Gods Men

by Pearl S. Buck

  After another hour he was tired and hungry and he wished that he had stopped to buy some food. Five miles had seemed nothing in his excitement. He sat down beside a small stream and drank and rested, and while he sat there a wagon came by, pulled by two horses as high as camels. A man drove them, seated on a bench in the wagon. “Hi, there, feller,” he called down. “Wanta ride?”

  Clem was cautious. Why should a stranger offer him a ride? Might not the fellow be a bandit? “No, thank you,” he replied.

  The man drew the wagon to a stop. “You look like a stranger.”

  Clem did not reply. The barber on the ship had clipped his hair close to get rid of the dyed hair, and he was conscious of his baldness.

  “Where you goin’?” the man asked.

  “To Mr. Charles Miller’s farm,” Clem replied.

  The man stared at him, his jaw hanging. He was a dirty fellow, clad in a sweat-soaked shirt and blue cotton trousers. Through the unbuttoned front of his shirt Clem saw a chest woolly with repulsively red hair.

  “Old Charley Miller is dead,” the man said.

  The sunlight glittering upon the landscape took on the sharpness of dagger points, springing from the edges of leaves, the tips of grass, the points of fence rails. Clem’s eyes blurred and weakness laid hold upon his knees.

  “When did he die?” His mouth was full of dust.

  “Coupla years ago.” The man prepared for the story. He spat thick brown spittle into the road and pushed back his torn straw hat.

  “Fact is, the old man hung himself in his own barn. Disappointed, that’s what. He’d been tryin’ for ten years to get a job with the Republicans, and when they got in that year they give him the sheriff’s job. He had to put somebody off a farm the very first day—mortgage couldn’t be met. He was too softhearted to do it—he was awful soft-hearted, old Charley was. He just hung himself the night before—yeah.”

  The man shook his head and sighed. “Wouldn’t hurt a flea, Charley wouldn’t. Couldn’t kill a fly. Lived all alone. He had a son somewheres, but he never come home.”

  “His son was my father.” The words escaped Clem like a cry.

  The man stared, brown saliva drooling down his chin. “You don’t, say!”

  Clem nodded. “He’s dead, too. That’s why I came to find my grandfather. But if I haven’t anybody—I guess—I guess I don’t know what to do.”

  The man was kind enough. “You get up here along of me, sonny, and I’ll take you to your grandpop’s farm, anyway. There’s folks livin’ there. Maybe they’ll lend a hand.”

  For lack of any directing thought Clem obeyed. He lifted his suitcase and gave it to the man and then stepping upon the axle he crawled into the seat. There in the hot sunshine he sat, his suitcase between his knees, and in silence the man drove two miles and put him down before an unpainted gate set in a decaying picket fence lost in high weeds. The wagon went away and Clem stared at a small solid stone house.

  This, then, was the place of which he had dreamed as long as he could remember. The grass grew long and unkempt even in the yard. Over the house leaned an enormous sycamore tree. Under this tree he saw some ragged children, two boys and two girls. The boys were about his own age, the girls younger, or at least smaller.

  They were eating dry bread, tearing at hunks of it with their teeth as they held it. When they saw him they hid the bread in their hands, holding it behind them.

  “What you want?” the bigger boy asked in a gruff voice. He had a thin freckled face and his hair grew long into his neck.

  “Who lives here?” Clem asked.

  “Pop and Mom Berger,” a girl said. She began to chew again at her bread. “You better go way or they’ll set the dogs on you.”

  “Are you their children?” Clem asked. Where could he go in a strange country where nevertheless he belonged?

  The thin boy answered again. “Naw, we’re Aid children.”

  Clem looked at them, comprehending nothing. “You mean—Aid is your name?”

  They looked at each other, confounded by this stupidity. “Aid children,” the girl repeated.

  “What do you mean?” Clem asked.

  “We’re Aid children. Children what ain’t got nobody.”

  Clem gazed and his heart began to shrink. He, too, had nobody. Then was he, perforce, an Aid child?

  Before he could reply to this frightful question, a short stout man ambled from the open door of the house and yelled: “Here, you kids—git back to work!” The children fled behind the house, and the man stared across the tumbled grass at Clem.

  “Where’d you come from?” he demanded.

  “I thought Charles Miller, my grandfather, was here,” Clem said.

  “Been gone two years,” the man said. “I bought the place and took over the mortgage. I never heard he had no grandson.”

  “I guess my father didn’t write. We lived a long way off.”

  “Out West?”

  “Yes.”

  “Folks still there?”

  “They’re dead. That’s why I came back.”

  “Ain’t none of your folks around here as I know of.”

  He was about to go back into the door when something seemed to occur to him. “How old are you?” he asked.

  “Fifteen,” Clem said.

  “Undersize,” the man muttered. “Well, you might as well come in. We was just thinkin’ we maybe could do with another Aid boy. The work’s gittin’ heavy.” He jerked his head. “C’mon in here.”

  Clem took up his suitcase. He had nowhere else to go. He followed the man into the house.

  “I’ll report you to the Aid next time she comes,” the man said.

