Gods Men

11

WHEN THE SECOND WORLD war broke out Clem made up his mind to ignore it. “Let her blaze,” he told Henrietta in cosmic anger. “It’s all got beyond me.”

“Aren’t you going to close the restaurants now?” Henrietta had asked when people were working again on war jobs.

“I’ve been thinking about that,” Clem said. “I don’t want to be in the restaurant business. I guess I’ll let the fellows have them. They can set up for themselves somewhere or they can stay where they are. They’ve got to promise me, though, that they’ll keep on giving free meals when necessary.”

“Since they’ve made money, I imagine they won’t mind that,” Henrietta said. Chinese could always take care of themselves with ancestral prudence.

By that time the government had ordered surpluses given outright to hungry people. Nobody knew how much of this giving away was the fruit of a certain day when Clem at last sat with that fabulous man in the White House who could not stand up unless somebody helped him. Clem got on well with him. He tried to remember that the man behind the big desk covered with small objects was the President of the United States, but most of the time he forgot it. They talked all over the world. The man behind the desk showed extraordinary knowledge and also profound ignorance, and he did not care who knew it. Clem tried to tell him about China and then gave up. There was too much the man did not know. He knew as little about India, and believed that the only problem there was too many people, and Clem labored earnestly to make him see this was not true. India could produce plenty of food for many more people.

“China, for instance, is nearly self-supporting in food,” Clem said. “She doesn’t import anything hardly. She grows immense amounts of food.”

“Seems to me I’ve heard of starving Chinese all my life,” said the man with the big smile.

“That’s because they need railroads and truck highways,” Clem said. “They can’t move surpluses. They starve in spots. It’s the world situation in a big nutshell. Before you can have a steady peace, you’ve got to be able to move surpluses.”

The war had broken out in China and in Europe and it meant that in China at least there would be fewer new highways than ever. Still the big man did not care much about China. That was to come later. Clem went away attracted and confounded. The big man didn’t see the world as round. For him it was flat. He couldn’t imagine the underneath. The whole world would have to blaze with war before the big man understood that the world was one big round globe.

It had never been easy for Clem to write letters but when he got home to Henrietta he began the series of letters which were his effort to educate the man who didn’t know the world was round. Sometimes these letters were long but usually they were not. The big man never answered them or acknowledged them himself, but Clem hoped that he read them. In them he tried to put down all he knew, including excerpts from the letters which Yusan wrote him.

“Of course we ought to help lick the Japs in China now,” Clem wrote, “but this is just the first step. As far as that goes the war really began when we let them have Manchuria. The next real job will come after the war when Chiang Kai-shek will have to hold his people together. It is easier for a soldier to keep on fighting than it is to get down to the necessary peace. It will be the Communists next, for sure, and that’s what we have got to reckon with. My advice now is to give some little hint of friendship for the people of India so as to begin to win friendship from Asia. I know you don’t want to get Winston worked up, but you could just say a word or two in the direction of India in your next fireside chat and this would please Indians by the millions as well as Chinese. If you would say you believe in the freedom of peoples but say it now, within this week, which is a time of crisis we don’t know anything about over here, it would mean everything. Next month would be too late. They are all waiting.”

Clem had bought his first radio especially to hear the President, but he did not say one word about India or the freedom of the peoples in his next fireside talk. The famous voice came richly over the wires. “My friends …” but it didn’t reach as far as China or India or Indonesia. Clem listened to the last rousing words and shut off the radio and was gloomy for so long that Henrietta was worried. She and Clem were no longer young and she wished that he could stop his world-worrying. Other people would have to take over and if they didn’t, it could not be helped. Clem’s stomach had been better after the depression but this second World War was making it worse again.

When she said something like this to Clem he would not listen to her. “I’m used to my stomach by now, hon. It hasn’t won out on me yet.”

“You haven’t won out either, Clem,” she said sharply. “It’s a continual struggle and you know it.”

He grinned at her, although there was nothing cheerful to grin about. Pearl Harbor had done him as much damage internally as it had done the Hawaiian Islands and he did not dare to tell Henrietta that all his old symptoms had returned, and that he was afraid to eat.

When America had finally swung into war he offered himself as a supercook and was actually put in charge of the mess halls and kitchens of barracks near Dayton. While the war went on and he still continued his long-distance education of the White House, conducted without any response whatever, Clem made some thousands of American boys happy by excellent food and pleasant dining halls where they were allowed to smoke and where cages of singing canaries brightened up their meals. Outside the dining room Clem made the administration furious by the economies he suggested and even put into force so that his regiments, as he called them, became notorious or longed for, depending upon whether a man was brass or buttons.

Clem himself considered it piddling. He was marking time until the end of the war when he intended to marshal all his theories into one vast gospel and present them to the White House and then to the nations. He had long ago forgotten William’s rebuff and he remembered now only the grace and kindness of William’s wife, and he dreamed secretly without telling Henrietta that after the war was over he would go back to William, not this time to advocate a theory but with a formula in his hand, a formula for a food so cheap that until the world got its distribution fixed up, people could still be kept from starving.

He set up a small laboratory in the basement of the house and with Henrietta to help him with her knowledge of chemistry refurbished and brought up to date with some new books, he began to work with the best soybeans he could get, the beans that Chinese farmers grew for their own food. Clem planted these seeds and tended them like hothouse asparagus, and as the war continued his harvests grew until he had enough soybean meal to make real experiments possible. He and Henrietta ate one formula after another, and studied seasoning and spoilage.

