THE LAST DITCH

CONTENTS

PROLOGUE: HANKOW

The Yellow Rug Woman

PART ONE: THE GREAT DRIFT

Sundry Adventures

PART TWO: THE GOBI

Anna Erivan

PART THREE: THE GOBI

Rajananda

PART FOUR: TIENTSIN

The Hunchback

PART FIVE: CONCLUSION

The Hill Country

PROLOGUE: HANKOW

THE YELLOW RUG WOMAN

I

Romney saw the rug before he saw the woman. It was the yellow of India, the yellow you see on the breast of the purple martin and on the inner petals of an Emperor rose. The weave of the rug was like no other. Its folds looked heavy like raw silk, yet the fabric itself was thin. It would last a life time, and then become a priceless gift for the one held most dear. It was soil-proof as a snake's skin. It was either holy or savage.

They were on the little river steamer, Sungkiang, a day's passage below Hankow. The woman had boarded that forenoon at Wu-chang. Romney had come through from Ngan-king. The yellow rug lay across the knees of the woman. The afternoon was breezy and bright. It was May, and the rice was green along the flats of the southern shore.... She was either English or American, Romney reflected, and also that the world was well supplied with pretty women, but not with rugs like that.

Just now the woman held out her arms to a missionary's child—a passing boy-child of five in sandals. His legs were bare and brown and scratched. His name was Paul and he was a stoic from much manhandling. He went to her arms in silence, and there was a burning now in Romney's chest. Her voice had been a thirsty primitive note, like a cry, as if the presence of the child hurt her.

The little boy stood erect and silent against her limbs. She lifted the rug and drew it about his waist to hold him close. She was lost to everything else. Romney had fancied her the most exquisite and delicate creature, but this face that he saw now had the plain earthy passion of a river-woman talking to her first-born—a love of the child's body and face and lips, the love of a woman who loves the very soil of play on her child. Paul had been running the decks for two days, making enough noise to give the missionary the reputation of being a widower. The child was moist from running at this moment, and the woman buried her face in his throat.

Romney wished whimsically that he were the missionary so he could come into the picture for the sake of meeting the woman. The child was drawing away. Her dark eyes were untellably hungry already. Paul must have told his name, for she was saying:

"Such a right name for a noble boy. And where are you going?"

"To Hankow."

"It's like a fairy-tale—a young man going to Hankow to seek his fortune—"

"My father does not like me to read fairy-tales—"

Paul's eyes were full of pictures. Romney did not hear what she said to that, but circled the little deck again, thinking of her eyes and voice. They went with the yellow rug. As Romney returned, the child pulled back from the woman, announcing:

"That's my father."

And now for the first time Romney's eyes and the woman's met. The child had pointed his way, though the missionary was behind him. Her look came up with something that seemed to say, "I beg of you—don't disappoint me." Then Romney forgot the peculiarity of that, in the sudden sense that she was like the blood-sister of some one he had known. At the same time flat in his consciousness was the fact that he had not known any such "some one." She was young, but this was not the look of a girl at all—the look of a hungry imperious woman who had known love and been denied—adult understanding, the shoals of cheap illusion passed. She was looking beyond him at the real father of Paul.

Under his own calm, Romney was intensely sensitized. Something had happened to him from her eyes. He felt he was out somewhere in the deep waters of life wherein she sailed—the shallow problems already put from them, all decoration, convention and imitation thrust aside. The missionary and the little boy had passed. And now Romney did a very good thing for him, and something that he would not have thought possible before this day. He drew a chair close to the yellow rug, saying: