Part 4

Stewart looked at him keenly a minute. “I am not married,” he said. “I never have been.... If I had married I should not have let the Chinese coat go.” He spoke with a certain curious emphasis and Richard glanced at him.

He nodded. “I should have kept it—for her,” he said. “I knew enough for that!... It gives me a queer kind of feeling to know that you were interested in it too. I somehow should not have suspected it of you.” He looked at him thoughtfully.

“My wife liked it,” said Richard stiffly. “I wanted it for her.”

“Yes—a woman would like it.... I remember the woman that had charge of the department—she’s been dead a number of years, now—I remember she always liked it. She would keep it in a box—half the time. Wouldn’t have it out where people could see it—seemed to be afraid somebody would buy it!” He chuckled. “If I’d really wanted to sell that coat I should have been pretty sharp with her.”... He roused himself. “Well, she’s dead!”

“You didn’t find another one, I suppose?” said Richard politely.

“No—not exactly.” He seemed to be trying to recall something.

“There was one—I got word of one.... But it was far in the interior—farther in than I’d ever gone, or had time to go. I left word in a general way for them to negotiate for it.... But they’re slow—the Chinese.... Ever been there?”

Richard shook his head—a sudden intention came to him.

“Well, it’s a wonderful country!” said Stewart. “And they’re a wonderful people. But different—different from us.... That’s where folks have always made a mistake. They think because the Chinese have heads and legs, and wear clothes, they are like us.... But they are no more like us than—than trees are like—lions.... They’re both of ’em alive, and that’s about all you can say—” He broke off with a laugh.

Richard smiled. “You know them pretty well, do you?”

“I’ve spent a good deal of time there.... But I don’t know them. Nobody knows ’em!” He spoke with quiet conviction and something that arrested Richard’s attention.

“I’ve sometimes thought I should like to go there.”... He had thought it not two minutes ago for the first time—but it seemed to him now that he had always intended to go—that it was something he had been moving toward all his life.

The other nodded. “You won’t regret it. I mean to go back myself, some time.”

They parted with a kind of friendliness they would not have expected from their previous knowledge of each other. Richard had in his pocket such directions as the man could give him.

“I can’t tell you precisely where the place is, nor how to get to it. I never knew, myself.... And it’s a country you have to find your own way in. Go slow and trust ’em. Don’t hurry them too much.... I wouldn’t be surprised if you’d find the coat—if there really was one, like the one we knew—I wouldn’t be surprised if you’d find it just where it was twenty years ago when they told me about it. They’re a slow-moving people! But they’ve found out some things... some things we don’t know yet.... In a sense they’ve forgotten more than we ever knew,” he added with a smile.

“Here, wait a minute!” He went to a cabinet across the room and took from a pigeonhole a yellow and discolored map. He brought it to the table and spread it out.

“Here is the region I spoke of—up here.... And these red lines show where I have been myself; and the little blue crosses are places where I got information—the right sort—where people are friendly and intelligent... they will not have changed much—” He looked at the map thoughtfully and took it up and folded it in slow fingers.

“I am going to give you this. It may be useful to you, and I may not go myself—I am an old man now.”

So Richard More took the map and went out. He had come expecting to make a business inquiry, in a businesslike way; and he had encountered something that was not business—something that the piece of worn and discolored paper seemed vaguely to whisper as it rustled in his pocket.

XVIII

THE next day he brought the runabout to the door and honked once—and waited.

Eleanor coming down the path stopped—and glanced at the car. She quickened her steps, a look of happy surprise in her face.

“You are going to drive yourself!”

“Trust me—can’t you?” said Richard.

She got in with a sigh of content. “There are always people!” she said, “and people and people!—till you can’t think!” She threw out her hands in a whimsical gesture.

“Well—you can think now!... No one to hinder!”

They took the road to the open country. And she rested back beside him. He could feel her quiet contentment—though she did not speak—not even when they left the open highway and travelled a rougher road that skirted the hills and came at last to the end of a grass-grown cart-path half-way up the hill. He turned the nose of the car a little one side.

“As far as we go,” he said quietly.

