- 2- 
 
BEGGARS GOLD 
 
By 
 ERNEST POOLE 
 
 His FAMILY 
 
 THE HARBOR 
 
 His SECOND WIFE 
 
 "THE DARK PEOPLE" 
 
 BLIND, A STORY OF THESE TIMES 
 
 THE VILLAGE, RUSSIAN IMPRESSIONS 
 
BEGGARS GOLD 
 
 J 
 
 BY 
 
 ERNEST POOLE 
 
 gocfe 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 1921 
 
 All rights reserved 
 


 To M. A. 
 
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 
 
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1921, 
 BY ERNEST POOLE. 
 
 electrotyped. Published October, 1921. 
 
 Press of 
 
 J. J. Little & Ives Company 
 New York, U. S. A. 
 
To M. A. 
 
BEGGARS GOLD 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 i. 
 
 IN New York, toward the end of an afternoon 
 in the autumn of 1894, through the strident 
 hubbub, the jostling, nervous rush of the crowds 
 pouring into the old Grand Central Station, came 
 two figures so incongruous that even in that whirl 
 ing haste they drew curious glances. One was a 
 large, heavy, young man of about twenty-eight, an 
 American. The other, who barely reached to his 
 waist, was a stout, little Chinese boy, in a padded 
 coat of dark, blue silk, a black cap with a big, red 
 button, blue trousers and white stockings. As he 
 jogged along, his diminutive pigtail hung straight 
 down and his face looked solemnly straight ahead; 
 but his black eyes kept darting about, and as the 
 pair pressed into the crowd his clutch on his huge 
 companion s hand tightened and his jaws set hard. 
 
:*;. BEGGARS GOLD 
 
 They had come so far ahead of time that they 
 found the train not yet made up, so they went to 
 the waiting room. The place was filled with trav 
 ellers, many of whom were as bored as they seemed; 
 but scattered all about the room were others whose 
 impassive eyes concealed an inner universe of trav 
 ellers thoughts and feelings memories, anticipa 
 tions, pictures of places left behind but vividly 
 remembered now, homes and busy offices; and other 
 scenes that loomed ahead; desires, schemes and busi 
 ness worries, sharp anxieties, loves and hates, jokes 
 remembered with keen relish, and the pettiest 
 little plans, hurt vanities, small jealousies all back 
 of those impassive eyes. Each one, busy with his 
 own, paid little heed to the others. But even these 
 people, as moments passed, cast looks of curious 
 interest at the big man in his plain, gray clothes and 
 the fantastic, little boy. What had brought this 
 couple together? 
 
 A few of the people sitting there gave more than 
 a casual glance to the pair, and most of these more 
 attentive observers soon forgot to look at the child 
 in their deepening interest in the man. There was 
 nothing bizarre about him. His big burly figure 
 was clothed in a cheap loose suit of grey, with 
 bulging pockets at the sides, and he wore a large 
 common straw hat over a thick shock of hair. 
 What drew their attention more and more, and 
 
BEGGARS GOLD 3, 
 
 gripped their curiosity, was the expression on his 
 face. For, in spite of all its heaviness, in the sensi 
 tive lips and twinkling eyes was an anxious, almost 
 wistful quality which made them ask, "What sort 
 of a man is he ? What kind of a life does he lead in 
 this town, and what in the world is he doing here, 
 nurse-maiding this young Celestial? Are they go 
 ing to China? . . . No, only the boy. The man 
 has come to see him off." 
 
 This conclusion they soon reached through 
 watching the actions of the pair. 
 
 The man took out a bundle of tickets and looked 
 them over, one by one slowly and carefully giv 
 ing directions. The boy kept nodding in reply, with 
 a look of absorbed expectancy. When his friend 
 had finished talking, they sat silent as before. But 
 from time to time the lips of the Httle Easterner 
 quivered and he clutched the other s arm. And into 
 the heavy, sensitive face and the twinkling gray eyes 
 of the Yankee crept once more that expression of 
 anxiety and wistful regret. For the small boy by 
 his side had been connected intimately with the 
 happiest year of his life. 
 
 2. 
 
 From the time when he himself had been a boy 
 upon a farm, in the inner world of Peter Wells the 
 
4 BEGGARS GOLD 
 
 word China had had a magic sound. As now he sat 
 in the waiting room, there came into his memory a 
 picture of another day in October, some twelve 
 years ago, in a village up in the Berkshires. Down 
 the mountainside a cold wind swept into a maple 
 grove where several hundred people stood listening 
 to a speaker with a hard, clear, incisive voice, a 
 missionary whom their church and several other 
 churches were sending over to China to convert the 
 heathen there. As he talked, his words like the 
 autumn wind made Peter feel cold and depressed. 
 Standing first on one leg, then on the other, he was 
 to all appearances a dull, stolid boy of fifteen; but 
 for all that, deep inside, he was sensitive, impres 
 sionable; he lived alone with u the Widder Wells," 
 who was religious to a degree; and he felt the call 
 of the preacher now to an extent that would have 
 surprised and gratified that grim individual, who 
 was finding it hard to drive his message into the 
 hearts of these unresponsive mountaineers. As the 
 time for the collection drew near, his voice rose in 
 a last appeal. China, a great jungle of darkness, 
 a bleak desert of despair! The missionary, a 
 martyr and God s chosen instrument, braving all, 
 enduring all! Listening, Peter was made to feel 
 that unless one offered himself to God and said, 
 "Lord, send me where Thou wilt," he was a poor 
 
BEGGARS GOLD 5 
 
 specimen in God s eyes. And he knew he would 
 never offer himself, and so he felt guilty and de 
 pressed. 
 
 His sense of guilt was made more acute by the 
 feeling of the silver dollar in one pocket of his 
 "pants." His devout mother had spurred him on to 
 earn this money and give it in the collection today; 
 but clutching it tight in his hand a vague but excited 
 determination was growing in him to keep the coin 
 and spend it at the county seat. He could get ten 
 novels for that dollar ten, delicious, thrilling 
 tales of travel and adventure! As he thought of 
 this sacrilege, which he knew he was about to com 
 mit, a feeling of resentment rose against the mis 
 sionary. But this only made it worse; for if he 
 hated this man of God, in what a hopelessly dam 
 nable condition his own soul must be! 
 
 "I guess I m headed for Hell, all right," poor 
 Peter thought discouragedly; and in the grim, cold, 
 awful perplexity of it all, this business of duty, souls 
 and God, he felt his whole mind drawn into a snarl. 
 
 Then he heard a low, sarcastic voice mutter just 
 behind him : 
 
 "God, but ain t he lucky takin a great trip 
 like that seein all China while we farm?" 
 
 Peter turned with a slight start and saw his uncle, 
 William Gowdy, a gnarled, shaggy individual with 
 
6 BEGGARS GOLD 
 
 black eyes that burned like coals from under heavy 
 eyebrows. 
 
 "Martyr shucks! Wouldn t I like to go to 
 China? Wouldn t I like to see the world?" 
 
 The voice of the tempter muttered on. And a 
 wave of emotion queer and deep surged slowly up 
 in Peter s breast. At first just a glow of relief, it 
 warmed into an exciting sense of peril and adven 
 ture. Bill Gowdy was a dangerous man ; some even 
 called him an u infidel". And so his rough whisper 
 now was like the very voice of the Devil ! But it did 
 warm Peter so ! It tightened his grip on that silver 
 coin, unlocked his tortured snarl of thoughts, broke 
 the spell of the preacher s eye. 
 
 "Martyr shucks !" 
 
 With a grunt of contempt, William Gowdy turned 
 away. Presently Peter followed him; and, as he 
 walked out of the grove, that exultant glow of relief, 
 which he did not trouble to understand, was with 
 him still. "Martyr shucks!" Those magic 
 words seemed to have set him suddenly free. Once 
 more he gripped the silver dollar. He had earned 
 it cent by cent. Ten dime novels ! "By Golly, I ll 
 get em! I ve a right to em!" he thought. Ten 
 wild, fascinating tales that would carry him out all 
 over the earth! Again he heard his uncle s voice: 
 "Wouldn t I like to go to China?" And, as though 
 
BEGGARS GOLD 7 
 
 unlocked from a prison cell, the thoughts and 
 fancies of Peter Wells, with a slow start but gath 
 ering speed, sped off away to the distant land behind 
 the great, red, autumn sun that was sinking over 
 the hills in the west. 
 
 What did he know about China? "I don t know 
 nuthinY he would have replied. But out of those 
 subconscious depths, where all he had ever heard 
 or seen, read, hated, loved, desired, dreamed, was 
 stored as in a house of gold, up came marvellous 
 pictures now. Golden idols, tinkling bells, sinister 
 priests on murder bent, lurking in dark temples with 
 long gleaming knives in their hands; enormous 
 brightly painted junks attacked by swarms of river 
 pirates; camels in long, weird processions winding 
 over the desert at night; mandarins in shining robes 
 watching their dozens of gorgeous young wives 
 dance before them in the light of tossing paper 
 lanterns; harem loves, escapes and murders; fields 
 of poppies, opium dives ! And Peter, the real Peter, 
 had nothing to do with this at all except to scowl 
 and hold his breath, as the pictures and entrancing 
 sounds kept rising up before him. The spell was 
 brief. Too engrossed to notice that his feet were 
 blearing him home, the luckless lad was roused from 
 his trance by the hard voice of "the Widder Wells" 
 and sent about the evening chores. But he saw the 
 
8 BEGGARS GOLD 
 
 East in dreams that night. And waking in the cold, 
 dark drawn, with other chores ahead of him, he 
 groaned with the tedium of his lot. 
 
 "China! Gosh!" he whispered. 
 
 In the next week the vision paled. The stolid 
 Peter of everyday came back into his own. He 
 thought, u Nuthin ever comes of dreamin . Nuthin 
 will ever happen to me. There s nuthin in China 
 nuthin for me." And as for those dime novels 
 when his mother gave him griddle cakes for dinner 
 that day, and other things he liked to eat, as a re 
 ward, she told him, for the dollar he had given to 
 God the honesty in Peter took hold of him to 
 such a degree that after a long, inner struggle he 
 confessed, gave up the coin, and was filled with a 
 sense of righteousness which sat like a big, solid 
 lump upon the rebellious, eager, dreaming Peter 
 underneath. Moreover, despite his hearty dislike 
 of the chores, he loved the life of this farm far up 
 on the broad mountainside. There were so many 
 things he liked to do. With two other boys he was 
 nutting that autumn and setting out traps for mink 
 and foxes; and with an old shotgun he went after 
 "patridges". And often there were sunsets that 
 made him feel all queer inside though he would 
 have flushed indignantly if anyone had told him so. 
 
 "I m doin pretty well as I am," thought Peter. 
 He soon settled back into the familiar rut, and would 
 
 
BEGGARS GOLD 9 
 
 no doubt have stayed there, were it not for a little 
 discovery that he made one autumn night down in 
 Bill Gowdy s general store. 
 
 He had seldom talked to his uncle before. Bill 
 Gowdy was a dangerous man. Gnarled and gray at 
 fifty-five, childless and a widower, he lived alone in 
 the rear of his store and "kept himself to himself" 
 except for rebel mutterings against the church, 
 the library, the school, and even the name of the 
 town. "Pearly Gates !" he was heard to sneer, as 
 he stamped it on the evening mail. The post office 
 was in his store. He had been able to keep it there 
 by the hold that his sarcasms, his gleaming com 
 ments on events, had on the male citizens. They 
 liked to chuckle at Bill s remarks. But "the Wid- 
 der Wells" was one of those who spoke of him as 
 "an infidel doin no good to God or man." And 
 so young Peter had let him alone. 
 
 But now, one night when the store was empty, 
 he found his uncle in the back room, with an enor 
 mous book in his lap, in which he was pasting some 
 thing. And so engrossed did he appear that Peter 
 was drawn as though by chains to come softly closer. 
 Then it was that he made his discovery. Bill Gowdy 
 had a collection of stamps ! For years he had col 
 lected, until the hobby had become a kind of holy 
 of holies, jealously kept from village eyes, perhaps 
 for fear of ridicule. "It s none of their business!" 
 
io BEGGARS 7 GOLD 
 
 he would have snarled, had he been asked the reason 
 why. With a startled u Huh!" he now looked up 
 and closed the huge volume with a slam. Then on 
 second thought, apparently deciding that his only 
 chance to keep this young fool quiet was to let him 
 into the secret, too, he said: 
 
 "You give me your promise to shet up, an I ll let 
 you have a look at this album." 
 
 So began an intimacy which turned the whole 
 course of Peter s life. The wide world was in that 
 book, and the fascination of it all grew and grew 
 upon him. The fascination of foreign names, of 
 tiny, colored pictures of kings, emperors, rajahs, 
 shahs, of great national heroes, of old cities, tem 
 ples, mosques, of lions, elephants, unicorns, of ships 
 and harbors, mighty rivers. This did not happen all 
 at once. After the first excitement, the heavy Peter 
 of everyday quickly reasserted himself. "There s 
 nuthin in stamps, nuthin really at all, but a lot of 
 little fool pictures," he thought. But as before, so 
 now again, the dreaming Peter deep inside was 
 stirred and roused by his uncle Bill, to whom these 
 stamps were windows opening on foreign lands. 
 Every dollar he could save, by close bargaining in 
 his store, went into his collection. He fixed his 
 thoughts on some rare, old stamp listed in his cata 
 logues, then saved and cheated until he could buy it. 
 
BEGGARS GOLD II 
 
 And as Peter saw the collection grow, he himself 
 became filled with the lust of possession. He did 
 odd jobs about the store and took his pay in 
 "traders." On winter nights he hurried through 
 the chores at home and followed the winding, snowy 
 road down to the village, to be in time for the even 
 ing mail. Gone was all dread of his uncle now; and 
 the little lies he had to tell, the secrecy of the whole 
 adventure, only gave an added zest. To go through 
 the night mail was like digging for gold; for, though 
 all the letters were domestic as a rule, there came 
 out of the bag at intervals a letter or a postcard 
 from a young marine engineer whose home had been 
 in Pearly Gates. From Calcutta and Bombay, 
 Shanghai, Yokohama and many other Eastern ports, 
 these letters came. He followed them home to get 
 the stamps, sometimes he heard them read aloud, 
 and his imagination burned ! 
 
 Except for the few forbidden tales of travel and 
 adventure that he had secretly bought or borrowed, 
 Peter had found most books a bore. He turned to 
 them now to get food for his dreams, but the food 
 was not there. The high school geographies were 
 filled with facts as dry as hay ; and the books in the 
 village library, selected by the minister and two of 
 his deacons, seemed to have been written on pur 
 pose to show there was not a thrill on the face of 
 
12 BEGGARS GOLD 
 
 the earth least of all in heathen lands. Now he 
 began to understand Bill Gowdy s lone rebellion 
 against library, church and school. 
 
 "They set out," said Bill, "to make the world 
 look so tarnation flat and cold, it d freeze a man 
 into thinkin of heayen. They set out to, an they 
 done it!" 
 
 Filled with a curious, grim delight at the hold 
 which his beloved stamps were getting on his 
 nephew, and more eager than he knew to share his 
 secret passion, he now let Peter deeper into his 
 strange treasure house. On some of the stamps 
 were long, dizzy words in queer, heathen characters, 
 Greek and Arabic, Chinese. With the aid of half 
 a dozen little foreign dictionaries, they worked them 
 out together, pronounced them with a nasal twang, 
 savored them; and later on, in payment for more 
 work in the store, he began to give Peter lessons 
 in German a language such as never before had 
 been heard upon the face of the globe for Bill 
 Gowdy had learned it all alone. 
 
 "I chose German," he remarked, "because in 
 these commercial days if you speak German and 
 English you can get along most anywhere. And 
 when I began to learn it, over twenty years ago, I 
 still had hopes of travellin ." He sank into gloomy 
 thoughts. "But my wife was alive," he muttered. 
 Presently he shot a look at Peter from under his 
 
BEGGARS GOLD 13 
 
 shaggy brows. "Why don t you go travellirv ? 
 Your mother ain t so long for this world. Why not 
 begin to fix things now so you can move an keep 
 on movin ? Get a job that ll take you around!" 
 
 "What job ?" burst from Peter Wells. Watching 
 his blunt, freckled face, his uncle s eyes grew quiz 
 zical. 
 
 "God knows," he said. But, for all its heaviness, 
 Peter s was a sensitive face; and, at the hurt ex 
 pression of woeful disappointment that swept over 
 it, in a tinder tone old William Gowdy added, "But 
 there s always a chance for a travellin job if you ve 
 got a furrin language." 
 
 So the lessons were begun. Peter made slow 
 headway at first; but, doggedly holding to the tasks 
 that his uncle gave him every night, at last he was 
 able to speak a few words, with Bill Gowdy s accent. 
 And now as they talked it back and forth, for the 
 first time in his sixteen years, Peter s dull convic 
 tion, that he could never do or be anything of any 
 account, began to lift, and there came intimations 
 of thrilling powers in himself deep, deep inside, 
 like buried springs. Though he had no definite plan 
 or ambition, he built pictures of himself in China, 
 Russia, Africa. But he was slow, and chained as 
 he was to "the Widder Wells" and the work on the 
 farm, the idea of running away barely even entered 
 his head. Peter was pretty comfortable. He was 
 
14 BEGGARS GOLD 
 
 fond of his mother, used to her; and, besides, she 
 was getting old. No, he could not leave her yet. 
 So the months slipped into years; and Peter was 
 nearly twenty before the first opportunity came to 
 escape the dull routine of the farm. 
 
 In the village school and high school, a new prin 
 cipal had arrived and was ejecting a little old life 
 by dismissing the three teachers there. Two of the 
 places had been filled, but the third was vacant still; 
 and in spite of his uncle s disapproval and sarcastic 
 comments, Peter listened to the urgings of the new 
 school principal, who was having a desperate time 
 to fill the one remaining place. Sensing Peter s 
 wanderlust, he urged that the only chance for that 
 lay in ar education. 
 
 "At least," said Peter, "it s a chance. It s a 
 damn sight better than workin a farm." 
 
 "It isn t !" growled his uncle Bill. "There s some- 
 thin real about a farm. This is just fillin yourself 
 with lies and feedin em out into the minds of a 
 lot of Christ-forsaken sheep !" 
 
 But Peter made up his mind to try, and for five 
 uneventful years he taught school in Pearly Gates. 
 The new principal was called away to a big school 
 in Burlington; back came the old order of things, 
 the dry dust of dull routine; and settling into that 
 village world of bleak concentration on its own 
 laborious affairs, as Peter grew into his twenties he 
 
BEGGARS GOLD 15 
 
 began to feel settled for life. His mother was still 
 ailing, and the idea of looking about for a job away 
 from home would never have occurred to him, had 
 it not been for Bill Gowdy. 
 
 "There s other ways of teachin things, there s 
 other kinds of schools," he said, "with some life in 
 em. Go to New York. There are libraries there 
 where you can get books from every country under 
 the sun, without its costin you a cent. And, if you 
 ain t blind enough to let some simperin fool of a 
 gal slip into place as your lawful wife, you can save 
 your money for travellin . You say you like geog 
 raphy best. All right, then make it your specialty. 
 Your true geography teacher ought to see and keep 
 seein furrin lands!" 
 
 The idea took hold of Peter and, to get ready for 
 such a^ life if the chance ever came to him, he went 
 on with his German, then tackled a little French and 
 Italian. In these studies his uncle joined, and what 
 he did not mispronounce Peter did. At night, in 
 the back room of the store, strange languages were 
 spoken ! 
 
 But all this time another side of Peter had been 
 developing, and it filled his uncle with disgust. The 
 little town of Pearly Gates was not all grim and 
 heavy toil; it had its genial spirits, who could never 
 be content unless they were getting up church sup 
 pers, picnics, "sugarin offs", sleigh rides, dances. 
 
1 6 BEGGARS GOLD 
 
 And, because young men were scarce, Peter had been 
 much in demand. Nor had he been slow to respond. 
 For, beside the curious Peter of visions and imag 
 inings, there was a comfortable Peter Wells, a large, 
 stout, sociable young man who liked to be friendly, 
 an overgrown boy, a human, kindly, wistful soul 
 who felt himself bubbling inside with genial humor, 
 and with elephantine grace tried at times to get it 
 out. And, when they laughed at his quips and jokes, 
 he was content with Pearly Gates. After all, it was 
 quite a town. Moreover, he had warm blood in his 
 veins, and he felt at times desires that filled him 
 with a strange delight and a savage restlessness. 
 These he clothed in sentiment and often thought 
 himself in love. From such affairs he was drawn 
 back by the caustic, mute derision of his uncle ; but, 
 as the years wore on, one girl, a curly headed blonde, 
 emerged from all the others. She had red lips, gay, 
 shining eyes and a fresh, enticing smile that hid a 
 placid soul beneath. She was disturbed by no de 
 sires for outlandish countries. She loved to dance. 
 On summer nights she liked a buggy and a man. 
 She wanted a home and babies. She knew how to 
 chloroform by smiles the queer, rebellious Peter, 
 and to warm and glorify all the everyday life he 
 loved. And, beneath her merry laughter and her 
 giggles at his jokes and the lofty sentiments they 
 
BEGGARS GOLD 17 
 
 so earnestly exchanged, there was something else 
 which grew and grew; and it stirred Peter s blood 
 to such a degree that by the time of his mother s 
 death he found himself pretty nearly engaged. 
 
 Once more it was his Uncle Bill who came to the 
 rescue. 
 
 "You young idiot," he growled, when he learned 
 of Peter s predicament, "you re free at last. For 
 Christ s sake run ! I ain t saying nuthin against 
 the dead but oh God, how your Aunt Sarah Jane 
 did love her home ! And all women are like that ! 
 Wives ain t budgers! They sit to home and the 
 law of the land makes you sit beside em ! Now 
 look here !" he ended. "There s just one thing for 
 you to do! Don t you never risk sayin good-bye to 
 that gal ! Turn over the farm to me to sell, pack 
 up to-night and get out of town tomorrow morning 
 at five twenty-two by the milk train while it s 
 -^ill dark!" 
 
 That night Peter Wells had a terrible walk. The 
 next morning, now heartily cursing his uncle and 
 longing for the girl behind, feeling waves of shame 
 and guilt, of loneliness and uncertainty, but again 
 with a glow of anticipation, he sat at a car window 
 and saw the day break coldly on the wide, outer 
 world of his dreams. By nightfall he was in New 
 York. 
 
1 8 BEGGARS GOLD 
 
 Lonely, baffled, homesick there, he was soon on 
 the point of going home. But a letter from his 
 uncle came, announcing the sale of Peter s farm; and, 
 before he recovered from this shock, he received 
 another in the news that his application for a job 
 as substitute teacher in the city public schools had 
 been granted, and that he was assigned to a school 
 down near Chatham Square. Gloomily he decided 
 to try it. For weeks, in that mammoth house of 
 din, he wrestled with the job of teaching sixty ur 
 chins who, with sudden jumps and piercing cries, 
 shouted a shrill English that he could barely under 
 stand. Outside of the windows, every few moments 
 a train came thundering by on the "L". A brief 
 respite, then another roar. And the whole city was 
 like that. In thundering waves of sound and color 
 it drove in upon him. Dazzling lights and swarthy 
 faces, harsh, incisive, guttural voices. Gone was 
 the fascination of foreigners for Peter now. He 
 saw them, dirty, hard and real, herding through 
 the streets at night. What place for him in such a 
 world? Doggedly nevertheless he held on; and in 
 the classroom, facing those sixty little foreigners, 
 he licked their lessons into them. 
 
 Then came the evenings. What to do? Leaving 
 his stuffy boarding house and looking about for 
 
BEGGARS GOLD 19 
 
 some escape from the din and dirt of the foreign 
 life, he went up-town, and on Broadway he wan 
 dered up and down the street hungrily watching 
 the glittering dames who emerged from cabs and 
 carriages and poured into the theatres. He fol 
 lowed them in, and on the stage saw others with 
 even more vivid charms. One reckless night, he 
 took a seat right down in the orchestra. Beside 
 him a ravishing creature, perfumed and smiling, 
 whispering, was engrossed in the man on her other 
 side to such a degree as swept away all the gloom 
 in Peter Wells. Life was warm and glamorous ! 
 "By God, I ll make my way in this town, I ll get 
 my share of all this!" he thought. A girl spoke to 
 him on the street that night. And Peter tried to 
 get his share. And it left him disgusted, cold, de 
 pressed. But even this depression was unable long 
 to weigh him down. 
 
 "All right, I was a young fool," he thought, 
 "but all the same I m going on to get what I set 
 out for." 
 
 He had come to this town to teach and learn, 
 and get ready to travel and see the world. And the 
 crisp days of fall had come, and Peter felt as strong 
 as a bull. Finding a public library, he asked for 
 French and German books and tackled them hard, 
 night after night, with a slow tenacious force; and 
 within a few weeks this familiar pursuit had given 
 
20 BEGGARS GOLD 
 
 him a feeling of having a foothold in the town. He 
 learned about the night schools now and began to 
 teach in the evenings. He had a class of German 
 Jews, and it gave him a thrill to discover that Ger 
 man and Yiddish were so much alike. Soon he 
 could make himself understood; and, as he talked 
 to his pupils now, he forgot his first revulsion 
 against these guttural foreigners. With some of 
 the young Jews in his class, he went to cafes where 
 they talked and argued half the night, recounted 
 jokes and stories, played pinochle, smoked cigar 
 ettes, drank beer and tea and coffee. In these little 
 vices Peter took part. Puffing his pipe, he listened 
 by the hour to this talk, all in a foreign language 
 which he had learned to understand! It was as 
 though a great gate had opened wide, and in a 
 burst of confidence the genial Peter came to the 
 surface; he gave them jokes and stories straight 
 from old Bill Gowdy s store. His first attempts 
 fell rather flat. The young Jews stared; and, when 
 they laughed, it was at him, not at his jokes. With 
 a scowl he drew back into his shell. 
 
 "My God," thought poor Peter, u have I no sense 
 of humor?" 
 
 But a sharp voice broke into his embarrassment, 
 and glancing up he saw a thin young Hebrew scorn 
 fully berating the group. 
 
 "You re a fine bunch of Jews!" he cried. "Ain t 
 
 
BEGGARS GOLD 21 
 
 you got any sense at all? We came to America, 
 didn t we? We came to stay here, didn t we, and 
 learn to be Americans to spread all over the 
 country, get into everything, learn it all ! And here s 
 a new American a kind we ve never seen before ! 
 Then why the hell don t you give him a chance?" 
 
 The effect of his words was magical. For hours, 
 as he puffed his pipe, Peter was kept answering 
 questions put with such flattering looks of respect, 
 that his resentment was smoothed away. He was 
 always welcome after that. And, in the course of 
 the next two years, through his night school classes, 
 he met other groups of foreigners, Italians, Greeks, 
 Bohemians. Gradually, by day and night, the big 
 school building where he taught became a world 
 in itself to him. For now he had discovered that, 
 in the terrific English spoken by these immigrants, 
 the accents were of a hundred kinds. Italians and 
 Sicilians, Greeks and some Armenians, and Irish, a 
 few Austrian Poles, and Jews from all over Europe, 
 were here. In the class-rooms and the noisy halls, 
 by day and night to Peter s ears, grown sensitive 
 to the slightest shades, came snatches of many for 
 eign tongues. He was learning to tell them apart. 
 And, proud of this queer power of his, and absorbed 
 in this strange seethe and surge of life so close 
 about him, he had little time to look ahead, or 
 back to that day so far behind when the voice of 
 
22 BEGGARS GOLD 
 
 old Bill Gowdy had sent his fancy wandering off to 
 the land beyond the setting sun. 
 
 Peter s grandfather, Jonathan Wells, had voy 
 aged in clippers long ago to India, China and Japan. 
 As though by some mysterious twist and turn of 
 heredity, Peter himself was voyaging now. But 
 his ship was his fancy; and his chart, his compass 
 and binoculars were verbs, adjectives and nouns 
 the strangest, most entrancing nouns, that took him 
 sailing far away to ancient cities over seas. A 
 comfortable way of travelling. It began to seem as 
 though the long, tormenting struggle between the 
 two Peters was settled at last. For both of them 
 were satisfied. Here he could both roam the world 
 and settle into his student s groove. He bought a 
 new pair of spectacles. 
 
 He had quite forgotten China, till one night in 
 a hallway of the school he came upon a weird, little 
 irruption. Out of a class room just ahead shot a 
 small, round figure, which turning blindly down the 
 hall dove straight at Peter s stomach, rebounded 
 and in a frenzy poured out a sobbing torrent of 
 words so strange that Peter started forward. "What 
 the devil is this?" he asked. With the zeal of a 
 collector he seized the urchin by the arm. The 
 
BEGGARS GOLD 23 
 
 mite fought like a wildcat. Turning, twisting, 
 scratching, he tore open Peter s vest. But Peter 
 took no notice of that, for in the dim light of the 
 hall he made out a little pigtail, and with an ex 
 ultant thrill he tightened his grip upon his prey. 
 Here was a rare new specimen! 
 
 He heard a low, indignant voice: 
 
 "What do you mean," it demanded, "by man 
 handling this little boy?" 
 
 Just then the frantic urchin knocked off Peter s 
 spectacles. 
 
 "Fm not man-handling him," Peter growled, as 
 he went like a huge bear to his knees. "The pre 
 cious little brat is man-handling me !" 
 
 He heard a ripple of laughter then, and having 
 found his spectacles he rose, still holding his cap 
 tive, and confronted a dark-haired girl with an 
 attractive, resolute face, a wide, firm mouth with 
 sensitive lips twitching with amusement, and two 
 challenging brown eyes. 
 
 "Moon Chao," she said. And at her voice the 
 youngster became suddenly still, except for a faint 
 wailing sound. "Will you please give me this 
 Chinaman?" Her voice was low and quizzical, and 
 her look revealed a frank enjoyment that put 
 Peter at his ease. Then happened an astonishing 
 thing. The boy jabbered at her in Chinese, and 
 she replied in the same tongue speaking swiftly 
 
24 BEGGARS GOLD 
 
 and fluently, as she gathered him into her arms. 
 Before Peter could fully take this in, she had flashed 
 a smile at him and was gone. 
 
 He stood there staring, frowning, then started 
 abruptly after her, and through the open class room 
 door he saw five Chinamen in a row. He saw the 
 girl hand over her small captive to the man at one 
 end, a stout genial individual with a placid, calm, 
 intelligent face, who put one arm around the boy, 
 smiled down at him and shook his head in a way 
 that said very quietly: u How foolish to be so ex 
 cited, my son." The boy snuggled close in under 
 his arm, and the work of the class went on. 
 
 "Who is she?" wondered Peter. "And how did 
 she ever learn Chinese?" 
 
 He felt a twinge of envy, and as he stood there 
 listening he was stirred to the very depths of his 
 language -loving soul. Hesitating for a time, he 
 mustered courage and came in. She met him with 
 a friendly smile. 
 
 "This is my China Club," she said. 
 
 "May I listen a while?" 
 
 "Of course you may." 
 
 She pointed to a seat in the rear, and turning 
 to the blackboard she began printing slowly in large 
 letters, "Shut the door." The row of Chinamen 
 watched her chalk with an interest breathless and 
 profound, leaning forward in their seats. All at 
 
BEGGARS 1 GOLD 25 
 
 once one of them jumped up, went very quickly and 
 shut the door. As he turned back in triumph, there 
 was a burst of laughter, and excited voices, each one 
 jabbering to his neighbor, nodding, smiling, beam 
 ing. Presently they fell silent and she began to 
 write again. 
 
 All through the rest of the evening, Peter sat in 
 the rear of the room, listening to a language of 
 which he could not understand a word. "Not even 
 a root I" he told himself in exasperation and delight. 
 Here indeed was a wonderful tongue ! He never 
 took his eyes off the girl. Who was she? Had she 
 lived in the East? What was she doing in this 
 school? When she spoke English to the class, his 
 sensitive ear caught a slight burr in her voice, which 
 was rich and deep. "Is she Scotch," he asked, "or 
 American?" With a barely conscious pang of 
 chagrin, he felt that his curiosity was not shared by 
 hers for him, for she barely looked his way. She 
 showed an almost strained absorption in this little 
 group of men. At times her smile would disappear 
 and a frowning sharp intensity would creep into her 
 brown eyes. But when the class was over and the 
 beaming pupils had departed with many "good- 
 nights," she turned back to Peter with a frank look 
 of interest. 
 
 "Are you teaching here?" she asked. 
 
 "Yes." 
 
26 BEGGARS GOLD 
 
 "So am I in the day school." 
 
 "But where did you ever learn Chinese?" 
 
 "In the dearest, loveliest city on earth 
 Peking," she said. "I was born there." 
 
 "Born there!" 
 
 "Yes and I lived there until I was twelve 
 years old." 
 
 Peter gazed at her with delight. 
 
 "You were lucky!" he breathed. She had turned 
 to get her hat and coat, but she looked back at him 
 with a lively curiosity. 
 
 "Yes, I know I was," she replied. "But how do 
 you know? Have you been there, too?" 
 
 "No but I mean to go," he said, "to every 
 country under the sun! And it was China," he 
 added, "that started me thinking wanting that." 
 
 Her curiosity increased. 
 
 "How do you mean? Please tell me." 
 
 Little by little she drew him out about the 
 preacher and the stamps, Bill Gowdy and the 
 languages. Soon he was talking rapidly, for he 
 knew that the lights in the building would soon 
 be put out for the night, and he had a good deal 
 to tell this girl ! His fluency would have surprised 
 him, had he stopped to think of that. For here 
 was a kind of miracle. It was as though the Peter 
 of dreams had burst up sharply through the crust, 
 
BEGGARS GOLD 27 
 
 through the reserved, selfconscious Peter Wells of 
 every day. Abruptly he stopped. 
 
 "That s all," he said. 
 
 "It s wonderful!" 
 
 "Is it?" He sat there in suspense. Would she 
 go now? How to hold her? He mustered cour 
 age, and with a smile that was meant to be humor 
 ous he asked, "Then will you please tell me what 
 is so wonderful about you?" 
 
 She gave a little laugh at that, then looked grave 
 ly back at him. 
 
 "The wonderful thing about me," she said, "is 
 that I had a father who gave his whole life for a 
 big idea." 
 
 "In China?" Peter ventured. 
 
 "Yes. He was an engineer." 
 
 "Was he Scotch?" Peter asked. 
 
 "Yes! How did you know?" 
 
 "By ypur accent," he answered, with a little 
 gleam of pride. 
 
 "That s funny I didn t know that I had it. 
 No one ever noticed it before. . . . He was born 
 in Scotland," she went on, "but became an American 
 when he married my mother here and took her with 
 him to Peking." 
 
 "But what did he do in China?" 
 
 "He worked with Chinese Gordon against the 
 
28 BEGGARS GOLD 
 
 schemes and intrigues of all Europe and Japan. His 
 love for China was like a religion. Helpless now, 
 right down on her back but with a past and a 
 future oh, so vast and beautiful." She smiled 
 a little. "Everything s vast in China even the 
 language," she went on. "But he made me learn 
 to speak it. My teachers were a very solemn, old 
 Confucian scholar and a funny, dear, old nurse who 
 was as fat as fat can be, and wore blue silk trousers. 
 We lived in Peking in the winter, and in the sum 
 mer we went out to a lovely ruined temple up on 
 the side of a low hill. My mother was an invalid, 
 so Dad and I were very close. He had to be away 
 most of the time, working on railroads and canals. 
 And often oh, for weeks and weeks he worked 
 literally day and night. For there was one kind of 
 vastness he never could get used to. When great 
 rivers overflowed, hundreds of thousands of people 
 were drowned. And because he could never get 
 used to that he killed himself by overwork." 
 
 She was looking directly at Peter now, but she 
 seemed barely to notice him. 
 
