All the inns along the trail had rather grand sounding names, and Gladys and Mrs. Lawson decided that their inn needed a grand name as well. So they called it the “Inn of Eight Happinesses.” The name had no special meaning; Mrs. Lawson just liked the sound of it.
The Inn of Eight Happinesses quickly took shape. As she worked away, Gladys wondered what she would be responsible for once it opened. Yang would be preparing the meals and serving them to the muleteers. Mrs. Lawson would be telling Bible stories after the meal and keeping track of the finances. That left one other responsibility: the mules. Someone had to take care of them. The mules needed to have the mud scraped off their legs and be fed and watered each night. Gladys had a suspicion that she would be that someone.
Sure enough, she was. She also had one other job. Somehow she had to get the muleteers into the inn. “Muyo beatch. Muyo goodso. How. How. How. Lai. Lai. Lai.” Gladys said the words over and over to herself a hundred times to make sure she remembered them. Yang told her the words meant, “We have no bugs. We have no fleas. Good. Good. Good. Come. Come. Come.” But as many times as Gladys repeated the words to herself, she still couldn’t imagine actually standing in the street yelling them to muleteers. But then, neither could she see herself scraping the mud off the mules. She’d never cared for an animal bigger than a cat! Still, she told herself, if the muleteers were inside the Inn of Eight Happinesses listening to Bible stories, she would do her best in the stable to keep the mules happy.
Gladys stood and shouted until she was hoarse the first night the inn was open. But nothing happened. Not a single muleteer stopped for the night. When the last mule train had passed by, Gladys walked back inside. The inn looked so beautiful. The table was set and ready for the bowls of delicious noodle soup Yang had made. Mrs. Lawson’s Bible lay open on her chair, ready for her to tell stories after dinner. The k’ang had been scrubbed, and a warm fire was radiating from under it.
Gladys stood in the doorway and shook her head. “I’m sorry,” she offered. “No matter what I did, the muleteers wouldn’t stop.”
“Tomorrow you’ll have to make them come in,” said Mrs. Lawson firmly.
“Make them?” quizzed Gladys. “I did everything I could.”
“Well, not exactly. Tomorrow you’ll have to grab the mules by the bridle and pull them in. Once they’re in the courtyard, nothing on earth will move them.” Mrs. Lawson spoke with such finality that Gladys didn’t argue.
All the next day, Gladys worried about getting the muleteers to stop. She discussed it with Yang, in limited Yangcheng dialect, of course, since he spoke no English, and by the time the sun began to set, she felt ready to try again.
Gladys stood in the shadows outside the inn as the mule trains passed by. She let the first two go past as she got up her courage. When she heard the steady clip-clop of the third mule train, she waited silently for the lead mule to come level with her hiding place. At what she thought was the right moment, she leaped from her hiding place and reached for the mule’s bridle. However, she’d misjudged her timing and ended up reaching for the head muleteer instead. He screamed with surprise. The other five muleteers scattered into the shadows, but the head muleteer couldn’t flee because the reins were tightly wound around his hand.
Gladys knew she had to lead the mules into the courtyard, and fast, before the muleteer realized what she was doing. She rushed to the lead mule and stood in front of him. The mule lowered his head and pushed it into her stomach. He lifted Gladys high into the air and bolted into the courtyard. Mrs. Lawson and Yang arrived at the doorway just in time to see the mule dump Gladys onto the cobblestones.
“Well done, Gladys,” congratulated Mrs. Lawson, looking at the mule train standing in the courtyard. “However you did it doesn’t matter now. We have our first guest.”
But not for long. The head muleteer took one look at Mrs. Lawson with her white hair, unwound the reins from his hand, and fled through the gate.
“What do we do now?” asked Gladys, picking herself up off the cobblestones.
Mrs. Lawson spoke to Yang. They talked much too fast for Gladys to understand what they were saying. Then she turned and said, “Yang says not to worry. This is a good start. The mules and their loads are worth far too much money to abandon. Yang will go and find the muleteers. They will come back with him. They have to; we have their mules. Yang will tell them they are safe staying here. They’ll quickly find out we’re nothing to be scared of.”
Gladys nodded. It was all turning out to be so much more complicated than she’d imagined it would be. She hoped that after tonight, things would get a little easier, but she had no idea of the problems that lay ahead.
Chapter 8
Jesus in the Ark
And then,” continued Yang in his most dramatic voice, “Jesus opened the door and let all the animals in two by two.”
Gladys frowned. She’d just come in from brushing down the mules and had stopped to listen to Yang tell a Bible story to the muleteers.
“After forty long, long days and forty long, long nights, the sun began to shine, and Jesus looked out the window. He saw the star of Bethlehem rising in the east…”
Gladys had heard enough. She went in search of Mrs. Lawson, finding her in her bedroom. Gladys knocked on the side of the open door. “May I come in?” she asked.
“Certainly,” replied Mrs. Lawson. “What is it?”
Gladys shook her head. “Perhaps I don’t understand enough of the Yangcheng dialect, but I thought I just heard Yang tell a story about Jesus being on Noah’s ark.”
Mrs. Lawson looked weary. “I’m sure you heard it correctly,” she sighed. “Last week Yang told the muleteers all about Saint Paul parting the Red Sea. The muleteers are begging for Bible stories, and if I’m not there every minute of every night, Yang can’t resist stepping in and telling his own versions of the stories for me.”
Gladys nodded. Ever since Yang had become a Christian a month before, he’d been eager to share his new faith with the muleteers.
