Thank You, Mr. Moto

by John P. Marquand

  “It is all right, Excellency,” the other said to me. “We have been told what to do with the car. Will you please all to get down?” He walked with me politely up to my front gate and beat the iron ring down hard. My own gatekeeper opened it just as he had on a hundred nights before, but for once I think he was surprised to see me—surprised and almost agitated.

  “Master,” he began and stammered, “we did not expect you, Master.”

  I remembered the last time I had seen him, when Wu Lo Feng and his men were there, and I was surprised that he was still alive.

  “There is no one here besides you, of course,” I said.

  His answer was prompt and confusing.

  “Oh no,” my doorman answered. “It is not so. Everyone is back, but it is regrettable. I do not think they expect the master. I shall tell them, please.”

  “You shall tell them nothing. You shall stay here,” I said, and Eleanor Joyce and I walked past him, with Prince Tung and Mr. Pu following just behind us. The gatekeeper still stared at me. His glazed eyes reminded me that I was still holding the pistol in my hand and that I probably was a shocking sight, but there was more than amazement in his stare. The man was acutely embarrassed.

  “I shall go to tell them,” he repeated.

  “No,” I told him again, “you will stay right here.”

  I was ready to expect something strange when we walked around the spirit screen and through my little garden and through the pavilion where I ate into the second courtyard on which my library and my bedroom faced, but I was not ready for what I saw.

  The library was brilliantly lighted. My number one boy Yao was inside and also my cook and my assistant cook, my ricksha boy and my yard man. They were wrapping all my possessions into cloth bundles, my clothes, my books, my bric-a-brac and bedding. Just before Yao saw me he was examining my dinner jacket. When he saw me he let it fall to the floor. I understood what he was doing and he knew I understood. Through one of those channels of intelligence so peculiar to a Chinese servant, Yao must have learned what had happened to me. He must have been very certain that I would never come back. He was taking the occasion to remove my personal effects; and a man of another race might have been confused on being discovered. I never admired Yao as much as I did at that crisis. We gazed at each other quite calmly over the bundles of my clothes.

  “Your mother in the country is better, I suppose,” I said.

  “Thank you for your graciousness in asking,” Yao answered. “It is true that my mother has fortunately recovered her health and I returned instantly to be of service as always to my master. We have all returned. We were alarmed at news that there might be some trouble. We have been hastening to pack the master’s possessions, to convey them to a place of safety.”

  We both knew that there was more to it than that. I was disappointed in him because I would have staked my reputation that he was a faithful servant.

  “So you thought I was dead,” I said.

  And then his composure left him. I shall always remember his explanation because it was logical, like so much of the Chinese mind.

  “Master,” said Yao, and I knew by his tone that he was genuinely hurt, “surely the master knows that I should be proud to serve him to the death while he was alive. Surely the master would not have objected to my disposing of these things. The clothing would have been valuable to no one else. The other effects I should have saved of course. Surely the master understands me.”

  I understood him. I felt kindly toward him again. As a matter of fact, he was absolutely right. There would have been no use for my things after I was dead. I should have been pleased to have allowed him to make any use of them which he might have seen fit. Furthermore, I am convinced that he would have served me without pay indefinitely, as so many Chinese servants have served their European masters, as long as I was alive. It still seems to me that Yao was a perfect servant, and that I shall never know a better. I still do not know why that incident made a disagreeable impression upon me. A day ago I should have accepted it all with tolerant amusement, but now I was not entirely amused. It may have been because I was face to face with a posthumous sort of reality.

  “I understand you,” I said. “You would have been welcome to everything, but now of course everything must be put back. And you forget yourselves. I have guests here who are tired.”

  Yao understood me at once. He shouted to the other servants.

  “What are you staring, at, you clodhoppers?” he shouted. “Do you not see the master is back with guests? Set this place to rights. Go to your places and prepare him food. Do you not see the master is fatigued? Bring the whiskey and soda. Bring tea. Place a chair for the lady. If the master will come with me I shall get him clean clothing. I shall bring the lady warm water.”

  “Yao will look after you,” I said to Eleanor Joyce, “if you will go to my room. Yao is an excellent servant. We shall have something to eat in a little while. I am sure he will make you comfortable.”

  Eleanor Joyce looked at me and smiled. “Yes, I’m sure he will,” she said. “Thank you. You’ve been very kind to-night. I’ve always known that you were kind.”

  I have never known that my servants could move so rapidly and so efficiently. The cook and his assistant had disappeared into the kitchen. The ricksha boy and the yard boy were putting back my books and ornaments. Yao was bringing whiskey and soda bottles. In almost the same moment, so fast did everything seem to move, he was offering tea to Prince Tung and Mr. Pu. He was bringing us towels soaked in hot water. He was helping me into a new coat. The old life which I had known and loved was coming back around me, but somehow it was not the same. Somehow I knew that it would never be the same again. I felt as I had not felt for years, that I was a stranger in my own house, that I was a member of a different race, unable to cope with the suavity around me, unable to trust anyone fully, unable to rely on the loyalty of anyone except perhaps Prince Tung. I knew that I must even distrust Prince Tung himself within limits. Prince Tung had seated himself in one of my chairs and was sipping his tea while he surveyed the disorder of the room. Mr. Pu had laid down his bundle of pictures and was bowing to me ingratiatingly. He knew that I recognized all his deviousness, but we were passing it over as we passed over anything that was unpleasant, as we passed over filth and corruption and the hideousness of beggars and starvation and human degradation.