 "A little while before he died, one evening we 
 were together in front of that temple on the hill. 
 And the plain was very dusky with only little 
 twinkles of light, and great shadows in between 
 and camel bells and sleepy calls like a kind of 
 singing. I was a small girl of twelve, but he talked 
 
BEGGARS GOLD 29 
 
 to me as though I were grown. You see, he knew 
 that mother and I would have to go home to Ohio, 
 where my mother had been born. But he hoped 
 that, when I grew up, some day I would come back 
 to Peking, and live and work for China. . . . And 
 later, in Ohio, I often thought of what he had said. 
 When I was eighteen, my mother died. I was al 
 ready teaching school, but I decided that before I 
 tried to get a position in Peking I had better go to 
 New York and find out more about my job. So I 
 came here three years ago and worked my way 
 through Teachers College," she concluded, smiling. 
 "And so, Mr. Wonderful What s-Your-Name, I ve 
 told you the story of my life. Please don t think 
 I do it often, sir. I m really not that kind at all." 
 
 "I told you mine," said Peter. 
 
 "Yes, and it s very wonderful. What s your 
 name?" 
 
 "Peter Wells." 
 
 "And mine," she said, "is Katherine Blake." She 
 was up on her feet and she held out her hand, 
 "Good-night, Peter Wells. Come back to my China 
 Club some evening when your wonderful life is 
 not too terribly busy and learn a little more 
 Chinese." 
 
30 BEGGARS GOLD 
 
 That was a great night for Peter. As he went 
 home through the din and smell of the crowded 
 tenement streets, he felt a new immensity in all he 
 had ever dreamed about. Something in him poured 
 up like fire and light. "China !" What new mys 
 tery and magic had come into the word ? The next 
 night he went to the library, got maps and books 
 and plunged into the study of China and her lan 
 guage. He worked hard and did not stop to face 
 embarrassing questions, but all the time he was 
 vaguely aware that this feeling of immensity and 
 fresh fascination came not only from the East but 
 from strange depths within himself. Katherine 
 Blake! With an astounding vividness her image 
 rose before him, delightful and confusing. But he 
 did not believe in love at first sight. That was all 
 damned moonshine. He had thought himself in 
 love before. He wanted to keep this different. So 
 sternly he turned away from her image and went 
 doggedly on with his work. And, with his gift for 
 languages, Peter made such headway that within 
 a few weeks, as he strained his ears in that small 
 Chinese class of hers, he began to catch a few of 
 the words. Every Thursday evening he came early 
 to the class, in time for a little talk before the even 
 ing s work began. So he learned that she lived 
 
BEGGARS GOLD 31 
 
 alone in a boarding house on Stuyvesant Square, 
 that she had a few acquaintances but not a single 
 real friend in New York. She was poor, and her 
 years at college had been crowded with little jobs 
 by which she had managed to eke out a living. 
 Poor kid, what a lonesome time she had had! He 
 became tremendously friendly now; and, feeling her 
 quickly respond to his big brother attitude, with a 
 beaming satisfaction he went on mastering Chinese. 
 
 And this brotherly compassion and this sensible 
 friendliness, and this mutual interest in the Chinese 
 language, were doing very nicely until one Thurs 
 day evening. She talked to her class of China that 
 night, of the boundless wealth both in the land and 
 in the minds and spirits of its four hundred million 
 people. In her low, rich voice, now sharp and clear, 
 she said, 
 
 "No matter how some foolish Americans may 
 laugh at you here, I hope that you will never forget 
 to be very proud of your country. China is poor 
 but China is rich richer than the wildest dreams I" 
 She paused for a moment, and then she said, "You 
 are beggars sitting on bags of gold!" 
 
 The brooding, hungry, almost sad, yet challeng 
 ing gleam in her brown eyes went into Peter like a 
 flame. 
 
 "My father said that," she ended. "And it is 
 true of all of us." 
 
32 BEGGARS GOLD 
 
 Peter walked home with her that night; and 
 though their talk was all of this gold that lies inside 
 each one of us, and of the books of William James, 
 and of the subconscious self and other very solemn 
 things, their excited voices kept breaking into laugh 
 ter as though it were all the merriest and gayest 
 joke conceivable. Suddenly she stopped by his side. 
 
 "This is where I am living/ she said. 
 
 Peter frowned and cast a look of indignant dis 
 approval up at the offending house which was about 
 to swallow her. 
 
 "It isn t China," he remarked. 
 
 "How do you know it isn t?" Kate retorted grave 
 ly. """It may have a China tucked away somewhere 
 inside." 
 
 A low laugh and she was gone. 
 
 As Peter went home he threw all cautious brother 
 hood and language-learning to the winds. He want 
 ed this girl! He had wanted her from that first 
 night! Why not confess it? The Peter of dreams 
 was rampant now. In his room he savagely looked 
 at himself in the cheap, cracked mirror there and 
 thought, "It s hopeless ! How can she care for me ?" 
 But then again he was shaken by this boundless, 
 new desire, this wanting to slave for her, give her 
 his life. "And this is me," poor Peter thought. 
 "More real than any other me that I ve known be 
 fore ! And if she ll only let me try. . . ." His 
 
BEGGARS GOLD 3$ 
 
 imagination leaped ahead to what a Peter he might 
 be ! Once more he looked into the mirror, and 
 groaned. "I may look like a boarding house, but 
 by God I ve got a China inside !" 
 
 He grabbed his Chinese grammar and went fero 
 ciously to work. For him all other languages, and 
 all those other friends of his, talking and arguing 
 in cafes, were out of his existence. To go to China, 
 that was enough. "And stay there, too, for the rest 
 of my days !" decided Peter recklessly. He was in 
 no mood for cautious thoughts or any sensible plan 
 ning. His whole existence went along Ipy fits and 
 starts, by ups and downs. Now she let him take 
 her to concerts, plays and for long walks; and, 
 though they talked in the friendliest tone, up and 
 up and up came the gold till at times the whole 
 aspect of the town was changed in the most aston 
 ishing ways, with this glory that kept pouring up 
 from somewhere inside of them. Often he felt his 
 amazing luck. He had found her just in time 
 while she had no friends, while her life in New 
 York was still hard, bare and lonely. "Thank 
 God!" he thought. Then, "What a brute I am, to 
 be glad of that !" With a wave of remorse and ten 
 derness, he wanted to help her, give her things, keep 
 off everything that was hard. "She isn t strong," 
 he told himself. "She s living up to the last notch." 
 But when he showed the slightest sign of any such 
 
34 BEGGARS GOLD 
 
 protecting mood, Kate laughed at him. There was 
 in this girl a laughing, warm vitality, that left him 
 humbled and abashed. She could think so much 
 quicker than himself. Now close, confiding, inti 
 mate ; again she would suddenly slip away, and wist 
 fully he felt depths in her that he himself could 
 never plumb. Often she spoke of her father and 
 the time when she was a little girl, and Peter lis 
 tened hungrily. And the China that he builded 
 was all mingled in his fancy with lights that came 
 in her brown eyes, shades of feeling in her voice, so 
 rich and low with its slight burr. Old cities, crowd 
 ed, rich bazaars, temples, mountains, river banks, 
 came into the picture one by one. And now he 
 could feel she was taking him there and wanting him 
 to love all that. Then suddenly he was left behind. 
 
 And Kate had her practical side. It was not 
 only the lack of money that kept her from going 
 to Peking; there was so much to learn right here 
 in New York. "What do I know of America 
 really know, so that I can teach it? Almost 
 nothing !" she exclaimed. She was taking various 
 courses up-town in domestic science, economics; and 
 often she would talk of such work until poor Peter 
 was fearfully bored. Suddenly she would relent. 
 
 "I m tired of being so awfully solemn. Aren t 
 you?" she asked, one evening. 
 
BEGGARS GOLD 35 
 
 "I am!" he replied. At the emphatic tone of 
 his voice, Kate shot a look at him and said: 
 
 "Perhaps you think me hopelessly so." And 
 at his fervent denial she gave him a grateful smile. 
 "I d hate to bore you, Peter Wells," she confided, 
 in a tone that thrilled him through and through. 
 But as he drew close to her she added, "Because, 
 don t you see, it s my business not to bore you. It s 
 my business," she went on, "to make all the friends 
 for China I can." She beamed on him. "You re 
 the first," she said; and then, with a sigh, "But 
 China needs so many." 
 
 "So that s her game !" thought Peter. He took 
 her that night to a roaring farce, and laughed in a 
 savage, reckless way as though he were going to 
 the dogs. But between the acts she was suddenly 
 so very intimate and small and altogether appealing 
 that his anger melted away. Like a humble ele 
 phant, he tried desperately to make her feel how 
 safe and gay and delightful life with him might be 
 some day. And how she seemed to appreciate every 
 little joke he made! How plainly then she let him 
 see that she thought him very funny and dear! 
 
 One evening not long afterward she took him into 
 Chinatown, and in a little theatre they sat with 
 Moon Chao between them watching his father on 
 the stage. Great China drew close to them that 
 
36 BEGGARS GOLD 
 
 night. Straining to catch the low spoken words and 
 understand the pantomime and the weird symbols in 
 the scene, Peter felt the small boy beside him star 
 ing at the man on the stage worshipping his an 
 cestor; and he felt the dark-haired girl nearby star 
 ing back into the years worshipping, too. 
 
 "What hope for me?" 
 
 But from that communion with somebody far 
 away, she came back to Peter with a radiance in 
 her face which he soon began to feel was for him 
 self. It was as though with her ancestor she had 
 at last made up her mind. And she was so frankly 
 and openly happy with him as they walked home; 
 she talked to him so earnestly of what his life in 
 China might be if only he would hold to his plan 
 that Peter, his throat tightening, resolved to ask 
 her there and then. He was slow, and he felt her 
 holding him back, as though she were pleading, 
 "Not just now." So he put it off once more. But 
 he barely slept that night. The next day in school 
 he was irritable, making the most savage remarks 
 to many astonished, little boys; and, catching the 
 curiosity in their shrewd, bright eyes, he thought, 
 "This has got to end!" The bell rang for a change 
 of classes. On an impulse, he hurried to her room 
 and drew her out into the hall. Peter s big face 
 was set and white. 
 
BEGGARS GOLD 37 
 
 "Look here," he said, "I can t stand this! Will 
 you will you marry me?" 
 
 "Yes!" she gasped. 
 
 Back she went to her room, and Peter to his. And 
 at sight of him the shrewd eyes of his pupils snapped 
 with interest. But Peter took no notice of that, 
 for the faces of these urchins and all other sights 
 and sounds had receded far away, and he was sunk 
 in a world of his own, dynamic and tumultuous, with 
 vistas opening over the earth and waves of a feel 
 ing of boundless power to go anywhere, do, see, and 
 feel anything under the sun by day or the stars by 
 night. Suddenly he saw again the new radiance in 
 Kate s brown eyes and Peter was seized with a 
 feeling of humbleness, of tenderness. 
 
 6. 
 
 They were married that same week. The Easter 
 Vacation had just begun, and before it was over 
 they were ensconced in a little apartment on Stuy- 
 vesant Square, in a large, old-fashioned house. The 
 generous, high-ceilinged rooms were filled with ugly 
 furniture. Kate got rid of some of it and moved 
 in a few belongings brought many years ago from 
 Peking a queer, old table, her father s chair, a 
 large piece of rich brocade that had been the robe 
 
38 BEGGARS GOLD 
 
 of a priest, and a few prints in blue and gold. One 
 was of a towering range of snowy mountains; an 
 other was of a broad river teeming with the life of 
 the East. And, from a shadowy corner, a huge, 
 golden Buddha looked out on the new life in this 
 room with ageless and inscrutable eyes. 
 
 But they had little time for China now. They 
 were so sure of going there that they happily put 
 the thought aside. They were wholly absorbed in 
 one another, in the discoveries large and small, the 
 shocks and the perplexities, that came with this ad 
 justing of two lives so wide apart. How different 
 their lives had been Peter had never realized. Now, 
 with the barriers dropping down, and this warm, 
 impulsive girl giving, giving, giving, the qualities he 
 had not known and would never really understand 
 loomed rapidly up. He came upon abrupt dislikes, 
 small delicacies and restraints and sudden revulsions 
 in this girl, who at twenty-two was so mature and 
 yet "such a kid," so quick to change. All at once, 
 with a grim dismay, he could feel the barriers rise 
 again. More often the discovered differences would 
 be swept aside by her low, rich laugh. 
 
 They were both back at work in the school. They 
 had their first little scene over that, for, with the 
 exultant feeling of new strength which had come 
 to him, Peter had made up his mind to do the earn 
 ing for them both. But when he asked Kate to 
 
BEGGARS GOLD 39 
 
 give up her job, she looked at him with a surprised, 
 indignant flash, as though demanding, "What kind 
 of a man is this that I ve married?" 
 
 "Oh Peter, dear, you re so comic at times ! Don t 
 you know that I m going to teach all my life?" 
 
 "Of course you are ! I didn t mean that. You ll 
 teach in Peking you ll work like a little Trojan 
 there. But I want to give you time to study and 
 go about and learn all you ll need to know for that! 
 Don t you see what I mean ? This day school job 
 you ve already learned from it all you can. It s 
 drudgery now and nothing else ! And I want to do 
 that for both of us! Can t you see how I feel?" 
 
 "Yes." She came into his arms. "And can t 
 you see how I feel?" she asked. "I want to earn 
 my own living. And until I m very old and very 
 decrepit, Peter dear, I shall go on earning it. And 
 that," she added smiling, "is one of the very many 
 things that you must let me decide for myself." 
 When he pressed his point, she cut him off. "We ll 
 earn more this way," she said, "and so all the 
 sooner get to Peking." 
 
 So every morning they went to school. In the 
 evenings she took up again her study of the many 
 things she wanted to know for their work in the 
 East. And before, in their apartment, the newness 
 and the fresh delight had had time to wear away, a 
 novel intimation of the vast dream life ahead came 
 
40 BEGGARS GOLD 
 
 into their home, in the small, round person of Moon 
 Chao. 
 
 They had already asked the little boy to supper 
 with them several times, had feasted him and petted 
 iim as the fellow who had made the match; and 
 Kate had prevailed on his father to let him come 
 to the day school, where she had him in her class. 
 
 But late one afternoon she came home looking so 
 pale and anxious that Peter asked her quickly, 
 
 "What s the matter? Where have you been?" 
 
 "Hunting for Moon Chao !" she said. "His fa 
 ther is dead ! He was killed last night stabbed 
 on the street in one of those wretched feuds of 
 the Tongs! I didn t learn till this afternoon. Moon 
 wasn t at school this morning. As soon as I learned, 
 I went right down to his father s rooms then to 
 the theatre restaurants every place I could 
 think of ! It was no use. Nobody knew or if 
 they did they wouldn t tell me. Moon has gone! 
 He s terrified probably, poor little tike think 
 what a panic he must be in ! He lived alone with 
 his father he has no other relatives here. He s 
 barely nine years old, Peter and he saw his 
 father stabbed! And now he thinks they re after 
 him!" 
 
 Peter grabbed his hat and coat. 
 
 "Don t worry," he said, "I ll find him. I ll find 
 
BEGGARS GOLD 41 
 
 him if it takes all night. You get some rest you 
 look played out." He kissed her. 
 
 "Bring him here," she said. 
 
 With a truant officer, Peter searched Chinatown 
 that night, and they found Moon Chao in a six cent 
 "dump" out on the edge of the quarter. On the 
 top floor of the lodging house they entered a long, 
 stifling room with tiers of bunks on either side all 
 filled with ragged sleepers. Others lay snoring on 
 the floor. At one end beside the stove, an old man 
 half naked was attending to his loathsome sores. 
 From somewhere behind him, Peter heard a low, 
 quavering wail, and peering into the corner he saw 
 Moon Chao crouched on his heels. An instant later, 
 with a bound and a loud sob of terror, the little boy 
 shot past them through the door and down the stairs. 
 Through the crooked, crowded streets below they 
 chased him, but lost track of him. The search went 
 on till midnight. Then Peter thought of the thea 
 tre. They went there, and out of the darkness 
 heard again the poignant wail. The truant officer 
 struck a match and lighted an old gas jet, and pres 
 ently they found Moon Chao huddled up in one 
 of the seats. Again he tried to get away, but he 
 was too exhausted now. Soon Peter had him in 
 his arms. Their questions brought no answer but 
 a stare from his black eyes, fixed, dilated, bright 
 
42 BEGGARS GOLD 
 
 with fear. But later that night in Peter s home, 
 with Kate holding him in her arms and whispering 
 to him in Chinese, Moon Chao began to whisper 
 back, looking up imploringly into her face. 
 
 "He wants to go back to China," she said. "He 
 says he has an uncle there a very kind, good 
 uncle in Peking or Shanghai he isn t sure 
 which. But he s begging us to keep him here and 
 write a letter perhaps many letters and find 
 out and send him home." 
 
 So Moon Chao came to live with them. Kate 
 gave him a vigorous bath that day, laughed at his 
 protesting squeals and loved the look of content 
 that came on his haggard, little face when she had 
 tucked him into their bed. Then she bought him a 
 small, blue bed of his own, and a suit of clothes, 
 and underclothes and stockings. "Give him a hair 
 cut? Oh, Peter!" she cried, when her husband sug 
 gested a barber shop. She carefully dressed his 
 hair herself, in a sort of Chinese style. And all 
 this time, laughing, petting, mothering him, she was 
 getting that terror out of his eyes. Each morning 
 after breakfast, they went to school, all three to 
 gether; and often in the afternoons she took Moon 
 Chao about to the shops. An overcoat, then books 
 and toys she found so much to buy for him. 
 Recklessly she squandered her wealth. In return, 
 as the weeks wore on, he became her adoring slave. 
 
BEGGARS GOLD 43 
 
 "You see, Peter," she said, smiling, "he s more 
 than just a dear little boy. He has all China back 
 of him." 
 
 And into that vast background he began to give 
 them glimpses now. Uncanny, strangely silent at 
 times, under her questioning he would emerge and 
 would try hard to tell her all he could remember 
 the way his uncle s home had looked, and the gar 
 den, his uncle s small bazaar. She gleaned what in 
 formation she could and sent letters to Shanghai and 
 Peking. But Moon had been only six years old 
 when he came away to America, and his recollec 
 tions were all mixed with lonely imaginings of his 
 own and things his father had told him of his 
 mother and their home in Peking, the theatre where 
 his father played, and a Chinese school, a temple, a 
 big painted boat on a river, a fish he had caught, 
 "so great as myself," that had almost pulled him 
 into the water. 
 
 "And then I would have gone down oh down ! 
 Oh down, oh down, oh down!" he cried. 
 
 "For goodness sake stop it, Moon Chao!" 
 she exclaimed. "Or you ll hit the bottom!" The 
 small boy gave her a roguish smile. 
 
 "And then I would bounce from that bottom," 
 he said, "up out of the water into the sky!" 
 
 These glimpses that he gave them, into a great 
 country and a very little boy, took hold on their 
 
44 BEGGARS GOLD 
 
 affections and their own imaginings, made their new 
 home unique and strange. Moon Chao gravely 
 playing with toys, or looking intently at picture 
 books or listening to stories she read, would seem 
 to retreat into far distant memories; then suddenly 
 he would chuckle or laugh, and start them speculat 
 ing as to what it was he considered so comic. Why 
 he laughed this was only one of the enigmas. 
 He was stormy in his love; and, when she failed to 
 understand something he was trying to say, there 
 would be irruptions of raging impatience, fits of 
 despair. 
 
 "All Chinese children aren t like this," she told 
 Peter earnestly. "Far from it. I ve seen them 
 playing on the streets and in the fields just 
 perfectly natural little boys. But Moon it s not 
 only his tragedy and his being so far away from 
 everything he was used to I think it s his actor 
 father, too, who was a genius in his way and 
 Moon is like him, he is that kind. If he hasn t any 
 relatives left, or our letters fail to find them, we ll 
 keep him won t we, Peter and take him with 
 us to Peking. Think what he ll mean to us all 
 our lives because he came to us just now when 
 we re so very happy, dear!" 
 
 When a few months later she learned that she 
 was to have a child of her own, she kept Moon Chao 
 in her new broodings, plans and dreams for their 
 
BEGGARS GOLD 45 
 
 life in the East. They would adopt him as their 
 own. . . . And so it was with a shock of dismay 
 that they read the letter which came at last from 
 China bidding them send him home. The uncle had 
 proved to be real, after all, and one of her letters 
 had reached him. He was a merchant in Peking 
 not rich, but comfortably off, and anxious to take his 
 brother s child. He sent a money order for the 
 ticket to San Francisco, where Moon was to be met 
 at the train by an agent of his uncle s and placed 
 safely on the boat. 
 
 As they began to realize what the loss of Moon 
 Chao would mean, a feeling of emptiness came to 
 them both, as though the warm, fresh wonder of 
 that opening year together had been suddenly 
 chilled and dimmed. Moon Chao had become so a 
 part of that. 
 
 When they told him, he was very still. 
 
 "Yes I go," he said. That was all. No tears 
 or kisses or regrets. But till late that night, as 
 she lay awake, Kate could hear him stirring in his 
 bed, could feel him staring up into the dark. 
 
 There was little time for brooding. To catch 
 the boat he must start very soon. So there were 
 last purchases, and the packing of a small trunk, and 
 the ticket to buy, and anxious plans and directions 
 for the journey. A letter was to be pinned to his 
 sleeve; and from one train to another, all across 
 
46 BEGGARS GOLD 
 
 the continent, conductor after conductor was to 
 hand him on. When the time for his departure 
 came, Kate took him a moment in her arms. 
 "Remember, dear, we re coming, too." 
 As Moon looked gravely at her then, his lips 
 began to tremble, but instantly he was quiet again* 
 "Yes you shall come," he answered. 
 
 Because Kate was not well that day, it was Peter 
 who took Moon Chao to the train. Sitting in the 
 waiting room, there kept drifting through his mind 
 fragments of those memories of how the distant 
 land in the East had little by little cast its spell 
 upon his life, and he wondered how it would end. 
 Would he really spend his days in China ? Suddenly 
 the whole idea seemed fantastic as a dream. For 
 there swept over him a sense of what he had been a 
 few years ago. And the gap was too prodigious! 
 Even his marriage seemed unreal till the small 
 figure at his side brought back the present. Then 
 he let his huge right hand drop on his companion s 
 shoulder. 
 
 "We shall miss you very much, Moon Chao." 
 
 The boy looked quickly up, then down. 
 
 "It is hard for me to leave you," he said, very 
 softly. Peter felt a tightening in his throat. But 
 
BEGGARS GOLD 47 
 
 as now for the last time he went over the directions, 
 Moon Chao nodded quietly. The trip did not seem 
 to frighten him. What a strange little boy ! "He ll 
 get along all right," Peter thought. u Half the time 
 he will barely notice the train. He ll crawl into 
 himself like a snail into his own imaginings. I 
 wonder what will become of him?" And aloud he 
 asked, "What do you want to be, Moon Chao, when 
 you grow to be a man?" 
 
 The small boy looked up at him. 
 
 "I shall try to be a great actor like my an 
 cestors," he softly replied. 
 
 For a moment Peter was very still. 
 
 "Yes, you must try," he answered. Then he be 
 gan to tell Moon Chao the fable which Kate had 
 woven around her father s pregnant phrase, "We 
 are beggars sitting on bags of gold." 
 
 "An old beggar lay down by the road. He was 
 in rags and covered with dust, and so tired and so 
 hungry and sick that he rested his head on his 
 beggar s bag, and very soon he fell asleep. In his 
 sleep a great god came to him. Look in your bag/ 
 he whispered. ( It is not rubbish but pure gold! 1 
 The old man woke up and trembled. Quickly he 
 seized the dirty old sack and jerked it open, and out 
 on the ground poured a torrent of gold and precious 
 stones ! 
 
 "That is China," Peter ended, with his arm 
 
48 BEGGARS GOLD 
 
 around Moon Chao. "And that is yourself. You 
 must never forget. No matter how poor your life 
 may be, you must be proud you must look in 
 into your country, into yourself and always you 
 will find the gold." 
 
 "Always I will find the gold!" burst in a whisper 
 from Moon Chao. Peter saw that he had soared 
 away on wings of fancy to the East. And so intense 
 was the light in his eyes, that a wave of strange 
 exultation swept into the spirit of Peter Wells. 
 "How much there is in him!" he thought. "How 
 much in me, in all of us ! And we barely ever get a 
 gleam! We dare not look, we dare not know! * 
 
 From somewhere in the world outside, remote 
 and hard and commonplace, a rasping nasal voice 
 announced the train on which Moon Chao was to 
 begin his journey. With a dazed and startled look 
 upon his heavy sensitive face, Peter pulled himself 
 together and took his companion to the train, settled 
 him in his Pullman seat and talked to the conductor. 
 That tall lean official said, "Sure. I ll keep an eye 
 on him." And standing a little later beneath the 
 car window, Peter in his fancy saw Moon Chao 
 being handed on and on around the world, an atom 
 in torrents of human beings, serene, inscrutable, 
 with his own life, so small, so immense, all hidden 
 behind those shining eyes which were looking down 
 through the window fixedly at Peter s face. 
 
BEGGARS GOLD 49 
 
 Slowly the train moved out of the station. Peter 
 walked on beside the car. A last wave of his hand, 
 and a last glimpse of the round little face pressed 
 tight to the window. Then it vanished. Moon 
 Chao was gone. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 i. 
 
 THE departure of Moon Chao left Kate a little 
 blue and depressed. China seemed very far 
 away. "How will it be with us now?" she asked 
 herself, that evening. She had a premonition of 
 how with the baby s coming the burden on Peter 
 would increase. She herself would have to stop 
 teaching, and expenses would mount up. She stole 
 an anxious glance at him as he sat with his pipe and 
 the evening paper. They had been married barely 
 a year, yet already she understood him so much 
 better than he did himself. "He thinks he s terribly 
 sorry to have Moon gone," she reflected. "Yet part 
 of him is greatly relieved to be rid of Moon Chao 
 and settled down right here in New York." How 
 he loved familiar things; how slow and cautious 
 he could be. "Suppose it grows on him," she 
 thought, "in spite of all that I can do, and he goes 
 on and on right here getting heavier and heav 
 ier." All at once a picture came to her of a Peter 
 dull, massive, middle aged; and she felt a wave of 
 sharp impatience. Kate was only twenty-three. 
 She felt things suddenly like that. 
 
 50 
 
BEGGARS GOLD 51 
 
 For a few moments, sewing rapidly, she kept her 
 eyes upon her work. Then in a swift scrutiny they 
 went back to her husband s face. "Heavy, stolid, 
 dull? Not at all ! That s only on the surface !" she 
 went on, in an eager defense of this man to whom 
 she felt she was tied for life. And she thought of 
 the wistful, hungry Peter beneath the crust of New 
 England reserve. "That s what I fell in love with. 
 He s really bubbling over with fun and dreams 
 and oh so much and he tries so hard to get it out. 
 But how clumsy, awkward, sensitive 1" That was 
 one of the things in him that had appealed to her 
 from the start. He looked so enormously tough, 
 and yet was so defenseless. Worries could drive 
 in on him so. What would the next years do to 
 him? She thought of his crowded class-room. As 
 a teacher herself, she knew so well what a deadening 
 strain it was. "Shall we get away from it in time?" 
 But as quickly, the next moment, came a rush of 
 self-reproach. "Shall I just sit back and criticize 
 or jump in and help him, do my share, and see this 
 through? Get away in time? Why shouldn t we? 
 Go to Peking? Of course we ll go and before 
 we re many years older, too !" 
 
 She looked up at him with a smile. But, behind 
 his paper, Peter was plunged in thoughts of his 
 own. 
 
 "This dream of hers, of going to China what 
 
$2 BEGGARS GOLD 
 
 will come of it?" he asked. "She wants it yes. 
 But look what she does. This little Chinaman 
 comes along, and she promptly squanders on him 
 half of all the money weVe saved, though she s 
 soon to have a child of her own." He recalled the 
 numberless books, toys, games, and other things, 
 which in her impulsive way she had kept running 
 out to buy. And he loved her for that and pitied 
 her, and felt protecting and mature. "What a kid 
 she is, after all," he thought, "acting on her im 
 pulses. But there s a queer, sharp streak in her, 
 too." As he thought of that impatience in Kate, 
 and then of her warmth and youth and beauty, with 
 a little twinge he asked, "What can she see in a man 
 like me? Haven t I felt from the word go that it 
 was too good to be true, all this? Suppose she sees 
 that China dream slipping, slipping, all because of 
 marrying me and having a baby and times get hard 
 s how can I ever make her happy?" A frown of 
 perplexity, almost dismay, came on his heavy, sensi 
 tive face. "I will, though I ll find a way. A way? 
 No hundreds big and small! That s how it will 
 be. What a complicated business marriage is," he 
 ended. "Here I was a year ago, free to do as I liked, 
 build my own life and Kate, the same. Now all 
 of a sudden together! How it changes things!" 
 
 He felt his thoughts lock into a snarl. Then he 
 glanced up and met her smile; and he could feel 
 
BEGGARS* GOLD 53 
 
 himself relax, and all his thinking grew clear again. 
 It was as though the whole last year had risen sud 
 denly crying, u lt s sure! There s nothing to be 
 afrafd of here!" A moment in silence they smiled 
 at each other. Back went their thoughts to little 
 Moon Chao. 
 
 "Don t let s ever forget him, Peter," she said. 
 "He means so much. He s that part of us, dear 
 he s our first year, our starting out. And we re 
 going to keep right on, you know. Aren t we? 
 Aren t we?" Out came her hand. He took it in 
 his and felt it tense and nervous, challenging, de 
 manding. 
 
 u Yes, Kate we ll keep right on!" he said. 
 
 2. 
 
 She had given Moon Chao letters to mail back 
 to her on his journey. One by one the letters came, 
 and her anxiety was allayed. She pictured him 
 farther and farther away. Now he was on the 
 ocean; then at last he was in Peking, and a letter 
 arrived from his uncle thanking them for what they 
 had done. 
 
 "If you come to China as you have planned, we 
 shall be happy," he ended. "For we need such 
 Americans here." 
 
 But, in the months that followed, the thought of 
 
>54 BEGGARS 1 GOLD 
 
 Moon Chao slipped out of Kate s life. Now she 
 had stopped teaching; and, at home most of the 
 day, as she finished baby clothes, more and more 
 her thinking centered on the child to be born. Peter 
 was quick to sense the change. There were nights 
 when in high spirits she seemed to want to do 
 nothing but make fun of him, love him, talk and 
 plan, in an eager, restless happiness. There were 
 times when she was sharp and cross, wishing only 
 to be left alone. But from the looks that came 
 on her face, he caught glimpses now and then into 
 that strange Woman s Land, where were not only 
 brooding intimations on the life unborn, but so 
 many memories, too, ties in a subconscious world 
 with all she had ever felt, desired, loved or hated. 
 Such elemental forces were working down there in 
 the dark. One night he pushed a heavy chair 
 against the golden Buddha. Down it came with a 
 crashing jar. He heard a quick breath, like a gasp, 
 and turning saw a look in Kate s eyes as though 
 he had smashed her childhood. The next moment 
 she burst into tears, sobbing, trembling violently. 
 Then, at his penitent, scared expression, she laughed 
 at him and at herself, and came into his arms and 
 kissed him. He felt her lips warm and quivering; 
 he felt her whole body trembling still. The big 
 god was not much damaged, and with gold lacquer 
 and some glue they soon had it looking as before. 
 
BEGGARS GOLD 55 
 
 But the strangeness in her was always there. More 
 and more she slipped away from him. 
 
 Upon the night when the child was born, Peter 
 sat in the other room staring straight before him, 
 his mind a blank, till all at once from its shadowy 
 corner he met the Buddha s inscrutable eyes. That 
 phrase of her father s flashed into his mind: "We 
 are beggars sitting on bags of gold." And a strange 
 excitement seized him. "How little we know!" It 
 was as though an opening door had given him just 
 one gleaming look down into the vast enigma of 
 life. At the weird, shrill cry that broke on his 
 ears, he grew rigid in his chair. But the eyes of 
 the great, golden god were as inscrutable as before. 
 
 As he noticed the relief that transfigured her 
 whole face, those days, Peter cast all misgivings 
 aside. "This is all good, all wonderful! Now 
 she ll come back to me!" he thought. And at first 
 it happened just like that. As they bent over thcl 
 tiny girl, watching the little jerks of her arms and^ 
 contortions of her features, Peter and Kate were 
 a happy pair. They decided to call her Susanna. 
 How quickly that name became familiar; how soon 
 she fitted into their lives. Kate s strength returned 
 so rapidly that within a few days she dismissed 
 
56 BEGGARS GOLD 
 
 the nurse and began to take care of the baby her 
 self, in addition to doing the housework. 
 
 Then Peter coming home one night found her in 
 bed with a fever. In alarm, he ran for the doctor; 
 and so began a period of such anxiety and strain 
 as he had never dreamed of. Her heart, it seemed, 
 had never been strong, and serious damage had 
 been done. Night after night Peter told himself, 
 "It s nip and tuck just touch and go!" Haggard, 
 flushed, unconscious, rousing to delirium, seeing 
 things he could not see, deep engrossed in a world 
 of her own, muttering and clenching her fists this 
 older, stronger, stranger woman, whom he did not 
 know, doggedly fought to keep alive. And he 
 could feel her winning. At last one day she looked 
 up at him with tired, clear and smiling eyes. 
 
 "Well, dearie, here I am again." 
 
 Peter bent clumsily, took her hand and pressed 
 it hungrily to his lips. 
 
 "Now stay here!" he whispered. "Don t let s 
 take any more fool chances I Just be quiet for 
 God s sake! Just just go to sleep!" he implored. 
 And with a weak little twitch of amusement she did 
 as he asked. Peter felt weary, beaten, broken, as 
 though he had been through a mill. "This is mar 
 riage and a baby!" he thought. "Just the begin 
 ning! Now what next?" Little Susanna loomed 
 
BEGGARS GOLD 57 
 
 immense, crowding out everything else from their 
 home. After a month of convalescence, Kate was 
 up again at last; but her illness had struck deep. 
 
 "Your heart will never be the same," the physi 
 cian warned her, "and on no account must you ever 
 risk having another child." With a kind of angry 
 quiet she faced the situation. "I m not going to 
 -be an invalid! And, if this is my only child, she s 
 ,going to have everything that I can give her!" she 
 resolved. "I ve got the other work besides cook 
 ing, washing, cleaning. All right, why not? Most 
 women have to." And she settled down to work. 
 
 Peter, in the meantime, was having worries of 
 his own. Their money was spent and they were 
 in debt. Moon Chao and China, utterly gone ! One 
 after the other the bills came in, from the doctor, 
 the nurse, the druggist, milkman, grocer, butcher, 
 and a small florist down the street. "The damned 
 robbers!" Peter thought, but as he went over the 
 items he found that they were all correct. Grad 
 ually he remembered now how through that long 
 nightmare he had kept rushing out to buy some 
 little extra thing that might just possibly help a bit. 
 In dismay he looked back as into a fog and asked 
 himself, "What else did I buy?" Guiltily he strove 
 to hide this ominous evidence from his wife, but she 
 found him out and scolded him. 
 
58 BEGGARS 1 GOLD 
 
 "Now, Peter," she ended firmly. "You poor 
 comic business man, go back to your school where 
 you belong, and leave this part of it to me." 
 
 Humbly he obeyed her; and, in the weeks that 
 followed, he discovered with relief that after many 
 experiments Kate was working out a way to take 
 care of her baby and her home without overtaxing 
 her strength. But it took all the strength she had, 
 and more and more he could feel her centering on 
 their little girl. When he came home in the even 
 ing, he found an absent-minded wife who tried to 
 put her worries aside and talk to him, but whose 
 anxious mind was always in the other room. More 
 bills came in, kept piling up, for she could not keep 
 expenses down. 
 
