Chapter 16: A Night to Be Remembered

“Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning.”
OUR escort were in no mood either to talk themselves or to hear us talk; so that the way was pursued in silence. And, indeed, we were not sorry to have it so, for we were unspeakably weary. The acute suffering, mental and physical, of the mountain solitude had been succeeded by a long, nervous strain of many hours in the very hands of those who were seeking our life, and we could not but be conscious of aftereffects. The marvel is that it was not followed by a serious reaction, in the can at least of the ladies. What God did for us in those days can never be fully told. From first to last it was one perpetual miracle. Where His power was not manifested in the more direct and obvious way of actual interference and deliverance from seen destruction, it was none the less evident to ourselves in the more hidden processes of strengthening and sustaining grace for spirit, soul and body.
As our thought traveled back over the events of the day, we were shut up more than ever to the conviction that the Lord had sent His angel and delivered us from all the expectation of the people. The escape from Yin-ch’eng was certainly not less miraculous than that from Uang-fang. One fact alone, apart from other considerations, will suffice to show the nature of it. In our parts, to cross the line of a rain procession was a crime to be visited there and then.
in the case of a man, with a heavy cudgeling, in the case of a woman or animal, with death. The year before, our evangelist and I had narrowly escaped a severe handling when returning late one night from the street chapel in Lu-an city. Seeing the procession coming up the street, we drew aside into the darkness of a doorway, where we expected to be secure from observation. The vanguard, however, whose duty it was to clear the way, found us and ordered us to strip off our coats. Our refusal was the signal for a demonstration which showed is that no time was to be lost if we were to get away with a whole skin, and we beat a retreat just as the main body was upon us. Already the advance party had begun to strike at our legs; but happily we were not far from a crossing where four roads met, and the turning we took proved, in the mercy of God, to be off the appointed path for the procession. Had it been otherwise, we should have been hunted down, and the usual penalty would have been meted out to us without mercy. My concern, therefore, on taking in the position of affairs at Yin-ch’eng may be imagined; and when the officer gave out as the reason for our quitting the inn that the processionists regarded our presence in the place as a hindrance to the efficacy of their prayers, we all understood the real significance of the warning. It meant nothing else than that they looked upon us as having crossed their path, and intended to treat us accordingly. Under ordinary circumstances even a native could not hope to escape with anything less than a severe beating; and as for a native woman, the penalty for her was death. What, then, had we to look forward to, the hated “iang kuei-tsï” —under circumstances, too, where the Empress Dowager’s edict for our extermination was already known, and when Boxer placards proclaimed everywhere that our destruction would be regarded as a work of merit? Escape even under ordinary conditions would have been marvelous enough; but as things were it had been nothing short of miraculous, the result of a definite act of Divine interference. God had proved Himself again unto us a God of deliverances, and our united testimony was and is, that unto Jehovah the Lord, and to Him alone, belong the issues from death.
How long we had been traveling I do not know, but it must have been over an hour when we entered a moderately-sized village. The long narrow street was deserted, and all was quiet as we pulled up before the crazy door of the only inn. To judge from the length of time it took the “chang kuei tih” to answer the summons, one would gather that custom seldom came his way, and that he was in a position to be independent of it when it did. Be that as it may, the arrival was an event of sufficient moment to be more particularly inquired into; and the discovery that he had a cartload of foreign devils to cater for, brought out all his native independence and something more, as he slammed the gate with a curse and bade us begone.
Driven off from the only shelter open to us, where should we find a resting place now? Every bone in our bodies ached with excessive weariness, until it became almost unbearable under the harsh jolt-jolt of a springless cart. There was nothing for it, however, but to go on. At any rate, our guards were so minded, and there was an end of it; so we passed out to the endurance of another hour or more of the unendurable. And yet even this had a compensation of its own. The quiet of the solitary roads, the freedom from mental strain, the cover of the darkness that hid us from recognition, and even the very fact that we were moving, brought each its element of comfort. Then, too, we were together and to ourselves in the cart; so that, other things notwithstanding, we could be “still praising Thee.” Above all else, it was a valued time for waiting on God without distraction, and in the opportunity of undisturbed communion we were able to renew our strength for what was immediately before us.