“We ought to have a real food chemist,” Henrietta told him on one of these days. “I don’t know how to get the taste you want, Clem. I don’t even know what it is.”

“It’s kind of like those meat rolls I used to eat at the Fongs’,” Clem said dreamily.

“But you were a half-starved boy then and anything would have been wonderful,” Henrietta suggested.

“Yes, but I never forget.”

Clem never forgot anything. He did not forget how it had felt to be a half-starved boy and his unforgetting mind made him know how people anywhere felt and what they wanted. The man in the White House could have got from Clem an accurate temperature of most of the world’s peoples in the crowded countries of Asia, but he did not know it, or even that he needed to know it. Meantime Clem had isolated himself from the war and was living ahead in the years after, when the new world would begin.

“War’s nothing but an epidemic,” he told Henrietta. “If you don’t prevent it in time it comes and then you have to go through with it. I’m glad we have no children, hon.”

“We might have had a girl,” Henrietta said with a wry smile.

“No, I’m glad we haven’t. She’d have been in love with a boy.”

The long process whereby William Lane decided to become a Catholic was one of combined logic and faith. His conscience, always his most fretful member, had become irritated beyond endurance by the monstrosity of his success, which was now uncontrollable. He needed to do nothing except to read his newspapers critically and then keep or discharge his editors. From somewhere in his ancestry, distilled through generations of New England lawyers, preachers, and reformers, he had received the gift of the critical mind attuned to his times. Long ago he had become as independent as a feudal baron. His chain of newspapers rested upon the solid properties of his own printing presses, and these in turn were set upon the sure output of his paper mills, which in finality rested upon the firm foundations of timbered land, stretching in miles across spaces of the north, in Canada as well as in the United States. He was impervious to the dangers and restrictions possible even to him, as the war blazed separately first in Asia and then in Europe. A pity about Hitler! Had he been well advised, Hitler could have been a savior against communism, the final enemy.

Upon the frightful morning after the attack on Pearl Harbor, when his valet drew the window curtains, William was weighed down by the necessity of making up his mind quickly upon a new policy for his staff. People must know immediately where he stood.

As usual when he felt confusion he decided to talk with Monsignor and he telephoned before he got up.

“Yes, William?” Monsignor said over the telephone. After two years or so, they had come to this intimacy. “How can I help you?”

“I feel confused,” William replied. “This war is bringing many problems. I must decide some of them today. I should like to talk with you this morning before I go to my office.”

“I am at your disposal,” the priest replied.

So William went immediately after he had eaten. Emory always breakfasted in her room, and he saw no one except servants whom he did not count. The morning sun shone down upon the magnificent granite Cathedral near the priest’s private home. Both stood in the upper part of the city against a background of skyscrapers, and their solidity was reassuring. Even bombs could scarcely prevail against the aging gray structure of the Cathedral, as formidable as a medieval castle. He rang the bell at a Gothic doorway and was immediately admitted by a young priest who led him in silence over thick velvet carpets spread upon stone floors. There was not one moment of waiting. It was an atmosphere far more courteous than that of the White House, where last week William had gone to call upon the President, repressing his personal dislike to do his patriotic duty, and had been kept waiting for nearly a quarter of an hour. In the end Roosevelt, though jovial, had not seemed grateful for William’s offer of help.

Monsignor’s library was a beautiful room. The crimson of the carpets was repeated in the velvet hangings at the Gothic windows, and mahogany bookcases reached to the arched ceilings. The air was warm and slightly fragrant. There was a great deal of gold decoration centering in a massive crucifix that hung in a long alcove, but carried out also in wide gold satin bookmarks, in the frames of two or three fine paintings.

Monsignor Lockhart was a handsome man, erect and dignified. His features were clear and he had fine, deep-set eyes of a clear hard blue.

“Sit down, William,” he said.

William sat down in a cushioned Gothic chair and began to consider his worries. There was nothing wrong in his daily life. He had no sins. He was entirely faithful to his wife and she to him. He knew that Emory, although she was a beautiful woman, was also fastidious, and he trusted her entirely and had never regretted his marriage. In her way she was his equal. There was no man in America above him in influence and few as rich. Had he been English he would of course have had a title. In that case he would have been poorer than he was, and Emory would not have enjoyed poverty. She had the finest jewels of any woman he knew. Emory in soft black chiffon, high at the neck and long sleeved, wearing her diamonds, was all he conceived of as beauty in woman. She had become a Catholic with him, and she liked wearing black chiffon and diamonds. With her dove-gray frocks she wore pearls.

No, his worries were entirely a matter of his responsibilities to the world, to the millions of people who looked at the pictures he alone chose and who read what he allowed to be printed. He wanted God’s guidance for this enormous responsibility, and for the stewardship, too, of his vast wealth. He did not want to give his money to any cause or organizations which would not submit to his direction. Unless he directed, he could not be sure of the right use of his support. He never gave money to a person.

He made known his wish to do right, never stronger than now, in view of the mounting war, and Monsignor listened thoughtfully, his hands folded. They were much alike, these two men, and they knew it. Toward human beings they were almost equally paternal. Priest and man, they had already what this world could give.

“I grieve for the peoples,” Monsignor Lockhart said. “In a war it is the innocent who suffer. The Church must assuage. You, William, must assuage. There will be much sorrow and death. You and I know how to find a comfort more profound, but the people are children and they must be comforted as children. God uses mysterious ways: Riches as well as poverty may serve Him. Continue as you have been doing, William. Do not try to take the people into high and difficult places, where they become afraid. Show them family life, show them love and kindness still alive, the ever protecting power of religion. The Church is eternal, surviving all wars, all catastrophes. Indeed, for us, God uses even wars and catastrophes. When men are afraid and distressed they come to the Church for shelter. So it will be again as it has always been.”