 So Peter went back to his night-school work. 
 There in his classes, as time went on, he found a 
 few so impatient to learn that they were willing to 
 pay him for tutoring in their tenement homes. He 
 added this to his evening work and did not get home 
 till twelve o clock. Peter was as strong as a bull, 
 and so he did not feel the strain, but he was soon 
 heartily sick of the job. These foreigners had long 
 ago lost all spice of novelty. It seemed as though 
 every pupil he had Russian, Pole, Roumanian or 
 Hungarian was a Jew. Some of them appealed 
 to him. A friendly, decent, likable lot, they would 
 talk of the life they had left behind in queer old 
 
BEGGARS GOLD 59 
 
 cities and somber towns, and Peter would listen 
 with some degree of his old interest and delight. 
 But more kept strictly to the job, to squeeze out of 
 him all they could in the way of an education. They 
 were so rabid to get on, and so much brighter than 
 himself. He had thought that Jews wanted noth 
 ing but money. "Well, I was wrong," he decided 
 grimly. "What they want is to gather in every 
 thing that has ever been learned everything that 
 has ever been seen or heard or felt since time 
 began! And what s more, they re going to get it, 
 too ! They ll own the whole city before they get 
 through; and, my God, what a cultured town it ll 
 be!" 
 
 Compared to these keen foreigners, how dull and 
 slow he felt at times. What chance had he to get 
 on in New York, or even to get away from the town? 
 China? It might as well have been Mars! How 
 completely, he reflected, Kate had put it out of 
 her thoughts. Impulsive and impatient still, she 
 was often cross and irritable with him for the many 
 mistakes he made from an over-anxiety to help. 
 "Oh, Peter, please don t interfere! If you d only 
 leave me alone!" she would cry. Then she would 
 grow repentant; and in those smooth, blessed weeks 
 when Susanna was steadily gaining, Kate would 
 praise and pity him for the way he stuck to the 
 drudgery which she knew he hated so. Soon they 
 
60 BEGGARS GOLD 
 
 would be out of debt. She would bring out the 
 old books and maps and talk of going to Peking. 
 And later, coming into his arms and holding him 
 tight, she would whisper, 
 
 "Don t give up! You re doing so splendidly, 
 Peter dear! We ll get through all this! You ll 
 see!" 
 
 On such nights, in a flash he realized that she 
 was the same girl beneath ardent, thirsting, dream 
 ing still. And memories came of their first year. 
 But how far behind it seemed! The letters that 
 came from little Moon Chao were like gleams of 
 a distant light. Kate had welcomed them at first 
 and had written long letters in reply; and, as she 
 rapidly set down the curious Chinese characters 
 which she had learned to write as a girl, the whole 
 expression of her face had changed. But, between 
 such messages, the intervals had soon increased. 
 And so it had been with her China Club. In the 
 first year of their marriage, she had invited the Club 
 to meet here; and there had been Chinese suppers, 
 weird music, recitations by the father of Moon Chao. 
 But since the birth of Susanna, the meetings had 
 never been the same. They had become repressed 
 affairs of low, guarded voices. Susanna asleep was 
 in the next room. Moreover, she was so often ill, 
 that the meetings had co be called off. At last, one 
 Thursday evening, Peter found Kate very blue. 
 
BEGGARS GOLD 61 
 
 "The Club is done for, Peter. I ve had to call 
 it off again. And this time will finish it." 
 
 She turned and went into the bedroom, as Susan 
 na s wail was heard. Peter found her by the crib, 
 mechanically humming a lullaby, with the tears roll 
 ing down her cheeks. She smiled and whispered, 
 "I m just silly! Don t worry please! I ll be all 
 right!" And she went to bed. But later, by her 
 side in the dark, he thought he could feel her rigid 
 and still, her mind far off in China, communing with 
 her ancestor. 
 
 "What s to be done to get out of this?" he asked 
 in desperation. Although awake till nearly dawn, 
 he could think of no solution. But the rebellious 
 Peter inside was rising now in gleams of wrath; 
 and a few nights later with one of his pupils there 
 came a sudden explosion. The pupil this time was 
 not a Jew but an Italian, with a bull neck, thick, red 
 hair, tough, freckled face, and omnivorous eyes. 
 Shrewd as any Yankee or Jew that ever cheated, 
 tricked or lied, this chap was already running a 
 thriving business in cheap cafes, and he felt the 
 need of an education to fit him for his new station 
 in life. Into his hour with Peter he tried to crowd 
 not only reading and writing but American history, 
 geography, arithmetic. 
 
 "What else do you want to know?" Peter asked. 
 
 "Ail, all!" his pupil cried. "There is nothing 
 
62 BEGGARS GOLD 
 
 that I will not learn ! Do you know how I am sure 
 of this?" He struck his head with a huge, freckled 
 fist. "It s here ! I can feel it, all inside !" 
 
 "You can, eh." Eyeing the man with a keen 
 dislike, Peter felt with a shock that this grasping 
 brute was a burlesque upon himself and his own mys 
 terious hunger. He closed his book with a slam 
 and arose. 
 
 "Not for fifty cents, " he growled, and put on his 
 hat and coat. The man rushed after him, wheed 
 ling, bargaining. 
 
 "All right, all right sixty cents. Now wait 
 be sensible! Seventy-five!" 
 
 Peter swung round abruptly, all New England 
 back of him. 
 
 "Not for a hundred dollars! I don t like you, 
 and I m through!" 
 
 As he strode wrathfully into the hall, he heard 
 the man behind him snarl in Italian to his wife, 
 
 "There s an Americano who will never get on in 
 life!" 
 
 "Won t, eh?" With grim satisfaction Peter 
 went down the rickety stairs and out of the garlic 
 smelling house. "I m through with em, these for 
 eigners, and all the languages they speak all they 
 want or think or feel! If that s the only way to 
 get on, I don t want to get on! I m sick of it! 
 Peace and quiet is what I want, and by George I 
 
BEGGARS GOLD 63 
 
 mean to have it, too ! And a chance to study, read 
 and learn! I don t propose to let these fellows 
 monopolize me for the rest of my life !" A tempt 
 ing picture came to him. How he would like to 
 dynamite the whole city of New York! "Just blow 
 it all to smithereens and fill the sky with for 
 eigners little wriggling foreigners!" 
 
 But at home, as he lit his pipe and looked through 
 the unpaid bills, little by little Peter s wrath changed 
 into uneasiness. Kate and Susanna were asleep; 
 he could feel their presence in the next room; and 
 there was in the very atmosphere something that 
 made him anxious now. For he had grown to love 
 it here all the more because he could be here so 
 little. Again a wave of exasperation went through 
 him as he thought how happ^ they could be if this 
 damned money trouble were solved. 
 
 "All right, then, how am I going to do it?" For 
 a long time, puffing his pipe, he racked his brains 
 for an idea. At last he had a glimmer of hope. 
 "I ll go and see Dillingham," he thought. 
 
 John Dillingham was his chief at school. A 
 short, stoop-shouldered, rugged man, grown gray 
 in a service of twenty-odd years, his mind unlike 
 those of some of his colleagues had kept surprisingly 
 
64 BEGGARS GOLD 
 
 open and welcoming to new ideas. He had taken 
 a lively interest in Kate and in her China Club. She 
 had been one of his favorite teachers. "How are 
 Kate and the baby?" he asked; and, as he drew out 
 of Peter some idea of the change of their lives, over 
 his face came a look of regret, and then of curiosity. 
 Peter had interested him from the start. A queer 
 combination, this bird from up-State, with his pas 
 sion for foreign languages. 
 
 "What s your plan for getting out of this rut?" 
 Dillingham asked abruptly. 
 
 "Promotion," Peter answered. 
 
 "Think you can pass the examinations?" 
 
 "That s just what I want to know about," said 
 Peter, and he reddened a bit. "The fact is," he 
 blurted, "I ve never thought of it till now. WeVe 
 had our minds so set on Peking thought we d get 
 off in a year or two. And we would have, too, if 
 it hadn t been " 
 
 "For the baby," Dillingham cut in. "I know- 
 life s queer goes just like that. And it s the finest 
 thing in the world, unless you let the jolts it gives 
 tip you over on your back. If I were you, I d never 
 give up that trip to China. It may be the biggest 
 thing in your lives." 
 
 "I m not giving it up," said Peter. "We ll get 
 out of this " 
 
 "But look here!" his chief interrupted. "Have 
 
BEGGARS GOLD 6g\ 
 
 you ever stopped to think of this school and the 
 two thousand kids that are in it and me? * Peter 
 looked blank; Dillingham, grim. "Seems some 
 times," he continued, u as though every teacher in 
 the place were thinking of nothing but getting out. 
 Why not look around you and see what s here see 
 if you can t get a little pleasure out of this vale of 
 tears? You want promotion, and you re right 
 and I can see no reason why you shouldn t make the 
 8 B grade. But try to get over this idea that the 
 whole job is drudgery! Why not put in your hard 
 est licks on history and geography? You re strong 
 there I ve watched your work. So I say go on 
 and pass your exams, and get promotion with higher 
 pay, quit this infernal tutoring, put in all your extra 
 time on these two subjects you like best and then 
 it may astonish you, how your work will fill your 
 life! And don t forget," he added, "that I m right 
 here to help you always all I can!" 
 
 "Thanks !" said Peter. Their talk that day acted 
 like a tonic; and, before he had time to lose the 
 effect, he had added a little spice by his next deter 
 mination, which was, "I ll tackle this job all alone, 
 and give Kate the surprise of her young life ! She 
 thinks I m pretty heavy and slow. All right, I ll 
 show her what I can do!" He put in every hour 
 he could spare in work for those examinations. He 
 cut down his sleep to four hours a night; he hid the 
 
66 BEGGARS GOLD 
 
 books that he brought home, and exulted in his 
 secret. Then came a long, hot day in June, a day 
 of anxious straining to answer all the questions 
 asked; and then a morning late in July when at 
 breakfast he tore open a letter, glanced at it and 
 gave a laugh and tossed it over to his wife. What 
 blank astonishment on her face ! 
 
 "Peter! You re promoted!" she cried. Still 
 laughing in low husky tones, he had risen and was 
 walking the floor. "What do you mean," she de 
 manded, "by doing all this without letting me 
 know?" His reply .was incoherent : 
 
 "Oh, I just just wanted to see if I couldn t 
 cheer you up a bit!" Again that husky, shaky 
 laugh. "Damned discouraging for a woman tied 
 for life to a dub like me who never gets on so I 
 thought I d try! I I ve worked like the devil, 
 Kate ! If I d failed, I don t know what I d have 
 done!" 
 
 "You old darling!" With quick tears in her 
 eyes, she laughed and kissed him. For a time they 
 talked in a jubilant, senseless way, and came out of 
 that with the sobering thought that his salary would 
 be raised only some forty dollars a month. 
 
 "Never mind," she cried, "it s a starter and 
 goodness only knows where we ll stop! Besides, 
 the wretched bills are paid, so you can drop this 
 tutoring! And oh Peter, I m so proud of you !" 
 
BEGGARS GOLD 67 
 
 5- 
 
 That summer he took Kate and Susanna up to 
 the Berkshires for a month, to visit his uncle in 
 Pearly Gates. Peter had not been home in years, 
 and now in his uncle s home his satisfaction with 
 himself for his recent achievement was shaken a 
 bit. So many memories rushed back, came at him 
 from all over the place, demanding, "Have you 
 gone so far? Is this all that s to come of those 
 dreams you had?" And there was compassion and 
 regret in Peter as he noticed how his uncle Bill had 
 changed. Bill Gowdy at last had suffered defeat; 
 the post office had been moved to the store of his 
 rival down the street; and his principal hold on the 
 world outside was broken. Retiring into himself, 
 he had lived with his stamps and his daily chores, a 
 lonely, surly, dark, old man. Their coming seemed 
 to wake him up, and his slowly deepening delight in 
 Kate and Susanna held a deal of pathos. He was 
 so plainly anxious to please them and to keep them 
 here. 
 
 "You re a lucky fellow," he said to Peter. "What 
 a chance you got to live!" 
 
 He loved to talk of China to Kate, his questions 
 seemed to have no end. He brought out his stamps; 
 and, when she caught the romance that was in 
 them, it warmed the cockles of his heart. While 
 
68 BEGGARS GOLD 
 
 she talked of Peking and her childhood, he sat 
 watching her with gleaming eyes, now and then 
 sharply nodding his head. 
 
 "You go there go there!" he implored. Don t 
 be held back by nuthin on earth! Don t let your 
 selves get anchored down!" 
 
 "We won t," she answered. "Oh, we won t! 
 That s just what we are working for!" 
 
 But, as she went on to explain how Peter s pro 
 motion was right in line with their old plan, a quiz 
 zical expression came on William Gowdy s face. 
 
 "I used to say that of my post office job. Look 
 out or before you know it, you ll be stuck in a 
 hole, like me for life. . . . For life," he repeated 
 softly. That spark of the old rebel in Bill, which 
 had flashed up for a moment, was gone. He leaned 
 back in his chair, a tired old man. And a chill 
 struck into Peter and Kate. 
 
 "Shall we ever get to be like that?" 
 
 6. 
 
 It was the next autumn in New York, and it was 
 Friday evening. Kate was putting Susanna to bed, 
 and Peter was comfortably ensconced with a book 
 on South America, a contented expression on his 
 face. The week s work was over, and he had two 
 long days to himself. No more tutoring at night. 
 
BEGGARS GOLD 69 
 
 Life was so much easier now. In her rich voice 
 with its slight burr, Kate began singing a cradle 
 song; and Peter glanced up listening. 
 
 As he did so, he heard a step outside and saw a 
 letter shoved under the door. A moment longer he 
 listened to Kate, then rose and picked the letter up, 
 and gave a little grunt of surprise as he saw the 
 Chinese stamp. He tore it open and read it 
 through, his features slowly tightening. It was 
 from the uncle of Moon Chao. The small boy had 
 been doing splendidly, and the uncle expressed again 
 his gratitude for the time when they had saved his 
 nephew s life. 
 
 "I am not a wealthy man," he wrote, "but, as the 
 years of my life go by, more and more do I feel 
 two things. One is admiration for your great Amer 
 ica. The other is our need of schools like those you 
 have in your country. We already have a few 
 schools of this kind, but they are controlled by for 
 eigners while our native Chinese schools cling too 
 closely to the past. So with a few of my old friends, 
 who are merchants and who share my views, I 
 have collected promises of money to start a little 
 school that shall be managed on new lines. My 
 nephew has often told us the fable, which he learned 
 from your honored wife, of the beggar and the bag 
 of gold. The school must have a faith like that 
 in China and her future. Will you come and be 
 
70 BEGGARS GOLD 
 
 our teacher? Will you bring your wife and child 
 and make your home in China? We cannot afford 
 to pay you well. We have so little money. But I 
 think that I can promise you one hundred dollars 
 every month and living is very cheap in Peking. 
 If you can come, we shall be glad to pay for your 
 ticket from New York. We are hoping that you 
 can come very soon, for unless we start the school 
 this year I am fearful my friends will give up the 
 plan." 
 
 There followed more expressions of gratitude and 
 friendliness, but Peter barely took them in. Scat 
 tered visions of the East came back with a rush. 
 He went to the bedroom. 
 
 "Kate!" he called, in a low voice. 
 
 "Oh Peter!" came an impatient whisper. "I al 
 most had Susanna asleep ! What is it?" She came 
 to the door. Then, as she caught sight of his face, 
 "What s the matter?" 
 
 "Nothing. Read this." 
 
 And, as she read, he watched her. 
 
 "Oh Peter, it s the chance of our lives!" 
 
 The next moment she threw an anxious look back 
 into the bedroom. She frowned and read the letter 
 again. 
 
 "What do you think?" she asked him slowly. He 
 stared back at her. 
 
BEGGARS GOLD 71 
 
 "I don t know." There was a little silence, and 
 then she said, 
 
 "Well, we ll have to think of this hard. Wait 
 till I get Susanna asleep." She went back, and a 
 moment later he could hear the lullaby. But there 
 was no sleepiness now in the song, and so the small 
 girl stayed wide awake. Over and over the song 
 was sung, and in the singing Peter could feel, now 
 a glad, hungry happiness, and again a sharp misgiv 
 ing. And the long talk they had that night was a 
 struggle between these two emotions. 
 
 Up with a rush came the hopes and plans of only 
 three brief years ago. If only this chance had come 
 to them then, how quickly they would have taken it ! 
 As they talked, unconsciously they drifted back to 
 those early days when life had been so gloriously 
 free from complications, and with the old eager 
 ness they faced this suddenly opened door, looked 
 through it into a land of dreams, excited hopes and 
 fascinations. Peter felt the East again grow real 
 and close as his wife talked on. It loomed im 
 mense and dazzling! As he watched her animated 
 face, he felt how both had suddenly been lifted out 
 of the daily rut. What a glorious light was in her 
 eyes! 
 
 Then Susanna woke up and cried. Kate went in 
 to her again, and Peter read the letter carefully 
 
72 BEGGARS GOLD 
 
 through a second time. "We have so little money. 
 But I think that I can promise you one hundred 
 dollars every month. " He frowned. "He doesn t 
 seem very sure of himself, this old Chinaman," he 
 thought. "What do we know about him? Noth 
 ing. Suppose he doesn t stick to the plan?" He 
 read slowly on. "We shall be glad to pay for your 
 ticket from New York." Not tickets ticket! He 
 looked closely to make sure. No, there was not a 
 sign of an s. "Then we ll have to pay for Kate s 
 ticket ourselves!" He got the old timetables and 
 sailing lists and figured it out. It would come to 
 two hundred dollars at least. Peter got his check 
 book. He had a little over a hundred dollars in 
 the bank, and there were a few small bills to be 
 paid. As he bent over, figuring, Kate came out of 
 the bedroom. She sat down limply in a chair. 
 
 "If only it hadn t come just now!" she said in a 
 low, strained voice. "Every cold that she takes 
 seems to go to her ears and they have such mean 
 winters in Peking!" 
 
 Peter watched her anxiously. He saw the old, 
 tense, worried look that he knew so well come on 
 her face. He felt the great chance slipping away, 
 and he blurted out in a desperate tone, 
 
 "You ve got to take chances in this life if you 
 want to get anything worth while !" 
 
BEGGARS GOLD 73 
 
 She shot a jealous look that said, "What do you 
 care for Susanna?" As though she had spoken, 
 he replied, "I m not forgetting the baby but how 
 about the winters here? Aren t they as bad as in 
 Peking?" 
 
 u No," she answered. "And besides, I know the 
 doctor here," she said. Then a change swept over 
 her face. "Oh Peter! I want to I want to go!" 
 She caught sight of his check book. "How much 
 have we in the bank?" 
 
 "About a hundred dollars." 
 
 "Good and your next month s salary. We d 
 have that much to start on there." 
 
 "No, we wouldn t. It would cost us all of that 
 to get to China," he replied; and he read that part 
 of the letter aloud. 
 
 "Then we d have nothing not a cent!" Kate 
 stared at him in dismay. "But why be so certain," 
 she asked, "that he meant to pay for your ticket 
 alone? It may have been just a slip, a mistake!" 
 
 For a time they anxiously discussed whether to 
 write and ask him. "No," said Peter finally; and 
 she sighed, "Yes, I guess you re right." There was 
 a long silence. Peter, rumpling his hair, was rest 
 lessly moving about the room. Kate sat thinking, 
 very still. 
 
 "We could sell our furniture, I suppose." In a 
 
74 BEGGARS GOLD 
 
 moment she added decidedly, "Yes, that s the only 
 thing to do!" But the moment he felt her coming 
 around, Peter himself began to draw back. 
 
 "That wouldn t go very far," he said. 
 
 "How do you know it wouldn t? What do you 
 know about life over there? It s cheap, I tell you! 
 And besides, there are a few clothes and things I 
 could sell." She plunged again into thoughts of 
 her own. 
 
 "If only I were sure," growled Peter, "that I 
 could make a success of that school." The Chinese 
 that he had learned was already half forgotten. "It 
 won t be easy," he muttered. He caught a glance 
 from his wife that said, "How terribly cautious he 
 is! Good God! If I were only a man!" He 
 flushed. "Not that I m afraid of putting it through 
 in the long run. Hard work doesn t scare me you 
 ought to know that. But suppose it takes two or 
 three years before I can show any real results? And 
 suppose this little group of Chinks, and their faith 
 and their money, won t last that long? Then 
 where d we be?" 
 
 "I know I know " 
 
 "You don t know ! Woman fashion, you haven t 
 half read the letter I mean carefully! Listen to 
 this! I think that I can promise you one hundred 
 dollars every month. He thinks he can." 
 
BEGGARS GOLD 75 
 
 "These Chinamen are honest, dear, they never 
 go back on a promise!" she cried. 
 
 "But he doesn t promise! He thinks he can!" 
 
 "I know I know," she answered. 
 
 "And there s Susanna," Peter said. 
 
 "Oh, don t remind me of Susanna ! I ve already 
 given her, sitting here, every sickness under the 
 sun!" She was thinking now of babies milk, and 
 of oil stoves and bathrooms. "Oh, Peter, I don t 
 see how we can go!" 
 
 "We won t settle it yet," he answered. "There 
 may be a way. If there is, we ll find it." She 
 looked at him wretchedly. 
 
 "Oh, if only Dad were alive !" 
 
 "If he were, he d tell you to take a chance!" 
 This burst from the hungry Peter beneath, desper 
 ately rousing to the fight. And the struggle began 
 all over again now one, now the other, holding 
 back. 
 
 "Why not write and ask if they ll wait till 
 spring?" she suggested. 
 
 "He says he s afraid to wait that long." 
 
 "Why shouldn t he wait, I d like to know?" 
 
 Their talk had become a torment. 
 
 "Peter," she said at last, wearily, "it s nearly 
 two o clock. Let s sleep on it." 
 
 But they could not sleep. And the next morning, 
 
76 BEGGARS GOLD 
 
 Saturday, haggard and worn, they went at it again. 
 Susanna, a sensitive, little mite, soon felt the tension 
 in their voices; and, after a dozen times stopping 
 her play and gazing at her parents without receiv 
 ing any Attention, she began to be fretful and cross; 
 and her interruptions made discussion hopeless. 
 
 "It s no use," said Kate at last. "I ll take 
 her out. She needs the air." 
 
 Peter made the rounds that day of many steam 
 ship offices, and he learned that since three years 
 ago the prices of tickets had taken a jump. The 
 same was true of railroad fares. "That almost 
 settles it," he thought, with a kind of grim relief. 
 But when he and Kate got together again, the old 
 longing swept up in them both. He told her of the 
 higher fares, and she spoke of a dressmaker s bill 
 which she had forgotten the night before. 
 
 "How can we ever decide this right, if you keep 
 forgetting things like that?" Peter cried impatiently. 
 
 "I m not forgetting!" 
 
 "How do I know? How do I know there aren t 
 other bills?" 
 
 In an instant they were quarreling. The tears 
 came suddenly in Kate s eyes. 
 
 "Oh Peter, don t, don t! Here s the chance of 
 our lives! Think what we were getting to be! 
 Just middle aged just settled for life! I don t 
 
BEGGARS GOLD 77 
 
 blame you, I blame myself! I ve let myself get 
 narrow and small! Oh Peter Peter!" She was 
 in his arms; he held her close and said huskily, 
 
 "No you re not to blame, Kate it s my infer 
 nal slowness! We ought to have been there long 
 ago! But we ll get out of this we ll find a way! 
 Let s try to be big and sensible, and look at it 
 quietly." 
 
 So they went over it all again, and they both tried 
 to steady down; but, when in reading the letter 
 Peter tore it slightly, she cried, "Look out!" as 
 though he had struck her. With all its possibilities 
 the letter was sheer magic now. Gathering her 
 memories, Kate was eagerly telling him of the sort 
 of little Chinese house and garden they might live 
 in. Then she had a sudden idea, and looked at him 
 a moment in silence. 
 
 "There s only one thing to do," she said. "It s 
 funny we haven t thought of it before." 
 
 "What s that?" 
 
 "You must go first alone." 
 
 He stared at her. 
 
 "You could leave me a little money," she said, 
 "and I could try some work at school." 
 
 "You ll do no such thing!" Peter broke in harshly. 
 "You re not strong enough. Have you forgotten 
 what the doctor told you?" 
 
78 BEGGARS GOLD 
 
 "Oh rubbish ! I m as well as you are now ! And 
 besides, you might be able to send a part of your 
 salary home!" 
 
 "Might, might? There you are again! Can t 
 you see that there s nothing certain about it? Sup 
 pose I failed then where d you be? And I d feel 
 that, and I d worry to death not only about my 
 end of it but yours, too! I d never be sure that 
 you were all right! It would simply double our 
 chances of trouble me over there and you over 
 here about eight thousand miles apart!" 
 
 "But other people do it!" she cried. "Look at 
 the immigrants in New York! Almost every one 
 of them leaves his family behind!" 
 
 "I m not a Jew!" snapped Peter. 
 
 "They love their families, Peter." 
 
 "I tell you I m not going alone Jew or no Jew! 
 And the minute you look at facts as they are, you ll 
 agree that I am right. How the devil could I make 
 a start over there? It s been you we ve counted on 
 from the start you and your knowledge of Chinese 
 and of the whole country, and how to get on. 
 Send me traipsing over there all by myself to teach 
 a lot of little Chinks, in a language I don t even 
 know? What do you think I am? A god?" He 
 marched over to the Buddha in the corner and held 
 out his hand. "How do you do?" he said gravely. 
 "We re regular fellahs, you and 1 1" 
 
BEGGARS GOLD 79 
 
 "But Peter!" she cried, laughing. "You can 
 speak the language already quite a little! And 
 you re wonderful at that and with my help, in a 
 month or two and another month on the journey, 
 besides " 
 
 "Oh, yes," he answered wrathfully. "All I need 
 is a pigtail and a dressing gown ! They d take me 
 for a native then!" 
 
 "My dear," she said, decidedly. "I know just 
 what I m talking about. I ve been there I know 
 what they want and I know that you could do it. 
 They wouldn t expect too much at first." 
 
 "I tell you I won t go without you!" Peter s 
 angry, sharp dismay was only made the more acute 
 by a voice from deep within himself that cried, 
 "Try it all alone!" Impatiently he shook it off 
 and laid all his emphasis on how he would worry 
 over there for Kate and Susanna in New York. 
 
 Nearly all that night, and Sunday, too, they kept 
 trying to decide tortured, tempted, giving up, then 
 coming back, still balancing. And this was repeated 
 Monday night. At last she said, in a desperate 
 way, 
 
 "Now Peter, we ve talked and talked till we re 
 sick! We ll never be any better able to decide than 
 now! Let s make up our minds one way or the 
 other!" 
 
 "All right." 
 
8o BEGGARS GOLD 
 
 "And I think we d better go!" 
 
 "All right," said Peter. She looked at him, drew 
 a resolute breath. 
 
 "And that you d better go first alone." A mo 
 ment he looked back at her. 
 
 "All right." He saw her flinch at that. -But she 
 added sharply. 
 
 "And let s write the letter now!" 
 
 "All right." He sat down, and with her help 
 he wrote accepting the offer. 
 
 "Now mail it mail it, Peter!" A dangerous 
 tension was in her voice. "Mail it so that we can t 
 change!" 
 
 She almost pushed him out of the door. As he 
 started to go down the stairs, he stopped abruptly, 
 clenched his hands for he heard a burst of sobs 
 behind. 
 
 "All right," he muttered grimly. 
 
 But when he came to the letter box down on 
 Second Avenue, he stopped again. In the hard, 
 brilliant glare of light on the broad thoroughfare, 
 laughing, quarreling, chattering, the crowds swept 
 by; and he had a bleak consciousness of being ter 
 ribly alone. "Who cares what I do, or where I 
 go? Nobody but Kate. How she broke down, 
 the minute that I left the room! How will she 
 ever get on by herself?" Savagely he started away, 
 walking rapidly with his big hands clenched tight 
 
BEGGARS GOLD 81 
 
 and cold Li his overcoat pockets. "I tell you she s 
 right! We ve done thinking enough!" But the 
 pictures came, they crowded back. Himself in 
 China Kate here in New York. "Suppose I m 
 right about her strength? The doctor said she d 
 never be strong! Suppose she overworks herself, 
 gets sick and dies?" Cold sweat came on his fore 
 head. He went into a cafe and had a cup of 
 coffee. He came out feeling better; and as he 
 walked on, the city, his home, his wife and child and 
 his steady job had never seemed so desirable. It 
 fitted him so! "I m that sort of man! Why run 
 off to something I don t want, when what I do want 
 is right here?" 
 
 It was late when he entered their flat. Kate had 
 gone to bed. Wearily, with his overcoat on, Peter 
 sank into a chair. Presently he reached for his 
 pipe. How he loved the familiar room and all the 
 life that had been here since Kate and he moved 
 into it. He noticed on the table the book he had 
 been reading Friday night when the letter came; 
 and, as he recalled his comfortable anticipation of 
 a week end, two days of peace and quiet, Peter gave 
 a little snort. A fine week end they had made of 
 it! But his indignation was soon merged in the 
 feeling of security and relief that was fast deepen 
 ing now. The stolid Peter of every day was getting 
 hold of the situation. How nicely life had been 
 
82 BEGGARS GOLD 
 
 working out Kate and Susanna steadily gaining 
 both in health and happiness, Peter himself by good 
 hard work winning his first promotion in school. 
 
 "And why the devil," he suddenly asked, "did we 
 forget, in all this talk, that we re going to China 
 anyhow? It s only a matter of a few years. There ll 
 be other chances when we re good and ready, too 
 while now by going off half cocked I may fail 
 over there and spoil our whole lives!" 
 
 "If you don t go now, you never will!" a desper 
 ate voice within him cried. He gave another angry 
 snort, frowned and got up. He was stiff and sore. 
 The room was getting cold. He went to his desk, 
 tore up the letter he was to have mailed and wrote 
 another quickly. His hat and overcoat were still 
 on. He went out and mailed the letter, came back, 
 undressed and went to bed. 
 
 The next morning he awoke with a start, at the 
 sound of Susanna s voice. The light was still dim 
 in the room, but the little girl was chattering. For 
 an hour he lay rigid there. Then, as the light grew 
 stronger, Kate noticed his wide open eyes. 
 
 "Did you mail it?" she asked abruptly. A mo 
 ment he looked back at her. 
 
 u No," he said. "I wrote another. I said I 
 
BEGGARS GOLD 83 
 
 couldn t take it now, but that later if they " He 
 
 stopped short. She had turned away. The swift 
 look she had given him went into Peter like a knife. 
 
 "It s not too late," he heard her say. "If you 
 want to, you can write again." 
 
 "It s decided, I tell you!" he replied. Angrily 
 he dressed himself, gobbled his breakfast and went 
 to school. 
 
 "Isn t that just like a woman!" Peter thought 
 indignantly. "She was as undecided as I yet she ll 
 put the blame for this all on me ! She maneuvered 
 and maneuvered till she got it just this way. She 
 put the whole business right on me! I was to be 
 the one to go ! I was to write the letter ! I was to 
 mail it! She went to bed! But before I could get 
 out of the flat she broke down and let me hear her 
 sobs, gave me them to take along!" But later 
 something honest and blunt in Peter rose and an 
 swered, "Yes, but when all s said and done she 
 was the one who did decide, she did try to shove it 
 through!" He pictured her at home that day, bit 
 terly disappointed. Peter s feeling of guilt in 
 creased, and several times the question came, "Shall 
 I write again this evening?" His suspense and 
 worry grew, and it was with a poignant dread that 
 he came into their flat that night. 
 
 And a feeling of glad surprise and a little disillu 
 sionment, too, came to Peter as he saw the expres- 
 
84 BEGGARS GOLD 
 
 sion on Kate s face. For he found her looking im 
 mensely relieved as though some danger had been 
 faced and put behind them. There was no mistak 
 ing it in her voice, as she laughed and talked about 
 the way they had tormented themselves. 
 
 "I don t see how I could have considered it, even 
 for a moment!" she cried. "I ve been out and 
 bought a dear little frock for Susanna to make up 
 for it the way I was willing to risk her life, on a 
 wild goose chase around the world. Thank Heaven, 
 you had sense enough to see it and change the letter 
 in time. I can t think what possessed me to urge 
 it so!" 
 
 Whatever had possessed her, god or devil, was 
 now gone ; and Peter saw the same sensible practical 
 mother and wife that had run his home a week ago, 
 and in managing to make ends meet had grown ut 
 terly engrossed in her husband and her child. The 
 letter seemed unreal as a dream. 
 
 u But it could have been real. It could have been 
 the beginning of such different lives," he thought, 
 with a last little twinge of regret. He wondered if 
 she were not thinking the same, and whether all this 
 glad relief were not simply a mask she had put on, 
 to hide from him the fact that he had had his first 
 big chance for the fulfillment of their dream, and 
 had let it slip away from him. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 i. 
 
 WHEN again, the summer following, they went 
 up to Pearly Gates to visit William Gowdy, 
 Peter rather dreaded what his sardonic relative 
 might say of that letter episode. But when he spoke 
 of it one day, his uncle turned and looked away 
 down into the valley, and listened in silence to the 
 end. 
 
 "I m feelin pretty old, these days," was his gruff, 
 low comment. "Glad that you and Kate and Susan 
 na ain t on t other side of the world. Sorry you 
 missed the chance, of course but it seems to run 
 in the family. We want things an we want things 
 but when it comes to takin a chance, what small 
 potatoes most of us be. ... That s been my life," 
 he ended. "Anyhow I m glad you re here." 
 
 There was something very appealing in the 
 shaggy, grey, old man as he stared down into the 
 valley then. And so Kate said softly: 
 
 "Oh Uncle, we re so happy to be with you in this 
 dear old house." 
 
 85 
 
86 BEGGARS GOLD 
 
 From that day on, in a hungry way, as though he 
 felt it might be his last opportunity, Bill Gowdy 
 made the most of their visit. Susanna was nearly 
 four years old, and he liked to go about with her or 
 sit and smoke and watch her play. And he had long 
 talks with Peter and Kate, talks that rambled all 
 over the earth. 
 
 Into these talks from time to time came the news 
 of our brief war with Spain. From the day of the 
 Rough Riders charge, early in the summer, old Bill 
 had taken a keen delight in Roosevelt s rapid rise to 
 fame. 
 
 u The first feller I ever come across with the gump 
 tion in him to break away from everything that holds 
 him back," Bill declared emphatically. "Look at 
 what his life has been. To begin with, he s a weak 
 ling sick half the time. So what does he do ? Sit 
 down and whine about it? No. Goes out to a ranch 
 in the West, by George, and gets himself as strong 
 as a bull. It was a case of kill or cure. Then back 
 he comes into New York an hits it like the Equinox 
 shakes up the whole Police Force, like a terrier 
 with a rat. Then he grabs the Civil Service, an the 
 Navy after that puts teeth in em both ! Then off 
 to Cuba! Ginger! Snap! You mark my words! 
 There s nuthin this side of Kingdom Come that can 
 hold that young man down!" 
 
BEGGARS GOLD 87 
 
 Just before Peter went back to the city, Roose 
 velt swung up through the State on his campaign 
 for the governorship. Peter and his uncle heard 
 him speak at a county fair, and later on their long 
 drive home they talked excitedly of the speech. 
 Peter had been thrilled to the core by the vitality 
 of the man. The village seemed a lonely place when 
 they came back to it that night. At supper with 
 Kate they talked of the speech, but Peter could feel 
 Bill Gowdy s voice grow gruff and dull with sleepi 
 ness, and he himself felt drowsy, too. It was as 
 though they had both been charged with some mys 
 terious, vital force, but now it was ebbing fast away. 
 After supper, he picked up a book, and his uncle 
 went out to the barn, which was just across the road. 
 Peter heard a wagon stop outside, but he went on 
 reading drowsily. Suddenly the door flew open and 
 Uncle Bill glared into the room. 
 
 "Come on out here!" he whispered. 
 
 "What s happened?" Peter followed him out; and 
 there by the light of a lantern he saw a smiling, scowl 
 ing face that made him give a violent start. 
 
 "Roosevelt!" 
 
 "Yes ! Hello hello !" Leaning out of the moun 
 tain wagon, genially showing his teeth, the hero of 
 San Juan snapped out, "Any newspaper men come 
 through this way?" 
 
88 BEGGARS GOLD 
 
 "Not that I know of." 
 
 "Then they re lost. How far is it to Danville?" 
 
 "About nine miles." 
 
 "By George ! And I Ve got to speak there at eight 
 o clock!" 
 