She got out with a smile. “Farther than last time—isn’t it?” She looked about her happily.

“You remember then?” he said. He came and stood beside her.

“Did you think I could forget?”

“It has been a long time——”

“Only a minute,” she replied gayly. “Come—are we going up?”

“I wonder—?” He looked a little doubtfully at the hill before them—and there was a hill beyond that, he knew, and another beyond that.

“It’s more of a climb than I remembered,” he said thoughtfully.

But she was already going on ahead of him, pushing aside the underbrush and walking with light step.... The birch stems came between them and he saw her hazily, always a little ahead, ascending the hill.... Then her pace slowed and he hurried and overtook her.

He looked at her sternly. “Sit down!” he said.

He spread his coat and she sat down on it almost meekly. She was breathing fast. There was a little flush of color in her face.

She looked about her with happy eyes. “Oh—I am glad you thought of it!”

“You have no sense!” said Richard shortly.

“Sense—?... Oh!”

“To hurry like that!—We have the day before us!”

“Have we?” She looked about with a little puzzled vagueness. “I think I must have been hurrying—to get back to set the table for dinner!” She was laughing at him. “It felt like being a girl!” she said.

“I shall go ahead after this,” responded Richard. “I’m not going to have you fainting away or twisting an ankle, or any other silly thing!”

“Nonsense!”

But when they started again he led the way; and they stopped at judicious intervals—to look at the view and talk of scenery—and Richard kept a careful eye on the face with its flitting color, and on her quickened breath. She leaned a little against him the last part of the way. Then they came out on the open bluff, with the country lying before them.

She stood gazing down at it with shining eyes. “Nothing has changed!” she cried after a minute.

“Not from up here,” said Richard. “Sit down.”

He made a place for her by a birch-tree and she leaned back against it and they looked out in silence over the wide country.

Presently he turned and looked at her. She had fallen asleep. Her head rested against the birch-tree and her face wore a soft flush in sleep.... Now that it was quiet and the smile was gone, he could see that it was very tired. A quick desire seized him—to keep the face—to stay the change in it. A woman should not grow old!... And then as he looked at her, he saw that she was more beautiful than she had ever been.

She opened her eyes and smiled to him hazily. “Twenty-five years!” she murmured sleepily, and the eyes closed. He moved a little nearer to her till her head rested against him and she slept on.

When she opened her eyes, the light had changed. She sat up with a swift look.

“How stupid in me—to go to sleep!... But how wonderful it is!” She was gazing at the darkened light that spread like a veil over the country below. The grass and trees were misty in it—only a winding river caught a touch of glamour from an unseen source and glowed through the dusk. The darkness grew and deepened on the plain, and the sides of the hill were blurred in it—shadowy shapes crept up.

“We must go,” said Richard. “The days are short.”

“Yes”—she breathed a little sigh—“yes—we must go.” She got up.

But he stayed her and she stood arrested, looking down at him.

“There—was something—I wanted to tell you,” he said.

She glanced at the plain—with the little gleaming river shining in it. “It is late!” she said.

“I brought my bug-light.” He touched his pocket. “Sit down.”

So she sat down beside him and he told her of the map in his pocket. He took it out and spread it before her. And she leaned toward it in the dim light—studying the discolored lines as he explained them to her.

“Do you want—to go—so much?” she asked, looking up at last.

“If you want to—Yes.”

She was silent a minute.

“Martin thinks he is going to be an engineer,” she said irrelevantly.

He spurned it. “Martin has sense—he doesn’t need his mother—to have sense for him!”

“But an engineer!” she said.

“They will lead the world to-morrow,” he responded.

“Oh—!” It was a little sigh of surprise and relief.

“I didn’t know engineers were anything important!” she added after a minute. Then she laughed out.

The darkness gathered closer—coming up from the plain—and the little river was only a gleam through its veil of haze.

She looked down on it.

“Very well,” she said. “We will go. I am ready to go.... Perhaps it will rest me to go.”