There was an atmosphere of calm reassurance in all the priest said and did. William, listening to that voice, so richly humane, so profoundly dominant, was aware of comfort stealing upon his own soul. It was good to be told that he must do only what he had been doing, good to remember that he was part of the vast historic body of the Church, which continuing through the ages, must continue as long as man lived upon this earth. The order, the structure, the cell-to-cell relationships of the Church comforted him. Outside all was disorder and upheaval but within the Church each had his place and knew it.

The two men were in strange communion. Around them was the deep rich silence of this house, devoted, in its beauty, to God. Although the morning was cold, in the vast velvety room the atmosphere was tempered with warmth and the proper degree of humidity for the leather-bound volumes. Between the two men the fire burned. Under the high-carved mantelpiece the flames quivered intense and blue above a bed of hard coal. Each man admired the other, each knew that his heart was set upon the same goal, each felt the keen thrusting of the other’s thought.

Between the two men was the still deeper bond of secret knowledge of each other. Though they spoke with reverence of the Church, each knew that the Church was a net as wide as the world, gathering into itself all men. It was the means of divine order, the opposite of man’s chaos.

William sat in long silence. With the priest he felt no need of constant speech. The huge room was restful to him.

“This room is beautiful,” he said at last. “I have often tried to analyze its effect upon me. I believe that order expresses the secret. Everything has its place and is in its place.”

“Order is the secret of the universe,” the priest replied. “Only within order can men function.”

An hour later William went away. The wisdom he craved, the guidance he sought, the confirmation of himself and his own will, the approval of what he wanted to do, all these he had found as he always did. He felt strong and dominating and sure of himself. The ancient foundations held. The Church was founded upon a Rock.

He entered his office shortly before noon and the current Miss Smith waited in electric nervousness for the buzz upon her desk that was his summons. When she entered his office he was already sitting behind his semicircular desk and she approached him, trying to smile. It would have been easier if her office had opened to the side of the desk so that she might sit down quickly with her pencil and pad. But there was only one door into the vast imposing room and whoever entered must make the long approach to the spare stern figure sitting behind the semicircle. She reached it at last and drew out her hidden stool and sat down.

“Take a memorandum,” William said. His voice was not in the least haughty and he would have been surprised to know that Miss Smith was afraid of him and often had a fit of crying after she left him.

“Memorandum to the editors,” William said. “Begin! ‘I have decided to support the British Empire. For the coming struggle, we must stand with England on the side of order in the world. Further details will follow within the next twenty-four hours.’ That’s all, Miss Smith. I do not wish to be interrupted until I call you.”

He spent the rest of the day alone and in profound thought, writing slowly upon large sheets of heavy white paper. When he had finished his meditation his blueprints were clear. He had mapped out his plans for the next two years. At the end of two years the war should be won or at least victory plain. He felt strong and clear in mind, his pulse was firm, his heart at peace. An impulse of thankfulness welled up in him, and he bowed his head in one of his brief but frequent prayers. He had learned from Monsignor to find in solitary prayer a solace and a release.

He had a flash of intuition now while his head was bent upon his folded hands and his eyes closed. Across the world Chiang Kai-shek also prayed. William had chosen only last week a feature about China’s strong man, and among the pictures was one of him at prayer. The Old Tiger, the Chinese called him, and it was a noble name. All strong men prayed. He could go to see the Old Tiger. A vague homesickness for China swept over his praying soul. Strong men ought to stand together. He would charter a plane, fly the Pacific, and visit China again in the person of that upstanding man.

Such thoughts mingled with his prayer without disturbing it, and when he had finished praying he touched the button of his telephone again. Miss Smith’s voice answered, irritatingly weak. She would not last long, he thought with momentary contempt.

“I want to speak to Mrs. Lane,” he commanded. A moment later the buzz told him that his wife waited.

“Emory? Have we anything on for tonight?”

“I half promised we’d go to that opening of the Picasso—”

“Cancel it! I feel that I need some relaxation in view of all that’s ahead of me. Let’s have dinner at the Waldorf — I’ll order a table — and then we’ll go to see something at the theater. What’s that new musical? Night in Peking?”

“I’d enjoy that. And I’ll get the tickets.”

Emory’s silvery voice was complacent and sweet. She was always ready to fall in with his wishes. When he had told her he wanted her to enter the Church with him, she had scarcely hesitated a moment.

“I’ve been thinking about it. I believe a solid religion will be good for you, William,” she had said.

“What do you mean by that?” he had demanded.

“Life isn’t enough for you,” she had replied with her strange thoughtfulness. She seemed to think a good deal without letting her thoughts oppress her, or him.

“It will be good for you, too, I think,” he had said.

“Why not?” she had replied, with one of her graceful smiles.

He was very effective that night. There was no fiasco whatever. He must have been successful at something or other at the office, Emory thought, one of his big plans, perhaps, which he would tell her about afterward. He was all of a piece, this man. Power flowed from him or, locked in him, wrecked his peace of mind and made him impotent. As always he made her his instrument and she did not rebel. Why, indeed, should she? He gave her all she wanted now in the world, which was luxury, which was beauty. Her wants were few but huge, and for beauty money was necessary, plenty of money, a mine of gold, the source inexhaustible. Only William possessed the golden touch nowadays. The old inherited capitalism was almost over, but he was the new capitalist. He had found the fresh source in the need of the people to be amused and to be led. And he led them — he led them into green pastures.