  William Lane was walking solitary along the beach. He had to be solitary a good deal of the time, for he had met no boys of his own age and it was intolerable to him to be with his sisters. Occasionally he went swimming with Ruth, but only at a time when the beach was not crowded. He had supposed of course that the beach was private since his grandfather’s house faced upon it, and on that first day of his arrival when he had gone for a swim with Ruth he had been shocked to see at least fifty people in or near the water.

  “Does Grandfather let all these people use our beach?” he had asked Ruth.

  Before she could answer he heard Henrietta’s horrid laughter. She came swimming out of the sea, her long straight hair lank upon her shoulders. “Nobody has private beaches here, stupid,” she had said in a rude voice.

  Ruth had reproached her as usual for his sake.

  “How can William know when it’s only his first day?”

  “He’d better learn quick, then,” Henrietta had retorted and returned to the sea.

  Now of course he knew the truth. The beach belonged to everybody. Anybody at all could come there. They were all Americans, he knew, and yet they were of a variety and a commonness which made him feel the loneliest soul in the world. He longed for his English schoolmates, and yet he was cut off from them forever, because he did not want to see them any more. He did not want them to know that America was exactly what they had said it was, a place full of common people.

  He lifted his head with a resolute arrogant gesture which was almost unconscious but not quite, since he had caught it from the boy who had been the captain of the cricket team last year, a fair-haired tall young man, whose father was Sir Gregory Scott, the British Consul General. Ronald Scott had been all that was splendid and fearless. Why not, when he had everything?

  At least, William thought, his grandfather’s house was better than some of the others facing the beach, and there were the two maids. He had felt slightly better when he discovered that most of the other houses had no servants, although in China women were only amahs for younger children. The two maids were old and badly trained. He had put his shoes outside his bedroom door the first night and they were still there the next morning but not polished.

  “I say,” he had asked his mother, “who does the boots in this house?”

  She had g
iven him a curious smile. “We do them ourselves,” she said smoothly and without explanation. This was another thing that made him solitary. In Peking he had always been able to count on his mother, but here he did not know her as she was. She took his part when they were alone, but in front of other people he felt she did not. When he left his hat and coat in the hall for the maid to hang up his mother hung them up and his grandmother had been sharp about it. “William, don’t let your mother wait on you,” she had exclaimed. “Oh, never mind,” his mother had said quickly. “Now, Helen, don’t spoil the boy,” his grandmother had retorted.

  “He’ll be going to college in just a few weeks, and then he’ll have to look after himself.” This was the feeble answer his mother had given. He had looked at both of them haughtily and had said nothing.

  The air today was as clear and cool as a June day in Peking, and the sea was very blue. He had left the house after luncheon and seeing the beach crowded, he had walked straight away from it and toward the other part of Old Harbor, the best part. It had not taken him many days to find that the place where the really rich people lived was there. Great houses set in plenty of lawn faced wide bright beaches almost empty of people. Now almost every day he came here, always alone, too proud to pretend that he belonged here and yet longing to seem that he did before a chance passerby.

  At this hour of early afternoon no one was to be seen. The heat of the sun was intense, though the air was cool, and the people were, he supposed, in their great houses. He was walking along the edge of a low bluff and suddenly he decided to climb it. The ascent was not difficult. He had only begun it when he saw a flight of wooden steps and was tempted to use them. It would be degrading to him if he were discovered trespassing, and yet his curiosity compelled him. He compromised by not using the steps and scrambled up the sandy rock ledge until he had reached the grass at the top. There he found himself still alone. For a quarter of a mile the lawn sloped back toward a knoll and hidden behind masses of trees he saw a vast house. His imagination hovered about it. Had his grandfather lived there and had he belonged there, how easily he might have been proud of his country!

  He threw himself down upon the grass and buried his face in his arms. The sun beat upon his back and he felt suffocated with despair. He longed for the summer to be over so that he could leave his family and be alone at college. Yet how could he be successful there when it now appeared that his grandfather had no intention of helping him with any money? His mother had asked his grandparents outright if they could help him so that he could spend all his time in studying, and his grandfather had said, “Let him work his way through, as much as he can. It’ll be good for him.”

  His mother had told him this with curious hesitation. “I suppose in a way it would be good for you,” she had said thoughtfully. “But in another way I know it wouldn’t. Work classes you here, actually, as much as it does in China. I wish we’d sent you to Groton.”

  “Why didn’t you?” he had asked violently.

  “Money,” she had said simply. “Just money. Everything goes back to that.”

  “Does Grandfather have no money?” he had demanded.

  “He seems to have enough for himself but nobody else,” his mother had replied. Then she had one of her inexplicable changes. “Why do I say that? He’s feeding us all—four of us, I suppose that’s something, week in and week out.”

  William would have wept had he not been too proud. He continued now to lie like stone under the sun, his flesh hot and his heart cold. His disappointment was becoming insupportable. Of all that he had seen, nothing in his country was what he had hoped it would be, nothing except this spot where the great houses stood facing the sea from their heights of green, and here he did not belong.

  At this moment he heard a voice.