XIX

The whole family was at the station to see them off. Annabel had provided luncheon and a tea-basket and little pillows and waxed paper and drinking-cups, and she flitted about her mother with watchful eyes. There was a kind of jealous loyalty in her, as if she would hold her mother by main force from this foolish thing she had entered upon.... She went with them into the car and settled the little pillow in place and stood with her hand on her mother’s shoulder.... Outside, through the window, she could see the others laughing and talking.

Her mother lifted her face quickly. “You will be carried off!” she said hurriedly.

The younger woman smiled down at her—and her face broke in little, helpless lines. She bent and kissed her almost fiercely. “You take care of yourself!... If anything happened to you—!” And she was gone.

Outside, the group moved and laughed and waved inane farewells. Annabel joined it wiping her eyes. She waved her handkerchief at the receding window and dabbed it swiftly across her eyes.

The red light at the end of the rear car receded into a dark tunnel.

Annabel caught her breath. “I don’t see why we let her do it!” she said helplessly.

“You couldn’t stop mother!” It was William Archer. He tucked her hand protectingly in his arm. “She’ll be all right!” he said reassuringly.

Annabel shook her head. They had turned away from the blackness of the tunnel and were walking toward the station. The others had scattered a little, and gone on ahead. Annabel’s eyes followed them.

“She isn’t fit to do it!” she said.... “She’s like a child. I feel as if I couldn’t—!” Her lip trembled, and she broke off.

William Archer smiled down at her. “Mother’s all right! She brought us up—five of us. And she’s pretty near brought father up—and I guess a few Chinamen won’t frighten her!”

Annabel looked at him absently.

“I didn’t tell her where I put the extra flannels—for the steamer. They say it’s cold—sometimes!”

“Telegraph!” replied William Archer promptly. “Want me to go home with you?”

They stood at the corner of the street. Annabel shook her head. “Of course not! Don’t be silly!... I shall telegraph to-night—a night-letter.”

“Whereto?”

She looked at him helplessly. “I don’t know.... And she’s always been so fixed before! Wherever I went, I seemed always just kind of circling around mother and coming back to her. And now she’s off like that—whirling into space!” She made a sweeping gesture of her hands and looked up to him appealingly.

The little laugh left William Archer’s face. “There’s no one in the world, of course, like mother.... Never has been—for me.... I suppose all men feel that way—about their mothers.” He said it slowly and looked at her inquiringly. “But it seems somehow as if she were somebody in particular—and nobody else could know—how we feel about her.”

“They can’t—and they don’t!” said Annabel grimly.

They stood looking at each other with quiet understanding. They had not felt so near together in years, not since they played in the branches of the oak-tree, and William Archer had called down to her from the topmost branch: “Come on up!”

She nodded to him with a little smile of remembrance and affection, and they turned and went their separate ways.

XX

From the window of the train Eleanor More looked out on green fields. They had emerged from the dark mouth of the tunnel into a spring day. The evening light was on the fields, and they stretched away to distant woods. The shadows along the ground caught a glow from the sky.

“Looks like a clear day to-morrow,” said Richard.

She nodded quietly. Her eyes were on the level green fields that moved past them, mile after mile.

He put out his hand and covered hers where it lay on the seat between them.

“Tired?” he asked.

She shook her head. Then she drew a long breath and looked at him with a smile.

“How good it seems!” she said slowly. “How good it seems—to get away from them all!”

“We are beginning all over,” he responded.

“Yes.... I can’t seem to worry about what’s happening to them.... Just a little worry—because I don’t worry—that’s all!”

“You’ll get over that in a mile or so,” he replied confidently.

It would seem she did get over it—or at least if she did not, she concealed it skilfully. The little lines in her face smoothed, one by one, and a tranquil look came to it.

She sat for hours as the train moved over the level plain, the look of abstraction in her eyes and the gentleness and strength in her face revealing themselves—as the lines of a landscape are sometimes revealed by a change of light or by the passing of a storm—all the surface life slipped from it.

And Richard More, watching, had a sudden sense of the mysterious force of very familiar things.... This was Eleanor’s face—that he had known and loved for years; and it was the face of a strange woman, an unknown majestic presence who moved beside him always.

