Gods Men

by Pearl S. Buck

  Dr. Lane, now, would have understood how he himself felt about getting food to people, quick and cheap. He would have enjoyed telling him about his markets and how he planned to find something that could be done anywhere in the world. He could have told all that to Dr. Lane, things he had not even told Henrietta, though she always stood by him whether she believed he could do it or not. But Dr. Lane would have believed it, maybe.

  Clem stole a glance at William’s profile. They were standing up. The funeral was almost over. Maybe he would be able to talk with William tomorrow when this was past. There was the grave yet.

  Around the open grave he stood among this family he did not know, yet to which he belonged because he and Henrietta belonged together. He saw them all, Jeremy and Ruth and the girls—cute little things, dressed in white instead of black, little white fur hats and coats. He had never seen Jeremy or Ruth or Mrs. Lane. They were the sort of people he did not know.

  While the minister spoke his solemn rich words and crumbled earth upon the coffin, Clem stood looking brightly abstracted, entirely unconscious, while his mind glanced at the various miracles of his life, first of which was that Henrietta had wanted to marry him. Seeing this family, he could not understand it, though he was not humble, either. The miracle was that, having been born among these people, she should have had the wit to see what he was and what he could do before he had done it.

  He looked at her as she stood, her black-gloved hands clasped, her strong profile bent, her eyes upon the ground. He loved her mightily, he loved her the way he loved his work, the way he loved his dream. It was one of the big things. But she was whole and entire without him. He did not think of her as a part of himself because he thought nothing of himself. He did not know how he looked or what sort of a man he was. He was as fleshless as a grasshopper.

  He was glad that Henrietta had never spoken to him of having children. He had seen too many children starving to death. The villages on that long and lonely march from Peking to the sea had been busy with children, dirty, laughing, hungry—so many children in the world, anyway. When he thought of children he always thought of his sisters as he had last seen them and his mind swerved away from that again. He had to be free to accomplish the thing for which he was born and children ought to be kept at home, treasures in a box. If his sisters had been kept at home they would have been alive today. He did not ever want children.

  Tim and Jen and Mamie! When he had hurried back to the farm after reading the ghastly story that held the headlines for a day, Tim was dead and buried. Pop Berger was in bed sick and he cried whenever anyone spoke to him. A police guard sat by the bed and there were reporters everywhere. Mom Berger kept the girls in the kitchen with her and the doors shut. There had been a square-set newspaper fellow there whose name was Seth James. He had gone away after he heard Clem was going to take the two girls to Ohio.

  “You’re the only decent person I’ve seen,” the fellow had said and had shaken Clem’s hand up and down hard half a dozen times.

  Clem had not known what to do with Mamie and Jen. They had cried when he took them away. But Henrietta had been nice to them and after a while they learned to wait on people in the store. Then, after they had fattened up a bit and got better looking, they had both married farm boys. Mamie had died when her baby was born but Jen, who he had always supposed could not live long, was growing stout and talkative. Food had done it, of course—plenty of good food.

  He came to himself suddenly when Henrietta put her hand on his arm. The funeral was over and he was ashamed that he had not kept his mind on it. He turned, obedient to her touch, and joined the solemn family procession back to the funeral cars.

  The procession stopped at William’s house and the family descended and entered the huge front door, held open by the footman, who wore a proper look of gloom. Roger Cameron and his wife had gone home, their car swerving past the ones that stopped. When Candace had begged her father to come in and stay the evening with her he had refused. “I swore ten years ago I would never go to another funeral before my own, and it was only because your mother forced me that I have come today. You’ll have to get through the rest of the day the best you can, daughter.”

