Dinner was over. One by one the younger people left the room. And within a few moments the afternoon routine of the mission compound was under way.
Through the open window came a beam of warm spring sunshine. Outside, across the wide courtyard Withery noted the, to him, familiar picture of two or three blue-clad Chinese men lounging on the steps of the gate house; students crossing, books in hand; young girls round and fresh of face, their slanting eyes demurely downcast, assembling before one of the buildings; two carpenters working deliberately on a scaffold. A soft-footed servant cleared the table. Now that the two friends were left free to chat of personal matters, the talk wandered into unexpectedly impersonal regions. Withery found himself baffled, and something puzzled. During each of their recent visits Griggsby's manner had affected him in this same way, but less definitely. The aloofness—he had once or twice ever, thought of it as an evasiveness—had been only a tendency. The old friendship had soon warmed through it and brought ease of spirit and tongue. But the tendency had grown. The present Griggsby was clearly going to prove harder to get at. That remoteness of manner had grown on him as a habit. The real man, whatever he was coming to be, was hidden now; the man whose very soul had once been written clear in the steady blue eyes.
And what a man he was! Mr. Withery indulged in a moment of sentiment as he quietly, shrewdly studied him, across the table.
In physical size, as in mental attainments and emotional force, James Griggsby Duane had been, from the beginning, a marked man. He was forty-five now; or within a year of it. The thick brown hair of their student days was thinner-now at the sides and nearly gone on top. But the big head was set on the solid shoulders with all the old distinction. A notable fact about Griggsby Doane was that after winning intercollegiate standing as a college football player, he had never allowed his body to settle back with the years. He weighed now, surely, within a pound or two or three of his playing weight twenty-four years earlier. He had always been what the British term a clean feeder, eating sparingly of simple food. Hardly a day of his life but had at least its hour or two of violent exercise. He would rise at five in the morning and run a few miles before breakfast. He played tennis and handball. He would gladly have boxed and wrestled, but a giant with nearly six and a half feet of trained, conditioned muscle at his disposal finds few to meet him, toe to toe. His passion for walking had really, during the earlier years, raised minor difficulties about T'ainan. The Chinese were intelligent and, of course, courteous; but it was more than they could be asked to understand at first.
It had worked out, gradually. They knew him now; knew he was fearless, industrious, patient, kind. During the later years, after the Boxer trouble, his immense figure, striding like him of the fabled seven-league-boots, had become a familiar, friendly figure in central Hansi. Not infrequently he would tramp, pack on shoulders, from one to another of the outlying mission stations; and thought nothing of covering a hundred and thirty or forty li where your cart or litter mules or your Manchu pony would stop at ninety and call it a day.
Withery was bringing the talk around to the personal when Doane looked at his watch.
“You'll excuse me, Henry,” he said. “I've a couple of classes. But I'll knock off about four-thirty. Make yourself comfortable. Prowl about. Use my study, if you like.... Or wait. We were speaking of the Ho Shan Company. They've had two or three mass meetings here during the winter, and got up some statements.”
“Do they suggest violence?”
“Oh, yes.” Doane waved the thought carelessly aside. “But Pao will keep them in hand, I think. He doesn't want real trouble. But he wouldn't mind scaring the company into selling out. The gossip is that he is rather heavily interested himself in some of the native mines.”
“Is Pao your governor?”