In Red and Gold

“Yes. It puzzle’ me – a little.”

He turned the paper over and over in his fingers, once again struggling to think… She sat motionless, gazing at the dahlias.

Blindly then he groped for her hands, found them and impulsively gripped them.

“Hui” – he whispered huskily – “tell me – if it’s like this – if you – if he… All this time I’ve supposed you and he were… I want you to come with me to America. We both do love it there. I’ll give up my life to making you happy. I’ll slave for you. I’ll make of my life what you say. just let us try it together…”

She silently heard him out – through this and much more, leaving her hands quietly in his. Finally then, when the emotional gust seemed in some measure to have spent itself, she said, gently:

“Rocky, I wan’ you to listen to what I’m going to tell you. You said I make you feel young. Well – can’ you see why? Can’ you see that I’m quite an ol’ lady?”

“But that’s nonsense! You – ” His eyes were feasting on her soft skin and on the exquisite curve of her cheek.

“No – you mus’ listen! First tel me how old you are.”

Unexpectedly on the defensive, Rocky had to compose himself, arrange his dignity, before he could reply. “I was twenty-one in the summer.”

“Ver’ good. An’ I was twenty-five in the spring.”

“But – ”

“Please! I don’ know what you coul’ have thought – how young you thought I was when I wen’ to college. But tha’s the way it is. I’m an ol’ lady. I have learn’ to like you ver’ much. I’m fond of you. I wan’ to feel always tha’ we’re frien’s. But we coul’n’ be happy together. Our interes’ aren’ the same – they coul’n’ be. Can’ you see, Rocky? If there is something abou’ me tha’ stirs you – that is ver’ won’erful. But we mus’n’ let it hurt you. An’ that isn’ the same as marriage. Marriage is differen’ – there mus’ be so much in common – if a man an’ woman are to live together an’ work together, they mus’ think an’ hope an’…”

Her voice died out. She was gazing again, mournfully at the dahlias. When he released her hands they lay limp in her lap.

With a great effort of will he wished her every happiness, promised to write, and got himself away.

This was on Thursday. Rocky walked at a feverish pace from the native city to the European settlement that was so quaintly not Chinese – more, with its Western-style buildings that were decorated with ornamental iron balconies and richly colored Chinese signs, like a “China-town” in an American city – and wandered for a time along Nanking Road; then out to Bubbling Well Road; away out, past the Country Club to the almost absurdly suburban quarter with its comfortably British villas; seeing, however, little of the busy life that moved about him, threading his way over cross-streets without a conscious glance at the motorcars and pony-drawn victorias (with turbanned mafoos cracking their whips) and bicycles and the creaking passenger wheelbarrow’s on which fat native women with tiny stumps of feet rode precariously. For those few hours were to be recalled in later years as the quietly darkest in the young man’s life. There was no question now of dissipation; he knew with the decisiveness of the Kanes that he had turned definitely away from the morbid oblivion of alcohol and opium, as from the unhealthy if exciting diversion of loveless women. But the bitterness would not down all at once. Indeed it was savagely powerful, still, to cloud his reason. The only evidence of victory over self of which he was aware was the fact that he could now look almost objectively at himself, and could fight.