  “The tea is excellent,” said Prince Tung, “and very refreshing.” And he glanced toward Mr. Pu. “I think,” he added, “now that this fellow has brought the pictures here we may have no further use for him. I suggest your servants beat him and throw him in the street.”

  Mr. Pu gave a cry of pain and astonishment. “Excellency,” he cried, “is it fitting to say such things? When I have done nothing but serve you, when I have risked my life from devotion? Besides Mr. Nelson has promised to give me money. I know that I may rely on his integrity. Besides, if I am placed in the streets there may be trouble. I have done all this solely on behalf of Your Excellency.” The man was a snake in the grass and he knew I knew it. I reflected at the same time that there must be millions like him. In a land where existence was so difficult, where all things were so unstable, there would be a million like Mr. Pu.

  “You will be taken care of,” I said. “Go out to the kitchen and tell them to give you food and give you some place to sleep. I will speak to you in the morning.” Mr. Pu clasped his hands in front of him and bowed, as he might have bowed to a holy man.

  “The master is gracious,” he said. “I shall always be his grateful slave.”

  “Go,” I said. And Mr. Pu disappeared into the courtyard.

  Prince Tung smiled faintly. I turned to a low table where the whiskey and soda stood and I heard his voice above the soda water as I poured it into the glass.

  “My country,” said Prince Tung, “is an interesting country. Do you not agree with me?”

  “Yes,” I said politely. The whiskey made me feel better. I had never needed a d
rink so much. “Your country will always be the most interesting country in the world.”

  “Yes,” said Prince Tung complacently, “and the most advanced, and the most intelligent, I think.”

  “Too intelligent,” I said. Prince Tung smiled again.

  “Exactly,” he agreed. “It is acute of you to understand. If you had come here as a younger man and had been given the proper teachers I think you might have been entirely sympathetic. You are quite right. We are too intelligent. We have forgotten nearly all that you are learning now.”

  “Also,” I said rather rudely, “you are the most insufferably conceited people in the world.”

  “Are we?” said Prince Tung. “I do not entirely understand you. We are certainly the most logical. I doubt if any one of my countrymen would have made such an unconsidered and foolish gesture as your countrywoman did to-night when she snatched the pistol from an armed man’s belt. It was an incongruous gesture and one which had no reason to succeed. It is such sudden insane bursts of your countrymen which make it so difficult for us to understand you.”

  “If she hadn’t done it, we wouldn’t be here now,” I said.

  “That is true,” Prince Tung agreed, “but then logically we have no right to be here at all. And there is another point,” Prince Tung looked at me accusingly. “You also disappointed and surprised me to-night. You also acted illogically, in a way which I cannot resolve. You, too, exhibited that strange lack of reasoning so inherent in your race. It is beyond me to understand how you can be a great people.”

  “And what was my fault?” I asked him.

  “Can you be serious in intimating that you do not understand?” Prince Tung demanded. “Yes, I believe you are serious, which is only the more confusing. Just before we left that room where we were imprisoned, you had an opportunity of performing an act which would have been highly useful to everyone. You had a weapon in your hand. Why did you not use the weapon? Any right-minded man would have done so. You should have killed Wu Lo Feng the moment before you left. He himself would have understood it perfectly. He certainly expected it.”

  The placid glance of Prince Tung was mildly accusing and mildly incredulous. More than that, I could interpret a polite contempt in the Prince’s look. I had fallen in his estimation. I had been tried and I had been found wanting. Although I argued the point with him, I knew there was no use. At least I had the sense not to put my defense on the grounds of humanity because I knew that such an explanation would have been beyond him.

  “I could not kill him. I had given him my promise to try to keep him alive,” I said. Prince Tung placed his hands squarely on his knees. His attitude was changing from contempt to charitable benevolence.

  “Surely,” he said slowly and politely, as though he were afraid that I might not follow him, “surely you should have known enough to have understood that such a promise has no validity, when counterbalanced by practical advantages. Wu Lo Feng himself placed no faith in such a promise. You should have killed him. You would have saved yourself difficulty and danger. By not doing so you have alarmed Wu Lo Feng.”

  “Alarmed him?” I echoed stupidly.

  “Yes. Alarmed him very much,” Prince Tung replied. “Now he knows that he cannot rely on you to be logical. He knows now that your existence is a perpetual source of danger to him. He knows that you will try to have him apprehended. Yes, he will certainly try to kill you, now that you have shown him mercy.”