“Still, we mustn’t complain,” Mrs. Lawson added with surprising optimism. “Yang is doing his best, and the inn is going much better than I ever thought it would.”
Gladys nodded again. It had been five months since the Inn of Eight Happinesses had opened. At first she’d had to drag each mule train into the courtyard, but now the new innkeepers had made friends with many of the muleteers, and most nights at the inn the k’ang overflowed with sleeping bodies, sometimes up to fifty or more!
Gladys wished she could speak better Chinese. If she could speak the language better, she could help Mrs. Lawson by telling the Bible stories herself. She decided to spend an extra hour each night learning to tell Bible stories in the Yangcheng dialect. Within a few weeks, Gladys thought, she would know enough to start telling some simple stories. But Gladys didn’t have a few weeks. She didn’t even have one week in which to learn the Yangcheng dialect better.
Three nights later, as Gladys sat on a soapbox in her room learning some new Chinese words from her notebook, Mrs. Lawson came in and told her it was time for their walk together. Gladys had been behind in her schedule all day. The millet merchant had wanted to talk about the gospel, the woman next door was sick, and Gladys had visited her. She had also spent longer than intended writing a letter to her parents in London. As a result, Gladys had decided to not go on their usual walk that night. Very politely she told Mrs. Lawson she couldn’t take a walk with her because she needed to spend more time concentrating on language study.
Mrs. Lawson was gruff, and she could get into a bad temper and say things she didn’t mean, but Gladys had never seen her in such a temper as the one she worked herself into over Gladys’s not taking a walk with her. Mrs. Lawson told Gladys that if she didn’t want to go for a walk with her, then she might as well pack up her bags and leave. When Gladys didn’t say anything, Mrs. Lawson got even angrier. She started throwing Gladys’s belongings out into the courtyard. An audience quickly gathered at the gate to see what all the commotion was about, and Gladys fled into the kitchen and hid behind a table with Yang. Both of them were shocked by Mrs. Lawson’s behavior.
Yang spoke first. “She is old,” he said in a soothing voice. “She needs some time to calm down. Why don’t you take a little trip to Tsechow and visit the nice lady there. Mrs. Lawson will call for you in a few days when she gets over this.”
Gladys closed her eyes and tried to think. By now Mrs. Lawson had finished yelling and slamming the new doors. Finally, there was silence in the house again.
“But I can’t walk the trail to Tsechow. It takes two days,” said Gladys.
“You will not have to walk. I will arrange for you to go with a mule train,” replied Yang.
The journey back through Chowtsun to Tsechow was a sad one for Gladys. Only ten months before, she had set off to find Mrs. Lawson with the highest of hopes, and now she was returning an outcast. Perhaps the director at the China Inland Mission Training School in London had been right after all. Perhaps she really didn’t have what it took to be a missionary, thought Gladys.
Gladys had no way of letting Mrs. Smith know she was coming to stay. The mule train was the fastest way to get a message from one place to another, and Gladys was on the first mule train out of Yangcheng following Mrs. Lawson’s explosive outburst. Gladys didn’t know how she would explain the situation to Mrs. Smith when she got to Tsechow. As it turned out, she didn’t need to. Mrs. Smith understood perfectly.
“We all know Mrs. Lawson,” she told Gladys when they met. “Her heart is in the right place, but her temper does get in the way sometimes. Over the next few days, she’ll think about what she said to you and be sorry. I’m sure a messenger will be at the door in a week or so with a note asking you to come back. She can’t do without you, you know.” Mrs. Smith held Gladys’s hand as she spoke.
Gladys smiled. Hearing what Mrs. Smith had to say made her feel much better.
“You just rest here with us, and you’ll hear from Mrs. Lawson in no time,” reassured Mrs. Smith, patting the back of Gladys’s hand.
Six days later, a messenger came to the door, just as Mrs. Smith had predicted. But he didn’t come to deliver the message they’d expected. The messenger talked to Mrs. Smith in the Tsechow dialect. Gladys couldn’t understand much of what they said, so she waited for the conversation to end. Finally, after a lot of questions, Mrs. Smith thanked the messenger, bowed to him, and closed the door. With the color draining from her face, she turned to Gladys.
“What is it?” asked Gladys.
“I’m not sure,” said Mrs. Smith, frowning. “It’s a bit hard to work out really. The messenger was from the mandarin of Tsechow.”
Gladys gasped. She knew a mandarin, a Chinese official, didn’t trouble himself with small matters.
“It seems Mrs. Lawson has been in some kind of accident,” said Mrs. Smith.
“Is she all right?” Gladys interrupted, her heart pounding.
“Well, it’s a bit hard to say. The mandarin heard the story after it had been sent through several mule trains. He didn’t know where Mrs. Lawson was, but he said she was dying.” Mrs. Smith’s voice trailed off.
“Dying?” repeated Gladys.
“Yes, but that could mean anything. She may only have a scratch or two. You know how rumors are,” said Mrs. Smith, trying to sound reassuring.
Gladys nodded. Her thoughts were whirling. There was only one thing to do.
“I must find her quickly. She needs me,” Gladys told Mrs. Smith. “I’ll leave at once. Poor Yang, he has so much to do already. I need to help him with Mrs. Lawson.”
Mrs. Smith helped Gladys gather supplies for the return journey, and together they found a mule train that would take her back to Yangcheng. Once again Gladys was hoisted onto a mule litter and found herself swaying and bobbing her way back up into the mountains. Every time they passed a mule train going the other way, she would call out and ask if they had any news of the old white devil. No one had any news.
