Hills of Han: A Romantic Incident. Samuel Merwin

      “You'll be back then, Grigg?”

      “Oh, yes. By the tenth. I shan't delay at all at Hankow.”

      It seemed to Henry Withery that his friend and host maneuvered to get him to retire first. Then he attributed the suspicion to his own disturbed thoughts. … Still, Griggsby hadn't returned to the house until after M. Pourmont's arrival. It was now nearly midnight, and there had been never a personal word.

      But at last, M. Pourmont out of the way for the night, lamp in hand, Griggsby led the way to the remaining guest room.

      Withery, following, looked up at the tall grave man, who had to stoop a little at the doors. Would Griggsby put down the lamp, speak a courteous good night, and go off to his own attic quarters; or would he linger? It was to be a test, this coming moment, of their friendship. … Withery's heart filled. In his way, through the years, out there in remote Kansu, he had always looked up to Grigg and had leaned on him, on memories of him as he had been. He had the memories now—curiously poignant memories, tinged with the melancholy of lost youth. But had he still the friend?

      Duane set down the lamp, and looked about, all grave courtesy, to see if his friend's bag was at hand, and if the wash-stand and towel-rack had been made ready.

      Withery stood on the sill, struggling to control his emotions. Longfellow's lines came to mind:

      “A boy's will is the wind's will,

      And the thoughts of youth are long, long

      thoughts.”

      They were middle-aged now, they two. It was extraordinarily hard to believe. They had felt so much, and shared so much. They had plunged at missionary work with such ardor. Grigg especially. He had thrown aside more than one early opportunity for a start in business. He had sacrificed useful worldly acquaintances. His heart had burned to save souls, to carry the flame of divine revelation into what had then seemed a benighted, materialistic land.

      Grigg would have succeeded in business or in the service of his government. He had a marked administrative gift. And power. … Distinctly power.

      Withery stepped within the room, closed the door behind him, and looked straight up into that mask of a face; in his own deep emotion he thought of it as a tragic mask.

      “Grigg,” he said very simply, “what's the matter?”

      There was a silence. Then Doane came toward the door.

      “The matter?” he queried, with an effort to smile.

      “Can't we talk, Grigg? … I know you are in deep trouble.”

      “Well”—Doane rested a massive hand on a bedpost—“I won't say that it isn't an anxious time, Henry. I'm pinning my faith to Pau Ting Chuan. But … And, of course, if I could have foreseen all the little developments, I wouldn't have sent for Betty. Though it's not easy to see what else I could have done. Frank and Ethel couldn't keep her longer. And the expense of any other arrangement … She's nineteen, Henry. A young woman. Curious—a young woman whom I've never even seen as such, and my daughter!”

      “It isn't that, Grigg.”

      At the moment Withery could say no more. He sank into a chair by the door, depressed in spirit.

      Doane walked to the window; looked out at the stars; drummed a moment on the glass.

      “It's been uphill work, Henry … since nineteen hundred.”

      Withery cleared his throat. “It isn't that,” he repeated unsteadily.

      Doane stood there a moment longer; then turned and gazed gloomily at his friend.

      The silence grew painful.

      Finally, Doane sighed, spread his hands in the manner of one who surrenders to fate, and came slowly over to the bed; stretching out his long frame there, against the pillows.

      “So it's as plain as that, Henry.”

      “It is—to me.”

      “I wonder if I can talk.”

      “The question is, Grigg—can I help you?”

      “I'm afraid not, Henry. I doubt if any one can.” The force of this sank slowly into Withery's mind. “No one?” he asked in a hushed voice.

      “I'm afraid not. … Do you think the others, my people here, see it?”

      “The tone has changed here, Grigg.”

      “I've tried not to believe it.”

      “I've felt it increasingly for several years. When I've passed through. Even in your letters. It's been hard to speak before. For that matter, I had formulated no question. It was just an impression. But today … and to-night …”

      “It's as bad as that, now.”

      “Suppose I say that it's as definite as that, Grigg. The impression.”

      Doane let his head drop back against the pillows; closed his eyes.

      “The words don't matter,” he remarked.

      “No, they don't, of course.” Withery's mind, trained through the busy years to the sort of informal confessional familiar to priests of other than the Roman church, was clearing itself of the confusions of friendship and was ready to dismiss, for the time, philosophically; the sense of personal loss.

      “Is it something you've done, Grigg?” he asked now, gently. “Have you—”

      Doane threw out an interrupting hand.

      “No,” he said rather shortly, “I've not broken the faith, Henry, not in act.”

      “In your thoughts only?”

      “Yes. There.”

      “It is doubt? … Strange, Grigg, I never knew a man whose faith had in it such vitality. You've inspired thousands. Tens of thousands. You—I will say this, now—you, nothing more, really, than my thoughts of you carried me through my bad time. Through those doldrums when the ardor of the first few years had burned out and I was spent, emotionally. It was with your help that I found my feet again. You never knew' that.”

      “No. I didn't know that.”

      “I worried a good deal, then. I had never before been aware of the church as a worldly organization, as a political mechanism. I hadn't questioned it. It was Hidderleigh's shrewd campaign for the bishopric that disturbed me. Then the money raised questions, of course.”

      “There's been a campaign on this winter, over in the States,” said Doane, speaking slowly and thoughtfully. “Part of that fund is to be sent here to help extend my work in the province. They're using all the old emotional devices. All the claptrap. Chaplain Cabell is touring the churches with his little cottage organ and his songs.”

      “But the need is real out here, Grigg. And the people at home must be stirred into recognizing it. They can't he reached except through their emotions. I've been through all that. I see now, clearly enough, that it's an imperfect world. We must do the best we can with it. Because it is imperfect we must keep at our work.”

      “You know as well as I what they're doing, Henry. Cabell, all that crowd, haven't once mentioned Hansi. They're talking the Congo.”

      “But you forget, Grigg, that the emotional interest of our home people in China has run out. They thought about us during the Boxer trouble, and later, during the famine in Shensi. Now, because of the talk of slavery and atrocities in Central Africa, public interest has shifted to that part of the world.”

      “And so they're playing on the public sympathy for Africa to raise money, some of which is later to be diverted to Central China.”

      “What else can they do?”

      “I don't know.”