Meantime there was nothing to do but rest, and they needed it. They had learned to sleep through gunfire, and to eat food when they could get it, and to simulate cheerfulness always. They had learned to face even the ghastly idea that the American battlefleet was at the bottom of Pearl Harbor. Did this mean that the great naval base was going to share the fate of Hongkong? Did it mean that the Japanese would be able to invade California? Radio JBW—“Hongkong calling!”—was still working, but it played mostly Christmas carols; the news, obviously, couldn’t be frank, since the enemy was listening in. People sat and guessed, and believed the best or the worst according to their temperaments. The son of Budd-Erling, considered an authority because of his father, could assure them that America was building many planes and would build whatever number it took; assuredly President Roosevelt would never make terms with a government of assassins.
Old Mr. Foo found this comforting, and said: “Tell them we got plenty men for fight; all we need is guns.”
“It is hard to get anything to China now,” Lanny replied. “The distances are such that it may be easier to take Japan than to get supplies to China.” That must have sounded like wild talk here in doomed and shell-torn Hongkong, but Mr. Foo was too polite to say so. Lanny added: “I have heard my father discuss it with air-force people, and that is what they were saying.”
They had to consider the problem of money for their trip. All three of the Americans had some with them, and American money would be good even in the interior of China; certainly in any town there would be someone to exchange it. Chinese money varied from district to district, and Mr. Foo suffered when he thought how they would be cheated. As for silver, it was so heavy that coolies would have been needed if they were going to carry enough. Mr. Foo would provide them with some gold, and he suggested that the ladies should carry it well hidden—they might be less apt to be robbed. He would pay the fisherman; this reliable “Party member” would receive one half in advance and the second half when he returned.
Lanny brought up the question of how to repay these sums. Mr. Foo said: “You know China War Relief Association in San Francisco?”
“No doubt I could find it,” replied the other.
“You pay them thousand dollar. You tell them it come from Mr. Foo Sung in Hongkong.”
“I’ll pay them two thousand, if I get there,” said the liberal-minded traveler—and Mr. Foo said that was quite all right with him. Lanny added: “I will get a receipt and mail it to you when the war is over. On the chance that I may not get back, I will give you an order on my father, who will surely make it good.” He wrote a draft on the President of the Budd-Erling Aircraft Corporation, Newcastle, Conn., instructing him to pay to Mr. Foo Sung, silk merchant of Hongkong, the sum of one thousand dollars. To the merchant he explained: “I won’t say what it is for, because that might get you into trouble if the Japs got hold of it. You can tell my father when you write.”
VI
That was all, and they had nothing more to do but wait, and offer prayers for fog to whatever gods they believed in. The sound of the guns seemed to be coming nearer, and they speculated about this. Mr. Foo told them that his household was in a panic and wanted to run away—but where to? He had his Number Two wife put on her best robe and brought her in to meet the foreigners; she was young, pretty, and painfully embarrassed, but maybe that was because of the guns. With her came three small children, and they, too, were shy, and hardly dared lift their eyes to the tall, white-faced and light-haired apparitions. Mr. Foo had two sons by the Number One wife; they were safe in Chungking, he thanked his gods.
Next for their entertainment, the host produced a copy of a four-page newspaper, printed in the Cantonese language. He read them the name, Tin Yin Yat Po; that meant, he said, the Heavenly Discourse Daily. It was Jap propaganda, and he amused them by translating some of it for them. Then he had one of his servants bring in the birds, for a Chinese with money to spare does not keep dogs—they eat too much in a crowded country; he keeps beautiful singing birds, and he will pay fancy prices for well-trained ones. Mr. Foo had half a dozen, one of them a small black creature called a myna; it was a talking bird, and had been taught a dozen or more Chinese words, and one American—or is it two?—“O.K.!” One bird was named “Voice of a Thousand Bells,” and the owner would take it out into the court when the sun shone, take the cover off the cage, and sit for a couple of hours listening to the song.
At the same time he would smoke his pipe and meditate upon the maxims of ancient Chinese sages. That had been his idea of a happy life, but now, he feared, it would soon be no more. The sages had had much to say about the uncertainties of fortune, and the need of the wise man to prepare himself to bear reverses. In proof thereof Mr. Foo quoted Liu Chi, who had been servant to the Emperor Hung Wu, first of the Ming dynasty six hundred years ago. When asked about the possibility of divination, this ancient one had replied:
“In the space of a day and night, the flower blooms and dies. Between spring and autumn, things perish and are renewed. Beneath the roaring cascade a deep pool is found. Dark valleys lie at the foot of high hills. These things you know; what more can divination tell you?”
Lanny’s comment was: “I suppose that is my answer to the question of whether I shall die in Hongkong.”
VII
They sat in this comfortable drawing-room, in which the sound of machine-gun fire had now been added to that of cannon. They had heard that it was in this part of the world that explosives had first been invented, but not applied to the killing of men. This, too, led to learned discourses; Lanny listened for a while, and then, when there came a lull, declared: “Mr. Foo, I have a special favor to ask of you. At first it may seem to be rude, but there is a reason for it.”