  Candace went upstairs and changed her black garments for a soft white gown whose collar she tied with a black ribbon. Then she hurried downstairs to see if the tea which William had ordered to be ready was set upon the table. It was more than a usual tea. Henrietta and Clem were taking an early train and Jeremy and Ruth must go home with their children. There were ham and sliced cold chicken upon the buffet and she knew that the cook had beaten up a custard dessert. By her command there were no flowers on the table. She had seen so many flowers this day that she did not want any more. Red roses perhaps next week! The dreadful thing was that she had felt no sorrow; a mild sadness, of course, such as death always persuades, but not sorrow. It was impossible to grieve for an old man to whom she had scarcely spoken, a sweet old man, she saw, even through his illness. But what troubled her was that she had not been able to share William’s sorrow. He treasured it, he kept it to himself, he endured with such nobleness that she felt repelled and then was angry with herself. She dreaded tomorrow when nobody would be here—except, of course, his mother. For the first time she felt glad that his mother was going to spend the winter with them. Perhaps together they could understand William better and make him happy.

  At this moment while she moved about the dining room, Henrietta’s husband came to the door and looked in. He made her think of a bird, slender, bright-faced, boyish, making so many little quick unconscious movements. He was completely different from Henrietta and yet there was something between them. She did not see why William had been angry when Henrietta married Clem.

  “Come in, Clem,” she said sweetly.

  He came in, his hands in his pockets jingling something, keys, coins—no, a small bottle of pills which he now brought out. “Can I find some water somewhere? All this has brought on my nervous indigestion.”

  She lifted a cut-glass carafe from the sideboard and he whistled softly when he took it. “Solid, isn’t it?”

  “A wedding present. If you saw the amount of cut glass I have packed away, besides all this!”

  “Swell wedding, must have been. But then, William would have that. Did he ever tell you we met once?”

  “No, did you?”

  He rolled pills into the palm of his hand, threw them in his mouth, gulped them and washed them down with water he poured into a goblet on the table. “Maybe he has forgotten but I never have. A Chinese boy and I were kind of dancing around each other ready to let out our fists when William came by and stopped us.”

  “Did he know you?”

  Clem grinned mischievously and she saw freckles under his pale skin. “No—but he knew who I was.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I came from the wrong side of the tracks, see?”

  “There were no tracks in Peking, were there?”

  “Oh yes, there were. The Lanes were aristocrats compared to us. Dr. Lane got a salary every month. They lived in a compound. My father hadn’t any salary. He was low enough to live on faith alone.”

  They spoke in half whispers, almost guiltily, enjoying the respite from gloom. He had a sense of humor, Candace saw. And Clem saw a pleasant pretty woman, an honest woman at that, not too smart maybe, certainly not grand like his Henrietta, but nice to talk to, especially after a funeral.

  “Christians are like other people. What’ll I call you—Mrs. William?”

  “Oh, call me Candy.”

  “Candy, eh? Nice name for you. My father was ignorant, Candy, just plain uneducated like I am. There’s a difference, though. I wanted an education and he didn’t believe it was right. He thought God would provide everything—even food, you know. Dr. Lane knew better. He was real well educated. Of course my father was only a farm boy.”

  Candace stared at him, not comprehending in spite of what she heard. He tried further.
r />   “All the well-heeled missionaries who didn’t have to trust God looked down on us, naturally. I guess my poor old dad was a sort of beggar sometimes. When he saw us hungry and no food in sight he used to push God a little.”

  “How?”

  Clem’s face turned red and the freckles disappeared. “He went to the other missionaries—or even sometimes to the Chinese—and told them we had nothing to eat.” He tried to laugh. “Kind of tattletale on God, I guess! Anyway, I don’t like to think of it.”

  “I’m sure William has forgotten all of that,” Candace said, on a rush of pity and vague affection for this too honest man.

  “Maybe,” Clem said. He looked sober and began jingling his pockets again.

  Something haunted his restless blue eyes and Candace went on pitying him. “You’re very happy with Henrietta, aren’t you? She adores you, I think. When she talks about you she looks as though she were thinking of her child as well as her husband.”