The staff perceived as soon as it congregated for the ferocity of the day’s work that there was to be no idleness. William reached the office early and even the least of them understood at once that it was going to be one of his good days. Whatever thought of weariness, whatever listlessness of the night before that any one of them had felt was gone in the instant. Today the utmost would be demanded of them mingled with excitement and some terror. It was doubtful that they would all be at their jobs by night. On William’s good days inevitably someone was fired. The weaker members decided not to go out to lunch. William himself never ate lunch.

“Miss Smith,” William said, “give me all the recent dispatches from China. I want to study them.”

This news from behind the circular desk was telegraphed through the offices and gusts of relief followed. Focus upon China meant focus upon Lemuel Barnard, who had just returned to make his report of the Chinese situation.

The first assistant editor thoughtfully started his search for Lem who at this time of the morning might still be anywhere but certainly not at his desk. Telephone messages began urgently though cautiously to permeate the city. The receptionist in the main entrance, Louise Henry, a pretty auburn-haired girl from Tennessee, stayed by the telephone as much as she dared. She had left Lem somewhere between midnight and dawn at a night club. Shortly before noon, she found him where no one expected him, in bed at his hotel room and asleep. Louise waked him.

“Lem, get over here quick. He’s been studying your dispatches all morning!”

“Oh hell,” Lem groaned and rolled out of bed.

At one o’clock William was delayed. Miss Smith brought in an envelope which she recognized as coming from her employer’s divorced wife and which therefore she was not to open. She took it in at once to William, though fearful as she did so, for he had left orders that he was not to be disturbed. By then Lem was waiting out in the hall with Louise.

“I don’t want to interrupt,” Miss Smith began.

“Well, you have interrupted,” William said.

“This—” Miss Smith faltered. She put the letter on the desk and went out.

William saw at once that it was from Candace. He did not immediately put down the map he was studying. Instead he discovered what he had been looking for, an old camel route from Peking into Sinkiang, and then he put down the map and took up the envelope. So far as he had any contact with Candace she had not changed. The heavy cream paper she always had used when he knew her as his wife, she continued to use. The fine gold lettering of the address simply carried the name Candace Lane instead of Mrs. William Lane. When he slit the envelope and took out the single sheet it contained, she began the letter as she usually did.

Dear William,

I have not written you for a good many months because until now there has been nothing to write. You hear from the boys regularly, I hope, and I live here in the same idle way. Today though there is something to write. I am going to be married again. I suppose this would not interest you, except I think I ought to tell you that I am going to marry Seth James. He was in love with me long ago when I was just a girl, before you and I were engaged. We began being friends again after Father died, and now it seems natural to go on into marriage. I expect to be happy. We shall keep on living here. Seth has always liked this house. But we’ll have his town house, too. As you probably know, his paper failed, and he lost so much money that he has only enough to live on now and not enough to venture into anything else except maybe another play. But he says he will enjoy just living here with me. We will be married on Christmas Eve. Will and Jerry approve, by the way. It’s sweet of them.

Good-by, William

CANDACE

The letter was so like her that for a moment William felt an amazing twinge of the heart. Candace was a good woman, childish but good. He had an envious reverence for sheer goodness, the quality his father had possessed in purity, and which he sometimes longed to know that he had. This longing he hid in the secret darkness of his own heart, among those shadows of his being which no one had ever penetrated, even Emory, for whom he felt something more near to admiration than he had ever felt toward any human person. She met him well at every point of his being. Her mind was quicker than his own and he suspected, without ever saying so, that it was more profound. She filled his house with music. Yet, though quite independent of him, she never talked too much, she never led in any conversation when he was present, she deferred to him not with malice as so many women did to men, not with the ostentation which made a mockery of deference. He believed that she admired him, too, and this gave him confidence in himself and in her, although her admiration was not flat and without criticism as Candace’s had been. Yet even Emory did not have the pure goodness of which he had been conscious in his father and now perceived unwillingly in Candace.

His eye fell on the letter again. Christmas Eve? He was leaving for China the day after Christmas. This made him remember Lem Barnard. He buzzed long and steadily until Miss Smith came to the door, her pale eyes popped in the way he intensely disliked.

“Tell Barnard to come here,” he commanded. “I suppose he’s about the office?”

“Oh yes, sir, he’s been here for hours—” She liked Lem, as everybody did.

William did not answer this. He frowned unconsciously and drummed his fingers upon the table. Within fifty seconds Lem Barnard shambled in, a huge lumbering fellow, overweight, and wearing as usual a dirty tweed suit. A button was gone from the coat and he needed a haircut.

“Sit down, Lem,” William said. He opened a folder on the desk before him. “I have been reading over your recent dispatches. China is going to be very important to us now. We have to have a policy, well defined and clear to everybody. There must be no confusion between editors and reporters. You are to find the sort of news that fits our policy.”

The veins on Lem’s temples swelled slightly but William did not look at him. He went on, ruffling the edges of the typed pages as he did so.

“These reports you’ve sent for the last three months have been very troublesome. I’ve had to go over everything myself. There has been little I could use. This is not the time, let me tell you, to bring back gossip and rumors about the Chiangs — either husband or wife.”

Lem exploded, “I’ve only told you what Chinese people themselves are saying.”