 In a daze Peter heard the rest of it. One of the 
 horses had gone lame, and a fresh team was wanted. 
 Bill Gowdy proudly offered his, and in a jiffy Roose 
 velt was making with Peter for the barn. Just how 
 together they got out the team, found the har 
 ness and threw it on, Peter could never clearly re 
 call. His uncle and the driver had unhitched the 
 other team, and with a hearty "Thank you, boys 
 come and see me next year in Albany!" the Colonel 
 climbed back into the wagon. A wave o^his hand; 
 and the wagon, with a lantern swinging beneath, 
 was going rapidly down the road. Quivering, Peter 
 stood there and watched the receding speck of light. 
 
 He felt a wave of restlessness and dissatisfaction 
 with himself. "While I am teaching history, here s 
 a man who s making it!" With a little glow he 
 thought how he would tell of this meeting to his his 
 tory class at school. But then the deep, deep rest 
 lessness came again upon him. Suddenly he asked 
 himself, "I wonder if I couldn t write a life of Roose 
 velt clear and simple meant for toys?" The 
 name of Roosevelt was still new; no such book had 
 
BEGGARS GOLD 89 
 
 yet appeared; and if it were written right it might 
 find its way into thousands of schools, East and 
 West, all over the land! What a chance! What 
 doors it opened wide ! Looking back over his life 
 he saw that in those two favorite subjects of his, 
 history and geography, what he had always hated 
 was the classroom drudgery. Here was an escape 
 from that, a chance to make the beginning at least 
 of a name as a biographer. "Here s what I ve al 
 ways wanted to do ! To write !" he thought excitedly. 
 As he turned it over in his mind, he walked slowly 
 back and forth on the road between the house and 
 the barn, until the village clock struck twelve. 
 
 And later, as he got into bed, Peter was rather 
 proud of himself for having walked up and down 
 so long. 
 
 He tried the idea the next day on his wife. Kate 
 drew a quick breath and said, 
 
 "Oh Peter! I wonder if you could?" 
 
 They talked little else for the next few days; and, 
 after they returned to New York, Peter spent his 
 evenings planning the book and piling up notes. 
 Each morning brought new headlines about "the 
 Colonel" in the press new catch words, national 
 ideals, jokes and trenchant, pointed tales. Hungrily 
 Peter gathered them in. There came the tingling 
 memory of that evening in the barn. And when 
 
90 BEGGARS GOLD 
 
 Roosevelt was elected, Peter and Kate had a jubil 
 ant night. Somehow they felt as though they them 
 selves had come a big step up in life. 
 
 2. 
 
 After that, the work on the book slowed down. 
 All through the following winter he kept gathering 
 material, but he had to do most of his work at 
 night, when he was already tired after the long day 
 in school. So the months wore slowly on. Kate had 
 given up asking when he meant to start his book. 
 "It will only worry him," she thought. Moreover, 
 her life was full enough. The cost of living was up 
 again, and she could barely meet the bills. Through 
 their old friend, Dillingham, she had been able to 
 get Susanna into the kindergarten at his school. 
 Kate went with her every day; and Dillingham, that 
 autumn, began to give her various jobs, paying 
 her out of a private fund he had from a few people 
 up-town. This work soon made a difference. She be 
 gan to be a little late, from early morning until night. 
 Through the school, she was rapidly making new 
 friends, and she often asked them to supper now. 
 People liked her and she knew it; and with keen 
 amusement she saw how at first putting Peter down 
 as dull, they came to see their mistake. 
 
 So Kate s crowded life went on. Several times 
 
BEGGARS GOLD 91 
 
 that winter, she had little breakdowns, but she man 
 aged to pull through without a doctor. She kept 
 Susanna at home, those days, and they had fine times 
 when Kate was sick, treating it all as a capital joke. 
 
 Then in March, after a long stretch of wet, beast 
 ly weather, Susanna caught an ugly cold. It went to 
 her ears and within a few days both mastoids were 
 affected. An operation saved her life; but, when at 
 last the danger was past, Kate crumpled up one eve 
 ning, and was in bed for over a month. Once more, 
 when she got up again, she tried to go on with her 
 work at school. But Peter put an end to it. Back 
 to the doctor he made her go. 
 
 "No use, Mrs. Wells. I m sorry, but your heart 
 won t stand it!" that gentleman said emphatically. 
 With a hunted look, she cried, 
 
 "Then I ll make a heart that will!" 
 
 "Good," he replied. "But remember that doing 
 all your housework and looking after a delicate child 
 is not exactly a rest cure." 
 
 "I don t want a rest cure! I want a good, sane, 
 common sense, work-and-will cure!" she replied. 
 "I m barely twenty-eight years old !" 
 
 The next two years were one long fight to regain 
 her old vitality. Weeks and months of vigilance, 
 looking after her home and her daughter, planning 
 her day, inventing work-savers. Slowly, with a glad 
 return of her self-confidence, she could feel her 
 
92 BEGGARS GOLD 
 
 strength again. Then one little slip, or a stretch of 
 bad weather, and back she would go. At such times 
 Peter would find his wife passing rapidly from fits 
 of blues to bursts of impatience and revolt. 
 
 "Oh I m sorry, Peter but I simply won t give 
 in and make up my mind to settle down as the invalid 
 of the story-books shedding beams of resignation 
 uncomplaining all that rot ! I won t, I tell you, 
 and I can t! I m bitter about it just plain mad! 
 Why couldn t my mother have told me more about 
 having babies the danger of getting up too soon! 
 I m bitter about it ! I want so much ! We re young, 
 you and I, with our lives ahead just opening! And 
 I m hungry! Do you know what a beggar really is? 
 Not a pauper he s too far gone to beg, there s 
 nothing he really wants enough! A beggar is a 
 fellow like me hungry, hungry and held back!" 
 The next moment, sobbing violently and trembling, 
 as he held her tight, she got hold of herself, and 
 laughed and murmured, "Oh Peter, you poor dear 
 what a wife! But give me time and you will 
 see!" 
 
 So the struggle went on again. To make up for 
 the money Kate had earned, and which they sorely 
 needed now, Peter had long ago gone back to the 
 night work he hated so; and, as he trudged the dirty 
 streets, often worried about his wife and anxious 
 for the future, perplexed and baffled in a town which 
 
BEGGARS GOLD 93 
 
 was now all harsh and guttural, grasping, rasping on 
 his nerves he felt his whole existence narrow to 
 this steady grind, and "The Boy s Roosevelt" slip 
 away. At times, as he read in the news of the day 
 of what "the Colonel" was up to now, Peter would 
 grow bitter against this preacher of "the strenuous 
 life." 
 
 "How does he know how it feels to be like me, 
 walled in on all sides? And I can t break through! 
 I m the plodding kind God damn it I m slow!" 
 
 And he could see no light ahead. 
 
 Early one warm evening in April, 1900, climbing 
 several flights of stairs in a dark, old tenement and 
 knocking at the door of a pupil, he got no answer, 
 knocked again and heard a strained, sharp voice re 
 ply in Yiddish, 
 
 "Come in!" 
 
 Peter s pupil, a young Galician Jew, was sitting 
 with his head in his hands bowed over the kitchen 
 table/ He glared up at his visitor; then down went 
 his head as before. "What the devil is wrong?" 
 thought Peter. He could see that the young Galician 
 was quivering from head to foot. Peter had never 
 liked the lad. He called himself a socialist, and was 
 perfecting his English in order to speak in public; 
 
94 BEGGARS GOLD 
 
 but often, forgetting his lesson and lapsing into 
 Yiddish, he would thunder oratorical economics. 
 Peter took little stock in his talk. But tonight, as 
 he made a move to go, he heard a groan from the 
 table. 
 
 "What s the matter with you ?" Peter asked. The 
 other looked up. 
 
 "My wife!" he cried. "She s left me!" 
 
 "Has, eh?" Peter remembered her now a pretty 
 young Jewess getting fat, wearing tight corsets and 
 high heeled shoes. "Where s she gone?" he asked. 
 The pupil leaped up and seized his arm. 
 
 "I will show you where she is!" And in spite 
 of Peter s protestations that he did not care to know, 
 the half-crazed boy insisted on taking him to the 
 window. At that time vice was advertised, not dis 
 creetly, as today, but frankly as in a mining camp. 
 In one of several narrow, dirty, brownstone buildings 
 down the street, all the rooms were lighted ; at some 
 of the windows the shades were up, and a group of 
 little boys outside kept eagerly pointing out the 
 sights. 
 
 "That s where she is!" her husband said; and he 
 burst out against his wife. "She was always kicking 
 and nagging me to give up socialism," he cried, "and 
 put the money I gave to the Cause into hats and 
 clothes for her! Last week she wanted a new 
 
BEGGARS GOLD 95 
 
 chemise! Another five spot! Y understand? The 
 chemise of capitalism! That s what gets em glit 
 ter and flash! She wanted to go to theatres and 
 bum dances every night! And while I was out at 
 night, working for the Party, God knows what she 
 was doing here! I know oy, oy I know damn 
 well! That house I showed you y understand? 
 she never got there all at a jump ! She couldn t 
 it s too rotten! She must have had some fellers 
 first got used to it! Y understand?" He clutched 
 his head, walked up and down. "Oy, oy, oy ! While 
 I was working for great ideas the freedom of the 
 masses, the toiling proletariate!" 
 
 In broken, furious phrases he went on to picture 
 how he had worked and sacrificed. Peter gave little 
 heed to him now, he was looking for a chance to 
 escape ; but, when he made a move to go, the young 
 ster seized him by the arm. 
 
 "Listen you!" He jerked Peter around. u You 
 ain t listening you re just letting me talk ! But by 
 God I ll make you listen!" he cried. "I ll make you 
 a socialist tonight!" His words came in a tor 
 rent now; and all of New England was in the look 
 of grim but rather startled dislike on Peter s heavy 
 features. 
 
 "You are a teacher!" the youngster cried. "Well, 
 what can you teach at a time like this? Whose 
 
96 BEGGARS GOLD 
 
 fault was it? What made her a bitch? Do you 
 know ? You ought to know. You re paid to know I" 
 Peter flushed and rose. 
 
 "I m not paid such a lot, young man!" The 
 dark face of the boy lit up. 
 
 "That s just if.! You ain t paid but a pittance! 
 They won t let you have the time and money to study 
 and get onto the lies they make you teach ! Do I say 
 it s your fault? Not on your life! I know you 
 have a wife and kid, and sickness, worry, day and 
 night! What chance you got to study, read, make 
 trips to Europe, broaden out? Shouldn t a teacher 
 have all that? Shouldn t he be like the high priest of 
 the whole damn bunch of us? Don t they say so in 
 all their talk of their Holy-to-God Democracy? The 
 school is the foundation stone ! They shout it every 
 Fourth of July! You bet it is, and they know it 
 is! They know the whole rotten business rests on 
 keeping the people fooled from the cradle up. So 
 fool the kids ! Give em beggars for teachers ! To 
 support your family, you ve got to run around nights 
 doing this, when you ought to be learning to open 
 your eyes ! You don t know what the world could 
 be not even what you could be yourself, if you 
 only had a chance ! The blame ain t in you or any 
 of us, but in the system! Y understand? Just give 
 us a chance an what couldn t we be! Oh God! 
 Don t you know? Ain t you felt it inside?" 
 
BEGGARS GOLD 97 
 
 "Yes I ve felt it," Peter said, with suddenly 
 arrested eyes. 
 
 "So have I ! It s in us all! But under this rotten 
 system of theirs it can t come up, it s all kept down ! 
 Every man has it y understand? every man you 
 see on the street no matter how dirty or poor he is ! 
 An don t you forget it! Believe in men! Believe in 
 men an it will come out of em! Y understand?" 
 
 All at once his head went down on the table, 
 clutched in his hands, and his whole thin body shook 
 with sobs. Presently Peter laid his hand on the 
 boy s quivering shoulder. 
 
 "How old are you?" 
 
 "Twenty-one!" 
 
 "Where are your friends?" 
 
 "I don t want any friends ! I want to die !" 
 
 "Look here, son," said Peter, "you come right 
 along with me." 
 
 He got the boy s hat, took him tight by the arm 
 and led him down into the street; and, questioning 
 him as to his friends, he walked the young radical 
 up town to a small brick house on a quiet street in 
 the edge of the foreign quarter. They went through 
 a little book shop to a couple of rooms behind. A 
 small socialist school was quartered there. In one 
 room, a class was going on; and in the other, at a 
 desk, sat a large, quiet woman of middle age, with a 
 face which rather to Peter s surprise was not foreign 
 
98 BEGGARS 1 GOLD 
 
 but American. She spoke with an accent of the 
 West. Her name was Anna Blainey. "What s 
 the trouble?" she asked. And, when she had learned 
 the gist of it, her broad, strong features tightened 
 in a maternal sort of way. 
 
 "I m sorry for you, Comrade. You d better sleep 
 here tonight," she said. Presently she sent him 
 upstairs; and as Peter turned to leave, she said, 
 "Thank you, friend, for bringing him here. How 
 did you find him?" Peter explained. "You teach 
 in a public school?" she asked. 
 
 "Yes." She gave an inquiring look. 
 
 "I was a teacher too," she said. "But I gave it up. 
 How about you? Are you satisfied?" He hesitated. 
 
 "Not entirely " 
 
 "Why not? You ve worked hard enough I can 
 see that; and you look like a man of high ideals. 
 No doubt you had them, at one time, about educa 
 tion. But grinding away for years and years, your 
 ideals have been starved. Isn t that true?" Her 
 voice had the tone of a lecturer now, but was still 
 low and quiet, and genuine like her grey eyes. "Now 
 who s to blame?" she continued. "Has it been 
 your fault? What opportunity have you had to 
 broaden yourself?" And she went on. With a 
 steady force of conviction that caught Peter s in 
 terest, she gave him her picture of men kept down, 
 not by faults within themselves, but by tremendous 
 
BEGGARS GOLD 99 
 
 forces outside. Something stirred in Peter at this 
 conception of human life, but instinctively he held 
 back. 
 
 "It sounds too easy," he put in. "If you think a 
 man can get or do anything worth while in life with 
 out his being willing to buckle down and work like 
 a dog " 
 
 "I don t think that," she interrupted, with a smile. 
 "Take a look at me," she said. "Don t I look as 
 though I had worked?" 
 
 "Yes," he admitted. 
 
 "And looking at you I can say the same," she 
 continued quietly. "But the difference between us 
 is that you re working for something you ve lost 
 faith in it leads nowhere any more ; while I m work 
 ing for something, all hope and faith, a world re 
 ligion and I know that in all countries millions of 
 people are doing the same and that our work leads 
 to a new freedom for the entire human race. In 
 every land, every city and town, and in every ship 
 at sea, there are men and women who believe this, 
 and who work for it, dream of it!" 
 
 When he left a little later, she asked him to come 
 back to the school. 
 
 "You re not a man to be afraid. Come and see 
 what we are doing," she said. 
 
 Peter walked home with a scowl on his face. He 
 was disturbed and excited. "Shall I dig into this?" 
 
ioo BEGGARS GOLD 
 
 he asked. The hard, lean years he had been through 
 had laid his mind open to what he had heard. Look 
 ing back over his life, he asked, "Haven t I got it 
 in me? Haven t I felt it, again and again? And 
 am I to blame? Haven t I tried? Haven t I worked 
 like a bull pup from start to finish?" Suppose there 
 was some truth in her talk? In every country, city, 
 village, every ship upon the seas! By George, the 
 thing was big enough, unless she lied. u No, I don t 
 believe she did!" Plunging both hands in his over 
 coat pockets, Peter walked on with his head down 
 as the vast, turgid, gleaming vista, which had ap 
 peared to so many millions, opened up before him 
 now. "It s all mixed up with a lot of damn moon 
 shine!" he growled. And he wondered what Kate 
 would say to it. 
 
 As she listened to him that night, throwing in an 
 occasional question, into her eyes came an anxious 
 look, but she kept them on her sewing. She had 
 been steadily gaining of late; for weeks she had not 
 had a relapse. But she felt something in Peter s 
 talk that again would halt them on their road. 
 "We ll have trouble if he goes into this," she thought, 
 but she would not oppose it. "I know nothing about 
 it yet, so I mustn t try to stop him." 
 
 "Well, what do you think?" he asked her bluntly. 
 For a moment she sewed in silence. 
 
 "Why I think it seems to interest you, and it 
 
BEGGARS GOLD : / i r : ;;ipi ; 
 
 may have a good deal in it," she said. "But you 
 know very little about it so far. I d look into it 
 further, if I were you." 
 
 A few nights later, he went back to Anna Blainey 
 in her school. She gave him a warm welcome, loaned 
 him several socialist books and invited him to join 
 a class. But Peter was no economist, and he found 
 the stuff they studied so dry and so bewildering that 
 at the end of a few weeks he would have been quite 
 ready to stop, were it not for the deep intensity here. 
 Though it was all strange and new to him, raw and 
 arrogant and half blind, it had a power of hope and 
 faith that made these callow boys and girls of the 
 modern city slave for it. He saw them come in as 
 new recruits, hesitating, questioning, with the cyni 
 cal eyes of the town. In a few weeks he saw them 
 changed, sacrificing their last cent. And soon, re 
 sponding to this faith, which had a greater driving 
 force than any he d ever felt before, he put in every 
 hour he could spare from the grind to meet the bills 
 at home. 
 
 His new intensity reached its height one evening 
 in the following autumn. The campaign of 1900 
 was near its end, and through the dense crowds on 
 the lower East Side a big truck slowly ploughed 
 its way. There came roaring waves of sound: 
 "Debs! Debs! Eugene V. Debs!" There came 
 amazing silences. And in one of these, when the 
 
104 BEGGARS GOLD 
 
 uncle listened all intent. Then Peter could feel him 
 slipping back. For a long time there was silence. 
 At last, in a hard, unnatural mumble, "Been a long 
 life," his uncle said. Staring up at the ceiling as be 
 fore, his eyes seemed roving over the years. With 
 a frown he came back to the present, and made a 
 great effort to speak again. 
 
 "Don t let Kate bring Susanna. Funeral cheap. 
 No fuss n feathers. . . . Find my will top bureau 
 drawer. . . . Stamp collection!" Those last words 
 came out with a jerk, sharp and clear. The black 
 eyes, with an energy that made them fierce and bright 
 once more, were fixed on Peter s. Scowling in the 
 effort to speak, his whole visage tightened, twisting: 
 "Stamp collection ! Your big chance !" The words, 
 in a thick whisper, came like an imploring cry. He 
 tried to go on, but with a sudden tightening of his 
 hand on Peter s he relaxed and fell unconscious. 
 By the morning he was dead. 
 
 Then Kate came. There was the funeral. And 
 later Peter had a talk with his uncle s lawyer. There 
 was barely money enough to bury old Bill and pay 
 his debts. "He has left the house and farm to you," 
 the lawyer said, "but they won t bring much. If you 
 want to hang on to the property, maybe I can get 
 you a tenant." Peter at once agreed to that. They 
 lingered a little in the house, selecting a few things 
 Kate had liked and packing them to be sent to New 
 
BEGGARS GOLD 105 
 
 York. The stamp collection had grown to be an 
 affair of four big albums. Peter took them with him. 
 On the train, he repeated his uncle s last words, and 
 for some time they tried to puzzle out his meaning. 
 Then Kate asked, 
 
 "Peter! Is it worth much?" 
 
 He looked back at her: 
 
 "Sell it, you mean?" 
 
 "He may have meant that." 
 
 In New York, Peter had it valued; and, surprised 
 at the result, he took it around from place to place, 
 and went home that evening with an offer of thirty- 
 one hundred dollars. On hearing the news, Kate 
 stared at him with tears coming quickly to her eyes. 
 
 "Poor old uncle. A big chance. He had dreamed 
 of it all his life and now he s giving it to you." 
 
 "A chance for what?" asked Peter. At the low, 
 strained tone of his voice, she shot a quick look at 
 him, disturbed and questioning. Suddenly both re 
 membered how wide apart they had drifted of late. 
 Again and again he had tried to gain her support 
 for his new radical views but without success; and 
 the widening gap had made them both unhappy. 
 They did not want to face it now. 
 
 "Your big chance," Kate said softly. "I wonder 
 what he meant by that?" 
 
 As they talked about him, the memories kept pil 
 ing in of Bill Gowdy s early dream and his lonely, 
 
; : BEGGARS GOLD 
 
 tall bald-headed leader who was loved by millions 
 sent over the crowds the slogan: "Workers of the 
 world, unite! You have nothing to lose but your 
 chains! You have a world to conquer!" Peter 
 looked far up the street, deep, narrow, dark and 
 glamorous, with a thousand window eyes. He saw 
 the shadowy mass below; he felt a tightening in his 
 throat, and a tremendous passion rising up within 
 him. 
 
 He came home cold and tired out, and found 
 Kate in the bedroom, packing his bag. A telegram 
 had come for him from the doctor up at Pearly 
 Gates. "Your uncle William Gowdy has had a 
 stroke. He wants you. Come at once. Do not 
 wait." As Peter stared at the message, he heard 
 Kate s voice: 
 
 "There s just time to catch the midnight train. 
 Don t miss it, dear; you must start at once. Poor 
 old man," she added, "how terribly lonely he must 
 be!" 
 
 "Yes," said Peter softly. He was trembling from 
 head to foot. Seeing the look upon his face, she 
 came to him. 
 
 "Oh, I m so sorry for you, dear. If he s worse 
 tomorrow, telegraph and I ll come at once." 
 
 On the train that night, the whole perspective 
 
BEGGARS GOLD 103 
 
 of his life abruptly changing, Peter was carried 
 rapidly back into the hills where he d been a boy. 
 They rose about him covered with snow, white phan 
 toms in the starlit night, evoking scenes and faces, 
 dreams. He still felt numb, he could not think. 
 The change had been so sudden. Brief, scattered 
 recollections came, of that dark mass of people 
 surging through the tenement streets. "Workers of 
 the world, unite !" Then all that slipped far behind, 
 as though it were in another life. With a rush, his 
 thoughts and feelings came back to his uncle Bill 
 and, glancing repeatedly at his watch, he cursed the 
 train for its long delays. ... It was still dark when 
 he walked with his bag rapidly up the village street. 
 The place was ghostly and unreal. White snow, 
 dark, silent houses beneath the steel blue autumn 
 sky. There was a light in his uncle s house, and 
 Peter found a woman there. 
 
 "It took him two days back," she said. u But no 
 body knew it till yesterday, when I noticed there 
 wa n t any smoke comin from his chimney." 
 
 On his bed, with rough, slow breathing, shaggy, 
 grim and paralyzed, Bill Gowdy stared up at the 
 ceiling. When Peter came in, his small black eyes 
 turned slowly; dull and glazed at first, they began 
 to brighten and gleam with light. Peter sat down 
 and took his hand, and began to talk to him quietly. 
 As he gave him the news of Kate and Susanna, his 
 
io6 BEGGARS* GOLD 
 
 rebel life, of his forlorn failure to break away from 
 the chains of habit that bound him down, and then of 
 Peter s dream and Kate s and their swift coming 
 together, Moon Chao and the chance to go to Pe 
 king. 
 
 "That may have been the chance he meant," said 
 Peter. For a moment they could almost hear his 
 voice : "Go there ! It s the chance of your lives !" 
 But a cloud of regret came over Kate s face. 
 
 "I wonder if it isn t too late? We re so much 
 more settled now. There s Susanna- 1 there are so 
 many things." She looked at Peter with anxious 
 eyes. "Oh I d like to go!" she exclaimed. "But 
 somehow it doesn t sound just like us any more!" 
 
 u No it doesn t," he replied. For some time 
 longer they talked on. 
 
 "Oh I don t know," she sighed at last. "I guess 
 we ll just have to wait and see. But remember, 
 Peter, this is for you." 
 
 "No," he replied, "he didn t mean that. He 
 meant a chance for all of us." 
 
 As he lay awake that night, he tried hard to 
 think it out. A part of the money he would have 
 liked to put into Anna Blainey s school, but he dis 
 missed the plan at once, as unfair to his uncle and 
 to Kate. She had had a hard time of it, that fall; 
 for in the campaign he had given up much of his 
 tutoring, and they were again in debt. He decided 
 
BEGGARS GOLD 107 
 
 now to pay the bills that had worried her so, and 
 to make her buy some clothes and take life easier all 
 around. Part of the money must go to that. Then 
 again he thought of the socialist school; but it was 
 as though the spirit of his grim old uncle were 
 haunting him, saying, "Quit all this wild radical 
 talk and do something to get ahead ! Think of Kate 
 and Susanna, and take this chance I m giving you!" 
 His thoughts kept turning to that chance the old 
 torment of the open door. 
 
 All at once he remembered the Roosevelt book. 
 His uncle would have approved of that. "Suppose 
 I use some of this money to get time to write," he 
 thought. It did not sound very exciting at first; but 
 for that very reason it appealed to him. It was 
 safe. "I needn t give up my position at school. 
 All I need is to get rid of this infernal tutoring and 
 be free to write at night. And if I can make this 
 book a success, it will give me a name and I can 
 go on to other biographies for boys. What have I 
 wanted all my life? History and geography not 
 just classroom drudgery but a chance to do original 
 work, and be free to study, travel about!" How 
 the vistas opened up that night. And reading 
 through his Roosevelt notes, in the weeks that fol 
 lowed, the warm generous force of the man began 
 to stir him as before. Roosevelt, much against his 
 will, had been made Vice-President. But was he 
 
io8 BEGGARS GOLD 
 
 Jetting himself be buried, as his enemies had hoped? 
 Far from it! With his old delight, Peter chuckled 
 as he read the news of him from day to day. Al 
 ready he had his first chapter, the meeting with 
 Roosevelt that frosty night when they harnessed the 
 team in Bill Gowdy s barn. U A close-up picture of 
 the man that will hit every boy between the eyes! 
 And I ll keep it like that clear through the book! 
 No hero bunkum ! The man as he is ! I ve learned 
 a lot in these last months; I can write now with eyes 
 wide open, to his strong points and his faults. He 
 has enough of em, God knows. But what was it 
 that appealed to me in this whole socialist point of 
 view? Revolt against things as they are, and be 
 lief in what s in all of us. And Roosevelt in his own 
 way is working right along those lines!" 
 
 So Peter tried to reconcile his new plan with his 
 radical views. But back in Anna Blainey s school 
 he found them bitter against T. R. Plainly they 
 were jealous of any progressive force than their own. 
 And he felt their small intolerance. Meanwhile, a 
 talk with Dillingham did much to clear up Peter s 
 mind. His old chief called him in one day and 
 asked, 
 
 "Are you still doing any work in that little social 
 ist school?" 
 
 "Yes," said Peter, with a slight start. "How did 
 you learn that I was there?" 
 
BEGGARS 1 GOLD 109 
 
 "From some people up-town," the other an 
 swered drily. "They want me to fire you. But I 
 guess you know me better than that." 
 
 Thanks," said Peter gruffly. 
 
 "No thanks about it," the old man said. "If I 
 had my way, I d have socialist clubs right here in 
 the building give em rooms to meet in at night. 
 What s false is bound to be shown up, and the 
 truth there is in it can do us no harm. We re not 
 perfect yet, God knows. We haven t even got to 
 the point where we give the kids a fair and decent 
 start in life; a square deal, as Teddy calls it. But 
 speaking of Teddy," he went on, "reminds me of 
 that book of yours. Why don t you tackle it again?" 
 
 "I m thinking of that," said Peter. 
 
 "Good! Kate was in, the other day. She told 
 me of that legacy and asked my advice. We talked 
 you over from A to Izzard, and came to the con* 
 elusion that the book was your best chance." 
 
 "She didn t tell me," Peter said. His old chief 
 chuckled. 
 
 "That s like Kate. She thought it would be better 
 to let you come to it yourself. Now how do you 
 mean to go about it?" 
 
 Soon in a rapid hungry way Peter was talking 
 of the book. When he had finished, Dillingham said, 
 "Well, this all sounds good to me. I tell you, boy, 
 in these next months you re going to feel like a new 
 
no BEGGARS 1 GOLD 
 
 man! You ll live in a new world Teddy s world 
 of vigor, hope, vitality! Get into it get into 
 him get way in under the skin of the man ! Try 
 to think as he thinks and feel as he feels ! Get thou 
 sands of little things in his life, that you ll never 
 write but which will be there and make you feel him, 
 real, alive !" 
 
 Later in their talk he asked, u How do you mean 
 to get time for this?" 
 
 "By cutting out all night work tutoring and 
 night school, too and giving my evenings to the 
 book." 
 
 "That won t do," said Dillingham. "You d bet 
 ter give up all teaching and put in your whole time 
 on it." Peter gave an anxious frown: 
 
 "I ve thought of that, but it s too big a risk! If 
 I quit school, it means we ll spend nearly all this 
 money in a year! I ve my family to think about!" 
 
 But when he spoke of it to Kate that night, she 
 warmly supported Dillingham s plan. 
 
 "You ve got to give up school," she said. "I ve 
 been a teacher myself, and I know. After a long 
 day s teaching, you feel as though you d been beaten 
 by sticks! And if you re going to write this book 
 you can t afford to feel like that! You must start 
 in the morning and give the whole day, the very best 
 that is in you ! Oh Peter, you ll succeed in this 
 I can just feel it in my bones ! And then you ll go 
 
BEGGARS GOLD in 
 
 on to other books! Stop worrying over Susanna 
 and me ! I m not going to be sick any more why 
 Peter, dearie, I m strong!" she cried. "Think what 
 it will mean for all of us ! Risk it, Peter take the 
 chance!" 
 
 A few weeks longer he held back; but toward the 
 end of the winter, he resigned his position at school, 
 and within a few days he was at work, in the old 
 Astor Library. 
 
 It was such a new life to Peter Wells, this glorious 
 start in the morning, fresh, with a whole day for 
 the work he loved. He had begun no writing yet. 
 For the present he was rabid to read, to take in and 
 absorb, let the fancies rise. It was as though he had 
 come abruptly into a gleaming inner world where 
 nothing was impossible. And looming in the fore 
 ground, closer, bigger, day by day, rose the figure 
 of the man who had sent his name like a magic 
 force spreading swiftly over the land. The gold in 
 him, the human gold, the warm rich humanity! To 
 keep up with him, what a race it was! While dig 
 ging into his boyhood growth, Peter would be over 
 whelmed by a fresh mass of material out of the 
 papers and magazines, Roosevelt s doings in a 
 month! Yielding himself and leaving behind the 
 
H2 BEGGARS GOLD 
 
 memories of his own little career, struggles, failures 
 and mistakes, he was swept up into the life of this 
 big American ; and reading, thinking, talking, breath 
 ing, dreaming Roosevelt, thrilling intimations came 
 of how it must feel to be like that ! 
 
 At home by the hour he talked with Kate, who 
 was an eager listener. Already she had begun again 
 to scrimp and save, to eke out their small legacy and 
 make it last the longer. But summer came, with the 
 hot days, and Peter insisted that she and Susanna 
 go to the seashore fcr two months. Alone in the 
 city he worked on. And then slowly came a change. 
 It was all very fine to read and take in; but when 
 he tackled his mass of notes, to sort them out and 
 sift them down, in the growing perplexity of it all 
 he lost that exultant glow. At the desk in the old 
 library, the lean, tall official there faced him with 
 discouraged eyes that seemed to ask: "What can 
 you do? You re only one of hundreds who have 
 come here to write great books and have failed. 
 What a waste of time." In exasperation, Peter now 
 began to write. But what false, stilted, awful stuff ! 
 T^ddy? A mere mannikin! Humor? A few 
 forced guffahs! Savagely he tore it up and tried 
 again again, again! 
 
 When Kate returned, she asked at once how the 
 book was getting on. "Oh it s beginning to shape 
 up." She caught the anxiety in his voice, and they 
 
BEGGARS GOLD 113 
 
 were not happy together that night; her attempts to 
 clear the atmosphere failed. For back of all their 
 thinking loomed two grim facts they had spent a 
 third of their money, and die hook refused to start. 
 
 Then came a tremendous shock. McKinley shot 
 by an anarchist! A few days later he was dead, and 
 Peter s hero had become President of the United 
 States! In the excitement of it all, Peter almost 
 forgot his work. Then back he came. "Now!" he 
 thought. How the opportunity for such a book had 
 been increased! That autumn by sheer force of 
 will he ground out chapter after chapter. But the 
 Roosevelt of his dreams had receded far away; and 
 in his place, in Peter s book, stood a grotesque and 
 clumsy image "like a snow man made by kids !" he 
 growled. Where was the warm reality? Reaching 
 out, as it were, in a savage appeal for the old T. R., 
 Peter would feel him coming back; but the moment 
 he tried to write him down, once more his mind 
 would seem to lock and the living stuff grow stiff and 
 cold Doggedly going back to the work, all day 
 until the library closed, often forgetting to stop 
 for meals, he came home late, blue and depressed; 
 and, through long nights when he could not sleep, a 
 deep, sardonic, inner self rose up and laughed at his 
 struggles. 
 
 "You ll fail in this! And it s your last chance! 
 You ll fail and settle, down and down!" 
 
ii 4 BEGGARS GOLD 
 
 He could feel Kate s anxious watching now 
 silent and now throwing in small casual suggestions. 
 In their talk one night a question rose about Roose 
 velt s early life. When had he first used a gun? 
 
 "Why not write him and ask?" said Kate. And in 
 a few moments, flushed and excited, crying, "Then 
 let s do it now!" she had Peter at the desk; and 
 they wrote and re-wrote the letter that night. 
 
 "Now, Peter, go out and mail it!" 
 
 He gave a slight start, and so did she. An old 
 memory flashed into their minds. He turned away, 
 but a moment later he faced her with a quizzical 
 smile. 
 
 "Hadn t you better go with me this time, and 
 make sure of it, Kate?" he asked. She laughed and 
 came quickly into his arms. 
 
 "Peter, dear, I could wring your neck!" 
 
 "No, you couldn t, Kate, it s too heavy and stiff 
 all muscle bound like me," he said. 
 
 "You poor, queer, darling husband " 
 
 "No not poor not queer," he whispered, hold 
 ing her tighter. "Just damned slow! But I m lov 
 ing you very hard, these days, and I m going to put 
 this through!" 
 
 Then he went out and mailed the letter; and in a 
 few days there came from the White House this 
 reply: 
 
 "My Dear Mr. Wells: I was given my first gun 
 
BEGGARS GOLD 115 
 
 the summer when I was thirteen. It was a breech- 
 loading, pin-fire, double barrel, made in France. For 
 weeks I was by all odds the worst shot among my 
 friends. Then I found that the trouble was in my 
 eyes. My parents bought me spectacles, and from 
 then on I quickly improved but those new specs 
 opened up such a world, that I had barely seen be 
 fore, of interest and beauty in the life of the woods 
 and fields that I often forgot to shoot at all. It 
 has been that way with me ever since, in spite of 
 what some people say. I am greatly interested in 
 your book. Not enough real stuff has been written 
 for boys. We are just at the beginning of real 
 education. I take off my hat to teachers. You have 
 the greatest job in the land. At best, I can only 
 lead men. You can mould them!" 
 
 Reading the letter many times, at first with Kate 
 and then alone, Peter felt a tonic force pour into 
 him; and, for several weeks, writing hard and fast, 
 he could feel the stuff grow strong and real. Then 
 slowly he got snarled once more; and Kate, still 
 watching, said one night: 
 
 "Why don t you write to him again?" 
 
 "What right have I to impose on him? Think 
 how packed his time must be." 
 
 "I don t care. This book is important. And if 
 you can catch his interest he won t mind it in the 
 least. That s exactly the sort of man he is!" 
 
in 6 BEGGARS GOLD 
 
 Carefully they composed a letter describing tne 
 book as a combination of "the strenuous life" idea 
 and the one that had meant so much in their lives, 
 "We are beggars sitting on bags of gold." And 
 they added a brief mention of that night meeting in 
 the barn. When Peter went out to mail it, she 
 quickly wrote another herself : 
 
 "Dear Mr. President: My husband has just 
 written you a letter about his book about you. If 
 you can only give him ten minutes, face to face, it 
 may change his entire life." 
 
