He gave up that problem, came down to the particular thought of this swiftly growing new love that had stolen into his heart. The hope of personal happiness had passed now. Self seemed, like the life to which it so eagerly clung, not to matter. Instead that hope was growing into a profound tenderness toward the girl. She was, after all--the thought came startlingly--about the age of his own daughter, Betty, whom he had not seen during these three strange years. Betty and her journalist husband would be somewhere in Turkestan now; he was studying central Asia for a book, she sketching the native types. For a long time no letter had come.... It was a fine experience, this unbidden stir of the emotions, this thrill. There was mystery in it, and wonder. Merely to have that almost youthful responsiveness still at call within his breast was an indication that life might yet hold, even for him, the derelict, rich promise. And it was a reminder, now, to his clearing brain that his life must be service. He must find terms on which to offer himself, his gifts. His spirit had been molded, after all, to no lesser end.
The viceroy drew away then from the group about the child; came deliberately along the bank. The increasing tenderness Doane felt toward Hui Fei reached also to her father, who was facing with such fine dignity the grim ending of a richly useful life. Now, perhaps, he could plead with him for the daughter's sake. Somehow, certainly, happiness must be found for her. In pleading he would be serving her.
His brain was swinging into something near balance; it was, after all, a good brain, trained to function clearly, mellowed through patient years of unhappiness. It would help him now to fight for the girl, to save her, if he might, from the dark ways of the Forbidden City. She called herself so naively an “American.” The West had thrilled her. She must not be given over to the eunuch, Chang.
So, even as he contrived a sort of self-control, even as he determined to forget his own little moment of romantic hopefulness, the lover within him stood triumphant over all his other selves.
|DOANE knew nothing of the dignified figure he presented as he took the viceroy's hand, a profoundly sobered giant, his huge frame outlined beneath his wet garments like a Greek statue of an athlete.