“I don’t care what Chinese people are saying,” William retorted. “I never care what any people say. I am interested in telling them what to say.”

He tapped the sheets with the tips of his ringers. “If I were interested in what people say my papers would soon degenerate to gossip sheets. Do you know why they succeed? Because they tell people what to think! You’re clever, Lem, but you aren’t clever enough. People don’t care to read what they already think or what any people think — they know all that well enough. They want to know what they ought to think. It is a spiritual desire, deep in the heart of mankind.”

He stopped and surveyed Lem, sitting huge and gross upon a straight-backed wooden chair. Lem overflowed the narrow seat and it was obvious from his clouded eyes and purplish cheeks that he ate and drank too much wherever he was. He was a disgusting sight.

“Man is a spiritual being,” William said sternly. His enunciation was incisively clear. “Man seeks truth, he wants divine guidance, he craves security of soul. In all your dispatches remember that, if you please.”

Lem swallowed once again his desire to fire himself, to bawl at William, to cry and howl. He could not afford it. His wife was in an expensive insane asylum. He bit his tongue for an instant and tasted the salt of his own blood. “Just what impression do you want me to give?” he then inquired in a sultry, gentle voice.

“Our people will now want to believe in the Chinese,” William said. “They will want to trust the Chinese leadership.”

Lem closed his bloodshot eyes. Against the lids he always saw Chinese faces, the starving, the homeless. War had been going on in China already for five years but nobody here had taken it seriously. Even the Chief here couldn’t seem to believe it. Then he thought of his poor wife again, steadily and for a whole minute. Whenever he got angry with William he thought about her. He had been happy with her for two years and she had gone everywhere with him in China. He had met her there in Shanghai, a beautiful White Russian girl, and he had suspected there were things she had never told him and never could tell him. But she had been a wonderful wife and had spoiled him for anybody else.

One morning when he had wakened in the old Cathay Hotel, Lem had found her bending over him with his old-fashioned razor, and he had known that she was about to kill him. He had one instant of horror and then he saw that of course she was mad. She had never been sane since. He had brought her to America himself, sleeping neither by night or day. She tried to kill anybody who was with her and he could leave her with no one. He put her into an asylum near San Francisco. She never knew him when he went to see her. She always called him something else, names of men he had never heard of. But the bills were terrible every month and if he couldn’t pay they would throw her out. It was not every place that would take such a violent case, they told him.

He had to stop seeing the Chinese when he shut his eyes. He had to see just Anastasie. He opened his eyes and said to William in the gentle and sultry voice, “Chief, I wish you’d go to China yourself. I wish you’d just go and see. You haven’t been there for a long time. You ought to go and see what it’s like now. Then you’d know—”

“I have already decided to go,” William replied. “I am going to see the Old Tiger.”

Chungking was a city set upon a hill. The sluggish yellow waters of the river wound around it and the tile-colored flights of steps led upward. There was nothing about it that was like Peking. Everything was at once familiar and strange. There were no palaces, no shining roofs, no dignity of marble archways and wide streets. The streets were crowded between gray-brick houses and fog-dampened walls. The cobblestones were slippery with water and slimy with filth. The people were grim-faced with continuing war and constant bombing. They did not look like the tall handsome people of the north. William was alarmed and dismayed when he thought of these people as the allies of America. What had they to give as allies? They were a danger and a liability. Yet Chiang must be held, he must be compelled, he must be supported.

The American car driven by a uniformed Chinese carried him at once to the Old Tiger’s house outside the city. It was reassuring to enter something that did not look like a hovel. The air was chill and damp, as everything was, but from the hall he was led into a square room where a fire blazed.

“Please sit down,” the manservant said in Chinese.

The words smote William’s ear with strange accustom. He had not spoken a single Chinese word for years, but the language lay in his memory. He felt syllables rise to his tongue. Perhaps he would be able to speak with Chiang in his own language. The Old Tiger spoke no English. No one knew how much he understood — probably more than he was willing for anyone to know.

The door opened and he looked up. It was not the Tiger who stood there, but a woman, slender and beautiful, her great eyes filled with ready pathos, her exquisite mouth sad. She put out both her hands.

“Mr. Lane. You are America, coming to our aid at last!”

He felt her soft feverish palms against his and was speechless. He did not know what to do with a lovely Chinese woman, one who looked so young, who spoke English naturally. He had never seen this sort of Chinese woman. The ones in Peking had bound feet, unless they were Manchu, but Chinese and Manchu alike they had been alien to him, except the old amah who had been only a servant — and except the Empress.

This beautiful woman with imperial grace sat down and bade him by a gesture to be seated.

“My husband is delayed but only for a moment. We have had bad news from the front. Of course, now everything will be righted, since America is joining us. I grieve for the sad event of Pearl Harbor, but, really, I do believe it was necessary to awaken the American people to our world danger. I do not think only of China — I think of the world. We must all think of the world.”

The door opened again and she broke off. A slender Chinese man in a long robe came in. It was the Old Tiger. Impossible indeed for anyone else to have those bold black eyes, that stubborn mouth! But he looked fragile. Was this the man who for fifteen years had conquered warlords and killed Communists? The Tiger put out his hand and withdrew it quickly as though he hated the touch of another’s hand, and the act revealed him an old-fashioned Chinese, unwillingly yielding to a foreign custom. With an abrupt gesture he motioned to William to sit down again and himself took a chair far from the fire.

“Does this American speak Chinese?” he inquired of his wife.

“How can he?” she replied.

“I must confess that I understand a little, at least,” William said. “My childhood was spent in Peking.”