We arrived at the village which was our objective, to receive again at the only inn a similar rebuff to that we had just experienced. In very truth we were tasting what it meant to be despised and rejected with our Master. It seemed now as if this was to be the rule wherever we came. As we looked out into the street and felt the touch of the chilly night air, our heart and our flesh failed us; but we remembered that it is enough for the disciple that he be as his Master, and the servant as his Lord. If it was true of Him that no man cared for His soul, and that even He had not where to lay His head, why should we expect it to be otherwise with us? for even hereunto were we called—to the fellowship of His sufferings, a privilege that carried with it its own reward, and in the knowledge of it “the joy of the Lord was our strength.” Clearly there was nothing for it now but just to take what we could get, and betake ourselves to the refuge of the destitute, the local temple. Such at least was the decision of the officer, and a few minutes later found us in the large theater area in front of the sacred buildings, Here we were ordered to dismount. The escort then tethered the mule without taking him out of the shafts, and telling us they were going to negotiate a night’s rest for us with the village elders inside, disappeared behind the temple wall.
We believed, of course, that their reappearance was but a matter of a few minutes more or less, and looked to see where we could seat ourselves meantime. There was no other accommodation than a pile of stones. angularly tilted in such a way as to ensure discomfort all ways. But we were thankful for anything in our weariness, and with the weight of the sleeping children to support were ready to make shift with whatever offered The little company of forlorn strangers could not fail to attract the notice of several groups of loungers on the place, who had no difficulty under the light of the clear moon in making out our identity. Of course, the news that there were “iang kuei-tsï” in the village was carried on to the street, and it was with no little anxiety that we saw the original handful increase to the dimensions of a crowd. Added to this was the consciousness that the escort were not to be relied upon, and that for aught we knew this was only another ruse of theirs for shirking the highly objectionable bit of work allotted to them. However, as long as the cart was before our eyes we had some tangible guarantee that they did not intend to abandon us, and with this hope in our hearts we kept watch.
How long I cannot say. Long enough to believe at last that they were never coming. Long enough to become acutely sensible of the cravings of hunger and to shiver with the cold. Long enough for the crowd to lose the silent reserve of curiosity, and give vent to the true expression of the thought of their heart. By evil looks, threatening gestures, sinister innuendoes, and open avowals, they left no room for doubt as to what they meant to do with us if we stayed in the place much longer. They sang the praises of the Ta Tao Huei, and fell to discussing in what way they should put us to death. Close to the temple buildings and immediately in front of them a huge fire was burning, only too suggestively, in a large square grating, and the idea of roasting us alive (possibly, as at Han-tien, with the thought of sacrifice behind it) was proposed and adopted. Our hearts went out to the poor degraded people, darkened as they were in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that was in them; and as opportunity offered we spoke to them of the life and immortality that Christ has brought to them through the Gospel, of redemption through His Blood and the forgiveness of sins. But there came a point at which they refused to listen further. We were in their eyes nothing more than the emissaries of the Evil One, and like him only devils, to be feared, hated, and got rid of out of hand. So that there was nothing left for us to do but silently lift our hearts in prayer for them.
Taken up with the attitude of the crowd, I was not on the alert, as I ought to have been, in the matter of the cart, when suddenly a cry from my wife startled me to my senses: “Quick, Archie, quick! they are bolting!” Sure enough they were. Surrounded as we were by the crowd, the escort had seen their opportunity and untethered the mule without our observing it. My wife just caught sight of them as they dashed through the enclosure, and they were away. Quick as thought I was on my feet, and after them. All sense of weariness was gone. I flew as on wings. The mule was a spirited animal, and making the pace under the driver’s lash, but I got him before he was halfway down the street. Gripping the reins at the bit, I held him until my wife and Miss Gates, who I knew would not be far behind, came up with me. The escort, I need hardly say, were furious; but either they were too taken aback or else too anxious to save their face to do anything. The excuse, always ready with a Chinaman, was that they were taking the animal to its night’s stabling. “Very well; then you take us with him,” we said; and in we bundled, to their infinite disgust. The crowd that had threatened us, not prepared for such a sudden turn in events, watched us drive off in amazement—thankful enough to be well rid of us, as their parting volley of “Shah iang kuei-tsï!” testified.
