“You vill, zen, allow me to give you zis.”
But Brachey declined the weapon stiffly, said good night, and returned to the inn below.
The next morning a Chinese servant brought a note from M Pourmont. If he would go—thus that gentleman—and if he would not so much as carry arms for protection, at least he must be sure to get into touch with M. Griggsby Duane at once on arriving at T'ianan. M. Doane was a man of strength and address. He would be the only support that M. Brachey could look for in that turbulent corner of the world.
3
The lamp threw a flickering unearthly light, faintly yellow, on the tattered wall-hangings that bore the Chinese characters signifying happiness and hospitality and other genial virtues. The lamp was of early Biblical pattern, nor unlike a gravy boat of iron, full of oil or grease, in which the wick floated. It stood on the roughly-made table.
The inn compound was still, save for the stirring and the steady crunching of the horses and mules at their long manger across the courtyard.
Brachey, half undressed, sat on his cot, staring at the shadowy brick wall. His face was haggard. There were hollows under the eyes. His hands lay, listless, on his knees. The fire that had been for a fortnight consuming him was now, for the moment, burnt out.
But at least, he now felt, the particular storm was over. That there might be recurrences, he recognized. That girl had found her way, through all the crust, to his heart. The result had been nearly unbearable while it lasted. It had upset his reason; made a fool of him. Here he was—now—less than a day's journey from her. He couldn't go back; the thought stirred savagely what he thought of as the shreds of his self-respect. And yet to go on was, or seemed, unthinkable. The best solution seemed to be merely to make use of T'ainan as a stopping place for the night and pass on to some other inland city. But this thought carried with it the unnerving fear that he would fail to pass on, that he might even communicate with her.
His life, apparently, was a lie. He had believed since his boyhood that human companionship lay apart from the line of his development. Even his one or two boy friends he had driven off. The fact embittered his earlier life; but it was so. In each instance he had said harsh things that the other could not or would not overlook. His marriage had contributed further proof. Along with his pitilessly detached judgment of the woman went the sharp consciousness that he, too, had failed at it. He couldn't adapt his life to the lives of others. Since that experience—these four years—by living alone, keeping away, keeping clear out of his own land, even out of touch with the white race, and making something of a success of it, he had not only proved himself finally, he had even, in a measure, justified himself. Yet now, a chance meeting with a nineteen-year-old girl had, at a breath, destroyed the laborious structure of his life. It all came down to the fact that emotion had at last caught him as surely as it had caught the millions of other men—men he had despised. He couldn't live now without feeling again that magic touch of warmth in his breast. He couldn't go on alone.
He bowed his head over it. Round and round went his thoughts, cutting deeper and deeper into the tempered metal of his mind.