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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d7b82bc --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,4 @@ +*.txt text eol=lf +*.htm text eol=lf +*.html text eol=lf +*.md text eol=lf diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6312041 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize +this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright +status under the laws that apply to them. diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..dbe882c --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for +eBook #66877 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/66877) diff --git a/old/66877-0.txt b/old/66877-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 819fb38..0000000 --- a/old/66877-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,10256 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg eBook of Mr. Wu, by Louise Jordan Miln - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and -most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions -whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms -of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you -will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before -using this eBook. - -Title: Mr. Wu - Based on the Play “Mr. Wu” by H. M. Vernon and Harold Owen - -Author: Louise Jordan Miln - -Contributors: H. M. Vernon - Harold Owen - -Release Date: December 4, 2021 [eBook #66877] - -Language: English - -Produced by: Stephen Hutcheson and the Online Distributed Proofreading - Team at https://www.pgdp.net - -*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MR. WU *** - - - - - -MR. WU - - By LOUISE JORDON MILN - (MRS. GEORGE CRICHTON MILN) - - Based on the Play “Mr. Wu” - By H. M. VERNON and HAROLD OWEN - - [Illustration] - - A. L. BURT COMPANY - Publishers New York - - Published by arrangement with Frederick A. Stokes Company - - - - - _Copyright, 1918, by_ - FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY - - _All rights reserved_ - - - _First published in the United States - of America, 1920_ - - PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA - - - - -CONTENTS - - CHAPTER PAGE - - I WU CHING YU AND WU LI CHANG 1 - - II AT RICE 7 - - III THE MARRIAGE JOURNEY 14 - - IV WEE MRS. WU 22 - - V HOMING 27 - - VI HEART ACHE 31 - - VII A TORTURED BOYHOOD 36 - - VIII SOME BALM 45 - - IX WU LI LU 52 - - X NANG PING 58 - - XI IN THE LOTUS GARDEN 62 - - XII O CURSE OF ASIA! 77 - - XIII MRS. GREGORY 87 - - XIV NANG’S VIGIL 93 - - XV THE MEETING OF THE MOTHERS 98 - - XVI GRIT 113 - - XVII THE SIGNAL OF THE GONG 124 - - XVIII AT THE FEET OF KWANYIN KO 128 - - XIX PREPARATION 132 - - XX WHAT WU DID IN PROOF OF LOVE 137 - - XXI A CONFERENCE 146 - - XXII SING KUNG YAH’S FLOWERS 156 - - XXIII AH WONG 161 - - XXIV IN THE CLUTCH OF THE TONGS 170 - - XXV WORSE AND WORSE 177 - - XXVI SUSPENSE 182 - - XXVII THE BEGINNING OF THE DUEL 190 - - XXVIII SOMETHING TO GO ON 203 - - XXIX “WILL YOU VISIT SING KUNG YAH?” 207 - - XXX SMILING WELCOME 220 - - XXXI FACE TO FACE 228 - - XXXII “CUR!” 236 - - XXXIII A CHINESE TEACHING 241 - - XXXIV ALONE IN CHINA 246 - - XXXV THE STORY OF THE SWORD 256 - - XXXVI IN THE PAGODA AND ON THE BENCH 265 - - XXXVII THE FAN 270 - - XXXVIII THE GONG 276 - - XXXIX AFTERWARDS 286 - - XL A GUEST ON HIGH 292 - - XLI “JUST WITH US” 294 - - XLII THE DUST OF CHINA FROM THEIR FEET 300 - - XLIII ENGLISH WEDDING BELLS 307 - - XLIV THE SOUND OF A CHINESE GONG 312 - - - - -MR. WU - -CHAPTER I - -WU CHING YU AND WU LI CHANG - - -A look of terror glinted across the eyes slit in the child’s moon-shaped -yellow face, but he stood stock still and silent--respectful and obedient. - -The very old man in the chair of carved and inlaid teak wood saw the -glint of fear, and he liked it fiercely, although he came of a clan -renowned for fearlessness, even in a race that for personal courage -has never been matched--unless by the British, the race which of all -others it most resembles. Old Wu adored little Wu, and was proud of him -with a jealous pride, but he knew that there was nothing craven in the -fear that had looked for one uncontrolled instant from his grandson’s -narrow eye--nothing craven, but love for himself, love of home, and -a reluctance to leave both; a reluctance that he was the last man in -China to resent or to misestimate. - -Wu the grandfather was eighty. Wu the grandson was ten. - -Rich almost beyond the dreams of even Chinese avarice, the mandarin -was warmly wrapped in clothes almost coolie-plain; but the youngster, -who was but his senior’s chattel, would have pawned for a fortune as -he stood, a ridiculous, gorgeous figure of warmth and of affluence, -almost half as broad as long, by virtue of padding. His stiffly -embroidered robe of yellow silk was worn over three quilted coats, silk -too, and well wadded with down of the Manchurian eider duck, and above -the yellow silk surcoat he wore a slightly shorter one of rich fur, -fur-lined and also wadded. The fur top-coat was buttoned with jewels. -The yellow coat was sewn with pearls and with emeralds. Jewels winked -on the thick little padded shoes and blazed on his little skull cap. - -For himself the mandarin took his ease in unencumbered old clothes, -but it pleased his arrogant pride and his love of the gorgeous that -his small grandson should be garbed, even in the semi-seclusion of -their isolated country estate, as if paying a visit of state to the boy -Emperor at Pekin. As little Wu was of royal blood himself, he might -indeed by some right of caste so have visited in no servile rôle, for -on his mother’s side the lad was of more than royal blood, descended -from the two supreme Chinese, descent from whom confers the only -hereditary nobility of China. Perhaps the yellows that he often wore -hinted at this discreetly. The sartorial boast (if boast it was) was -well controlled, for true yellow was the imperial color, sacred to the -Emperor, and young Wu’s yellows were always on the amber side, or on -the lemon; and even so he might have worn them less in Pekin than he -did here in the Sze-chuan stronghold of his house. - -The room was very warm, and seemed no cooler for the scented -prayer-sticks that were burning profusely in the carved recess where -the ancestral tablet hung, and as he talked with and studied the boy, -whom he had studied for every hour of the young life, the upright -old man with the gaunt, withered, pockmarked face fanned himself -incessantly. Little Wu had run in from his play in the bitterly cold -garden, all fur-clad as he was. The mandarin had sent for him, and he -had not stayed to throw off even one of his thick garments. Old Wu was -not accustomed to be kept waiting or the grandchild to delay. - -“Well?” the old man demanded, “you have heard. What do you say?” - -The quaint little figure kotowed almost to the ground. It was wonderful -that a form so swathed and padded could bend so low, wonderful that -the jewel-heavy cap kept its place. His little cue swept the polished -floor, and his stiff embroideries of gem-sewn kingfisher feathers -creaked as he bent. He bent thrice before he answered, his hands meekly -crossed, his eyes humbly on the ground: “Most Honorable, thou art a -thousand years old, and, O thrice Honorable Sir, ten thousand times -wise. Thy despicable worm entreats thy jadelike pardon that he pollutes -with his putrid presence thy plum-blossomed eyes. Thou hast spoken. I -thank thee for thy gracious words.” - -“Art thou glad to go?” - -“Thy child is glad, Sir most renowned and venerable, to obey thy wish.” - -“Art glad to go?” - -The boy swept again to the ground, and, bending up, spread out his -pink palms in a gesture of pleased acceptance. “Most glad, O ancient -long-beard.” - -The grandfather laughed. “Nay, thou liest. Thou art loth to go. And I -am loth to have thee go. But it is best, and so I send thee.” He held -out his yellow, claw-like hand, and little Wu came and caught it to -his forehead, then stood leaning against the other’s knee, and began -playing with the long string of scented beads that hung about the man’s -neck. - -“Well,” the mandarin said again, “say all that is in thy heart. Leave -off the words of ceremony. Speak simply. Say what thou wilt.” - -“When do I go?” It was characteristically Chinese that such was the -question, and not “Must I go?” or even “Why must I go?” The grandfather -had said that he was to go: that point was settled. From that will -there was no appeal. The boy scarcely knew that there were children -who did not obey their parents implicitly and always. That there -were countries--in the far off foreign-devils’ land--where filial -disobedience was almost the rule, he had never heard and could not have -believed. Of course, in the classics, which even now he read easily, -there were runaway marriages and undutiful offspring now and then. But -the end of all such offenders was beyond horror horrible, and even so -little Wu had always regarded them as literary makeweight, artistic -shades to throw up the high lights whiter, shadows grotesque and -devilish as some of his grandsire’s most precious carvings were, and -scarcely as flesh and blood possibilities. - -In all their ten years together there had been between these two -nothing but love and kindness. No child in China (where children are -adored) had ever been more indulged; no child in China (where children -are guarded) more strictly disciplined. The older Wu had loved and -ruled; the younger Wu had loved and obeyed always. They live life so in -China. - -“When do I go?” was all the boy said. - -“Soon after your marriage moon: the third next moon, as I plan it.” - -The child’s face glowed and creamed with relief. He was only ten, -and--at least in that part of the Empire--older bridegrooms were the -rule. If the dreaded exile were not to begin until after his marriage, -years hence, all its intricate ceremonial, all its long-drawn-out -preliminaries, and happily to be delayed again and again by the -astrologers, why, then here was respite indeed. - -“Nay,” the mandarin said, shaking his old head a little sadly, “think -not so. Thy marriage will be when the cherry trees in Honan next bloom.” - -“Oh!” the boy just breathed his surprise. - -“I think it best,” the old man added. “Your wife was born last month. -The runners reached me yesterday with the letter of her honorable -father.” - -Little Wu was interested. He had read of such marriages and he knew -that they really took place sometimes. He rather liked the scheme--if -only he need not go to England for hideous years of wifeless honeymoon! -He had heard none of the details of his exile--only the hateful fact. -But his Chinese instinct divined that in all probability young Mrs. -Wu would not accompany him. Yes, he rather liked the idea of a wife. -He was desperately fond of babies, and often had two or three brought -from the retainers’ quarters that he might play with them and feed them -perfumed sugar-flowers. He hoped his grandfather would tell him more of -his baby-betrothed. - -But the grandfather did not, now at all events, nor did he add anything -to the less pleasant piece of news, but rose stiffly from his chair, -saying, “Strike the gong.” - -The boy went quickly to a great disk of beaten and filigreed gold that -hung over a big porcelain tub of glowing azaleas, caught up an ivory -snake-entwined rod of tortoise-shell, and beat upon the gong. He struck -it but once, but at the sound servants came running--half a dozen or -more, clad in blue linen, the “Wu” crest worked between the shoulders. - -“Rice,” the master said, and held out his hand to the child. - -“Lean on me, lean on me hard,” pleaded the boy; “thy venerable bones -are tired.” - -“They ache to-day,” the octogenarian admitted grimly. “But untie -thyself first, my frogling. Thou canst not eat so--we are going to -rice, and not into thy beloved snow and ice.” - -The child slipped out of his fur, and cast it from him. His quick -fingers made light work of buttons, clasps and cords. Garment followed -garment to the floor, and as they fell servants ran and knelt and -picked them up almost reverently, until the boy drew a long free -breath, clad only in a flowing robe of thin crimson tussore: a little -upright figure, graceful, and for a Chinese boy very thin. Then the old -man laid his hand, not lightly, on the young shoulder; and so they went -together to their rice. - - - - -CHAPTER II - -AT RICE - - -James Muir was waiting for them in the room where their meal was -served. There were but two meals in that household--breakfast and -dinner--or rather but two for the mandarin and those who shared his -rice; the servants ate three times a day, such few of them as ate in -the house at all. But there was a fine mastery of the art of dining, as -well as a good deal of clockwork, in the old Chinese’s constitution; -and Muir, at liberty to command food when and where he would, found it -convenient and entertaining to eat with his pupil and his host. - -For three years the young Scot had held, and filled admirably, a chair -in the University of Pekin. The post had been well paid, and he had -enjoyed it hugely, and the Pekin background of life no less; but old Wu -had lured him from it with a salary four times as generous, and with -an opportunity to study China and Chinese life from the inside such as -probably no Briton had had before, and far more complete and intimate -than the no mean opportunity afforded by his professorship in the -capital. - -Chinese to the core and Chinese to the remotest tip of his longest -spiral-twisted and silver-shielded fingernail, Wu Ching Yu, astute and -contemplative even beyond his peers, searching the future anxiously saw -strange things ahead of this native land of his burning love, and he -had boldly mapped out an unique education for his grandson. - -Europe was coming into China. It was too late to prevent that now; Wu -Ching Yu doubted if it had not always been too late. Well, what would -be would be; Confucius had said so. Europe was coming into China, and -Wu Li Chang, his grandson, should meet it at an advantage which other -Chinese were not wise enough to prepare for themselves. Wu Li Chang -should know Europe before Europe came to reap the wealth of Shantung -and Peichihli and to fatten on the golden harvest of four thousand -years of Chinese thrift, frugality, and sagacity. The boy should have -an English education and a facile understanding of English thought and -of English ways. - -Quietly, remorselessly, the grandfather had studied the individuals -of the Aryan races already permeating in official and mercantile -trickles into Pekin, Hong Kong, Shanghai and Hankow. The Germans -commended themselves to him in much. His Chinese thoroughness liked -their thoroughness. His concentration liked theirs. But they had other -qualities he liked less. The French and the Americans he understood -least, and he somewhat under-estimated both. He liked the Russians; -but he gauged them to be threatened by the future rather than being -themselves seriously threateners of China. - -It was the British, he decided deliberately, who most threatened China -and promised her most; they, above all others, were to be dreaded as -foes, desired as friends. He thought that they had staying powers -beyond all other races save his own, honorableness and breeding. He -disliked their manners often, but he liked the quality of their given -word. He suspected that the English would win in the long run in any -contest of peoples to which they set their shoulders and their will: -and it was to England that he determined to send his boy, that there -the child might learn to hold his Chinese own in China in the years to -come, let come to China from the West what would. Cost them both what -it might--and would--of heartache, the boy should go, but he should go -with such equipment, such armor of _savoir faire_ as was possible -or could be made possible. He should learn to speak English, to ride a -horse English fashion, and to use a fork before he went. And so James -Muir was selected and secured as tutor, mentor and general leader to -the little yellow Chinese bear. - -Mandarin Wu had met Muir in Pekin, had studied and liked him. And Wu’s -great crony, Li Hung Chang, knew the Scot and respected him. The rest -was easy; for Wu was masterful, diplomatic, and the length of his purse -was almost endless. Muir had lived with the Wus for three years now, -and had known from the first what little Wu had only learned an hour -ago: that the boy was going to England and Oxford. - -Not for a moment had the mandarin neglected the Chinese furnituring -and decorating of the boy’s mind. Such a course would have been -unthinkable. Already almost the lad might have been presented at -the great national examination, and very possibly ennobled as one -of the literati, but the mandarin had not thought it necessary. The -boy could recite the Li Ki (the old, old Book of Rites that has had -more influence than any other secular book ever written, and has done -more to make and shape Chinese character and Chinese customs than -have all other books put together) and recite it without mistake or -hesitation; he could write decorous verse, paint swiftly and accurately -the intricate Chinese characters, and he knew his people’s history. -He could wrestle and tilt, and once he had beaten his grandfather at -chess. - -He had worked well with Muir, and Muir with him. They liked each -other. And after three years of constant drilling, always followed -industriously and often enthusiastically, the young Chinese had a glib -smattering of European lore, dates, grammar, facts. Europe itself--real -Europe--was a closed book to him, of course. The mandarin understood -that. But a few years in the West would mend all that: and then the -beloved boy should come home, to serve China and to rule his own -destiny. - -Between the old Chinese mandarin and the young Scotchman a sincere -friendship had grown--and almost inevitably, for they had so much in -common, and so much mutual respect. Each was honest, manly, and a -gentleman. Each had self-control, generosity, deliberation, taste and -a glowing soul. Three years of daily intercourse, and something of -intimacy, had destroyed completely such slight remaining prejudice as -either had had against the other’s race when they met at Pekin. - -Wu the grandfather was never long or far from the side of Wu the -grandson. James Muir had taught one Wu almost as much (though not as -systematically) as he had taught the other. And they had taught him -more than he had taught them: the child unconsciously, the mandarin -with conscious glee. All three had been eager to learn, the men more -eager than the boy; and the teacher who is at home always has a -wide and deep advantage over the teacher who is abroad. Background, -environment, each smallest detail and petty reiteration of daily life, -aid the teacher who instructs in his own country, but impede and thwart -the teacher who instructs aliens in theirs. - -Chinese families who live in some state usually eat in the great -hall--the k’o-tang, or guest-hall--of their house, as far as they have -any usual eating place. But more often than not when in residence here -the Wus “dined” (of course, they used for it no such term: it was, as -were all their meals, just “rice”) in the chamber in which the two men -and the child now sat. This house had more than one great hall, and -several rooms larger than this, though it was far from small. - -It was a passionate room. It throbbed with color, with perfume, with -flowers, with quaint picked music and with a dozen glows and warmths of -wealth. - -High towards the red and sea-green lacquered roof, carved and scrolled -with silver and blue, a balcony of pungent sandal-wood jutted from -the wall. The floor of the balcony was solid, and from it hung three -splendid but delicate lamps, filled with burning attar. The railing of -the balcony was carved with dragons, gods, bamboos and lotus flowers, -and within the railing sat three sing-song girls. They were silent -and motionless until, at a gesture of the master’s hand, the eunuch, -who was their choirmaster and their guardian, spoke a syllable, and -then they began a soft chant to the tinkling accompaniment of their -instruments. One played an ivory lute, one a lacquered flute, the third -cymbals and bells; and the eunuch drew a deeper, more throbbing note -from his chin or student’s lute--five feet long, with seven strings -of silk, its office to soothe man’s soul and drive all evil from his -heart. In the corner farthest from the table squatted, on the mosaic -floor, a life-size figure of the belly-god. He wore many very valuable -rings, an unctuous smirk, a wreath--about his shoulders--of fresh -flowers, and very little else. He was fleshed of priceless majolica, -but his figure would have been the despair of the most ingenious -corset shop in Paris; his abdomen protruded several feet in front of -his knees; his was a masterly embonpoint of glut. - -There must have been a hundred big joss-sticks burning in the room--not -the poor, slight things sold in Europe, but Chinese incense at its best -and most pungent. - -The mandarin used chop-sticks. The boy and his tutor ate with silver -forks. - -The food was delicious, and Muir ate heartily. But the child and the -old man ate little. Both were sick at heart. Five of the mandarin’s -concubines brought in fruit and sweetmeats. The boy took a glacé -persimmon, and smiled at the woman. He knew them all by name (there -were a score or more in the “fragrant apartments”), and he liked most -of them and often played with them. The mandarin paid no heed to -them whatever. Such of their names as he had once known he had quite -forgotten. The old celibate lived for China and for his grandson. But -he kept his Chinese state in China, and always would. And his women -were well clad, well fed, well treated and reasonably happy. And if one -of them died she was replaced, and so was one that took the smallpox -and was disfigured. But one was rarely scolded, and never was one -beaten. Wu Ching Yu rarely remembered their existence. When he did it -bored him. But they were part of his retinue, and it no more occurs to -an important Chinese to discard his retinue than it does to a portly -and decent Scot to discard his kilt in broad daylight on Princes -Street. The one discard would be as indecent as the other. Manners make -men everywhere, and they have no small share in making manhood, in -China as in Edinburgh. They differ in different districts, but, after -all, their difference is but of thinskin depth. It is their observance -that matters: it is vital. - -A great snake waddled in and came across the floor--a fat, over-fed, -hideous thing. Muir knew the creature well, and that it was perfectly -tame and harmless, but, for all that, he tucked his feet between the -rungs of his chair. Little Wu flung sweetmeats and bits of sugared -fat pork to the monster, and presently it waddled off again, crawling -fatly, and curled up at the feet of the belly-god, and went to sleep -with its sleek, slimy, wrinkled head under the lea of the god’s wide -paunch. - - - - -CHAPTER III - -THE MARRIAGE JOURNEY - - -Wu Li Chang enjoyed his wedding very much. He enjoyed all of it (except -the enforced parting with his young wife)--the wonderful journey to -Peichihli, brightened by anticipation; the more wonderful return -journey, not a little dulled by homesickness for his bride and by the -near-drawing of his voyage to England; the six weeks’ stay in the -palace of the Lis; and most of all--decidedly most of all--his wife. - -He would have been ingratitude itself if he had not enjoyed his visit -at his father-in-law’s. Never went marriage bells more happily. Never -was bridegroom more warmly welcomed or more kindly entertained. The -wedding ceremonies interested him intensely; they went without a hitch, -and never in China was bridal more gorgeous. The honeymoon was best of -all--if only it might have been longer!--and had but one jar. (Most -honeymoons--at least in Europe--have more.) The one in Wu Li Chang’s -and Wu Lu’s honeymoon was acute and plaintive: it was the day that his -wife had the colic and wailed bitterly. Wu Li Chang had colic too--in -sympathy, the women said, but James Muir suspected an over-feed of -stolen bride-cake, gray and soggy, stuffed with sugared pork fat and -roasted almonds. Probably the women were right, for Wu Li Chang was not -a gluttonous boy, and he had eaten sugared pork fat with impunity all -his life; but, caused no matter by what, the colic was real enough, -and Wu Li Chang could have wailed too, had such relief been permissible -to a Chinese gentleman. - -The cavalcade started at dawn on an auspicious day in early spring, -when the nut trees were just blushing into bloom and the heavy buds -of the wistaria forests were showing faint hints of violet on their -lips. The return journey was made when the short summer of Northern and -North Central China was turning towards autumn, and the great wistarias -creaked in the wind and flung their purple splendor across the bamboos -and the varnish trees, and the green baubles of the lychees were -turning pink and russet. - -The marriage ceremonial took quite a month, for the mandarins would -skimp it of nothing; and a Chinese wedding of any elegance is never -brief. The engagement had been unprecedentedly brief--made so by -the exigencies of Wu Ching Yu’s plans--and to have laid on the lady -the further slight of shabby or hurried nuptials would have been -unthinkable, and most possibly would have been punished by three -generations of hunchbacked Wus. - -Mandarin Wu kept his own soothsayer, of course, and equally of course -that psychic had pronounced for the brevity of the engagement, and -himself had selected the day of the bridegroom’s departure and -the marriage days. His commandments had synchronised exactly with -his patron’s desire. The mandarin’s wishes and the necromancer’s -pronouncements almost invariably dovetailed to a nicety; and when they -did not the mandarin took upon himself the rôle of leading seer, and -then changed his fortune-teller. It had only happened once, and was -not likely to happen again. Wu Ching Yu was a very fine clairvoyant -himself. - -The prospective parents-in-law were old and warm friends, Wu Li’s -senior by thirty years. The older mandarin had dreamed a dream one -night, just a year ago, and in the morning had sent a runner to Pekin -with a letter to his friend: - -“Thy honorable wife, who has laid at thy feet so many jeweled sons, -will bear to thy matchless house a daughter when next the snow lies -thick upon the lower hills of Han-yang. Thy contemptible friend sues -to thee for that matchless maiden’s incomparable golden hand to be -bestowed upon his worm of a grandson and heir”--and several yards more -to the same effect, beautifully written on fine red paper. - -The offer had been cordially (but with Mongol circumlocution) accepted. -The match was desirable in every conceivable way. And when Li Lu was -born she was already as good as “wooed and married and a’” to the young -Wu, at that moment teaching James Muir a new form of leap-frog. - -The cavalcade formed at daybreak, and Wu--both Wus--and the tutor came -out of the great house’s only door, mounted their horses, and the -journey began. It was a musical start, for each saddle horse wore a -collar of bells that the pedestrians might be warned to stand aside. - -The palanquins of state and their ornate sedan chairs were carried by -liveried coolies that the three gentlemen might travel so when they -chose; and those provided for Muir were as splendid as those for the -mandarin and little Wu. Teachers are treated so in China always, though -not always are they paid as the mandarin paid Muir. - -The presents for the bride were packed in bales and baskets--pei -tsz--of scented grass, slung by plaited bamboo straps from the -shoulders of the carrying coolies. There were three hundred bales in -all, their precious contents of silk and crêpe and jade and gems, of -spices and porcelains and lacquers, wrapped in invulnerable oiled silk -of finest texture and impervious to the sharpest rain. There were silks -enough to clothe Li Lu and Li Lu’s daughters forever, and the materials -for her bridal robes were as fine as the Emperor’s bride had worn. - -There were five hundred bride’s cakes, sodden gray things, quite small -in size but heavy with fat pork. There were sixty tiny pipes--all -for the bride--of every conceivable pipe material and design. There -were a hundred pairs of shoes, to be worn a few years hence when her -feet had been bound. There were birds to sing to her--living birds in -jeweled cages, and birds made of gold, of coral and of amber. There -were ivories and rare pottery and mirrors of burnished steel. There -were jades--such as Europe has not yet seen--bronzes beyond price, -tea, tortoiseshell and musk, paint for her face, and a bale of hair -ornaments. There were a score of slave-girls--ten for her, ten for -her mother. In a great bottle-shaped cage of rush a tame tortoise -rode at ease. It had been procured from Ceylon at great expense for -a maharajah’s children in Southern India, and trained to carry them -on its back. It were jeweled anklets now, and was for Li Lu when she -should be old enough to straddle it. Wu Li Chang had tried it, and he -said that its gait was good. And Muir had named it “Nizam.” But it had -its own servants; for the tortoise is one of the four sacred animals -in China. A hundred and thirty musicians followed the mandarin’s cooks -and bakers--a musician for each instrument of Chinese