The Old Tiger nodded vigorously. “Good — good!” His voice was high and thin. When he spoke to his soldiers he was forced to shriek.

William contemplated his ally, this bony bald-headed man who was the master of millions of Chinese. Tiger was a good name for him. In repose he looked like a monster cat, soft and safe, except for the eyes where ferocious temper smoldered. He was old China, he hated the new, he was rooted in the past. Enough of his own childhood knowledge remained with William so that he knew exactly where the Tiger belonged. Had there been no revolution among the Chinese people he would have ascended the Dragon Throne and become a strong successor to the Old Buddha. He would have made a spectacular figure there, wrapped in gold-embroidered imperial robes, the Son of Heaven. And the Chinese people, William thought, would have been better off. What were they now but a scattered head? People needed to worship and when they were given no god, they made themselves a golden calf. There was tragedy in this man, deprived of his throne because of the age in which he had been born. A strange respectful tenderness crept into William’s mood. He leaned toward the Old Tiger.

“I have come here to know how we can help you. There are two ways in which I myself can be of some use. I can influence millions of people. I can tell them — whatever you want me to tell them. I can also report to my government.”

He spoke in English and the beautiful woman translated rapidly into a Chinese so simple that he could understand it. The Old Tiger nodded his head and repeated the short word signifying good, “Hao — hao—” It was almost a purr. Not the soft purr of a cat, but the stiff, throaty rasp of a wild beast.

The beautiful woman seemingly effaced herself between the two men. She became an instrument, mild, almost shy. William all but forgot her as he pressed his arguments with the Tiger. But she was neither mild nor shy. A supreme actress by natural gift, she took his English words and remolded them into her fluent Chinese, stressing this word, muting that. When she perceived that he understood something of what she was saying, she varied her dialect slightly, slipping into a sort of Fukienese, excusing herself with adroitness.

“My husband comes from Fukien, and he understands that language better than Mandarin. It is essential that he grasp your every word.”

William could make nothing thereafter of what she said. He did not want to believe that she added meanings of her own. There was no reason why she should. He was ready for the utmost gift.

One hour, two hours went by. Suddenly the Tiger stood up.

“Hao!” he cried in his thin sharp voice. “It is all good. We will do these things. I will command my men. I shall not rest until the yellow devils are driven into the sea.”

He folded his hands, this time without pretense of foreign custom, nodded twice to William, and went out of the room, his step silent and swift.

William was left with the beautiful woman. She put one soft pale hand upon his sleeve. “Dear Mr. Lane, your coming is an answer to prayer. I believe that. I believe so much in prayer, don’t you? Every morning my husband and I pray together.”

Tears came to her eyes and she took a little lace handkerchief from her sleeve and wiped them away. “You know China.” Her voice was a whisper now, broken with her tears. “I can speak to you. You see my husband. He is so strong, so good, he is really good. He wants to save our people not only from the present enemy but from those who are far worse. You understand me, Mr. Lane. I am sure you do. But my husband must be helped. He has not had the advantage of education. He has many impulses. I try to control them through praying with him, Mr. Lane. What I cannot do, God will do.”

William listened with rising sympathy.

“You have a very responsible work to do,” he said. “Perhaps you are in the key position of the whole world.”

His voice was grave and he meant it to be so, and she looked at him sorrowfully. Her big black eyes were shining and the tears were gone. Her hands were outstretched to him again.

“You must help me, promise me you will help me!”

He took her hands in his own. “I promise.”

A week later, after incessant flying, from the dried sands of the northwest to the green provinces of the south, hours broken only by descents into cities where he sat out long feasts given in his honor, he went southward and then across the mountains and seas homeward. Wherever he went the beautiful woman had gone with him, and with them was always a third, a general usually, whom they picked up from the region and who could give them the latest news of the war. She translated for William as she had for the Tiger, giving him a continuing drama of a brave poverty-stricken people, patriots who wanted only guns in their hands, a few tanks and planes, to become invincible.

“Like your own Washington,” she urged. “Like Jefferson, like Lincoln!”

He might have distrusted her eagerness, but she was always ahead of his mood. She knew when to let tears fill her eyes, but she knew also when to make her eyes hard and her voice firm. She knew when to show anger at a subordinate, when to be a queen and when to be a woman. Watching her he felt a new regret that the Phoenix Throne, too, had been destroyed. She would have made an empress fit to sit beside the Tiger on the Dragon Throne. People feared her, that he perceived, and he admired her for it. There must always be some whom the people fear.

At the end of the week he left convinced that because of her it was safe to uphold the Old Tiger. Without her there might be treachery; with her there was no danger. When they parted at the final airport she used her tears again.

“Dear America,” she breathed. “Give her my love. Give everybody my love! Tell them I spend my life to teach my people the lessons that I was taught over there!”

He reached Washington exactly on schedule and made his report, and took the next plane home. It was snowing softly when he got out of the plane. The chauffeur was there to meet him. When he stepped into the car he found Emory, looking very pretty in a silver-gray frock and hat.

“This is good of you, Emory,” he exclaimed.

“Not good of me. I’ve missed you terribly.”

He crushed her shoulders in his arm and kissed her. She smelled of a delicate perfume, clean and warm, and he was grateful for all that was his, his wife, his home, his business, his country.

“I’m glad to be back. China is hell now.”

“Is it, William? Then do you feel your trip was wasted?”