He was back at the hotel between seven and eight, but couldn’t eat. For an hour he walked his room, locked in. Then, in sheer loneliness, a little afraid of himself, he went down to the spacious lounge and sat in a corner, behind a palm, staring at a copy of the China Press and listening, all overstrung nerves, to the cackle and laughter of the self-centered tourists and the curiously bold and loud commercial men from across the Pacific. He heard this, in his younger way, as Doane would have heard it, even as Hui; it was all heedless, light-brained; careless… Confused with the bitterness (in a bewildering degree) was a sense of the finely reflective atmosphere that had lately enveloped him and that he was not to lose easily. He felt – sitting, all nerves, in this babel – the fine old Chinese gentleman who had gone serenely to the death that was his destiny. He felt – constantly, intensely – the princess who had brought to her American college an instinct for culture the like of which neither he nor any of his friends at home had brought or found there. And he felt Mr. Doane – felt a spaciousness of mind in the man, a patience, a tolerance – felt him as a gentleman – felt him while still, in his heart, he was bitterly fighting him… The thing had closed over his head – the sheer quality of these remarkable folk. He was simply out of a cruder world. He hadn’t the right to stand with them – the simple right of character and breeding. And no amount of determination, no amount of storming at it could alter the fact. It would take years of patient work. Ever, then he might miss it; for his environment soon again would be that of the cackling tourists he now hated. Even at college it would be all the dominant athletics, the parties and the motors and girls and drinking, the association with those sons of prosperous families who were all consciously cementing alliances with the financial upper class that quietly ruled America while hired politicians prated and performed without in the smallest measure controlling or even altering the blatant facts… He and his kind, at college, despised the “grind.” And you had to be a grind if you weren’t the other thing. Yet Hui Pei had managed it differently. She was neither and both. It seemed to be a difference of mental texture…

A slim girl, richly dressed, with a sable wrap about her shoulders and a pretty little hat, was threading her way among the crowding chairs and tables and the talkative groups in the lounge. He glanced up: then looked closely. It was Dixie Carmichael. She stood before him, wearing her icy, faintly mocking smile. He rose.

“How are you?” said she.

He could only incline his head with a sort of courtesy, and contrive an artificial smile. He seemed to have been dreaming, outrageously. Life had begun now’.

“I’m running down to Singapore,” said she. “Friends there. And a look-see?”

“Oh,” he murmured, “indeed.” She looked out-and-out rich; and she was surprisingly pretty, without a sign that she had ever known danger or even care.

“Staying here?” she asked.

“No. I start back home Saturday.”

“So?.. Well, that’ll be pleasant.” With a final glance of what seemed almost like triumph she sailed away. And he knew that in taking the pearls he had not taken all from her. Apparently, too, she meant him to know it. That would be her moment of triumph. And that was all; not a word was spoken regarding his violence or her threats… He saw the yellow porters carrying out her luggage of bright new leather.

He resumed his seat; twitched for a time with increasing nervousness; got up and went aimlessly over to the desk; asked the Malay clerk for mail.

A smiling little Japanese appeared, rather officious about a great lot of bags and a trunk or two that were coming in. He had a familiar look; even raised his hat and stepped forward with outstretched hand. It was Kato… And then Dawley Kane came in – tall, quiet, neatly dressed, his nearly white mustache newly cropped.

To his pale son Dawley Kane said merely – “Well!” – as he took his hand; and then was busy registering. That done, he asked: “Had dinner?” Rocky shook his head. “I don’t care for any.” Daw ley Kane’s quietly keen eyes surveyed his son. “What’s the matter? Not well.”

“I’m well enough.”

“Sit down with me, can’t you?” And turning to the attending Japanese he said: “You’ll excuse me Kato. I’ll be dining with my son. And tell Mr. Braker, please… Just a minute. Rocky, till I wash my hands.”

They were shown to a table in the great diningroom, where the cackling was louder than in the lounge (they dine late on the coast) – where blue-gowned waiters moved softly about as if there had never been a revolution and wine glasses glistened and prettily bared shoulders gleamed roundly under the electric lights.

And Rocky, seated gloomily opposite this powerful quiet man – who took him unerringly in of course; dishearteningly, Rocky felt – found himself in a depression deeper than any he had known before. His father was so strong and he brought back with him the enveloping atmosphere of the mighty, splendidly successful white world in which they both belonged – a world that crushed the heart out of weaker peoples while it blandly talked the moralities. He felt it as a Juggernaut. It had the amazingly successful racial blend of character and plausibility. That would be the British quality; and, more roughly and confusedly, the American.

“Getting rather interesting up the river.” remarked Dawley Kane, over his soup. “How’d you get down?”