melody, and for -many two; ten more for the flutes, four for the harps, nine for the -bells, and a dozen for trumpets, drums and gongs--the women carried in -chairs, the men on foot. There was much, much more, and at long last -the mandarin’s bannerman brought up the slow rear. - -Beside the old noble’s palfrey a servant carried his master’s favorite -linnet in its cage. - -There was a long wait at the temple, some yards from the house. Wu and -his grandchild went in to make obeisance and to worship before the -temple tablets of their dead, while Muir sat outside and smoked an -honest meerschaum pipe and drank scalding tea. - -The road climbed hillward, and soon after they left the temple they -passed a magnificent paifang. The mandarin bowed to it reverently, -dismounted, and passed it on foot; and so did the child, knowing -that it marked the spot where his grandfather’s mother had hanged -herself--in her best robes--at her husband’s funeral. - -On the summit of the first hill they halted again. The old man and the -boy took soup and sweetmeats and tea, and Muir munched fishcakes and -savory rice; and the child looked long at the house in which he had -been born. - -The carved screen, standing a few feet before the door to keep the evil -spirits out, was dyed deep with sunlight, and its peaked roof’s green -and blue and yellow tiles were darkly iridescent, as were the green and -yellow and blue tiles of the old dwelling’s many tent-shaped roofs. - -When they moved on, the boy trotted on foot beside his grandfather and -twittered to the linnet, and the linnet twittered back; the mandarin -smiled down at them, and Muir lit another pipeful. - -All this was most irregular--so irregular that only a Wu could have -compassed it. The bride should have been coming to her husband, not the -bridegroom going to his wife. But Wu and the necromancer had managed -it. Wu was an iconoclast--China is full of iconoclasts. Moreover, it -was scarcely feasible to bring so young a bride across China in the -early spring--treacherous often and uncertain always. And Mrs. Li, who -was not well and who hated travel, had insisted upon conducting the -details of the wedding herself. That clinched it. Mrs. Li ruled her -husband. It is so in China oftener than it is in Europe. - -It would be delightful to chronicle every hour of that marriage journey -and of the splendid festivity that closed it. But this is the history -of an incident in Wu Li Chang’s maturity, and the boyhood that was -father to that manhood must be hinted in few, swift syllables. - -They traveled as in some highly colored royal progress. Now and again -they passed an inn. But they stopped at none. They squatted by the -roadside for “rice” whenever they would, and they fared sumptuously -every day. There was whisky and mutton for the Scot, and any number of -other things that he liked almost as well. When it rained--and in the -month it took them to reach Pekin it rained in angry torrents four or -five times--they stretched out in their padded palanquins and slept. -Each night they rested in comfortable bamboo huts that relays of the -mandarin’s servants had erected in advance; and when they had eaten -and had wearied of chess, the musicians sat outside and tinkled them -to sleep, and often the crickets joined in the throbbing music--and -sometimes the pet linnet too. - -Because they traveled in such state, the peasants, with which many of -the districts through which they passed teemed, never pressed near -them. But in the wildest parts there were a hundred evidences of human -life and industries. Tiny homesteads jutted from the rocks, perched -on the crags, hung beside the waterfalls. Wood-cutters, grass-cutters, -charcoal-burners passed them hourly and made obeisant way for the -shên-shih or sash-wearers, as the Chinese term their gentry. On every -sandstone precipice some great god was carved--Buddha usually--or a -devout inscription cut in gigantic letters--gilded, as a rule. Each -day they passed some old temple, ruined or spruce and splendid; some -days they passed a score; and nearing or leaving each temple was its -inevitable stream of pilgrims with yellow incense bags slung across -their shoulders--for Buddha shares the imperial yellow in Northern -China. Each pilgrim cried out “Teh fu”--acquire bliss--or “Teh lieo -fuh”--we have acquired bliss--and to them all the mandarin sent cash -and rice or doles of cowry shells, and sometimes bowls of liangkao, the -delicious rice-flour blancmange, colder than ice and more sustaining -than beef-tea, or plates of bean-curd, the staff of Chinese coolie life. - -They passed through groves of tallow trees, winged willow, hoangko, -walnut, acacia, poplar, camellia and bamboo; through miles of brilliant -fire-weed, arbutus, peanut and golden millet; through jungles of -loquat, yellow lily and strawberry. - -Everywhere there was running water, jade-green or musk-yellow or -frothing white: water clear and unpolluted always, for in Asia it is a -crime to befoul or misuse water. - -When the short twilight died into the dark, from every temple or hut, -by path or on hill, glints of lamp radiance sprang into the night, -and lamps glowed along the river banks; from every traveler’s hand a -jocund silk or paper lantern danced, and everywhere the kwang yin -têng--“lamps of mercy” the Chinese name these will-o’-the-wisps--darted -and burned. - -The days were golden, and the nights smelt sweet. - -And from then Muir had but one quarrel with China: it had made Japan -seem to him forever commonplace. - -James Muir had never enjoyed himself so intensely before: every moment -was a picture and a feast. And often now, sitting alone in London, he -closes his book-tired eyes and dreams that he is back once more in -China, crossing the Sze-chuan hills with a mandarin he admired and -a boy he loved, or sipping hot perfumed wine at the indescribable -kaleidoscope that was the marriage of Wu Li Chang and Li Lu, and -thinking sometimes, not without a sigh, of all he relinquished when the -great boat on which Wu Li Chang went to England took him--the tutor--as -he well knew, forever from China. - - - - -CHAPTER IV - -WEE MRS. WU - - -It was love at first sight. The bride crowed at the bridegroom, and he -forgot his grave new dignity and his ceremonial mandarin robes, and -clapped his little yellow hands and danced with delight. - -The bride’s part might have been performed by proxy, and there had been -some talk of this, Mrs. Li volunteering for the vicarious rôle. But Wu -Li Chang’s lip had quivered mutinously, and so the suggestion had gone -no farther. - -All was performed punctiliously--or nearly all. One “essential” had -been discarded perforce. The baby bride had torn off her red veil -and screamed her refusal to wear it. So Wu Li Chang had seen his -betrothed’s face some hours before he should. It was a brazen bride, -but very bonnie. She wore less paint than an older bride would have -worn, for Mrs. Li feared for the new, tender skin. Li Lu was a gleeful -bride. The feigned reluctance and the daughterly wailing had to be -omitted with the veil. She played with the strings of bright beads that -hung over her from the bridal crown, and peeped through them giggling -at her bridegroom. She laughed when their wrists were tied together -with the crimson cord. Wu Li Chang thought the hot marriage wine less -nice than that he usually drank at home; but when a few drops from his -cup were poured upon her mouth she sucked her lips eagerly and pursed -them up for more. - -Even Muir, who had small flair for babies, thought this one very -pretty. She was as fat as butter, but not nearly as yellow as Devon -butter is when creamed from kine that feed on buttercups and clover -there. Her tints were more the color of a pale tea-rose. She had -bewitching dimples and the exquisitely lovely eyes which are a Chinese -birthright. And her grandfather-in-law thought that she would be -surpassingly lovely as a woman; for Mrs. Li, whom he saw now for the -first time, was as beautiful as any woman he had ever seen, and his -proud old heart was much content, for he knew well how a wife’s beauty -comforts her husband’s years. - -She was married on a daïs, of course, but instead of sitting--as she -should have done--on a chair of state, she was tied upright in her -cradle, the perpendicular bamboo cradle of Chinese babyhood, very much -the size and exactly the shape of the huge tins in which farmers send -milk to London--to be seen in their hundreds any morning at Victoria or -Paddington. - -When the last of the hundred rites was over, Li lifted up the mite to -carry her to her own room; but she stretched out her arms to little -Wu in unmistakable desire, and he sprang to her and gathered her into -his arms and carried her himself up to her nursery and her women: the -happiest and the proudest bridegroom that ever was--and the mandarins -almost chuckled with delight and the Scot felt oddly queer. - -After that the boy was free of the women’s quarters (the fragrant -apartments) in the inner court. He had many a good game of battledore -and of kites in the spacious grounds and in the courtyards with his -wife’s brothers--she had six, and they were all very kind to him; but -most of his time he spent squatted on the polished cherry-wood floor -of her room, nursing the babe. He liked that best of all. She was a -placid mite, but she seemed to like his arms, that never tired of her, -almost as much as they loved nesting her so--and she slept longest or, -waking, smiled sunniest when they encradled her. Even the day the foul -fiend colic came and cankered them both, she seemed less tortured in -his holding, and it was he who soothed her first. - -And so they spent their spotless honeymoon. And much of it they spent -alone. Her amah watched them from the balcony where she sat sewing, -and Li’s prettiest concubine tottered in now and then on her tiny -feet, sent by Mrs. Li to see that all was well. But amah and concubine -counted scarcely as more than useful, necessary yamên furniture to the -boy, and were no intrusion. - -No man of his rank in all China had more or comelier concubines than -Li, and none concubines that were finer dressed. Mrs. Li saw to that. -She was a strict and punctilious stickler in such things. Her lord had -grumbled sometimes at the expensiveness of “so many dolls”--for he -was thrifty--and once he had flatly refused another semi-matrimonial -plunge. But Mrs. Li had lost her temper then, called him bad things, -and smacked him with her fan, and after that he had let her be, and -she had enlarged his string of handmaidens as she chose, and he had -paid for them; for he loved his wife, and feared her too, and she had -borne him six strong sons. But he saw to it that all the concubines -served her well. In English (and in the other tongues of Europe) more -exquisitely ignorant nonsense has been written about China than about -any other subject, and far the silliest and crassest of it all about -the facts of Chinese womanhood. - -Mrs. Li did not neglect her baby, and she was too good a mother and -too proud not to nurse the little girl herself, and she toddled into -the nursery as often as the hour-glass was turned thrice, coming in -slowly, leaning on an attendant’s arm because her own feet were so -very small and useless. As a matter of fact, she could move about -quickly enough, and run too (as many of the small-footed women can), so -skillfully had her “golden lilies” been bound. But she did it privately -only or when she forgot. It was not a fashionable thing to do. - -She nursed little Mrs. Wu, but she did not linger in the baby’s -room overmuch. The mother of six sons was not inordinately proud -of a daughter’s arrival, although the great marriage had gilded it -considerably. And she was greatly occupied in playing hostess to her -husband’s older guest. It is not etiquette for a Chinese lady to chat -with men friends or to flutter about her husband’s home beyond the -female apartments, but a great many Chinese ladies do--ladies in most -things as canonical sticklers as Mrs. Li. Of course she never went -beyond her home gates except in the seclusion of her closed chair. The -Emperor himself would as soon have thought of showing his face freely -on the Pekin streets. - -So the boy and the baby were practically alone much of the time. He sat -and crooned to her and rocked her in his arms, and she crooned to him -and grew fast into his warm young heart. And each week passed in added -delight. - -But they passed! Wu the mandarin had much business in Pekin, aside from -the paramount marriage business that had brought him so far; he had not -been in Pekin for years till now, although his official yamên was still -here, and much of his revenue. The yamên was a bleak, empty place that -he had never used as “home,” and now given up to compradores and other -underlings. He visited it daily after the wedding had been completed, -and well scrutinized his deputies’ accounts and doings. It took time. -Nothing is hurried in China except the waterfalls. But Lord Wu’s Pekin -business was done at last, and he took his elaborate farewells of the -Lis, and turned towards home, taking Wu Li Chang reluctant with him. - -The boy had asked to take the baby too, even venturing to urge that she -belonged to them now. (And to Muir he confided in an unreticent moment -that he’d dearly like to include her in the ill-anticipated trip to -England.) - -The grandfather agreed that she was indeed theirs now. Of course she -was. A Chinese wife is the property of her husband’s patriarch. That -is alphabetic Chinese fact. But they would lend her to the Lis until -her husband returned from Europe. The boy grieved secretly and at -heart rebelled, but outwardly he was smiling and calm, made the thrice -obeisance of respect and fealty, saying, “Thy honorable will is good, -and shall by me, thy worthless slave, be gladly done,” took a stolid -(but inwardly convulsive) leave of Mrs. Wu, fast asleep on her crimson -cushion, and turned his slow feet heavily toward his homing palanquin. - - - - -CHAPTER V - -HOMING - - -But the homeward journey was even more delightful than the journey -coming had been. The mandarin was very good to the boy, even a little -kinder than his wont, watching him narrowly with a gentle smile -glinting in the narrow old eyes. - -The air was pungent with the smells of coming autumn. In the wayside -orchards the trees bent with ripening fruit and were heavy with thick -harvest of glistening and prickly-sheathed nuts. - -There were still strawberries for the gathering, and the raspberries -and blackberries were ripe. The wayside was flushed with great waxen -pink begonia flowers and fringed by a thousand ferns. The air was sweet -and succulent for miles from the blossoms of the orange trees, and on -the same trees the great gold globes hung ripe. And the feathery bamboo -was everywhere--the fairest thing that grows in Asia. - -They passed groups of girls gathering the precious deposit of insect -wax off the camellia trees--blue-clad, sunburnt girls, singing as they -worked. - -Once--for a great lark, and just to see what such common places were -really like--Wu Li Chang and Muir had tea at an inn, a three-roofed -peaked thing built astride the road. The mandarin did not join them, -but stayed to pray at a wayside shrine dedicated to Lingwun--the soul. - -One day the three friends (for they were deeply that) saw the great -Sie’tu, the Buddhist thanksgiving-to-the-earth service, in a great -straggling monastery that twisted about a mountain’s snowcovered -crest, and blinked and twinkled like some monster thing of life and -electricity, for its dozen tent-shaped, curling roofs were of beaten -brass. - -The Scot got a deal of human sight-seeing out of that return -journeying. But it was its silent pictures and its wide solitudes that -the boy, child though he was, liked best. They moved on homewards -through a pulsing sea of flowers and fruit and ripening grain, of -song and light and warmth and vivid color, but above them towered the -everlasting hills, imperial as China herself, white, cold, snow-wrapped. - -The soul of China pulsed and flushed at their feet; the soul of China -watched them from her far height: China, Titan, mighty, insolent, older -than history; China, lovely, laughing, coquetting with her babbling -brooks, playing--like the child she is--with her little wild flowers. - -There was a tang of autumn in the air, and the cherries were growing -very ripe. - -Often at night they lit a fire of brush beside their wayside camp, -and sitting in its glow the old man talked long and earnestly to the -child. To much of their talk Muir listened, smoking his sweet cob in -silence. Some of it was intimate even from his trusted hearing. Nothing -was said of the voyage to England or of the years to be lived out -there. It had been said for the most already, and almost the subject -was taboo. But of the home-coming to follow and the long years to be -lived at home the old man said much. And most of all he talked to the -boy of--women. Again and again he told him, as he often had even from -his cradle-days, of the women of their clan. There are several great -families in China noted above all else for their women, and the Wu -family was the most notable of all. - -Most of the ladies Wu had been beautiful. Many of them had been great, -wise, gifted, scholarly. Their paifangs speckled the home provinces. -One had been espoused by an Emperor and had borne his more illustrious -Emperor-son. All had been virtuous. All had been loved and obeyed. To -treat their women well was an instinct with the Wus; to be proud of -them an inheritance and a tradition. - -Wu Li Chang just remembered his own mother, and his father’s grief at -her death. The father had died before he had laid aside the coarse -white hempen garments of grief that he had worn for her. The epidemic -of smallpox that had pitted the mandarin’s face for a second time had -killed the only son--the father of this one child. - -A great-great-aunt of the mandarin had been a noted mathematician. -Another ancestress had invented an astronomical instrument still used -in the great observatory at Pekin. On the distaff side the old man and -the boy could prove descent from both the two great sages--descent in -the male line from whom alone gives hereditary and titled nobility -in China, except in such rare, Emperor-bestowed instances as that of -Prince Kung. Wu Ching Yu and Wu Li Chang were descended through their -mothers from Confucius and from Mencius. One foremother of theirs had -written a book that still ranked high in Chinese classics, and one had -worn the smallest shoes in all the eighteen provinces. - -They had cause to be proud of their women, and to boast it intimately -from generation to generation. - -Li--perhaps in compliment for the tortoise--had given his son-in-law -a tame trained bear and a skilled juggler, and Mrs. Li had presented -Wu Ching Yu with two of her husband’s choicest concubines. The -older mandarin had graciously appointed them attendants upon his -granddaughter and to stay with her in Pekin. But the bear and the -juggler were traveling with the home-returning Wus; and when the -inevitable chess-board and its jeweled chessmen and the flagons of hot -spiced wine were laid between Muir and the mandarin, Bruin--Kung Fo -Lo was his name--danced and pranced in the firelight for the boy, who -clapped his hands and shook with laughter; the heart of a man-child -cannot be for ever sad for a baby-girl, known but two months and not -able to crawl yet. But Wu Li Chang did not forget Wu Lu. He often -wished that she might have come with them. He’d willingly have traded -the dancing bear for her, with the juggler thrown in (he had two better -jugglers at home); and for permission to forego the journey to Europe -he would have given everything he had: his favorite Kweichow pony (a -dwarfed survival from the fleet white Arabs that the Turkish horde -of Genghis Khan brought into China), his best robes, the little gold -pagoda that was his very own, everything except his cue, his ancestral -tablets, and his grandfather’s love and approval--yes, everything, even -his wife. - - - - -CHAPTER VI - -HEART ACHE - - -But it was summer again before he went. The mandarin was taken ill soon -on their home-coming, and all through the cold northern winter only -just lived. Death means little to the Chinese, but somehow, for all his -relentlessness of purpose, for all his iron of will, the old man could -not bring himself to part with the child while his megrim was sharp. -With spring he grew better, and when the great tassels of the wistaria -were plump and deeply purpled he sent the boy with his tutor to Hong -Kong. - -They took their parting in a room in which they had passed much of -their close and pleasant companionship. James Muir understood that -the old man avoided, both for himself and the lad, the strain of the -parting, long drawn out, that the cross-country journey must have been. -And Muir suspected also that the mandarin did not dare the bodily -fatigue of such a journey, no matter how easily and luxuriously taken. - -Muir was right. But chiefly, Wu chose to say good-by in their home--the -home that had been theirs for generations and for centuries. - -Except a few pagodas there is not an old building in China. The -picturesque houses, with their pavilions and their triple roofs, -flower-pot hung, curling and multicolored, spring up like mushrooms, -and decay as soon. Houses last a few generations--perhaps. Great -cities crumble, disappear, and every trace of them is obliterated -in a brief century or two. The Chinese rebuild, or move on and -build elsewhere, but they do not repair. Their style and scheme -of architecture never alter. The tent-like roofs (or ship-prow -survivals--have it as you will, for no one knows), painted as gayly -as the roofs of Moscow, make all China tuliptinted, and looking from -a hillside at a Chinese city is often oddly like looking down upon -the Kremlin. It is very beautiful, and it looks old. But unlike the -Muscovite city, it is all new. - -But this house of Wu, where both the old man and his grandson had been -born, was far older than a house in China often is. The Wus were a -tenacious race, even in much that their countrymen usually let slide; -and here, in these same buildings, or in others built on the same site, -the Wus had made their stronghold and kept their state since before the -great Venetian came to China to learn and to report her and her cause -aright. - -And it was because of this, far more than because his old bones ached -and his breath cut and rasped in his side, that Wu Ching Yu chose to -take here what must be a long and might well be a last farewell. - -The actual “good-by” was said standing beside the costly coffin which -had been the man’s gift from his wife the year their son was born. Wu -the grandson had played beside it when still almost a baby. He knew its -significance, its great value, and that there was no finer coffin in -China. The precious Shi-mu wood, from one solid piece of which it had -been carved, was hidden beneath layer after layer of priceless lacquer -and Kweichow varnish, both inside and out. And little Wu, who knew -each of its elaborate, fantastic details as well as if it had been a -favorite picture-book, had never been able to determine which was the -more gorgeous--the vermilion of its surface or the gold leaf of the -arabesque that decorated it. - -The old man laid one thin claw-hand on the casket, the bleached and -taloned other on the young shoulder. “I hope that you will be here to -stretch and straighten me in it at my ease when my repose comes, and I -take my jade-like sleep in this matchless Longevity Wood. If so, _or -if not_, remember always that you are Wu, my grandson, a master of -men, the son and the father of good women, and a Chinese. You have -always pleased me well. Now go.” - -The boy prostrated himself and laid his forehead on the old man’s foot. -The old man bent and blessed him. The child rose. - -“Go!” - -Without a word, without a look, Wu Li Chang went. And James Muir, -waiting at the outer door, noticed that not once did the child look -back--not when they came round the devil-protection screen, not -when they passed the ancestral graves, not when they went beneath -his great-grandmother’s memorial arch, not when they crested the -hill--nowhere, not at all, not once. He folded his hands together in -his long sleeves and went calmly, with his head held high and with a -sick smile on his pale face. They were to sail from Hong Kong in a few -days, but that was a small thing: this was his passing from China and -from childhood. - -And as they passed south, bearing east, the boy said little. He neither -sulked nor grieved--or, if he grieved, he hid it well. But he wrapped -himself in reticence as in a thick cloak. - -His eyes went everywhere, but his face was expressionless and his lips -motionless. - -Villages, cities, gorges, lakes, hills, highways and by-ways, he -regarded them all gravely, and made no comment. Even when they crossed -the Yangtze-Kiang, he looked but showed no interest. And when at last -Muir pointed into the distance, the boy just smiled a cold perfunctory -smile, and bent his head slightly in courtesy; nor did he display a -warmer interest when the exquisite island lay close before them. - - * * * * * - -The old rock that used to be the Chinese pirates’ stronghold and -tall look-out, but on which England has now built Greater Britain’s -loveliest holding--there is no lovelier spot on earth--sparkled in the -hot sunlight. The bamboos quivered on the peak, the blue bay danced and -laughed. The sampans pushed and crowded in the harbor, the rickshaws -rolled and ran along the bund, Europe and Asia jostled each other on -the streets and on the boats. - -Muir stood on the ship’s white deck holding Wu Li Chang’s hand, and -taking a long last look at the city of Victoria and at the old island -it threatened to overspread, and in parts did, bulging out into and -over the sea. His thoughts were long thoughts too. He had come to Hong -Kong little more than a boy, academic honors thick upon him, but life -all untasted. Few Europeans had seen China as he had, and almost he -sickened to leave her. He was going home. In a month or two he would -see his mother, who was very much to him. But China quickened and -pulled at his heart. He knew that he would not forget China. - -The boat slipped slowly off, backing like a courtier from the queenly -place. And the man and the boy stood without a word and watched the -unmatched panorama dim to nothingness. The small yellow hand lay cold -and passive in the big, warm, white one. Presently Wu drew his palm -gently from his friend’s, and turned quietly away and walked to the -saloon stairs. Muir turned too, and watched the quaint, gorgeous figure -as it went--so pitifully magnificent, so pathetically lonely--but did -not follow. He understood that the boy wished to be alone. And he -himself was glad to be alone just then. - -Two hours later, when the dressing warning went, he found his charge in -their cabin. Wu had no wish for dinner. He had been crying--almost for -the first time in his life; the Chinese rarely weep--and besides, he -was very sick. Muir dressed without speaking much, and when dinner was -served mercifully left the boy to himself and his pillows. - - * * * * * - -Across China an old man in shabby robes left his rice untouched, and -bowed long before the ancestral tablets of his race. - -And that night in her sleep Wu Li Lu gave a little cry; she had cut a -tooth. - - - - -CHAPTER VII - -A TORTURED BOYHOOD - - -On the whole, young Wu enjoyed the voyage. He liked the way the foreign -women eyed his clothes; not one of them had garments half so fine. He -liked the motion of the boat when once he had mastered it. There were -snatches of absorbing sightseeing at Colombo and at Malta. And in those -days one had to change boats between Hong Kong and Southampton. He had -much to think of when he chose to sit alone. He had Muir to talk with -when he liked to talk. And the captain, on whose left hand he sat at -table from Hong Kong to Colombo, was friendly without patronage and -played a good game of chess. - -And by some strength of will and childhood’s splendid resilience -he had thrown off (or laid away) his heart-broken apathy with his -sea-sickness. He enjoyed the voyage, on the whole. - -When they landed at Southampton Wu thought that he had found Bedlam, -and wondered, as he had not done before, why his grandfather had -condemned him to such hideous exile. Everything he saw revolted him. He -thought that nothing could be uglier. He was not even interested. The -very novelty had no charm. His little gorge rose. Europe--seen so and -so sounding--was a stench in his nostrils and rank offense to his eyes. -He held up his heavy embroidered satin skirts and tucked them about -him close, as a girl in Sunday-best might pick her way across the -malodorous street slime in a low and squalid neighborhood. - -It was late afternoon, and as they were not expected at their London -destination until the next morning, Muir put up at the hotel of which -Southampton was proudest. Wu was measurably accustomed to English food. -The mandarin had seen to it. And on the liner the young Chinese, eating -tit-bits and prime cuts from the joints at the captain’s table, had -found them good. But this was English food with a difference. James -Muir was not a selfish man--far from it--but he exulted, for the time -at least, at being at home; and he ordered a truly British dinner in a -burst of patriotism (not the less deep because its expression took such -homely form), forgetting to consult the boy’s tastes, which he knew -perfectly. They began with oxtail soup and finished with three kinds -of inferior cheese and a brew of “small” coffee which _was_ very -small indeed. Wu thought it would have been an unkindness to the palate -of a coolie. And in the big, strange bed he lay awake half the night, -grieving for his old grandfather, and trying to make up his homesick -little mind which was nastiest, apple tart or salt beef and carrots, -and wondering why the gods let a people be who made and ate such salad. -His tutor had taken two helpings, and had praised the abominable beef. - -The train frightened him. The little (first class, reserved) box -into which they were locked, appalled and then offended. Waterloo -was purgatory. The hansom he liked. They drove to Portland Place, -and Wu went up the steps with dignified eagerness. This he knew, was -the Chinese Legation--the London yamên of a distant kinsman. This -would be better--almost something of home. They expected him here. -But it was not better; it was worse--a purgatory and a drab, dull -one. Even James Muir was struck that the hall and the drawing-room -had been subjected to unhappy furnishing. And instead of the friendly -countryman that Wu had expected to greet him at the threshold, a sleek -young English attaché, with oiled yellow hair and a lisp, came forward -leisurely, saying, “Oh, it’s you. Hello then! Come on in.” A Chinese -servant opened the door to them, but he scarcely seemed real to the -disappointed lad, and there was nothing else in the least Chinese to be -seen. - -Why the Chinese Legation in London should have been furnished from -the Tottenham Court Road passes respectful understanding; but it had. -It was magnificently furnished. It had been done completely and with -no stint by a famous firm. Probably that firm would have done the -work less crudely if it had been left to its own well-experienced -professional devices. But it by no means had. The youngest attaché--he -of the fair, sleek locks--suffered from conscience. He suspected that -he might never shine at international diplomacy, but he intended -to do what he could to earn his “ripping” emolument. And among -other self-imposed activities he had elected to direct the great -house furnishers and decorators. The red and yellow, about equally -proportioned, of the hall and the reception-rooms were not his own -first favorites. A nice Cambridge blue with rose trimmings he’d have -liked better for himself. But the Chinese Government was paying him, -and he meant to play the game by that Imperial Body of an imperial -people; and he played it by some hundreds of yards of red silk plush -and bright marigold-yellow satin that he considered utterly Chinese. -Wu thought it barbaric, demoniac. The Chinese Minister saw both the -intended kindness and the joke, and enjoyed the joke very much indeed, -laughing slyly and good-naturedly up his long, dove-colored crêpe -sleeve. - -The Minister was out, the attaché explained: had had to go--“to the -F. O., don’t you know?”