She did not offer it. She rose and clasped her hands and looked down at him.
“For why you can’t do it, neither,” she said. “It would break his heart to think we had doubted.”
“It’s not doubt — it’s just wanting proof,” he insisted.
“But asking God for proof is doubt, my dearie,” she said quickly. “Papa has explained that to us, hasn’t he? Don’t you remember, Clem?”
He did remember. His father, at the long family prayers held morning and evening every day, had taught them in his eager careful way, dwelling upon each detail of God’s mercy to them, that to ask God to prove Himself was to court Satan. Doubt was the dust Satan cast to blind the eyes of man.
“And besides,” his mother was saying, “I love Papa too much to hurt him, and you must love him, too, Clem. He hasn’t anybody in the world but us, and really nobody but you and me, for the children are so little. He has to believe in our faith, to keep him strong. And Papa is so good, Clem. He’s the best man I ever saw. He’s like Jesus. He never thinks of himself. He thinks of everybody else.”
It was true. Though sometimes he hated the unselfishness of his father, though his father’s humility made him burn with shame, he knew these were but aspects of a goodness so pure that it could not be defiled. He yielded to its truth and sighed. Then he rose from the stool and looked toward the table.
“Is Papa home?”
“No — not yet. He went down to preach in the market place.”
Paul Miller had left the market place where he had gone to preach the saving grace of Jesus, for the people were busy and indifferent. On the way home he met Dr. Lane, returning from his Wednesday afternoon catechism class in the church. Ordinarily the tall handsome missionary, settled comfortably in a riksha, would have passed the short figure plodding through the dust with no more than a friendly, though somewhat embarrassed, nod. Today, however, he stopped the riksha. “Miller, may I have a word with you?”
“Certainly, Brother Lane.”
Henry Lane winced at the title. Brother he was, of course, spiritually, to all mankind, for he hoped he was a true Christian. But to hear it shouted thus cheerfully in the streets by a white man who wore patched garments was not pleasant. He did not encourage his wife or his son when they criticized the Faith Mission family. Indeed, he reminded them that Christ could be preached in many ways. Now, however, he had to conceal feelings that he was too honest to deny to himself were much like theirs. It was humiliating to the foreign community of Peking to have the Millers there. It was even worse that they were missionaries of a sort, preaching at least the same Saviour. The Faith Mission family had caused wonder and questions even in his own well-established church.
On the street Chinese began to gather about the two Americans, the immediate crowd that seemed to spring from the very dust. Henry Lane took it for granted that no Chinese spoke English and ignored them.
“Miller, it occurs to me that I ought to warn you that there is very likely to be trouble here against foreigners. I don’t like the talk I hear.”
He glanced at the crowd. In the pale and golden twilight the faces were bemused with their usual quiet curiosity.
“What have you heard, Brother Lane?” Paul Miller asked. He rested his hands on the fender of the riksha, and admired, as he had before, the delicate spirituality of the elder man’s looks. It did not occur to him to envy the good black broadcloth of the missionary’s garments or the whiteness of his starched collar and the satin of his cravat. Dr. Lane lowered his voice.
“It is reported to me by one of my vestrymen, whose brother is a minister at the Imperial Court, that the Empress Dowager is inclined to favor the Boxers. She viewed personally today an exhibition of their nonsensical pretensions of inviolability to bullet wounds and bayonet thrusts. That is all she fears — our foreign armies. If she is convinced that these rascals are immune to our weapons she may actually encourage them to drive us all out by force. You must think of your family, Miller.”
“What of yours, Brother Lane?”
“I shall send them to Shanghai. Our warships are there,” Henry Lane replied.
Paul Miller took his hands from the polished wooden fender.
He looked at the watching Chinese faces, pale in the growing dusk. “I put my faith in God and not in warships,” he said simply.
Henry Lane, good Christian though he was, felt his heart sting. “It is my duty to warn you.”
“Thank you, Brother.”
“Good night,” Henry Lane said and motioned to the riksha puller to move on.
Paul Miller stood ankle deep in the spring dust and watched the riksha whirl away. His face was square and thin, and his skin was still pink and white, although it had been twenty years since first he heard the call of God at a camp meeting in Pennsylvania, and leaving his father’s farm, to the consternation of that old man, had gone to China, as the only heathen land of which he had heard. Faith had provided the meager means for himself and Mary to cross the continent in a tourist coach, and the Pacific by steerage. Neither had been home since. He did not feel it fair to ask God for furloughs, although other missionaries took them every seven years. He was living by faith.
His mouth trembled and his eyes smarted. Until now he had never faced the possibility of death. They had been hungry often and sometimes sick, and the sorrow over Artie continued in him, though he tried not to think about it. But death at the hands of cruel men, his Mary and his little ones, this he had not dreamed of, even in the nights when Satan tempted him with doubt and with homesickness for the sweet freshness of the farm life he had long ago lived. He was often homesick, but he no longer told Mary. At first they had cried themselves to sleep with homesickness, he a man grown. His mother had written to him now and again until she died, ten years ago, but he had never had a letter from his father. He did not even know if he lived.
There in the darkening Chinese street, amid the dim lights of oil lanterns and candles of cows’ fat, listening to the sounds of coming night, mothers calling their children in from the streets, a sick child crying, an angry quarrel somewhere, the slam of wooden doors sliding into place in front of shops, a wailing two-stringed violin, the howl of the rising night wind, he was overcome with terror. He was a stranger and in a strange land. Whither could he and his little family flee? He thought of his wife’s tender looks, the gentleness of the two pale little girls, his son’s growing manhood. These were all he had, given him by God, and what did they have? He had robbed them of their birthright upon the farm, the safety of their own kind about them, a roof secure above their humble heads. If evil men killed these for whom he was responsible he could believe no more in God. In the darkness he stretched his hands toward heaven. The cold and twinkling stars were above him. There was no moon. None could see him, and he fell upon his knees, even here in the street, and he cried out to God. Then clenching his hands upon his bosom he lifted his face up and shut his eyes against the laughing stars.
“Oh, God,” he whispered. “Thou who at this moment maybe art looking down upon my dear old home, which I left, dear God, thinking it was what Thou wanted. Thou canst see into all hearts and knowest whether it is true that evil men are seeking our lives. Humbly I say I have noticed some difference myself in the Chinese in the last months. Our landlord wants us to move without reason. I have kept him paid up, though it has been hard to find the money always on time. But Thou dost provide. Save our lives and keep us safe, I now pray, and especially those dear ones whom Thou has given me, and yet I say Thy will be done, and I will not love them above Thee.”