She was, it came out, a notorious woman of Soo-chow Road, Shanghai; one of the so-called “American girls” that have brought a good name to local disgrace. The new American judge, at that time engaged in driving out the disreputable women and the gamblers from the quasi protection of the consular courts, had issued a warrant for her arrest, whereupon young Beggins, who had been numbered among her “friends,” had undertaken to protect her, out here in the interior, until the little wave of reform should have passed.
Despite her vulgarity, and despite the chill of spiritual death in his heart, he wished to be kind to her. Something of the long-frustrated emotional quality of the man overflowed toward her. He did what he could; laid her case before the magistrate, and left enough money to buy her a ticket to Peking from the northern railroad near Kalgan. This in the morning.
One other thing he did in the morning was to write to Hidderleigh, at Shanghai, telling enough of the truth about his fall, and asking that his successor be sent out at the earliest moment possible. And he sent off the letter, early, at the Chinese post-office. At least he needn't play the hypocrite. The worst imaginable disaster had come upon him. His real life, it seemed, was over As for telling the truth at the mission, his mind would shape a course. The easiest thing would be to tell Boatwright, straight. Though in any case it would come around to them from Shanghai. He had sealed his fate when he posted the letter. They would surely know, all of them. Henry Withery would know. It would reach the congregations back there in the States. At the consulates and up and down the coast—where men drank and gambled and carved fortunes out of great inert China and loved as they liked—they would be laughing at him within a fortnight.
And then he thought of Betty.
That night, on the march back to T'ainan, he stood, a solitary figure on the Pass of the Flighting Geese, looking up, arms outstretched, toward the mountain that for thousands of years has been to the sons of Han a sacred eminence; and the old prayer, handed down from another Oriental race as uttered by a greater sinner than he, burst from his lips:
“I will lift mine eyes to the hills, from whence cometh my help!”
But no help came to Griggsby Duane that night. With tears lying warm on his cheeks he strode down the long slope toward Tainan.