 Three weeks later, an answer came : 
 
 "Dear Mr. Wells: That s a bully idea you have 
 for your book. I remember quite well that night in 
 the barn. Why don t you come and see me? Come 
 Tuesday at 10:45." 
 
 "Good God!" cried Peter. "That s tomorrow!" 
 
 "Never mind," said Kate in a low, tense voice. 
 "I ll pack your bag while you go through your 
 manuscript and choose what to take along." 
 
 "Take along? Do you think I d show him any of 
 this stuff?" he cried. 
 
 "Of course you will! He ll ask for it! And he s 
 President of the United States!" 
 
 6. 
 
 The next morning in the White House, with a con 
 fused, exciting sense of a crowd of other visitors 
 
BEGGARS GOLD 117 
 
 about him from all over the land, Peter fiercely went 
 over the list of questions he meant to ask, points 
 for his book that he wanted so, that would make such 
 a difference! He asked an official how long he 
 Would have. The man glanced at his schedule. "Ten 
 minutes/ he said. Peter felt his huge throat con 
 strict. Then came the thought, "He ll make it an 
 hour! He s just that kind! He ll keep all these 
 
 millionaires and senators and diplomats " Peter 
 
 was vague about such men "all waiting, while we 
 talk of my book!" And he excitedly mopped his 
 brow. 
 
 In a slow, rigid way, a few minutes later, he 
 got up when his name was called, and smiling walked 
 into the other room. 
 
 The enormous chest of the man! And the jaws, 
 the genial, teethy smile, and the eyes, and the strong 
 grip of his hand ! 
 
 "Glad to meet you, Mr. Wells ! So you were the 
 fellow in the barn. I remember that night remem 
 ber it well ! We made a quick job of that harnessing, 
 eh?" And then, when Peter had sat down: "So 
 you re writing a book about me for boys? That s 
 a great idea you ve got to hold it all together. 
 Beggars sitting on bags of gold. We all are. I 
 am myself a beggar only a beggar, by George ! 
 when I think of all I want to be, and do in life, before 
 I m through. Now tell me your troubles." 
 
n8 BEGGARS GOLD 
 
 Peter began, and grew tense and hot in his effort 
 to get out what was in him. "What I want to do, 
 Mr. President, is something real!" he ended. From 
 his listener came a glance that asked, "But what 
 do you know of realities?" 
 
 "Have you ever been in Dakota, Wells?" 
 
 "No, sir." 
 
 "Go there if you can. Seen anything of the New 
 York Police?" 
 
 "Not much. I " 
 
 "Talk with my friend, Jake Riis. Were you in 
 the War?" 
 
 "Why no, Mr. President. You see, my wife s 
 baby was >" 
 
 "I understand. Ever been in Albany?" 
 
 The questions, fired thick and fast, had filled Peter 
 with dismay. He began talking hard and fast about 
 how in a book of this kind, for boys, there was room 
 for only the A, B, C s of American politics. 
 
 "That s right," said Roosevelt cordially, "boil it 
 down, make it simple and plain. But don t you for 
 get that American boys understand a lot more than 
 we older ones think ! And don t forget to see Jake 
 Riis! By the way, got a sample of what you ve 
 done?" 
 
 "Yes," said Peter, turning cold. "But it s not 
 at all as I want it yet." 
 
 "Never mind let s have a look at it." 
 
BEGGARS GOLD 119 
 
 As he glanced through a few pages then, Peter 
 saw him hesitate ; and Peter grew so rigid now that 
 when the President looked up a flash of sympathy 
 came in his eyes. 
 
 "All right bully this is a start. You haven t 
 got it yet as you say. But keep at it, Wells and 
 write me." He rose. "And take my advice. If 
 you want a short cut, why not get a trained writer 
 to help you? See what I mean? It will save your 
 time. . . . Oh, hello Senator, glad to see you. 
 Good-bye, Wells, and good luck to the book. And 
 write me write me!" 
 
 Peter went out in a kind of a daze ; but later, on 
 his journey home, the facts of his brief interview 
 grew clear to him, and they were grim. "I got ten 
 minutes and no more. He sized me up as a great, 
 big dub no first hand knowledge of his life, no- 
 power as a writer." For some time he sat staring 
 out of the car window. "And yet he s wrong, by 
 God, he s wrong! I have got it in me! . . . But 
 the difference between us is that he can get it out I 
 can t. I m like him I m like Roosevelt. So is that 
 farmer out there, cutting wood and so are millions 
 of average men. The seeds of all he has are in us 
 but they re all locked up inside." 
 
120 BEGGARS GOLD 
 
 When he got home that evening, he tried to hide 
 his discouragement; but by her anxious questions 
 Kate soon broke through his defence and got the 
 whole truth out of him. 
 
 "All right," she said, determinedly, "there s noth 
 ing to be discouraged about. He wants you to get it 
 more at first hand. Why can t you ?" 
 
 "Go out West? Ride broncos? Shoot and yell 
 and swing a lasso ?" At the startled look on his face, 
 Kate threw back her head and laughed. "Now," 
 said he, "when you can stop laughing, tell me some 
 thing else I m to do !" 
 
 "I will. Why Peter, right here in New York 
 there must be scores of friends of his. He told 
 you to see Jacob Riis." 
 
 "I tell you he s wrong! I don t need his friends! 
 I ve already got too much as it is ! All I need is to 
 write it, get it out!" 
 
 "Then why not do as he suggests and get some 
 one to help you, dear a man who has been trained 
 to write and who does it easily? Other men have 
 begun that way! You ll learn so much that will 
 help you in any other books you try!" 
 
 "If I ever try another book," growled Peter, "it 
 will be a telephone directory!" 
 
 It ended in his promising to try to find a collabora 
 tor. But it was not easy. Peter had no writer 
 friends. As a last resource, he went back to the 
 
BEGGARS GOLD 121 
 
 Astor Library and spoke to the lean official there. 
 This man, by his dark, discouraging eyes, had built 
 up a wall of defence from the hundreds of readers 
 who came each day; but behind this wall, in his own 
 grim way, he had spent a lifetime watching them 
 picking out the queer birds in the flock, noticing the 
 books they read or the books that they were writing 
 here. So Peter, coming every day, had attracted his 
 attention. They had had brief talks at times, and 
 he knew a good deal about Peter s book. When 
 asked if he knew of anyone who would do as a col 
 laborator, he answered with a queer expression, 
 
 "I do the very man you want. But he left here 
 some days ago. He was doing a book on the Colo 
 nel, too." 
 
 "Roosevelt?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "For boys?" 
 
 "That s it." 
 
 Peter stared. 
 
 "Do you know if he was at it long?" 
 
 "Not very. Only a month or so." 
 
 "I see." 
 
 At the expression on Peter s face, a look almost 
 of compassion came into the lean man s eyes. 
 
 "But I don t mind telling you," he said, in a low, 
 confidential tone, "that from what I saw of it, this 
 chap was doing a cheap piece of work. You go 
 
122 BEGGARS GOLD 
 
 ahead and forget him and leave all hack-writers 
 alone. You ve gone after something big; and you 
 don t want to let it worry you if it takes years to 
 put it through. Most of these people aren t in 
 your class. If you ever get to feeling down, just 
 take a look around the room. Over half of em 
 read nothing but trash, and the few queer birds who 
 are on the job are all dried up in theories, or riding 
 hobbies of their own, or out to get one special thing 
 and get it quick. Grabbers, dreamers, loafers, bums, 
 come in here to get out of the cold." 
 
 Back to his corner Peter went and plunged again 
 into his work. But, in the weeks that followed, his 
 whole feeling of the lofty room gradually under 
 went a change. No longer a place of boundless 
 chances, vistas opening bright and wide into a 
 gleaming inner world where all things were pos 
 sible. He felt the limitations here, not only in him 
 self alone but in all these other workers here, in 
 these faces, this fixed eyes. Even while he was 
 working hard, they pressed into his consciousness. 
 
 One day, a florid youngster, with a little pointed 
 beard, sat down and was soon in a fever of writing, 
 throwing off page after page. When anyone sat 
 down next to him, he would look up with a scowl of 
 suspicion; but learning in time of Peter s wort, he 
 grew confidential, and one night he told of th play 
 he was writing. Its title was "The Acid Cross," 
 
BEGGARS GOLD 123 
 
 and the great scene was in a church. "No ancient 
 beauty none at all just modern, ugly, real," he 
 cried, with a strong twang of the Middle West. The 
 hero, who was a chemist "a modern scientist un 
 derstand?" was trying to keep the girl he loved 
 from becoming a nun. And to show up "the clap 
 trap of the whole religious bunkum game," he put 
 into the Holy Fount a few drops of an acid so 
 strong that all the worshippers soon began to feel 
 fiery crosses on their brows. There followed a 
 panic in the church. "Then a speech from the scien 
 tist, ending with Take! And then a slow curtain 
 understand? Do you get it the big punch of it, 
 the superb dramatic effect? I tell you, man, I know 
 thej stage I ve been an actor all my life ! And if 
 this is done as it should be, this play will go thunder 
 ing over the world till it comes like a crash of 
 doom to Rome!" 
 
 As Peter listened to this youth, a quizzical ex 
 pression came on his heavy, sensitive face. "My 
 God, am I like that," he asked, "with this would-be 
 famous book of mine?" 
 
 In the first, warm, restless days of spring, many 
 travellers came to the library. With books and 
 maps how eagerly they careered about the earth! 
 To Peter s table one young girl brought time tables 
 and sailing lists, and made notes in a hungry way 
 that reminded him of Kate and himself in the first 
 
[124 BEGGARS GOLD 
 
 year of their married life. "I wonder if she ll go?" 
 he thought. "I wonder if any of em will go? Or 
 are they all just like me taking it all out in 
 dreams?" 
 
 There was still one more figure who caught his 
 attention here an elderly, clear eyed little man, who 
 in a wistful, whimsical way perused a most astonish 
 ing variety of volumes on natural science, history, 
 art, philosophy and religion. One Saturday, he 
 brought to the table some huge volumes filled with 
 prints of Spanish and Italian paintings. He apolo 
 gized to Peter for taking so much room that day. 
 
 "Would you mind telling me," Peter asked, "why 
 you are so interested in so many kinds of books? * 
 And, with that whimsical, wistful look, the elderly 
 man answered: 
 
 "I am trying to find God. I lost track of Him 
 several years ago, at the time of the death of my 
 dearest friend. It s a puzzling task to find Him, 
 these days. He seems to be so scattered about in 
 so many kinds of places. What is it you are looking 
 for?" Peter smiled back at him and said, 
 
 "I m trying to find Roosevelt." The little man 
 gave a quiet chuckle. 
 
 "That should not be hard," he said. 
 
 "It isn t. The only trouble comes when you try 
 to crowd him into a book catch him, hold him, pin 
 him down." 
 
BEGGARS GOLD 125; 
 
 "Yes, that would be difficult." 
 
 As Peter told of his troubles, the other listened 
 with a look of deepening curiosity. He spent the 
 rest of the afternoon reading Peter s manuscript; 
 and, when he was through, he said : 
 
 "I know very little about books, but reading yours, 
 after what you have told me, I should say that if I 
 were you I d feel very proud of what I had in me, 
 whether or not I could bring it all out. Thank you 
 for an afternoon that has carried me quite a long 
 way on my road. For the bags of gold you speak 
 of are in us all." He hesitated, and then said, in a 
 low, deferential tone, "I m inclined to think this gold 
 is God." 
 
 After their talk that afternoon, Peter grew more 
 and more intense. Nearly two-thirds of the money 
 was gone. At home he could feel how Kate was 
 cutting down expenses in every little way she could; 
 and again she was earning money by doing work for 
 Dillingham. But she barely ever looked tired now. 
 Gathering all her forces for the impending crisis, she 
 kept steadily on each day, leaving Peter alone when 
 she felt that the thought of her sharpened his anx 
 iety; but again when she knew he wanted her, listen 
 ing while he talked of his book, putting in quick 
 suggestions, and making him feel her warm, deep 
 faith. He had not let her read it yet. Despite her 
 reluctance to leave him, he made her take Susanna 
 
126 BEGGARS* GOLD 
 
 again to the seashore in July; and alone in the city, 
 he settled down to the last stretch. Often at home 
 he wrote half the night; and by day, in the hot 
 library, Peter utterly forgot those figures who had 
 emerged before. The big room had grown stale to 
 him, its secrets silent, hidden deep. Still, with a 
 slow, grinding force, he kept on with his writing. 
 At times it all seemed like a dream. "When shall I 
 wake up?" he asked. 
 
 But just before his awakening, there was thrown 
 across the path of his dream the shadow of a tragedy 
 that affected to no small degree the color of his 
 thinking, the denouement of his own struggle here. 
 
 Early in the summer the author of "The Acid 
 Cross" had finished up his manuscript. Peter had 
 watched him, late one evening, wrap it up and ad 
 dress the package. Then both hands had gone to 
 his eyes, and he had sat a moment rigid, as though 
 breathing a last prayer. "He s doing that because 
 he knows I m looking," Peter had thought. "He 
 just can t help it playing the part." He had come 
 almost daily after that; and, as he sat reading plays, 
 mumbling anxiously at times or throwing sharp, tor 
 mented looks out into space, again Peter had felt 
 he was playing the part. But now he looked thin, 
 sallow, ill; Peter s sympathy was gripped, and he 
 found himself wanting the boy to win. At last, one 
 August afternoon, with the rejected manuscript un- 
 
BEGGARS GOLD 127 
 
 der his arm, the little actor-dramatist made a slow 
 entrance, as though on the stage, slowly sank into a 
 chair, and the blue eyes that Peter saw were those 
 of a dismal, hopeless boy, sick, lonely, wishing he 
 were dead. But abruptly once more the actor in 
 him came to the fore; again the eyes grew con 
 scious, gleaming; and in a stage whisper, 
 
 "Yes, that s it to die!" he said. "In the very 
 heart and center of the world that I have loved!" 
 
 A moment longer he held his pose. Then with 
 a start he seemed to notice Peter close beside him. 
 He sprang up, laughing, seized Peter s hand, and 
 with a gay, quick, "Good-bye!" he walked off down 
 the lofty room. Peter turned and watched him go. 
 He had caught the whiskey on his breath. "That 
 boy will never kill himself he ll go on a good drunk 
 instead, and then get a job as cheap as himself, in 
 some road company," he thought. But the next 
 afternoon, to get a book that he needed, he went to 
 his friend, the librarian; and that laconic person 
 asked, 
 
 "Remember the little actor ass who used to work 
 at your table?" 
 
 "Yes. What about him?" 
 
 "Look at this." And he handed Peter an evening 
 paper. On the front page was a half column story 
 under the heading, "His Big Last Act." 
 
 "Last night about eight forty-five, when the cur- 
 
128 BEGGARS GOLD 
 
 tains in the theatres had been rung up and the Great 
 White Way was settling down to wait for the late 
 evening rush, a thin young man with a Vandyke 
 beard and a big portfolio under his arm came up to a 
 taxi by the curb. My friend/ he said to the taxi- 
 man, Tm dead to the world. I want a nap/ The 
 breaker of speed ordinances replied, All right, old 
 top. Go on home and sleep it off/ I have chosen 
 your taxi/ the youth replied, as the place for my 
 long sleep/ To this the wheel-smasher answered, 
 Have, eh? Choose again! The bearded boy pro 
 duced six dollar bills. How long can I sit in there 
 for this? The chauffeur woke right up and asked, 
 Where do you want to go, sir? The youngster 
 scowled impatiently. I don t want to go I want 
 to stay right here where I am! he cried. All right, 
 hop in. When would you like to be called, my 
 Lord? Oh in an hour or so, my good man. He 
 disappeared into the car, and, while the driver was 
 scratching his head over this queer bird come to 
 roost, his head came out of the window. I forgot 
 your tip, my good fellow. He handed out forty 
 cents and yawned pulled down the curtains. An 
 hour passed. At ten o clock the driver looked in 
 and saw that his fare was fast asleep. At eleven, 
 when the street came to life, when the crowds poured 
 out of the theatres and all the cabs and taxis began 
 to hustle for business, the driver again jerked open 
 
BEGGARS GOLD 129 
 
 the door and shouted, Heigh! Time s up! You re 
 home ! There was no reply. He seized the arm of 
 the sleeper to shake him. Then with a quick startled 
 cry he hustled off to get a cop. For the young 
 man with the Vandyke beard was home indeed. In 
 one hand was a bottle of laudanum On the seat was 
 the big portfolio which being opened revealed a 
 play in four acts entitled, The Acid Cross. The 
 ambulance doctor said, Too late. In the dead boy s 
 other hand was a card on which, underlined in red 
 ink, was written, Exit J. Pinkerton Jones. 
 
 From reading the story, Peter looked up and met 
 the lean librarian s eyes. There was a curious glint 
 in them: 
 
 "And he did it with laudanum," he said. "Good 
 old tragic laudanum." 
 
 "Well," said Peter, huskily, "thank God the poor 
 kid got on the front page." 
 
 8. 
 
 It was hard to work that evening. In spite of 
 himself he kept glancing at the empty chair nearby. 
 What a futile little life; what a cheap, theatrical 
 end. "But we re all more or less that," he thought, 
 "when you think of these little lives we lead be 
 neath the stars and the things we try to be." A 
 picture came of the stars at night, up in the moun- 
 
130 BEGGARS 1 GOLD 
 
 tains where he was born, and then of his wife and 
 child who were still at the seashore. He saw Kate 
 quietly reading, Susanna playing in the sand; he 
 saw the long, shining, ocean waves roll in and break 
 upon the beach. And suddenly that night he found 
 that all the fever of suspense had gone out of his 
 struggle here. The pitiful, cheap, little drama, that 
 had been played so close to him, had abruptly re 
 stored his sense of proportions, lost in the strain of 
 this last year. Success? A useful book for boys. 
 And failure ? Well, then, back to school. 
 
 "Whatever comes, there ll be no scene no plung 
 ing into melodramatic depths of despair no hell 
 for my wife. No I ll keep it quiet." 
 
 And though, in the month that followed, the old 
 intensity returned, and there were many sleepless 
 nights, when at last the end did come, he kept it 
 quiet, all inside. Early one afternoon in October he 
 left his manuscript with Kate and went out for a 
 long walk. He stayed out until late in the evening. 
 When he came home he found her still reading, and 
 one look at her face was enough. She was disap 
 pointed. Well? What next? He sat down and lit 
 his pipe, opened a book and began to read mechani 
 cally. Little by little he fixed his thoughts on his 
 old job and Dillingham. What a splendid chief he 
 was, and what a relief to be back with him. He 
 puffed his pipe and glanced at Kate. . He could see 
 
BEGGARS GOLD 131 
 
 that she was nearing the end. How to make it easy 
 for her? She finished, and there was a little pause, 
 as she put the last pages with the rest. Then Peter 
 spoke up quietly. 
 
 u The book s not what I hoped," he said. "I ve 
 thought it out pretty clearly, Kate ; and, if you ll just 
 agree with me, I feel pretty sure what I d better do." 
 
 She looked up, her eyes bright with the wave of 
 relief that his quiet words had given her. 
 
 "Do you know what I ve been thinking?" In 
 her voice, now low and clear, was the Scotch burr 
 of years ago. And he noticed it and thougjht, 
 "That s because of the strain! She s been sitting 
 here all afternoon, wondering what she d say to 
 
 me! 
 
 "I ve been thinking," she went on, "of the little 
 old man you told me about, in the library, who was 
 hunting for God. When he read the book, he said, 
 If I were you I d be very proud of what I had in 
 me even if I couldn t bring it all out. As he 
 smiled at that and started to speak, she went on 
 quickly: "This book may succeed, for all I know. 
 I m afraid my opinion isn t worth much. I only 
 know one simple thing that it held me, Peter, oh so 
 hard! You ve packed so much into it, dear, so 
 much more than- you ll ever know ! But it does seem 
 to me to need more work. Why don t you take it to 
 Dillingham?" 
 
i 3 2 BEGGARS GOLD 
 
 "All right, I ll do that, if you like though I 
 think I know what he ll advise. But remember, 
 Kate." For a moment his eyes held hers. "I m not 
 beaten by this. I ve come a long way. It has taught 
 me a good many things. But now that it s over, 
 there s to be no fuss at all of any kind. We ve 
 some of the money left, thank God, and we ll be 
 better off than ever before." 
 
 And she came and kissed him, and they laughed, 
 and remembered they had had nothing to eat, and 
 so they got supper together. And with the long 
 strain of suspense at an end, their love for each 
 other rose in a way that would have made an out 
 sider believe they were celebrating some success, 
 instead of a failure, in their lives. 
 
 And that ended it. For Dillingham, after he had 
 read the book, told Peter, "I don t say you can t 
 get a publisher. Go and try it if you like. But my 
 advice is to lay it aside. There s a big book here, 
 and you ll write it some day." 
 
 "No I won t write it," Peter said. "But at any 
 rate I m glad I tried. Can you give me back my 
 job in school?" His old chief gripped his hand and 
 said, 
 
 "Yes, I need you." 
 
 "Good. When can I start?" 
 
 "Next week, if you like. But don t you want a 
 little rest?" 
 
BEGGARS GOLD 133 
 
 "No, I don t seem to feel like it now." 
 And the next Monday morning at nine o clock, 
 spreading open on his desk a history of the United 
 States, hesitating for a time, Peter looked out at his 
 class and said, 
 
 "Before we begin with Chapter Eighteen, I ad 
 vise you fellows if you want to enjoy yourselves and 
 learn some things that ll do you good to read a 
 book by Roosevelt, called The Winning of the 
 West. " 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 i. 
 
 HE had thought that to get back into the old, 
 familiar work would be a relief, but it was not 
 so. The long, hot summer had left his nerves in a 
 state that played queer tricks on him. In school, 
 toward the end of each noisy day, his whole body 
 ached; over his eyes was a throbbing pain; and it 
 was all that he could do to keep from flying into a 
 rage, grabbing each small offender and banging him 
 up against the wall. In the time he had been away 
 from all this, he had forgotten what it was like. 
 The demands upon him, and the din of the hard, 
 shrill voices, never stopped. And this was to go on 
 and on. "I had my chance to get out of this rut, and 
 missed it!" Now he realized how close he had been 
 to success. He felt the strong points in his book, 
 realized what a boundless wealth of life he had 
 poured into it. All for nothing! He thought of 
 mistakes that he had made, and came out of his 
 memories face to face with failure. "Yes, old boy, 
 you re through ! From this time on it s middle age, 
 
 134 
 
BEGGARS GOLD 135 
 
 and the rut and the daily grind for you !" All life at 
 such times seemed level, flat, a bleak cold marsh of 
 little things. 
 
 Still, with the tenacious force that had always 
 been a part of him, he kept grimly to the job. "No 
 squealing now, no showing this not a sign!" he 
 would command himself. And when he went home 
 to supper, head aching and no appetite, facing an 
 other sleepless night, with Kate and Susanna he 
 never let the pent-up irritations of the day burst out 
 of him. When at times Kate could not keep from 
 showing her anxiety in questions, he would answer, 
 "Why no, Kate I feel all right/ or "No today s 
 been pretty easy." And he would read until late at 
 night. His pipe was a great companion. 
 
 But suddenly there came a night when he needed 
 every ounce of his new strength and steadiness. 
 
 The old brown house in which they lived fronted 
 upon Stuyvesant Square, but its side windows looked 
 on Second Avenue; and down this broad thorough 
 fare early one evening came abruptly a babel of 
 sounds the blare and boom of a brass band, the rau 
 cous honks of motor horns and roars of cheers and 
 rushing feet. Peter threw open a window, leaned 
 out and saw a big car surrounded by crowds and 
 waving flags. The next moment, growing rigid, he 
 knew that it was Roosevelt, swinging down through 
 the lower East Side, down into the tenements, into 
 
136 BEGGARS GOLD 
 
 the commond herds of men! And, as the roar of 
 cheering rose till it made the very window panes 
 beside him shake and rattle, a hot wave of resent 
 ment surged up in Peter. He clenched his hands; 
 and, watching the burly figure below stand up in the 
 car and wave his hat, deep within himself Peter 
 cried, 
 
 "What right have you what right have you to 
 come stirring us all up like this?" 
 
 But he did not speak. With his big fists clenched 
 and every muscle taut, he stood there till the din was 
 gone. For he knew that Kate was just behind him. 
 At last he heard her move softly away. He turned 
 and caught a glimpse of her face, white and strained. 
 Peter shut the window. The receding roar of sound 
 was cut off, and in the sudden quiet the room inside 
 felt small and cramped. Just Kate and himself. He 
 drew a slow, determined breath. "No cheap acting, 
 ranting, now. Hold on to yourself; be a man." 
 And, in the next few moments, it was as though 
 that grip on himself were slowly, slowly squeezing 
 up something hard and strong and bright, like bur 
 nished, gleaming metal. He felt it rise. At last he 
 said: 
 
 "When you think of all that fellow can be before 
 he gets through, it gives you a new hold on life. 
 Oh Kate, I m so glad I tried that book. It brought 
 me up so close to him." 
 
BEGGARS GOLD 137 
 
 Then he heard a kind of a sob. She swung about 
 and came to him quickly. 
 
 u Oh Peter ! If you only knew how I love you for 
 that!" she whispered. He held her tight. 
 
 "No, Kate, no. Just slow slow." His voice 
 was low and incoherent. He felt her trembling like 
 himself, and he waited. Then, in a steady tone: 
 "But it s going to be so much easier now. I see it 
 all so clearly just what it is I want to do. Re 
 member that first promotion in school? There ll be 
 others more and more. Just slowly, slowly more 
 and more." 
 
 And time proved that he was right. Life did 
 grow easier after this; for by keeping up the outward 
 show of steadiness and cheerfulness, he began to 
 feel like that inside. The keen, autumn days had 
 come. He began to sleep at night, and the pain 
 above his eyes was no longer a constant torment. In 
 the school, as he grew used to it, the work no longer 
 irked him so; and he relished the quiet evenings 
 at home. 
 
 So the stolid Peter of every day having buried 
 for good and all the rebellious Peter inside, who 
 had made so much trouble all these years with his 
 dreams and his adventurings began once more to 
 settle down. 
 
 2. 
 
 And the new, restless spark of life, which he 
 
138 BEGGARS GOLD 
 
 presently felt in his home did not alarm him in the 
 least. 
 
 It dawned upon him one evening that Susanna 
 was fast growing up, and that he barely knew her 
 now. At the start, it had not been so. He looked 
 wistfully back to the time when she was an adorable 
 little thing, when her voice had been soft, with the 
 tenderest notes, and her laugh had gone deep into 
 him. He had read Mother Goose to her. They 
 had laid out a farm with blocks on the floor. Peter s 
 big chair had become a mountain. The old wolf s 
 lair had been up there ; and lambs had been carried 
 off from the farm and rescued in the nick of time by 
 a good old dog who, in spite of the fact that he had 
 but one leg, could invariably be counted on to pro 
 duce the happy ending. . . . But, in kindergarten 
 and later in school, she had grown shrill, like all the 
 rest whom he had to face in his classroom; and, in 
 the worry of those years when it had been hard to 
 make ends meet, she had become an irritation, chat 
 tering, demanding, asking countless questions. More 
 and more he had put her off or rather, Kate had 
 kept her away. . . . But now that Peter had come 
 again to one of the quiet times in his life, he woke 
 up to the fact that she was a stranger. And, when 
 he tried to make friends with her, he came up against 
 a veritable wall of reserves and false conceptions 
 
BEGGARS GOLD 139 
 
 which this queer little daughter of his seemed to 
 have raised against him. 
 
 "It s my own fault," he decided. "I ve been 
 wrapped up in the grand importance of my own 
 dull little life. Here s a life a thousand times as 
 fresh and sweet and new as mine, that has sprung up 
 right under my nose. I m missing it. She s nine 
 years old, and she has learned to look at me, not as 
 her Dad, but as one of those dry cantankerous killers 
 of joy known to her as teachers. When I come 
 home, it s a sign for Susanna to settle right down. 
 And Susanna hates to settle down ! She loathes the 
 job of being good and not making a noise to bother 
 her father. Bother me why shouldn t she? What 
 else am I here for, I d like to know!" He worked 
 himself into a state of virtuous indignation against a 
 hard, selfish father by the name of Peter Wells. 
 "Now," he concluded, "I propose to show her what 
 a teacher can be!" 
 
 He took her to the circus ; and there, warming up 
 to his new role, he treated the amazed little girl to 
 an ice cream cone, and peanuts and candy on top 
 of that. Susanna was sick in bed for two days, but 
 Peter was not at all abashed. When he heard her 
 ask, in a perplexed and awe-struck tone, "Mother, 
 what in the world has happened to Dad?" Peter 
 thrilled with a new delight. "I ll show her what has 
 
140 BEGGARS 1 GOLD 
 
 happened!" And, not to be discouraged by many 
 failures, slight rebuffs and looks of blank surprise, he 
 helped her with her lessons at night, discovered her 
 troubles and showed her short cuts; and, with noth- 
 ing but a dull geography book as a starting point, 
 he took her on travels to the Far East. Mute 
 and very still at first, as they journeyed on he felt 
 Susanna s small hand on his arm; in a low, thrilling 
 voice certain questions were asked. He found that 
 his daughter liked to know just how they travelled 
 on sea or land; on ship, on train, on river boat, in 
 rickshaw or on camel s back; she wanted to know 
 just what to wear, and about the meals and the beds 
 at night. So he grew careful and exact; and, with 
 these matters settled, they looked together at the 
 East. Once, in a sharp, excited voice, she asked, 
 
 "Have you taken many trips like this?" 
 
 "Oh yes all my life, my dear." 
 
 And that night, as they played parchesi, he told 
 her how it had been played in India long, long ago 
 with a spacious court in place of the board, and 
 in place of counters beautiful slave girls moving 
 about as the game went on. 
 
 "What did they wear?" she demanded. And, as 
 her huge father tried to describe to her those gar 
 ments, into his small daughter s eyes came a look 
 amused and pitying. 
 
 This was not all steadily done. The winning of 
 
BEGGARS GOLD 141 
 
 Susanna proceeded most unevenly; now it was rapid, 
 now very slow. There were evenings when he was 
 made to feel that she did not want him at all, and 
 at such times he was nothing loath to go back to 
 his evening paper. But, long before the winter was 
 over, the affair had come to a stage where Susanna 
 in a talkative mood would chatter away to her father 
 as though she had known him all her life, about her 
 school, her best girl friends and a club that they 
 had organized. She even confided to him one night 
 her guilty feeling over the way she could not yet 
 make up her mind to put dolls aside. "I know it s 
 silly at my age !" she exclaimed, as she sat beside 
 him sewing, her blue-ribboned pigtails bobbing, her 
 blue eyes intent on her work. As she talked on 
 about her dolls and how hard it was to leave them 
 behind, from the fresh and radiant depths within 
 her this mothering passion came up with a force 
 that made her silent father feel, with a mingling of 
 pleasure and pain, how immense were the life forces 
 playing with this little girl. 
 
 At times she would bring home a friend from the 
 big public school nearby. One night, with a small 
 Jewish girl, as they sewed in the other room, Peter 
 heard Susanna exclaim in a shocked tone, 
 
 "Why Sarah Blumberg!" 
 
 "I tell you," came the voice of her friend, "there 
 isn t any God at all." 
 
I 4 2 BEGGARS GOLD 
 
 Peter looked up with a start and saw them through 
 the open door. The small Jewess, stout and stu 
 dious, with spectacles over solemn black eyes, held 
 doggedly to her assertion, and for some time they 
 fought it out. Susanna had not many weapons, but 
 she was game for an argument. 
 
 "How do you know there is no God? How do 
 you positively know?" she demanded, in a withering 
 tone. 
 
 "My big brother told me so! So there!" 
 
 "Oh." There was silence. "But how does he 
 know?" 
 
 "Out of books the very best ones. My brother 
 has read thousands. He reads all night. He never 
 sleeps." 
 
 "Never sleeps! I ll bet he does! You ve got to 
 sleep!" 
 
 "How do you know? Have you ever tried it?" 
 
 "I don t care I ll bet there s a God. If there 
 isn t, how were we all born? Where did we come 
 from? What was the world before the world?" 
 
 "Science!" came the quick reply to this volley of 
 questions. "Science can show you all about that. 
 To Science it is clear as day." 
 
 "Have you read Science, may I ask?" 
 
 "No, I haven t and you neither! But my broth 
 er has read every word of it ! Don ;: you let em fool 
 you, he says to me. Our father and mother are 
 
BEGGARS GOLD 143 
 
 old Jews who can t even read English. Don t let em 
 fool you ! Science says there is no God. Science says 
 there is nothing at all unless you can prove it al 
 ready exact! Do you know what Science can 
 do with the stars? You see a star, way up in the 
 sky. Is it a million miles from the earth, or a mil 
 lion miles and three feet and two inches? Science 
 can tell you!" 
 
 Here Susanna s voice cut in, sharp and clear, tri 
 umphant: 
 
 "Sarah Blumberg, that is simply too ridiculous 
 for any words ! Where could they start measuring 
 from where do you think the earth begins? Down 
 there on Second Avenue, or in this room, or up on 
 the roof? Three feet and two inches! If that s 
 Science, Sarah Blumberg, you can keep it to your 
 self. There s a lot of things I don t yet understand 
 and I m glad I don t. If there is a God and I ll 
 bet there is he s so perfectly enormous you 
 couldn t possibly measure him out ! Three feet 
 and two inches!" Again the devastating scorn. 
 "Did you ever notice that big god out there in the 
 sitting room?" 
 
 "What?" gasped the startled scientist. u What 
 do you mean?" 
 
 "I mean exactly what I say. That big yellow 
 Chinese god. It s my mother s. She s been in China, 
 you know." Susanna s voice had now a calm su- 
 
i 4 4 BEGGARS GOLD 
 
 periority. "She says the world is full of gods and 
 religions and they re wonderful !" 
 
 "Are your parents orthodox?" came the loud 
 shocked whisper. 
 
 "What do you mean?" 
 
 "Orthodox! You mean you don t know what 
 orthodox is?" The scientist was now gaining 
 ground, but Susanna cut her off. 
 
 "Orthodox? Of course I know ! And they re not 
 they wouldn t consider it ! Science neither ! They 
 don t brag about sitting up all night and reading 
 when they should be asleep. But they know more 
 about gods of all kinds in their little fingers 
 than your big brother in all his books ! Now, Sarah 
 Blumberg, my advice to you is to leave God alone 
 and attend to your children. Their clothes and 
 shoes are too shocking for words!" 
 
 "I can t help it I m poor!" 
 
 "You are not poor! You spent eight cents this 
 very day on candy! And the way you get every 
 thing sticky you touch is perfectly disgusting! You 
 positively stick to your children!" 
 
 At this moment Kate came through and shut the 
 door behind her. Peter leaned back with a curious 
 smile. So self-important and comic at times was 
 this little daughter of his so small, so tremendous, 
 so very dear. 
 
BEGGARS GOLD 145 
 
 3- 
 
 As the winter drifted on, though there still came 
 to Peter ugly moments of regret at the thought of 
 the opportunity lost, he grew steadily more recon 
 ciled. At school he began to do extra work for 
 Dillingham, and by degrees he came more and more 
 to feel the rugged strength of the man and of his 
 philosophy. 
 
 One Saturday night the old principal asked Peter 
 and Kate to come to supper in his home. It was a 
 small apartment in a dilapidated house a little south 
 of Washington Square. He had lived there half 
 his life. "I m a curio in this town," he said, "I 
 haven t budged for thirty years. Same home, same 
 school. And I m hopeless now. Grown too fond 
 of em both to change." In his old fashioned living 
 room, the furniture, rugs and pictures were all mel 
 low with the years; but on the walls and all about 
 were fresh accumulations out of the ever growing 
 activities in his big school. The room had an air 
 both old and young. As he usually did on Saturday 
 night, he had let his servant go, and he cooked the 
 supper himself. Later, when they had settled down 
 to smoke before the small coal fire, he gave them 
 bits about his life. And, though most of the time he 
 seemed talking to Kate, every word was aimed at her 
 husband. 
 
