Gods Men

by Pearl S. Buck

  Henrietta had a vague understanding of him, nevertheless, as she sat thoughtfully by the window of this room. William could not endure to be outdone by anyone, but at school no American could be as the English were and there William felt himself unjustly surpassed. Moreover she herself surpassed him in their studies, and she had gone to some pains as she had grown older to hide from him the marks which made him hate her, too. And why should this only brother of hers suffer so much when, had he been content with himself, he might have been very happy? A handsome boy he had been, and his mind, developing more slowly than hers, was a good and even brilliant mind, likely now to have gone far ahead of hers. His intolerable, bitter, burning pride had poisoned him to the soul, a pride begun by their foolish old Chinese amah, who because he was a boy among girls, had loved him best and praised him most and made them all worship him as the young prince of the family—a pride fostered, certainly, by being an American among Chinese. But here in America itself there were no princes.

  The door opened and Candace came in, trailing the lace ruffles of her negligee. It was almost noon and she had not yet dressed herself for the day. But so immaculate, so exquisite was she in her rose and lace, her fair hair so curled and smoothed and waved, that Henrietta felt dingy after her night on the train.

  Candace held out her hands and her rings glittered. “Not to tell us that you were coming, you naughty thing!”

  She had grown soft and was prettier than ever, slender but rounded and feminine and too tender in voice and eyes.

  “I thought you would expect me to come at once,” Henrietta said. She submitted to a scented embrace and sat down again.

  Candace sighed. The tears came to her violet eyes. “William is not to be consoled. He sits there beside his father day and night. He will neither eat nor rest. Your mother is sleeping. She is very tired. Ruth has gone home for a bit to be with her children. There is nothing to do here but wait.”

  “Clem will be here tomorrow,” Henrietta said.

  “How good of him to get away,” Candace said.

  “It is not good of him,” Henrietta replied. “He does it for me.”

  She found herself with nothing to say and so she sat for a moment in silence while Candace twisted the rings on her fingers. Then Henrietta made up her mind. She did not intend to be cowed by this house or by any of William’s belongings or indeed by William himself.

  “I would like to go to my father, please, Candace. I have not seen him at all, you know.”

  Candace looked distressed. Her mouth, soft and full and red, looked suddenly childish and she bit her lower lip. “I don’t know if William will—”

  “William knows me,” Henrietta said. “He will not blame you.”

  She rose and Candace, as though she submitted by habit, rose too, and in silent doubtfulness she led Henrietta across the hall through another large room—a music room, Henrietta saw, since it contained a grand piano and a gramophone set into a carved cabinet, and then across a hall which ended in a conservatory, and at last to heavy closed doors of polished oak. Here Candace paused and then she slid the doors a small distance apart. Over her shoulder Henrietta looked into an immense library, in the center of which stood a bier. There William sat. He had drawn a leather armchair close enough to see his father’s face. A tall pot of lilies stood at the foot of the bier. Upon this scene the sunshine of the morning streamed through high southern windows.

  Henrietta gently put Candace aside and entered the room. “William, I have come.”

  William looked at her startled. Then he rose. “You came early, Henrietta.” His voice, deep and always harsh, was composed.

  “I came as soon as I had Mother’s telegram.”

  Candace had closed the doors and gone away and they were alone. She went to the bier and looked down upon her father’s face. It was as white as an image of snow. The long thin hands folded upon the breast were of the same deadly whiteness.

  “I am glad you have not sent him away,” Henrietta said.

  “Whatever had to be done was done here.”

  “He is desperately thin.”

  “He was ill for two years,” William said. “Of course Mother did not realize it, nor did he complain. His intestines were eaten away by the wretched disease. There was no hope.”

  Neither of them wept, and neither expected weeping of the other.

  “I am glad he did not die over there,” William said.

  “Perhaps he would rather have died there. He loved the Chinese so much,” Henrietta said.

  “He wasted his life upon them,” said William.

  He spoke without emotion, yet she felt his absolute grief. He revealed himself in this grief as she had never seen him, a gaunt lonely man, still young, and his pride was bitter in his face, in his haughty bearing, in the abrupt movements of his hands.

  “It is a comfort to you that he came here to die.” This she added in sudden pity for him.

  “It is more than a comfort,” he replied. “It was his last mission.”

  She turned her gaze then from the calm dead face to look at William and perceived in his stone-gray eyes a look so profoundly strange, for that was the word which came to her mind, that she was for the first time in her life half frightened of him.

  William had no impulse to tell her of those last words which his father had spoken. For him they had indeed taken on the importance of prophecy. His father, he had learned from his mother, had a premonition of approaching death during the last year in Peking. He had long refused to come back to America because, he said simply, he wanted to die in China and be buried there. Yet when he felt death imminent he changed his mind. “I must see William,” he had told her one night when he woke as he often did long before dawn. “I must see my son. I want to talk with him. I have things to tell him.”

  Here his mother had paused to wipe her eyes and also to ask him in curiosity, “What things did he tell you, William?”