--Wu had no idea what “F. O.” meant--“sorry not -to be here. Back soon,” and he ushered them up into the long, draped and -padded barrack of a drawing-room, and said again, “Hello!” but added in -a verbose burst, “I say, sit down.” - -It was better when the Minister returned at last from the Foreign -Office. And after lunch he took Wu into an inner room more like China, -less like Hades. But until he died Wu hated the Chinese Legation at -Portland Place. And he stayed there for five years. Then he went to -Oxford. - -London he never learned to like. There was no reason why he should. -But he did learn to like the country places all over the kingdom’s two -islands. For he and Muir traveled together at Christmas and at Easter -and in the summer. - -Muir had a British Museum appointment--it was waiting for him when they -landed. But his hours and his duties were easy, and he still drew his -larger income from the coffers of the mandarin in Sze-chuan, and he -gave much of his time and labor to his old pupil. But for the Scot and -a few of the Chinese at No. 49 the exiled boy might have gone mad, so -shaken and cramped was he by homesickness. But they were an enormous -help and refuge. He worked hard and learned prodigiously, as only a -Chinese can learn. And, being Chinese, what he once learned he never in -the least forgot. - -Oxford he liked from the first. Always his soul ached for China, for -her people (_his_ people), her ways and her scenes: the smell of -her, the sound of her, the heart and soul of her matching to his: the -haze of her peaceful atmosphere, pricked by the music of her lutes, and -throbbing with the mystic beat, beat of the tom-tom. He thought there -were no flowers in Europe, no repose, no balance, no art, no friendship. - -But, for all that, Oxford thrilled him, and though he counted every -hour that brought him nearer to China, he counted them not a little -good in themselves because they passed by the Isis and in the classic -droning of Oxford days and ways. - -All the sunshine seemed to find him in Oxfordshire, all the shadow at -Portland Place. - -Small things rasped him at the Legation, and two heavy trials--one a -humiliation, the other a grief--found him out there. A few months after -his arrival they cut his cue and dressed him in an Eton suit. His rage -and shame were terrible. For months he did not forgive it--if he ever -quite did. Child as he was, they might not have encompassed it had they -not assured him that it was his grandfather’s will. That silenced but -did not console him. And he treated his new garments to more than one -paroxysm of ugly rage. Chinese calm is as great a national asset as -any of the many assets of that wonderful race. Heart disease is almost -unknown among the Chinese, and probably they owe their happy immunity -from that painful scourge to their own placidity and equable behavior. -But when they do “boil over,” as they do at times, the eruption is -indescribable--they foam and froth, and until the fit ( for it is -that) has spent itself and them they are uncontrollable and beyond all -self-control or semblance of it. - -Wu did not mind being laughed at in the London streets for his -“pig-tail” and his gold-embroidered satins. He was sincerely -indifferent to it. When English urchins called after him, “Chin-chin -Chinaman, chop, chop, chop,” he did not care a whit. Partly this -was good-nature--for he was good-natured as yet--and partly it was -vanity: the centuries-old vanity of a descendant of an interminable -mandarinate. He understood how immeasurably superior he was to those -who presumed to laugh at him--how much better clad, how much better -bred--and tolerated them and their peasant mirth very much in the -spirit of the old fellow in Æsop’s fable who scorned to resent the -kicks his donkey gave him because he “considered the source,” and -with, too, the quiet pride of the MacGregor who, when his acquaintance -expressed surprise that the great “Mac” had been seated below the salt -at some feast, asserted with bland arrogance, “Where MacGregor sits -is the head of the table.” But to be shorn of the cue and stripped of -the finery at which the canaille jeered maddened him and made him very -bitter. - -In ten years the Chinese in exile made many acquaintances, but only -one friend. Probably he filched some profit, some equipment for his -years to come, from each of the acquaintances; but, for all that, he -found most of them no small nuisance. A Mrs. Cholmondeley-Piggot was -his infliction in chief. She was a distant connection of the blond -attaché’s mother, and had gone to school with a second or third cousin -of Sir Halliday Macartney. And she had no doubt that those two facts, -by the strength and the charm of their union, made her _persona -grata_ at the Chinese Legation. She called there at the oddest -times, and dropped in to lunch uninvited; and the Chinese Minister, -trained from his birth to make great and chivalrous allowance for the -vagaries of women and of lunatics, would not permit his exasperated -staff to cold-shoulder, much less to snub, Mrs. Cholmondeley-Piggot. -And so she came to Portland Place frequently and unrebuked. She called -the Minister “my dear Mandarin.” She doted on China, and did so hope to -go there some glad day. She loved the Chinese, poor dears. And once, -when she gave a dinner party, she borrowed the Legation cook; but she -only did this once. The Minister would have condoned a second time, but -the cook would not. Mrs. Cholmondeley-Piggot had called him “John,” and -asked him if Chinese children loved their mothers, and the kitchen-maid -had taken liberties with his cue. - -But there were others of his race--more highly born than he--whom this -lady also called “John,” among them the Minister’s private secretary, a -very proud and solemn man who was a nobleman by inheritance--there are -a few in China--and who often longed to boil the friendly Englishwoman -alive in oil. - -She took Wu to her heart at once; and, what was far worse, she took him -for “a nice long day” in Kew Gardens. - -That awful day! And she meant so well! At first she merely bored him. -Then she infuriated him. It was scarcely fair to ask a Chinese boy to -think overmuch of Kew’s prized Wistaria sinensis--there were miles of -better on the estate at home. He thought the picture of the House of -Confucius hanging in the Museum an impertinence--no red scroll of honor -above it, no joss-stick burning in homage beneath it. The Chambers -imitation of a pagoda was to him even more unpardonable. What right -had this English tea-garden sort of place with a shabby mockery of a -sacred thing of China? And the bamboos and the golden-leaf flowers of -the hamamelis and the fragrant cream blossoms of the syringa made him -newly homesick. What right had the dear home-flowers to grow in Europe, -transplanted, dwarfed, caged, exhibited--as he was? And his hostess’s -remarks upon opium, as they stood beside the poppy beds, did not tend -to soothe him. Wu Li Chang did not know much about opium in those days, -but he knew considerably more than Mrs. Cholmondeley-Piggot did, and -he knew that these were not opium poppies, for all the lady or the -guide-books said--she had presented him with a guide-book, of course. -There was not much poppy culture in his part of Sze-chuan, but he knew -that much. Decent brands of opium were made from the white poppy. Some -inferior sorts, such as coolies chew, are made from the red-flowered -plants, but not such as these. - -To his angry young eyes the expatriated lotus plants seemed little -better than weeds; and when she expatiated upon the wonders of Kew’s -banyan tree (a picture rather of banyan fragments) he scorned to tell -her of banyans he knew well at home, trees under any one of which a -thousand men could shelter from the rain, and of one his grandfather -had seen under which twenty thousand men could hide from storm or sun. - -The day at Kew was a ghastly failure. But happily Mrs. -Cholmondeley-Piggot never suspected it, and was sincerely and -generously sorry that the boy could never seem to find time to go -anywhere with her again. - -The second trouble that came to him was on a grander scale than the -cutting of hair or the enforced wearing of strange, uncomfortable -garments. It was tragedy indeed, and almost broke his affectionate, -homesick heart. When he had been in England about a year word came that -his grandfather was dead. - -Wu was desperate. And now he was quite alone. He belonged to no one -in all the world. And in all the world no one belonged to him except a -baby-girl just learning to walk across a floor of polished cherry-wood, -nearly eight thousand miles away in old Pekin. - - - - -CHAPTER VIII - -SOME BALM - - -There was a great deal in the Oxford life that reminded Wu of China: -the beauty and the dignity, the repose, the dedication (and of some -the devotion too) to the finer things, and not less the riot of -the “wines,” the crash and clash of the “rows,” the luxury and the -elaborations. It was reminder that he found, and not resemblance. -Oxford was intensely English. He liked it none the less for that. -Nothing at Portland Place had annoyed him more than the mongrel mix-up -of West and East, the fatuous attempt to blend the unblendable. It was -neither English goose nor Chinese mongoose, and he loathed it. Oxford -was good, downright English dog, and well pedigreed; he liked the bark -and the bite of it and the honest look in its eyes. - -The crass mistakes so often made by his rich countrymen at such places -he avoided, partly by his own good sense and partly by Muir’s counsel -and the dead mandarin’s command. He spent of his great income lavishly, -but not too lavishly. He kept good horses, but not too good; and he -kept no valet. His entertainment was generous, but nothing much out -of the common, and never beyond the convenient return of the richer -men. He made much pleasant and useful acquaintance, but no friends. -He indulged himself a little in the furnishing of his rooms, but they -scarcely smacked of China. His jade lamp had cost a great deal, but a -young duke had one that had cost more. He had a little bronze and some -lacquer, but he had no kakemonos and burned no incense. Quite a number -of the other students had kakemonos by the half-dozen, and burned -joss-sticks elaborately. - -Wu worked prodigiously at Oxford and played industriously. He enjoyed -the work. There were some brilliant men at Oxford then, but no mind -better than his, and no industriousness to equal his. He took nothing -much in honors--that was not in his grandfather’s scheme; but he -assimilated an immense amount of alien fact and thought. He learned -Englishmen. He read many books and mastered them. But he had been sent -to Europe to study men and peoples, and he never forgot it or swerved -from it for an hour. None of his fellow undergraduates particularly -liked him, but few disliked him, and he interested many. Several of -the dons and fellows did like him; with one he might have had intimacy -if he had cared to, and from studying Wu two of the wisest reversed a -lifelong estimate of China and the Chinese. - -He excelled at all he did there. But almost always he was at pains to -be surpassed at the last lap; and when now and then he won, he made it -his inexorable rule to win by but a hair’s breadth. - -Not all his fellow undergraduates treated him with entire courtesy. -Some laughed at him openly at times and called him “Chops.” And because -these presumably were gentlemen he was not so altogether indifferent -to it as he had been to the gibes of the gamins on the London streets. -He was young enough to wince at the criticisms of companions he was -Chinese enough to despise. - -He studied women too when he had the chance, but with all them his -relations were impeccably ceremonial and on the surface. His being -was in China still, and no English girl stirred his pulse or fogged -his subtle shrewdness. James Muir, who watched over him faithful as a -mother, had somewhat feared for him when the passing of adolescence -into first raw manhood should come pounding at the door of sex. Muir -knew that in that experience Englishmen in exile usually found some -impulse toward vagary irresistible. But Wu lived on unruffled--alone in -Europe, and content with loneliness. - -He did not forget Li Lu, but he rarely thought of her now. No doubt she -would do well enough when the time came to assert his ownership and -desire sons. In the meantime, he was absorbed in carrying out to the -minutest particle his grandfather’s behest. - -There was a girl at a parsonage where he sometimes visited that he -thought less uninteresting than the others he met, less like a horse -or a tornado or a pudding, more like a girl. And Florence Grey made -him shyly welcome at her tea-table and taught him to play croquet. -She played a beautiful game, and in their second match he could have -beaten her. He gave her father’s church a new organ, and made her -first bazaar an unprecedented success: he half stocked the tables, -and then saw that they were swiftly stripped. She knew of many of his -“kind contributions,” though not of all his re-purchases--they were -indirectly made, and Mrs. Muir in Scotland was not a little aghast at -the frills and flummeries her son sent her in three big packing-cases. -And the Vicar looked a little askance at the presence of a smirking -heathen god, conspicuous, but not for being overdressed, on his -daughter’s stall. - -After the Oxford years came several years of travel, sometimes with -Muir, sometimes not. One summer Wu was the Muirs’ guest in their simple -Scottish home. - -After her first sternly concealed qualm or two, the friend’s mother -took an immense liking to the young Chinese, and her he liked at once, -perhaps better than he had ever liked any one but his grandfather and -her son. And it was in no way an attraction of opposites. Worth and -courage recognized worth and courage, and felt at home with them. Ellen -Muir and young Wu were both indomitable, naturally upright, proud, -clannish. They had twenty qualities and several prejudices in common. - -They talked together gravely for hours. He helped her often as she -moved keenly about her housework, and Muir rocked with silent laughter -at the sight, knowing that those delicate yellow hands had never -performed anything menial before, and in all human probability never -would again. - -Wu watched his hostess with lynx eyes, and the more he watched the more -be respected and admired. Late at night, in the hour he invariably -spent alone, and had done so from his first coming to England--the hour -in which he read and wrote and spoke and thought in Chinese, when in -spirit, and bodily too, he made obeisance to his ancestors’ tablets -across the world--he wrote down carefully much that she had said and -that he had learned from her. Among his many sons the gods might send a -daughter, and if they did she too should learn of Ellen Muir. - -Wu knew, of course, that many of the English ladies he had seen at -theaters and had met at aristocratic dinner-tables were respectable, -above reproach. But he had never yet escaped a shudder of contempt when -he had seen one “dressed” for evening. He had seen the coolie women, -in the cocoon sheds on his grandfather’s silkworm farms, scantily -clad in one brief garment, that by their own chilliness they might be -warned if the room grew too cold for the delicate spinners, and that -they might easily shelter the hatching worms beneath their breasts, -but that semi-nudity was a necessity and had a use, and rarely was -the privacy of the shed invaded; but women undressed (as he termed -it) collectively, voluntarily, and interspersed among men, he thought -abominable. Ellen Muir did not dine in décolletage. - -The eminent scholar--for as such the scholar world now recognized Wu’s -once tutor--she commanded, and even at times reprimanded, sharply, -exacting and receiving the docile obedience of a tractable child. -And that appealed to Wu as inevitably as did the high-necked stuff -gowns. Mother ruled sons so in China. And in China sons showed their -mothers just such meek obedience. The keeper of many of the most -valuable treasures at the British Museum spilled marmalade on her best -tablecloth one day, and she scolded him roundly, and Wu saw nothing -funny in it, and would not, had he known that the son had bought the -cloth and kept up the home. - -The little house stood on one of the loveliest of Scotland’s hillsides. -A brown burn rushed by the door. Great birds wheeled and whirred above -the eaves. This woman almost worshiped the beauty of her homeland, and -it touched her to see how much their strange guest saw and felt it. He -saw even more of it than she did--though, fortunately for their mutual -liking, she could not suspect that--and he felt it very much indeed. It -reminded him of the country beside the Yangtze in the neighborhood of -the Falls of Chung Shui. - -One long vacation Wu and Muir climbed the Alps and the London papers -reported Wu killed. But it was another Chinese, an undergraduate at -Cambridge whose name was Ku, who had misstepped and slid down into the -engulfing ice. But the mistake reached Oxford, and several there were -sorry to hear it. And Florence Grey, who had been married the week -before, heard it on her honeymoon, and felt a little saddened for a few -moments. He had always seemed a nice boy, and he was so far from home. - -Once he lived for three months in Tours, alone with the people and the -language. - -After Oxford he traveled carefully, as he had done everything so far, -sometimes alone, sometimes with Muir, searching Europe for every -experience that might serve his grandfather’s desire and plan. - -When Wu was twenty-four he went home. James Muir had half expected to -be asked to go also, but Wu did not suggest it. - -His European phase was over, and he wished to be alone with his own -people in his own land. - -Bland and courteous to all, yet he spoke little on the long voyage, but -sat looking out across the waters towards China. And he did not trouble -to leave the boat either at Malta or at Colombo. - -But he was not dreaming as he sat brooding, looking out to sea. He was -planning, for himself and for his race. - -There were international clouds ahead. Wu saw them. - -A week in Hong Kong--he had much to do there--and then he pushed across -the mainland that was still China, where feet of Europe rarely trod, -and journeyed to his home. - -When he had paid his long respects to the graves and the tablets, he -set his house in order, and the estate. But indeed all had been well -kept in his absence. It seemed as if the old mandarin’s spirit still -brooded there and his adamant will still ruled. - -To visit all he owned took Wu some months, though he went swiftly, by -boat, by horse, and in chairs with which the coolies ran, for there -were several wide estates and a score of smaller holdings. - -All seen at last and ordered to his mind, he took the old winding road -to Pekin and knocked at Li’s yamén gate. - - - - -CHAPTER IX - -WU LI LU - - -Wu did not see his wife in Pekin. He stayed with Li several days, and -long and earnest was their talk, many and deep their interchanged -kot’ows, and the cups of boiling tea and tiny bowls of hot spiced wine -they drank together innumerable. Mrs. Wu was well, they assured him, -and utterly inconsolable at her approaching departure from her parents. -She wept and wailed continuously, and would not be comforted. Wu bowed -and smiled. For this was as it should be. No Chinese maiden would do -otherwise, and his bride’s high estate predicated an utmost excess of -grief. And once he caught through a wide courtyard the noisy storm of -her grief. Evidently she had been well brought up, and Wu was highly -satisfied. - -He took profoundly respectful farewells of Mr. and Mrs. Li and hurried -home. - -And while he waited for the coming of his bride, some days thinking of -it a good deal, some days thinking of it not at all, he had twofold and -strenuous occupation. He divided his time between preparation for the -reception and the housing of his wife, and laying the foundations of -his own relations with the innumerable “tongs” or secret societies that -in China play so powerful and so indescribable a part in all things of -great pith and moment, and more particularly in everything touching -international affairs and the treatment of aliens in China. - -Sociology and political economy had been no small part of Wu’s studies -in Europe; there he had observed and gleaned much on those lines that -he planned to graft upon the sociological and political methods of his -own people. - -While studying Europe he had kept in passionate touch with China. He -knew that the mighty current of her being ran underground. He was -permeated by things European now, for the time at least, but was in -no way enmeshed by them. He did not make the mistake that some highly -intelligent Chinese have made after years of European study and -travel--the mistake of underestimating the quality, the power, and the -permanence of the “tongs,” of which so comparatively little is heard, -so much felt, in every part of China. - -He knew that who ruled China in deed must rule through the secret -societies of that tong-ridden and yet tong-buttressed land; he knew -that who would influence and serve China greatly must work through the -tongs, or work but half effectually. - -He intended to rule in China, to be one of the supreme powers behind -and beneath her throne; for he was loyal to the Imperial Manchu, in -his heart held no traffic with republicanism or rebellion, and meant -to hold none with his hands. He intended to rule because dominance was -his nature and his delight, and equally because he believed it to be -his duty--his duty to China and to the house of Wu. Even more than he -intended to rule he intended to serve. He was his country’s servant. -He had dedicated his life to China, and sworn her his fealty on almost -every day of his exile. - -He determined to rule and to serve with and through the established -tongs, and himself to establish others, because he saw clearly that so -he could serve best, and with the surest, tightest grip. - -While he waited for the girl to come with noise and cavalcade, he -stayed at home and in the neighborhood of home; but every day odd -messengers came and went, quiet, unobtrusive men. Often Wu was closeted -for hours with some shabby-looking coolie, footsore and travel-torn. Wu -was seeking and making affiliation with tong after tong. He was sowing -seed all over vast China. - -But he found time, or took it, to oversee every item of the bridal -preparation. So lavish had been his orders on his first home-coming, -and so well had they been obeyed, that further preparation might have -been dispensed with--only a Chinese mind could have detected blemish or -contrived improvement or addition. Wu’s mind was very Chinese. Thirteen -years in banishment had not discolored it in the least. Everything that -Lu would touch, every place that she would see, was in some way or -detail given additional beauty or comfort. In her garden he lavished a -wealth of care. The very flowers seemed to respond to his urging, as -things much more inanimate than flowers do respond to such a master -will as that of Wu. Wu Lu’s garden foamed and glowed with bud, perfume -and flower, until even in China there could scarcely have been another -spot so roseate or so full of rapture. - -There was a pagoda of course, a bridge, a lotus lake, a sun-dial and a -forest of tiny dwarf trees. - -The pagoda had eleven storeys. Each storey’s projecting roof had eight -corners, and from each corner Wu had hung a bell of precious blue -porcelain, silver lined, silver clappered. The slightest breeze that -came must set one or more of the delicate things a-ringing, and by a -costly and ingenious device each motion of a bell threw down on the -garden not only music, but sweet, aromatic smell--a different odor, as -a different note, from each bell. - -That was the last thing Wu could find to do. - -And then they gave him his wife. They brought her to him through the -gloaming one balmy autumn eve, sitting hidden in her flowery chair, -carried through the paifang which he had regilded and newly crimsoned -in her honor and in that of his never-to-be-forgotten great-grandmother. - -She came in greatest state, and much of the glittering ceremonial -they had enacted fourteen years ago they re-enacted now; and all that -necessarily had been omitted before because of her tender days, and of -the marriage having been (irregularly) celebrated at her home in lieu -of his, was scrupulously performed now. - -At the house door he bent and lifted her from her chair, which the -bearers had put down on the ground. She shrank back on her cushions -into the farthest corner when he drew the curtains aside, and when -he reached to touch her she panted delicately like some frightened -pigeon. He could not see her, even when he held her in his arms, for -she was shrouded from crown to toe in her voluminous veil of crimson -gauze. There had been no difficulty about her wearing it this time. -She knew all the niceties of her important rôle, of which she had -been so outrageously ignorant before, and performed them to a Chinese -perfection. He saw only a red-wrapped bundle--it felt soft and tender -to his gentle grip--with an under-gleam of jewels and gold, and the -iridescent glitter of the strings of many-colored beads hanging from -her crown thickly over her face. And no one else saw even that much, -for when the chair had been laid at his feet the bearers and all her -retinue and his had turned away and stood backs to the chair. - -He carried her in, holding her over a dish of smoking charcoal at the -threshold, that all ill-luck might be for ever fumed away from her. - -In the great hall he sat her high up upon her chair of state and took -his seat on his. For more than an hour they sat so, and neither spoke. -But when the wild goose which the medicine-man flung from a lacquered -cage circled about her head and not about his own, indicating that she -would rule, not he, Wu laughed aloud, and under her red veil the girl -looked down at her half-inch embroidered shoe and smiled well pleased. - -They drank from one cup. The crimson cord was tied about her wrist and -his, fastening them together now for weal or woe. - -At length he rose and led her to the tablets of his ancestors--hers too -now, for Li was no longer her father--and there they bent together and -paid homage again and again. - -Then came the marriage feast. - -And through all the incense burned, the tom-toms bleated brazenly, -a hundred instruments gave out their unchorded melodies, and the -slave-girls shrilled Chinese love-songs in their sweet falsetto voices -and a marriage hymn that is four thousand years old. - -And all this time he had not seen her face, and she but dimly his. - -But at last they were left alone. One by one the horde of people who -had witnessed and served them made repeated obeisance and withdrew. - -They were alone. - -Gently, carefully, slowly he led her into an inner room, and there -he lifted the red veil and looked at her face. After a long moment -she raised her pretty almond eyes and looked in his--two gorgeous, -bedizened figures, standing very still, with a cloud of red silk gauze -heaped at their feet. - -Wu made a sudden sound that was almost a sob, and held out his arms. - -“My flower,” he said. - - * * * * * - -All night long the perfume of the flowers, the sweet, shrill voices of -the sing-song girls, and the soundings of the guitar and the flutes -stole softly in through the chamber casements; all night long they -heard the throb, throb of the drums and of old barbaric love-songs; and -all night long each felt the beating of the other’s heart. - -After that Wu Li Lu forgot that she had had a father and a mother, -brothers, girl-friends and a home in Pekin. And Wu let all the days -slip by, forgetting business of his own, affairs of China, life-plans, -life-schemes, almost forgetting his grandfather; scarcely remembering, -his wife’s soft hand in his, to make obeisance before the old, old -tablet in front of which their children would bow and worship them in -far-off years to come, when he and Wu Lu should be dead. - -For a year they lived in paradise, the pretty paradise that comes but -once and does not come to all. - -Mrs. Wu was as sweet, as delicate, as the graceful pet names he called -her. She had no great strength of character, and little distinction of -mind. How long it would have taken the infatuated man to learn this is -impossible to guess. Whether, when learned, it would have diminished -her fascination in the least is as difficult to determine, but, on the -whole, probably not, Wu being Wu in China China. - -When their first year closed in she bore him a daughter, and in bearing -died. - - - - -CHAPTER X - -NANG PING - - -The years passed, and Wu took no other wife. Time enough, he reasoned; -and while he devoted himself, body and soul and seething, subtle -intellect, to the big tasks he had set himself and had had set him -by the old mandarin long ago, the bachelor habit grew upon him and -encrusted him with its self-sufficient and not unselfish little -customs, as it does so many men of Europe. Perhaps in this and in some -other things Europe had marked and tinged him more than he knew. - -Except for his wifelessness, he kept all such establishment as a -Chinese gentleman should; there were flower-girls in his retinue and -much in his life of which Ellen Muir would have disapproved violently. - -He had felt no disappointment at the sex of his firstborn. Perhaps -his grief (it was very great) at Wu Lu’s death made him indifferent -to the great sex-blemish in the child. Or possibly his descent from -Queen Yenfi and from a score of ladies little less able or less -famed gave him an unconscious estimate of the woman-sex strangely -un-Chinese--unless China be misreported. - -Mrs. Li had petitioned for the custody of the babe, but Wu had refused -sternly. “She is a Wu. She stays with Wu.” But he conceded a point--a -minor point. A younger sister of Mrs. Li was widowed at about the time -of Wu Lu’s death, widowed while still a bride and childless. She begged -to come and be foster-mother and servant to the motherless babe; and Wu -had consented to her coming, for a time at least, partly because he -had known and liked her husband, partly in pity for her widowhood--the -most uncomfortable condition in Chinese life, and abjectly deplorable -when the indignity of childlessness is added--partly because he had no -kinswoman of his own to fill a post which he instinctively hesitated to -confer on any hireling. Sing Kung Yah came; Wu found her amiable and -tractable, and, he thought, fairly efficient. Of her fondness for the -child or the child’s fondness for her there could be no doubt, and her -place in their household soon came to be one of established permanency. -From the first Wu exacted for her treatment from his retainers such -as Eastern widows rarely enjoy, and gradually he gave her some real -authority, as well as much show of it, in addition to the lavish -courtesy he paid and enforced for her. Sing Kung Yah was pathetically -grateful. She never heard of Ellen Muir, and little thought that she -owed her unprecedented ease of widowhood to the dignity and firm -despotism with which an Aryan woman had worn her weeds in Fife. - -When Nang Ping was three her father brought her to Kowloon, and when -she was thirteen established her as mistress of the tiny and very -charming estate he had bought and perfected there, just beyond the -English holding, and where he made his home when his business lay, as -it did more often than not, in Hong Kong. - -He knew now that he should take no wife. He had no wish to, and he -saw no necessity. For he could adopt a son--presently. There was time -enough. A wife was neither here nor there, but certainly a son was -indispensable. He could not die without a son. Without a son he could -not be properly buried, or mourned and worshiped. - -Upon the great wealth his grandfather had left him he piled wealth -far greater. But far beyond the riches he amassed he amassed power -and influence. The ramifications of his influence were endless and -tortuous. Tze-Shi felt Wu’s influence as she decreed policies, signed -edicts and enacted laws of tremendous reach, weaving and fraying out -the destiny of China, and there was not a coolie in Hong Kong but felt -and obeyed it. No one in China--unless it was Tze-Shi herself--wielded -more power than Wu. - -He held the Chinese in Shanghai, in Penang and in Rangoon, in Bentick -Street and in Yokohoma, in the hollow of his hand. - -Wu wore a mandarin’s button now. And he had presented himself at one of -the great national examinations in the first year of his fatherhood. To -be enrolled among the literati served him and his purposes, as it did -to wear the coveted peacock feather. But he did not overvalue either of -the showy distinctions, or often wear them conspicuously. Chinese to -the core, superficially he was no little cosmopolitan. All that he had -found good in English life and in English ways he adopted frankly, but -always for a Chinese purpose, with a Chinese heart. At home he usually -wore the dress and ate the food of his country, but not always. Out -of his home, at least in the treaty ports, he was usually dressed as -Englishmen dress, but not always. - -Nang Ping had more apparent freedom than other Chinese girls of fair -birth have; and some of it was real. She had English governesses from -time to time. She spoke English almost as purely as her father did, but -with less vocabulary and far less command of idiom, and French quite as -well as he; she played Grieg and Chopin better than Hilda Gregory--the -rich steamship magnate’s only daughter, and not a contemptible -pianist--so the German music master who taught them both had told the -Governor’s wife. - -The Gregorys had been in Hong Kong for a year--the mother, the son and -daughter, as well as Mr. Gregory himself. But the two girls had never -met. Hilda Gregory went everywhere, but Nang Ping did not often leave -Kowloon. - - - - -CHAPTER XI - -IN THE LOTUS GARDEN - - -Kowloon was drenched with sunlight, and the lotus garden was drenched -with music. A minstrel paused a moment to drink in the beauty of the -great lilies, white, yellow, pink, amber and mauve, one that had cost a -fortune, clear pale blue, one that had cost more, a delicate jade green. - -The strolling singer retuned his lute and moved across the garden, -singing as he went. - -It was the typical garden of a rich Chinese home--so repeatedly -caricatured on the “willow-tree-pattern” crockery of cheap European -commerce--caricatured but also somewhat accurately portrayed. But the -gardens on the plates for sale in half the pawnshops in outer London -(the aristocracy of the pawnbrokers will not look at them any more), in -every household furnisher’s in Marylebone and Camberwell, in Battersea -and Shoreditch, and on the business streets of every British town and -village, are of one uniform Chinese blue--the blue the sampsan women -wear when their clothes are new--and background of white, Chinese -white, appropriately enough. This living garden in Kowloon was of every -vivid hue on nature’s prodigal palette, and its background was of blue -hills and purple haze and blue, white and limpid golden sky. - -A twisted camel’s back bridge of carved stonework, like coarse lace in -its pierced tracery, dragons squatting and guarding its corners, and -flowers hung from it everywhere in baskets of bamboo, of crystal, of -painted porcelain and of lacquer, spanned one corner of the lake, above -which a crooked flight of steps at each bridge-end lifted it high. -Dwarf trees in glazed pots, some on the ground, rarer specimens on -carved stands of teak wood and of ebony, stood here and there. And in -the artificial water, half river, half lake, which the miniature bridge -crossed, the priceless lotus grew and glowed. Most of the great lily -cups were pink, others were deeply red. - -Some distance from the house there was a pagoda open to the garden, its -plaid floor strewn with cushions, a book or two, a woman’s scarf, and -from every outer point and eave hung a pot or a basket in which flowers -of every brilliant hue grew and bloomed. - -A sinuous gravel path turned from the dwelling-house to the outer wall, -twisting and turning ingeniously all over the garden, passing close -to the cypress bush at the foot of the steps that led to the bridge, -skirting the baby grove of dwarf orange and lemon trees, and encircling -the gnarled old cherry tree. - -Whatever we may think of China, the sun thinks well, and shines so -gloriously nowhere else. It made the flowers in Nang Ping’s garden -glow with a vivid brilliance that was part their own, part his; it -touched the summits of the hills seen in the distance with a light blue -haze which deepened to purple at their base. Against that dark purple -background the sumptuous little garden foreground glowed with a riot of -color, and quivered with pulsing, scent-breathing flowers. - -A servant squatted on his yellow heels, picking up dead leaves and -broken flowers heads, gathering them into his tidy basket. Another -gardener was sweeping the gravel path as carefully as if it had been -the velvet carpet than which it was no less soft. - -Four girls tripped down the bridge, chattering and laughing as they -came, and the gardeners took up basket and broom and moved away. - -Hearing the singer (he had left the garden now), the girls rushed -with one accord, and climbed and clambered up until they could peer -at him over the wall. One poised like a fat balloon-shaped butterfly -on the high edge of a great flower-pot, two jostled together tip-toe -on a majolica bench, and one (the smallest footed of the lot) climbed -squirrel-nimble up a tulip tree. They pelted him with flowers, tearing -blossoms ruthlessly from shrub and vase and vine and tree, and each -commanded him shrilly to sing to her her favorite song. - -“Chong-chong er-ti” (professional singer), “sing on,” one cried; “Yao -won chong” (let us play with him), another; and the girl in the tree -tore the jasmine from her hair and tossed it into his hands. - -He leaned against the wall and sang: - - “Over green fields and meadows Tiny Rill ran - (The little precocious coquette!); - She was pretty, she knew, and thus early began - Gayly flirting with all that she met. - Her favors on both sides she’d gracefully shower; - One moment she’d kiss the sweet lips of a flower, - The next lave the root of a tree;” - -and as he sang, Nang Ping, with Low Soong, her cousin, in her wake, -came slowly from the house, and stood listening too, one finger on her -lips, her eyes far on the fading hills. - -They did not see their mistress--they were her play-girls, in -attendance on rich Wu’s child--until the man had done and gone. But -when they did they rushed to her, laughing and pelting her with speech. -“Nang Ping! Nang Ping! Come, play with us! Come, play!” But she beat -them off, saying, “Go away. I do not want you now. Go away.” - -But they clustered the closer and girdled her with their arms, but -again she shook them off, repeating impatiently, “Pa choopa, pa -choopa;” and realizing that she meant it, they went, tumbling against -each other as they ran laughing and singing, and turning as they went, -and hurling flowers at her, and crying, “Pu yao choopa,” that they did -not wish to go away. - -When they had gone the cousins went to the pagoda, looked in it, and -then about it, carefully. Then they beat the garden as some careful -watchman might some treasure-place of price. - -It was growing dusk. - -The girls went together to the lotus basin, and stood a long time -looking down into its darkling glass. But neither spoke. The brilliant -lilies were softer-colored now, turning to pink and blue-greys, and the -red few almost to ruddy black. - -A long, low whistle pierced through the gloaming from beyond the wall. - -Nang Ping’s tiny hand clutched excitedly at her sash. “Soetzo”--“go and -watch over the bridge,” she told her cousin quickly. But Low Soong had -already gone. - -The blackbird whistle came again, nearer, but very soft. - -Nang Ping answered it with a high falsetto crooning, and in a moment -more a man cautiously parted the bamboos that grew clumped beyond the -wall, vaulted it, and stood within the garden. Nang Ping ran to him -with a little gurgling cry, and he caught her in his arms. - -No Chinese lover this, in Oriental gala dress, with glancing amber eyes -and coarse threads of strong red silk prolonging his long braid of -straight hair, but a Saxon, wide gray-eyed, a distinct wave in his fair -short hair, trim and British in his well-cut suit of white duck, with -the crimson cummerbund wound about his waist. - -He looked down with laughing tenderness at the picturesque little -creature in his clasp, half-affectionate, half-amused, and she looked -up at him with all a woman’s soul--soul aflame--and all a nation’s -passion in her eyes, adoring and perfect trustfulness. - -“Oh! my celestial little angel,” he murmured at her flushing cheek. - -The girl nestled closely and sighed with content, and he held her, and -played with the dangling jewel in her fantastic hair. - -“You have been so cruel long, Basil,” the girl told him gently, but -moving not at all. - -Basil Gregory laughed lightly. “So? I could not come before. You’re an -impatient puss.” - -Nang Ping shook her sheeny head, and the red flower in her wonderfully -dressed hair shook and quivered, and all the jade stick-pins and the -hanging emeralds and turquoise jangled against the tassel of small -pearls that she wore pendant from her comb. “No. I am never impatient. -But the sun-dial tells not lies. You came not soon, and I did miss you -hard.” - -“Well, I’ve brought you news. Guess.” - -“Thy honorable mother----” - -“Good girl! You’ve guessed it first go. My mother and Hilda are coming -to-morrow to make the acquaintance of pretty Miss Wu and to see her -very honorable garden.” - -“Your mother and your sister,” the girl said under her breath softly. -“Ah!” - -“They were no end pleased to come, especially the mater. She’d come -quick enough anywhere I told her to. We’ve been the greatest chums -always, the mater and I. Hilda pals with the governor, but she’s no end -keen on China, the motherkin--goes into all sorts of smelly dives and -dens after blue plates and shaky ivory balls, and--and all that sort -of thing, you know; reads the rummiest books, knows all about spotted -dragons and crinkly gods. She bought one yesterday, a rum, fat fellow -made out of some sort of crockery stuff; he sits squatted on the floor -this minute in her own room, and if you pat him on his noddle the old -chap nods it, and goes on nodding it, too, for a blessed hour by the -clock”--Nang Ping understood less than half of this truly British -ramble, and listened to it with a puzzled smile--“and she is no end -keen to come, to see how things are done in real China. I wouldn’t -wonder if she wrote an article for one of the picture papers at -home--‘The Chinese at Home,’ or some such stuff. I say, you’ll be sure -to give her tea Chinese fashion. No borrowed European tricks, you know; -just pucka Chinaman way!” - -Nang Ping understood the drift, if not quite all his words. “It shall -be as you wish: Chinese reception, Chinese delicacies, offered Chinese -way.” - -“That will be ripping then.” - -“How strange it will be to talk with thy honorable mother!” the girl -said wistfully. “And thy sister! Is she like me, or more beautiful?” -she asked most seriously. And that he might judge his answer the more -nicely and adjust his answer to exact truth, she went from him a few -paces, opened her fan wide, spread out her arms, and stood very still, -a pathetic figure of Chinese girlhood on view, waiting, anxious but -meek, an Englishman’s verdict. And then, remembering that the light -was somewhat dim, she came a little nearer, but not too close, and -repeated her grave question, “Is thy honorable sister like Nang Ping, -or even more beautiful?” - -Basil laughed with kindly patronage. “Hilda?” Strolling to the wide -stone bench he threw his hat on to it and sat down. “All nice girls are -like each other, Nang Ping. Hilda’s so-so. But Tom Carruthers thinks -she’s ‘top-side’ nice. Carruthers, the governor’s secretary, and I -rather think he’s going to be my honorable brother-in-law. The governor -won’t object. Tom’s right enough, and old Carruthers got any amount of -tin. The Right Reverend John B. thinks Sis nice too, or I’m greatly -mistaken. It’s a queer freak for a parson, for Hilda isn’t exactly -churchified, but Bradley finds her nice all right.” - -“And my lord finds me nice?” - -The gray eyes narrowed. “Very nice,” the man answered, and held out his -arms. - -She went at once and sat down on the other end of the bench. Gregory -bent and kissed her, and presently she kissed him in return. And the -sudden darkness thickened, creeping closer, for there is no true -gloaming, no lingering dusk, in the Orient. It is day there, or else it -is night. - -The glow-worms came out then and speckled the garden with tiny points -of fire. Nang Ping called them by a prettier name: kwang yin têng, -lamps of mercy, as her father had called them when, as a boy of ten, he -crossed Sze-chuan to wed her baby mother in Pekin. - -They kissed again, the man and the girl. Kissing is not a Chinese art. -Basil Gregory had taught Wu Nang Ping to kiss. - -“Oh! if only I could!” the girl said impulsively, and then broke off as -suddenly as she had begun. - -“Could what, Nang Ping?” He asked it a little uneasily--uneasy at a -something in her voice. - -“Tell them all about us,” she replied simply, but her voice aglow with -ecstasy at the thought. - -Gregory was aghast. “Tell them all about us!” he cried hoarsely. - -“Oh! not all things,” she whispered, creeping a little closer in his -arms. “There are some things one would not tell, even to the birds.” - -Basil Gregory’s conscience, to its credit, shuddered sickly then, and -his arm trembled, not in tenderness, but in shame. - -But self-preservation is indeed the first law of much man-nature, and -he said quickly, “I don’t mind what you tell to the birds, but you must -be extremely careful not to let my mother or sister know. _Extremely -careful_,” he repeated with dictatorial emphasis. - -“Why?” - -“They would not understand.” - -“Why?” - -He made no answer, and after a little she questioned on, “They would -not like to know that _you_ are happy?” - -“Of course they would, but----” - -“And that it is I that make you happy?” the light young voice pestered -on wistfully. - -The Englishman shifted uneasily on his seat. “Oh, no! nothing of -that sort, to them, Nang Ping,” he said petulantly. “Don’t try to -understand. Just leave it all to me.” - -“But,” the girl persisted, “do they not understand love?” She put her -arms about him. - -“Oh! well,” he parried, “you see, they are English--very English.” - -“But they are women.” The Chinese girl shook her head, smiling -unconvinced, and all its jeweled filigree twinkled and winked in the -opalescent half light. “They are women. All women understand love, even -before the man comes to teach them. We are born so. Your honorable -mother and the honorable Hilda, they understand; Nang Ping is sure they -do, the wise and virtuous ladies.” - -“Not--not altogether. You see, things are different with us. Secret -love is not looked upon like--like married love.” - -The girl laughed softly. “Then let it be no longer secret!” she purred -contentedly, warmly willing to make his people hers, their ways her -ways. “You shall tell them!” she said brightly, laying her little hands -palm down on his. - -“Oh! but, Nang Ping,” Basil began miserably. But Nang would have none -of that. She nestled to him closer still. “Basil,” she interrupted, -“if our love were not secret, but married love, and I flew away with -you before my honorable father came back, then would thy honorable -mother like me in her house?--if I did that--for love make brave for -everything?” - -Gregory was almost choking. But he controlled himself: that was the -least he could do for her now. “Dear child!” he said huskily, and then -he kissed her. There was tenderness in his kiss, and passion and bitter -remorse. She felt the passion and the tenderness. He broke from her -gently and moved away, standing looking down moodily at the darkening -lotus flowers, distressed, all his light-hearted happiness of idle, -selfish weeks gone, gone forever. “Oh, Nang Ping!” presently he said -ruefully, “it would be better if you had never met me,” and he moved -restlessly still a little farther away. - -But still she would not understand. She rose and went to him, and put -her little arms about him again. “No,” she said with tender, caressing -emphasis, “because I am happy.” And then she added--for it was growing -dark, something that lay warm on her heart to say--that must be said -soon now, “Basil’s honorable mother would like me then, if--if I gave a -son to worship at the grave of thy ancestors!” - -Gregory recoiled a little from the girl’s gentle, clinging -arms--recoiled with a startled cry: the world-old cry of man confronted -for the first time with very self; the cry of man hoist at last with -his own petard. But pity, too, for her, as yet so free from pity -for herself, welled up in him (he was not all bad--who is?), and he -controlled himself again for her sake. It was difficult, but even so -it was not much to do in return for what she had done for him. And it -was the only return that he could make, or would, the giving her some -gentleness of treatment even in the crash of his own dismay. He came -back, and caught her elbows in his hands, and held her from him so--at -arm’s length. “Nang Ping,” he tried to say it lightly, “what amazing -ideas you get into your head!” - -“No,” she said stoutly, “not so! Listen! All the women in China make -one big prayer in the temples to the goddess Kwan-Yin”--he released her -arms, letting his fall at his sides helplessly, his fingers clenched in -his palms--“a prayer to her to bring them a son!” - -Her lover turned away, distressed, tormented. - -“Oh!” he said brokenly, “what a fool I’ve been!” It is almost the -oldest of the man-cries, almost as old as “I love you” and “I take you -for my own.” - -Nang Ping ran to him, crying, “Oh! how I love you, Basil! I want to -fill my hands with happiness to pour it at _your_ feet. Do you -know how my mother died? She died when she bore me to her lord my -father. And I would gladly die so, only the child must be a son, to -worship at your grave and to teach his sons and his sons’ sons to -worship so.” The pretty, delicate creature clung to him in an ecstasy -of devotion, all her fresh womanhood dedicated to him, and then she -laughed softly, pressed her hands together in a lightened mood. “Oh! I -would gather the dew from the cherry blossoms to bathe me in its scent, -to make me more beautiful to thee!” And this, too, was an old, old cry, -as old as woman-sex. - - “You see me, Lord Bassanio, where I stand, - Such as I am: though for myself alone - I would not be ambitious in my wish, - To wish myself much better; yet, for you - I would be trebled twenty times myself.” - -A girl in Belmont put it so, in a dream a man dreamed beneath an -English mulberry tree. And girls have said it countless times, each -girl after her own sweet fashion, and men have accepted it, some in -manhood splendidly, some in dastardy cravenly. Basil accepted it in -shame, drinking the bitter cup of his selfish brewing. - -“But,” he said, bending over her tenderly as she clung to him, “you are -as beautiful as the cherry blossom itself, Nang Ping.” - -She bent back and looked up searchingly into his face, and then she -broke away and danced a little from him, as if too quick with her own -joy to stand longer still. “And as happy as heaven!” she cried. “Ah! -and when they see me, will they not guess?” - -“Oh! but you mustn’t let them; you must not,” his answer came quickly. - -She shook her head slowly. “But I am all happiness that I cannot -hide.” Then a new thought caught and frightened her, and she turned -back to him anxiously. “If they guessed, would they take you from me?” - -“Why, yes,” he told her quickly, snatching at her idea; “they -might--yes--yes--certainly they would.” - -“Oh, no, no! That would kill me.” She shuddered as she spoke. - -He went to her now, and standing behind her put his arms about her -again. “Oh!” he said contritely, “you mustn’t think so much of me, Nang -Ping. You were happy before--before you met me----” - -“But I was only waiting for you to come,” she said. - -At that he kissed her. How could he help doing it? - -“I was really only two moons old. I was only sleeping and waiting, like -those lotus flowers, waiting for you to come and wake me. You are my -summer and my sun.” - -“That’s all very poetical, Nang Ping,” he said, fondling at her -elaborate and stiffened hair, “but you must not take all this too -seriously, you know.” - -She broke away from him at that, speaking wistfully as she moved. “I do -not understand you. You are the poem of my life and the song that sings -in my heart!” - -The man’s face darkened with trouble. He was indeed troubled. But -still he spoke kindly, and he went to her and caressed her lightly, -soothingly, as he said, “Listen, Celeste.” - -“Ah!” the girl cried, “you gave me that name. That makes me yours. I am -Nang Ping no more.” - -“Listen, Celeste”--at a change, a chilliness in his tone, she stiffened -a little; it is so most women face a blow--“my people are going -home--father, mother, my sister Hilda----” - -“So soon!” But her face brightened, in spite of herself, as she said -it; it was not such very bad news after all. “How can they bear to -leave you?” she added wonderingly. - -“They can’t,” Gregory said desperately. She did indeed stiffen then. -And there was piteous accusation in her eyes. But she said nothing; and -presently he went on lamely enough, “and that is what I had to tell -you.” - -“You--you are leaving me?” the girl said very quietly. - -“I must.” - -“But,” she said intensely, “you will not go. You will tell them that -you cannot go--_now_!” - -He must have understood her then, if he had failed, as he had tried to -fail, to do so before. “I couldn’t tell them about you, dear.” Poor -wretch! it was the best that he could find to say. “With us, things -like that are not so easy,” he added weakly. - -“But you could tell them that you cannot leave me,” Nang Ping pleaded. -“You _must_ tell them that,” she whispered desperately. - -“But I am not leaving you forever, little one,” the man faltered. -“England is not many weeks from here.” - -“Yes, but I cannot follow you!” - -Follow him! The heavens forbid! “No, of course not,” he said quickly, -“of course not, you silly little Celeste. But I shall come back. Some -day, when you least expect me, I shall be here in the lotus garden or -in the pagoda.” - -“The pagoda!” she moaned. - -“The pagoda,” he hurried on, “where we learned to love.” He tried to -draw her to him, but she recoiled. “No, no!” she cried hotly. “If the -bird of love once leaves its nest, the nest grows cold.” And then she -broke quite down and threw herself sobbing on the steps of the bridge. - -“Oh, Celeste!” Basil Gregory said wretchedly, humbly--he was humbled, -for the hour at least, and wretchedly uncomfortable--“I--I didn’t know -your love could mean so much, but--but--oh! well, don’t you see?--won’t -you see?