The hostility of the village being what it was, we could not but thank God that we had been denied shelter there. A quiet night in the solitude of the open was preferable to the doubtful comfort of a room filled with plotting watchers. In the light of experience, however, it was not reassuring to find that we were retracing our steps and hastening back towards Yinch’eng, and we were bold to tell the escort that, take us where they might, we refused to think of passing the night at either of the two places, Yin-ch’eng or Uang-fang, where we knew well a reappearance would mean certain death. The answer was a storm of abuse.
I remember how my heart quailed under it, for it seemed now as if they had reached the point where they could no longer tolerate our presence, and would even turn on us themselves. I need not say that, while we received it with outward silence, we made it the occasion of loud inward crying to God.
The quiet of the lonely roads, that had been so restful to us before, in the knowledge that we were leaving the scene of riot behind us, had lost its power to refresh us now. The old nameless anxiety came back (upon me at any rate) as we drew nearer the town; but when at last we were near enough to hear the distant roar of riotous revel, and to know therefore that the processionists had not yet dispersed, I could no longer refrain, and said to the officer in courteous tones: “We are not willing to enter the town. You know they wanted to put us to death there, and you are not wise in risking death for us again. We trust you to find us a suitable lodging elsewhere.”
He turned on me fiercely. “We are going nowhere else tonight. Where should I find stabling at this hour if not at Yin-ch’eng? If you don’t wish to come, get out and sleep under yonder hedge. You slept out in the open last night, and you can do it again tonight.”
I thought that surely now the climax was reached, and that they were minded to turn us out forcibly by the wayside—the more certainly that they pulled up short, and began to talk together apart. Not so. however. The conference ended, the officer gave a charge to one of the soldiers, and taking the other with him to lead his horse, hurried off on foot towards Yinch’eng.
The hour or so that we were kept standing in the roadway awaiting their return was of a piece with the rest of that troublous day. Ordinarily we should not have had to reckon with wayfarers at that time of night; but we had fallen upon a great exception, and we knew that before long the processionists would be taking the homeward tack. Thankful we were that we had not been driven back into the thick of it all, as at one time seemed inevitable. But we were still in the presence of a very real danger, and one that called for the staying of the mind afresh upon God. A cart standing stock still in the middle of the road, under a bright moon, was an object conspicuous enough, and one calculated to excite curiosity; and the curiosity of processionists who had sought our lives once that day already was not a cheering prospect. So again from under the p’eng of the cart went up the cry of the helpless to God mighty to save.
In due course they came, one here and another there, singly and in groups. One and all, arrested by the unusual sight, stopped at the answer to the customary inquiry, “Who have you got there?” “The cursed iang kuei-tsï.” The bitterness with which the soldier gave it out went through me; for it amounted to an invitation to the bystanders (about twenty of them) to fall on us. But though they joined him in heaping scurrilous abuse on us, no one lifted a hand against us. That endless hour of suspense under the cold moon was one that left its mark upon my own soul. Though the situation was not so acute, perhaps, as on some occasions, yet I recall it as one of peculiar suffering, as well as of signal mercy. For the hostility of the guard, openly avowed as it had not been before, removed even the semblance of protection from us. There was nothing on man’s side to hold them back from doing all the desire of their heart; and yet they feared a fear, and we knew well that it was a fear from God Who stood as a wall of fire between us and them.
The suspense was ended by the return of the other two. We had dreaded, indeed, lest it might only prove an aggravation of the trouble, but in the mercy of God it was otherwise. The officer’s manner seemed to indicate that he had business on hand that required haste. After addressing a few words which we could not catch to the several groups around us, he gave an order to turn the carts (which owing to the restiveness of the mule had been facing in the opposite direction) for Yin-ch’eng; and away we sped with lightened hearts, leaving the dreaded wayfarers to go their way and think their thoughts.