  He could not share even with her the solemnity of those last words his father had been able to speak. They were few, far fewer than he had meant to speak, William felt sure, had he not been so ill in the last weeks before the end. And yet in few words all was said. He understood that his father had come thousands of miles by land and sea to speak them to his dear and only son, and so he forgave his father everything, all the shame of being his son, the disgrace of the lowliness of being the son of a poor man and a missionary. By his love for his son and by his death his father had lifted himself up into sainthood. There was symbolism here which in its way was as great as that of the Cross. He was his father’s only begotten son, whom his father so loved. …

  “William, are you sure you feel well?”

  Henrietta’s anxious voice flung ice upon his burning heart.

  His old irritation flared at her. “Of course I am well! Naturally I am tired. I don’t expect to rest until after the funeral tomorrow. I think you ought to go and see Mother.”

  “Candace said she was sleeping.”

  “Then it is time she woke.”

  He took her elbow and led her out of the room. In the hall he pressed a button and the man appeared again. “Take my sister upstairs to my mother’s room,” William ordered.

  “Yes, sir. This way if you please, Madame.”

  The sliding doors closed behind Henrietta and she was compelled to follow the man, her footsteps sinking again into heavy carpets across the hall and up the stairs and down another hall to one of a half dozen closed doors. Here the man knocked. She heard her mother’s voice. “Who is it?”

  “Thank you,” Henrietta said, dismissing the man with a nod. She opened the door. There her mother sat at a small desk, fully dressed, her steel-gray hair swept up into a thick knot on top of her head. She was writing and she lifted her pen and turned her head.

  “Henrietta, my dear!” She rose, majestic, and held out her arms. “My dear daughter!”

  Henrietta allowed herself to be enveloped and she kissed her mother’s dry cheek. She saw in
the first glance that although her mother had aged or weathered into a dry ruddiness in the years since they had last met, she was not changed. Neither life nor death could change her. There was nothing new here. Her mother planned what to do, how to behave, what to say. Henrietta withdrew herself and sat down and took off her hat and coat.

  “Mother, it was so strange to find you and Father gone away when we got to Peking.”

  “You should have told us you were coming,” Mrs. Lane said, “then you needn’t have come all that way.”

  Henrietta refrained from mentioning Clem, his reasons for wanting to go to China, the suddenness of their departure.

  “Please, Mother, tell me everything.”

  Her mother could tell only so much as she could comprehend of what had gone on.

  “Everything got harder in Peking,” her mother began. “It wasn’t in the least as it had been in the dear old days. You remember, Henrietta, how easy everything used to be? When you were a child, I was received most courteously wherever I went, merely because I was a foreigner. That was after the Boxer Rebellion, of course. Peking was heavenly then. I got to be fond of the Old Empress, really fond! I went with Mrs. Conger sometimes to call and Her Majesty used to have one of her ladies explain to me, so that I could tell Mrs. Conger who spoke no Chinese at all, how sorry she was for all that had happened, and how she understood that we were all there for the good of China. Then she would reach out her hand and stroke mine. She had the most beautiful old hand—so delicate, covered with rings, and then the long enameled nail protectors. It was really wonderful to see her. I don’t think most people understood her. I used to tell your father so, but he would never trust her, no matter what I said.”

  “When did Father fall ill?” Henrietta asked.

  “It began soon after that upstart Sun Yatsen stirred up the people. Your father was so worried. I told him that nothing would be made better by his worrying, but you know he never listened to me. In his way he was frightfully stubborn. And things began to get so hard. After the Empress died the wonderful courtesy just ended—like that! Even the people on the streets began to be rough to us. They didn’t seem to want us in Peking. Your father was stoned one Sunday night on his way to chapel.”

  “Stoned—for what?” Henrietta asked.

  “For nothing—just because he was a foreigner. Then it got better again. Oh dear, you’ve been away so long! It’s difficult to explain. But it has been one thing after another, a revolution about something all the time, and when I told your father he was looking thin he always said he couldn’t leave.”

  “And when he did leave he wanted to go to William.”

  “He got the idea suddenly that William needed him. I remember he said a queer thing when we were standing on the deck as the steamer pulled away from Shanghai. He was staring at the shore and then he said, ‘But what shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own son?’ ”

  Henrietta did not answer. She did not listen any more to her mother’s prattling voice. A strange thing for her father to say, and what did it mean?

  Henrietta went herself to the station to meet Clem. With his usual skill, perfected by constant travel, he managed to catch a train at the last moment possible in time to get to the funeral. Had there been half an hour’s delay it would have been too late. But Henrietta had now come to believe that there would never be such delay upon any train which Clem chose to take. Luck was the aura in which he lived.

  Thus she stood waiting on the platform while the train drew in, accurate to the second. Clem was always the first passenger to get out. She saw him swing himself down, shake his head at a porter and come hurrying toward her, carrying his small bag. William’s chauffeur stepped forward to take it but Clem resisted.

  “I’m used to carrying my own suitcase, thanks.”

  He threw the man a brief bright abstract smile, then forgot him. “Henrietta, gosh—it’s good to see you! How are you, hon?”