“No, far from it. I made them feel that America is behind them. I made them promises that I must see fulfilled. My work is cut out for me, Emory, I can tell you. I’ve got to shape public opinion to support those two people who are all that stand between us and defeat in Asia.”

“Don’t tell me now, William. You look fearfully tired.”

“I hope we haven’t any guests tonight.”

“No, of course not. Just you and me.”

He sighed and relaxed as much as he could. Everything had a new meaning for him. He felt as he never had before the value of being an American. The big car gliding over the great highways, the smokestacks of the factories, the lifted outlines of the city beyond, this could only be America. If China was hell, this was heaven, and it was his own. Nothing must be allowed to destroy it or bring it down to dust, now or ever. Holding Emory’s hand in his, he dedicated himself afresh and with all his heart to his own country.

Upon reflection, even after a night’s sleep, William felt that his mission to China had been a successful one. He had performed it in the quiet private way he liked to do large things, simply flying across the world alone in a plane for which he had paid a fabulous sum. The money was spent as he liked to spend money, by himself alone, for an end chosen by him but which would affect the world. The world knew nothing of it and would never acknowledge its debt to him, perhaps, while he lived. But some day, when historians were able to penetrate the shades of the past, they would see that through him, perhaps above all men, the war which might have been lost was won. Let others pour their energies upon the small tormented countries of Europe. He would save China, and by saving that vast territory the enemy would be foiled. He commanded Emory to invite no guests, accept no invitations. For two weeks he must stay at the office, coming home only to sleep. During that time he would give directives to his entire staff. Those who could not obey with efficiency he would discharge at once. His whole organization must concentrate now upon his directives. Techniques must be worked out for the papers, compelling simplicity, subtle argument, plausible presentation, every visual aid, every mental persuasion.

At the end of the first day he fired four persons, among them Miss Smith and Lem Barnard. Miss Smith was nobody. He ordered the office manager to have another ready for his dictation tomorrow morning. But Lem was difficult to replace. The Chinese would not tell a foreigner things unless he had charm, although charm was something William did not care for in his own office. It was then that he thought of Jeremy. Jeremy might do very well with the beautiful woman, even with the Old Tiger, if he were accompanied by someone to buy his tickets and take care of his baggage and see that he got his stuff on time. Besides, it would move Jeremy out of the office. When he did not show up it was a bad example. Acting instantly, with that abrupt complete co-ordination which was the source of his extraordinary energy, he pressed a buzzer.

It was near the end of the day and there was a slight delay, which made the blood swell into his high forehead. The delay, it seemed, when he demanded to know the reason, was because Miss Smith had not waited for his going home as she should have done. She had gone for her check at once and had actually left half an hour ago. He was tempted to fire the office manager but was too impatient to stop for it. In a few minutes he heard Ruth’s sweet, somewhat childish voice. It sounded unusually faint.

“Ruth — that you?”

“Oh, William.” Her voice was stronger. “How wonderful to hear you!”

“Jeremy there?”

“No — he isn’t — yet, William.”

“Where is he? He wasn’t in the office.”

“William, he isn’t — he’s not quite well. I think he’ll be back in a day or so.” She had begged Emory not to tell but maybe she had been wrong. Maybe William had to know.

“I have a job for him if he can get here by tomorrow. How do you think he’d like to go to China for me, as my personal representative?”

To his astonishment William heard his sister sob. He was fond of Ruth without having any respect for her, because she depended on him. Something was wrong with her marriage, of course, but he had never cared to go into it. Personal things took too much time and every hour counted in these terrible days. Now he had to inquire.

“What’s wrong?”

“Oh William, I’m afraid you have to know. I didn’t want to bother you. Jeremy is in a sanitarium.”

“What sort? Is he sick?”

“Oh, William, no! Well, yes, I suppose it is a sickness. He was drinking too much and after you left he — Oh dear, he just went to pieces!”

“Nobody told me.”

“I didn’t want them to. I kept hoping he’d …”

He thought quickly while her voice babbled into his unheeding ear. This would give him the excuse to end everything with Jeremy. He would treat it as an illness.

“Ruth, I wish you would stop crying. I want you to know that I feel very sorry and I want to help you. I am going to give Jeremy unlimited leave of absence. He doesn’t need to feel that he has to come back at all. But I want you to be independent. He wouldn’t take a pension from me, of course, but I am going to set up a trust for you and the girls. Then whatever happens to him you’ll be safe.”

“Oh, William, darling—” her voice, still half sobbing, was breathless. “I wouldn’t think of—”

“Be sure he stays there long enough to get in good shape and let me know when he comes home. We’ll get together. Good-by. I’m frightfully busy—”

He thought for a moment and decided to send Barney Chester to China. He was a smart young Harvard man, only a few years out of college. Barney would listen to him.

He rose, refusing to acknowledge weariness, and went down the elevator to his waiting car. It was nearly ten o’clock and snow was falling. Sitting in the darkness of his car, staring steadfastly ahead, he saw the snow fly at him in little daggers of silver against the windshield. Around him were the darkness and the cold, the people still plodding along the wet streets, their heads held down against the wind. But he sat in warmth and safety, secure in himself and his possessions. All that he was he had made himself and all that he possessed he had earned. He had come from China, obscure and unknown, a shy and gawky youth, and what he was he had achieved without help. Yet America had given him opportunity. In England his birth alone would have condemned him. Even a title could not have hidden it. He smiled against the darting silver daggers which could not reach him. Here people had forgotten where he was born and who his father was. Where could that happen but in America? …

In the morning he woke inexplicably depressed again. There was no reason for it, except, he decided, that his conscience was stirring because he had not told Monsignor Lockhart about China. He had not even called him on the telephone, afraid that he would be tempted by the priest’s quiet voice to yield time he could not spare. It was not as if he needed counsel. He had already determined what he must do. Now, however, there was no reason why he should not allow himself the luxury of some hours of spiritual communion.