146 BEGGARS 1 GOLD 
 
 "I made up my youngster mind/ he said, "to be 
 a college president. How gloriously solemn I was 
 when I got my first big chance a college about the 
 size of a peanut perched on the bank of the Ohio. 
 It was down in Kentucky, near the place where I was 
 born." He told how he had slaved for years to 
 build up the forlorn little center of learning, and how 
 in the end a certain old Kentucky feud had come in 
 to spoil it all. "So I was ousted; and on the whole 
 I was glad of it," he went on. "Ever since I left 
 Columbia, I had felt a hankering for the city of 
 New York. So back I came. I was thirty-one and 
 now I m over sixty. And I m not a college presi 
 dent, but I ve made one, out of a boy in our school. 
 And I guess I ve made a judge or two, and three or 
 four State Senators, God help me, and some million 
 aires in the wholesale clothing business and some 
 first-class burglars, too, and murderers, and a pretty 
 young thing who has the whole town at her feet 
 she s dancing up at Weber and Field s. I ve made 
 em all, I like to say, with a glow of conscious 
 pride. But how much had I to do with it? 
 
 "You re over twenty years younger, Peter I 
 wonder how you ll feel at my age ? You can go on 
 steadily up, if you want, and most likely get my 
 job when I step out I hope you will. If you do, 
 will you feel the same as I? The world changes so 
 fast, it s hard to tell how a man will feel in twenty 
 
BEGGARS GOLD 147 
 
 years but some things go pretty deep, and there s 
 one feeling in us all that s likely to stay about the 
 same." He smiled and frowned a little, wrinkling 
 his brows a bit over the smoke of his cigar. "It s 
 this this rising feeling this sense of having such a 
 lot inside of us when we are young. Up it comes; 
 and, as each one of us makes his solemn little attempt 
 to flash his light up to the stars, he gets to feeling 
 like God Almighty. Then, in most cases, down it 
 goes, and he feels like a man again. And after 
 many such ups and downs he gets used to this feeling. 
 It s like an old friend. Hello you here again? 
 he says. Good-morning. And presently, Good 
 night. For down it sinks again to sleep. And the 
 sleeps grow longer longer. 
 
 "But I m not at all sorry about growing old. I 
 like it. I was never in all my days so happy as now. 
 In a queer way I feel younger, too. And the reason 
 is, I suppose, that way down inside of me, where 
 so much goes on that we don t understand, this ris 
 ing feeling has widened out till suddenly I ve 
 waked up to the fact that it s in all people as well as 
 in me, and that I m much more interested in watch 
 ing its countless ups and downs in others than in my 
 self alone. My own little dream of bumping the 
 stars is dead, but in others it lives on. The King is 
 dead. Long live the King. And, as I watch this 
 feeling rise in thousands of young people, I m always 
 
148 BEGGARS GOLD 
 
 finding something new. I ve got over the idea that 
 I can do much to mould their lives. Instead of that, 
 I watch em all just giving a hand to em now and 
 then, or pointing and saying, Look over there. 
 There s something you are missing. 
 
 "There s nothing new in all this, of course. We 
 all of us know it, as a fact. But as more than a 
 fact, as a feeling that soaks all through you it s 
 immense. It s big as all democracy. It makes you 
 wish you had more time to watch and listen and un 
 derstand. I used to watch you, Peter, learning all 
 those languages, and more than once I wondered 
 why. But I envy you now and curse myself for my 
 own laziness in the past. For I d like to listen to 
 New York in every one of its many queer tongues 
 queer to me, but to the man or woman or child 
 that speaks it, intimate and dear." 
 
 All through this rambling talk of his chief, Peter 
 could feel a vein of encouragement meant for him 
 self. And the question flashed into his mind: "I won 
 der if Kate put him up to this?" 
 
 They went that night to an old Bowery theatre 
 where an Italian company was giving Trovatore. 
 The house was packed; people sat in the aisles; small 
 boys and girls with joyous eyes squeezed their way 
 in and out of the throng; the boxes bulged with 
 families; on every hand were solemn babies nursing 
 at their mothers breasts. And, as the old opera 
 
BEGGARS 1 GOLD 149 
 
 lumbered slowly on its way, there were explosive 
 bursts of laughter, hisses, and long silences. Here 
 was felt no worry about getting on in life; here was 
 a place to watch and listen. Peter felt relaxed and 
 warm. And later, on his way home with Kate, he 
 knew that she was happy. 
 
 "What a big human specimen Dillingham is," he 
 remarked. At first there was no reply. Then she 
 said, 
 
 "You know, Peter, a life like that it seems to me 
 about as big and fine as anything one could ask 
 for." And, although she did not add, "And that s 
 
 how you are going to be " he understood as 
 
 though she had spoken. He waited a moment, and 
 then he replied, 
 
 "And yet he s a poor devil, Kate." 
 
 And she knew what he meant, and squeezed his 
 arm. 
 
 At home, long after she was asleep, he got up and 
 came into the other room. He lit his pipe and 
 settled back with a sense of solid comfort. What a 
 familiar presence here. No more leaps into the dark; 
 no more strain, uncertainty. The words of his old 
 chief recurred: "Time to watch and listen." He 
 picked up the evening paper. He had not had time 
 to read it tonight. On the front page his atten 
 tion was caught by the headline : "One More Sena 
 tor Joins the Ananias Club." With a gleam of relish 
 
150 BEGGARS GOLD 
 
 Peter s eye travelled down the column. "What a 
 game proposition Teddy is, when it comes to a 
 fight," he was thinking. "He made a bad slip in 
 that Tuesday speech and got himself into a hole. 
 But now watch him get out of it!" And he read, 
 "In making that statement Senator Brown told a 
 wilful and deliberate and unmitigated untruth." 
 Peter chuckled. "Go it, Teddy boy you may be a 
 little wrong now and then, but by Golly you re pretty 
 right through it all!" Hungrily he read the rest. 
 "I ll bet he gets away with it." 
 
 Peter tossed the paper aside, knocked the ashes 
 from his pipe, put out the light and went to bed. 
 
 One afternoon soon after this, having had a 
 crowded day in school, Peter spent an hour uptown 
 looking into several shops for a small gift for 
 Susanna. Her birthday was now close ahead. At 
 last he found what he wanted, and with a feeling 
 of great satisfaction and relief he started home. 
 But, on coming into the flat, he learned that Susanna 
 had a bad cold. She was in bed, flushed and hoarse. 
 And the old, familiar, sinking feeling came to Peter 
 out of the past. Suddenly she opened her eyes 
 and gave him a look of impatient reproach for being 
 so late. She wanted to get away from this bed 
 
BEGGARS GOLD 151 
 
 and take "a long cool trip" with him. So Peter 
 sat down, and her hand clutched his, and soon they 
 were journeying far away over cool seas and be 
 neath quiet stars away from this hot fever, this 
 loud, hoarse breathing that scared him so. In an 
 hour Susanna was asleep. 
 
 But the next night when he came home he found 
 it was pneumonia; and, as Peter sat by the bed, 
 with a dull, benumbing ache of fear he realized what 
 she meant to him. "Time to watch and listen." 
 Rigid, he watched her heaving chest and listened to 
 the quick, rough breaths. And, as the night wore 
 slowly on and at times there came a spasm that 
 seemed to tear and rend her, he huddled forward, 
 mountainous, every muscle straining, as though to 
 lift the pain away. On the other side of the bed, 
 he saw Kate doing various things, tense and deft. 
 In a whisper he asked, 
 
 "Are you sure of that doctor? How about call 
 ing in somebody else?" She shook her head. "Or 
 getting a nurse?" 
 
 "No, I can handle this," she said. 
 
 The windows were open now; it was cold. 
 Toward morning Peter fell asleep and wakened 
 with a violent start. Dawn was creeping into the 
 room; and Kate with the doctor was at the door. 
 Peter stared at them, mute and numb. The loud 
 hoarse breathing beside him had stopped. Why? 
 
152 BEGGARS GOLD 
 
 He did not dare to look at the bed. Then Kate 
 turned back, and in the soft glow of the lamp he 
 caught the glad relief in her eyes. She came to 
 him, and as she came she seemed to bring with her 
 a rush of new life. 
 
 "The crisis is past. She s better now." 
 Evening after evening he watched Susanna get 
 back her strength. And they took long journeys 
 as before, and he brought her small surprises. He 
 utterly spoiled this little girl. And, when she had 
 gone asleep, he had long talks about her with Kate. 
 He could see how the strain had told on Kate, in 
 spite of her impatient denials. Her face was grey, 
 and there were shadows under her resolute brown 
 eyes. "We won t take any more risks," he said. 
 "You re going South with Susanna." They drew 
 very close in the next few nights, making plans with 
 a love grown quiet and deep in the relief of the 
 danger passed. A week later, Kate and Susanna 
 started off for Florida. They were gone six weeks. 
 Then at last they were back, browned by the sun 
 and full of new vitality. And, though the money 
 they had saved was gone again, the spring had 
 come; and, without trying to think it out, he knew 
 that he was entering upon a new stage in his life. 
 
BEGGARS GOLD 153 
 
 Slowly a change was coming in his whole feeling 
 toward the school. The old sardonic hardness in 
 his attitude was mellowing. Susanna and her ill 
 ness had made such a difference. Now, when a 
 boy in his class fell sick, Peter went to his tenement 
 and there did what he could to help. He would 
 often stay till late at night. There were many 
 demands of this kind; and, growl as he would, he 
 could not resist them. He took more and more 
 evening work, clubs and classes in the school. Deeper 
 and deeper he was drawn in. Not at once, but 
 slowly through the years, his own personal strain 
 ing to rise was little by little merged and made a 
 part of this vaster rising, this prodigious battle 
 for the children of New York. "He that loseth 
 his life shall find it." Peter Wells was finding it 
 now. Through all the din and jangle and rasping 
 irritations he moved, a big sluggish man of middle 
 age, making no show of what lay beneath; but as 
 time went on he could feel the tenacious strength of 
 his personality grow and make its impress upon the 
 life about him. 
 
 Once more he won promotion. He was an as 
 sistant principal now, and his activities increased. 
 At the head of all the schools in that section of the 
 town was a deputy superintendent "Old Granite," 
 
154 BEGGARS GOLD 
 
 he was often called; a man barely fifty but old in 
 spirit, rigid against every change. Against him, 
 with a grim enjoyment, John Dillingham had fought 
 for years. Into the plots and conspiracies Peter 
 entered with deepening zest; and soon he was plan 
 ning campaigns of his own to change this school, 
 to make of it a rich, free, vital center of life, to 
 demand and obtain a "square deal" for these chil 
 dren, to fight for their health, to go into their 
 homes and see that they were fed and clothed, to 
 bring their parents into the school to help in the 
 fight for better things, to change the teaching and 
 make it grip the keen fresh minds and imaginations 
 of these little citizens. Education, warm, vital, 
 throbbing, alive! In this absorbing battle, Peter 
 was drawn steadily deeper into the crowded tene 
 ment life, its challenge and its problems, its hungry 
 aspirations. 
 
 A Russian Jewish boy of sixteen, dark, slim and 
 precocious, took Peter one night to see a play, in a 
 little theatre up over a tobacco shop. The play 
 had been staged by friends of his, and it was called 
 "The Candle." The curtain rose on darkness. Then 
 was heard a baby s cry, and at the same moment 
 a tiny flame of light appeared. It came from a 
 tall candle there. As in scene after scene the life 
 of a man from birth to death was roughly sketched, 
 the candle kept burning lower, lower. And the 
 
BEGGARS 5 GOLD 155 
 
 effect was breathless. It was as though from all 
 over the narrow, stifling room, packed with the 
 youth of the tenements, came a whisper, "Go on! 
 Go on! Go on! Can t you see how fast it s burn 
 ing? And it s your life! It s all you have! Stop 
 waiting, wasting, holding back!" When at last the 
 light went out, that silence in the darkness was held 
 for a moment and then a breath, long, deep and 
 quivering, was heard. 
 
 Old memories stirred in Peter that night, but 
 gone was the sharp pang of regret. 
 
 "This is my life. Here I am strong. 1 
 
 6. 
 
 In the meantime, through those crowded years, 
 Susanna had grown into her teens, and, with the 
 delightful egotism of her age, was demanding more 
 and more of Peter s time and interest. Helping in 
 her lessons and trying to answer honestly the ques 
 tions she poured out on him; listening to her per 
 plexities and the sudden troubles that loomed enor 
 mous to her mind ; gravely listening, all intent, with 
 a grunt or a nod and hardly ever the sign of a 
 twinkle in his eyes, as his important and self-en 
 grossed young daughter chattered on; delighting in 
 her triumphs and sympathizing in her woes, plan 
 ning small surprises and sprees and celebrations ? 
 
156 BEGGARS GOLD 
 
 it seemed to Peter sometimes as though she were 
 the fresh deep source of all the lively interest he 
 threw into his work at school. With Kate he loved 
 to plan and contrive for Susanna s education. They 
 wanted to give her everything abundant health and 
 hosts of friends, music, college, travel abroad. The 
 vistas stretched into the years, and back to them 
 both came the long buried hunger to journey far 
 and explore this fascinating earth to do it with 
 Susanna. 
 
 So, with the life of his home and his school 
 crowding one into the other, making constant new 
 demands and as constantly pouring in fresh hopes 
 and interests and dreams, this changing, deepening, 
 settling life of Peter Wells wore rapidly on. There 
 was grey in his heavy shock of hair, strong mark 
 ings round his mouth and eyes; for the cares and 
 the anxieties and responsibilities piled up. Year 
 after year the grind went on. At last, one day at 
 close of school, Dillingham swung around in his 
 big swivel chair and said, 
 
 "I ve some news for you. The principal in 
 School Thirty-eight has died, and you are next in 
 line." 
 
 Peter had won his principal s license some time 
 before, and had been on the waiting list. But now 
 for a moment he made no reply. With mingled 
 feelings he looked at his chief. 
 
 ! 
 
BEGGARS GOLD 157 
 
 "You don t want to leave," said Dillingham. 
 
 "That s it." 
 
 "And I don t want to have you. Sitting here 
 I ve been thinking of all that we ve been able to 
 do in these last years by working together. It isn t 
 much we ve just made a start. And Fm nearly 
 seventy, Peter the job s beginning to tell on me. 
 I can t go on much longer. And when I quit I 
 want you here to drive it on, this work of ours. I 
 want it so much that I ve made up my mind to send 
 in my resignation now instead of a little later." 
 
 "No!" said Peter sharply. 
 
 "Yes," said his chief. "If I wait, I ll have to 
 give my place to a stranger. I don t want to. I 
 want you. I ve already talked about it uptown. 
 There were difficulties, of course; but, because I ve 
 refused promotion and stuck to this school for so 
 many years, I ve been able to make em stretch a 
 point in our favor. With you here, as I explained, 
 I can still be right behind you." A hungry look 
 came on his face. "I ll be here most of the time, 
 I guess." Peter gripped his hand and said, 
 
 "If you aren t, I ll know the reason why!" 
 
 When he told the news to Kate, she said, "Oh, 
 Peter, I m so glad" And as he held her in his 
 arms he felt her trembling. "Didn t I know you 
 had it in you, all the time? It s come at last! And 
 now we haven t the least idea how far we ll go 
 
158 BEGGARS GOLD 
 
 all the rest of our lives !" They sat down and be 
 gan to talk and plan, but their talk was all in frag 
 ments. Each of them kept stopping to listen for 
 Susanna. Soon they heard her quick step outside, 
 an impatient turn of her key in the door. In she 
 came, with her bundle of books, and tossed them 
 <lown. She was well along in high school now 
 small for her age, slim, wiry, dark, with vivid blue 
 eyes. As she took off her hat she was humming 
 a song. "Oh Mother, I m terribly late!" she ex 
 claimed. "It s Friday night, you know dance at 
 school!" Peter watched her, smiling, and said, 
 "Susanna, I ve some news for you." 
 "What is it?" And when he began to tell her, 
 suddenly getting it all in a flash, she broke in, with 
 a little rush. "Oh you darling, wonderful Dad!" 
 Into his arms Susanna came and hugged him tight. 
 And, as though in this room some secret spring 
 of emotions had been sprung, all three broke into 
 a medley of excited chatter, laughter, sudden inter 
 ruptions. In less than no time Petbr was made 
 School Superintendent of New York. "And by that 
 time," Susanna cried, "there ll be a million pupils ! 
 And every one will be under the thumb of a man 
 by the name of Peterkin Wells who happens to 
 be my father!" 
 
 Late that night, when he was alone, Peter s mind 
 went back through the years. From the time of 
 
BEGGARS GOLD 159 
 
 those frosty mountain nights when as a boy he had 
 hurried down to his uncle s store and found the 
 shaggy, gnarled, old man waiting for him with his 
 stamps and his dreams that roamed out over the 
 earth, figure after figure came up in Peter s memory. 
 And the look which came in his grey eyes was com 
 pounded of various feelings, whimsical, yet very 
 deep. He had known so many men who had failed, 
 and how often they were finer and more humanly 
 appealing than those few who had won success. 
 
 "How much we all have in ourselves, both good 
 and bad, and how it s kept down. I wonder what 
 the world would be like if every mother s son of 
 us became what he might have been?" 
 
 For a moment, as though the eyes of his spirit 
 were looking at some vast and mad and flaming 
 panorama, over the heavy sensitive face of Peter 
 Wells there came the look which is bound to come 
 upon the face of any man who looks off and far 
 away into the prodigious wonder of what this human 
 existence upon the earth is to become, in the mil 
 lions of years that rise ahead. Startled, as though 
 in some weird trance his spirit had been suddenly 
 flung to a clear and radiant height above the grey, 
 familiar clouds. "Mad!" he muttered. "Utterly 
 mad! Every one of hundreds of millions of com 
 mon little folk like me, all to be some day like that? 
 The very stars would tumble down!" With a smile 
 
160 BEGGARS GOLD 
 
 and a long quivering breath he dropped back to 
 that present year of Nineteen Hundred and Twelve 
 A.D., when all sensible people knew that no prodi 
 gious happening of any kind was any more to shake 
 this steady world of ours. Back he came into his 
 own small life. 
 
 "Thank God, so far as I m concerned, it s settled 
 now for the rest of my days." 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 i. 
 
 IT was early one night the following autumn. 
 Susanna was out at some school affair; and 
 Peter and Kate had settled down to a long quiet 
 evening, with some work he had brought home in 
 order to get her advice. For him the last few 
 weeks had been filled with the numberless adjust 
 ments which came at the start of the new school 
 year, as he found himself at the head of some two 
 thousand children. 
 
 Presently the door bell rang, and he went to the 
 door and opened it. In the dim light of the hall 
 loomed the tall figure of a man, a younger man, 
 who looked at Peter intently, with a questioning 
 smile. In a moment Peter felt a stir and glow of 
 memory. In a low voice the stranger said, 
 
 "You don t know me." 
 
 "Yes I know you." Moving slowly backward, 
 he let the light from the room behind him strike 
 full on the visitor s face. "Moon Chao!" he cried- 
 
 "Splendid! Yes it is I!" 
 
 161 
 
1 62 BEGGARS 1 GOLD 
 
 A few moments later, in the Boom, all three of 
 them together were talking excitedly. Dazed at 
 first, Peter caught but a blurred picture of the 
 man tall and dark, with lustrous eyes unreal as 
 a vision dropped from the sky. For in a twinkling 
 this room, where they had lived for twenty years, 
 was utterly changed, as it began to fill with the light 
 of memories. As he looked at Kate and felt the 
 almost painful rush of happiness in her low quick 
 thrilling laugh, up from the depths of both their 
 lives flashed the old dream of that first year. Glow 
 ing recollections, confused, haphazard, up they came. 
 Motionless, his smiling gaze was fixed upon this 
 messenger from the Country of What Might Have 
 Been, and slowly Moon Chao Began to grow real. 
 
 Tall, slender no, not slender, lean. There was 
 something almost gaunt about him, powerful lines 
 in his dark face. "How hard he has lived! How 
 old can he be?" Peter reckoned a moment. "Just 
 twenty-eight. Eighteen years since he left this room. 
 Good God, what years they must have been !" But, 
 in spite of the signs of struggle and early, deep 
 maturity in the long face, with its high forehead, 
 strong cheek bones and powerful jaws, there was 
 youth in the big black gleaming eyes. In almost 
 perfect English, Moon Chao was talking rapidly, 
 and the story he was telling struck into the whirl of 
 Peter s thoughts like a strong, clear path of light. 
 
BEGGARS GOLD 163 
 
 He had lived at first with his uncle and had gone 
 to that small school which Peter had been asked to 
 teach. In Peter s place they had secured a young 
 Chinaman from America, who had studied under 
 William James. 
 
 "What a spirit he had!" Moon Chao exclaimed. 
 "How he loved the work! He half starved him 
 self, and many times he would work on the whole 
 night through, to study and to read and plan how 
 he was going to make his way, deep, deep, deep 
 into our minds, take hold of us and make us think 
 clear truth and throw away the lies. At last he 
 learned to open great windows. LookP And we 
 would see far off to the Western World and far 
 down into ourselves/* 
 
 He turned to Kate. 
 
 "For in this man was the same faith which you 
 began to give me here. You do not know what you 
 can be! he would declare. No country knows! 
 But they shall see! There shall be at some far 
 day a China dazzling as the land that men have 
 dreamed of for the gods! And the only road to 
 that land, he would say, is the path of truth, real 
 ity not the shallow, surface reality of every day, 
 but the deep knowledge of ourselves and all the 
 wonder forces, the miracles inside of us, that as 
 yet have barely been revealed! You must never 
 lose your faith in that. Be proud of yourselvef 
 
1 64 BEGGARS 7 GOLD 
 
 and China proud of her for what she has been, 
 still more for what she is to be. The road to that 
 is long and hard; we ourselves must build it as we 
 go slowly up the mountainside. And for this 
 building we must have so many tools tools of the 
 mind and of the soul tools simple, tools as intri 
 cate as great, miraculous machines and powder of 
 the spirit, too, and dynamite, to blast away great 
 rocks and cliffs of prejudice. But oh my children, 
 now at first we must use only simple tools/ 
 
 "So speaking in the morning, he would open the 
 book on his desk, and the work of the day begin 
 ning would often go on until the dark. He was a 
 master hard to satisfy. Though he was patient, 
 kind and human, always ready to stop for a laugh 
 or in order to find our point of view, back he would 
 come to the drill of the day, and drill and drill 
 until each task was done in a clean, thorough way. 
 We loved that man we slaved for him. We were 
 few we were only seventeen boys ; but all but one, 
 and three that died, kept on with him until the time 
 when we entered the University. There we found 
 among the students a scattered few from all over 
 the land, who under the guidance of two or three 
 great teachers in the faculty were studying the 
 sciences. We joined them, and with those Great 
 Tools we began to build the road to the new nation 
 
BEGGARS GOLD 165 
 
 that shall be. What talks we had, and how we 
 worked! Often we would dream too much, for 
 dreams are soft and easy. Again and again we 
 would forget the command of our first captain, and 
 turning impatiently aside from all reality soar away. 
 But suddenly we would hear him say, Come back, 
 come back, my children. Up there are dizzy cliffs 
 that lead only into clouds. Back to the road 
 back to the tools back to the work/ And back 
 we would come. 
 
 "And we saw the road grow longer, with obstacles 
 on every hand and many paths that led astray. In 
 spite of our proud, clear thinking, we found we could 
 not see ahead in the ocean of our country s life. 
 From its depths and from the world outside vast 
 forces rose, and rolling in they swept us on to 
 changes? Yes. But oh my friends, so different! 
 Japan and Russia, England, France and Germany 
 and America were always there. Their money rolled 
 in, and their business men, their diplomats, their en 
 gineers. In a fury that was blind, the Boxers rose 
 against them massacred but were put down; and 
 our condition after that was worse than it had been 
 before. Japan and Russia went to war, and China 
 had to pay the price. So all these forces from out 
 side poured into China s wakening. And so, when 
 at last a year ago we found ourselves a republic, 
 
1 66 BEGGARS GOLD 
 
 we soon discovered that our new state was no glori 
 ous goal of our dreams, but only one short step 
 ahead!" 
 
 Moon Chao broke off with a quick laugh. 
 
 "Oh, I have so much to tell you and so much to 
 learn from you! How can we succeed you you 
 and I? It has been so long! Eighteen years!" 
 
 "Eighteen years!" repeated Kate. And then 
 Peter asked him, 
 
 "Why did you stop writing, Moon Chao?" 
 
 "I stopped because you did not reply!" 
 
 "When was that?" 
 
 "About five years after I had left you," he said. 
 And suddenly Peter remembered it now. Kate had 
 been very ill at the time, and life had been black. 
 How bitter the letter from Peking had made him 
 then! "I waited for months," Moon Chao went 
 on. "There was no reply. And I told myself, 
 They no longer care to write or they are dead. 
 I will keep what I have, my memory. 
 
 There was a little silence. Then, with her smil 
 ing eyes on his, Kate asked, 
 
 "Do you remember how when you were with us 
 here you were going to be a great actor, Moon 
 Chao?" 
 
 He threw back his head and laughed. 
 
 "Yes, yes I must tell you about that! For I 
 
BEGGARS GOLD 167 
 
 did remember and all the time I was working for 
 that it became a part of all the rest. China shall 
 be new, I thought, but not by merely imitating what 
 has been done in other lands. China must always 
 be herself, and herself goes back into her past, and 
 her past is in her drama. More and more of my 
 time, as I grew, I began to spend in the theatres. 
 My father s spirit was close to me there. I watched 
 and listened, and drank in old wine that set me all 
 aflame. Soon I began to play small parts. They 
 praised my work and gave me hopes of leading roles 
 as time went on. But then in that first little school 
 my teacher died. He had given his life in twelve 
 hard years. ISow you must come, my uncle said, 
 or soon the school will die away for I can find 
 no teacher. I heard his message many times and 
 struggled hard to throw it aside, to forget all that 
 had been given to me, to escape the debt. But I 
 asked myself, How do I know I shall be a great 
 actor? Here is something I can do, here is a great 
 teacher s work that will die unless I carry it on 
 until a better man can be found. So I went back, 
 five years ago. When I took the little school, there 
 were thirty-seven boys. There are over seventy 
 now and, though I have never learned to teach like 
 the man who came behind me, I have grown to love 
 the work ! So here I am ! I have come to learn all 
 
1 68 BEGGARS GOLD 
 
 that I can what is good, what is bad, what is weak, 
 what is strong in all your schools and then go 
 back to China!" 
 
 As he went on, in reply to their questions, pour 
 ing out his hopes and plans, Peter turned with a 
 quick start. Laughing, her face radiant, Kate was 
 speaking in Chinese ! It was as though all the years 
 between had abruptly dropped away. Moon Chao 
 leaned forward in delight and took both her hands 
 in his. 
 
 "Oh, I am glad, so glad!" he cried. "Do you 
 know that when I came to your door I was fright 
 ened? Do you know the cause? I was asking, 
 Shall I find them here? And if I do, how shall 
 they be? These two people gave me life they 
 caught me up from a childish terror that was worse 
 than any death they took me in when they were 
 young and their home was like a heaven and here 
 they gave me splendid dreams! I am the son of 
 the glory of their youth ! And now perhaps I shall 
 find them old the light gone out! 
 
 "Moon Chao, you ve come too late for that! Our 
 old age is left behind!" said Kate, in a voice vibrat 
 ing with the strange happiness of this night. Once 
 more, almost unconsciously, she began talking in 
 Chinese ; and Peter knew she was telling of the fight 
 he had made in these last years. His mind swept 
 quickly over them. How hard and dull and com- 
 
BEGGARS GOLD 169 
 
 monplace they seemed to him, mere drudgery! And 
 yet they were like solid rock beneath him now! 
 "Thank God, he didn t come to us in the years when 
 I had failed and failed! Then we were old! It s 
 different now! I ve stood the gaff come through 
 at last! I can welcome him, and this dream he is 
 bringing!" He recalled how again and again, in 
 all those years of failure, this vision of What Might 
 Have Been had come to him, and how each time 
 there had been a stabbing of regret. But now all 
 that was left behind, and now he could be glad 
 with Kate over Moon Chao s coming. "He must 
 live with us while he is here," thought Peter. Again 
 he looked at his wife. "How happy she is how 
 young she is!" 
 
 2. 
 
 Suddenly he turned his head and saw Susanna, 
 stiff with surprise, standing in the doorway. She 
 had come so quietly that nobody had noticed her; 
 and, as Moon Chao and her mother talked on rap 
 idly in Chinese, Susanna listened aghast. With keen 
 relish* and delight, Peter watched her. Straight as 
 an arrow, vigorous, slim, her head thrown back, 
 her dark face flushed from a quick walk home. 
 "Head utterly filled with her own life, her dance, 
 her club or something else of tremendous impor 
 tance," Peter thought. "And now to come into this 
 
170 BEGGARS GOLD 
 
 room and find her mother talking Chinese !" Lips 
 parted in an uncertain smile, eyes blazing with aston 
 ishment he could see she was trying to think it 
 out. She was asking, "Who is this Chinaman, and 
 why is he talking to Mother like this? When did 
 he know her? What does it mean? Was it in 
 China, when she was a girl? But he looks too 
 young for that ! Dear old Mother ! Look at her ! 
 She looks as young as a girl herself ! What in the 
 world is happening here?" 
 
 Peter chuckled, and, with his eyes on Kate, he 
 said, 
 
 "Hello, Susanna." 
 
 With a start and then a laugh, Kate sprang up ; 
 and in a moment all of them were on their feet, 
 while eagerly she began to explain, to answer all 
 the questions that her excited young daughter poured 
 out. So close to each other all these years, and now 
 so suddenly apart, with a rush their thoughts and 
 feelings came together. "Here s something new! 
 I belong in this !" Susanna seemed demanding. "And 
 I mean to have it, too!" Her sharp questions came 
 pellmell, and now she began to understand. But, 
 long after they were seated and Moon Chao was 
 talking on, Peter saw Susanna s glance turn again 
 and again to Kate. "Mother in China! A small 
 girl ! Why on earth have I never stopped to really 
 feel it until now? What a different life she has 
 
BEGGARS GOLD 171 
 
 had from mine ! And to jump way back like thi; 
 away from me and look so young! Oh, Jimminy 
 Crickets! Mother. 9 He saw her eyes turn to 
 Moon Chao with a deepening hostility. "What 
 right have you," she seemed to ask, "to mean so 
 much in my mother s life? What do you want to 
 do with her now you foreigner?" 
 
 The next moment she was given a terrific shock 
 of surprise. For leaning forward in his chair, with 
 his hands locked together tight, the young Chinaman 
 cried to her mother in English, 
 
 "And if old age is left behind, why should not 
 you come with me back at last to my school in 
 Peking?" 
 
 Susanna fairly bounced in her seat. 
 
 "Mother!" she breathed. 
 
 Kate turned and gave a low laugh of delight, at 
 the indignation visible on her young daughter s 
 countenance. 
 
 "Would you like to go, Susanna?" she asked. 
 
 "Where?" 
 
 "To China!" 
 
 "Certainly not!" 
 
 Kate laughed again. 
 
 "You see, Moon Chao, the trouble you ll have if 
 you want to move this family. Before Susanna 
 budges, she ll have to be shown the reason why!" 
 
 Moon Chao began to talk to her. Holding her 
 
172 BEGGARS GOLD 
 
 excited eyes with his own, so black and lustrous, 
 which seemed to widen with his dream he told of 
 his school, of the life in Peking, of the crowded 
 streets, the costumes, the rickshaws and the camels, 
 the small .ponies and the dogs, the big-wheeled, gaily 
 painted carts, the rich bazaars, old temples hidden 
 by high walls and lovely, quiet gardens. 
 
 "On a deep, soft Eastern night," he said, "when" 
 the great city of Peking is whispering in dreamland, 
 I shall bring rickshaws to your house. You will be 
 in the little garden there, drinking tea with your 
 ancestors. Let us go to the theatre, I shall say; 
 and soon we shall be rushing without a sound along 
 a street that winds in the dark shadow of the ancient 
 city wall. Rushing along in silence! Only the 
 quick breaths of our men only the soft pad of their 
 feet and bugle calls from far behind, in the Lega 
 tion Quarter and distant cries from far ahead 
 and a great, quivering glow of light ! The glow will 
 brighten, and the cries grow louder, as we rush 
 along the streets, no longer silent, dark, but gay 
 with the soft glamour of lanterns tossing overhead 
 and from the booths on either side. Such very nar 
 row, crooked streets, with such swarms of people 
 there, and crowded full of rickshaws, too ! Now we 
 are dodging in and out, our men still running at 
 full speed. You shall hear the rickshaw silver gongs 
 and the quick Hoy! Hoy! of the rickshaw men, 
 
BEGGARS GOLD 173 
 
 as they dash for every opening! At each instant 
 with delight you shall see beautiful costumes, rich 
 colors and the gleam of gold ! You shall enter into 
 the theatre and look down upon the stage and 
 there you shall see a gorgeous girl the reigning 
 comedy queen of Peking! You shall " 
 
 "What does she wear?" Susanna cried. Her 
 mother laughed. Moon Chao replied, 
 
 "A suit of white satin embroidered with gold! 
 The trousers tied at the ankles! She is in white, 
 because that is the color of mourning and she is 
 mourning the death of a suitor! He is not dead 
 she has been deceived by her wise old father whom 
 she disobeyed. For he wanted her to marry this 
 man. She refused. Then he told her, The man 
 is dead! And at once, to make peace with her 
 ancestor for her disobedience, she goes into mourn- 
 mg and she cries, How I loved that man ! Oh my 
 father, I meant to marry him all the time ! She is 
 frantic with pretended grief at which the old man 
 smiles and we, who know the plot, we say, Soon 
 the dead man will appear, and then this young de- 
 ceptress will have to live up to all this terrible grief 
 of hers! Moon Chao broke off with a quick 
 smile. "Do you see? It is pure comedy! A kind 
 you can so quickly and so easily understand, that 
 watching this delightful girl who is dressed in such 
 attractive ways, you shall say, These Chinese peo- 
 
174 BEGGARS GOLD 
 
 pie are human, and I like them all! Why did I 
 call them foreigners ? They are like me they shall 
 be my friends! I see I hear I understand! " 
 
 u But how could I understand them?" Susanna, 
 still bolt upright, still half hostile, half afraid, but 
 thrilled and fascinated now, demanded sharply of 
 Moon Chao. He answered, 
 
 "You shall learn Chinese !" 
 
 "Where?" she asked. 
 
 "With a teacher as your mother learned and 
 then in the University." 
 
 "I? In a college full of Chinamen?" Susanna 
 had dreamed of college for years; and, as her star 
 tled fancy tried to make the awful leap from Bar 
 nard College in New York to the University of 
 Peking, her face grew eloquent with dismay. 
 
 "With Chinamen? No," he answered. "With 
 Chinese girls delightful girls, who shall be with 
 you every day, and shall become your lifelong 
 friends!" 
 
 "Lifelong friends!" she stared at him. A fine, 
 curling wisp of hair got into her eyes. Viciously 
 she blew it aside. Her mother watched her with 
 a smile, and thought, "How unfair to her it would 
 be ! t Her thoughts are already struggling back 
 back to school and college here, and all this crowded 
 life she loves!" And, turning to their visitor, she 
 said, 
 
BEGGARS GOLD 175 
 
 "Moon Chao, we can t go with you. We want 
 to oh we want to go. But now, you see, there s 
 too much here not only this daughter of ours, but 
 our school. We have two thousand children now." 
 
 But he was not so easily to be stopped in his 
 appeal. 
 
 "And I," he said, "have seventy-three. But 
 oh why will you Americans always measure by num 
 bers? My school is small but it is great as three 
 small ships upon the ocean, bearing Columbus to a 
 new world. It is great as three little specks in the 
 desert, bearing Wise Men from the East! It is 
 great as the beginning of a mighty new life, for four 
 hundred millions of people !" he cried. With a low, 
 clear, thrilling laugh, Kate said, 
 
 "How glad I am how glad for you!" 
 