With lightened hearts; for no one can imagine the intense relief of finding another peril left behind. And yet with hearts not wholly without care; for were we not heading for Yin-ch’eng? Sad experience was teaching us that we were to escape one phase of danger only to confront another; and the inward attitude to be constantly maintained, was by necessity one in which praise for “mercy obtained” in deliverance merged into prayer for “grace to help” in view of a “time of need” that lay on immediately before. Thus only were we enabled to go on from hour to hour; and as the care of the hour brought us into touch with Him Who careth for us, we learned in a very practical way what it meant to be “lifted above—above all,” and with our hand in His to be “without carefulness.”
The moon’s light was at intervals obscured under masses of drifting cloud as we hurried along the now wholly silent and deserted road. It was after midnight when the gate of the town was reached. There was no question about it—they meant us to spend the night there; and once more we entered the place of Sorrows. Instead of taking us however, into the town to a respectable inn, we had no sooner drawn within the gate than the cart pulled up. Here we were ordered to get out, and the place indicated where we were to pass the night. It was the stage of the small stone theater, open, of course, in front and facing the long main street. Such places are the customary sleeping ground of tramps, outcasts and professional beggars; and doubtless it was chosen now to mark the contempt in which we were held, and suitably to impress the sense of our degradation upon us. So far, indeed, as our outward appearance was concerned, there was everything to suggest, to the ordinary observer, a natural correspondence with our environment; for we looked by this time as nearly professional, qua Chinese beggar, as the genuine article—specially I, in the orthodox dress of the order. It was evident to us all that we had no choice but to obey the direction, though not before we had required and received the solemn assurance that they would call for us at dawn the next morning, ‘ere the town was astir.’ Not that their word went for anything, but an appeal to their honor was the only resort left to us from man’s side; and then from God’s side, might He not use that very appeal as the lever for the accomplishment of His saving purpose? At any rate, faith took hold of it thus, and the prayer that it might be so in His good pleasure turned into the hope that it would be so to His glory.
The officer planted our feet in the small, narrow steps of the steep stairway, and one by one, with heavy hearts, we mounted to the stage. Happily for us the darkness hid from sight the horrible filth amid which we were to lie. Nothing was discernible save the dark forms of some five others, beggars and outcasts like ourselves, stretched in the attitude of sleep. One of these—a woman—the officer roused up, and telling her who we were, bade her watch us carefully till the morning, and on no account allow us to escape, as we were to be put to death next day. Then, throwing us three or four small breads of steamed dough, he jumped on the cart and was gone.
Yes, really gone this time—our one hope of escape; and we were alone once more, publicly exposed in the very midst of our enemies. I shall never forget what I felt like as the rattle of the cart died away in the street. With the knowledge that they had twice attempted to abandon us, how could we reasonably expect to see the escort again?
The old woman in whose charge we had been left affected no small solicitude for us. She mourned our plight, deplored the fate that awaited us, and then urged us to lay ourselves down to sleep beside the rest of her gang. Finding, however, that we withdrew to the farthest corner and the deepest shadows, she came and settled herself beside us, watching us intently, and giving vent to her inner feelings in a series of sighs, mutterings and ejaculations. It was dreary work listening to a voice in the dark, with its hoarse, low monotone, “Ai-is! ai-is! they are all to be killed in the morning”; and the consciousness of being thus narrowly overlooked by a hag who, for aught we knew, had a stake in our destruction, as well as of the near neighborhood of her lawless clique, was disturbing enough (to say the least) to make sleep out of the question. She was too suspiciously anxious to see us sleeping for us not to fear that there was a sinister motive in it all. How much the poor old soul took in of the Gospel message, lovingly given her by Miss Gates, it is impossible to say; but when all was still enough for her to suppose that we were asleep, it was not encouraging to see her steal away to her four male companions where they lay, softly rouse them to a sitting posture, talk low with them for a while, and then resume her moanings beside us. It was now time to let her know that we were not so oblivious to her movements as she had hoped; and the sound of Miss Gates’ voice bidding her go and rest in her own place instead of sitting where she was, evidently took both her and her companions by surprise. To our unspeakable relief she left us to lie down and feign sleep with the rest.
