“I don’t know what—”
“Oh yes, you do,” said Macklin. He kissed her urgently. “Isn’t it really simpler now?” he whispered.
“But I—”
“Yes, you do. Does Fu Manchu ever use his key at night, or should we go to my place?”
Jill began to shed tears again. They were David Copperfield tears.
“Oh, it’s awful,” she wept, digging her fists into her eyes. “You wouldn’t have been this way if I hadn’t told you. Now you think, just because I—”
“Blondie, Blondie, act your age. I never heard such silliness, not even from a girl.” He shook her shoulders gently. “I would have been this way no matter what you told me or didn’t tell me. So would you, you little idiot. I am this way.”
Her sobs slowed down. “Tm lost,” she said. “Really.”
“Sure, sure. So am I. So are we all lost. There, there.”
Jill wiped her eyes.
“Besides, I may be sent off to Europe or somewhere tomorrow,” added Macklin, “and all this is a waste of time. So blow your nose and tell Uncle now, while you still have the chance, where shall we go?”
“He never comes at night,” said Jill.
XI
Jill did not so much quit the college as recede from it like a slow tide. For a long time she attended the classes about half the time, and even after she stopped going she paid the fees for a few weeks by mail. There was always a chance, she told herself, that she might go back and finish. The examinations could always be postponed if she wanted to wait.
Maria had long since disappeared from the college, happy in her new job; from Maria’s circle, too, Jill receded. Ray’s continued presence in Shanghai kept her far too busy for other outside company. They now met every day as a matter of course and spent their time either alone together or with Ray’s friends, who were, like himself, transients, connected through magazines, papers, or news agencies with the same business.
Later in her infrequent moments of clear sight, untinged with bitterness, Jill admitted within herself that it was not Ray’s doing, even in a roundabout way, that she also receded from B. W., in a general house cleaning. She stopped seeing B. W. because it interfered with her happiness to spend a few afternoons with him, so long as she knew Macklin was in town. If she had been a little harder-boiled or less impulsive the thing could have been managed, for Ray did sometimes go away suddenly, to Manila or Nanking or Tokyo; at those times it would not have been onerous to see B. W. It would have been far more practical, anyway. If she had pretended not to have changed her plans, if the gentle little man could still have credited her with ambition, he would have gone on providing her with an allowance. He had always carefully refrained from asking awkward questions about Macklin. But Jill wanted to cut herself free. She wanted to make an ostentatious sacrifice for Macklin’s sake. She had a talk with B. W. one day while Ray was not in town and made it all clear. B. W. listened quietly, nodding from time to time.
At last: “Then you have made all your arrangements with him?” he asked. “Will he take care of you?”
“Oh, he will if I need it,” said Jill quickly.
“But you will need it, you know.”
Jill bit her lip, then nodded. She did not want to tell B. W. quite everything; she did not even tell Macklin that she had saved up some money. That much she had learned from Konya.
“Of course I’ll move away from here,” she said. “I’ll get rooms somewhere farther uptown, where it doesn’t cost so much.… Uncle, you are sweet, and you know how grateful I am. You don’t really mind very much, do you?”
“Why …” B. W. smiled. “It would not be polite to say I do not mind, little Jill. But it is true that my family is coming from Peking, so perhaps this change is not very inconvenient for me. Also, we remain good friends, and this is not quite farewell forever, is it? You will come to me when you need help again, I hope.”
“Oh yes, Uncle.…”
“I only wish you had finished your college course, Jill.”
“I can always go back,” she said quickly. “The money hasn’t been wasted.”
“It is not the money, you know that. I think it would be good for you to have your certificate, that is all.” He spread his short slim fingers on his knee and studied them. “This Mr. Macklin,” he said, “he will be good to you? You are sure?”
“Oh, Uncle, he is good to me. He’s good for me. He’s not ashamed to be seen with me anywhere. Isn’t that nice?” She smiled happily. “I’ve met all his friends. They act as if I were one of them. I’m not lonely any more.”