And then the mask of greatness would slip from her, and she would chatter for days about nothing, trivial things—delighting like a child in the discoveries he brought and laid in her lap when he alighted at some lonely station—a flower or a bit of mineral; and the train would plunge on again, dipping around the curve of a hill, climbing along a dizzy cliff, while she sat beside him, her hand a little reached out to him, her breath half stayed by a glance of delight.

“It is a voyage of discovery,” he said in her ear.

“How foolish—to want to stay in one place—always!” Her hand swept up to the piling masses of snow, glacial vastnesses that gleamed high above them. “How foolish!” she said softly.

And the strange look of dignity and strength came swiftly into her face.

“A voyage of discovery,” he repeated.... “Do you think we shall find it?”

She looked at him with puzzled eyes.

“Find—?” she said vaguely.

“The Chinese coat?”

“Oh—!” she laughed out. “Perhaps so. It doesn’t matter—does it?” She nodded toward the distant peaks of snow—a faint tinge of pink was beginning to rest on them.... “It does not matter!” she said softly.

“No—it does not matter.... But I should like to find it—for you.”

When she looked at him her eyes were full of tears.

“Foolish boy!” she said, “to care—for that!”

“We will go back—if you say so,” he responded. He was watching her closely.

She reached out a quick hand.

“No—Oh, no! We must go on!” she cried under her breath.

He laughed out. “I thought so! You care for it—as much as I do.... Only

“I want to go on,” she said swiftly. “What would the children say—if we should come back now?”

“They would be a little surprised—to see us walk in,” he admitted.

“Very well, madam—to please you, we will go on.”

They talked in any foolish way that pleased them, and they did not hurry on the journey.

He had a time-table of the dates of sailing of the Japanese line they were to travel by, and a stateroom engaged on each boat sailing for the next month.

One after one he relinquished them, by telegraph, as the days slipped by.

They stopped off for two weeks at a high mountain inn that they liked; and several times they rested for days in some spot that pleased her fancy.

He watched her face. When it grew fatigued, he gave directions to the Japanese courier who had joined them at a point on the journey, and they left the train at the next station.

The courier came and went like a shadow along the route—sometimes ahead of them and sometimes following, but always at hand when he was needed.

Eleanor grew to watch for his face as if he were a kind of meteor that played a game with them.

“There he is!” she would exclaim at some station as she looked out and caught a glimpse of him. “There he is, Richard!” And if the train went on without him, she would press her face to the glass and lean forward to watch till he was out of sight.

“What a wonderful people!” she said. “When I see him I seem to understand—almost! And then he is gone! Is he going with us—all the way?”

“Perhaps so,” said Richard. “I had arranged with him only to San Francisco. But we can keep him on if you like.... There will be plenty like him on the boat. They are all Japs on the boat.”

XXI

On the steamer they were, as Richard had predicted, all Japanese. Not only the crew and attendants, but many of the passengers showed the dark skin and straight hair of the race to the west. There were Chinese, too, and strange foreign faces that Richard More did not know. A few Americans were on board—bound on business or pleasure to China and Japan—but the majority of the passengers were of alien race.

Richard More and his wife sat day after day in their steamer-chairs, looking out to sea and watching the strange faces drift between them and the horizon line.... They came and went, dreamlike and vague.... Now a face would silhouette itself on the sky, turbaned and dark and motionless against the approaching west; and now gesticulating hands moved swiftly, and sharp staccatoed words flitted by them along the deck. They were in a foreign world, a cosmopolite world—a restless, moving strangeness of life.... It was not possible not to feel, deep underneath, the common tie of race or nation that made them one.... Only a boat moving to the west—and the faces moving with it.

The courier left them at the dock at San Francisco. Eleanor caught a glimpse of his face among the crowd as the boat moved out.

“There he is!” she cried to Richard, her hand on his arm and her eyes searching the dock. Then the crowd jostled—and the face was gone. There were many dark faces along the dock’s edge, watching the boat recede, and she could not see that one was more familiar than another.

She had come to fancy on the journey that she knew the courier a little; but now she saw that she had known only his strangeness; there were dozens like him, and he was merged in the deeper alienism of his race.

