The Last Ditch

was a face you were apt to remember. The mannerism was so peculiarly his own when he was interested or amused, that he did not know of it. There was nothin

lean shoulders, and a long dark hand-nothing striking or exceptional, except the beaked

him. He had a rice-brewery on the side, and couldn't write English. He used to chew tobacco and promote his business, swearing that rice beer was more delectable than English ale, and experimenting in keg-making with the native woods. It hur

about that day as the sun rose. I seem to remember this now more than then. You always put an atmosphere to your stories-the kind of day or night. Nature means things to you.... I knew right there that day that I had left India for good. That was four years ago. Chin

touched me, kind of opened up to me then and there, the big deviltry, the big cunning, t

t to know what they were saying, and why they said it. I threw up my job and travelled north. I studied long in Shanghai. Long-that is, about two years. Academic Sanscrit didn't help then. I had to get a new neck. I learned the basic Chinese and then began to put o

China, India and Palestine. In Shanghai, and later in Peking, I hobnobbed with the young literati-a different class from the Indian students, very interesting men who prepare themselves almost cosmically to enter local politics. I saw that China had always pulled me strangely. Meeting the boys here recalled to me how interested I had been in the Chinese students at Palo Alto. It was from a Chinese at college that I began to get a re

, the idea that drove me to become powerful in the native mind and at the same time to hold a grip on the West. I was disinclined to the poverty of the earth and at the same time unwilling to release my grip on certain ideas of Heaven. You see all real mysticism is out of the East. There was only one way to make good on this training and the Chinese knows how. The Hindu doesn't. It's to keep God and man separate, to keep the left han

nese-that's the truth-so much so that the English and American training I had known began to take on the same sense of distance and novelty that they woul

rst time in her presence because he saw that hi

and I had come into a bodily health and strength that I never kn

ch," Moira

f premonition-that what he said was not quite a

aps I have to learn how to wait and how to laugh all over again in the things that are nearer the heart. I was only talking about the pressures tha

, don't they, Sir

her eyes and teeth

tement of a human presence such as you have brought to me. It's because

sted. I like

ought," she went on. "And yet you are young. You are still prepa

ng moth of your Irish house that lay in the desk through the long winter. All that the usual white man sees, even now, is the weathered rusty chrysalis of the old, but I see the wings. They are still pinned. The

to old mother China. He dreams about the peace that is ahead for the world, and his dreams are straight as the hammer to the anvil because he has no sentiment, knows all ab

nt through him because this yearning was not for him. He saw that he had touched her in the ce

ore," she

ave you, too,

Is that the Hu

ame hushed with the Hunchback's presence. Cushions were brought and we sat down around him. I remembered his name in connection with the military text-book now. That came with a jump. He was young and yet long ago I had read another book of his, which, until he was here before me, I had not related to the author of the text-book. It was during the college days in California when that other book came to me, and I loved the Chinese setting. The book itself, I did not remember. It was half a story, half a fairy-tale, but fro

pale angular jaw and the narrow temples had not changed. I was startled at his look. His head made me think of a wolf-hound-that long ironed head. It was not unti

t took her farther from himself, if nearer to her dream. He caught a glimpse of what it would mean to hold the heart of this

his presence, I had touched the inner circle. He spoke of China and Japan, a low uninflected English, and then of America-how he had left her because there was no play of his powers i

now?" Moira

ever far from the centre of

some time and the

like. It has been a good day-thanks to you. I'm glad to know you better and better. It sounds cold-but perhaps some time you'll know what that means. I am a little mad to