--even if I didn’t go it could not last forever, this.” That -was bad and crude enough; but he went on and made it worse (such men -usually do). “I--I am not a mandarin in my own country, not even the -son of one; and you know _you_ are to marry a mandarin here in -your--your own country.” (He had heard that more than once in Hong -Kong; and really he had supposed she knew he knew. It was commonly -known. And many wondered why Wu Li Chang had let it wait so long.) - -Nang Ping looked up at him, her narrow eyes wide with horror. “Not -now!” she said tensely. “And when I tell my august father why, he will -kill me,” she added as quietly. - -“You--tell him why?” the man cried in consternation. - -“Yes, because now I do not wish to live.” - -“You must not tell him!” he said roughly. - -“Only when you are gone, or he would kill you too!” Nang said, simply -and without bitterness. The Englishman winced. “He will ask me why I -disobey him, and I shall tell him.” - -“Don’t do that--not that! I couldn’t have it on my conscience!” And -indeed he tried to believe that he said it for her sake. “Keep our -secret, Celeste,” he begged. “Think of the perils we have run whilst -he was here”--the Chinese girl smiled a little at that wanly--“of the -happiness we have had when he has been away, as he is now. Tell him -nothing, for fear, for fear, dear, that when I came back we should -never again be able to meet.” - -“You will never come back.” - -“I will, Celeste--I swear it! I swear it now! I see things differently.” - -“You will never come back.” She turned slowly, and without looking back -went on into the house. - -“Celeste, come back! Nang Ping! Nang Ping!” he called, and she knew -that he was calling her to say at least good night, as was their -custom, in the pagoda. But she neither slowed her quiet step nor turned -her head. The pagoda had sheltered her happiness; it should not be -soiled by her despair. She went on and left him standing alone by the -lotus lake. - -He waited there a while, confident that she would come back to him; but -presently, convinced that she would not come that night, or perhaps -could not, he went stealthily away, very sorry for himself and not a -little vexed with Nang Ping: the offender is easily vexed. - -Low Soong came from the coign of watch, looking after him curiously, -and wondering what had happened. She had seen little and heard nothing, -but she sensed trouble in the air. Basil did not turn or speak to her, -and when he had gone she passed slowly into the house. - -There was not a sound in the garden. The darkness had come. Nothing was -visible except the gay lanterns and many lamps lit on the walls and -at the house-door, and in the deserted garden itself the vivid pulse -of the glow-worms poised on shrubs and trees or winging brilliantly -through the purple night. - - - - -CHAPTER XII - -O CURSE OF ASIA! - - -Do you know Hong Kong? If not, you are poor with poverty indeed. Except -in China earth has no lovelier spot, and heaven itself needs none. The -interior of the island is almost bleak, not beautiful, but its edge is -paradise. - -Other unknown wonder-places you may a little learn from books, from -travelers and from pictures, but not Hong Kong. No words can in the -least describe it. The attempt is an impertinence. Canvas and camera -are useless too. “Hong Kong,” the gazetteers say, means “Fragrant -Streams” or “Place of Sweet Lagoons.” But they are absurd. “Hong -Kong” means “superbly beautiful.” If you know it, your eyes have been -enriched forever. Climb the Peak, feathered with fern and bamboos, you -are enwalled in beauty. Go far along the island by-ways, beauty leans -toward you from every side, and beckons you on and still on. Pause on -the bamboo-outlined path that bisects the great amphitheater of Happy -Valley, and you may bathe your spirit and your sight in beauty, whether -you look to the right, where the graves of European dead in China rest -beneath their sumptuous coverlets of flowers, or to the left, where the -Chinese jockeys, with their blue petticoats tucked up above their brown -hips, and their bright satin jackets showing up their dancing cues, and -English boys in regimental colors--gentlemen riders--canter neck to -neck on the race-course, rehearsing the ponies for to-morrow’s race. - -It is a unique juxtaposition, that sweet and perfumed bit of God’s -acreage, and the lurid, teeming race-course, the dead men’s bones -(and women’s, too, and babes’) just under the grass, and the betting, -straining, champagne-drinking, well-dressed crowd, with only a narrow -strip of yellow, bamboo-fringed path between; unique as is the old -juxtaposition of life and death, and, too, strangely eloquent and -appropriate of Anglo-Chinese life. - -Hong Kong! Heaven and Hell in one. Hong Kong a gem of lovely, laughing -China given to Britain--or, perhaps, loaned for a century or two. Wu -often wondered which. - -Every light in Victoria seemed twinkling hard as Basil Gregory’s boat -gained the shore, a lamp in every window, a thousand painted paper -lanterns, no two shaped or colored alike, swaying ambiently in the -hands of coolies who trotted along the bund and up the hill paths, -along the Bowen Road and peak-climbing streets, carrying chairs, -pulling rickshaws, or running errands, uninterested but faithful, the -most reliable hirelings on earth, and often, when the European employer -gives himself half a chance with them, the most devoted. - -Basil walked some distance from the spot where he had landed before he -hailed a rickshaw. The naked coolie grunted a little at the address the -Englishman gave him, but said grimly, “Can do.” For Gregory had named -a bungalow that nestled in a tiny grove of persimmon and loquat trees, -nearly halfway up the Peak--and Hong Kong Peak is steep. - -It was not his home address that he had given, nor that of any club -respectable or otherwise, or tree-hidden wayside tea-house, but the -bungalow of a man he had treated none too well, and to call upon whom -this was an odd hour. - -In our moments of greatest personal dilemma and peril we seek the -strangest confidants: sometimes in half-crazed desperation, sometimes -in shame and fear of our nearer and dearer, sometimes instinctively, -and _then_ oddly often it proves well done. But whatever the most -general explanation, most of us are prone at such tremulous times to -lean upon some one not of our constant or closest entourage. - -Basil Gregory had little estimate of Wu’s position and power, and -none at all of Chinese character. But he had heard something of Wu, -of course, and had read unconsciously something of her father between -the pretty lines of Nang Ping’s gilded home life, and the young fellow -realized that he was in personal peril, though he had not the least -impression of how much. - -He knew that he needed advice and a sounder judgment than his own. - -His mother was his chum, and had been from his birth--they had stood -together and pulled together always; but he could not take this to -his mother. And he hoped to goodness it need not reach his father’s -ear. He feared his father’s anger far less than he did his mother’s -sorrow, and he divined that the paternal anger would be nine-tenths -financial and not more than one-tenth moral. But such an escapade as -his was calculated to injure a business that depended considerably -upon a nice balance of British interests and Chinese industriousness -and acquiescence. And the elder Gregory could be nasty at times, and -disconcertingly close-fisted too. Certainly he could turn to neither -parent now. He was not brave, but he certainly would have thrown -himself into Hong Kong harbor or into the deadlier foaming rapid of -Tsin-Tan rather than have had his mother know the truth about Nang Ping. - -In his schooldays he had made half friends, half foes with a boy a few -years his senior, whose influence, the little way it had gone, had all -been to the good for Basil. - -Basil had not done well at school or at ’Varsity. But ’Varsities -are fairly used to that, and are built of long-suffering stuff, and -young Gregory’s shortcomings had not over-mattered at Queen’s. But at -school--a nice school, strictly run--he had been in serious trouble -more than once, and once had been saved from expulsion by Jack Bradley, -and at some sacrifices on Bradley’s part. - -Both the school and the ’Varsity had been rather inappropriately -selected. Basil came of commercial stock and was dedicated to a -commercial life, and commercial life of a sort for which a few years’ -business training in Chicago would have been more useful preparation -than any amount of term-keeping at Oxford. But Gregory the father, who -had had a very limited education, was, as is usual with such men of -means, obsessed that his son should have the public-school and ’Varsity -hallmark that he himself lacked. And Mrs. Gregory had wished it no less -ardently. She had Oxford associations in her blood and of her girlhood, -and her own father had worn an Oxford hood and held a modest incumbency -near the town. - -Basil Gregory learned some of the prescribed lessons at public school: -he had to. And he might have learned something of books and other -erudite lore at Oxford, for they do teach at the ’Varsities any one who -insists upon being taught. But Basil had not insisted, and left Oxford -knowing a little less than when he went. - -Bradley had been at Queen’s, but had worked while Basil played, and -such intimacy as had been between them died away, naturally enough, -in the wider life and the greater individual freedom and scope of -’Varsity. But they had met sometimes; and once Bradley had been of -great service to Gregory. - -When Basil had reached Hong Kong a year ago, John Bradley had been -serving there for some time as a curate in the Cathedral Church of St. -John. - -The young priest had held out an eager, friendly hand at once, but -Basil had almost ignored it. It was shabby of him, and he knew it at -the time. He knew that the other’s overtures were not in the least to -the rich ship-owner’s son, but altogether to an old schoolmate newly -come to a foreign country. - -The priest--he lived quite alone--was just sitting down to his solitary -dinner when Basil’s rickshaw came through the gate, ran up the path -between the tall lychee trees, and stopped at the door. - -The older man gave the younger the cordial greeting of their old days, -and added, “Come and eat. Oh! but you must. I’m famished.” - -And Basil sat down, both glad and sorry to postpone even by half an -hour the unpleasant tale he had come to tell. - -The priest was no anchorite, and his simple food was good, his -wine sound. Both had their flattering tonic effect upon the easily -influenced peccant, and as he ate and drank his misdemeanor dwindled -away in his own eyes, until almost it seemed to him that he had been -more sinned against than sinner. - -But it seemed nothing of the sort to John Bradley, and it was soon -evident as Gregory unfolded his errand while they smoked on the tiny -balcony that jutted out into the begonias and laburnums of the little -garden. The priest was sorrowful, but the man was furious. With some -effort he heard the other through, and then he ripped out an ugly oath. - -The visitor was astonished. Old John had always been a bit particular, -of course--had to, don’t you know, and all that--but a man of the world -and a thorough good sort. And this was not the first confession his -schoolfellow had made to him. - -“I say, easy all,” Gregory protested. “I wish it hadn’t happened”--you -nearly always do--“but you needn’t play Peter Prigg. It isn’t one of -your flock. The girl’s a nice little girl. I’m fond of her, I tell you. -But she isn’t one of your reserved flock. She’s Chinese----” - -“Oh, hell and damnation!” interrupted Bradley, striking the well-built -railing with a fist so angry that the interlaced bamboos quivered and -shook, “that’s the infamy of it. If you had to be a beast, don’t you -see how much less loathsome you’d have been if you had seduced some -girl of your own race?” - -The other was too dumbfounded to reply, and the priest pounded on: -“O curse of Europe! That such men as you pour into Asia and do this -damnable thing! You’ll boil in oil for this. You insufferable ass! -Don’t you realize in the least who and what her father is? You might -better have affronted Tze-Shi herself. Boil in oil, I tell you, and, by -God, so you ought! If it were not for your mother, I’d help Wu to heat -it. How would you like some Chinese man to do to your sister what you -have done to this girl? Oh! you needn’t spring up like that. You’ll not -put a finger to me. I could pitch you over there, down to the road a -thousand feet below, and for half a string of counterfeit cash I’d do -it too. Oh! Basil, old chap, how could you, how could you----” - -“Well,” sulkily, “I’m not the first.” - -“No,” brokenly, “and you’ll not be the last. And where will it end, -where will it end!” - -“I thought you----” - -“Oh! I don’t mean where will this special case end--for you and for -that poor child I know how it will end--but how will it all end?--the -putrid inter-racial welter and tangle that we Christians have made! -And we--misunderstanding China, spoiling China, insulting her people, -fattening on her industry--we, we English call ourselves men! We push -our way into China. We laugh at everything she holds sacred, mock what -we should admire, condemn what we lack the brain to understand, spit on -a culture four thousand years older and in a good deal as much deeper -and more sincere than ours, we steal what we want--oh, yes! it’s just -that, most of it--we teach her boys to smoke opium, we show her a dozen -new corruptions, teach her twenty new sins, we seize and spill her -thimbleful of saki and give her a tumbler of brandy, and her women--her -women----” he broke off. - -The other man winced now. He knew there were tears in Bradley’s eyes, -perhaps on his face. Just once before he had known John in tears, and -he thought of it now, a never-to-be-forgotten radiant summer day when -a young boy, an only child, had been publicly expelled from school for -the saddest of young crimes--the one crime that even the laxest of our -public schools neither forgive nor condone--and sent broken home to his -mother, a widow. - -“You’d like to throttle me when I dare say, ‘How would you like it, -what would you think of it then, if a Chinese man treated your sister -as you have treated this Chinese girl?’ Well, I say it again--and I -hold your sister very dear--I say it again. And I say more: I say, -‘_Why not?_’ You have set the example--you and some generations of -Christian gentlemen! And I tell you the day of reckoning will come.” -With a gesture of despair he picked up his discarded pipe and filled it -with nice men’s opium--tobacco. - -When he had lit his pipe, Bradley sat and pulled at it moodily, and for -a while Basil, thrashed and sore, sat and watched him. But the prick -of personal dilemma could not give way long to, or even be dwarfed by, -any thought of a general tragedy, be it as great and terrible even as -Bradley averred. - -“You said you knew how this was going to end for me----” - -“And for her! Yes. It began in selfishness. It will go on, forever, in -misery. It will end in misery. But there is just one thing now. A crime -can never be so damned black that it can’t be made blacker. Yours is -black enough, and it is going to stop right there. You must marry her.” - -“I say----” - -“You needn’t. There is nothing for you to say; you have come to me for -help, and I am going to help you, as far as I can.” - -“But----” - -“Oh! there’ll be trouble--plenty of trouble. Wu will never forgive -you or the poor child; though it’s he himself he ought not to forgive -for having let a Chinese girl out and unwatched so _with us English -about_. He’ll punish you both, and what Wu does he does well. -There’ll be no escaping him. No boat will take you beyond his reach, no -spot on earth hide you. You can’t stay in China with her. Her position -would be too intolerable, even for one of us to inflict on a woman. -You must take her to England--if you can get there. And even if Wu lets -you do the best you can with the monstrous mess you’ve made of life for -yourself and for her, you’ll both be miserable there, but not quite so -miserable as you’d be in China. England is the one country on earth -where the Eurasian, the poor innocent mongrel result of such conduct as -yours, is treated a little better than contagion and vermin. Think what -chance your children would have here! You have seen such children here, -and how they fare!” - -Little as he, in common with most of his race, had troubled to observe -in Asia, Basil Gregory knew well enough how those half-European, -half-Chinese were despised and treated in Hong Kong, and how much -more despised by the Chinese than by the Europeans. And he knew -too--though not so thoroughly as Bradley did--that to the Chinese at -least such Eurasians were doubly despised when born in wedlock. The -Chinese mind has some contemptuous shrug of “n’importe” for such racial -misdemeanor that is unaffectedly wanton, but to that mind marriage -makes the gross miscarriage ten times more putrid. Such few attempts at -European-Chinese marriage as are braved in China are between, almost -always, European men and Chinese women. Exiled, the Chinese will marry -and treat well and honorably the women of the race of the place in -which he lives--he does it in Singapore, in Chicago and in Rio--but -never for him such mixed marriage in China. - -Basil had no intention of making the experiment in China or otherwise. -Escape, not atonement, was his intention. - -“Yes,” he said presently, “and if only for that reason, the children, -don’t you see that it would better end here and now? At the -worst--now--one. But if--if I did marry Nang and take her to England, -there might be others.” - -Bradley groaned. “It is all very difficult. The consequences of wrong -always are. I don’t see my way. You must let me think a bit; perhaps -to-morrow I’ll see what’s best, least bad!” He groaned again, but -he did not tell Gregory that it had just occurred to him that legal -marriage without Wu’s consent might prove impossible. Wu’s consent -would never be had, he thought. They solve such problems differently in -China. They cut them. - - - - -CHAPTER XIII - -MRS. GREGORY - - -On one point, and on just one, John and Basil had agreed last night: -Mrs. Gregory was to be spared as much as possible. She and Hilda were -to remain happily ignorant of what had happened--ignorant of it in its -worst form, if that could be compassed. - -Basil had carefully omitted telling the clergyman of the proposed visit -of the morrow. He would have cancelled it if he could have thought of -any way. But he had not a devisive brain. His mother had quite set her -heart on the excursion. He felt safe that he could trust to Nang Ping’s -pride. Her pride would carry her through, and save and screen him, as -such outraged womanly pride has saved and screened such men ever since -Eve gave an apple to a man in Eden. - -In this episode of Nang Ping (a little nefarious episode of his life; -the soul-crux, the supreme tragedy of the girl) Basil Gregory cut -the sorriest figure, for he had but toyed with her, he had indulged -passion, passion had not mastered him, she was his toy, he her god; he -felt tenderness for her, but not love; he had not the great excuse of -a great love. His lingering by the sun-drenched lotus pond and in the -scented dark of the old pagoda had been mere dalliance, not obsession. -And yet the young Englishman was not all bad--far from that. To no one -do the wise lines of the Western genius apply more closely: - - “In men, whom men proclaim divine, - I find so much of sin and blot; - In men, whom men condemn as ill, - I find so much of goodness still-- - I hesitate to draw the line - Between the two where God has not.” - -There is a streak, at least, of angel in most women and in all men. -Basil had a rich vein of angel. All that was best in him leapt to his -mother. They had been sweethearts from the first. Such love as he had -loved as yet was hers. It was a chivalrous love, and passionate. The -other primal love, the love of man for his mate, might come to him: -probably it would; it comes to most, but it would never equal the love -he bore his mother. No other woman would ever be to him half that his -mother was, or have from him half that he gave her. - -Mothers that are loved so can face most sorrows with some buoyancy. -This mother had sorrow, and she fronted it almost blithely. - -Between these two, in a very beautiful sense, the spiritual umbilical -cord had never been cut, and never would or could be cut. - -She appealed to him in a dozen ways. She was gifted with youth. She -laughed at the years, and they laughed back at her and caressed her. -She looked his own age, scarcely more, and some days, in some moods and -in some lights, she looked his junior. And, too, hers was a radiant -personality. Her son joyed in her. He was proud of her, and proud to -be seen with her. And she gave him love for love. But her love for him -needs no explanation, nor merits one; he was her boy and her firstborn. - -The night before, after Bradley had cried, “I don’t see my way. You -must let me think,” the two men had sat silent for a time, and then -the clergyman had re-begun, trying again to thrash it out, breaking -nervously the silence he himself had enjoined. And he had referred -again to the hideous discomfort of mixed marriages. - -The waters of the Tigris do not mingle with the salt water of the -sea until they have flowed through it a long, long way from the -river-mouth. And so, it seemed to him, many suffering generations -must pass before, if ever, any marriage could in truth unite races of -East and West, or result in descendants less than sorely unhappy and -bitterly resentful. - -But marriages that tie the bloods of alien races are not the only -mixed marriages. There are mixed marriages of another sort that bring -as much, perhaps more, discomfort to the two most directly concerned, -although they entail no social inconvenience: marriages of alien -individualities. Such his mother’s marriage had proved, and Basil -sensed it, and that she winced daily. He had never definitely realized -it. He had never thought about it clearly. But he felt it. And this had -roused all the angel in him to her defense, and made him very true and -knightly to her. - -The daughter of a poor Oxford cleric, Florence Grey had married -“surprisingly well.” Robert Gregory was rich even then, good-looking, -jovial, and to his young and pretty wife indulgent. He was indulgent to -her still. - -She had married him quite gladly, and for a time been well enough -content. But after a year or two the sag had come and the disillusion. -What in him had seemed once tonic and individuality came to seem -brusque, and even boorish at times. She grew used to silken raiment -and spiced meats, used and a little indifferent, though doubtless she -would have missed them had she lost them, a tinge contemptuous of them. -And often in the whirl of life--in Manchester, in Paris, in Calcutta, -and now in gay Hong Kong--she longed a little for the Oxford quiet and -Oxford ways, cool, green lanes, a dim old church, a shabby old library, -dim too, full of well-worn books, simple usual things--roast mutton, -milk pudding, and soft English rain, gray English skies. - -But, too, she enjoyed life, and reaped from it with both hands. And her -husband had been and was well content. He had married her for love, -and he loved her still. But he had had no exultation and no opalescent -anticipations. And so, reasonably enough, he had suffered no relapse. -Such extremes of feeling, such quiver and ardor as he had ever known, -had come to him in office and shipping yard. Business was his cult. -And so far he had proved an excellent business man. He was perfectly -satisfied with himself; and it never occurred to him that any one else -was not. That would be preposterous, and certainly Florence was not -preposterous. He was magnificently satisfied with himself, and in a -suitably smaller way he was satisfied with his wife. - -She had given him no cause to be dissatisfied. And they got on well -together. They always had. She wore well. She dressed well. She never -tried to understand his business, or to talk to him when he was reading -the market reports or the shipping news. She was a handsome creature. -People liked her. And she had borne him two children. He would have -resented a third; to have had none would have enraged him as much as if -he’d been a “Chinaman.” - -Yes, Florence had done him very well, and he acknowledged it to -himself, and boasted of it to all his cronies. And he had done her -well too, by Jove! He was always kind to her. He let her have her own -way absolutely when her way did not cross his, and their ways too -rarely met (in any soul-sense) to cross often. And he was generous -to her. He began that way, and, it is no little to the credit of so -busy and business-bound a man, he had always kept it up. They had been -married twenty-five years, and he bought flowers for her still. And -jewelry he gave her constantly. No woman, unless she was the wife of a -rich noble or a millionaire, had more good jewelry. - -Mr. Gregory had given his wife some good jewelry for a wedding present. -But the handsomest gifts she had received then had been sent her by an -acquaintance he had never seen: a Chinese undergrad who had left Oxford -the year before--“damned rich Chink,” as Robert Gregory expressed it, -when he did not put it even more chastely, “a Rothschild of a nigger.” - -The Chinese gift, a bracelet of emeralds and turquoise and jacinths and -pearls, still was the most beautiful and the most valuable jewel Basil -Gregory’s mother had, and she wore it on every occasion that justified -such splendor. And Hilda, watching its green fire and blue softness on -their mother’s fine white arm, could but wonder hungrily whether it -would become ultimately the possession of herself or of Basil’s wife. - -“It is the most beautiful jewel I have ever seen,” John Bradley said -when he first saw it. - -“Yes, isn’t it?” its owner acquiesced; “but when I have it on, I always -feel as if I were wearing a bit of Revelation.” - -“More like a bit of the Koran,” the priest had reassured her with an -odd smile. - -She was greatly puzzled. She had always supposed the Koran was a -somewhat indecent book, quite the sort of book a clergyman would not -mention to a lady. She resolved to get a cheap copy--she believed there -were cheap editions; there were of almost everything now--the next time -she sent to Kelly and Walsh’s. - -And this resolve was not born of any wish to sample a questionable -classic, but of a wish to repair an injustice she was regretful to have -done even to a book or a heathen faith. Mrs. Gregory was a thoroughly -nice woman. - - - - -CHAPTER XIV - -NANG’S VIGIL - - -Sing Kung Yah was away temporarily from her important post as Wu -Nang Ping’s chaperone-guard, spending a few weeks of semi-religious -villeggiatura in a Taoist nunnery with a kinswoman who was its abbess. - -So powerful was Wu’s personality and his wealth that he had been able -to command for his widowed kinswoman and for her participation in the -gala things of life, even from the most conventional of his countrymen, -considerable courteous toleration. But it was toleration only, and -never approval. His influence was enormous. Every tong in China would -have torn at the vitals of any one rash enough to exercise against -Sing Kung Yah a social ostracism contrary to his wish. And so the -unprecedented festivity of the kinswoman’s widowhood was tolerated even -by the Chinese whom it both shocked and affronted. - -But anything more, or kindlier, than tolerance, even the great Wu was -powerless to win for her--at least from the Chinese. And both he and -she knew this, and it was the one fly in her very nice amber. She -would have been ostracized fiercely if those of their own caste had -dared; but, they not daring, she was tolerated coldly. And feeling it -(approving it even in her thoroughly Chinese heart) she was often glad -to steal away into the quiet, and behind the screen, of the Taoist -nunnery on the cool, far-off hillside. - -She had quite a number of English friends in Hong Kong and at Sha-mien. -The English thought her great fun, and she was eagerly sociable. And -English merchants, anxious to conciliate the powerful Wu, encouraged -their womenkind to friendliness with his kinswoman. But she longed -for friends of her own race; and except Nang and Wu she had none. She -longed for cronies, and she had not one, except the Taoist abbess. - -Strange that a people so implacable to comforted and comfortable -widowhood should be ruled by a widow! But so it is. And, after all, the -Chinese race has a right to its share of human inconsistency. Tze-Shi -was an Empress, the mother of a son, and had a great personality. -Sing Kung Yah had been born a long way from the imperial yellow, was -childless, and had little personality of her own. And so Nang Ping, in -the sweetest way, had run a little wild, as roses and honeysuckle do, -and so the frequent visits--that were something of a skurrying too--to -the Taoist convent on the hills. - -The Wus were not Taoists, strictly. Like most Chinese of their class, -they mingled a loyal observance of the rites of all three of the great -Chinese sects and an anxious acceptance of their tripled superstitions, -with an easy and respectful contempt for them all--certainly for all -except the Confucianism that has made and welded China for twenty-five -centuries, but that every Chinese of half Wu’s intelligence knows is, -in fact, a magnificent irreligion, a philosophy, a patriotism, but no -God-cult. - -In her aunt’s absence, as well as her father’s, Nang Ping was -absolutely mistress of herself and of all in her father’s house. When -she left Basil Gregory she had closed the door panel of her own room, -hanging a purple scarf in its outer carving, and no one, not even Low -Soong, dared disregard the imperative silken signal that she would be -alone and unmolested. Even when the gong brayed out the call of evening -rice she made no sign. Wu Low Soong brought a tray of food and laid -it gently on the floor, with a timid supplicatory clatter, beneath -the purple scarf, and, after listening a moment as she knelt with her -hands still on the tray, crept ruefully away. She had shared in the -outer edges of all Nang Ping’s love raptures, shared the dangers of the -forbidden sweetnesses, and it was very hard to be shut out from the -newer excitement of what was evidently a jagged love-rift. - -Nang Ping lay very still all night, uncushioned and uncovered on her -polished floor. Her frightened eyes were closed, but she was wide -awake--wider awake than she had ever been before. - -She felt Basil linger. She heard him go. She heard each night-sound all -the night long. She heard her household’s every stir, and heard it hush. - -In the morning, before any but the night-watchman stirred, she stole -out into the garden and wandered about it aimlessly. But she did not -enter the pagoda. - -While it was still very early she went back to her own room, beat on -her own gong, a little burnished steel disk, summoning her women. And -when they hurried to her, surprised and heavy with sleep, she bathed -and put on fresh garments. It was her habit to chatter gayly with her -women while they dressed her, but to-day she scarcely spoke and they -scarcely dared speak. She sat quite motionless in her ivory chair while -Tieng Po dressed her hair. Tieng Po was one of the cleverest tire maids -in China, and wonderfully quick. It rarely took her more than three -hours to do her lady’s hair, and to-day she did it in even a little -less. But she had never done it more elaborately, and all the time her -mistress watched her with cold, critical eyes. For Nang Ping had a -glass, a very lovely one that Wu had bought in Venice. It had been her -mother’s, and reflected more clearly and with less strain on the eyes -than the mirrors that most Chinese women consult. - -When Nang was dressed--she was very fine--she sent for Low Soong and -ordered food. - -The two girls breakfasted together in silence, and were silent -afterwards as they paced the Peacock Terrace together until the sun was -high and cruel. But Low Soong began to understand, and as each moment -passed understood more and more. The women and the peasants of no other -race chatter so much or so incessantly as the Chinese do; only the -gentlemen and the children are often still. But no other race has so -little need of words. The Chinese is the psychic of all the races. Even -the women have wizard minds. They are all sensitives. And as the girls -paced silently, but arm in arm, Low Soong learned it all. - - * * * * * - -In the early afternoon Basil contrived to send a note to Miss Wu, and -it reached her safely. Indeed, it ill needed the subterfuge he spent -upon its delivery, for its few formal lines, saying that he would, -as promised, have the honor to wait upon her presently, and have -the pleasure of begging her acquaintance for his mother and sister, -might have been cried aloud from the Kowloon housetops, or published -in the _Pekin Gazette_ and the _Shanghai Mercury_ or the -_Hong Kong Telegraph_. Written words could not have been less -compromising; such a love-letter could not have compromised a nun or -a female fly. And it was the last that he would write her. (It was -almost the first.) Nang’s little lip quivered as she read it, and she -made to tear it into bits; then the little painted lip quivered more -piteously, and she thrust the paper inside her robe. He had had no need -to warn her. She should play her part. He might have trusted her in -that, and in all. - -She began to think that Englishmen were timid. And she wondered too if -they might not be dense, some of them, sometimes. - - - - -CHAPTER XV - -THE MEETING OF THE MOTHERS - - -Basil Gregory had written his formally couched note of warning in a -fidget. Nang Ping had no experience of masculine fidgets. She had seen -her countrywomen fidget, but never her countrymen. - -And Basil was in a fidget still when he came to her presently, not by -stealth this time, no whistle heralding him, but walking swiftly from -beyond the bridge. - -She greeted him placidly, too proud to show the hauteur she felt now; -but Low Soong knew that Nang Ping’s heart was fluttering sickly under -her jade and coral girdle. - -Low returned his greeting with a placid face, but her narrow eyes were -yellow with hate, and she turned at once and went to her old place of -watch on the bridge. - -“They will come soon?” Nang asked. - -“Yes, they are lingering by the big lake, in the outer garden, and -that gave me the chance to speak to you a moment. Oh! my darling.” He -had been near to hating her as he had been coming to her across the -rippling water--hating her because he had wronged her, and now feared -that he might not escape quite all share in her punishment; but now, as -she stood there in all her pretty feminine trappings among her flowers, -he longed to take her into his arms. She had never looked so altogether -desirable to him before--probably because he had made up his mind to -leave her, to snap his life and his years from hers. “Have you missed -me? Why did you leave me so? How are you, dear?” - -Nang Ping smiled oddly. She said nothing. - -And Low Soong called from the bridge, “Chillee! Chillee!” - -Women’s voices, deeper throated than Nang’s and Low’s, European voices, -could be heard coming that way, and Basil said nervously, “Yes,” adding -in English what Low had just said, “They are coming. I shall leave them -when they are going--make some excuse, and I shall go and hide in the -pagoda by the lake----” - -“Oh, that pagoda--by the lake!” Nang Ping interjected softly, but her -voice was grim. - -“I shall see them pass, and when they have quite gone I will come back. -Wait for me when they are gone. I must speak to you. Remember!” He -moved away from her, and went and stood beside an old stone lantern, as -if examining and admiring it for the first time. - -“Low Soong!” Nang Ping said breathlessly, and Low hurried to her from -the bridge and put her arms about her. And they stood so for a moment. - -But the voices and the footsteps were close now, and Nang Ping released -herself from Low’s comforting arms, and stood gracious and alone. - -This was one of Florence Gregory’s young days--one of her very -youngest. Still in her early forties, she looked a radiant twenty-five -as she stood an instant on the bridge, and then came gayly down it. -And her radiant English beauty--blue eyes, golden hair, cream and rose -face--looked all the more radiant because of the delicate gray of her -gown--a dress of artificial simplicity, Paris-made. It had not cost as -much as Chinese Nang’s fantastic clothes had, but it had cost a great -deal, and it was the more perishable. - -Hilda Gregory, walking beside her mother, quite a pretty girl seen by -herself, seemed in the mother’s wake rather than side by side, though -far the more brightly clad, and was a dim afterglow of the matron’s -glory--as Low Soong, for all her gay apparel and own high coloring, -standing a little apart, seemed too of Nang Ping’s. And Florence -Gregory looked as much Basil’s sister as Hilda, who was a few years his -junior. - -A Chinese serving woman followed the Gregory ladies. She was palpably -Mrs. Gregory’s maid, and not Hilda’s; why, it is impossible to say, -unless because the mother was unmistakably of the woman-type to which -servants and dogs attach themselves, that claims them, and to which -they belong. Hilda Gregory probably played tennis and golf better than -her mother, and plied a more useful needle; but she buttoned her own -boots as naturally as it came to the mother to lean well back at ease -against down cushions and have her hair brushed by a servant. Ah Wong, -the amah, carried a closed parasol, a costly European thing of lace -and mother-o’-pearl, that would have suited Miss Gregory’s rose crêpe -quite as well as it did Mrs. Gregory’s silver ninon; but the sturdy -Chinese figure, plainly clad in dark blue cotton, was unmistakably in -attendance on the mother. - -There were six here now, not counting the Wu servants moving on the -outskirts of the group, silent and busied. But Mrs. Gregory and Wu Nang -Ping held the stage: English womanhood and Chinese something at their -best. - -They made a great contrast than which the old beauty-packed garden had -seen nothing prettier: two living, sentient expressions of womanhood, -greatly different, greatly alike. - -Each was natural, each was artificial--sweet, elaborate, decorated, -highly bred. - -Nang Ping’s face and lips were painted; Mrs. Gregory’s were not. -But her nails were slightly, beneath her gloves, and so were Nang’s -that had never worn a glove. Mrs. Gregory’s eyebrows were lightly -penciled. Nang Ping’s were not. Nang Ping’s hair had taken the longer -to dress, but the dressing of the other’s had cost an hour. The black -hair was stiffened into shape with thick scented gum; the blonde -hair was marcelled into shape by hot tongs. And Mrs. Gregory had the -slightly smaller feet, and far less comfortably shod. For Wu had set -his face against one custom of his country, and braved the anger of -his ancestors. Nang smoked a pipe--Basil Gregory could not insert -his smallest finger-tip into its tiny bowl--Florence Gregory smoked -cigarettes; and they both inhaled sometimes. And each considered the -other of inferior race. - -They looked at each other curiously--Mrs. Gregory frankly so. Nang -veiled her keen interest. But her interest was the more. The English -woman was keenly interested in China and in things Chinese. The country -had fascinated her powerfully, its odd people considerably. But she did -not take Chinese womanhood very seriously. Every one of intelligence -knew by now that many Chinese men were clever, almost hideously so, -but equally every one knew that Chinese women were limited--very. Of -course, the terrible old woman who ruled at Pekin was shrewd, unless -her ministers, Li Hung Chang and the rest, did it all for her, which -was probable; and then, too, she wasn’t Chinese really, Tartar not -Mongol. And Mrs. Gregory had no suspicion of what must have interested -her in Nang Ping indeed. She was keener to see the garden, and, if -possible, the house--it was said to be very wonderful--than to exploit -little Miss Wu. But she thought the girl pretty after a grotesque -Chinese fashion, “cute” and not unattractive, and she looked at her -with sincerely friendly eyes. - -The young eyes that looked back at her were mingled adoration and -resentment. This was Basil’s mother, and she was like him. This was the -honorable mother who had given him life and nursed him at her breast. -And this was the woman because of whom he was going to forsake her, and -shut her out forever from peace, honor and paradise. Because of this -woman standing smiling at her here he forbade her Europe and joyful -motherhood. And he had shut her forever out of China! Why? Oh! why? - -There are three supreme moments in the life of every Chinese girl to -whom the gods are not hideously unkind: the moment when her unknown -bridegroom lifts up her red veil and looks upon her face--perhaps to -love and cherish, perhaps to loathe and punish; the moment when the -midwife says, “Hail, Lady, it is an honorable _son_,” and lays -the funny little red, squirming firstborn on her breast to be adored, -and always to adore her; and the moment when she meets eyes with her -husband’s mother, and they look a little into each other’s souls. And -this last is _the_ supreme moment of her fate. In all the small -ways that make up the most of every woman’s life, her comfort and -happiness will depend upon this mother-in-law even more than upon her -husband--and mothers-in-law live long in China. Women are the pampered -class in China, as they are almost everywhere, and will be until “new” -hermaphrodite “movements” have pulled nature from her throne. And in -the quiet ways, the ways that count, the supremacy of the Chinese -mother is even greater than the autocratic supremacy of the Chinese -father. Occidental readers may believe this or disbelieve it as they -like; superficial travelers, ill-equipped for Asian sojourn, may see or -miss it, but the fact remains. Motherhood has ruled China for thousands -of years. It is not the fair young wife or the favorite daughter who -rules a Chinese, but his mother, old, wrinkled, toothless, bent. -From the thraldom of his father, from the thraldom of his gods, he -_may_ escape; from the thraldom of his mother, never! Nang Ping -knew now that she would never wear the soft red veil. That great moment -had been, and passed, for her when Basil had kissed her first in the -pagoda. The child that even now just fluttered beneath her breast--a -son, she thought, and surely blue-eyed--must die unborn; she knew that -now. He would never purl and pull and purr at her exultant breast. But -this was Basil’s mother, the honorable grandmother to whom she had -given a first grandson! What this moment might have been! Something of -the agony of the disappointment gnawing at her baffled heart crept into -her narrow eyes, and turned her faint and sick, and almost she swayed -an instant standing proud and gracious among her flowers--and the child -leapt. - -Basil Gregory stood irresolute, embarrassed, looking from his mother to -Nang Ping, from Nang Ping to his mother. - -Mrs. Gregory turned to him with a happy smile. “Ah! Basil, there you -are.” - -“Yes, Mother, I missed you,” he said as lightly as he could, “and found -my way here to make the acquaintance of Miss Wu.” - -He gestured courteously toward Nang as he spoke, and Mrs. Gregory moved -to the girl and held out her hand. Nang Ping moved too, a little -towards her guest, and made the elaborate gesture, hands clasped, of -Eastern greeting. Mrs. Gregory still held out her hand, and wondered, -when she gained the girl’s, which was the softer or the better kept, -Nang’s or her own. Basil had wondered it often. - -“This visit to your beautiful garden is the greatest treat I’ve had -since I arrived in China, Miss Wu,” she began. - -Wu Nang Ping bowed. “I am pleased to receive you in my honorable -father’s absence. He has had much kindness in England. It is his -command that always English friends have most honorable welcome here, -and it gives me happiness. My cousin, Low Soong.” - -“How do you do?” Mrs. Gregory said cordially. “And this is my -daughter.” The three girls bowed, the two Chinese with grave formality, -a gesture of the arms more than a bending. - -“Such a perfectly beautiful place!” Mrs. Gregory said it sincerely, her -beauty-loving eyes here, there and everywhere gloating. - -“This is my own garden, where I walk with my women,” Nang Ping told her. - -“It beats our poor little garden, Hilda,” the mother said gayly. - -“Into fits.” Just a trifle of the surface vulgarity which, with its -hard coating of adamant varnish, covered and hid Robert Gregory’s soul -side--even from his wife--and wronged him, had caught and scorched, -slightly, the delicacy of Hilda’s breeding. Even Florence Gregory, some -rare times, used a slight word of slang: “As the husband is, the wife -is.” - -Low Soong listened to Hilda with polite indifference. Low Soong had -no English. But Nang Ping wondered dully how a garden could have a -fit; she thought an epileptic garden must be very horrid. But she said -smoothly, “Ah! in London you have only walls and roofs, I think.” - -“You have been there, Miss Wu, of course?” Mrs. Gregory asked. - -“I have never been to any country.” - -“Really? But--you must excuse me--but your excellent English.” - -“My honorable teacher was English. My honorable father knows it like -you; he has been there--to Oxford.” - -“Really! I was born at Oxford. And my son”--she turned to him a little, -meaning to coax him into the talk, and wondering to see him stand so -awkwardly and wordless--he was not often so socially inept, and never -gauche--“my son was there.” - -“And my honorable father has taught me to esteem English people because -they are all”--she paused an instant, but she did not glance towards -Basil, and added with a grave, deferential smile--“all honorable men.” - -“Well”--Basil’s mother smiled too, a prettily pathetic smile which -was half good manners and half sincere--“I am afraid there are a few -exceptions, sometimes.” She went up to her boy and laid her hand fondly -on his arm. “But”--not speaking to him, but still to Nang--“it is the -duty of all Englishmen to live up to such a high reputation.” - -“I must be off, Mother,” the man said hurriedly, releasing himself -gently, “if Miss Wu will excuse me. I thought Father was coming.” - -“He has. We left them down by the fish-pond, him and Tom, talking to a -quaint old gardener.” - -“Oh! Well, I’m afraid I ought to be off--to the office. I’ll go -straight to the hotel afterwards--dinner usual time?” - -“Of course, dear, unless you’d like it earlier or later. Do you know, -Basil, you haven’t dined with us for days?”--Nang Ping knew it. “I’m -getting quite anxious about your health, dear. Bother that fusty -office! You don’t seem a bit yourself.” - -Her boy laughed at her and put his hand under her chin. (And Nang Ping -watched them curiously.) “You dear--why--I--I’m as right as rain.” - -“Then prove it, my son--a big man’s dinner at eight. Now, if Miss Wu -will excuse you”--for evidently he was uncomfortable here--and why -not, the dear English child? How should he be anything else in this -funny Chinese nook with these Chinese girls? Probably he could not -even see how pretty this smaller one was, for all her narrow eyes and -absurd, grotesque clothes and paint, and it was plain that he could -not find a word to say to either of them, not even to this one who -was playing hostess so nicely, and who understood English and spoke -it surprisingly. His silence towards the plump dumpling of a cousin, -who was showing Hilda about the garden with quaint bobbings and solemn -pantomime, was excusable enough. She didn’t know a word of English, -it seemed; though you never could tell what a Chinese did or didn’t -know, John Bradley said, and Ah Wong said so too. But really, Basil -might have made an effort, and said a little something civil to the -English-knowing hostess; he was not often so shy--he _had_ been at -Oxford, and he was her son. Robert had no _savoir faire_, but, as -a rule, the boy had some. - -When he was free from his mother, Basil moved to Nang Ping to take -leave of her. She received him with a quiet dignity that seemed -perfectly natural. “Chinese, but quite the grande dame,” the mother -thought. - -He uncovered and looked down at Nang. “Good-day, Miss Wu.” She shook -her hands at him in Chinese-salutation way, and straightening up -looked at him with just the edge of a courteous smile--not an eyelash -quivered. He turned and looked towards the other girls, but Low Soong -had turned her back and was bending and gesticulating over a peony bed. - -“By the way, Basil,” his mother said as he passed her, but paused to -give her one more smile, “the gardener was telling your father that he -knew you.” She wished him to go, and yet she stayed him. - -Basil shot Nang a look--of consternation--taken aback and off his -guard. Mrs. Gregory did not catch it, but both Hilda and Low Soong -did. Nang Ping held herself impassive, but distress flickered for a -moment in her eyes. Then he turned back to his mother, trying to seem -unconcerned. - -“Knew me? Why, I--he’s never seen me here in his life.” - -“He didn’t say he had, silly,” Hilda Gregory said, strolling towards -them, Low Soong tottering deftly beside her--Low’s feet were bound--“he -said he’d seen you in Hong Kong.” - -“Oh!” her brother laughed feebly, “in Hong Kong--that’s quite possible. -Well, now, I really am off. Good-by, Miss Wu.” And Nang Ping bowed to -him once more, in the prescribed ceremonial way, her face perfectly -emotionless, dismissing him suavely, turning from him before he had -quite gone. - -“Will you not be seated?” she asked Mrs. Gregory, with a deferential -gesture pointing to the old stone seat. - -Hilda and Low Soong still strolled about among the treasures of the -garden. - -Ah Sing and perhaps half a dozen other servants moved about on padded, -noiseless feet, preparing Miss Wu’s tea-table with all its picturesque -paraphernalia of elaborate teakwood stools and benches, lacquer -sweetmeat-cabinets, glazed porcelain tea-bowls as thin as gauze and -painted by master craftsmen, trays of candied fruit, and several -delicacies of which Florence Gregory did not know the name and could -not guess the nature. - -“So,” she said, surprised to find how comfortable a stone bench could -be, “Mr. Wu was at Oxford. How interesting! I wonder when. I knew a -Chinese gentleman--a student there--when I was quite a girl. We lived -at Oxford, my father and I. I forget his name. I have the saddest -memory, especially for names, and it could not have been your father -whom I knew, for I distinctly remember hearing, the year after I was -married--or some time about then--that my friend was dead, killed in a -climbing accident somewhere on the Alps. He was a fine sportsman.” - -“Many Chinese gentlemen are sent to Oxford, I have heard my honorable -father say,” Nang Ping rejoined. “The Japanese go more to Cambridge.” - -“Yes--and yet,” Mrs. Gregory said musingly, but more interested in -watching the servants than she was in her talk with this rather wooden -and very painted-faced child of the East, “your name--‘Wu,’ I mean--has -seemed familiar to me from the first, and now I seem to remember that -the man I knew at Oxford had a surname rather like that--or even that. -How odd!” - -“There are many Wus in China,” the girl said. “It is a most large clan. -All our clans are very large. We are, you know, so old.” - -“Wu.” The English woman said it slowly, as if trying to send, on the -sound of it, her peccant memory back to some forgotten hour. - -“Oh! it is a most general name. It means Military. I do not know -why, for,” she added almost hastily, “we have had no soldiers in our -family--everything almost but that. All Chinese names mean something, -but of most of them--they are so old--the meaning is lost in the mists -of far, far back, uncounted years before history was written or kept -in record. And perhaps I ought to have remembered that one Wu was a -soldier once. Wu Sankwei defended Ningyuan against T’ientsung when -the Manchus first overran China. But that was, oh! so many years ago, -and since then none of my honorable ancestors have been soldiers--or -at least very few,” she added, with a sudden blush beneath her paint, -too honest to conceal from Basil’s mother, who was also her guest, her -military forbears, descent from whom she felt to be a bitter disgrace, -though she knew, as every educated Chinese must, that in all China’s -long history there are few greater names than that of Wu Sankwei, the -defender of Ningyuan. “‘Li’ is the name in China the most common and -perhaps the most proud. It is our ‘Smith’ name. And we are very proud -of it, because many of its men have been great and noble, and because -their honorable wives have borne them many children. Scarcely the -census-takers can count the Lis. My honorable mother was a Li before -my honorable father married her to be Mrs. Wu. They were cousins, but -more than a century away--‘twenty times removed,’ as you would call it -in your English. The honorable Li Hung Chang’s our distant kinsman, my -honorable kinsman on both sides. My own honorable father has ‘Li’ blood -on the side of distaff; his honorable name is Wu Li Chang. We are -Chinese, we of our house, but now in some of our blood we are Manchu -too.” - -Mrs. Gregory smiled up at the girl. “Will you not sit here too?” And -Nang Ping bowed and curled up on the other end of the big seat. - -Ah Wong opened her mistress’s parasol and brought it, and Mrs. Gregory -took it with a grateful “Ah!” “We have enjoyed ourselves so much in -your wonderful country, Miss Wu,” she went on; “we are quite sorry -our time here is drawing to a close. You know--but I forgot, you know -nothing of us, of course--well, we are going soon, going home.” - -“All of you go?” Nang Ping knew that they all were to go, but she could -not resist the self-inflicted pain of hearing it again. - -“Yes, all four of us--we are just the four--and I think my son will be -glad to get home again, after a year in the East.” - -“I doubt that not,” the girl replied, in an odd, quiet voice. “But,” -she added, reaching up one ring-heavy hand to pull down a flower, only -to pitch it aside when she had smelt it once--the Chinese rarely do -that--“but he said he liked the East.” - -“Oh! yes, indeed he does. We all do. Who could help it? But, after -all, it is not quite the same thing as home, you know, especially to a -man; and, besides, Basil has many friends whom he longs to see again. -And”--adding this good-naturedly, anxious to interest the girl and -smiling significantly--“we don’t want an old bachelor in our family, -you know; we have but the one son.” - -“‘Bachelor’--that is one English word I do not know.” - -“Well, what I mean is that Basil must return home before all the -eligible young ladies of his acquaintance forget him.” - -“That means”--the girl’s voice hurt her throat--“he is going home to -marry?” - -“Well,” his mother admitted, “there is a young lady at home, I believe, -who will be very glad to see him again, so I hope it will eventually -come to that.” - -Nang Ping laughed. And Mrs. Gregory thought, “How very oddly the -Chinese laugh! It’s anything but gay.” - -“And he will never come back?”--the strange creature said it with a -smile. - -“Oh, yes!” Hilda said, joining them, “some day, perhaps, when he has -settled down, to take charge of this branch.” - -“I’m afraid Basil is the sort of son who never settles down,” his -mother said lightly. Nang Ping thought it most strange, and not nice, -that the mother should say it at all, but she quite believed--now--that -it was true. She rose, and clapped her hands for Ah Sing. - -“If you will honor me by taking tea,” she said, and led the way to the -highly decorated table where the ornate meal was elaborately laid, the -blue-clad servants standing about it in a circle, as still as stones. -At their young mistress’s approach they bowed almost to the ground--so -low that their cues swept the grass, and one caught and tangled in -a verbena bed. Mrs. Gregory suppressed a smile, but Hilda could not -suppress a low giggle. But she tried to, and that much is to her credit. - -“How jolly!” she cried, as they sat down to an accompaniment of many -bows from the cousins. “How perfectly jolly!” - -“Delightful!” agreed her mother. And Nang Ping, in spite of the -choking misery in her throat and smarting in her breast, was pleased -at their pleasure. She thought it sincere, and both Low Soong and Ah -Wong, watching lynx-eyed and imperturbable, knew that it was. Low Soong -was but an obliging mannequin this afternoon, Ah Wong but a lay figure, -expressionless and almost motionless, but neither had missed a word, a -look, or a meaning from the first, although Ah Wong had little English -and Low Soong had none. - - - - -CHAPTER XVI - -GRIT - - -Mrs. Gregory bore her part in the pretty little function with -creditable imitation of Chinese propriety. She had been coached by a -woman at Government House. She blessed her own foresight that she had, -and reproached herself that Hilda had not. - -Nang Ping raised her bowl of scalding tea almost to her forehead, and -then held it out first towards Mrs. Gregory and then towards Hilda, and -waited for them to drink--and so did Low Soong; and when they drank, -the two girls bowed several times and then drained their tiny bowls. - -When the sweetmeats were pressed upon them Mrs. Gregory took one -candied rose petal, and then--after much urging--took, with a fine -display of reluctance, the smallest crystallized violet on the dish. -But when Miss Wu entreated Hilda, “I beg you to condescend to accept -and pardon my abominable food,” Hilda helped herself generously to five -or six of the glittering dainties. A guest at a London dinner-table who -had seized in her own hands a roast fowl by its stark legs, conveyed it -to her own plate, and then began to gnaw it, without even wrenching it -into portions as Tudor Elizabeth would have wrenched it, would not have -committed a more outrageous act. Nang Ping immediately helped herself -even more generously than Hilda had, and Low Soong, after one startled -instant, did the same. Mrs. Gregory saw it all, and wondered, with a -social conscience abashed and chastened, if she would have had the fine -courage, had the situation been reversed, to seize the second chicken -and chew at it noisily. And she looked at her little hostess with -new respect, convinced again that Nang Ping was exquisitely “grande -dame,” and beginning to suspect that the pretty, painted doll-thing -had something in her after all, if only one knew how to get at it. She -wondered what a girl living so, amid such a riot of fantastic ornament -and seemingly meaningless petty ceremony, thought and felt. Did she -think? Did she feel? Or was her mind as blank, her soul as impassive -as her face? What did motherhood itself mean to such dolls, and could -wifehood mean anything? Ah! well, if marriage was but a gilded mirage -on the horizon of such opera-bouffe existence--as, for all she could -see, the existence of well-to-do Chinese women was--that unreality -might lessen pain more than it dwarfed happiness. The English woman -sighed a little. But they must love their babies, these funny little -creatures. Every mother loved her baby. And there was something gentle -and loving, she thought, in this girl’s face, beneath the paint and the -conventional mask. She looked up and searched the younger face with -kindly, motherly eyes. Yes; it would be pretty to see a baby cuddled in -those gay silken sleeves. She smiled at the thought and at the girl, -and Nang Ping smiled back at her. Something cried and fluttered at -Nang’s heart, and flashed softly from her eyes, and found a moment’s -nesting in the older woman’s heart. And for an instant the Chinese girl -and the English woman were in close touch; and, if they had been alone, -perhaps--who knows-- - -But before the tea-bowls had been replenished four times they heard -the truants, Mr. Gregory and Tom Carruthers, coming. - -Carruthers was speaking. “There, Mr. Gregory, there’s a pond full of -goldfish--and such goldfish! By Jove!” - -“My dear Tom,” an older voice said impatiently, “there’s more sense in -a bowl of herrings than a pondful of silly goldfish.” - -“Ah!