“On a junk.”

“Any trouble?”

“Oh – some.”

“Been here long?”

“Several days. I’m sailing Saturday.”

“Sailing?” Mr. Kane raised his eyebrows. “Where?”

“Home.”

“You decided not to consult me?”

“Oh… Don’t ride me, father! It’s the next thing. I’m going back to college.”

“Oh – I see.” Mr. Kane looked over the menu, ordered his roast, and selected a red wine, cautioning the waiter to set it near the stove for five minutes. “It’s wicked to heat Burgundy,” he said, when the waiter had gone, “but it’s the only way you can get it served at the right temperature. I discovered that when we were here before… I gather, my boy, that you’ve come to your senses in the matter of that little yellow girl.”

Rocky did not wince outwardly; he merely sat still. But his mind, at last, was active. And he knew – saw it in a flash – that no explanation he could possibly make, would be intelligible. You can not – yet – talk across the gulf between the worlds. It was his first intelligent glimpse of the tremendous fact that Doane had so long and so clearly felt and seen. So he merely – at last, when his father looked closely at him – inclined his head and said, huskily:

“I’m going to work out this college business’. That’s my job clear enough.”

This new attitude was to bring, later in the evening, confidences from the father.

“It’s been an interesting journey for me, Rocky.” Thoughtfully Dawley Kane smoked his Manila cigar.

“It’s enabled me to understand somewhat the delicate international situation out here. I couldn’t see why our agents weren’t accomplishing more. The trouble is, of course, that every square foot of China’s staked out by the European nations. If you don’t believe that, just get a concession from the Chinese Government – for a big job – water power development, mining, railway building, or an industrial monopoly – that part of it isn’t so hard – and then try to carry it through. You’d find out fast enough who are the real owners of China. And those owners would never let you start. Great Britain controls this great empire of the Yangtze Valley as completely as she controls India. France owns the south – Russia the northwest and the north – Japan, from Korea and Lower Manchuria is penetrating the northwest, too; they’re bound, the Japanese, to tip Russia out one of these days, and they’re very clever and patient about slipping into the British regions. They’ve got the Germans to contend with, too, in the Kiochow region. But someday – either in the event of the final break-up of China or in the event of the European nations coming to an out-and-out squabble (which is almost a certainty, at that) Japan will be found to have pulled off most of the big prizes for herself. We’ll have to fight Japan someday, I suppose – over the control of the Pacific – but in the meantime, those little people are the best bet. They know the East as the rest of us don’t, they’re clever, and their diplomats aren’t hampered by the sort of half-enlightened public opinion that’s always tripping us up in the West – sentimental idealism, that sort of thing – and they control their press infinitely better than we do. They’ve got everything, the Japanese, except money. And we’ve got the money. It’ll be just a question of security, that’s all; and watching them pretty closely. I’ve made up my mind to play it that way… A survey of the actual conditions out here makes our American diplomacy look pretty naive. We talk idealism – open door and all – while all the rest of them are moving in and setting up shop and getting the money.”

Later, in Dawley Kane’s spacious suite overlooking the park-like street where the colored lanterns of the rickshaws glowed pleasantly under the trees, the father said, laying a hand affectionately on the boy’s shoulder:

“I can’t tell you how happy you’ve made me, Rocky. It looks as if you’d turned your corner. Just don’t go in for too much thinking about what you’ve been through. There’s nothing in remorse. As a matter of fact, a little rough experience is a good thing for a boy. After you get your balance you’ll be all the closer to life for it… Go ahead with your college plans, get your degree, and then after a year or two in the New York office I’ll bring you out here. We shall be playing for big stakes. And we shall need good men… That’s the whole problem, really – the men. I had my eyes on this man Doane, but he turned out to be only a sentimentalist after all.”

It was the hopelessness of it that drove Rocky out – after a respectful good night – and over to the revolutionary headquarters. He knew that Mr. Doane worked most of the night; and took what sleep he got on a cot there.