“I don’t think I can go,” he replied. “I don’t think I ought to go. The Chinese Christians will expect me to stay. The Boxers will be against them as well as us, if things break loose. Of course the Legation soldiers will protect us, but I don’t want you and the children to face a siege, if it comes to that. But it would not look well for me to run. It would not be possible for my conscience. My duty to God comes first.”
The children fell into silence. By the patient firmness with which their father spoke they understood that he was determined to go through an argument with their mother. Usually she won, but when their father brought God into the conversation this early, they guessed the end. Alone he might lose, but under that divine leadership, he would prevail even against her.
Yet only a few days later Mrs. Lane was ready to go and at once. It was Saturday and Dr. Lane was working on his usual Sunday sermon. He had chosen a text strangely inept for the times. “The wicked flee when no man pursueth,” and he was weaving his thoughts, divinely directed, about the profound meaning hidden in these words, when he heard Mrs. Lane’s voice crying aloud his name. Almost immediately the door of his study opened, and he saw William. The boy’s garments were covered with dust, his face was ashen and there was a cut on his forehead. He stood there speechless.
Dr. Lane cried out, rising from his chair. “William! What has happened to you?”
William’s lips moved. “The — the people — a mob—”
“What?” Dr. Lane exclaimed. He hurried into the hall and there found his wife sitting upon one of the carved Chinese chairs, looking faint.
“Helen, what—”
“There was a mob!” she cried. “I thought we couldn’t get away. If it hadn’t been for Lao Li — William and I crowded into the same riksha.”
“Where was this?” Dr. Lane broke in.
“At that tailor shop on Hatamen Street, where I always go for William’s clothes. He needs a new suit—”
“What did William do?” Dr. Lane demanded. Instinctively he knew that someone had done something. Mobs did not gather without cause.
Mrs. Lane sobbed. “Nothing — I don’t know! There was a man sleeping against his riksha when we came out — a beggar. William pushed him with his foot; he didn’t kick him. The people sprang at us from every door. Oh, Henry, I want to get right out of here — all of us!”
He soothed her gently, directing Wang meanwhile to make some tea. “Helen, I quite agree that you should go. The people are very touchy. Don’t go out again, my dear. There might be a real incident.”
“It was an incident!” she insisted. “If you’d seen their frightful faces — where’s William? Henry, you must find William! They pushed him down into the dust, and if Lao Li hadn’t helped him, they would have trampled him to death.”
“Go into the living room and wait for your tea,” Dr. Lane said. He was very much disturbed, but it would not do to show it. He had told William, how often, never to touch a Chinese. They considered it an indignity to be touched. Once, he remembered, in a New Year’s crowd upon the street when he had taken the children out to see the sights, William in six-year-old impatience had pulled the queue of a tall old gentleman standing in front of him, and the man had turned on them in a fury. Dr. Lane had been compelled to apologize again and again, and only William’s youth had saved them from serious trouble.
He searched for William and found him upstairs in his room, changing his clothes. He had put a bit of gauze and some sticking plaster on his forehead.
“Did you disinfect that cut?” Dr. Lane asked.
“Yes, sir, thoroughly,” William said.
The boy’s face was still white, Dr. Lane noticed. “You had better go downstairs and have some tea with your mother. You look rather shaken.”
“I do feel so, a bit.”
“Never touch a Chinese. Do you remember?” Dr. Lane said with unusual sternness.
“It was a beggar, leaning against the riksha.”
“Never mind who he is or what he is doing. Never touch a Chinese!” Dr. Lane repeated more loudly.
“Yes, sir.”
William turned his back on his father and began tying a fresh tie. His hands were trembling and he stood so that his father could not see him. The people had turned on him, ignorant common people who did not know his name! He, American and white, the son of privilege, had been beset by poor and filthy people. He would never feel safe again. He wanted to get away from Peking, from China, from these hordes of people—
“You might have been killed,” his father said.
William could not deny it. It was true. He might have been trampled upon by vile bare feet. Lao Li had lifted him up and shielded him until he could get to the riksha where his mother was shrieking. They had clung together in the riksha while Lao Li, bending his head, butted his way through the crowd and William had stared out at the angry people, pressing against the wheels. He would never forget the faces, never as long as he lived.
The next week with his mother and sisters he left Peking.
The northern spring drew on. The duststorms subsided, the willow trees grew green and the peach trees bloomed. The festival of Clear Spring was observed with the usual joy and freedom. People strolled along the streets, the men carrying bird cages and the women their children, and over the doorways of houses were hung the mingled branches of willow green and peach pink. The Imperial Court made great holiday of the feast and the Old Empress ordered special theatricals. Outwardly the city was as calm, as stable, as it had been for hundreds of years, and yet every Chinese past childhood knew that it was not so.
The Empress had expressed her feelings in December, when the two German missionaries had been killed in the province of Shantung. The foreign governments had demanded that the provincial governor, Yu Hsien, be removed. The palace news trickled through the city, through eunuchs and servants. Everybody heard that the Old Buddha, as they called the Empress, had at first refused to withdraw Yu Hsien. Her ministers had surrounded her, telling her the size of the foreign guns and the number of soldiers already in the foreign legations. She would not believe that foreigners could prevail against her, but she had been compelled by her ministers. Yet when she had withdrawn Yu Hsien and had appointed Yuan Shih K’ai in his place, as her ministers had recommended, she had given the huge inner province of Shansi to Yu Hsien. In a rage she had set him higher than before, and the people had laughed in rueful admiration. “Our Old Buddha,” they told each other, “our Old Buddha always has her way. She is a woman as well as ruler.” They were proud of her, though they hated her.
The spring had never been more beautiful. The Americans in the city were reassured by the warmth of the sun, by the blossoming fruit trees, by the amiability of the crowds upon the streets. The guards sent the year before to strengthen the legations had been withdrawn again, and the murder of the missionaries had been paid for. Shansi was far enough away so that Yu Hsien, though as high a governor as before, seemed banished, and life in the wide streets went on as usual.
Nevertheless the consuls had warned all Westerners to stay off the streets during the festival, lest some brawl arise which might make cause for fresh trouble. But the day passed in peace, and in the afternoon the foreigners came out of their compounds and walked about. In the morning the farmers had brought in fresh young greens from outside the city, turnips and radishes and onions and garlic from their new fields, and the people, surfeited with the bread and sweet potatoes of winter, ate to renew their blood. The hundreds of the poor who could not buy went outside the city gates to dig the sweet clover and shepherd’s purse to roll in their sheets of baked bread. Children played in the sunshine beside their mothers, shedding their padded coats and running about barebacked.