How we managed to keep awake that night I really do not know; but the situation demanded it, and I can only say that Divine grace was given for it. In spite of the known and felt (if unseen) filth, in spite of vermin and distressful pose of body, in spite of cold that pierced to the bone, my eyes were so heavy that I knew not how to force them open. We had agreed to take each a short watch, waking one another by turns; but the snatch of sleep thus afforded, for all its imperativeness, was yet so troubled that after all it amounted to little more than a series of apprehensive starts. It was a night of terrors. I cannot describe what it was. “O Lord, I am oppressed, undertake for me!” was the burden of all my waking moments. There was the continual suspicion that the beggars were only feigning sleep, and watching for an expected opportunity of falling on us; and every movement of theirs kept fear alive. Peering out into the street, there was the constant dread of seeing the forms of our enemies emerge from the darkness to hurry us away to death. And then with all the longing for the darkness to be passed, there was the terror of the morning light—the gathering of the hostile crowds as we had known it yesterday in that place, and no man now to cover us from violence. The condition of nervous apprehension to which we were reduced appears in the fact that when some ix or eight men came past the theater in the small hours, Miss Gates insisted that they were crouching beneath at the foot of the stage, ready for the work of death in the morning—an illusion which was only dispelled by my creeping forward to the edge to verify the assertion. We were sitting in darkness in more senses than one that night but we thought upon Him that quickeneth the dead, and remembered that our Advocate at His right hand was One that had been tempted in all points like as we are; and the words of Micah 7:8 became a literal experience: “When I sit in darkness, the Lord shall be a light unto me.”
The break of day brought home to us the full indignity of our position. As my eye turned from my beggar associates in all their filth and squalor, to the forms of my wife and children beside me, and saw them where they lay, my heart bled at the sight. To any passerby we must have looked, in our rags and dirt, as one company with the rest. And yet with it all we had the sweetest solace, to which even the darling little ones were not insensible, in the knowledge that unto us it was being given in the behalf of Christ to suffer for His sake. Many times in the course of our sad journeyings some moment of peculiar darkness would be suddenly shot through with heavenly light, by a word from the lips of our babes, uttered in all the simplicity of childlike innocence and trust. There was one such moment now. The sorrow of seeing the extent of their outward wretchedness was broken in upon by Hedley’s voice.
“Father dear?”
“What is it, darling boy?”
“I think Jesus must have slept in a place like this, when He had nowhere to go to?”
“Yes, darling, I think it very likely.”
“Then we ought to be glad that we are like Jesus, oughtn’t we?”
Little did the dear child know what that baby message meant to me. “We ought to be glad that we are like Jesus.” I could see that it was a reality to him—a power that really kept him amid all the very real suffering from complaining, and little Hope too. Yet there they were—hungry, blistered, all but naked; their bed the hard, cold stone of the stage floor, their bedding filth unimaginable. Tiny as they were, there was given to those little ones that believed in Christ, not only to believe, but also to suffer in His behalf in a way that often put my own faith and patience to the blush, while it also imparted fresh courage, joy and strength in the Lord.
The beggars were astir with the dawn. For a while they sat over a fire of sticks talking together and eyeing us askance; but they did not attempt to meddle with us in any way. An early opened food shop close by supplied them with a meal, and with broad daylight they decamped, as if fearful of us, and glad to get away from our neighborhood. The old woman probably considered that, having been charged to watch us till the morning, she had fulfilled her trust, and that indeed there was no further need to watch, as escape by day was out of the question.
In accordance with the promise given by the escort we hoped against hope, and kept an anxious watch for the cart’s appearing. With the experience of yesterday before our eyes, we had nothing to look forward to in Yin-ch’eng but hostility, all the more certainly that we had dared to come back and were now unprotected. I need not say that our time of quietness, when we found ourselves once more alone after the beggars’ departure, was one of diligent waiting upon God for guidance and protection, and of definite committal of ourselves, our burden and our way, into His hand.