“So. So. The American way.” B. W. pondered a moment, drained his glass of tea, sighed, and stood up to go. “Very well, Jill, I wish you happiness and prosperity and a return soon to your own country, if that is what you wish. You will not forget to call on me if you need help, or if I am not here, ask for my brother.”
“Good-by, B. W. Give my regards to Annette when you see her.”
“Oh, I do not go to Annette’s now, Jill. I am getting too old, and my wife is coming home! She won’t let me go out.”
It was rather frightening, taking on the responsibility of her own support, knowing that there was no longer the chance of more money every evening, either as her share of the fee at Annette’s or as a special tip. It gave Jill the feeling that she was diving into icy water. For the first time since the early days with Konya she was living without any money coming in. She tried not to think of it, putting it aside as a problem to be settled at some later date.
“I’m taking a holiday,” she told herself. “Everyone has a holiday sometimes.” Nevertheless, she was haunted by the thought of her bank account, so long untouched except for additions and now beginning to dwindle.
“I’ve plenty of money to live on for ages,” she reminded herself. “I mustn’t turn into a miser. This will be good for me.” But until Macklin returned to Shanghai she continued to fret.
It was worth having been uneasy for a few days, she thought; Ray was manifestly delighted when he found what she had done.
“Blondie! All moved and living on your own now? No more Fu Manchu, and you did it all for me? That really is sweet of you, honey; I don’t know when I’ve been so proud.” After a little, however, he looked thoughtful and a bit worried. “Blondie,” he said, patting the chair arm, “come on over and talk to Papa. Seriously.”
“No,” said Jill, “I don’t want to. You’re going to tell me I shouldn’t have stopped being kept by B. W.”
“Yes, I am. I don’t like to think you did that just for me, Blondie.”
She laughed and tapped his lips. “You just told me you were proud of it. You mustn’t be naughty and take it back, once you’ve said it.”
“Well, I am proud, naturally. Any fellow would be. But, Blondie, I’m not worth it, honey. Please listen. I’m really not. Any woman silly enough to take R. Macklin seriously is sure to get hurt.”
Jill shook her head vigorously. “It’s no use,” she said, “I’m not listening.”
“No, but, Blondie, I sort of feel like a heel. I didn’t ask you to do this, did I, while I was lit or something? If I did––”
“You didn’t. It was all my own idea, to surprise you.”
“Sure?” His eyes looked anxiously into hers. He had never before been so intense, in all her knowledge of him.
“Sure. You never asked me to give up anything. You’ve been absolutely sweet. You’re not responsible for it, Ray.”
“Well, so long as you’re sure.”
He looked relieved and went to find a bottle of soda. Men, reflected Jill, are very odd, worrying like that over little matters of conscience. Why couldn’t he have just been glad?
“I guess you’re better off this way,” he said, coming back with soda and glasses, “if you didn’t like the guy. You didn’t, did you?”
“Oh yes, I like B. W. But I told you, not that way.”
“And if the worse comes to the worst,” continued Macklin, “
you could go on being a secretary or something? That’s what you did want, isn’t it?”
“Oh, don’t worry so. I don’t want to do anything right now. I’m having a holiday. It’s such fun being on my own.”
“Okay, Blondie; let’s celebrate and take the week end off. Gert and Jeff want us to go houseboating up to Soochow. Would you like that? They’ve hired a boat. Only thing is, I thought it might be too hot.”
“Oh, darling, I’d love it. I’ve never been houseboating.”
“Neither have I. Neither has Gert. Neither has Jeff. Now, if only the Japs hold off, we’re all set.” He tugged her head over to his face, holding her by her back hair, and kissed her smackingly on the mouth. “Nice Blondie,” he said, and she knew he was still feeling proud. “I sure missed you,” he said.