  “Come on, Clem. We haven’t a moment.”

  “Funeral isn’t till four, is it? Lots of time.”

  This Henrietta would not allow. “Come on, do. Everybody’s waiting.”

  “Everybody’s early then.” But he humored her, seeing that her eyes were washed with weeping.

  They got into the big heavy car which William had imported from England. Clem lifted his sandy eyebrows and said nothing, but Henrietta understood his reproach.

  “Never mind, he always hates England and yet he worships everything English.”

  “I don’t mind. Anything to tell me, hon?”

  “Not now, Clem. Afterward.”

  They drove in silence through the bright New York streets. He saw her dressed for the first time in black. She looked handsome but he had better sense than to tell her so now. He wanted to share her sorrow but he could not. When he thought of Dr. Lane’s death he saw with dreadful renewal the sight of his own father lying with his head half severed from his neck, in the midst of the other dead. He wanted to talk quickly about something else, tell her how triumphant the market opening in Dayton had really been, and yet he knew that he should not speak of that, either, here or now. To escape the inescapable memory he stared out into the streets, trying to catch from the passing windows ideas for advertising, for displays, for announcements, and while he did so he felt guilty because he dared not think of Henrietta’s grief. She could not comprehend, perhaps, though he had told her everything, how memory could pervade his whole life if he gave it the least chance at him. He crowded it out by his constant activity, by his incessant planning and incredible accomplishment.

  “You are never still,” she said with sudden and extraordinary impatience.

  He looked at her, astonished.

  “Oh, Clem!” She seized his hand in both of hers.

  He saw tears brimming again into her eyes. “I know, Henrietta. I don’t know why I can’t sit still.”

  She was broken by his humility. “Don’t mind me. I can’t tell you why I feel so mixed up.”

  “That’s all right.”

  He made a superhuman effort then and did sit still, forcing his hand that held hers to be still, keeping his feet from twitching or shuffling, refusing to recognize the itch of his nose, his cheek, the nervous ache of arm or leg, the innumerable minute demands of his tense frame.

  She was grateful and in silence they sat while the car swept them up to the huge church on Fifth Avenue where William had commanded that his father’s body be laid. Here she and Clem got out and mounted the marble steps. In the lobby they were met by an attendant of some sort, who guided them in silence to an area of pews tied in with black ribbon, where the family was assembled. To her surprise she saw even Roger Cameron and his wife, Roger lean and aged and looking as permanent as a mummy. Her seat and Clem’s had been kept beside William. She sat down.

  Clem looked across Henrietta into William’s eyes, gray under the heavy brows. He felt a shock in his breast. The tall grim boy he had seen on the Peking street had grown into a tall grim man. In the one glance and the brief nod Clem saw the long square face, the pallid skin, the deep-set eyes and black brows, and the strained handsome mouth. Then he sat down, forgetting the dead. William was unhappy! The sorrow of the last few weeks could not have worked quickly enough to carve his face into such lines. But why should William be unhappy as well as sorrowful? Unhappiness was something deep, permeating to the very sinews of a man’s soul.

  “The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away.” The rich and polished voice of the robed minister rolled from the chancel. Clem breathed hard and tried not to shift his feet. The flowers were too fragrant, the church too warm. Upon the bier he saw a white-faced statue, handsomely clothed and surrounded with flowers so skillfully that they made a background for him. This statue did not look in the least like Dr. Lane, whom he remembered as a quiet melancholy saint, always withdrawn though kind. This dead man looked proud and even haughty. His features were too clear, the eyebrows touched with black, the lips with a p
ale red, the nose perfected, the sleeping eyelids outlined. The head had immense and marble dignity. As he remembered, Dr. Lane had walked with a slight stoop, a humble pose of the head, and his features though good were blurred with the thoughtful doubt of a man who always saw the other side of everything.

  William, he supposed, had ordered all to be of the best, and so they had made the best of Dr. Lane. Clem disliked what he saw and feeling the impulse to move now become uncontrollable he stealthily shifted his feet, scratched his wrists and palms, and even rubbed his nose with his forefinger while a woman with a loud clear soprano sang a hymn, “For All the Saints Who from Their Labors Rest.” Henrietta pressed his arm with her shoulder and he became quiet again.

  The minister got up and began a eulogy of Dr. Lane, whom he had never known, and Clem listened. All the facts were right, he supposed—Dr. Lane, the father of William Lane, one of America’s great figures, was born of a distinguished and scholarly family. Although his family had not entirely approved his becoming a missionary he had persisted in his noble determination, in which he was joined by a fine young woman of equally good family. It was not usual that two young people of such position gave up all to follow after Christ in a heathen country. There Dr. Lane’s efforts had been singularly blessed. He had become important not only in the mission field but in his interpretation of the Chinese mind during the political crises of recent years.

  “The fellow isn’t saying the really important things,” Clem told himself. It was strange that William had not pointed out to the minister that his father understood the Chinese and appreciated them and that he had not always wanted to convert them. That was why they had liked him. William should have told the small good things his father did, how he always put his hand into his pocket when he saw a beggar. …