--still,” the younger persisted, as the two men came in sight, “you -must admit this is another lovely spot.” - -“H’m, yes,” Robert Gregory allowed, pursing up his lips deprecatingly -in a way he often had when bartering in boats or rates. “Rather reminds -me of Kew Gardens, but inferior--too gimcrack!” - -But Carruthers saw the others then. “Ah! There they are! Taking tea -under rather better conditions than Kew, I fancy.” - -Nang Ping rose and went towards Gregory hospitably. He lifted his hat -perfunctorily and spoke to her crisply, not waiting for the welcome she -had risen to accord. “How do you do? Miss Wu, I presume? It’s awfully -good of you to let us have a look around.” - -Mrs. Gregory rose too, and came up to Nang Ping, feeling the girl’s -resentment at a tone to which she was unaccustomed--a resentment she in -no way showed. - -“My husband, Miss Wu,” the English lady said, presenting him to the -girl, and speaking to her with pointed respect, and the man took the -hint a little, and bowed pleasantly enough as Nang Ping almost ko’towed. - -So this was the father--Basil’s honorable father! She liked him least -of the three--the three who might have been her relatives--more to her -than her own father, whom she had known so long and loved so well. He -was not like Basil, but like the daughter. Of the three she liked the -honorable mother best--much. “You are just in time to take tea, if you -will honor me,” she said. - -“May I present Mr. Carruthers to you, Miss Wu?” Mrs. Gregory asked. - -Nang Ping greeted the additional guest with the widest outpush of her -joined hands and the most stiffly formal bow she had made yet. But she -liked this face; he looked, she thought, indeed an “honorable man.” - -“Tea! By all means,” Mr. Gregory said briskly, steering for the richly -laden toy tea-table in a businesslike way. He thought there’d been -bowing and arm-shaking enough for a month o’ Sundays. - -Low Soong giggled a little when Tom Carruthers lifted his hat to -her--Nang shot her cousin a severe look--and then, to Mr. Gregory’s -disgust, all the bowing and arm-waving was to do again. - -“I am sorry not to serve tea in the English way,” Nang Ping said, as -she returned to her seat. (Gregory had already taken his.) - -“Why!” Mrs. Gregory protested, “what can be more delightful than to -serve China tea in the Chinese way in China? And this is such a real -treat to me! I can have my tea in our stupid home way--half cold and -quite insipid--any day.” - -“Well,” Gregory commented, leaning back negligently in his chair and -stretching out his legs in comfortable abandon, “perhaps I’ve not been -here long enough to appreciate Chinese customs. That’s the worst of -being a real Englishman, Miss Wu--one misses English comforts.” - -Tom Carruthers saw a tiny shadow of disgust cloud across Nang Ping’s -painted mouth, and he knew, without looking, the distress on Florence -Gregory’s face. “Mr. Gregory,” he interposed, “your tea,” and pointed -to Gregory’s waiting cup. - -They all were waiting to drink together; not to have done so would have -been a rudeness. - -“Oh!” Gregory vouchsafed, lifting the tiny piece of porcelain -critically and tasting the brew gingerly when he had discarded the -covering saucer a little roughly. And when he drank, the others drank -with him. - -He tasted the delicate tea superciliously, and disapproved it frankly. -“Here, boy,” he called to one of the Wu servants, and holding out the -cup with a disgusted grimace, “take it away.” The servant with the Wu -crest embroidered on his back bowed low, stepped forward, bowed lower, -and then took the offending handleless cup and gravely bore it away. -And the four women looked on, Hilda amused, his wife distressed, the -two Chinese girls smilingly imperturbable. It is difficult to decide -which owes China the more apology--English missionaries or English -manners. - -“By the way, Miss Wu,” Gregory said, speaking staccato between sugared -mouthfuls--he had appropriated the nearest dish of sweetmeats to his -sole use, and evidently approved its candied contents as much as he had -disapproved the tea--“I’m very dissatisfied with your father.” - -Nang Ping smiled a little haughtily, rising as she spoke. “I am sorry -my honorable father should offend.” - -“Yes, so am I. Of course, business is business. I admit I live up to -that myself, and I must expect others to. But I have heard that he has -just bought over my head--over my head, mind you--a dock site which is -indispensable for my new line of ships to Australia. I wrote him about -it, and reply seemed, I must admit--well, a trifle vindictive.” - -The girl sat down again quietly, but Tom Carruthers, who had risen when -she had, stood still leaning a little on his chair and watching her -closely. - -“But you have not seen my honorable father for a long time,” Nang told -the financier. - -“Oh!” he returned, “I, personally, have never seen your father, Miss -Wu; but my manager, Holman, saw him a couple of hours ago.” - -Nang Ping’s fingers tangled quickly in her girdle. Only Ah Wong saw it, -but several of them noticed Low Soong’s start--it was noticeable. “It -cannot be so,” Nang said. - -“Eh? Of course it is so. Old Holman’s got both his eyes; he sees all -right.” - -“But”--and, in spite of her, a little of the concern she felt crept -into her voice--“but he has been in Canton for twenty days.” - -“Oh! well,” Mr. Gregory returned indifferently, “then he must have come -back. It’s scarcely two hours since Holman met him and told him we were -visiting Kowloon. And your father particularly requested that we should -visit his garden. He said any member of my family would be made very -welcome. Holman said those were Wu’s exact words--exact old josser, -Holman, always. Any member of my family would be made very welcome. -And, you know, that’s all very well when you’ve just done a man down in -business--any one can afford to be polite then.” He got up and dragged -his chair a few feet and reseated himself beside his wife. - -“Robert,” she greeted him, “you can scarcely expect Miss Wu to be -interested in your business disappointments.” She turned then to the -girl. “It will be a pleasant surprise for you; you did not know your -father had returned?” - -Nang shook her head a little. “No. It is strange, for he is never -unkind to me.” - -“Oh! I know what brought him back,” Gregory persisted bellicosely, “and -it’s a dog-in-a-manger business, and I wrote and told him so, because -the dock site isn’t any earthly good to him.” - -Florence Gregory sighed. “Robert,” she said severely, “I am sure Mr. Wu -does not trouble his daughter with his business worries.” - -“My dear,” her husband snapped irritably, “it is not his worries we are -discussing, but mine. By the way, Miss Wu, has your right honorable -father by any chance a brother?” - -“Alas!” the girl replied sorrowfully--she had missed the slur in that -“right honorable” (no one else had missed it, not even Low)--“alas! His -honorable mother was unfortunate in only having one son.” - -“Well,” almost grunted the Englishman, “I could have sworn she’d had -twins.” - -“Robert!”--his wife’s voice was coldly angry. But Hilda giggled. - -“Twins!” Carruthers said, a little fatuously. He was puzzled, and he -liked to understand things as he went along. - -Gregory answered his wife’s expostulation with expostulation. “My dear, -it’s scarcely two hours ago since Holman saw him in Hong Kong. And yet, -as soon as we get this side of the water, your gardener, Miss Wu, tells -me that your father has just arrived here in Kowloon, and that he was -here for a while yesterday, and yet I don’t see him about anywhere, -and I particularly want to see him.” - -“In that San Fong make a mistake,” Nang Ping said quietly. But she -had risen to her feet in evident distress, though she controlled it -bravely, and the others had all risen too, as if her sudden motion was -a one that prompted them. Even Gregory saw that he had made a _faux -pas_, and looked awkwardly towards his wife, saying, “Oh! well, -maybe he did, but I don’t believe it. I’m not educated up to green tea -and chop-sticks, but I’ve lived in China off and on some good few years -now, and I understand your lingo right enough, at least the ‘pigeon’ -variety of it, and that’s what the gardener said, and if you ask me, he -savvied what he was talking about.” - -Low Soong had slipped round to Nang’s side, and stood very close to it. - -“Robert,” his wife said bitterly, “I really don’t know which is worse, -a bull in a china-shop or you in a Chinese lady’s garden. You make -one understand why they call us foreign devils.” He shrugged his big -shoulders sulkily in reply, and moved off to the pond, whistling -unconcernedly. - -Mrs. Gregory followed him, and he turned towards Nang and said -patronisingly (but that was unintentional--he couldn’t help it), “It’s -really quite a charming place, Miss Wu, ’pon my word it is--charming. -Quite Oriental, isn’t it?” He paused at that to let them all appreciate -his unique discovery, and wondered impatiently why the dickens -Carruthers grinned. “I suppose every country has the landscape that -suits it best, but there are some little bits of England that take a -lot of beating.” - -“The light is failing now,” Florence said--she had quite relinquished -her hope of seeing the interior of the house--“and I am afraid we are -keeping Miss Wu long after her tea-time.” - -“Oh, no!” Nang Ping said, “not at the least; but”--for she knew her -strength was ebbing fast, and she felt very ill--“I--I am not strong -to-day. And--I must seek my apartments early, as my honorable father -has returned.” She turned to Ah Sing, who had not moved from his -sentinel place in front of the pagoda, and said to him, “Tsu tang yang -ur!” And he bowed and went to summon the lantern-bearers. - -Florence Gregory took both the Chinese girl’s little hands in hers. -“How cold they feel, even through my gloves!” she thought. “Good-by,” -she said very gently. “Good-by, Miss Wu, and let me thank you for the -great treat you have given us.” - -Nang Ping made no reply--she couldn’t--but she looked up at her going -guest with something so pathetic in her odd eyes and something so -nearly a-tremble on her mouth that the older woman almost bent and -kissed her. - -“Where’s Basil?” Tom Carruthers asked. “Has he cleared off, Hilda?” - -“Yes,” she told him, “he had a conscientious fit and has gone to the -office to work. Good-by, Miss Wu,” she said to Nang Ping, “and thanks -awfully. It’s been quite too ripping.” - -Nang felt too faint by now to wonder what the odd English words the -other girl used meant. But she smiled up at Basil’s sister very kindly. - -“You shall be attended to the gates,” she said to her, and added to -Carruthers, as he came to take leave, “My own garden is locked at -sunset.” - -Carruthers said something brief, and then looked about to take his -leave of the cousin, and wondered to see her slipping stealthily away -and out of sight. She was a funny little bunch, he thought. - -“Father hardly brought his garden-party manners with him, did he?” -Hilda said unconcernedly to her mother, as they and Carruthers passed -from the garden, four blue-robed Chinese, with great lanterns swinging -from their hands, in close attendance, and Ah Wong just behind them. - -“No,” his wife said wearily. “And I’m afraid he didn’t leave many -behind, either.” - -Except for a group of silent, motionless serving-men, Robert Gregory -and Wu Nang Ping were alone in the darkening garden now. - -He held out his hand to her. “Good-by, Miss Wu.” - -She did not take it, but she bowed to him deeply, and because he was -Basil’s father and she thought that she should not see him again she -gave him the utmost obeisance of Chinese ceremony, sinking quite down -to the ground. That extremest collapse of leg and knee, the ko’tow of -utmost reverence, is reserved, as a rule, for an Emperor, an imperial -mother or first wife, the grave of Confucius in the Kung cemetery, -outside K’iuh-fu (where only the crystal tree will grow) and for the -tablets of one’s own ancestral dead. - -“Oh! To be sure,” he said good-naturedly enough, letting his extended -hand drop to his side. “Well, good-by and good luck. I had hoped to -meet our interesting friend. I had quite a lot to say to him. But I’m -pleased to have met you, even if I don’t think much of your tea. You -must come up to our hotel one day, and Mrs. Gregory and Hilda’ll give -you the prime stuff. Good-by.” He added to himself only half under -his breath, as he marched off, “And I hope my visit isn’t going to be -wasted!” - -Nang Ping stood motionless and watched him till he was out of sight. - - - - -CHAPTER XVII - -THE SIGNAL OF THE GONG - - -And then the breakdown came, and she sank down, weeping and distracted, -on the long stone seat. Her father in Kowloon! Her father who was -almost omniscient! How long had he been there? What had he learned? - -Somewhere in the house a great gong sounded--seven slow beats, deep -throated as the braying of some bloodhound, but low and soft at first, -growing louder, then soft again, all musical, but almost uncannily -significant. As the second note beat into the garden, Nang Ping -roused herself, and sat up against the seat’s back, clutching at it -desperately. She listened in fear that grew to anguish as note followed -note. Only one hand ever struck that gong! As the brazened signal died -away in the scented evening air, she sprang up and ran distracted on to -the bridge, calling, “Basil! Basil!” thinking no longer of herself but -only to save the lover who had spoiled her life. Women are like that in -China--and in England. - -He came at once, and she bent over the bridge to him and said, as he -stood on the path he had come by, “You must go. My father! Go quickly!” - -“Your father!” - -“Go--go now! Quick!” - -“But we’re safe here--for the moment.” He was glad of an excuse to -leave her, and yet he wanted too to stay, to toy, if but for a moment, -by the lotus lake where he had found the dalliance sweet that had -proved fatal to poor Nang Ping. - -“No, no!” she told him frantically. “Not safe. Safe nowhere. Never safe -again. But most dangerous here. Go! Fly, Basil, fly! Before my father’s -wrath falls on you, fly! Take the path by the Peacock Terrace and go.” - -She had infected him now with her own breathless fear, but even so he -hesitated an instant longer, for she had urged him to go; and when is -not the man reluctant to go whom a woman forbids to stay? - -“Celeste”--he called her by the name with which he had wooed her and -never wooed in vain--“little flower, our happiness has been too great, -too perfect. There must be some other way: there shall!” - -“None! None!” the girl said solemnly. - -“I love you, dear,” he whispered passionately. - -“No,” Nang Ping said gently, “your love has flown away from me, and the -nest of my heart is cold for always now.” - -“It isn’t true,” he protested hotly. “It is not true.” - -“Go!” - -“I will come back to you.” - -“No!” Nang Ping’s voice was soft and clear and tender as a flute. “Go. -Go, and forget.” - -“Then”--he lifted his hat and came towards her uncovered, his arms -outstretched--“farewell, Celeste.” - -But she turned and moved a little away, not even facing him again. -She was afraid to trust those arms, a thousand times afraid to trust -herself. “Farewell to life and love,” she said under her breath, -smiling wanly but moving steadily towards the house. - -With a cry--half remorse, half passion, and something too, just -a little, of the brute, grim and primal, not to be baulked of his -prey--Basil Gregory sprang after her to catch her in his arms. But -before he reached her, just before, other arms caught him and held him -in a vice. - -Ah Sing had glided like some upright indigo-colored snake from the -pagoda--“the pagoda by the lake”--and, springing seemingly from space, -one from one direction, one from another, two of the gardeners, -almost as quick as he, reached the Englishman almost as soon. Six -arms pinioned him, without a word, without a sound. And there was -no expression on the Chinese faces of the three--no hatred, no -determination, not even interest. - -But another man, a dark-robed figure, stood on the bridge, above them -all, and slowly he smiled--a terrible smile. - -Nang Ping had not heard the four Chinese--no one could have heard them. -But she caught the slight sound of Basil’s desperate struggles--he was -struggling too frantically to waste any of his strength on voluntary -noise. She turned and ran to him, crying, “Oh, Basil!”--no matter who -heard her now. The end had come, and Nang Ping knew it. She threw -herself in front of him, thrust herself into the seething coil, to -protect his body with hers, as far as she could. - -With a supreme effort--or did that still figure on the bridge give a -slight signal that Ah Sing caught?--perhaps both--for a moment Basil’s -right arm was free. He whipped out his revolver. But with a touch of Ah -Sing’s finger-tips--it looked an indifferent touch, and the servant’s -eyes had not turned even for the smallest space of time from that quiet -figure on the bridge--the English arm fell helpless at Gregory’s side, -the revolver clattered down the stone step, and Basil, turning his head -up in pain, saw the motionless looker-on. - -“My God!” the boy cried. “Mr. Wu!” - -Nang Ping turned slowly round, looked at her father as if entranced and -dazed, then with a scream that cut through the hot air like the voice -of a child that had been knifed and was dying, fell prostrate at the -foot of the bridge, and lay moaning with her face on Basil Gregory’s -shoe, her hands, with some last instinct to protect him, clasped about -his silk-clad ankle. - - - - -CHAPTER XVIII - -AT THE FEET OF KWANYIN KO - - -Nang Ping sat crouched at the feet of Kwanyin Ko, the Goddess of Mercy, -on the floor of her own room. She had been alone all night. - -She remembered seeing her father on the bridge. She remembered falling -at Basil’s feet. She remembered nothing more--clearly. She thought she -recalled, as from a dream, being carried from the garden and laid here. -She thought it had been gently done. Whose arms had lifted and borne -her? She thought that she had been laid on her bed; across the room -her sleeping-mats were unrolled, and a light down coverlet was tossed -across the hard little cylinder which was her pillow. Some one had laid -her down to sleep. Who? And some one had brought her food and drink, -for on a tray near the mats there were fresh fruit and a dish of wine. - -Had she been awake when she crawled here to lay her sorrow at Kwanyin’s -feet? Or had she thrown off the coverlet and crept across the floor in -her sleep? - -A nightlight burned dimly in an opalescent cup, and across the garden -she could hear a cricket call and some big insect buzzing in the dark. - -She tried to think, but she was too tired. She turned her face to the -floor and laid so, prone before the painted graven figure which was the -only succor left, the only semblance of woman’s companionship within -her reach. Where was Low Soong? Had Low been caught too in the coil? -If not, surely Low would come to her presently, if she could. What had -they done to Basil? She clenched her hands together in supplication -so frenzied that her nails cut into her palms and her rings tore her -flesh. What would come now? Or, rather, when would it come, and how? -She knew what was to come. - -But she could think no more. She could suffer. That faculty was left -her, but she could neither reason nor plan. And why should she? The end -was absolute, and absolute the uselessness of thought. - -Towards morning she found the little tinder-box, stuffed her pipe, -and began to smoke. It was innocuous enough a drugging, but gave her -growing nervousness something to do. Three or four whiffs empty those -tiny pipes. To throw out the ash took a moment, to refill the bowl took -another; the drawing on the stem killed a third--over and over again, -and one of the terrible night hours had gone. And still the Chinese -girl lay on her hard wood floor smoking mechanically, as in Europe -a girl so placed might have crocheted, or a woman older but no less -desperate have played patience, or tried to play. - -When the first streaks of day came to sharpen the familiar outlines -of the room and of its furnishings, and sharpen her sense of pain and -peril, she threw the tiny silver pipe across the floor. It fell with a -clatter on the arabesque of the hard inlaying. - -This Kowloon house of Wu was a veritable treasure-house. Not an -apartment in it (for the servants lived, and cooked even, outside) but -held much that was priceless. And no other room had been plenished with -such lavish tenderness as had this room of his one child. - -The old bronze table that pedestalled and throned Kwanyin Ko had not -its match in Europe, neither in palace nor museum, and Kwanyin Ko, -herself looted from a palace six hundred years ago, was worth something -fabulous: no dealer would have sold her for sixty thousand yen. - -The lapis-lazuli peacock, so exquisitely carved that its feathers -were fine and delicate as those of the big birds that strutted in the -sunshine on the terrace beyond the lotus pond (and the emerald points -that studded each feather thickly and the threads of gold and silver -that just showed their threads of burnishing here and there were real) -was worth its weight in rubies. - -In all the room--and it was large--there was not one thing that of -its own kind was not the best. Wu had skimmed China relentlessly, and -much of its cream was embowled here: Nang Ping’s. And China is wide -and rich. Every inlaid instrument of music that strewed the cushions -and the floor, every classic book, the picture on the wall (there was -only one picture, of course--a landscape by Ma Yuan--heavily framed in -carved and inlaid camphor-wood) was a masterpiece, the culmination of -some imperial art of an imperial people, art begotten of a spiritual -and indomitable race’s genius, and nursed and perfected by centuries of -unfatigued patience. Cedar and sandal-wood and ivory hung and jutted -from walls and painted ceiling in cornice and lambrequins cut into -lace-work, as fine (though thicker) and as beautiful as any ever made -on a Belgian pillow. Three hundred robes, each in its scented bag of -silk, each costlier than the others, were piled on the next room’s -shelves of camphor-wood, and the lacquer chests of drawers and the -carved coffers that stood beyond the sleeping mats were crammed with -jewels. Nang Ping had sapphires that Maria Theresa had worn and a ruby -that had been Josephine’s, a pearl that had blinked on the hand of -England’s Elizabeth. She had, and often wore, a diamond that Hwangti’s -Queen Yenfi had worn four thousand years before. And the girl’s best -gems had been her mother’s. - -And in this toyed temple of Chinese maidenhood and her father’s -devotion Nang Ping lay huddled on the floor, “by Love’s simplicity -betrayed, all soiled, low i’ the dust.” - -Remember Nang Ping so long as you live, English Basil--while you live -and after! - -The day came in, a lovely, laughing day of perfect Chinese summer, and -Kwanyin Ko blinked and grinned in the early radiance. - -Nang Ping rose up a little and knelt before the joss, praying, as she -had never prayed before, the old, old prayer of tortured womanhood, -Magdalene’s petition, echoing, moaning in every corner of earth, -girdling the world with a hymn of shame and with terrible entreaty, the -saddest--save one other--of all prayers; never to be answered on earth, -never to be disregarded or coldly heard in heaven. - -And in another room, ko’towed before an uglier, sterner joss--the God -of Justice--Wu the mandarin was praying too. - -And in the pagoda--for it was there that it had been Wu’s humor to -prison him--Basil Gregory was praying, trying to remember words of -simple, tender supplication that his mother had taught him in England -when he was a little child. - - - - -CHAPTER XIX - -PREPARATION - - -A bird was singing rapturously in a honagko tree as Nang Ping rose -from her knees. She stood awhile at her open casement--it had been -flung wide all night--listening to the little feathered flutist, saying -good-by to her garden. The pagoda gleamed like rose-stained snow in the -rosy sunrise, and the girl smiled wanly, thinking how like a bride’s -cake it looked--the high tapering towers, white-sugared and fantastic, -that English brides have. She had seen several at a confectioner’s in -Hong Kong, and she had seen an English bride cut one with her husband’s -sword at a bridal in Pekin. It was far prettier, Nang had thought, than -the little cakes, gray and heavy, that Chinese brides have, but not so -nice to the taste--flat and dry. The lotus flowers were waking now, -slowly opening their painted cups of carmine, white, rose and amethyst; -the peacocks were preening to the day, the king-bird of them all -flinging out his jewels to the sun, and the shabbily-garbed hens, in -the red kissing of the sunrise refulgence, looking to wear breasts of -rose. A lark swayed and tuned on the yellow tassel of a laburnum, and a -bullfinch see-sawed and throated on the acacia tree. And every gorgeous -tulip was a chalice filled with dew. - -“Good-by,” the girl said gently, and turned away. - -She still wore the rich festive robes of yesterday. She began to take -them off, slowly, drawing strings from their knottings, slipping hooks -from their silver eyes, pushing jewel-buttons out of their holes, -letting the loosened garments fall one by one in a rainbow heap of silk -upon the floor (as Wu, when a boy, had shed furs and gems upon a floor -in Sze-chuan). Her women would find and fold them presently. But it -mattered nothing. Nothing mattered now. - -She still was wearing her nail-protectors, two on each hand--necessary -adjuncts to the toilet and to the comfort of many Chinese ladies, whose -long spiral nails would be a torture if unprotected. But it had been -Wu’s pleasure to have Nang Ping taught the piano, and so, of course, -she had to wear her nails short. But whenever she was “dressed” she -wore the fantastic ornaments, to indicate that Wu’s daughter did not -work. She discarded them now, and listlessly let them fall upon the -silks heaped at her feet: two were of green jade (one finely carved, -one studded with diamonds), one was silver set with rubies, the fourth -was gold set with pearls and moonstones. - -When all the finery--such finery as Europe never sees, except -burlesqued on the stage--had been cast off, she began to re-dress -herself, steadily and very carefully. - -From the silver ewer she poured water into the silver basin. It needed -both her hands and much of her strength to lift the ewer; it was heavy -with the precious metal’s weight, and she had never lifted it before. -In all her life she had never once dressed or undressed herself. -When the attar and the sweet vinegars had creamed in the basin she -bathed her face again and again until all the paint was gone. She only -wore rouge and thick-crusted white paint on days of function and of -festival. On days of homely ease and unceremonied home-keeping her skin -was as clean and unprofaned as a baby’s. - -It is a canon of Chinese womanhood never quite to undress -unnecessarily. Modesty at her toilet, even when performing it alone, is -enjoined the Manchu girl as it is the Catholic girl of Europe. And this -Manchu niceness has permeated the other Chinese races. And in China -a maid would be held not chary, but prodigal indeed, did “she unmask -her beauty to the moon.” A land of several peoples sharply distinct in -much, China is in much else the land of great racial amalgamation. And -it is impossible to trace back to their source many of this wonderful -people’s most salient qualities. Tartar has infected Mongol, Mongol -inoculated Tartar, Taoist taught Mohammedan, Confucianism and Buddhism -have mixed and fused, Teng-Shui tinged all, sometimes tainting and -degrading, occasionally idealizing and lifting up to poetry. And -modesty of body is simple instinct with Chinese girls of every blend -and caste. Nor is it lost--as so many of youth’s sweetnesses always -must be everywhere--in the gray slough of old age. Nowhere in China -will you encounter the unique exhibitions of antique female nudity that -occasionally startle one so extraordinarily in Japan. The old women -of China, even the poorest, are always clad, and a Chinese girl slips -from the screening of her smock into the screening of her bubbling bath -without an instant’s flash of interim. - -The early daylight showed Nang Ping very lovely, as she stood there in -her one last garment. Chinese women of the mandarin