety of a young married woman visiting an un¬ married man? And hadn’t Esther valiantly defended the sanctity of the home, marriage ties and all that sort of thing, then spoilt it all, just as he was leaving, by saying in most caressing fashion:

“You know you are rather a dear old thing. Per¬ sonalities upset arguments—and, well, I’d like time to think it over—perhaps one might—for a very short stay— under certain circumstances.”

To which Mr. Ko had replied: “I allow you three days; this is plenty to ponder abstract questions of marital rights versus wifely privileges.”

This was the gradual result of Esther’s infatuation for the handsome and accomplished millionaire so much dis¬ cussed in Shanghai, so envied everywhere, so spoiled by the flattery of women. And both had the effrontery to ignore his presence as an accident of no importance!

Despite a sallow skin, the man did not lack physical attraction. His eyes were brilliant; there was nothing sinister in their expression; they did not rise grotesquely at the corners. He wore a small black mustache and an imperial just below his under lip. Nothing but his costume distinctly marked him as an Oriental, and yet the traveller would have known his origin though he had been in European dress; a gravity, an air of mysticism, a suggestion of introspection. But superposed upon this eastern foundation, venerable and dignified as it was, arose the new twentieth century temple for universal homage: Wealth.

Wealth beckoned you from the flashing diamond worn upon his thumb; wealth sneered at you from the con¬ sciousness of supreme power in the dark glowing eyes; wealth breathed its benediction upon you from the im¬ palpable aura surrounding that unruffled egoism; wealth pervaded the air in every distinct, impatient throb of the engines panting at the river bank below, where the house boat, regal in its luxury, awaited the orders of its lord and master. Wealth—holding in one hand the friend¬ ship of Aladdin’s lamp, in the other the hostility of the powers of darkness—was approaching the door of the humble yellow cottage, while the husband and wife watched him, the husband vaguely apprehensive and dis¬ quieted; the wife exultant, intoxicated by this newest proof of her importance, her power to charm, her op¬ portunity to prove the validity of her complaint that she was wasted in this nook shut of! from the real life of the world.

She met him with outstretched hands, with a welcome that came from the heart; that rang a little more posi¬ tively from her lips than the occasion seemed to warrant; that gleamed from her eyes with so seductive a charm that the guest who had made his million by displaying agility coupled with versatility suddenly changed his manner into something far warmer and more intimate than he had only an instant before intended.

“Oh, my dear, dear, dear little ladee, I’m so glad— so positively joyed to see you—so—what is it? So radiant!”

He stood still to utter this sentiment, solemnly, with all the dignity of attendance upon a queen.

“It must all be due to your coming, Mr. Ko, if I am radiant. My husband will tell you that I was anything but radiant a few minutes ago.”

The two men who had thus far only nodded to each other, exchanged a questioning glance; one must verify or disprove such a statement.

“If you are not then so radiant a little since—is it some sadness which have caused this?” asked Ko-Yiang in his literal fashion.

“Not a sadness,” she replied, “except my husband’s disapproval. He is old-fashioned; doesn’t like it because I take my morning dip in the river after the Japanese style.”

“Japanese style?” Ko-Yiang repeated, evidently puzzled. “You would mean Japan style of the bath—the clothing—not any? Alas that my poor boat is so slow to move! Else had I been here in time to—to test the European ladee in the custom of Japan/’

“I wonder,” thought Peter, “whether she sees that look of the tomcat in his horrid eyes! What strange thing's women are; they love to set fires and then run away and leave them!”

If Esther had seen the look, it had no terrors for her. Her hand rested lightly on the back of a chair. As though by accident, Mr. Ko’s hand presently covered hers. Peter saw the strong fingers close in two convulsive clasps over Esther’s. He saw his wife as though unaware of his presence look up with a smile into the dark eyes of the guest. Then she nodded assent. “May I pour you a cup of tea?” she asked him in what tried to be a nonchalant tone.