“I am sure you never rude, Mr. Budd,” said the old gentleman. “My house, all I have, is yours.”
“What I wish to ask is that you and Dr. Carroll leave me alone with Miss Creston for a while. The reason is that I wish to ask her to marry me.”
The effect of this was as if there had been a pin in the seat of the venerable Chinese; he leaped up. His race has been blessed with a keen sense of humor, and Lanny’s remark delighted him beyond measure. He clapped his hands together like a child; his rather wide mouth spread into a grin, and he cried: “Oh, good, good, good!” Apparently he couldn’t think of any other word. “Very good! Very good!” He turned his enraptured smile upon Laurel. “You take him! He very nice man. You take him quick! What you say?”
Laurel’s usually pale face had turned bright pink, and she was in a state of confusion; but still, she was a Baltimore lady, even on this under side of the earth. “He hasn’t asked me yet, Mr. Foo.”
This was more than a hint, and the delighted old man held up his finger to the woman doctor. “Come,” he said. “We go.”
Lanny sat gazing at his friend, and smiling almost as broadly as the Chinese. He did not speak, and finally she exclaimed: “Lanny, what a thing to do!”
“I waited,” he said. “But what chance did I have?”
She might have said: “You have it now,” but being a Baltimore lady, she said nothing. It was up to him.
He took her hand and led her to a sofa where he could sit by her side. Still wearing his teasing smile, he began: “We are going on a long journey, and it may sometimes be embarrassing. We may not be able to get separate rooms.”
“Is that the reason you want to marry me?”
“There are many reasons, and I am beginning with the more obvious. Time and again I have wanted to try séances with you, but always it would have been a scandal. Think how nice it will be to be able to experiment all we please!”
“Lanny, stop joking!”
“I am not joking at all; these are solid, sensible facts. Another is that I may really die in Hongkong, and you may survive. I have earned quite a lot of money at my profession, and while I have wasted much of it in fashionable living, I still have some left. My father has my stocks and bonds in
his safe-deposit box, and if anything happens to me I should like you to, own them.”
“You don’t wish to leave them to any member of your own family?”
“There is no member who needs them. All my various fathers and mothers have begged me to get married, and they will have no ground of complaint if I take their advice.”
“In order to talk about marriage, Lanny, it is necessary that something should be said about love.”
“I am coming to that, dear. I have quite a discourse in mind, and we don’t seem to have anything urgent to do until darkness falls.”
“I am ready to hear whatever you have to say.” Usually it was Laurel who did the teasing, and she could hardly complain if for once he had taken a leaf out of her book.
“I must have seemed a reluctant lover, and I beg you at the outset to believe that this has not been from choice.”
“I have understood your circumstances, Lanny; at least I have guessed at them. But I had no means of guessing which of your various lady friends you would choose if you were free to choose.”
“I admit that I have taken time to make up my mind; but then I had the time, and what was I to do with it? Speculation was all that was allowed me. I did that off and on, whenever I felt too lonely.”
“Tell me honestly: were you ever in love with Lizbeth?”
“The phrase ‘in love’ is a dubious one, and I find myself reluctant to use it. I was ‘in love’ when I was young, and I remember it vividly; it denotes a state of complete absorption in passion, a suspension of the judgment that can lead to blunders and cruel suffering. I don’t think that a man who has just passed his forty-first birthday ought to let himself be brought to that state—and still less ought he to desire it.”
“I see that you have indeed quite a discourse prepared.” Laurel had recovered her self-possession, and was perhaps ready to take the teasing role away from him.
“Believe me, I had at least a month on the Oriole in which to work it out in my mind. I could not say it, I could only think it, and I thought about every aspect of the problem.”
“Ever since you made up your mind that Lizbeth bored you too much for endurance?”
“Precisely then. You must understand that I was under heavy pressure to think about marrying Lizbeth. First my mother and all her friends, and then my father and my stepmother in Connecticut picked her as the proper person for me, and did everything they could to get us and keep us together. My father had business reasons, for Reverdy has become his heaviest stockholder. When I first met Lizbeth she seemed to me very sweet and lovely, and it was possible to think of making her happy. Apparently she fell in love with me from the first and never gave it up; in the end it became embarrassing, because I realized that she had no interest in my ideas.”
“Nor in any ideas,” said Laurel decisively.
“But there was a time, at first, when I thought: She is the only sort of woman I could marry without having to hide her. You understand, my job required me to be a near-Fascist and to go among people of that sort. If I married a woman of my own way of thinking, I should have to hide her, and that is a wretched way of life. I tried it once, and I know that it is hardly possible for either the man or the woman to be happy under such conditions.”
The lady from Baltimore was looking at him curiously. “You are apparently referring to something that I do not know about.”
“It is something I am starting to tell you about. A year or more after my divorce from Irma I was secretly married to a woman of the German underground. Nobody knows about it except my friends Rick and. Nina, in England. Her name was Trudi Schultz, and I had known her for years in Berlin; she and her husband were fighting the Nazis, and the Nazis got him. I helped Trudi to escape, and she lived in Paris. I used to visit her there clandestinely; it would have ruined both of us if our connection had been known. Finally she disappeared, and I learned that the Nazis had her in a château they had rented near Paris. I pretty nearly finished myself trying to save her, but I was too late.”