It would be hard to say when Jill first began to think Macklin might possibly marry her. It had not entered her mind at the time she broke off with the Chinese, because for some years she had taken it for granted that nobody except an eccentric, an old man, or some oriental polygamist would ever consider marrying a girl of her history. Girls of her sort did marry, of course. Where white women were scarce, in new colonies or in frontier towns, prostitutes could pick and choose husbands among the most desirable white men. In a place like Shanghai, however, already crowded both with women of her class and a more fortunate sort, Jill’s chances of being claimed as a legal partner were almost nil, unless she had money of her own. An eligible European man, unless he were enamored to the point of jealous madness, would not see any necessity to marry Jill. Senile imbeciles who might be attracted by her childish appearance and manners were usually already claimed by the greedy, needy, beautiful Russian waifs who filled the market place. At the back of Jill’s mind was always Annette’s suggestion that she would be clever as well as lucky if she could find an Indian rajah who would marry her and make her rich, or, failing that, a wealthy Chinese who would not be averse to supporting a blond concubine. But all that, Annette told her, could wait for a few years, until she was older.
Unconsciously, even before her venture into wage-earning respectability, she had decided that it would be more agreeable to make a future for herself than to throw herself on the mercy of a capricious rajah. “Suppose I didn’t like him and then later on met someone I did like. Suppose I should want to go traveling and he wouldn’t let me go. Suppose I hated him so much I ran away, then where would I be?” But again the other thought haunted her: “Suppose I get old and ugly and there isn’t anyone to look out for me, what then?”
The only cure for that worry was her bankbook. Now, under the combined spell of Ray Macklin and his friends’ acceptance of her, she was attacking her own foundations, cheating herself, little by little, of a safe future.… It was surprising that she took so long to come around to the inevitable thought, “Why doesn’t he offer to help me?”
Close on that came the next thought: “If he were helping me, how would I be any different from what I was with B. W.? No, the reason I can see Gert and Jeff the way I do, and just go around with him like any other girl, is that he’s not helping me. That’s why he’s so nice to me. That’s what makes it so right. If he gave me money he could never think of marrying me– for instance.” Only for instance.
The idea was there. She seldom took it out and looked at it because she was afraid, but it was there, hidden away. The thought of it stopped her worry about her bankbook and warmed her when she was alone. She was, after all, investing in something: it was not all wanton waste when she withdrew money from the bank.
The days went by without excitement, but she was steadily happy. She saw nobody but Ray and the newspaper people; she heard nothing but their lazy talk. They spoke of alarming things–war in Europe, which they said was almost ready to break; war in China, which Ray insisted was on the way, but Jeff would not foresee; war everywhere, and perhaps the end of human life. They had, especially when they talked of such things, a tired, bored, detached manner of speaking, as if they sat on clouds and could float away in case of danger. Or perhaps it was more as if they didn’t care whether or not they could float away. Even Gert never seemed really upset, until one evening when Ray Macklin said:
“If they want to get the jump on us the Japs can do whatever they like. I wouldn’t be surprised to see them landing at San Diego.”
Gert sat up and said sharply, “Ray, don’t be a damn fool! You don’t mean that!”
“As it happens,” said Ray, “I do mean it.” He glanced at Jill and settled back in the pleasant knowledge that she was listening, as usual, adoringly. “Don’t you doubt for a minute, Gert,” he said, “that we won’t be in it this time. We’re in it up to our necks.”
“But we’re too far away. You’re–you’re crazy, Ray; they could never get that far. Germany, maybe, though I don’t take that seriously; Hitler wouldn’t dare. But the Pacific!”
Macklin shrugged and took a drink.
“Seriously, Ray,” said Jeff, “do you mean to say they’d have anything left over after China? China won’t be such an easy proposition for them. It’ll take years, our lifetime at least, before they could whip Asia into shape. They won’t be wanting to pick on us for, say, twenty-five years.” He paused, remembered his children, and added quickly, “No, fifty at least.”