  “There is nobody in the whole world like Henrietta,” Clem said. The red had left his face as quickly as it had come and the freckles were back. “I don’t know what I’d do if I didn’t have her. She’s my life’s foundation. I’ll build all sorts of superstructures, maybe, in what I’m trying to do about food, but she keeps me steady. And here’s the thing—she never discourages me.”

  “Wonderful! And what are you trying to do about food, Clem?”

  “Oh—just feed the world.”

  “Hush!”

  She put a hand, pretty and ringed, upon Clem’s arm. They listened and she took it away again. William entered the room and she turned to him

  “Clem and I are here waiting, William. Everything is ready.”

  “I don’t know where everyone is,” William said.

  He sat down in a great Jacobean chair that stood beside the long windows opening to a wide terrace. He still wore his black suit and above the dead hue of the broadcloth his face was whiter than ever, his brows more intense.

  “Clem was talking about feeding the world.”

  William glanced from under his eyebrows and Clem suddenly heard the jingling in his own pockets and took his hands out of them.

  “You are in the food business, aren’t you?” William asked without interest.

  “Yes,” Clem replied. “I’ve just opened a big new market at Dayton, Ohio.”

  “What has that to do with the world?”

  “Just a beginning,” Clem said without humility. He was surprised to find that he rather enjoyed talking with William. There was an edge to it. Walking briskly across the floor he took the other Jacobean chair on the opposite side of the window and turning sidewise began to talk with sudden fluency.

  “I began in the simplest sort of way—with a grocery store, in fact, in a small town, New Point, Ohio. It’s still the home base. I have no family, you know—Boxer Rebellion put an end to that.”

  “My father told me,” William said.

  “Yes, well, we don’t have to remember the past. But the way we had to live when I was a kid I suppose made me awful interested in food. Can’t eat much myself—I have nervous indigestion. All that wonderful stuff on the table there—I won’t hardly touch it. A cup of tea maybe and a little chicken. Bread poisons me, though I make the finest bread. Say, William, do you remember Chinese bread?”

  “My mother never let us eat Chinese things.”

  “Well, we were thankful for that bread at our house. It was a lot easier to take than starvation. I learned what good bread was. I might send you a few loaves of my product.”

  William was too shocked to thank him. “Is your business successful?” he asked coldly. The fellow looked like a country storekeeper.

  “I undersell every staple,” Clem said with pride. “I watch the surplus everywhere in the country. Got twenty men doing just that. Some day I’ll be watching world surpluses. Then I’ll be doing what I mean to do.”

  “You actually plan to establish a world food monopoly?” William for the first time in days looked interested.

  “Hell no!” Clem said cheerfully. “I’m not interested in monopolies. I’m interested in getting people fed. If they can’t pay for it I give it to them.”

  “You mean you give food to people?” William’s voice was unbelieving.

  “Why not, if they’re hungry?”

  “But you can’t stay in business that way.”

  Clem wriggled in the huge chair, scratched one cheek and then the other with one hand, and then pulled the short hair over his right ear and rubbed both knees. “I don’t know why,” he said humbly “but I’m a millionaire already—or almost.”

  Candace, seated upon one of the gilt dining chairs, suddenly began to laugh and William turned upon her.

  “Why do you laugh, Candace?”

  She buried her face in her hands and shook her head, still laughing. What had made her laugh was the look on William’s face but she could not tell him. “It’s so funny,” she gasped, her face still in her hands. “It’s so funny to get rich giving food away.”

  “Nonsense,” William said. “Of course he doesn’t give it all away.”

  “But to give any of it away,” she murmured. She found her handkerchief and wiped her eyes. Then she caught Clem grinning at her wryly.

  “It is funny,” he agreed. “It’s darned funny. I can’t explain it. There’s some sort of magic hidden in the golden rule—I can’t explain it any other way.”

  Upon this conversation, which had become entirely repulsive to William, Mrs. Lane now entered, followed by Jeremy and Ruth. Behind them came Henrietta with her hat on, ready for the train. William rose. “Let us take our places,” he said quietly. “Mother, please sit at my right. Ruth at my left, Jeremy at Candace’s right and Henrietta next. Your place, Clem.”