“What happened to her?”
“They spirited her away into Germany. Later on I was able to trick Rudi Hess into finding out for me that she had died in Dachau concentration camp. That was all over before I met you.”
“What a dreadful story! I begin to see why you do not talk lightly about a third marriage.”
“I could not bring myself to ask you to share such a life as I was obliged to live. It would have ruined my work to be known as the husband of ‘Mary Morrow,’ or even as her friend on any terms. You must have been annoyed by all the precautions I took, but I assure you they were necessary.”
“Let me tell you something, Lanny, before you go any further. I am not hinting for an answer, and you don’t have to say a word. I just want you to know that I have a guess concerning that trip to Poughkeepsie, and what it was about.”
“I told you that it was on picture business.”
“You did, and of course you have to go on saying it. However, I sat in a dark theater, looking at a very silly movie, and I thought: He isn’t going off to sell pictures just a day or two before he leaves on a dangerous mission. There is only one man in this part of the country important enough for him to be visiting; but of course I have to pretend that I haven’t guessed. Please understand that I have never opened my lips on the subject to any person but you, and I never shall.”
“Let’s leave it there,” he said, “and come back to the subject of love.”
VIII
Laurel Creston could have guessed the greater part of that “discourse” which he had prepared in his mind, but no woman wants to guess it, she wants to hear it, and she is never bored by it—at least, not if it is the right man speaking.
“I have had five love affairs in my life,” he told her, “and some day I will tell you about them. Two of the women died, and the other three left me for what they thought was a higher destiny; one became a stage star, and the others became countesses; I couldn’t have helped any of them on their chosen paths. From the two real and unselfish loves that I enjoyed I learned a lot, and you may have the benefit of my knowledge if you wish. It may be useful to you as a novelist, if not as a wife.”
“By all means tell me,” she responded.
“I don’t think of love, as a devouring flame or anything of that extravagant sort. It may be that, but I don’t want any of it. I think of it as a partnership in some worth-while undertaking, and I believe that the basis of it is honesty and good faith, and mutuality of interests, or at any rate, respect for each other’s interests, whatever they may be. I think that love can be made, in much the same way that you make a cake, provided that you know the recipe and have the right ingredients. A man and a woman agree to help each other, to take care of each other, to try to understand each other’s needs and tastes—and if they do, and are honest and frank about it, love will grow between them. True and enduring love is mainly shared experience.”
“In other words, Lanny, you are trying to tell me that you don’t love me now, but that you will be able to if you try?”
“Nothing of the sort, dear. I mean that I am not putting the icing on the cake until after I have mixed and baked it. Many times I have wanted to love you, and many times I have said: ‘No; you haven’t the right to think about it. You haven’t the right to suggest the idea to her. You haven’t the right to torment yourself with the idea. You haven’t the right to have a wife so long as you are—’ well, what I have been.”
“You’re not that any longer?”
“I am on a furlough with three months still to run, and it may be longer yet before I can get back to the job. I doubt if, after what happened to me in Halifax, I can go back into Naziland again. Of course I’m going on fighting Nazi-Fascism, but it may have to be in some different way, and it may permit me to have a wife and to cherish her, and not have to hide her as if she were a criminal.”
“And so, you haven’t loved me yet, but you might begin if you would let yourself.”
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“Let’s not quibble about words, dear. I think that you are a lovely person. You are wise, and you are kind—”
“No, not kind, Lanny! I have a sharp, satirical tongue.”
“Yes, but you aim your shafts at my enemies. We agree in our ideas, and I have seen you tried in the fire. I know that you could make me happy. The question is, whether I could make you happy. Is that better?”
“Much better,” she admitted.
“All right then; and now it’s your turn.”
“I want to be wooed, Lanny. I want to be told all sorts of wonderful things about myself. And above all, I want to hear that I am needed.”
He perceived that she had succeeded in turning the tables and now was teasing him, but he didn’t mind. He had learned long ago that love is a game. He asked: “Then I have your permission to woo you?”
“Oh, indeed you have!”
“I don’t know if we are going to escape, but even if we don’t, love in a concentration camp will be better than no love at all. If we do escape, we have a long journey before us, and we’ll make it a honeymoon journey, and practice enjoying every moment of it, even the hardships. I promise that I won’t stop making lave to you when the wedding vows have been pledged. I will woo you with every word, every glance, every thought. I will be gentle and kind. I will think first about your happiness, and I will guard you as the most precious jewel in all Cathay—the Celestial Kingdom, the Flowery Kingdom, the Dragon Kingdom. Is that the way you want me to talk to you?”
“That is the most delightful talk that a Baltimore bluestocking ever had offered to her.”
“We will get you stockings of pure China silk, and golden slippers with pearls on them, and we will dance all the way from the South China Sea to Outer Mongolia. And every day I will tell you all the lovely things I have dreamed about you, and every night we will make the dreams come true.”