He was replaced by a Chinese interpreter who was to act as guide for the rest of the journey. Richard More, searching for a courier who was familiar with the languages and dialects of the different provinces of China, had come upon Kou Ying, who was contemplating a journey home. For a consideration, he was willing to go with them into the interior and to remain with them as long as they wished.

Eleanor had seen him only at a distance, leaning against the rail and looking out to sea, or rolling a cigarette with slow lingering touch in his yellow hands extending from the wide, silken sleeves.

She fancied, once or twice, that a glance from the oblique eyes rested on her with slow intentness. But when she looked again she saw that the glance was vacant of meaning and that it slipped past her and gazed out along the pathless sea to the west.

“I cannot make him out!” she said to Richard.

“Don’t you like him?” he demanded. “We will exchange him at Shanghai. There are always plenty to be had, I understand. But I thought the man seemed intelligent—and the boat gives us a little chance to get acquainted.”

He looked at her keenly. “We don’t need to keep him, you know.”

She wrinkled her eyes in a little perplexity, gazing at the figure that stood well to the front of the boat.... His back was turned to them and the wind blowing against the boat filled the blue coat and trousers like little balloons. One could fancy the thin yellow legs inside the balloons, holding like grim little steel pipes to the deck. There was a wiry strength in the man and a kind of gripping forcefulness that went oddly with the placid face and slow figure.

“I don’t know what it is,” she said slowly. “I do not dislike him. But he makes me feel as if the world were queer—a little topsy-turvy, I think—almost as if I saw a pine-tree lift its roots out of the ground and go skipping along the grass!” Her husband laughed out. “Kou Ying doesn’t skip much!”

“No.... His soul skips!”

“All the better for us, isn’t it?”

“Perhaps—” Her eyes brooded on the ballooning little figure, anchored to the deck.

“No—Don’t send him away!” She shook her head with decision.

“Well, I’m glad you like him. I fancy he’s going to be pretty useful to us later on.”

He got up and strolled over to the man, and Eleanor More watched the two figures side by side—the tall, well-built American and the thin little figure of steel in its swelling, puffed-out garments.

Presently they moved along the deck and passed out of sight. When they reappeared, at the other end of the boat, Eleanor was lying half-asleep, her eyes closed and her face very quiet.

She opened her eyes, as they came up.

The oblique gaze was looking down on her out of an impassive face. She smiled dreamily.... Now she understood. The man was journeying too.

“This is Kou Ying,” said Richard casually.

The Oriental made a gesture of service... and the pine-tree danced hazily before Eleanor’s eyes. She smiled a little.

“You are going with us?” she asked.

The stolid face had not changed. But something, far back in the eyes, responded to the smile.

“As long as you need me, madam,” said the man courteously.

“We are looking for a coat,” said Richard.

“Hadn’t you told him?” asked Eleanor, a little astonished. She sat up in her chair.

“No. I waited—to be sure.”

The Chinese eyes regarded him, incurious and quiet.

“We saw a coat, several years ago,” said Richard, addressing them. “A coat that we should like to find—or one like it.”

“A mandarin coat?” asked the man quietly.

“No-o—I don’t think so. It was longer——”

“Blue, with gold things on it—Dragons,” said Eleanor eagerly, “and marks down the front like this—” She drew a few lines on the paper beside her.

“Ah—!” The man’s breath gave a little whistling sound....

“That is a very old coat,” he said softly. “Hundreds of years—very, very old.”

His face took on a strange, removed look. “It will be difficult to find—I am afraid.”

He spoke the words with a clear, clipping sound, and looked out to the west, steadying himself to the motion of the boat.

“There are not many chances of finding it,” he said at last with grave accent. “But I will help you—if I can.”

“We are depending on you,” said Richard More.

The man bowed and walked away.

After that Eleanor saw him often, mingling with the different groups of Chinamen on the deck and talking and laughing with easy familiarity.

“He is making inquiries,” said Richard. “He tells me there are people on board from nearly every province in China. He may find a clew before we leave the boat.”