“I should be charmed,” he answered. “My country’s best beverage—a boon, surely, to mankind.”

“I must get away to work,” Peter interrupted, too brusquely to seem a casual utterance.

As he went out into the warm sunlight he was think¬ ing, “How Esther’s voice shook when she offered that cup of tea! And what was the meaning of that signal to which she so readily responded? Has she even for¬ gotten that she is my wife?”

Chapter III

The two, standing where they must look across the fresh mound surmounted by the yellow coffin, watched the retreating figure in its shabby gray suit, until the bank hid him for a moment. Then the panting of his engine told that the little motor boat had started on its daily journey up stream to the iron mines where Peter’s father, Jeffrey Landon, had sunk all the money he had saved in a lifetime of hard work.

“Look for your money where you lost it,” Peter knew to be an old saying in the stock market. It seemed such sound advice that he had determined to act upon it in an effort to redeem some of the losses which had left him poor.

But it was not absorption in his day’s work which pre¬ vented Peter from looking back at the little yellow house. The hand which seized the wheel was cold, the eyes stead¬ fastly directed up stream burned like fire. Let them watch him, if indeed they would take the trouble! They would see no sign that he was jealous; they would never know of the lump in his throat which was even then choking him!

The little boat had disappeared in the distance when Mr. Ko-Yiang drew from his pocket a black and gold lacquered box, opened it and displayed to the girl’s ad- 15 i6 miring gaze a necklace of carved white jade and red gold intricately wrought, beautiful.

“Very old workmanship,” he said clasping it about her neck. “It must have the fitting place to rest. I have found such a place now, the very best home for it.”

“But, Mr. Ko, you are so masterful! I haven’t said I would accept such a valuable gift.”

“No? It is not need to accept—to wear it, so, this is all!”

“But you forget—my husband.”

“No, no,” he laughed, “not forget—just—” and he ended with a snap of his long yellow fingers.

“Come,” he added. “My house boat waits to take you little vacation time to Shanghai. You leave little note Mr. Landon, say excuse while I make the little vacation. Come back soon—much better.”

“Do you think he’d believe that about ‘much better’?” she flung him as she left the room. He didn’t answer. Enough for him that he heard sounds of hurried prepara¬ tion from the next room, and knew that wealth and he had won another victory.

Little enough she had to carry, but such as it was she stowed in her canvas travelling bag. A note very brief and vague—for she was timid now that she faced reality—lay on the table directed in her erratic hand to Mr. Peter Landon. It was almost an apologetic note, beginning; “Peter dear, I had to go—the lure of Shanghai and Life!”

She looked back at it as it lay there on the table; something very nearly related to remorse smote her. She hoped poor old Peter would understand that she didn’t mean half she had said.

Poor old Peter! Of course he was a dear old helpless thing—and she was coming back to him as soon as she had had her fling in Shanghai.

Once aboard the house boat, who could think of Peter! Here was Mr. Ko, a veritable prince. Her own little apartment fitted for a queen. Tiffin was served on deck under the heavy blue canopy, the air was delightful, the food delicious, the wine delirious. Her host spoke but little, content to lie upon his cushions and look at her. After a while, conscious of his scrutiny, she felt that he was looking through her.

Twice she started to draw him into conversation—that searching look frightened her. Twice she desisted for lack of courage. At last she got up and walked forward into the bow, where perched on a coil or rope she scanned the river far ahead; its dark-winged, flat, fishing craft, its islands rising like minarets, its canals cut through the fields to some distant walled town.

Before her, a day’s journey, lay the gay, cosmopolitan life of Shanghai. Behind her, wealth beamed its blessing in the person of Ko-Yiang. Still farther back was Peter Landon, her Peter, a thought at which she trembled, for she felt guilty and somehow contemptible.