 "Yes, but you and you!" he cried. And he 
 turned to Peter. "I know your school how large 
 it is and all the good that you can do. But you 
 have given it twenty years the best of your life. 
 In a few years more it will wear you down old age 
 will come to you again, never to be put behind! But 
 come with me out to the East, and you will come into 
 a dream so warm with gleaming color and light 
 that new life will pour into you !" 
 
 "Yes," said Peter quietly, "but you see, I love 
 my school." As he spoke, his mind flashed over 
 his work. How hard and commonplace it was. 
 
176 BEGGARS GOLD 
 
 What dirt and din. But he smiled at Moon Chao. 
 "You ll find no gleaming color there but we re 
 building, son, we re building, too; and like your 
 school it was given to me as a trust from a man 
 whose entire life has gone into the building. Build 
 ing what? It s hard to say. But in the last hour 
 you ve made me feel that in the new and greater 
 America that lies ahead, a part of our greatness is 
 to be our friendship with the new life in the East. 
 I can feel it already in this room. This one night 
 think what it has done ! It has been like a miracle ! 
 You are back, thank God; and from this time on 
 we must keep together. Perhaps we shall come to 
 China, some day. In the meantime, we can help 
 you. That school of yours, as it grows and grows, 
 will be to us like a part of our lives !" 
 
 With a little tightening of his throat, he broke 
 off, said abruptly, "Tell us your plans." But as 
 he went on to question Moon Chao, and advise him 
 as to what schools he should see, Peter soon began 
 to feel the vividness, the strangeness, of the last 
 hour pass away. Susanna s coming had broken the 
 spell. Again they were parents real, middle aged 
 an American school teacher and his wife. 
 
 "Never mind," he thought. "It will come back. 
 It must. We must make the most of this. It s 
 like the very wine of youth to Kate, and she must 
 have it all." Aloud, he said, 
 
BEGGARS GOLD 177 
 
 "Moon Chao, my boy, you must stay with us 
 while you are here." 
 
 Moon Chao looked down a moment, his hands 
 locked together tight. Then he looked up and 
 said with a smile, 
 
 "Yes, once again as once before." 
 
 And in the months that followed, the miracle of 
 that hour at night, though not so stirring and in 
 tense, was clothed in warm realities. Now the old 
 and now the new. The little Moon Chao of long 
 ago, the son of the glory of their youth, came back 
 to them in memories, with his sudden bursts of 
 hungry love, his moods of lonely, deep reserve. And 
 the Moon of today, the teacher, poet, dreamer, 
 builder, he grew steadily more real. As Peter 
 probed into his plans, with relief he felt, "This boy 
 is no mere enthusiast." Already he was tackling 
 hard the methods of teaching over here. Rapidly 
 he was piling up notes and books and pamphlets. 
 
 "I have so little time," he said. "I must take 
 them all back with me, to read and study over there. 
 In China very often I shall go into a trance. My 
 friends will ask, Where is Moon Chao? I shall 
 be here in America, trying with you to understand 
 both what is good and what is bad, what to take 
 
178 BEGGARS GOLD 
 
 i 
 
 and what to leave. For we must learn by your mis 
 takes ; and what we take from you we must change 
 and adapt it all to our own life, which is so different 
 from yours. Not so different as you may think, 
 for we are a practical people, too. And yet and 
 yet we are not the same nor shall we ever try to 
 be. Japan is trying. Swiftly she is reaching out 
 for all the ways of the Western World, like a bright, 
 greedy boy who cries, I can eat anything! Nothing 
 can hurt me ! But Japan is losing fast the very 
 deepest strength and beauty of her national life. 
 We shall not follow. We Chinese shall take the 
 slower, harder path. To watch and watch and 
 study deep, through thousands of our young men 
 and girls who will come to study abroad. But then 
 to choose so carefully. Oh, it will not be easy. 
 And who am I? Already I feel like one small drop 
 in an ocean of peoples. I have seen but a few of 
 your schools; but, as I try to understand what is 
 good for China here, already often I find myself 
 suddenly groping in the dark." 
 
 It was in this baffled, groping mood that he grew 
 most real to them. Living with them most of the 
 time, his various little human faults and weaknesses 
 soon came out. After driving hard at his task, he 
 would be plunged in discouragement. But suddenly 
 up again he would rise and at such moments they 
 both knew that they could never make him real, 
 
BEGGARS GOLD 179 
 
 that for them he was and would always be like some 
 figure of romance, filled with the vision of their 
 youth. 
 
 One evening in the lamp-lit room he recited a 
 dramatic poem that he himself had written from 
 the fable Kate had made for him when he was a 
 little boy, about the old beggar and his bag and 
 the god who had told him of the gold. And, though 
 Peter could catch but a few of the lines, he did not 
 need them; for Moon Chao seemed to change before 
 their eyes and become a weary, hopeless old man. 
 Slowly the picture faded, as the beggar fell asleep. 
 Then came the god and towering there, with an 
 unearthly glory coming in the powerful face; and, 
 in the smile and the low voice, a deep, serene com 
 passion Moon Chao seemed dreaming far away. 
 Suddenly Peter s glance was caught by the great 
 golden Buddha, in its shadowy corner, staring out 
 of a thousand years. And the old excitement stirred 
 in him, responding to the call of the East. He 
 looked at Kate. She sat very still, her lips parted 
 in a smile, and he saw that she, too, was far away. 
 Again with tenfold power he felt what it would 
 mean to her to be there. And for a time he barely 
 heard the low, rhythmic, thrilling lines so in 
 tensely was he loving her now. There went through 
 him a swift regret, as he thought, "What a love it 
 might have been. It is here always, underneath the 
 
i8o BEGGARS GOLD 
 
 heavy load of little things of every day that hold 
 it down." In upon his feeling fell the last line 
 of the poem low, vibrant, hardly more than a sigh 
 in which was all the tragedy and all the joy of 
 human life : 
 
 "We are beggars sitting on bags of gold." 
 
 There was silence as Moon Chao sat down. He 
 did not appear to relax he just grew very quiet. 
 After a moment he said to Kate, 
 
 "You see, for many, many years the story that 
 you told me has been here." He touched his breast. 
 "And so it has grown up, like me. Does it please 
 you?" 
 
 "Yes," she said in a low voice. "You should be 
 in the theatre, Moon Chao." He smiled. 
 
 "Yes? But I should be in my school." 
 
 And then Peter asked himself: "Shall we go to 
 Peking and take his place and set him free ? Can 
 I give up my work?" But, as his thoughts went 
 over the long years of struggle here, there was in 
 him an honesty that made him reply, "This is only 
 an hour by lamplight. Already it is slipping away. 
 Tomorrow how sensible I shall be. How my school 
 will grip me then and the pledge I made to Dilling- 
 ham, and the opportunity that is here." 
 
 And so it was. As he took Moon Chao all 
 through his school, explaining and suggesting, warn 
 ing against this and that, the spell of the big noisy 
 
BEGGARS GOLD 181 
 
 building was upon him as before. And watching 
 him Kate told herself, "He d never be happy away 
 from it now. This is where he belongs. And 
 Susanna, too her life is here. And she is more 
 to us than Moon Chao not only the child of that 
 first year but of all the years, the thousands of days. 
 She is part of what we are, not of what we might 
 have been." 
 
 So Kate relinquished once again the old dream 
 of her existence. But she did not seem unhappy. 
 Anxiously watching her at times, Peter could feel 
 that the regret had soon lost its poignancy. Like 
 Moon Chao, she was quiet; she turned to the ques 
 tion, "How shall we be able to make the very best 
 of this? We must not lose him this time. How 
 close can we keep to him over there?" She thought 
 of the long, devious route by land and sea, and of 
 letters travelling back and forth, and newspapers 
 and magazines, books and pictures, that would help 
 him in his school. And there would be many mes 
 sengers, friends that would go to China, and young 
 pupils that Moon Chao would be sending over here. 
 What plans they made ! The months sped by, and 
 now the last few weeks had come. She was helping 
 him wind up his search, and bring together all the 
 bewildering things he had learned. There was a 
 last evening. And then, as he had done long ago, 
 Peter stood with Moon Chao by the train. This 
 
182 BEGGARS GOLD 
 
 time Kate was with them. In all three the memories 
 and the old yearnings rose again. 
 
 "Good-bye," said Moon Chao very quietly. 
 "Now we shall keep close all our lives." He 
 looked at Peter, then at Kate, and smiled. "You 
 will come to the East," he said. 
 
 And, as they were walking home through the 
 harsh din of the city streets back into their lives of 
 every day, like some invisible messenger from the 
 Country of What Might Have Been, those last 
 words seemed to follow them. 
 
 They missed him in the evenings. With grim, 
 American common sense, they settled down and 
 said little about it, but were nevertheless so forlorn 
 that on the third night Susanna exclaimed, 
 
 "Look here, you two, I m getting pretty sick of 
 this! You haven t lost your only child! I m here, 
 you know and I m talking! I ve been talking 
 for some time !" 
 
 At the guilty look on her father s face, she burst 
 into a merry laugh. 
 
 "You poor dear lambs! It s just as though a 
 great white bird had come swooping down into your 
 lives, and you d tried to fly away with him ! Never 
 
BEGGARS GOLD 183 
 
 a thought of me, of course ! There you both stood, 
 flapping your wings " 
 
 <7 Lambs haven t wings, Susanna. * Peter pulled 
 her down to his chair. "Aren t you ashamed of 
 yourself?" he asked. 
 
 "No, only a little jealous. It s a little hard, you 
 see, to sit here talking, talking telling my fond par 
 ents just how and why I ve made up my mind to 
 marry a nice young Turk I know " 
 
 "What s that?" 
 
 "Susanna!" 
 
 She threw back her head in a laugh that was music 
 to their ears. 
 
 "I might have said that quite easily with abso 
 lutely no effect ! You were both way off in China ! 
 What difference does it make to you whether I 
 marry a Turk?" she cried. "You both sit here, 
 night after night " 
 
 "He has only been gone three nights," said Kate. 
 
 "Yes, and they seem a thousand!" 
 
 "Susanna," demanded Peter sternly, "whom have 
 you decided to marry?" 
 
 "Nobody! At any time! But I mean to march 
 in the Suffrage Parade as I ve been trying to tell 
 you all evening and I want you to do the same!" 
 
 "All right, we ll march," said Peter submissively. 
 
 So, by degrees, from that night on, Susanna came 
 
1 84 BEGGARS GOLD 
 
 back into her own. And the life of New York, 
 which after all is not so very dreary, went on again. 
 In came the old demands, and the spell of Peter s 
 work took hold upon him as before. 
 
 Meanwhile, across a continent and over a great 
 ocean, Moon Chao was once more speeding home. 
 And they followed him in their fancy. His letters 
 came, and they read them aloud, and wrote letters 
 in reply. And they began to send him things. Peter 
 would come home at night and say, "Here s a book 
 that Moon Chao ought to read." In their daily 
 lives so many things kept cropping up that he ought 
 to have to help him, to remind him. Once more 
 Kate had a China Club ; for, while Moon Chao was 
 with them still, she had gathered a small group of 
 people, to whom he had talked; and later a small 
 club had been formed, to learn about the new life 
 in the East and to help on the work of his school. 
 The roaring city of New York, for all its grab and 
 hustle, is full of such groups, large and small, help 
 ing on some new idea in every conceivable part of 
 the globe. When a new idea comes into town, it 
 seems as though the city simply could not be content 
 till a "group" had been formed, with a letter-head 
 and a circular letter to raise funds ! v Kate now had 
 a letter-head, and her organization quickly grew. 
 Then in the winter a picture came, of a street scene 
 in Peking at night before a little old theatre. The 
 
BEGGARS GOLD 185 
 
 picture went up on the wall beside the piece of old 
 brocade that had come from China long ago. And 
 later, other gifts arrived. The great golden Buddha 
 was no longer lonely now; he had a small com 
 panion, whom Kate s irreverent daughter promptly 
 called, U B. Junior." 
 
 In the early summer, a year after he had gone, 
 there came a long letter from Moon Chao telling 
 of his love affair and his approaching marriage. 
 Often in his letters he had spoken of the girl before. 
 He had met her through her father, a well-to-do 
 merchant in Peking who, when Moon Chao s uncle 
 died, had taken his place and had become. the chief 
 supporter of the school. Through his increasing 
 interest, the school had ample funds at last; the 
 hard days were left behind. Then the daughter, 
 having graduated from the University, had come 
 to help as a teacher and so the love affair had 
 begun. Moon Chao was blissfully happy now, as 
 he wrote of their plans for the years ahead. 
 
 "And do not forget," he said, "what I told you 
 in New York. You shall both come to China ! This 
 I know this I can feel! And when you come, my 
 home is yours my school is yours ! Oh how happy 
 I shall be when you meet my wife and we shall all 
 be friends together!" 
 
 But, in the months that followed, once more he 
 slipped away from them; for in his letters Kate 
 
1 86 BEGGARS GOLD 
 
 could feel that he no longer needed them so. His 
 marriage made such a difference. It was as though 
 she had lost a son. So the bright flame of a year 
 before died down and deepened to a glow. That 
 strange little school in the Far East was very, very 
 far away; and the figure of Moon Chao became 
 more and more unreal. Faded? No. If any 
 thing, it was more vivid than before vivid and 
 fantastic, an image deep inside of them, in those 
 vast mysterious regions of the spirit where we dream. 
 And the figure of Susanna not fantastic or re 
 mote, but intimate, close, a part of their lives, flesh 
 of their flesh demanded more and more attention. 
 In and out of their home she flashed, forever chang 
 ing. Up went her hair. What a woman she was ! 
 No, what a child! How plain she was how beau 
 tiful ! One evening tired, pale and cross ; again a 
 dark-haired creature with smiling lips and bright 
 mischievous blue eyes. Now thoughtful, tender, 
 loving; now thoughtless, inconsiderate. Now puz 
 zling over how to meet some new perplexity in her 
 life, or filled with desolation over "some perfectly 
 awful mistake." Again delighted, treading on air, 
 flushed with triumph, arrogant. And now impor 
 tantly intent on some immense ambition or ardent, 
 new discovery a life career, a job, a friend, an 
 opera, a book, a play. A fresh, delightful egotist, 
 demanding attention, thought and love and sym- 
 
BEGGARS GOLD 187 
 
 pathy, and much advice. So she was to Peter now. 
 Susanna loved to tease him so. One evening she 
 poured into his ear the story of nine dances that 
 she had had the night before with a certain young 
 man whose tango was "simply life itself!" This 
 youth, it seemed, intended to be a mining engineer, 
 and go to China. "So of course we had all that in 
 common." Susanna talked on till she had her father 
 thoroughly disturbed and alarmed. Then she burst 
 out laughing. "Oh you poor mountain of a Dad! 
 Just quivering!" And she hugged him tight. 
 
 "She will, though," Peter groaned to himself. 
 "She ll marry and we ll lose her. We ve only got 
 a few years more." 
 
 And at such times he would plan with Kate how 
 to make those few years count to give her the best 
 of everything. "The more she has, the happier 
 she ll be with us," he told himself, "and the less 
 likely to run off with any young hoity-toity fly-up- 
 the-creek that comes along." 
 
 Education for a modern girl what a puzzling 
 confusion of opportunities in New York, good and 
 bad, sham and real; and it was all made more 
 chaotic by the swiftly changing whims and desires 
 of Susanna. 
 
 At eighteen, her mind was made up "thor 
 oughly" to be a physician. 
 
 "I tell you, Dad, I don t care that how hard it 
 
1 88 BEGGARS GOLD 
 
 is ! I ll work till it kills me I ll make good ! What 
 does all this suffrage mean, and all this talk of 
 modern girls? It means a job or nothing! Mar 
 riage? Home? Babies? Decidedly not!" 
 
 Peter had winced, a moment before, at the pic 
 ture of Susanna at work in a dissecting room. But 
 a ray of hope shot into him now. 
 
 "Quite right, my dear," he promptly agreed, 
 "these early marriages are a mistake. I m all in 
 favor of a job. But have you stopped to consider 
 how many kinds of jobs there are?" He gave her 
 a tempting list, but his medical daughter shook her 
 head. 
 
 "Nothing nothing nothing but this!" 
 
 A month later she was wondering how it would 
 feel to go on the stage. A new friend of hers was 
 thinking of that. 
 
 "And it has its points, Dad you know it has! 
 Don t you?" she demanded. 
 
 "Yes, I know I know," said Peter, wrinkling 
 his heavy brows. "I can t say I like especially the 
 way they rouge you up," he began. "But " 
 
 "Rouge you up?" his daughter cut in. "Why you 
 poor old lamb, have you never noticed that half 
 the girls I bring here use lip-sticks every day of 
 their lives? I don t. I don t have to. But the 
 idea of letting a little red paint stand between me 
 and my profession " 
 
BEGGARS 1 GOLD 189 
 
 "It s not your profession yet, Susanna." 
 
 u No," she said, with malicious delight, "I may go 
 into the movies, instead. Madge Wulliver is al 
 ready in, and she s getting eighty dollars a week. 
 She says they paint you a ghastly green" 
 
 But Peter was ready for this thrust. In a pleased, 
 reflective tone he said, 
 
 "Well, that s a nice, fresh color to be." 
 
 So they watched Susanna grow. Chances, 
 chances, chances. How to reach out and gather 
 them in? It cost money. Music lessons, concerts, 
 plays, lectures, books, clothes, hats and shoes, cost 
 money and college loomed ahead. Peter s salary 
 was not large, and part of it was used in school. 
 Small pupils, dirty, ragged, sick there were al 
 ways scores of them about; and with Dillingham, 
 who was often there, Peter was still working hard 
 at their new plans and experiments. The never 
 ending grip and urge and strain of it all! More 
 and more heavy and distinct grew the lines in his 
 face, and his bushy shock of hair was almost entirely 
 grey. By June he was badly in need of rest, and 
 there was little money in sight to finance a summer 
 in the country. 
 
 But one night a letter came from a man up in 
 
190 BEGGARS GOLD 
 
 Pearly Gates, who since the death of Peter s uncle 
 had been working the farm on shares. It had never 
 been much of a farm, only a strip of twenty-two 
 acres extending back down the mountainside from 
 old Bill s home on the village street. Peter s share 
 of the hay each year had barely paid the taxes. 
 Meanwhile the farm had been "goin back." And 
 the neighbor now wrote to say that the hay was 
 no longer worth the cutting. 
 
 u The fact of the matter is," he wrote, "your 
 uncle s place is so run down it s good for nothing 
 but to help to hold the world together." 
 
 "Very well," concluded Kate. "Then it can help 
 hold us together give us a real home at last, where 
 Susanna can bring her college friends, and where 
 you and I when summer comes can rest from our 
 labors. Oh, Peter, my dear, we re getting old 
 just old enough to have learned what it means really 
 to enjoy our lives," she ended smiling. "So let s 
 go." 
 
 The next week they went up to the mountains. 
 
 They found it pretty depressing at first. On a 
 lovely afternoon in June, when the whole broad 
 slope of the mountainside was fresh and fragrant 
 with new life, the old house on the village street 
 loomed deserted, grim, forlorn, like some gaunt 
 old beggar there. But soon in the naked musty 
 rooms all three of them were hard at work, sweep- 
 
BEGGARS 1 GOLD 191 
 
 ing, scrubbing, hammering, puttying, moving in 
 things they had brought from New York. While 
 she worked, Susanna explored, and her exclama 
 tions of delight revealed how she was seeing it all 
 not as a place where life had been, but as the scene 
 of the fresh new life that would come pouring into 
 it. She even saw dances in the barn. For Peter, 
 in the meantime, old memories of the years behind 
 emerged from every corner and took his hand and 
 drew him back. Underneath his uncle s bed he 
 found an old map of Asia. 
 
 A queer exciting treasure house. As he lay 
 awake that night, there came to him a curious sense 
 of this flowing together of old and new. Susanna 
 had been too excited to sleep and had remained 
 downstairs to read. Now he heard her step as 
 she came up to bed. She was humming a Fox-Trot ! 
 Sacrilege ! He chuckled, then drew a breath of 
 content. How well Kate s plan was working out. 
 His thoughts travelled drowsily into the bright years 
 ahead. He fell asleep and awoke with a start, 
 heard the heavy patter of rain on the roof. "What 
 was it wakened me like that?" There was some 
 thing cold and wet on his brow. Ghosts? No, 
 For now it came again, a large, unmistakable splash 
 on his face. 
 
 "By George, the old roof leaks like a sieve!" 
 He bought shingles the next day, and set about 
 
i 9 2 BEGGARS GOLD 
 
 to patch the roof; and from that time on he was 
 kept busy tackling jobs all over the house. He had 
 once been quite a carpenter; and Susanna, his eager 
 helper now, was forever discovering something else 
 "that weVe simply got to attend to, Dad." Then 
 they went on to larger things. They knocked out 
 a partition and made the store into one big room; 
 and later, after much discussion, measuring and 
 drawing of plans, they started to build a veranda 
 on at the rear of the old house. 
 
 "We need a place," Susanna said, "where we 
 can just sit quietly and look down upon the world." 
 
 By now it was the end of July, 1914. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 i. 
 
 LATER, when Peter looked back on the War, 
 always its beginning was connected in his mind 
 with the sound of hammer and saw and the smell 
 of wood. For, as that vast confusion came rolling 
 in upon him and he tried to comprehend, in a slow, 
 deliberate way he continued his work on the house. 
 And later, in the city, in the same way he attended 
 to the routine work at school. His mind and spirit, 
 startled, lifted, flung about, went groping on. "Beg 
 gars sitting on bags of gold." Here was the gold 
 in prodigious masses surging up out of the hearts 
 of men, for good or ill, with a force terrific. In 
 the news of every day, the propagandists of both 
 sides hurled at him the most lurid tales of passions 
 risen from the depths. They sickened him, he 
 passed them by, and read the other tales they told, 
 of courage and devotion, enduring and self-sacri 
 fice. Gold, gold, gold of youth into the raging 
 furnace it poured. And watching the grim pano 
 rama of devotion, death, despair, by slow degrees 
 
 193 
 
i 9 4 BEGGARS GOLD 
 
 month after month, a spell came over all his think 
 ing. The horrors of Belgium and of France, and 
 then of the Lusitania, soon drove him into deep, 
 intense and angry feeling against Berlin; but around 
 this feeling crowded a thousand questions in his 
 mind. From all around the world they came, from 
 Russia, China and Japan. For thirty years he had 
 studied maps, and through them now he saw this 
 thing spread swiftly over the face of the earth. 
 He gave up hope of thinking it out, in a way that 
 would shed one ray of light into the shadows that 
 loomed ahead. Dark, real, enigmatic it was 
 there; and in the spell of its presence his mind and 
 will were beneath a weight inexorable that pressed 
 them down. Slowly, slowly, all the while, he could 
 feel his own country being sucked in. 
 
 But when at last the crisis came, it brought a 
 sudden change in his thinking. 
 
 All in one night, from China on his way to France, 
 Moon Chao flashed into their home and was gone. 
 A swift, ardent, tingling shock; a flare and burst of 
 sheer romance. A ring at the door, a quick cry 
 of excitement from Susanna, and the next moment 
 he was in .the room, laughing, taking Kate s hands 
 in his. As the storm of questions came, he threw 
 off his coat and revealed himself in Eastern garb 
 of dark blue silk. 
 
 "I am going to France !" he cried. "Going with 
 
BEGGARS GOLD 195 
 
 the Secret, the Great Secret of the coming age! 
 They will not know they will laugh at us there 
 a few hundred thousand coolie boys to do the dirty 
 work of war. That is the part they give us to play; 
 that is what they bargained for with the military 
 party which rules China in these days. Reaction 
 aries! War! they cry. And they think in war 
 to force us back into the old condition of things. 
 Very well, we shall go; but in our minds is the 
 seed of a Secret coming to life. It will be hidden, 
 there in France. These clothes I am wearing now 
 for you are a symbol. Tonight I shall take them 
 off; all gleaming hopes will be packed away; and 
 tomorrow a dirty steamship will start across the 
 ocean, filled with Chinese farmer boys in plain cot 
 ton working clothes. Over in France they will dig 
 and plough, and the harvest of their labor will give 
 food to people starved by war. And we are glad 
 that this is so." His voice grew low, vibrating, 
 sharp. "But another harvest there will be! As 
 these few hundred thousand boys come home and 
 scatter far and wide over the farms of China, four 
 hundred million people there will waken slowly 
 slowly feel a sense of what their lives might be 
 and of the power of the East! And so many other 
 things such startling, astounding things will have 
 happened all over the world by then!" His black 
 eyes, deep and lustrous, contracted in long narrow 
 
196 BEGGARS GOLD 
 
 slits. "I can feel them," said Moon Chao. "So 
 many other forces urging, lashing, whispering, 
 Old China, waken you are young! 
 
 Did Moon Chao speak these words that night? 
 Did these pulsing, rhythmic lines all come from his 
 lips, or were they unspoken thoughts flashing out 
 of his dark eyes? Afterwards Peter could not say, 
 for to him it was such a whirling night. To have 
 left and almost forgotten the East; to have been 
 forced, for over two years, to look on the sombre, 
 vast convulsions of an old world torn to shreds, 
 without one gleam on the horizon of any new order 
 to appear. And now to be swept back again ! To 
 China? No, into ardent Youth Youth with the 
 strange immensity of all the East behind it, Youth 
 in the furnace of fehe Gods, in the grip of the Great 
 Secret ! 
 
 "Don t forget China!" 
 
 Moon Chao had gone. 
 
 And coming slowly out of the whirl and trying 
 to collect his thoughts, Peter began to remember 
 now the other things Moon Chao had said. In 
 reply to eager questions, from Kate and from 
 Susanna, gayly he had talked of his wife, the child 
 that had been born to them, the life in their home, 
 the work in their school, the struggles, hopes and 
 disappointments. He had spoken of the slowly wid 
 ening Students Movement in his land, barely con- 
 
BEGGARS GOLD 197 
 
 scious still of its power, scattered and unorganized, 
 and of how the War had stifled it, as the military 
 party and the forces of reaction, with the support 
 of Tokyo, came back again into their own. He 
 had told of the aggressions and encroachments of 
 Japan. He had spoken of the message of hope 
 which, flashing from the White House out to every 
 foreign land, had reached his school, waved in the 
 hand of an excited Chinese boy; and he had recited 
 in Chinese the pregnant, fateful sentences of that 
 promise to all peoples oppressed, that from this 
 time forth they should be allowed to determine for 
 and by themselves what their governments should 
 be. In a low voice he had ended, 
 
 "That splendid pledge, giving China new life, 
 will never be forgotten." 
 
 2. 
 
 Moon Chao was gone. In the rush of those 
 weeks, for Peter and Kate, the memory of his visit 
 was quickly left behind them; but the flame that he 
 had kindled was fed by other messages, from the 
 man in the White House, shooting long rays of 
 light ahead. Peter felt those prophecies sweeping 
 high above him now; and all about and in himself 
 he felt the mighty warmth and light that is revealed 
 when common men suddenly discover the forces 
 
198 BEGGARS GOLD 
 
 locked within them. In those first months of awak 
 ening, he saw only the glory of it all. For him 
 the sinister side of it, the hardening intolerance, the 
 stupid blunders and mistakes, the graft and profit 
 eering, were swept impatiently aside. He had no 
 time for such gloomy thoughts. The school-house 
 changed before his eyes. The parents of boys who 
 had gone away, to the army or the navy, came pour 
 ing into the school to help. War Service groups 
 of all kinds were formed, until the whole building 
 day and night was humming with activities. Into 
 his attack on his work had come a religious inten 
 sity; and when at times he was assailed by a small, 
 grim, inner voice that said, "Nothing is to come 
 of this, no New Life upon the earth. This is only 
 a Great Death" with a scowl he turned from such 
 thinking and plunged at the mass of details on his 
 desk. 
 
 All through the hot summer months the war activ 
 ities went on. In a room in the basement of the 
 school, with scores of women and young girls, Kate 
 was managing Red Cross work; it was often mid 
 night when she came home. But she laughed at 
 Peter s warnings that she was overtaxing her 
 strength. The summer changed to autumn. They 
 saw little of Susanna now, for she was up at Barnard, 
 where she had begun her senior year. How mature 
 
BEGGARS GOLD 199 
 
 she had grown in these last months. Of medium 
 height, strong, vigorous, a dark haired girl of 
 twenty-two, impulsive, laughing, gay at times, but 
 then so quickly sobering down, so much quieter than 
 before and she talked so little about herself. 
 Through the summer she had worked in a big hos 
 pital eight hours a day. "It s a good stiff course," 
 she had declared with satisfaction. By autumn she 
 had qualified as a nurse s aid. She went back to 
 college then, but all fall and winter she watched 
 for a chance ; and at last, one night in March when 
 Peter came home, she said to him, 
 
 "I ve done it, Dad I m off tomorrow." At the 
 look that came on his face she added, "I only heard 
 about it at noon, and I tried to get you on the 
 phone. I ve been awfully busy with this and that, 
 but I m all through now. Where s Mother?" 
 
 "She ll be here pretty soon," he said, a little 
 huskily. He began to question Susanna then; and, 
 for all her quiet, Peter could feel the girl s repressed 
 excitement. And he felt it, too, in Kate, when she 
 came home and heard the news. But almost at 
 once she turned the talk to practical, familiar things 
 clothes, equipment and the like; and Susanna 
 seemed to be glad of that. She wanted to be quiet 
 that night, to make no splurge about herself, to 
 don no halo but just go. The next morning, after 
 
200 BEGGARS GOLD 
 
 breakfast, she quickly finished packing her bag. 
 Peter wished to go with her to the boat. But she 
 said, 
 
 "No, Dad, I d rather not. They wouldn t let 
 you on the pier." 
 
 "Then wait till I get a taxi." 
 
 "No, thanks," she said, "I ll take the car." 
 
 There were brief good-byes. Then she picked 
 up her bag and went out and down the stairs. 
 
 As Peter turned back, he saw that Kate s eyes 
 were glistening. 
 
 "What will it do to her?" she asked. "I wonder 
 what she will be like, and what she will want, when 
 she comes home?" 
 
 "Something very new," he said. 
 
 Feeling, just for a little, rather old and left be 
 hind, grimly soon he shook it off and went with 
 Kate back to the school, where a mass of details 
 awaited him. 
 
 All through the spring the work piled up. A 
 brief letter came from Susanna in France, and then 
 several postcards. They told little. She was" 
 working hard. Then came a letter from Moon 
 Chao. "I am well and happy," it began. All the 
 rest was blotted out. And Peter chuckled as he 
 thought of the puzzled clerk in the censor s office 
 reading Moon Chao s prophecies with stern and 
 disapproving eyes. But such brief messages as 
 
BEGGARS GOLD 201 
 
 these, and the memories they stirred, were now few 
 and far between. For the anxious days had come. 
 The Russian peace, the German drive, and the ques 
 tion: "Shall we be in time?" kept pressing in. The 
 work went on. Gone was the first stimulus, that 
 tremendous tonic force. By summer it had settled 
 down into a regular, rhythmic drive. The full spell 
 was upon them now. From these plain average 
 men and women, boys and girls, how the inexhaus 
 tible energies poured up and up ! The old exultant 
 thought returned: "What powers lie buried deep 
 in men!" 
 
 Then he felt victory coming at last; and, through 
 the early days of August, after the first glow of 
 relief, there came again a change in him. The peak 
 was passed; and, with that sharp anxiety abating 
 quickly day by day, he was brought back to the old 
 question: "What is coming out of this?" He faced 
 it suddenly one night in the home of his old chief. 
 For Dillingham, who all these months had been 
 almost constantly at the school, gave out one day 
 and was taken home. He suffered very little that 
 night. Lying quietly in his bed, with Peter and 
 Kate beside him, he wondered what the world would 
 be like. 
 
 "Don t count too much upon the years just ahead 
 of you," he said. "I have a hunch that all this 
 world-wide brotherhood will be tossed up in a blan- 
 
202 BEGGARS GOLD 
 
 ket, forty times as high as the moon and there ll 
 be some pretty ugly times, as there were just after 
 the Civil War. But I m looking away ahead to 
 night, and what I see makes me wish I could live 
 not ten years, but a hundred." He smiled at them 
 and added, "But I guess I m getting too old for 
 that." 
 
 Then he grew very tired. He said good-night 
 and fell asleep. And a little before dawn he died. 
 
 For Peter and Kate that long night s watch was 
 like a dividing line. With the great emergency 
 slipping behind, they, too, began to look ahead. And 
 they began to realize now how tired they were. For 
 nearly two years they had worked without a week s 
 vacation, summer and winter. For a few days 
 longer, both of them kept on at school. Then Kate 
 toppled over, one sultry night; Peter brought her 
 home and put her to bed, and the next week he 
 took her up to the Berkshires for a rest. There 
 she was soon herself again; and her old buoyant 
 interest in life came back, as they talked of what 
 the War might bring. A new world to rise out of 
 this, at once, by a miracle? Oh no. But the foun 
 dation stones at least of a greater, richer, kinder 
 life for all humanity. In the very uncertainties of 
 it all lay for them the fascination. Soon Moon 
 Chao would be coming through, on his way back 
 to China to what pregnant happenings there? 
 
BEGGARS GOLD 203 
 
 And Susanna would be coming home to what kind 
 of a career? It was good to talk about these things, 
 as one basked in the warm, sunny, mountain air; 
 for they both had a feeling now that the harvest 
 time had come at last, not only of the War abroad, 
 but of their own lives as well. A new world order 
 opening up, a daughter beginning her womanhood, 
 a school where Peter was just on the eve of his best 
 work. 
 
 "To reap at last what we have sown." 
 
 In September they went back to town; and there 
 at once he felt a change. In the posters, editorials 
 and speeches shouted on the streets, gone was the 
 big generous vision of a New World and a Great 
 Peace; and all around him Peter could feel a swiftly 
 spreading impatience with all such dreaming. 
 "Crush the Huns!" 
 
 "What has happened? What has gone wrong? 
 How have they changed so suddenly?" he asked. 
 "Or is the change in me? Have I been blind to 
 something that has been rising all the while?" 
 
 As the spell of the War let go of him, it was as 
 though he had climbed a hill and, looking back down 
 on the battlefield, for the first time realized where 
 he had been looked back into the murk and din, 
 
204 BEGGARS GOLD 
 
 the smoke and heat, and saw not gods but common 
 men, in whom the War had summoned forth not 
 only courage and devotion but, along with these, 
 other passions, hate, revenge. And with grim irony 
 it had left these last to do the work of Peace. Let 
 anyone speak for a lasting peace, terms possible, 
 terms reasonable, and they cried, "Down him! He s 
 a Hun!" And, as this hysteria spread, it was turned 
 on every critic of the existing order of things. Peter 
 heard the word "Bolshevik" applied to almost every 
 man, radical or liberal, that he had known from 
 the time long ago when he had entered the Great 
 Revolt. 
 
 And then, one night in early December, into his 
 home came Anna Blainey. Nearly twenty years had 
 gone since he had taught in her small school. Since 
 then, he had seen her from time to time and had 
 helped her when he could. Though she was over 
 sixty now, she had kept strong, and there was still 
 the old quiet conviction in her voice. She came at 
 once to the point of her visit. 
 
 "Pve come to ask you, Peter, whether you can 
 see your way to helping us," she started in. "I 
 know you don t agree with us on many things, but 
 you will on this. You are a liberal. You stand 
 for the old rights and liberties." 
 
 "What has happened?" Peter asked. 
 
 "A mob broke into our school tonight, and 
 
BEGGARS GOLD 205 
 
 smashed our desks, typewriters threw them out 
 into the street. And, when some of our boys and 
 girls tried to jump in and interfere, they were so 
 badly beaten up that they are now in hospitals 
 and one boy may possibly die." She went on to 
 give him the details. "On Friday night," she 
 ended, "we re going to hold a meeting of protest. 
 I ve come to ask if you ll be there to speak for the 
 rights that you believe in. You are the head of a 
 big public school, and your words would have a 
 strong effect. I know that you believe in schools 
 all kinds of schools in a free country free to 
 teach whatever they like." 
 
 "Except violence," Peter said. 
 
