“Why go away?” said he. “Your courtyard adjoins mine. If there is trouble we put up a ladder and you come over to us.”
And there was hint of trouble then. As we sat at supper there came in the Chinese postman in his shabby uniform of dirty blue and white, with his large military cap pushed on the back of his head, and he brought to the Falls a letter from Dr Edwards, the missionary doctor all foreign T'ai Yuan Fu thought I ought to meet.
When I was within reach of the Peking foreign daily papers they mentioned Pai Lang as one might mention a burglar in London, sandwiching him in between the last racing fixtures or the latest Cinema attraction, but from a little walled town within a day's march of Hsi An Fu the veteran missionary wrote very differently, and we in this other little walled town read breathlessly.
White Wolf had surrounded Hsi An Fu, he said; it was impossible to get there and he was returning.
The darkness had fallen, the lamp in the middle of the table threw a light on the letter and on the faces of the middle-aged missionary and his wife who pored over it. It might mean so much to them. It undoubtedly meant much to their friends in Hsi An Fu, and it meant much to me, the outsider who had but an hour ago walked into their lives. For I began to fear lest this robber might affect me after all, lest in coming north I was not going to outflank him. According to Dr Edwards, he had already taken a little walled city a hundred li—about a day's journey—north-west of Hsi An Fu, and when 'White Wolf took a town it meant murder and rapine. And sitting there in the old Chinese room these two people who knew China told me in no measured terms what might happen to a woman travelling alone in disturbed country.
Missionaries, they said, never left their stations when the country was disturbed, they were safer at home, surrounded by their friends. Once the country is raided by a robber band—and remember this is no uncommon thing in China—all the bad characters in the country come to the fore, and robber bands that have nothing to do with the original one spring into existence, the cities shut their gates to all strangers, and passports are so much waste paper. Between ourselves, I have a feeling they always are in China. I could hardly tell the difference between mine and my agreement with my muleteers, and I have an uneasy feeling that occasionally the agreement was presented when it should have been the passport.
Now no one could be certain whether Pai Lang intended to take Lan Chou Fu, but it looked as if that were his objective. If he took the city it would not be much good my getting there, because the bankers would certainly not be able to supply me with money; even if he only raided the country round, it would be so disturbed that my muleteers would be bound to take alarm. If they left me, and they certainly would leave me if they thought there was a chance of their mules being taken, I should be done. It would spell finish not only to the expedition but to my life. A foreigner, especially a woman without money and without friends, would be helpless in China. Why should the people help her? It takes them all they know to keep their own heads above water. And Kansu was always turbulent; it only wanted a match to set the fire alight. Air and Mrs Falls—bless them for their kindness and interest!—thought I should be mad to venture.
