Chapter 3

Heaven knows I ought to have been a happy man that day, fog or no fog,
for I was coming back to my own land after four dreary years in China.
Birds should have been singing, as the Chinese say, in the topmost
branches of my heart; I should have walked with brisk elated tread.
Instead I crossed the dimly lighted pier shed, where yellow lamps
burned wanly overhead, with lagging step, dragging my battered old bags
after me. The injustice of the world lay heavy on my heart. For I was
young, and I had been unfairly treated. Four years earlier, just
graduated from the engineering department of a big technical
institution in the East, I had set sail from Vancouver to take charge
of a mine in China for Henry Drew. I met the old San Francisco
millionaire in Shanghai–a little yellow-faced man with snapping black
eyes and long thin hands that must have begun, even in the cradle, to
reach and seize and hold.

The mine, he told me frankly, was little better than a joke so far.
Its future was up to me. I would encounter many obstacles–inadequate
pumping machinery, bribe-hunting officials, superstitious workmen
fearful of disturbing the earth dragon as our shaft sank deeper. If I
could conquer in spite of everything, accomplish a miracle and make the
mine pay, then in addition to my salary I was to receive a third
interest in the property. I suppose he really meant it at the time.
He said it more than once. I was very young, with boundless faith. I
did not get that part of it in writing.

Through four awful years I labored for Henry Drew down there in Yunnan,
the province of the cloudy south. One by one the obstacles gave way,
and copper began to come from the mine. Now and then ugly disquieting
rumors as to the sense of honor of old Drew drifted to me, but I put
them resolutely out of my thoughts.

I might seem guilty of boasting if I went into details regarding the
results of my work. It is enough to say that I succeeded. Again I met
Henry Drew in Shanghai, and he told me he was proud of me. I ventured
to remind him of his promise of an interest in the property. He said I
must be dreaming. He recalled no such promise. I was appalled. Could
such things be? Angrily and at length I told him what I thought of
him. He listened in silence.

“I’ll accept it,” he said when I paused for breath.

“Accept what?” I asked.

“Your resignation.”

He got it, along with further comments on his character. I went back
to my hotel to take up the difficult task of securing accommodations on
a home-bound boat.

All liners were crowded to suffocation in those days, but I finally
managed to get a November sailing. I was informed that I, along with
another male passenger, would be put into the cabin of the ship’s
doctor. Rumor had told me that old Henry Drew was sailing on the same
boat, but I was hardly prepared, when I went on board and entered my
stateroom, to find him there, bending over an open bag. Fate in
playful mood had selected him as the third member of our party.

He was more upset than I, and made a strenuous effort to be assigned to
some other room. But with all his money he could not manage it, and we
set out on our homeward journey together. I would see him when I came
in late at night, lying there in his berth with the light from the deck
outside on his yellow face, his eyes closed–but wide awake. I think
he was afraid of me. He had reason to be.

Anyhow, I was rid of his slimy presence now, there in that dim pier
shed. It was one thing to be thankful for. And already the memory of
what he had done to me was fading–for I had suffered a later and
deeper wound. In the midst of the trouble with Drew I had met the most
wonderful girl in the world, and only a moment before, on the deck of
the China boat, I had said good-by to her–forever.

I left the pier shed and stepped to the sidewalk outside. The air was
heavy and wet with fog, the walk damp and slippery; liquid fog dripped
down from telegraph wires overhead. I saw the blurred lights of the
city, heard its ceaseless grumble, the clang of street-cars, the
clatter of wheels on cobblestones. Weird mysterious figures slipped by
me, stranger faces peered into mine and were gone. This was the
Embarcadero, the old Barbary Coast famed round the world. Somewhere
there in the mist were its dance-halls, where rovers of the broad
Pacific had, in the vanished past, made merry after a sodden fashion.
I stood, straining to see.

“Want a taxi, mister?” asked a dim figure at my side.

“If you can find one,” I answered. “Things seem a bit thick.”

“It’s the tule-fog,” he told me. “Drifts down every year about this
time from the tule-fields between here and Sacramento. Never knew one
to stick around so late in the day before. Yes, sir–this is sure
unusual.”

In reply to my query he told me that the tule was a sort of bulrush.
And little Moses amid his bulrushes could have felt no more lost than I
did at that moment.

“See what you can dig up,” I ordered.

“You just wait here,” he said. “It’ll take time. Don’t go away.”

Again I stood alone amid the strange shadow shapes that came and went.
Somewhere, behind that tule-curtain, the business of the town went on
as usual. I made a neat pile of my luggage close to a telegraph pole
and sat down to wait. My mind went back to the deck of the boat I had
left, to Mary Will Tellfair, that wonderful girl.

And she was wonderful–in courage and in charm. I had met her three
weeks before in Shanghai; and it was her dark hour, as it was mine.
For Mary Will had come five thousand miles to marry Jack Paige, her
sweetheart in a sleepy southern town. She had not seen him for six
years, but there had been many letters, and life at home was dull.
Then, too, she had been very fond of him once, I judge. So there had
been parties, and jokes, and tears, and Mary Will had sailed for
Shanghai and her wedding.

It has happened to other girls, no doubt. Young Paige met her boat.
He was very drunk, and there was in his face evidence of a fall to
depths unspeakable. Poor Mary Will saw at the first frightened look
that the boy she had known and loved was gone forever. Many of the
other girls–helpless, without money, alone–marry the men and make the
best of it. Not Mary Will. Helpless, without money, alone, she was
still brave enough to hold her head high and refuse.