Samuel Merwin - In Red and Gold

“The officers would, of course. Many of the soldiers are with us. Anyway, it doesn’t matter.”

“What is your errand?”

“I will tell you. The revolution, as you doubtless know, is fully planned.”

“I’ve assumed so. There has been so much talk. And then, of course, the outbreak in Szechuen.”

“That was premature. It was the plan to strike in the spring. This fighting in Szechuen has caused much confusion. Sun Yat Sen is in America. He is going to England, and can hardly reach China within two months. He will bring money enough for all our needs. He is the organizer, the directing genius of the new republic. But the Szechuen outbreak has set all the young hotheads afire.”

“I am told that the throne has sent Tuan Fang out there to put down the disturbance. But we have had no news lately.”

“That is because the wires are cut. Tuan Fang will never come back. We will pay five thousand taels, cash, to the bearer of his head, and ask no questions. We must exterminate the Manchus. It has finally come down to that. It is the only way out. But we must pull together. Did you know that the Wu Chang republicans plan to strike at once?”

“No.”

“I have been sent there to tell them to wait. That is our gravest danger now. If we pull together we shall win. If our emotions run away with our judgment – ”

“The throne will defeat your forces piecemeal and destroy your morale.”

“Exactly. My one fear is that I may not reach Wu Chang in time. But” – with a careless gesture – “that is as it may be. I will tell you now why I spoke to you. We need you. Our organization is incomplete as yet, naturally. One matter of the greatest importance is that our spirit be understood from the first by foreign countries. There is an enormous task – diplomatic publicity, you might call it – which you, Mr. Doane, are peculiarly fitted to undertake You know both China and the West. You are a philosopher of mature judgment. You would work in association with Doctor Wu Ting Fang at our Shanghai offices. There will be money. Will you consider this?”

“It is a wholly new thought,” Doane replied slowly. “I should have to give it very serious consideration.”

“But you are in sympathy with our aims?”

“In a general way, certainly. Even though I may not share your optimism.”

“On your return to Shanghai would you be willing to call at once on Doctor Wu and discuss the matter?”

“Yes… Yes, I will do that. I must leave you now. We are nearly at Kiu Kiang.”

Sun, glancing out the window, raised his hand. Doane looked; two small German cruisers, the kaiser’s flag at the taff, were steaming up-stream.

“They know,” murmured Sun, with meaning. “I wish to God I could find their means of information. They all know. From the Japanese in particular nothing seems to be hidden. Two or three of your American war-ships are already up there. And the English, naturally, in force.”

“They must be on hand to protect the foreign colony at Hankow. The Szechuen trouble would justify such a move.”

But Sun shook his head. “They know ,” he repeated. Then he clasped Doane’s hand. “However… that is a detail. It is now war. You will find events marching fast – faster, I fear, than we republicans wish. Good-by now. You will call on Doctor Wu.”

The steamer moved slowly in toward the landing hulk. Doane, from the boat deck, by the after bell pull, gazed across at the park-like foreign bund, with its embankment of masonry and its trees. Behind lay, compactly, the walled city. Everything looked as it had always looked – the curious crowd along the railing, the water carriers passing down and up the steps, the eager shouting swarm of water beggars. Below, the coolies swung out from the hulk, ready to make their usual breakneck leap over green water to the approaching steamer. Now – they were jumping. The passengers were leaning out from the promenade deck to watch and applaud… Doane’s thoughts, as he went mechanically through his familiar duties, wandered off inland, past the battlements and towers of the ancient city to the thousands of other ancient cities and villages and farmsteads beyond; and he wondered if the scores of millions of lethargic minds in all those centers of population could really be awakened from their sleep of six hundred years and stirred into action.

Could a republic, he asked himself, possibly mean anything real to those minds? The habit of mere endurance, of bare existence, was so deep-seated, the struggle to live so intense, the opportunity so slight. Sun Shi-pi and his kind were a semi-Western product. They were, when all was said and done, an exotic breed. They were the ardent, adventurous young; and they were the few. There had always been a throne in China, always extortionate mandarins, always a popular acceptance of conditions.

The lines were out now. And suddenly a blue-clad soldier climbed over the rail, below, balanced along the stern hawser, leaped to the hulk, and was about to disappear among the coolies there when a rifle-shot cracked and he fell. He seemed to fall, if anything, slightly before the shot. Another soldier, following close, was caught by a second shot as he was balancing on the hawser, and spun headlong into the water where the propeller still churned.

A few moments later, when Doane moved among the passengers, it became clear that they knew nothing of the casual tragedy astern. They were all pressing ashore for a walk in the native city, eager to buy the worked silver that is traditionally sold there. The slim girl in the middy blouse had apparently captured young Rocky Kane; they strolled off across the bund together. But Dawley Kane remained aboard, stretched out comfortably in a deck chair, listening thoughtfully to the stocky little Japanese, one Kato, who was by now generally known to be his alter ego in the matter of buying objects of Oriental art.

None of these folk knew or cared about China. Excepting this Kato. Him Doane was continually encountering below decks, chatting smilingly in Chinese with the good-natured soldiers. His work along the river, doubtless, ranged over a wider field than his present employer would ever learn. It would be interesting, now, to know what he was saying, talking so rapidly and always, of course, smiling… The rest of this upper-deck white man’s existence Doane dismissed from his mind as he went about his work. It was all too familiar. Though later he thought of Rocky Kane. The boy, wild though he might be, had attractive qualities. It was not pleasant to see that girl get her hands on him. Just one more evil influence.

He thought, at this juncture, of the – the word came – appalling change in himself. That he, once a fervid missionary, could stand back like a sophisticated European, and let the wandering and vicious and broken human creatures about him go their various ways, as might be, was disturbing, was even saddening. Something apparently had died in him. Sun had called him a philosopher. The Oriental, of course, even the blazing revolutionist, admired this passive quality, this fatalistic acceptance of the fact. He sighed. To be a philosopher was, then, to be emotionally dead. The church had been taken out of his life, leaving – nothing. A mate on a river steamer, in China. Life had gone quite topsy-turvey. Even the amazing courtesy of his excellency – it was that, when you considered – and this profound compliment from the revolutionary junta seemed but incidents. Too many promises had smiled at Doane, these years of his spiritual Odyssey – smiled and faded to nothing – to permit an easy hope of anything new and beautiful. He was beginning to believe that a man can not build and live two lives. And he had built and lived one.

Captain Benjamin found him; a dogged little captain with dull fright in his eyes. “It’s happened,” he said, trying desperately to attain an offhand manner. “Company wire. They’re fighting at Wu Chang. What do you know about that!”