V

Claude had been married a year and a half.  One December morning he got a telephone message from his father-in-law, asking him to come in to Frankfort at once.  He found Mr. Royce sunk in his desk-chair, smoking as usual, with several foreign-looking letters on the table before him.  As he took these out of their envelopes and sorted the pages, Claude noticed how unsteady his hands had become.

One letter, from the chief of the medical staff in the mission school where Caroline Royce taught, informed Mr. Royce that his daughter was seriously ill in the mission hospital.  She would have to be sent to a more salubrious part of the country for rest and treatment, and would not be strong enough to return to her duties for a year or more.  If some member of her family could come out to take care of her, it would relieve the school authorities of great anxiety.  There was also a letter from a fellow teacher, and a rather incoherent one from Caroline herself.  After Claude finished reading them, Mr. Royce pushed a box of cigars toward him and began to talk despondently about missionaries.

“I could go to her,” he complained, “but what good would that do?  I’m not in sympathy with her ideas, and it would only fret her.  You can see she’s made her mind up not to come home.  I don’t believe in one people trying to force their ways or their religion on another.  I’m not that kind of man.”  He sat looking at his cigar.  After a long pause he broke out suddenly, “China has been drummed into my ears.  It seems like a long way to go to hunt for trouble, don’t it?  A man hasn’t got much control over his own life, Claude.  If it ain’t poverty or disease that torments him, it’s a name on the map.  I could have made out pretty well, if it hadn’t been for China, and some other things....  If Carrie’d had to teach for her clothes and help pay off my notes, like old man Harrison’s daughters, like enough she’d have stayed at home.  There’s always something.  I don’t know what to say about showing these letters to Enid.”

“Oh, she will have to know about it, Mr. Royce.  If she feels that she ought to go to Carrie, it wouldn’t be right for me to interfere.”

Mr. Royce shook his head.  “I don’t know.  It don’t seem fair that China should hang over you, too.”

When Claude got home he remarked as he handed Enid the letters, “Your father has been a good deal upset by this.  I never saw him look so old as he did today.”

Enid studied their contents, sitting at her orderly little desk, while Claude pretended to read the paper.

“It seems clear that I am the one to go,” she said when she had finished.

“You think it’s necessary for some one to go?  I don’t see it.”

“It would look very strange if none of us went,” Enid replied with spirit.

“How, look strange?”

“Why, it would look to her associates as if her family had no feeling.”