This musing took place long before his usual hour for rising, but he felt wakeful and he took the receiver from the telephone at his bedside and called for Monsignor Lockhart.

The priest’s voice came as usual, “I am here, William.”

“I have wanted to see you ever since I returned, Monsignor, but you understand.”

“Always.”

“I count on that. But this morning?”

“Whenever you wish. I am already in my study.”

He had planned to go back to sleep. It was still dark. Yet it might be interesting and even stimulating to get up and make his own way by foot to that huge gold-lit room. Their minds would be clear and quick.

In twenty minutes he was walking over fresh snow on the streets. He had never been out at this hour and the city seemed strange to him. The people he was accustomed to see were still in their beds. But the streets were not entirely empty, especially the side street he took from one avenue to the next. Two or three people were there, slouching along, one a woman who passed him and then stopped when an old man whose face he could just see in the approaching dawn held out a filthy hand without speaking. William went on. He made it a habit never to see an outstretched hand. His generous check went annually to the Community Chest.

“A cup o’cawfee fer Gawd’s sake,” the old man muttered.

William went on and the dirty hand brushed his arm and fell.

“Damned capitalist!” the woman shouted at his back. “Wants us to starve!”

A policeman suddenly rounded the corner.

“Did I hear somethin’, sir?” he inquired.

William considered for a moment whether he should nod in the direction of the woman and then decided that he would ignore her.

“Nothing, except that old man asking for a drink.”

“They will do it,” the policeman said apologetically.

William gave the slightest inclination of his head and went on. Five minutes later he was inside the priest’s warm and handsome home.

“You look hopeful,” Monsignor Lockhart said.

“I do not feel hopeful at all,” William retorted.

He finished a good English breakfast, while he talked, kidneys and bacon and buttered toast with marmalade. The coffee was American and delicious. A man came in and took the silver tray away, and closed the door softly.

“Yet I feel hopefulness in you,” Monsignor repeated.

“I am hopeful to the extent of thinking that it is possible to hold China. It is my belief that we should allow England to take the lead in Europe but we must take the lead in Asia, now and after the war. Since only China is a free country, it is there we must concentrate our power.”

“Very sound,” Monsignor said. “I take it you do not mean permanent power.”

“Certainly not permanent in the sense of eternal,” William agreed. “I hope a complete American victory will have been won somewhere this side of eternity.”

Monsignor’s face was benign, although he wore this morning a lean weary beauty which showed hours of thought and perhaps prayer. William allowed himself a moment’s wonder at this man who attracted him so much.

“You are tired,” he said abruptly.

The priest looked startled and then his face closed. “If I am tired I am unworthy of my faith. It is true that the Church has great and new problems. In Europe our priests are facing oppression which we have never known, never in our agelong history. The gravest reports come to me from Austria. We have reached the age of anti-Christ. There is a demon in the people.”

“Then it is no private ill that I see in your face?” William said.

Monsignor Lockhart’s fine brows drew down. “What private ill is it possible for me to have?” he retorted. “The affliction of the Church is my affliction. I have no other.”

William gazed at him, forgetful for the moment of their friendship. Monsignor seemed suddenly remote and cold. He was reminded of the temples of his childhood, where the gods sat aloof. No, it was not a god of whom he thought. It was the palace and the Old Buddha again, looking down upon him, a foreign child.

Monsignor dropped his lids. “We understand each other. Let us proceed from day to day, watchful of each hour’s history.”

He rose for the first time without waiting for William to signify that he was ready to go, and he put out his hand in the gesture of blessing. A deeper gravity came over his stern face. “Many are called but few are chosen,” he said simply, and making the sign of the cross upon his own breast he left the room.

Throughout the day William carried with him the vague alarm of the priest’s words, holding it upon the fringes of his mind.

He buzzed sharply for the new Miss Smith and did not look up when she came in.

“Dictation,” he said.

He dictated steadily for an hour, letters, finally a long directive for Barney Chester. Then he dismissed Miss Smith and buzzed for his news editor.

“That you, Barney? Come to my office. I’m sending you to China immediately as my personal representative.”

He spent the next two hours outlining to a silent and rather terrified young man exactly what he expected him to do in China.

“In short,” he concluded at the end of the two hours, “I shall expect from you the most detailed reports of what American diplomacy is doing, in order that I may be kept informed here at home. At the same time I expect you to maintain confidential relationship with the Old Tiger and with — her.”

“Yes, sir,” Barney Chester said. He was a pale dark young man, very slender and smart. William liked all his young men to look smart. Actually Barney had a somewhat soft heart which he daily denied. Certainly before the stern, gray-faced man behind the circular desk he would have been alarmed to allow the slightest hint of a heart to escape him. This was the best paying job a man of his age could have anywhere in the country, anywhere in the world, probably. Lane paid his men well and worked them hard. He wished that his wife Peggy were not expecting their second baby. He had counted on asking for his delayed vacation when the time came so that he could take care of Barney Junior. There was no one to look after him, except a servant. It did not occur to him to mention such humble difficulties to William, who was still giving orders.

“Be ready to leave day after tomorrow. I’ll see that you get priority on the plane.”

“Yes, sir,” Barney said.