Free The Bitter Tea of General Yen by Grace Zaring Stone

in dignity for all that. Only man among animals, she thought, even among those most noble, has any dignity indeath; the rest become at once carrion. But Megan had never in her hospital, nor again here, looked at a man just dead without feeling that that which had just left him had been in its essence truly august. The young Chinese soldiers were past help from her, but there remained all of China and it could not be possible that having reached China she should find herself thwarted as at home. That almost desperate irritation which she felt before obstacles began to take hold of her. She dropped her book and walked over to her window, open now on darkness and rain and a few casual lights. She thought of Miss Reed at the beleaguered orphanage in the midst of Chapei. Miss Reed’s ultimate desire, she was convinced, was for martyrdom, and apparently she was about to attain it. A desire so capable of definite realization was, she felt sure, rare. Miss Reed was fortunate. And it came to her with a further irritation how much her own desires still floated unharnessed and goalless, waiting amid a confusion as of voices, beating of wings, sharp flashes, for something they could take hold of and make their own.
    Mrs. Jackson called her from below and she ran downstairs in great haste because haste gave an illusion of direction. But she found it difficult to eat, and Mr. Jackson also sat making scraping sounds with his fork, eating nothing. His face was flushed and his eyes were heavy. Mrs. Jackson, after watching him anxiously during the meal leaned over and felt his forehead.
    “Will,” she exclaimed, “You have a fever!” She jumped up and ran to the foot of the stairs, calling her amah to bring down the thermometer.
    Mr. Jackson looked apologetically at Megan.
    “I got soaked to the skin yesterday and today, but I don’t feel as if I had a cold at all.” But sitting foolishly with the thermometer in his mouth, he admitted to pains in his head and back.
    “Does your chest hurt you?” demanded Mrs. Jackson.
    He said it did not.
    “Well, into bed you go. I am going to rub you with Vick’s Salve and give you a hot lemonade and some aspirin. And don’t you stir till they burn the roof over our heads. Mr. Jackson had pneumonia two years ago at Shasi,” she explained, “and it all came from not doing as I said.”
    “But, dear, I must stay up till Doctor Strike comes, or at any rate till I have some word from him. He may need me.”
    “When he comes I’ll send him right up to you. But there won’t be a thing you can do, Will. The Doctor is never going to get a permit from that man.”
    “No, I’m afraid not,” Mr. Jackson admitted sadly, and he suffered himself to be led up to bed.
    Megan and Mrs. Jackson sat up a while. Several times the telephone rang and Megan always ran to answer it herself. But it always proved to be a Chinese who had got the wrong number. Even the exchange was worse than usual that night. Doctor Strike did not come. Finally they went to bed.
    Megan lay in bed knowing she would never be able to sleep. The rain had stopped but moisture dripped off the eaves of the house and it grew gradually colder so that she pulled a blanket over her. Suddenly she heard what she knew to be firing. It came from somewhere the other side of the International Settlement and it sounded like a stick drawn rapidly along a picket fence. Megan got up and ran to the window, but aside from the red glow in the direction of Chapei there was nothing to be seen. The firing went on but came no nearer. Then it stopped. Megan went back to bed. She began to count sheep as her father had made her do as a child. Sometimes when she had been sick or frightened he would sit by her bed and count them for her. She made herself think of her father. Then of Bob. Bob was as near to China as she would let herself think. It was easier to picture Bob’s fulfillment than her own. She saw Bob’s life as one long integrity in the midst of