“But—” Jill spoke so seldom during conversations like this that they all looked around at her in surprise. “You mean Japan’s going to whip China?”
Gert, Macklin, and Jeff burst into laughter, and Macklin said, “Dear old Blondie!”
She felt tears coming to her eyes; she kept them out of her voice. “But you’re talking as if–– You sound just as if you had talked it over and settled it. Are we going to let them? Aren’t we going to try to help?”
“I thought you loved the Japanese,” said Ray, sounding edgy.
“Well, I like them. But nobody ever talked to me in Japan about things like that–making war on China and then on people like us. They like China all right. They love Chinese food.”
“Sure, they like China all right,” Ray said. “They like her so much they want to take her into the family. Seriously, Jeff, did it ever occur to you that the Chinese could do worse? Ever read Keyserling? Ever stop to think it’s bound to happen someday?”
Jeff made a noise with his lips and went into the kitchen for some ice. Nobody said anything more to Jill about Japan that time.
At night she had bad dreams, and when she woke she tried to put together all the things she had heard about the coming trouble, the medley of opinions and guesses that a girl collected at Annette’s when she kept her ears open, and the occasional remarks made by B. W. She wished violently that she had listened more carefully to Uncle. Of course most of his talk was about business and of how the events in North China were affecting his affairs, and she had always listened carefully from another point of view—investments. At Annette’s they had told her many stories of girls who had made their fortunes by keeping their ears open when they entertained bankers and people like that. For the first time, however, she wondered now if it would be possible to piece together something else from Uncle’s talk—what he thought of war itself, and whether he believed it was sure to happen.
The more she thought, the more she realized that he had simply taken war for granted. It was going on in his mind, in every little flurry that the daily paper reported. War with Japan was a chronic state, not openly painful at the moment, but a thing which existed, and had done so since 1932, and would flare out like endemic cholera at this time or that. B. W. was so used to the idea of war that it had become a part of his routine wearily to move his beloved children from one part of the Chinese map to another, outguessing so far as he could the future path of the disease.
Yes, thought Jill, hot-eyed in the darkness, but that was B. W.’s national affair; it couldn’t affect her. Or could it? B. W. had always seemed to ignore such a possibility. But B. W. was bafflingly polite. What had he really thought?
?
??Probably he didn’t think at all,” she decided. “Not about me. He did his duty by me with money, and if my own government can’t take care of the rest of the mess…”
Well, if it couldn’t? She suddenly saw a great menacing emptiness, without Ray in it, without Jeff or Gert, without a bank account or even a bank. Perhaps, even, without Jill?
“I could go home to Australia; they’re sure to let white people get out, aren’t they? Or if the Japanese come in quietly, well, I can talk Japanese; I can manage. But Ray would be gone by that time. Or maybe he would take me with him and I could go to America. I don’t think anybody in America wouldn’t be all right. They were just talking, just joking.… I wish I were going to see B. W. tomorrow. He could tell me what happens about banks. But he couldn’t tell me about Ray.
“War. I suppose there would be trenches right across Nanking Road. Maybe poison gas. And ships with guns firing at the Bund. But the Chinese are good fighters; anyway, they used to be. The older men at Annette’s said they could do anything if they had the guns.
“Would Botchan be a general? Would they let him do anything? They never used to. If Botchan came to Shanghai I’d be all right, but what about Ray? He’ll go away before that happens.
“If he would take me to America … If I only had American papers as his wife—”
She smiled seraphically and fell asleep.
XII
One day Ray broke a date with Jill. He telephoned her only a few minutes before he was supposed to meet her at a bar with Jeff and Gert. “Look, honey, I can’t make it tonight. Something’s turned up.”
“Well, what do you want me to do?” she asked amiably. These little accidents had happened often before, and she took it for granted that it was some sort of story he had to get off by cable. “Shall I go along by myself and meet Jeff and Gert? Then you can come along and join us later.”