 "But you know," she retorted quietly, "that we 
 have never taught that in my school. You are 
 against violence. You are against that mob to 
 night." 
 
 He looked at her. 
 
 "Will you come?" she asked. 
 
 "Let me think it over. I ll give you my answer 
 tomorrow," he said. 
 
 When she had gone, he lit his pipe and settled 
 down to face a storm of questioning. He was filled 
 with a sharp exasperation first against that mob 
 of men, and then against her and all her friends. 
 He angrily thought, "It isn t so simple as you say! 
 You did your best, every one of you, to hinder this 
 
206 BEGGARS GOLD 
 
 country in the War! If we d listened to you, the 
 Kaiser would now be ruling a German world ! You 
 were wrong! And, too dogmatic still to see it, 
 you have seized this chance to make capital for 
 your propaganda out of this time of passion ! Why 
 couldn t you have waited a bit, a few months more, 
 till the mob quiets down? But no, you ve seized 
 it as your chance paraded waving your red flags, 
 held meetings, flooded the town with your leaflets, 
 did all you could to rouse the storm! And now 
 you want to drag into it men like me! Do you 
 know what it means? If I go and speak in your 
 defence, at once I m called a Bolshevik and in all 
 probability thrown out of school ! All my life work 
 must go by the board!" 
 
 But his anger cooled and he asked himself, "What 
 am I so excited about? Let s try to be fair and see 
 this right. Is she driving me into a corner? No. 
 She simply asked, Can you see your way to speak 
 at our meeting? If I refuse, will she press it? 
 No." He puffed his pipe. "But can I refuse ? Do 
 I want to refuse ? I do believe in freedom of speech 
 and in free teaching, as she said. Am I ready to 
 stand up for it now? That s the only question 
 here." He smiled bitterly and asked, "I wonder 
 if all liberal men are to be driven into corners like 
 this?" 
 
 And his anger swung back against the mob. 
 
BEGGARS GOLD 207 
 
 A few minutes later, when Kate came home and 
 he told her what he was facing, he felt her go 
 through the same inner conflict. 
 
 "What will you do?" She looked at him anx 
 iously. And when at first he made no reply, "It 
 isn t simple, is it?" she said. 
 
 "No it isn t simple." 
 
 "But isn t there any other way out, a way we 
 won t be ashamed of?" He made no answer for a 
 time. Then he said, 
 
 "She had a big ugly bruise on her hand. I no 
 ticed it when she said good-night. . . . And she s 
 over sixty." 
 
 Kate turned a little white at that. Restlessly 
 she moved to the window and stood looking down 
 into the street. A few moments later, he heard 
 her ask, 
 
 "What would John Dillingham say to this?" 
 
 At the mention of his name, the man s whole per 
 sonality seemed to pour into the room. And there 
 was a long silence, as though they were both list 
 ening. 
 
 "He d be angry about it as we are," said Peter 
 quietly at last, "both with the mob and with the 
 Reds. He d feel his school in danger. But he d 
 be just as certain, as you and I have been from the 
 start, that I ve got to go to that meeting and speak." 
 
 The decision brought him a deep relief. His 
 
208 BEGGARS GOLD 
 
 whole mind had been locked tight in one of the 
 worst snarls of his life, but now the eyes of his 
 spirit opened abruptly, wide and clear, to see this 
 in its true proportions. And so, in the brief speech 
 he wrote, he put into phrases blunt and plain the 
 facts of the raid and his protest against it, and then 
 he went back to the great appeal that had lifted 
 America into the War, had lifted the very War 
 itself into a vast devotion, a reaching out of common 
 men for the old, old dream of the Better Day. 
 
 Back at school he found it hard. Though he 
 had not yet announced his intention, already in his 
 fancy Peter could see the satisfied smiles of all of 
 his old enemies in the city public schools. How they 
 would rub their dry old hands! "We ve got him 
 at last, this radical! He played with fire when 
 he was young. He has been dangerous ever since 
 to all that we believe in. But he had it all so 
 nicely hidden, like his old chief, Dillingham. Now, 
 thank God, he s driven out at last into the open!" 
 Peter grew hot and cold with anger. One by one 
 the things he had planned, with Dillingham, with 
 Kate or alone, the vital, definite, concrete things, 
 steps on the road to the school of tomorrow, crowded 
 in upon him. Must they all be given up ? On the 
 day of the meeting, he could feel the rumor spread 
 of what he was about to do; for instantly there 
 came a change in the attitude of his teachers. Those 
 
BEGGARS GOLD 209 
 
 who had disliked him were obviously exulting now, 
 and most of the others drew away. In an atmos 
 phere growing quickly cold, he could almost hear 
 the word, "Bolshevik!" 
 
 And with this behind him, Peter went to the 
 meeting that night. 
 
 There he found the street outside packed with 
 men, or rather boys, about half of them in uniform. 
 Several hundred policemen kept pushing them back 
 from two narrow lanes that led into the building. 
 As Peter came through, he heard shouts and jeers, 
 saw thousands of bitter, angry eyes. The hall in 
 side was filling fast with radicals of various kinds, 
 some frightened, others enjoying the thrill, still 
 others with the exultant look of martyrs. Watch 
 ing them, he asked, "What chance will there be for 
 any clear thinking here to-night?" But Peter set 
 his heavy jaws. "I m not going to back out of 
 this." He looked about him on the platform, then 
 glanced through the list of speakers. Anna Blainey 
 had told him of other outsiders she meant to ask. 
 There were none. All the others had declined. 
 More and more his look went down to the row of 
 newspaper-men who were sitting just beneath him. 
 "That s really why I m here," he thought. 
 
 At last it was his turn to speak. In the begin 
 ning he threw out his blunt statement of the facts, 
 his protest against the raid, and there was applause 
 
210 BEGGARS GOLD 
 
 for that; but, as he went back to the aims of the 
 War, he felt the crowd fast drop away; he faced 
 long rows of smiling eyes that seemed to say, "This 
 poor old fool, this liberal! A good old scout, he 
 had the nerve to come here and talk, stand up for 
 his old fashioned ideals. But what a sentimental 
 ist! He still believes in this Bourgeois War and 
 in this League of Nations." Grimly he continued. 
 He talked no longer to the crowd but to the row 
 of men from the press. All at once he noticed a 
 youngster there whose left arm was in a sling and 
 who wore a service badge. He was staring up 
 in a questioning way; and looking straight down at 
 him Peter asked, 
 
 "Have we so soon forgotten? What was it we 
 were fighting for? To lick the Kaiser? Yes, but 
 more. What was it roused this nation from East 
 to West and North to South? Was there no mighty 
 vision there? Were all those deaths to sweep us 
 on to a world no better than before? The world 
 made safe for democracy. Every nation, every 
 man, to be free to determine his own life, so long 
 as he does not harm the rest. Live and let live- 
 tolerance. Have we so soon forgotten all that? 
 When shall such belief be tested? Only when we 
 disagree. The Russian Czar and the Man in Ber 
 lin were tolerant toward every man who agreed 
 with them and upheld their rule. Surely we mean 
 
BEGGARS GOLD 211 
 
 more than that. Here are men we do not agree 
 with. How are we to deal with them? By clap 
 ping them all into jail? By mobbing, lynching, 
 beating up, all that we don t believe in ourselves? 
 Is this the way to the Great Peace ? What do you 
 mean by democracy? How in God s name can it 
 work, if we turn down the liberties that men for 
 ages in the past have fought and died for freedom 
 of speech, freedom to think and say what you please, 
 so long as you keep within your rights! And the 
 people in that school were within their rights last 
 Tuesday night!" 
 
 A burst of applause from the Reds behind, and 
 in an instant Peter felt the boy to whom he was 
 talking change and harden, saw him glance back 
 with dry, bitter, smiling eyes. The futility of it! 
 "What can I do in a place like this, with the crowd 
 in here, the mob outside?" He finished his speech; 
 and as he left the platform he heard a perfect roar 
 of cheers, as a well-known socialist arose. 
 
 "That s it, that s what they want," he thought, 
 "something good and hot and blind both here and 
 out there on the street!" 
 
 As he left the hall and came through the lane 
 between the angry crowds outside, a policeman 
 started to follow him, but Peter quickly turned and 
 said, 
 
 "No, thanks, I don t want your protection." 
 
212 BEGGARS GOLD 
 
 He had gone but a short way down the street 
 when he heard steps behind him. He wheeled and 
 faced two furious lads who wore navy uniforms. 
 They came up ; and one of them, who did not look 
 above eighteen, excitedly demanded, 
 
 "What the hell were you doing in that hall?" 
 "Still licking the Kaiser," Peter said. 
 "You mean you were talking against the Reds?" 
 "No, I was talking against you. And I m old 
 enough to be your father. Go on home and go to 
 bed." 
 
 They hesitated, scowling up with fists clenched 
 and threatening. Then, "Come on, Sam," the 
 other one said, "Let this Christ-forsaken old nut 
 go back to the Asylum." 
 
 The next afternoon, in the office of "Old Gran 
 ite," the deputy school superintendent, Peter said, 
 
 "No I won t resign." 
 
 His old enemy s face wore a quizzical smile. 
 Not after those accounts in the papers?" 
 
 "No not after those accounts. They garbled 
 half of what I said and omitted the rest." 
 
 "And you re willing, while this fight goes on, to 
 keep your school under a cloud of scandal, treason 
 and disgrace?" 
 
BEGGARS GOLD 213 
 
 "I d rather do that than leave it to you." 
 
 The fight dragged on for several weeks. Red 
 tape, official hearings, a special committee appointed 
 to investigate his case. From various quarters, both 
 within and without the school system, forces were 
 roused to hold back the steam roller, voices were 
 raised in Peter s defence ; but the other voices clam 
 oring in soon drowned out this minority. From 
 the time so many years before, when he himself 
 had been a Red, Peter s speeches were brought forth 
 and combined with his defence of them now. Was 
 such a man to be left in charge of two thousand 
 boys and girls, who would soon be citizens? Should 
 he be allowed to poison their minds with thoughts 
 so un-American? 
 
 Just before the new year began, he was notified 
 of his expulsion. 
 
 There followed two bleak, bitter months, when it 
 seemed to Peter Wells as though the whole structure 
 of his life had come tumbling, crashing down. With 
 steady, vigilant, anxious eyes Kate watched him 
 now. They were alone. Moon Chao and Susanna 
 were still in France. Moon Chao had tackled the 
 hopeless job of obtaining ships to take the coolies 
 back to their homes; and Susanna, since the Armi 
 stice, had been hard at work on Civilian Relief in 
 the devastated regions. Again and again she wrote 
 long letters picturing the dire need, indignant over 
 
214 BEGGARS GOLD 
 
 the lack of funds. u Has America suddenly gone 
 poor? What s the trouble with you folks at home?" 
 
 she asked. She did not know of Peter s trouble. 
 
 
 
 "Let s wait," he had urged, "till she comes home. 
 The worst will all be over then." 
 
 But the worst still lay ahead of him. Tired, 
 beaten, dulled at first, it was a relief to have the 
 suspense, the tension, the publicity, all done away 
 with and to rest. It was good to stay at home with 
 Kate. All through his crisis, she had been a tower 
 of strength close by his side ; and, though she looked 
 tired now, she was a great companion. Reading, 
 knitting, talking at times, drifting back into old 
 memories so the first few weeks went by. But 
 the news from the world outside kept breaking in 
 upon them. Over in Paris day by day the dream 
 of a Great Peace grew dim; from many parts of 
 the Old World, where civilization rocked and 
 groaned, came desperate appeals for aid. But the 
 people over here had grown sick and tired of it 
 all. From the long hard drive and strain and exal 
 tation of the War, they were turning in reaction to 
 an era of grab and frenzied spending. On the 
 streets, when Peter went out, their faces looked hard 
 and tough to him ; and his bitterness was made more 
 acute by the injustice he had suffered. He had no 
 money, it had all gone into war activities. So, 
 through the few friends he had left, he managed 
 
BEGGARS GOL D 215 
 
 to get some tutoring; and soon he was going about 
 in the evenings, as he had done long ago. He 
 looked years older. On the street he passed young 
 men and girls on their way to dances, movies, plays, 
 or to shops, to spend their money. Most of them 
 were earning more than any teacher in Peter s school. 
 A smart young girl who could trim a hat was worth 
 more to the world than a teacher now. 
 
 Slowly the winter wore away. "We re through 
 the worst of it," Kate said. "Susanna will soon 
 be coming home, and in May we ll go to the moun 
 
 tains." 
 
 But early in March she took a bad cold, and 
 Peter made her go to bed. "It s nothing," she said. 
 "Just leave me alone and you ll see how much better 
 I ll be by night." But when he came home that 
 evening he found her much worse, with pains in 
 her chest, her color high. "It s the Flu," he told 
 himself. Back went his thoughts to the night long 
 ago when Susanna had had pneumonia. Peter had 
 dreaded it ever since. "It s so damned ugly works 
 so fast gives you no time to get ready!" he thought. 
 "And she has a weak heart!" He went out at once 
 for a doctor; and, when an hour later his worst fears 
 were realized, Peter braced himself and said, 
 
216 BEGGARS GOLD 
 
 "Now tell me exactly what I m to do." 
 
 "Do you want a nurse?" the physician asked. 
 
 "No. I spoke of that. She won t have one. She 
 wants me." 
 
 He went back and sat down by her bed. Her eyes 
 were closed, but she knew he was there. He noticed 
 now the lines in her face. Kate was forty-seven 
 years old, and her soft, fine hair was already turning 
 grey. "But she has always kept herself young," he 
 thought determinedly. "She s a fighter, and she 
 wants to live !" In a moment her hand came out for 
 his. 
 
 "I m pretty sick, Peter," she whispered. "But 
 don t worry. We ll get through this." 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "Only don t go away. Keep hold of my hand. 
 You give me so much more than you know." 
 
 Toward the middle of the night, after a long, 
 fierce struggle for breath, she muttered, smiling, 
 
 "I can t stand many more like that." 
 
 Peter grew rigid, straining, as though all she were 
 suffering had been gathered into himself. 
 
 "It won t last long. You must!" he said. 
 
 An hour, and another, passed. Between the bat 
 tles that she fought, a gleaming light came in her 
 eyes. 
 
 "I m going somewhere, Peter!" Her whisper 
 
BEGGARS GOLD 217 
 
 was so sharp and clear that he started forward in 
 alarm. "Back back back to the East! I have 
 the strangest feeling! Keep hold of me! Remem 
 ber, dear " 
 
 A terrible fear struck into him then. Leaning 
 forward, her hand in his, he felt her suddenly slip 
 away from him into delirium. He faced his last big 
 fight alone. 
 
 A strange thing happened to Peter that night 
 strange as the rising of the sun, mysterious as the 
 break of day. He had lived with Kate nearly thirty 
 years. In all that time, those thousands of days, in 
 lives all filled with little things worries, tangles, 
 petty quarrels, disagreements, comforts, joys their 
 love, upon the surface, had seemed to grow dull, 
 middle aged. But to-night he knew it had not been 
 so. Beggars sitting on bags of gold. Down be 
 neath their consciousness there had been lived two 
 deeper lives lives in which no memories were ever 
 lost or cast aside, where all their struggles, hopes 
 and dreams, bleak disappointments, sudden joys, 
 lived on, piled up. And between those lives this love 
 had grown to such amazing power that now as it 
 came bursting up he felt as though his whole exist 
 ence were in Kate s. She could not die! Sitting 
 there with her hand in his, he could feel a vital cur 
 rent passing into her from himself. "You give me 
 
218 BEGGARS 1 GOLD 
 
 so much more than you know." At first he could 
 feel only that. But later, with his senses dulled, his 
 inner vision growing clear, as though a mist were 
 lifting, other intimations rose of deep, hungry 
 aspirations, the grim courage that had never died. 
 And as from that subconscious world he could feel 
 these powers rise, in the days and nights that fol 
 lowed, his strength seemed inexhaustible giving, 
 giving, pouring out, yet with no feeling of fatigue. 
 He had no need of food or sleep. His mind kept 
 curiously clear. Though he seemed to be living in a 
 dream, the figure of the physician kept breaking in 
 at intervals; and then Peter questioned, answered, 
 listened, followed each direction. And yet all that 
 was trivial, small, mere movements in a little room. 
 The greater struggle was inside. Down in deep, 
 still waters, the searching and the finding and the 
 outpouring still went on. 
 
 And all at once he was not alone. One night, 
 in the soft glow of the lamp, he saw in her dark, 
 shining eyes a radiant recognition. 
 
 "I ve come back, dearie." 
 
 "Where have you been?" 
 
 "At first I wanted to go to China. Oh, how 
 hard I wanted it the cool, dark ocean and the stars. 
 But I could feel you hold me back. Too tired to 
 fight you, I gave in. And you said, There s an 
 other journey. I could feel you take my hand and 
 
BEGGARS GOLD 219 
 
 off we drifted, back through our lives. And oh, 
 Peter the miracles!" Smiling still, she closed her 
 eyes. He bent close over her and said, 
 
 "You mustn t try to tell me now you must rest." 
 
 There came in answer a faint ripple of a laugh. 
 
 "But I m not afraid of dying now. That seems 
 so unimportant. I ve so much to tell you now. The 
 only thing I m afraid of is that after being very good 
 and resting, as the doctor wants, I might die after all 
 and not have told you. Oh Peter, Peter, don t let s 
 fce safe. Let s take the splendid, dangerous way. 
 Come with me, before I forget 1 There was so much 
 but all in a dream. Let s go and find if it was 
 real! Because if we can only find it real, real 
 not just a dream then life or death is nothing!" 
 
 Speaking in whispered fragments she needed no 
 more, for he caught the rest as in a rare, exalted 
 air, along the edge of a precipice, just clinging to 
 existence but with no fear of the void below, she 
 took him back again through the years. And now 
 with a redoubled warmth he felt the slowly kindling 
 glow of those two greater, deeper lives, compound 
 ed of What Might Have Been. She whispered just 
 the fragment, "That night at school when I came 
 out in the hall and found you with Moon Chao." 
 Then up with a rush came the memories of that first 
 night together, and of the months that followed, 
 when their love had grown as though never to stop. 
 
220 BEGGARS GOLD 
 
 And they felt how it might have gone on growing, 
 breaking all chains; all the petty, worrying, hard, 
 little things swept away in radiant understandings, 
 in giving, giving, giving. Only to one another? 
 No reaching out beyond themselves and turning 
 everything to gold. 
 
 "That letter from Peking," she whispered. And 
 this time nothing could hold them back. No cautious, 
 anxious reckoning. What an ocean they crossed 
 that night what starry skies ! And the old city of 
 Peking a miracle beyond his dreams rich with a 
 million days and nights ! 
 
 "And the school," she whispered, "grew and 
 grew ! Oh how hard it was at first. There was so 
 little money, so few friends to stand behind us. And 
 the school, so tiny, it seemed as though it would 
 never start. What long, long nights when Susanna 
 was teething and I was teaching you Chinese!" 
 Again the faint, clear ripple of laughter. "But how 
 we laughed anJ laughed at troubles. The miracle 
 was always there this love of ours, and the strength 
 it gave the dear joy of being alive ! And the mem 
 ory of Dad was there. Do this for China for the 
 East- for half the people of the earth! . . . And 
 Moon Chao what a strange little boy who knew 
 he was going to be a great actor. We took him back 
 to live with us. ... And the winter passed and 
 
BEGGARS GOLD 221 
 
 summer came and we went out of the city to the 
 old temple on the hill. 
 
 "And all that," she said softly, "was only one of 
 the Might-Have-Beens. . . . And it wasn t just a 
 dream it was more real than the things we did all 
 those years in this little room. It was always there 
 inside of us; and something, so tremendous, bright, 
 was always waiting, whispering, Come to me, and 
 all this that is in you will have life ! Come, come 
 to the East, the splendid East! . . . Years so 
 many wore away. And when Moon Chao came 
 back to us here, do you remember how all at once, 
 in you, in me, it came bursting up, and we knew that 
 it had never died? What was it that he called him 
 self? The son of the glory of our youth! And 
 all the other Might-Have-Beens oh, Peter, they 
 were all like that all sons of the love that had 
 grown and grown even though we barely knew! 
 All real ! Because they were in us still parts of the 
 love that had never died!" 
 
 She drew a long, smiling breath, and he saw a haze 
 come over her eyes. 
 
 "Now I ll sleep," she whispered. 
 
 6. 
 
 As though he were still under a spell, Peter sat 
 watching, listening. He saw the lines of her face 
 
222 BEGGARS GOLD 
 
 relax, the breathing slow and regular. He knew 
 that she was past the crisis; and, as this certainty 
 grew and grew, it seemed to lift him up on wings. 
 In the days and nights that followed, this feeling 
 came again and again, sweeping away all weariness, 
 bearing him on into dreams of his own. 
 
 All at once he was in a spacious room. Ho\^ 
 quiet it was. Only now and then he heard the 
 turning of a page. He began to see the faces of 
 hundreds of readers. And the books in number 
 less thousands! suddenly they seemed alive. And 
 in a kind of terror he thought, "All the world is in 
 this room!" A feverish vigor seized him. How 
 swiftly he was writing now! With a miraculous 
 power and ease the images, the thoughts and scenes, 
 kept sweeping up out of himself. As he wrote, the 
 figure of a man drew close and real, familiar, mas 
 sive. And Peter grew rigid, as in a trance; for, as 
 he wrote, it seemed to him that he himself were 
 facing a hundred million people rousing them to 
 a consciousness of what they all might do and be! 
 They grew tempestuous as the sea ! And straining, 
 straining, suddenly as though some heavy bonds had 
 snapped, he felt himself soar to a region where in 
 spite of the stillness there he could feel the irresist 
 ible rush of the deep waters of life. Gigantic figures 
 loomed around him. With a kind of awe he knew 
 that they were the Great Doers, Builders, Seers of 
 
BEGGARS GOLD 223 
 
 all the Ages. Then down he dropped into the dark, 
 exhausted, into dreamless sleep. 
 
 As he drifted back to consciousness, he felt a 
 soft, familiar glow of light and warmth around him. 
 He opened his eyes, and suddenly he was back in his 
 room. As he lay on his bed, he felt strange, light 
 headed, weak. "What has happened?" He tried 
 to think it out. With a sharp quick effort he turned 
 his head to the bed next his. It was empty! Kate 
 was gone ! And terror seized him, but it passed al 
 most as quickly as it came ; for he felt her presence 
 in the room. He turned his head the other way 
 and saw her sitting by the lamp, pale, thin and 
 shadowy like a ghost. But, as though she had been 
 spoken to, she looked up presently from her book 
 and smiled at him. 
 
 "Oh, dearie, what a sleep youVe had and how 
 tired you must be. We ll have to take care of each 
 other now." 
 
 Slowly, slowly, day and night, as Kate s strength 
 returned to her, they felt the life of every day take 
 hold again upon them its small details all welcome 
 now, for they felt weary and relaxed. The room 
 grew more and more real to them. "Here we lived, 
 those thousands of days and nights while all that 
 went on inside." Again they began to remember 
 their vision; and, as one by one the intimations out 
 of those distant, deeper lives came stealing back 
 
224 BEGGARS GOLD 
 
 mysteriously, once more they felt the call of the 
 East and drifted into dreamland. 
 
 And soon that summons was renewed, in terms of 
 warm reality. For, in the weeks that followed, first 
 Moon Chao and then Susanna came back from 
 France. And Susanna, so much more mature but 
 impulsive as before, filled with dismay at the change 
 in her parents, and with indignation over the injus 
 tice Peter had suffered in his school, shook off 
 her old hostility to Moon Chao and supported his 
 plan that her parents should go with him to Peking. 
 
 "It s what you have both wanted all your lives," 
 Susanna said, "and there isn t a reason on earth why 
 you shouldn t go there now. And I am going with 
 you. After what I ve been through in France, I 
 want to get just as far away from the War as I pos 
 sibly can. I don t mean to be a slacker I ll soon 
 find a job over there. If I don t like it, I may come 
 back and you may want to do the same. But this is 
 no time for attempting to plan out all the rest of 
 our days. The point is that we all need a big change 
 and we re going to have it!" 
 
 One by one their objections were swept aside. 
 Money? Susanna had some saved, and there were a 
 few Liberty Bonds to be sold, and the furniture in 
 
BEGGARS GOLD 225 
 
 the flat. This would take them to Peking, and there 
 Moon Chao offered them his home. 
 
 u You must stay with me as long as you like/ he 
 begged them, "I hope it will be for years ! Think 
 of all you have done for me. You have treated me 
 like a son, and you must let me be one now. I know 
 you will not be so unkind as to refuse me you will 
 come ! In my house there are many rooms," he con 
 tinued, smiling, u and there is a little garden, where 
 we shall sit under the skies at night and talk of the 
 work we have done that day, and of the work that 
 we shall do for in my school there is work for you 
 both; and, if you decide to stay in China, there will 
 be work for the rest of your lives. And there will 
 be so much more than that ! For do not forget the 
 theatre the nights when in rickshaws we shall rush 
 along through dark and silent streets deep into 
 the glories of the Past, and of the years that rise 
 ahead!" 
 
 "Oh Moon Chao !" Kate whispered. There were 
 warm tears in her bright eyes. "If only I were 
 strong and young!" Her strength was so precarious 
 still; she seemed but the phantom of her old self. 
 After the desperate crisis through which they had 
 come together, it had been good to sink again into 
 this familiar life. They had lived here nearly thirty 
 years, and it was hard to break away. 
 
 As they were still holding back, still undecided and 
 
226 BEGGARS* GOLD 
 
 afraid that they might be a burden, Susanna came 
 home in triumph one day and announced that she 
 had taken a place in the new American hospital 
 which had been opened in Peking. 
 
 "That settles it!" she ended, in a firm, decided 
 tone. 
 
 But it seemed to Peter still like a dream. 
 
 "You see, Moon Chao, Fm getting old," he said, 
 "too old for a big fresh start like this. I keep won 
 dering how much use I ll be." 
 
 It was a lovely afternoon toward the end of April. 
 They had brought Kate up to the roof of the old 
 house on Stuyvesant Square, where the voice of the 
 turgid city beneath was subdued and far away, where 
 the sun with all its healing glow seemed pouring new 
 life into her. Now it was well down in the West. 
 
 "Old?" Moon Chao leaned forward, his big 
 eyes flashing in the sun. "Now you yourself shall 
 reveal to me the deep, deep youth inside of you! 
 That mighty, mighty life beneath, those boundless 
 depths and visions have you forgotten all so soon? 
 When you sat by the bed of your wife, and soared 
 away on memory wings to the East with her did 
 you feel old? Old age is only for the blind ! Blind 
 beggars! You have seen the gold! Come to the 
 East and you will see the beginnings of what will set 
 the whole world free from the chains that bind us 
 now ! In every country of the earth, cold and dark, 
 
BEGGARS GOLD 227 
 
 tumultuous years, a vast confusion, looms ahead. 
 And the darkness will not be dispelled till the Great 
 Secret is revealed! Come to the East, and you 
 shall see!" 
 
 Kate smiled at this fantastic boy, so gay with the 
 eternal, radiant arrogance of dreams, the arrogance 
 of being young, of seeing, understanding all, of 
 sweeping all humanity into himself and, like a god, 
 moulding it to his own image. She asked him, 
 
 "What is the Great Secret?" 
 
 Moon Chao looked off to the setting sun. 
 
 "I think that I can tell you best by a little story," 
 he replied. "One night in Peking, I sat by a win 
 dow listening to a speech on the street. It was a soft 
 and lovely night soft as the air in the East can be, 
 lovely with rich colors, and the stars and a great 
 half moon. The speaker was a student boy. He 
 was talking to a group of peasants come into the mar 
 kets from the farms, and he spoke of how the power 
 of the rulers of Japan was slowly fastening on 
 our land. What will this mean to you? he asked. 
 Will they drive you off your farms? No, you will 
 labor as before. But through taxes, mortgage bonds 
 and many, many tyrannies, year by year the chains 
 will grow until at last when you are old you will 
 be no longer men but slaves! Then the time will 
 come for you to die, and you will go to your ances 
 tors. They will ask, "What have you done with 
 
228 BEGGARS GOLD 
 
 China?" Think of the shame you will feel then! 
 When he spoke these words, you could see in their 
 faces how all these peasants came under a spell. It 
 was as though some mighty hand had been laid upon 
 their spirits. But, in your everlasting lives, this 
 will not be the worst/ he said, the deepest shame 
 you must endure. For the state of China under 
 Japan will steadily go down and down, and the 
 slavery you suffered here will be as nothing when 
 compared to the deepening degradation that will 
 come to the spirits of your sons. And then these 
 sons in turn will die and will come to you, their an 
 cestors. What did you do to China? they will 
 demand in sorrow. Think of the shame you will 
 feel then! " 
 
 There was a moment s silence. Moon Chao 
 turned quietly back to Kate and said, 
 
 "This is the Great Secret. In the East, we think 
 not only of what is outside a man s body but of how 
 it will affect the man s spirit life within. . . . The 
 people of America arc not thinking of that now." 
 
 They listened to the roar from below. It was the 
 rush hour, five o clock. 
 
 "No, they are not thinking of that," said Peter. 
 "But a year ago " 
 
 "Yes, then you felt a Great New Day stealing 
 over the face of the earth ! But, as you had always 
 done before, you fastened your thoughts on what 
 
BEGGARS GOLD 229 
 
 you must do! You did not stop to think out what 
 you felt or to clear up your new ideal ! A generous 
 impulse swept your land and you could make guns 
 and you could kill men! And so you saved the 
 world from Berlin ! But then, because this new ideal 
 was only an impulse, very vague or perhaps a mil 
 lion impulses of different kinds, not strong and 
 clear it could not hold together and keep its grip 
 upon your souls ! So it died ! Already in Versailles 
 the great promises you made, to China and all coun 
 tries, one by one are being betrayed ! And by your 
 splenA d sacrifice what good did you do to the 
 world, to yourselves? Thirty million people are 
 dead! Has the world been made better, happier? 
 No! 
 
 "Your western revolutionists declare, But we will 
 make it so. 1 And they point to books by thousands, 
 expounding and expounding their plan of freedom 
 for all men. I find so much in them that is true, 
 that I believe their rising force is needed now to 
 blast away the rubbish heaps of old ideas. But one 
 great thing I do not find. They give no thought to 
 the inner man. They will try to change the world 
 outside by giving it to .the man on the street. They 
 believe in him, and they are right. He has the gold 
 inside of him. But to give it conscious life, that is 
 the Great Enigma! To destroy yes, that is easy 
 and it will be quickly done. But then they will be- 
 
2 3 o BEGGARS* GOLD 
 
 gin to build, and as in Russia they will find that the 
 peasants and the laborers will show dull eyes for 
 great ideals and hard tight fists for what is theirs. 
 Into their new governments will creep intrigues and 
 scandal, greed and waste and stupid bungling, as 
 of old. And even when at last they build a govern 
 ment, a system, that will feed their bodies, the mass 
 will say, It is enough. Now we have enough to eat, 
 clothes to wear and good warm homes. Let us risk 
 no more new ideas. Let all our very comfortable 
 and equal citizens think alike. 
 
 "Some will bitterly declare that this dreary same 
 ness is all the fault of the common crowd and the 
 new order. They will be wrong! It began a hun 
 dred years ago. Already the world has been bound 
 so close that what one nation does or dreams damns 
 or blesses all the rest; and this will go on, in the 
 years ahead, even swifter than before. Armies, not 
 of soldiers but of commercial travellers, will flow 
 back and forth in endless tides by ships and trains, on 
 land and sea. Factories by millions, and books, 
 newspapers, picture shows, will pour forth their pat 
 tern goods, their pattern thoughts and feelings all 
 working swiftly to one end that all the peoples of 
 the earth shall wear the same clothes, think alike, 
 and see and feel and dream alike ! What a dreary 
 world it will seem to be !" 
 
 He stopped abruptly, his big lean hands locked 
 
BEGGARS GOLD 231 
 
 together like a vise, and again he stared at the set 
 ting sun. Then Kate, who had been watching him 
 affectionately, smiled and said, 
 
 "But the Great Secret. Have you forgotten that, 
 Moon Chao?" 
 
 He turned back to her. 
 
 "No I have not forgotten." His voice was low 
 and quivering. "For, from the beginning, while all 
 that is going on, beneath that comfort of the body, 
 that stagnation of the mind, will still be the eternal, 
 unconscious, yearning cry of man, Let me be free 
 within my soul ! Let me be different myself ! In 
 every land, from the very start, there will be some 
 to voice this yearning only a few, but they will 
 increase, and they will search the world for their 
 friends. Over the lands and across the seas, and in 
 vessels through the skies, will go these rebel dream 
 ers; and in each land they will find what they seek. 
 Beneath the deadening sameness, the differences will 
 still exist. They will find this passion for liberty 
 still. With a glad light in their eyes, they will 
 cry, 
 
 " Oh my foreign brother, thank the Gods we are 
 not alike ! And in our very differences, the joy of 
 life, the fascination, and the essential brotherhood 
 lies ! We are not the same so we can give ! How 
 much you have to learn from us; how much we have 
 to learn from you ! But in all this giving, learning, 
 
232 BEGGARS GOLD 
 
 let us never become the same ! What we take let us 
 make our own, so that in passing from you to us it 
 shall become different something new! 
 
 "In things for the body this is hard, but in things 
 for the spirit it is not so. What is the greatest 
 new force of our age? The awakening of Woman 
 to the things that she can do. There at first the 
 West will teach the East. But, when our women 
 have roused at last, will they be the same as your 
 women here? No, no, no, a thousand times ah, 
 how different they will be ! Only this they will have 
 alike their love of children, the mother s belief 
 that in her child there is great gold. And to save 
 this gold before the child shall harden into a dull 
 beggar man, the mothers in every land will rise, 
 demanding schools schools multiplied schools 
 splendid schools into which is poured .a wealth of 
 wisdom, watchful care and understanding sympa 
 thies, a wealth as deep as the gold that lies in the 
 children waiting for the light! For in this is the 
 whole hope of the world. Slowly, slowly, it will 
 be not by sudden miracles but through struggles 
 and mistakes, through many generations, that these 
 children growing up, different in every land, will 
 slowly rear upon the earth and reaching up into the 
 stars, a new civilization, built on the communion of 
 free individual souls helping one another giving, 
 receiving rising still! Only then will the radiant 
 
BEGGARS GOLD 233 
 
 splendor of the Brotherhood of Man be flashed up 
 into the heavens! And the past will then seem 
 cold and dim as the deepening dusk in a valley be 
 low. We shall see shadows loom down there, shades 
 of the great men of the past. They were great men, 
 those ancestors," he ended in a reverent tone, "they 
 were as great as men can be when rising each by 
 himself alone, out of the dark valley depths. But 
 up on the high plateau of the future, other great 
 men will arise, who need not start from the depths 
 below they will start from the mountain ridge of 
 the new common life of men ! And so their shining 
 peaks will rise and men and gods will at last be 
 
 one." 
 
 As though coming slowly back from a far distant 
 country, he looked at Kate, whose smiling face was 
 quivering and wet with tears. He took her hand and 
 turned to Peter. 
 
 Come to the East!" he whispered. "Be one of 
 the explorers into the vast mysterious life which in 
 your vision you have seen. Come and help me in 
 my school, and watch the great awakening! Come 
 with me ! I am the son of the first glory of your 
 youth and I have come back to bid you heed the 
 voice of the gods within you, whispering, Live! 
 You are still young! 1 
 
 It seemed to Peter, as he turned his eyes out 
 over the twinkling lights of the city, off across the 
 
234 BEGGARS GOLD 
 
 river to the glow in the darkening sky, that all he 
 heard had been a dream. And as in a trarce he 
 heard Kate s voice, as she answered softly, 
 
 "Yes, now at last, Moon Chao, we ll come to the 
 East to help you in your school and see a thou 
 sand years ahead into the Promised Land at last 
 into the death of the Beggar Days into the birth 
 of the Age of Gold." 
 
nKra 
 
 SS&S**"" CENTS 
 
 JAN 31 1933 
 
 
 JUL 
 
 
 RECDL! 
 
 
6845 / 
 
 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY