In Red and Gold

by Samuel Merwin

There were broad courtyards, then, and buildings with heavily curving roofs and columns richly colored and carved, with dim lights behind windows of paper squares. There were drunken soldiers, who ran away, and screaming women, and other women who would never scream or smile again. There was litter and splintered furniture and a broken-in door here and there. There was a familiar big soldier who plunged at Mr. Doane with a glinting blade in his hand; and then a sharp struggle that was to last, in retrospect, but an instant of time, for the clearer memory was of himself binding with his handkerchief a small cut in Mr. Doane's forearm while the soldiers carried out a wounded struggling giant, and then shouts and shots from the courtyard when the giant escaped. And he would remember picking up an unset ruby from the tiling and handing it to Mr. Doane. There was the picture, then, of a melancholy procession winding slowly through the grove with bobbing gay lanterns.

And finally, to the boy incredibly, the place came into a degree of order and calm. Women and men disappeared into this building and that. Rocky sat alone on the steps of a structure that might have been a temple, hands supporting his throbbing head. The moonlight streamed down into the courtyard; he could see the grotesque ornaments on the eaves of the buildings, and the large blue-and-white bowls and vases in which grew flowering plants and dwarfed trees from Japan, and, in the farther gate, a sentry lounging. Now and again faint sounds came from within the largest of the buildings, voices and footsteps; and he could see lights again dimly through the paper. He wondered what they might be doing.... His thoughts were a fever. The spirit of Hui Fei hovered like an exquisite dream there, but crowding in with malignant persistence came, kept coming, pictures of Dixie Carmichael. He wondered where they had put her. Perhaps she was already asleep. It would be like her to sleep. She was so cold, so oddly unhealthy. Doubtless, surely, he would have to speak with her.

He must have dozed. Soldiers were dragging themselves sleepily about the courtyard, rifles in hand. Two officers and a mandarin in a gown were examining a paper by the light of a lantern. Then Mr. Doane came out and read the paper. They talked in Chinese, Mr. Deane's as fluent as theirs. Rocky thought drowsily about this; considered vaguely the years of study and experience that must lie back of that fluency.

Mr. Doane, indeed, seemed to be assuming a sort of command. With great courtesy, but with impressive finality, he appeared to be outlining a course to which the mandarin assented. The officers bowed and went out through the gate. And when the mandarin and Doane then turned and entered the largest building it was the white man who held the paper in his hand.

Rocky fell again into a doze; slept until he found Mr. Doane shaking him.

“Come with me now. You can help.” Thus the huge grave man with the deep shadows in his face.

And Rocky went with him, guided by a servant with a lantern, through corridors and courtyards, glimpsing dimly massive pillars and panels in black wood and softly red silk and railings of marble carved into exquisite tracery.

With the paper that the boy had drowsily observed Doane sought his excellency. Dominated by the white man the attendant mandarin tapped at an inner door, then hesitatingly opened; and Doane alone stepped within.

The room was long, plain, obscurely seen by the light of a single incandescent lamp over the formal kang or platform across the farther end. Doane had not thought of electric light in here and found it momentarily surprising. The walls were paneled in silk; the ceiling was heavy with beams. Against either side wall, mathematically at the center, stood a square small table and a square stool, heavily carved. Seated on the kang, with papers spread about and brushes and ink pot directly under the light, in short quilted coat and simple black cap, was Kang; a serenely patient figure, quietly working. He had merely looked up; a frail old man, quite beyond the reach of annoyance, whose eyes gazed unafraid over the rim of mere personal life into the eternal, tireless energy that would so soon absorb all that was himself. Then, recognizing the stalwart figure that moved forward into the light, he rose and clasped his hands and smiled.

“Only an unexpected crisis would lead me to intrude thus,” began Doane in Chinese, bowing in courtly fashion and clasping his own hands before his breast.