  In spite of myself, Prince Tung’s ideas made me uneasy, because Prince Tung was nearly always right in his estimate of the characters of his countrymen. It occurred to me that Wu Lo Feng would be at large by this time, and that nothing would be very safe for me either in the city or beyond the walls. The impersonal, liquid voice of Prince Tung made me want to answer him sharply. I was learning, as every foreigner must sometimes learn, that I was incapable of coping with Oriental complexities. The vagaries of Prince Tung had delighted me once, but now they only added to my growing exasperation. My own deficiencies and his were clear enough that night to show me that a mutual understanding was nearly hopeless. An idea passing through the mind of Prince Tung warped itself like light travelling through a lens and dissipated itself mystically into a hundred lesser lights. Yet none of these disturbed the crystal clearness of his inner conceit and tranquillity. I was about to answer him when Eleanor Joyce returned. I was glad to speak to her instead because I knew that she would understand me.

  “Prince Tung and I were making some philosophic observations.” Eleanor Joyce had been looking at me in a friendly way but now her face clouded.

  “Haven’t you talked enough about that?” she asked. “Are you going right back where you started, Tom? Are you going to go back to talking?”

  “Perhaps you are right,” I said, “but I thought you might be interested. Prince Tung was saying that it was most irregular for you to snatch the pistol from Wu Lo Feng.”

  Then Eleanor Joyce smiled. She was beautiful when she smiled.

  “At any rate it made you do something,” she said. “It was probably the first time you were ever obliged to do anything definite for years. At any rate you might be obliged to me for that.”

  “I think perhaps I am obliged to you,” I said. “I’m not exactly sure.” I was not entirely sure of anything now that she was speaking, except that I was pleased that she was back. There had been a definite sort of antagonism between us, but now it had disappeared inexplicably. Without having any basis for my conviction, I knew that we were friends—very good friends, as Mr. Moto would have said. Nothing about her irritated me any more. I knew that I had changed in her estimation also and I was grateful for it.

  “And you did very well once you started doing something,” she said. “Once you did something besides talk and say that it doesn’t matter.” Her glance was steady and kindly but not her voice. “I respected you a good deal to-night, more than I’ve respected any man I think. You were brave to-night.” I tried to answer her carelessly as I would have a few hours before.

  “Anyone would have been brave under the circumstances,” I said. “Let’s forget about it if we can. It was rather a ridiculous piece of business.” Eleanor Joyce shook her head.

  “I don’t agree with you,” she said. “There are some things I shall be glad to remember always.” She smiled again. “You might give me a little of that whiskey, please,” she added.

  I still tried to answer her carelessly but the attempt was not a great success. Although I was under no illusions about myself, something had changed in me which I could not estimate and I wondered if she was speaking of that change.

  “Thanks,” I said. “You are kind to put it that way. But just remember that no one can be sublimated very long. Circumstances make one move in certain ways.”

  “But you moved circumstances,” she said. “We both did, didn’t we? At least I have taught you that.”

  “What?” I asked her.

  “At least I’ve taught you that it isn’t always worth while to drift. You can be as much of a fatalist as you like, but don’t forget there are times when you can do something. There are times when anyone can make fate change a little. Men have done a good deal to change the world. You and I have changed it a little. People may be altered by circumstances but they can alter circumstances too. At any rate I’ve taught you that.”

  I did not answer her. I had not thought of matters in exactly that light. I tried to cast back to possibilities, wondering what would have happened if she had done this and if I had done that. I tried to make an estimate, but all such speculation is useless. And then she spoke again.

  “Tom,” she said, “you’re not going to go back, are you?”

  “Back where?” I asked. I did not understand her.

  “Back to where you were when I found you,” she said. “Back to doing nothing but sitting, to talk amusingly, back to escaping from everything that is actual, back to being waited on and quarrelling with servants, back to being an expatriate. You are n
ot going to do it, are you, Tom? You’re better than that, you know.”

  I was neither indignant nor cynical when she asked me, although I should have been one or the other a little time before. I could see rather clearly what she meant, perhaps too clearly to be comfortable. I remembered what a businessman in Shanghai had told me once, who had considered himself an old China hand, although he had hardly moved beyond the limits of the Treaty Ports during his years in China. He said that his company had always discouraged its young men studying Chinese or learning Chinese customs because such interests invariably made men queer. I had been intensely amused at this theory at the time, I remember, but now I found myself wondering if perhaps he was not partly right. I wondered if I were growing queer. I wondered if anyone brought up in one tradition could ever assimilate another without losing a certain balance of integrity.

  “Tom,” she was saying, “you aren’t going to, are you, Tom?

  “I understand what you mean,” I said, “but my answer is, I don’t know. After all it’s rather hard to change. At any rate it doesn’t matter, does it?”

  “Doesn’t it?” she asked me, “I rather hoped it might.”

  I was relieved when Prince Tung interrupted us. Even if he had understood English I doubt if our conversation would have interested him.

  “I hope,” said Prince Tung, “that the young virgin is speaking about the pictures.”

  “What pictures?” I began. I had forgotten almost entirely about the scroll paintings. “No, she is not speaking of them.”

  “Then it is high time she should,” said Prince Tung. “They are here. I consider them a matter of very great importance.”

  “Prince Tung is asking you about the pictures,” I said to Eleanor Joyce.