  “What are you doing here, boy?”

  He lifted his head and saw an old gentleman leaning on a cane. A loose brown tweed cap hung over his forehead and he wore a baggy top coat of the same material. His face was brown, too, against the white of his pointed beard and mustaches.

  “Trespassing, I’m afraid, sir.” William sprang to his feet and stood very straight. He went on in his best English manner, instilled by the headmaster in Chefoo. “I couldn’t resist climbing the bluff to see what was here. Then I was tired and wanted to rest a bit.”

  “Do you like what you see?”

  “Rather!”

  He felt some sort of approval in the old gentleman, and he held his black head higher and compelled his gray gaze to meet the sharp blue eyes that were staring at him. Then he smiled, a slow cautious smile.

  The old gentleman responded at once and laughed. “You sound English!”

  “No, sir, I’m not. But I’ve just come from China.”

  The old gentleman looked interested. “China, eh? Where?”

  “Peking, sir.”

  “Been a lot of trouble over there.”

  “Yes, sir, that’s why we came away—all of us, that is, except my father. He is in the siege.”

  The old gentleman sat down carefully on a boulder placed for the purpose. “It is very nasty, all those Americans locked up there. The Chinese will have to be taught a good lesson, especially as we have always been decent to them—the Open Door and so on. What’s your father doing in Peking?”

  It was the question he had been dreading. He toyed for an instant with the idea of a lie and decided against it. “I hope you won’t think it strange, sir, but he’s a missionary—Episcopal.” He want to explain, but could not bring himself to it, that being Episcopal meant at least a Christian aristocracy.

  He averted his eyes to avoid the inevitable look of disgust. To his astonishment the old gentleman was cordial. “A missionary, is he? Now that’s interesting. We’re Christian Scientists. What’s your name?”

  “Lane. William Lane.”

  He was as much disconcerted by approval as he might have been by rebuff. Before he had time to adjust himself the old gentleman said in a dry, kindly voice; “Now you come on up to the house. Mrs. Cameron will want a look at you. You can talk to her about your father. She’s interested in foreign travel. I’m pretty busy, myself.”

  He stumped ahead of William, panting a little as the lawn rose toward the house. Behind him William walked gracefully, almost forgetting himself in his excitement. He was to enter this house, looming ahead in all its white beauty.

  “I have a son,” Mr. Cameron was saying. “He isn’t as strong as we wish he was and we have him here trying to get him ready for Harvard in the autumn—freshman.”

  “I’m going to Harvard, too,” William said.

  “Then Jeremy will want to see you,” Mr. Cameron said.

  He paused on a wide white porch and William was compelled to stop, too, though his feet urged him to the door. Mr. Cameron’s sharp small blue eyes roamed over the sea and the sky and fixed themselves upon the horizon.

  “No storm in sight,” he murmured.

  He turned abruptly and led the way through the open door into a wide hall that swept through the house to open again at the back upon gardens of blooming flowers.

  “I don’t know where anybody is,” Mr. Cameron murmured again. He touched a bell and a uniformed manservant appeared and took his cap and coat, glanced at William and looked away.

  “Where is Mrs. Cameron?”

  “In the rose garden, sir.”

  “Tell her I’m bringing someone to see her. Is Jeremy with her?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Very well.”

  The man went silently toward the end of the hall and Mr. Cameron said to William, “It is always warm in the gardens. Come along.”

  He strolled toward the door and William followed him. His eyes stole right and left, and he saw glimpses of great cool rooms furnished in pale blue and rose. Silver gray curtains hung to the floor at the windows, and flowers were massed in bowls. Here were his dreams. He lifted his head and smiled. If such dreams could be real he would have them, someday, for h
is own.

  The smell of hot sunshine upon fragrant flowers scented the air of the gardens as they reached the open doors. He knew very well from the garden about the mission house in Peking that only workmen could bring about the high perfection of what he now saw. Formal flower beds as precise as floral carpets stretched about him. A path of clean red brick led to an arbor a quarter of a mile away, and the arbor itself stood in a mass of late blooming roses. The manservant emerged from the arbor and stood respectfully while Mr. Cameron approached.

  “Mrs. Cameron is here, sir. I am to bring tea in half an hour, sir, if you wish.”

  “Oh, all right,” Mr. Cameron replied carelessly.

  They entered the vine-hung arbor, and William saw a slender pretty woman, whose hair was graying, and a boy of his own age. She was sitting by a table filling a wicker basket with roses. The boy was stretched on a couch, a book turned face down on his lap. He was tall, with light hair and pale skin and pale blue eyes.

  “This is William Lane, my dear,” Mr. Cameron said. “I found him lying on his stomach on top of the bluff, and he says he comes from, China.”

  “Do you really?” Mrs. Cameron exclaimed. “How interesting!” She lifted large sweet brown eyes to William’s face.

  “I do, Mrs. Cameron,” William replied. “I’m glad if it interests you.”

  “This is Jeremy,” Mr. Cameron said. The two boys touched hands.

  Mr. Cameron sat down. “I have a daughter somewhere, too. Where is she, my dear?”