  When they were all seated William lifted his head and fixed his eyes on a point above Candace’s head at the end of the long lace-spread table. She saw that there was something he wanted to say to them.

  “It has not been our habit in this house to have grace before meals. Perhaps we have grown careless. But from this day on, in memory of my father. “I will say grace at meals in my house.”

  His eyes fell and for an instant Candace’s caught them. He saw love and pity rush into tears and he bent his head to avoid the sight.

  “Dear William,” his mother whispered, and put out her hand to him. But he did not pause to look at Candace or touch his mother’s hand. He bent his head and began to pray in a tense low voice:

  “Our Father, for the food that Thou hast given us, receive our thanks. Bless this food to our use and us to Thy Kingdom, Amen.”

  It was the grace that his father had used throughout the years of his missionary life.

  8

  CLEM BIDED HIS TIME. His faith, fulfilling itself by his steady success, was only embattled when he met with opposition. He was amazed when he discovered those who would have laughed at him had he failed but who were angered by him when he did not fail, and who attacked him finally for undermining their own markets. These were the consolidated groceries and food companies, the chain stores which were beginning to form a net over the whole country. They declared that they, too, were selling to the people cheap and good food, and they began their warfare by insidious advertising against Clem’s wares, saying that cheap surplus foods were not guaranteed foods and carried in them the germs of disease and decay. Buy only our packaged foods, they screamed, buy foods only with our seal upon them.

  “We must get some big lawyers,” Bump told Clem. During the war he had served as a food expert, and had won a medal for saving the nation millions of dollars in food, buying where experience with Clem had taught him to buy and buying, too, with Clem’s help. Somewhat reluctantly, when the war was over, he had married a German girl, Frieda Altmann, with whom he had fallen in love while he was overseas and they now had two fat children who looked, he often felt, entirely German. Nevertheless his Frieda was good and a fine cook and she adored Clem, whom she cons
idered a god, and she was humble before Henrietta, whom she loved with enthusiasm. But Frieda did all things with enthusiasm.

  Clem had only to be driven into a corner to become cool and aggressive. He hired two clever lawyers, Beltham and Black of Dayton, and entered into the private war which was to last as long as he lived.

  For Clem himself the world war had been an atavism which could not be understood. Europe he knew little and his inclination was to think of it as a small and diverting piece of ground which included England. He had run over there, as he put it, the summer before the war, Henrietta, of course going with him. He still refused to allow an ocean between them. A few weeks in England had sufficed.

  “Can’t tell these people anything,” he said to Henrietta. “They think I have only one idea. Well, that’s all I need. If an idea is big enough a man don’t need but one.”

  He surveyed the tidy farms and smooth green hills of England with something like cynicism. “I seem to see India behind all this,” he said. “I see Egypt and the Middle East. Sometime we got to go and take a look at India, hon, and see the green hills there and the fat people. All these beef roasts and steaks and legs of mutton!”

  In Europe he looked for hunger and found little. Instead he found prudence and habitual scarcity. The French threw nothing away and this he approved. A fish head belonged on the dish and not in the garbage can.

  “There is no sweeter meat than the cheeks of a carp,” Mrs. Fong used to tell him in Peking and he had never forgotten.

  The farms in Denmark were Clem’s delight. He visited them without introduction, appearing at a barn door while Henrietta lingered in the road outside. Sometimes he called her, sometimes he did not. One morning he beckoned to her fiercely.

  “Come here, hon—this fellow has an idea!”

  She looked into the wide barn door and there in the shadowy depths she saw the Danish farmer painting the walls. Pots of paint, green and sky blue, stood on the floor of beaten earth and with a large brush, not of a housepainter but of an artist, the farmer was painting the walls with scenes of green meadows and running water under blue skies.