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 given 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.