He was silent during the meager breakfast, silent when his father prayed longer than usual. The food was hot. They were out of fuel but he had torn some laths from a plaster wall. Their landlord did not come near them now. They were only grateful that he did not turn them into the streets.
After breakfast Clem waited for his father to go into the inner room and then he got the ragged blue cotton Chinese garments and put them on where the girls could not see him and know that he was going out. Not bidding even his mother good-by, waiting until she was in the small kitchen, he climbed the wall so that he would not leave the gate open and dropped into the alleyway.
Where in all the vast enemy city should he go for food? He dared not go to Mr. Fong. There was nowhere to go indeed except to Mr. Lane, alone in the compound. He had given them food before and he would give again, and Clem did not mind going now that William was not there. So by alleyways and back streets, all empty, he crept through the city toward the compound. None of the compounds were in the Legation Quarter, but this one was nearer than the others.
The gate was locked when he came and he pounded on it softly with his fists. A small square opened above him and the gateman’s face looked out. When he saw the foreign boy, he drew back the bar and let him in.
“Is the Teacher at home?” Clem asked safely inside.
“He is always at home now,” the gateman replied. “What is your business?”
“I have something to ask,” Clem said.
In usual times the gateman would have refused him, as Clem well knew, but now he refused no white face. These foreigners were all in piteous danger and he was a fool to stay by his own white master, but still he did. He had no wife or child and there was only his own life, which was worth little. Thus he plodded ahead of Clem to the big square house and knocked at the front door. It was opened by Dr. Lane himself, who was surprised to see a foreign boy.
“Do I know you?” he asked.
“I don’t think so,” Clem replied. “But I know you, sir. I am Clem Miller.”
“Oh yes,” Dr. Lane said vaguely. “The Millers — I know your father. Come in. You shouldn’t be out on the streets.”
“My father doesn’t know that I am,” Clem replied. He stepped into the house. It looked bare and cool.
“My family is in Shanghai,” Dr. Lane said. “I’m camping out. Did you know my son William? Sit down.”
“I’ve seen him,” Clem said with caution. He sat down on the edge of a carved chair.
Dr. Lane continued to look at him with sad dark eyes. He had a kind face except that it looked as though he were not listening.
“What did you come for?” he asked in a gentle voice.
“We have no food,” Clem said simply. The blood rushed into his pale face. “I know you have helped us before, Dr. Lane. I wouldn’t have come if I had known where else to go.”
“That is quite all right,” Dr. Lane said. “I’ll be glad—”
Clem interrupted him. “One more thing, Dr. Lane. I don’t consider that when I ask you for food it’s God’s providing. I know it isn’t. I don’t think like my father on that. I wouldn’t come just for myself, either. But there’s my mother and my two sisters.”
“That’s all right,” Dr. Lane said. “I have more food than I need. A good many tins of stuff — we had just got up an order from Tientsin before the railroad was cut.”
The house was dusty, Clem saw, and the kitchen was empty. Dr. Lane seemed helpless. “I don’t know just where things are. The cook left yesterday. He was the last one. I can’t blame them. It’s very dangerous to stay.”
“Why didn’t you go with William?” Clem asked.
Dr. Lane was still searching. “Here’s a basket. I didn’t go because of my parish. The Chinese Christians are having a time of sore trial. I can’t do much for them except just stay. Here are some tins of milk and some meat — potted ham, I believe.”
He filled the basket and put a kitchen towel over it. “Better not carry the tins in the open. They might tempt someone. I wish I could send you home in the riksha but of course the puller has gone — a faithful fellow, too. Lao Li was his name. There’s only the gate keeper.”
He was leading the way to the door. “You’d better get home as fast as you can. Tell your father that he must get your family into the Legation Quarter if any trouble comes. We’ll have to stick together. I suppose our governments will send soldiers to rescue us. They may be on the way.”
“I’m afraid my father won’t go into the Legation,” Clem said. To explain that his father would consider such retreat a total loss of faith, might hurt Dr. Lane’s feelings.
But Dr. Lane knew. “Ah,” he said, “it takes more courage than I have for such faith. For myself, I can — but not for my son.”
They were at the door now and the old gateman was waiting.
“Good-by, Clem,” Dr. Lane said.
“Good-by, sir.”
The gateman stared at the basket, and he went into his little room and brought out some old shoes and put them on top of the towel. “Let it seem rubbish,” he said, “otherwise you will be robbed.”
The gate shut behind Clem and he was alone in the street, the basket heavy upon his arm. It was midmorning, and the sun was beginning to be hot. There were a few people about now, all men, and he saw they were soldiers, wearing the baggy brightly colored uniform of the Imperial Palace. He tried to escape their notice, and had succeeded, he thought, for their officer was laughing and joking and did not notice him. They were looking at a foreign gun the officer held. Then they did see him and they started after him. He began to run. On another day, at another hour, he might have shown better sense by stopping to talk with them in their own tongue. Now he wanted only to keep his face hidden from them, his face and his pale foreign eyes. He ran out of the alleyways into Hatamen Street, the eastern boundary of the Legation. Perhaps he could get into the Legation gate. He turned and was stopped by a small procession of two sedan chairs and their outriders. In the sedans he looked into two foreign faces, arrogant, severe, bearded faces he had never seen before. Before he could slip away into an alley again, he was caught between the Chinese soldiers and the foreigners in their sedans. The soldiers blocked the street so that the bearers were forced to set the sedans down.
Now the curtain of the first sedan lifted and the foreigner put out his head and shouted fiercely to the soldiers, “Out of the way! I am Von Ketteler, the German Ambassador, and I go for audience with the Empress!”
The second sedan opened and he heard a guttural warning. It came too late. The Chinese officer raised his foreign gun and leveled it at the German. Clem saw a spit of fire and the Ambassador crumpled, dead. Clem crawled behind the sedan, and clutching his basket, he hurried as fast as he could from the dreadful spot.
Homeward he ran through streets now filling with people. It was hopeless to escape them. Hands reached out and tore away the coverings of the basket and revealed the food. Dirty hands fought for the tins and emptied the basket in an instant, and then he felt hands laid upon him.
“A foreigner, a foreign devil—” he heard voices screaming at the sight of his face. He burrowed among legs and forced his way through, agile with terror, and hid himself inside an open gate, looking this way and that until he saw a woman’s angry face at a window and then he darted out again. Now he was near home and the crowd was surging in the opposite direction to see the murdered German. He was safe for a moment but what would he do without the food? He began to sob and tried to stop because his sobs shook him so he could not run, and then he had no breath to run and so he walked, limping and gasping, down the hutung to the small gate. He would have to knock; he was too weary to try to climb the wall. Ah, the gate was open! He stopped, bewildered, and then saw something bright in the dust of the threshold at his feet. It was blood, brightly red, curling at the edges in the dust. A new more desperate terror fell upon him. He could not think. He ran through the gate and into the meager courtyard. The paper-latticed doors of the little central room were swinging to and fro, and he pushed his way through them.