Ko-Yiang was a man of the world; he didn’t hurry her. When, after hours of listless gazing and reverie, she turned back to her cabin he still lay outstretched upon the i8 cushions, absorbed in a book, so completely absorbed that he didn't notice her. Peeping through the curtains of one of her windows facing aft she could see him later. He had fallen asleep. How little she meant to him, after all, and how silly she had been to make such a mountain of this little unconventional journey.

“It’s many a mile to Ealing,” she told herself, “and all the little nonconformist gossip of my girlhood!”

Peter presented the only difficulty. Peter was con¬ ventional and would be quite upset over it; but a little kindness would smooth Peter out. He always yielded to treatment. Nine-tenths of life, after all, was involved in the gentle art of handling men.

“It isn’t what happens,” she said to her exceedingly fair reflection in a little mirror over her dressing table, “it’s the excitement of what may happen. That’s life!”

Dinner, served at half past eight, was a ceremony. The host was at his best. Food and drink combined to stimu¬ late his brain, to warm his heart, to give new zest to his enjoyment in living. He knew what a woman, a Euro¬ pean woman, would relish; he led her on by easy and im¬ perceptible steps toward a semi-intoxication, comfortable and seductive, for he was a master in allurement.

At midnight over their wine he was reciting his latest adventure in shielding from Japan one of her fellowcountrymen and friends who had mixed himself up in a Japanese plot to control China.

“Your friend, Mr. Householder, I have seen him a fortnight since in Seoul where he visits with a Korean mountaineer, a giant. And this Mr. Householder has met there an American girl, daughter of a missionary. Ah, but they two are a wild pair, wild as the mountain goat that stops at nothing but the bullet. ,,

“How good of you! You are rather a dear/’ she ex¬ claimed, bending forward to tap the hand that lay ex¬ tended on the arm of his bamboo chair.

The man’s eyes narrowed as he watched her; his hand turned and imprisoned hers. The boys, their table deftly cleared, had vanished with the dishes.

“Don’t, please!” Esther whispered, but the man heard a stifled quality in her voice rather than the words, and continued to hold her hand in his.

“Poor old Jerry,” she said, half soliloquizing. “I should have been wiser to marry him. He frightened me, he was so wild. Fool that I was, a wild man was just what I wanted; but his terror of a mother thwarted us. The old dragon terrified me by a show of false teeth. Is he still handsome?”

“Handsome?” Ko-Yiang repeated as if the word were new to him.

“That man,” she went on ignoring the query, “could make love to an iron dog so it would walk off the lawn.”

Again the man’s eyes narrowed. His wine was doing its work thoroughly and well.

“You were very good to take so much trouble, such a journey to please me,” she said.

“And to serve my country,” he added. “It is against my country this plot is made—to put Japanese upon the throne of China, to make new monarchy.”

“Oh, then, I share with China the credit for your journey into Korea.”

“Yes,” he said, “with my great countree you share, dear lady. It is honor to both that I have paid.”

Casually, almost thoughtlessly, he filled her glass and then his own.

“This Householder, then,” he asked, “have you still now a—tenderness—love for him?”

His long finger tapped the little table between them, counting off, it seemed to Esther, the time she took to answer so direct a question.

So she waited, wondering how much he cared. The banks were now so dark they seemed miles away. The chug-chug of the muffled motor and the ripple of their bow as she cut the water, were the only sounds.

A swinging lamp above their heads gave but faint light. Two cigarettes glowed in two bright points below it.

Time? What was time to Mr. Ko-Yiang, representa¬ tive of an ancient race, old centuries before so-called Christian nations were born! Mr. Ko knew little, cared less, for your twentieth century rush. The tiny watch on Esther’s wrist had passed midnight an hour ago. Let it tick on, let it tick its little life out. Is not Eternity as much before us as behind! Mr. Ko would not hurry. Even his cigarette burned slowly, controlled by his spirit. The taps of his long finger came slowly and more slowly.

“I never loved him,” she said at last very quietly.

“He was too—impulsive. A girl doesn’t like violent men, at least I never have. I like deference, reserve, something to keep you guessing.”