The promised time of dawn had gone by, and no cart appeared. Dawn had melted into clear daylight, and daylight itself into the brilliance of cloudless sunshine; and still no cart came. In another hour or so the town would be astir, our presence in the place would be noised abroad, and all hope of escape cut off. It now became a question of the first moment; What would be the right thing to do—to stay on where we were and take the risk of waiting for the cart, or to make off across the fields while yet we had the chance of escape on foot? If ever I felt the need of a wisdom other than my own, it was in that hour of awful responsibility. Life and death were in the balance—the life or death, not of myself, but of those committed to my trust; and the final decision one way or the other rested with me. The hopelessness of the escort ever turning up again, rendered almost certain by the length of time that had already elapsed since the promised hour of dawn, combined with the certainty of our being taken for death by the hostile crowd of yesterday, led me to favor the desperate idea of getting away into hiding while the opportunity was in our hand; and but for my wife’s conviction that the cart had been given us too definitely to be thus presumptuously set aside, I should have taken the latter course. And yet as I looked the alternative of sitting still square in the face, it seemed sheer suicide. Look which way I would, I was borne down at every point by the overwhelming odds against us. Flight was madness, and sitting still was madness; and we, whither should we go, where every way was death! I never remember coming so near despair. But “it is good that a man should both hope and quietly wait for the Lord”; and I was being brought to an end of myself, that I might cease from myself and be shut up to God. Eventually we were all brought to one mind in the matter; and as we resolved to remain where the will of God had set us, and committed the keeping of our souls to Him, in the well-doing of patient, trustful waiting, as to a faithful Creator, a sure consciousness possessed us that, whether He made a way of escape or no, we were in His hand; and “the peace of God that passeth all understanding” garrisoned our hearts.
In due time the usual signs of awakening life appeared, and the ones and twos that came down the street stopped curiously at the sight of the stranger group against the back wall of the stage. For a while they were content to survey us from below; but as the deferred with the momently expectation of attack before us. The power of the sun drove us to the back wall of the stage, where a slender strip of shade now showed itself; and again the crowd from below pressed up in front of us with menace of rude jest and gesture. We bore it until it became insufferable as before, and then sought refuge again below on the street.
The state of exhaustion to which we were being reduced by hunger and thirst, combined with the oppressive heat of sun and stifling crowds, forced me to crave a little water from the food shop hard by the theater. In the compassionate mercy of our God the request was not denied, and I had the joy of reappearing with a bowl of “k’ai-shui” in each hand. Not only so, but the chang-kuei-tih repeated this kindness until our thirst was satisfied. The Lord remember those cups of water given us at a time when to befriend the foreigner was to court the foreigner’s doom.
Another of those gracious tokens for good which had never failed us just at the time of special need, this little incident, as may be supposed, cheered our hearts more than it refreshed our bodies. It afforded us, too, an opportunity of witness before the people that we sought their good alone; for as we lifted our hearts in thanksgiving to God before drinking, we prayed Him in their hearing to send them the rain for their fields and the living water for their souls. They were noticeably quieter after this, having nothing against us that they could lay hold of.
The situation, however, was too precarious to last long. Superstition works by fear as well as by hate, and there was enough to show us that if we were not quickly relieved by the escort we should be driven out from very fear of our presence in the place. To have to sit on and on and see the restless spirit of uneasiness gradually rising and working to a head, was to me a form of ordeal more dreaded than any other. But it was allowed of God only that we might learn what it meant to be “strengthened with all might according to His glorious power unto all patience and long suffering with joyfulness”; and that we might know that “salvation is of the Lord.”
It was going on for noon now, and still there was no cart, or any sign of it—the cart that had been promised at dawn! But the comfort was ours that we were in the appointed place of God’s will, and, in spite of all, our hearts were in peace because we “trusted in Him.” Shall I ever forget the bounding joy of the sight which at length rewarded our faith—the officer with his long pipe hurrying past on foot! He paused for a moment to tell us in an off-hand way that they were soon coming to take us on; then, tossing us a morsel of steamed bread, hastened away. Here, at least, was a double mercy—the known presence of the escort in the place, and the supply of our present need of food; and out of a full heart we gave thanks to Him Whose mercy endureth forever.