class are often -exquisitely lovely, especially those of mingled Manchu and Mongol -bloods. Nang’s sorrow was too new to have bleared or blowsed her yet; -it had but thrown a gracious, pathetic delicacy about her as a veil. -And even the charming coloring of her was not impaired. - -There is no greater beauty of coloring than the coloring of such -girls--not in England, not in Spain. Nang Ping’s skin was no darker -than the liquor of the finest Chinese tea, and not unlike it in hue, -not green, not buff, but white, just hinting of each, and in her cheeks -the delicate pink of a tea rose told how red the blood at her heart -was, and how thin the patrician skin that masked and yet revealed it. -The little figure, tall for a Chinese, was tenderly drawn and perfectly -proportioned; the young presence, for all its gentleness, was queenly; -the firmly modeled head was well set on the straight shoulders. Hair -could not be blacker or arched jet brows more beautifully drawn. The -girl’s mobile mouth was large, but exquisitely shaped, and her red lips -parted and closed over teeth that could not have been whiter, more -faultless or more prettily set. There was a dimple in the obstinate -chin, and one beneath the tiny mole on her right cheek; and her black, -velvet eyes (soft now, and almost purple with unshed tears) were as -straight set in the small head as the eyes of any Venus in Vatican or -Louvre. - -She stood a moment, gazing into space, clad only in her delicate smock, -and then slowly she redressed herself in her simplest robes--soft, -loose and gray. She had many such gowns, and wore them often. The -Chinese are too greatly, too finely artist to let the gorgeousness -in which they gloat degenerate by over-use into a commonplace. The -blare of their brazen music has its long reliefs of slow, soft minor -passages; their gayest gardens have prominent heaps of dull, barren -stone, long stretches of cold, gray walls; each sumptuous room has its -empty, restful corner. Nang Ping had fifty pictures of great price, -and more ivories, each a gem, but all the pictures save one, all the -ivories save one, were stowed away always, and just one at a time -placed where it might joy her sight; and most often she moved softly -about her home habited in plain raiment of neutral tints as gentle as a -dove’s. - -Her hair took her longest. She had never brushed it before, and the -unguent took time to remove. But at last even that was done, the -jeweled pins heaped away, the long black strands braided about her head. - -And then she sat down on the floor again, her cold, ringless hands -clasped at her knees, and waited and listened until her father’s gong -should strike. - -She knew that she should hear it presently. - -Once she started, and caught up from the floor a little scented bead. -She held it to her face, and then laid it away in her bosom. It was -her father’s, one of a string he often wore, and in her bitter misery -she was pathetically a little happier for the proof it gave her that -his own hands had carried her here. She would keep it in her bosom -always--while she lived. - -Twice servants came in with trays of food and drink; blanc-mange, soup, -tea and wine. They made deep obeisance to her when they came and when -they went. But she did not speak to them, nor they to her. - -And no message came until the message of the great gong’s soft boom. - - - - -CHAPTER XX - -WHAT WU DID IN PROOF OF LOVE - - -Wu, when he had laid Nang Ping on her mats and covered her, went to his -library, and sat thinking through the night. - -When he had lifted her, he had not glanced at the Englishman, nor -had he even looked in the direction of prison or prisoner since. The -servants had their orders. Those orders would be obeyed. With Basil -Gregory, Wu had nothing more to do--yet. - -All night long he scarcely moved by so much as the drumming of finger -or toe, by so much as the quiver of a lash. None of Nang Ping’s -restlessness was shared by him. He was beyond restlessness. His agony -was absolute. Mothers suffer acutely when daughters “fall”--good -mothers and bad. But such mothers’ sorrow can never equal the red -torment of fatherhood so punished. Nature holds stricter justice -between sex and sex than she is credited. And such partiality and -unfair favoritism as he does show now and then is given, as is the -gross favoritism of man-made laws constantly (in Europe and in Asia), -to women. - -Analyze what law of life you will, and the resultant conclusion will -have something to testify of Chinese wiseness. The punishment of a -crime never falls solely upon the direct miscreant. Blood and love must -pay their debt. And the Chinese legal code which allows and decrees -that kindred shall suffer (even to capital punishment) for a kinsman’s -crime is less fantastic and less fatuous than it seems to Western minds. - -Basil Gregory and Nang Ping had sinned. Wu and Florence Gregory were to -be punished with them. And because Nature forgives man less than she -forgives woman, the sharper, surer punishment was to fall on the father -and the son. - -Compared with one year in Wu’s life, the joy Nang Ping had stolen in -the garden was but “as water unto wine.” And, suffering now to her -sharp young utmost, she was suffering less than he. - -When day came he rose, as Nang Ping did, and went to the window. Her -room was on the one higher floor; his looked almost level with the -garden--his own garden. For he too had his own private pleasance, -taboo to all, unless expressly bidden there. And Wu rarely gave that -permission, even to Nang Ping. That bit of garden was his outer -solitude, and this room was his indoor privacy. It was here and there -he kept alone. - -No race prizes privacy more, more realizes its value, conserves and -guards it with more dignity and skill, or with so much. A people of -interminable clans, knit together and interdependent as is no other -people, yet it is with the Chinese people, both Mongol and Tartar, that -individuality has its fullest rights, its surest safety. - -Towards noon he bathed, put on again his plain dark robes, went into -the great hall and ate a little rice. He had work ahead, much work, and -he intended to do it well. He had no more time for thought, nor need. -His thinking was done. His years of selfishness were past. He no longer -saw or felt “a divided duty.” He was China’s now--Wu the mandarin. Each -hour should be full. He would serve assiduously and relentlessly, not -with brooding thought, but with action piled on action. - -At dusk he smote upon the gong hanging in the smaller audience hall, an -apartment half of state and half of intimacy. - -Nang Ping heard the deep notes reverberate through the house--she had -been listening for the sound all day--and rose to her feet before -they died away. She was standing ready at her door when her father’s -message came, and she followed the servant, for herself relieved that -her waiting was done, for herself feeling little else, but miserable -for Wu. He had been tender to her always, and she had loved him with -an absorbing love, until the Englishman had come to kiss her face, -dislocate her life and change her soul. - -She went in steadily and alone, bent in obeisance three times, and then -stood before her father quietly, her hands folded meekly at her breast, -her eyes patient and sorrowful, but not afraid. - -And she was not afraid. Basil was dead by now--she made no doubt -of that; the spoiler of Wu’s daughter could not have lived in Wu’s -vengeance for a day. There was no more to fear for Basil. For him the -worst had come, and was done. For herself fear had no place in her now. -Her father would not torture her--that she knew. But she thought that -she should scarcely have winced if he had. A slight, slip of a girl, -slim as willow in her scant dull robe, she came of a race whose women -had hung themselves more than once to honor a husband’s obsequies; and -one--a queen--had burned to her death, lighting beside the imperial -grave her own funeral pile of teak- and sandal-woods, oil-and-perfume -drenched, Nang Ping was not afraid. - -Wu met her eyes, and she met his; and his were not unkind. - -“Will you tell me all?” Wu did not speak unkindly. And this was the -first time he had couched command to her in interrogative. - -“My honorable father,” the girl said sadly, “I will tell you nothing.” - -The mandarin smiled. This was too grave a time for anger. And he had a -bribe that he knew could be trusted to buy from her what he would, let -the telling cost her what it might. - -He had never bribed his child, not even with sugar-plums for her smiles -when she was a babe. But he would bribe her now. Their old days were -done, and with them some old principles of conduct. And their old -relationship--spoiled now--was drawing to its close. - -“You fear to injure the Englishman!” But even that he did not say -roughly. - -“My honorable father, not that. He is past beyond injury now; Nang Ping -knows that.” - -Again he smiled. But he only said, “You fear to implicate Low Soong?” - -At that Nang Ping raised her eyes to his in entreaty. - -“Have no fear. No punishment shall fall on her. She is not worth it. -She shall be well dowered and honorably wed soon. She has dealt ill by -me, and by you, her kinswoman, foully; but even so, I will not do her -an injustice to you. She never betrayed you. In her first panic the -slight, silly frog-thing fled--to save her own dishonest skin--but she -came back but now, creeping to share your lot, and begging to speak -with you. Do you care to see her?” - -“I wish to see no one, O honorable sir.” - -“I thought you would answer so. Be at rest for her. She shall fare -well.” He did not add that he would keep his word. There was no need: -Nang Ping knew it. - -He called for lights, and when the red candles were lit and the sweet -torches in their sconces until all the room flamed with light, and the -noiseless servants had withdrawn to await his next command, whether it -came in a moment or in a year, he began to speak again. And because he -was Chinese, and because he still loved her well, his words were long. - -“Sit. Listen. I am not blameless. I shall be blameless from this hour. -My venerable, honorable grandfather, the sainted Wu Ching Yu, dedicated -me to a great task. I have obeyed him for the most, fulfilled it in the -main, but not with the single purpose such high duty claims. I loved -your mother. That was most right. Less would have wronged her; and she -was fragrant as the yellow musk, holy as the queen-star. But for one -celestial year, at her plum-blossom side, I forgot my task; at least I -let it wait, and sometimes I have let it wait for you. Not again shall -I do so. Scarcely time for suitable penance will I allow myself. I am -Wu, and the house of Wu shall be avenged. I shall live for that and for -China. My venerable grandfather, three thousand times wise, did well -to send me to England. And he bade me study Englishmen closely. But I -did ill to take to myself too much of their custom. We have learned too -much of Europe. It is well to learn of every nation, but to accept too -much from inferior peoples is a hideous crime; and in that crime I have -shared to China’s hurt--and yours. You are undone. China is threatened -with the loss of all that has made her for thousands of years paramount -and exquisite. Sometimes, alone at night, I have thought that I have -heard the wind cry, and Heaven sob, and the parting knell of China -toll. And I have thrown myself prostrate before our gods, and entreated -that China--our China--may prove stronger than her enemies, stronger -than her fools. But my soul aches. For I realize that change is in our -air, from Canton to Pekin, from Ningpo to Tibet, and that any hour -revolution may strike our mighty empire to the heart. The rebel, the -missionary, the fanatic and the adventurer, the foe without and the -dolt within, press her hard. Her plight is sore to-day. But China has -held together longer than any other empire in history. We Chinese never -forget, and we do not meekly forgive. Again and again we have seemed -to accept innovations, have tried them, have found them unacceptable, -and then we have discarded them once and forever. We are in peril now; -but the end is not yet. Already the word passes over China, as a breath -of summer over the head-heavy poppy fields, ‘Back to Confucius’! And -I--I descended from that great sage--I, too, who love China as I did -not love your mother--I, too, have betrayed China--and you! I have -given you a freedom that was in itself a soil to a maiden. I ask your -pardon. All night long I have asked your honorable mother’s, and the -forgiveness of my most noble ancestors. You have been to me both son -and daughter; the women of the Wus have often been so, and endowed in -it with great merit. But in me it was a sin. But from this I shall -be wholly China’s. This moon I perform a duty to our house--my last -selfish rite. It done, I am my country’s, my people’s. I shall wed now, -and give my honorable ancestors other sons, China men-Wus to be her -rulers and her servants. That I have not done so before is my crime. I -thought to adopt your husband, or if that might not be, he too highly -ranked in his own great clan, one of your younger sons, that all I -had might go to you and to one you had borne. I sinned to think it. -Adoption is honorable, decreed of our sages, countenanced of our gods, -but only for those to whom sons of their bodies are denied. A man -should beget men, father his own heir.” - -He said much more. It was his last indulgence of self, for even his -stern resolve yearned over her, and his tortured heart delayed the -parting with the girl. He spoke of her childhood and of his own. But of -the high traditions of the women of its blood, upon which their great -house was built as on an impregnable rock, he did not speak again. He -spared her that--his only child, the first woman of her name to err in -the degree that is not forgiven Chinese gentlewomen. - -Presently he commanded again--and no question now--that she should tell -him all, and commanding turned his screw. - -“He is not dead,” he said. “He lives. He is unharmed.” Nang Ping swayed -a little on her stool and caught at her knees with her hands. “Tell me -all.” - -“O honorable sir,” she sobbed, huddling at his feet, “I cannot.” - -Wu smiled. “All! Omit nothing. You can save him so!” - -Nang Ping started up, sitting bolt on her heels, and searched her -father’s face with narrow eyes widened and piteous. - -“All! And he shall live. Even, he shall go free!” - -Nang Ping moaned, hung down her head, and began to speak, for she knew -that Wu Li Chang would keep his word. And even this price of shame her -discarded love would pay to save her man. Her words came with tortured -breath--in gasps. But it was for Basil, and she kept her bond. She told -of their first meeting and their last. She told it all--all but those -utmost things that never have been told, and never can, and in China -least of all. - -Why Wu exacted it was hard to say. Perhaps he could not have told -himself. If it tortured her, more it tortured him an hundred fold. -And there was little of it in detail, nothing of it in essential, -that he did not already know. Much of it he knew better and deeper -than she did. Perhaps to hear it from her lips was no small part of a -self-inflicted punishment he had decreed his scourge since he had been -so lax a father--lax a father, and he Chinese! And she motherless! - -He heard her in silence--without once a word of prompting or of -interruption. And not once did she raise her head or look at him. -If she had looked, her faltering words must have died. For his face -twitched with convulsive pain again and again, and foam beaded white on -his clenched lips. - -There was a long silence when she had done, and neither moved. - -At last he said, “Is there something you would ask of me, some message -you would give?” - -Nang Ping trembled violently. But the message her soul cried out to -send she dared not speak; and if she had dared, surely she must have -spared him it, for she was gentle, and he had always loved her well -and shown her tenderness. When she could command herself a little, she -said, falteringly, “If Low Soong might have a jewel or a robe--one, -from me.” - -“Of all that was not your mother’s or my mother’s, or any mothers’ of -theirs, Low Soong shall choose all that she will. And I promise you -that I will bear that frail no ill-will. It was not for her to guard -what I, your father, failed to guard.” - -Nang Ping tried to thank him, but she could only bow her head and lay -it near his shoe. She dared not touch that shoe. It was an old, easy -shoe. She had embroidered it when a child. - -“The day grows warm,” Wu said presently, rising and bidding her rise. -And when she stood before him, he laid his hand a moment on her -shoulder and said softly, “Nang Ping!” for she was motherless, and very -young, and he loved her still. - -“The day grows warm. Go to the easement and tell me if the sun is on -the tulip tree.” And as she moved away, without a sound he seized the -great sword hanging beside the shrine and struck her once. - -It was enough. - -She scarcely moaned--just a soft quick sigh--and one smothered word. - -Wu Li Chang caught the sigh but not the word. Surely Kwanyin Ko had -granted something of Nang Ping’s prayer, and was merciful to Wu in -that. For the Chinese girl had died speaking an English name. - -He did not catch the word; but he saw something fall from her dress and -roll towards the altar, and he rose and found it--a little scented bead. - -And all night long, until the day broke over China, Wu sat motionless -and alone in the room where he had played with her often in her baby -days, taught her as a child, decorated her fresh young womanhood with -gems and love: sat immovable and alone, while the heart’s blood of his -only child clotted and crusted at his feet. - - - - -CHAPTER XXI - -A CONFERENCE - - -Lord Melbourne once said that “nobody has ever done a very foolish -thing except for some great principle.” Well, it would be difficult -to find the great principle underlying most of the very foolish -things the average European does in Asia. As a nation we British are -very wise in our conduct there. As a race we deal honorably with the -Oriental peoples--when once we’ve conquered them--and honorable conduct -is a high wisdom in itself, and from it we reap a fine reward--the -respect of the Eastern races. But as individuals we perpetrate a long -series of crass blunders, of petty daily idiocies, whose sum total is -tragedy and sometimes threatens international holocaust. And it is -the Englishwoman, not the Englishman, who is the worst offender. Our -security in Asia is built up on Oriental respect and liking, and Mrs. -Montmorency-Jones can do more in a day to undermine it than a Sir Harry -Parkes can do in a month to build it. Insolence is her method; fair -dealing is his. - -The average British man in Asia learns little enough, Heaven knows! -of the natives among whom he lives; the average British woman learns -nothing. She does not decline to know the natives; no, indeed--she -simply ignores them. Woman rules in Asia--and especially in China--as -(if a woman may be allowed to hint it) she does almost everywhere. And -Englishwomen living in Calcutta or Shanghai do English interests grave -injury, by courting, winning (and meriting) the dislike of Indian and -Chinese women. The Englishwoman does it not by any overt act or series -of acts, but by a consistent supercilious contemptuousness of attitude. -I am a memsahib. You do not exist. The secret societies--the tongs and -the brotherhoods--are responsible for much of our Asiatic difficulties; -our own women are responsible for more. If the Boxers made Pekin run -red with European blood, some women of the European Legations did even -more to bring down the trouble and to foment it. - -And the pity of it is its absolute unnecessariness: just a cup of cold -water now and then, just a little human kindliness now and then, and -the liking and sympathy of Oriental womanhood were ours. Some one has -written of “the heart that must beat somewhere beneath the impenetrable -Oriental mask.” The mask is not impenetrable. An honest, friendly smile -will pierce it. The Oriental is nine-tenths heart. A typical Asiatic -can be won by moderate kindness to great loyalty and devotion. Page -after page of the history of the Indian mutiny proves it. - -And of the Chinese people this is even truer. - -Florence Gregory was a kindly, likeable woman, and during her year in -Hong Kong she had not thought it necessary to make herself detestable -to the Chinese with whom she came in contact. - -On her part this was neither tact nor studied policy. They interested -her and she liked them, and in return they liked her. She gave them -courtesy and decent treatment, and sometimes a sunny word or two, and -in return they gave her of their best and served her loyally. Ah Wong, -her amah, adored her. - -There was nothing that Ah Wong would not have done for her English -mistress. And the story of it is this: Mrs. Gregory had never saved Ah -Wong’s life or rescued her son from slavery. She had just been quietly -and decently kind to her in the little daily ways. Oh! those little -ways, the little things--too small to chronicle, almost too small to -sense sometimes--but to women they are _everything_! The big -things scarcely count to women; but the little things--they count. - -When Basil Gregory did not keep his promise to dine at their hotel -his mother was disappointed, but not inordinately surprised, and only -moderately hurt. It had happened before. - -They waited dinner half an hour. Robert Gregory would not allow a -longer waiting. And even the mother dined with an unruffled appetite. -Even when midnight came without him it occurred to no one to be in the -least alarmed--to no one but Ah Wong. - -Ah Wong had seen the impalpable intrinsic stalking in the garden at -Kowloon. And what she saw alarmed her then. Basil’s continued absence -alarmed her more and more. She was alarmed for her mistress’s peace of -mind. Basil himself she neither liked nor disliked. She thought Robert -Gregory a funny old chap. The son did not interest her. - -When Basil did not appear at the office the next day his father was -angry. When three days passed, and no word came of the truant, they -were alarmed--all of them. And in a week the island rang with hue and -cry for him. - -Mrs. Gregory was distraught. - -Perhaps the son’s disappearance might have worried the father even more -if there had been no other pressing anxieties. But there were--several. - -There was the very deuce to pay at the Hong Kong branch of the Gregory -Steamship Company, and a good deal of inadequacy with which to pay it. - -It was a bright, hot day--a blue and gold day, without a trace of Hong -Kong mist and murk--and the windows in the manager’s room were open -wide. The furniture was sparse but rich; it was Robert Gregory’s own -room, and he was of the type of business man who likes to do himself -well in the format of his office routine, more in a sincere pride in -his business cult than in personal vanity or any pampering of self, and -also in a well-defined theory of advertisement: Persian carpets and -Spanish mahogany desks indicate a firm’s prosperity clearly. Gregory’s -furniture was very expensive, but sensible, solid and untrimmed. He -earned and amassed money in big ways and in small, but, in the main, -he left the spending of it on fripperies to Hilda and his wife. A -photograph of Hilda--the one ornament the office confessed to--stood -on her father’s desk, in a splendid wide frame that might have been -Chinese, so costly and so barbaric was it, had only the design and the -workmanship been better. But if the picture was somewhat over-framed, -its girl-subject was not over-dressed, for English Hilda, who from her -father’s office table smiled up at all the world, was several inches -more décolleté than even the moon had ever seen Nang Ping. - -But modesty and even decency are as much virtues of the eye that looks -as of the creatures of its glance; and John Bradley, sitting in Robert -Gregory’s chair, saw only maidenhood delectable and flawless in the -picture his eyes sought again and again. And any man who, to Robert -Gregory’s knowledge, had seen anything coarser, Robert Gregory would -have shot cheerfully. - -Holman, Gregory’s head clerk, sat moodily opposite the priest, looking -out into the quay. The long window he faced was the apartment’s most -conspicuous feature, and through it outrolled a teeming panorama of -steamships and shipping industries. Docks and shipping in the near -distance looked even nearer in the clear magnifying atmosphere, and -close at hand smoke curled up from the funnels of a large steamer, -flying the house flag of the company--a noticeable pennant even in that -harbor, where noticeable objects jostle each other by the hundreds. -The big lettering--“G. S. S. Co.”--was as bright and blue as the -sky against whose brilliant background the smoke belched forth from -the fat funnels, and the bunting that backgrounded the letters was -yellow--impertinently yellow, for it was of the precise shade that in -Pekin would have spelled death to any other who wore it or showed it on -his chair, so sacred was it to reigning Emperor and Empress. But Robert -Gregory did not know that, nor did Holman. But they should have known -it--certainly Holman should, for he had lived in China many years now, -and was far from being so crassly stupid concerning the Chinese as his -chief was. - -Between the big ship and the office building a constant procession of -coolies passed up and down the dock, and the hum of their incessant -intoned chatter filled the room with a noisy sing-song that rose and -fell but never rested or drew breath. - -On a rostrum behind the _Fee Chow’s_ side, Simpson, an old and -trusted clerk, was watching the coolies load, and a Chinese clerk -perched near him on a high stool, checking each bale and box. A -compradore sat at his desk on the wharf, wrangling with a knot of -loin-clothed coolies who were gesticulating wildly with arms and poles -and chattering like angry chimpanzees. - -“And that is all you can tell me?” Holman said, as Bradley rose to go. - -“All I care to say. I’ve strained a point to say that much.” - -“And you will not tell me where you got your information? Is that quite -fair?” - -John Bradley shook his head. “Not information. I have no -information--none. But I have my suspicion, and I believe it is well -based.” - -“Built on Chinese rock!” - -“Well--yes--in part. And I have a great deal of respect for Chinese -rock. As for being unfair, that is the last thing I’d be willingly. And -I have tried to look at this from every side. A man likes to respect -confidence; with a priest it is a duty, solemn and imperative. But if I -chose to blab, I have not one concrete fact to state. A Chinese woman, -I will not tell you her name--if I know it--comes to me in the middle -of the night, getting into the grounds somehow over the wall or up the -hill, certainly not through the gate, and begs me to find some way of -getting Basil Gregory’s people out of China. She urges me to let them -lose no time in searching for him, because no searching will find him; -and they, she insists, are in danger that will grow deadlier every hour -they stay on here. I did not know that Basil was missing until she told -me; it’s two nights ago. I had been expecting him to call--to complete -some talk we’d begun----” - -“About a girl?” - -“But I was not particularly surprised that he delayed keeping -an appointment that was not very definite. Basil was always a -procrastinator. The woman does not know where he is or what has -happened to him. Take that from me. She said so, and she was speaking -the truth. It is part of my business to know when people are telling -the truth and when they are lying to me. She had some suspicion--what -it was I have no idea, or whether it was right or wrong--but she would -tell me nothing, except that she risked her life to warn me that at all -costs the Gregorys must go from China, and go now.” - -“And leave poor Mr. Basil to his fate?” - -Bradley made a gesture of baffled helplessness. - -The clerk’s lip curled. “You have a poor idea of my intelligence. I -know it all now--all that you know--and what you suspect.” - -“Then you do not know much,” the other retorted hotly. - -“No,” Holman admitted grimly. “Not much to chew on, and nothing at -all to go upon. Ah Wong comes to you in the middle of the night--it -_was_ Ah Wong; she is devoted to Mrs. Gregory, and quite -indifferent to Mr. Basil, dead or alive. You learn from her, or from -some one else, the next morning, of the visit three days ago to Wu’s -garden at Kowloon, and off you go to Kowloon to dig it all out. You -said you went to Kowloon to try to interest your friend Wu in the case, -because he is the one man who can do anything that can be done in -China. Now, you did not go--excuse me, Mr. Bradley--to Kowloon to try -to interest Wu in the case; you went to find Mr. Basil.” - -Bradley threw down the hat he had taken up and sat down again. “You -are wrong there,” he said. “For I too believe that Basil Gregory will -not be found. But I did go to try to interest Wu Li Chang in what is -very urgent to me--for--for several reasons--because I know him to be, -humanly speaking, almost omnipotent, and because I trust and like him.” - -“Trust and like Wu Li Chang!” - -“Emphatically,” was the quiet answer. “I’ve seen a great deal of -Mandarin Wu since I first came out. He’s a gentleman, and every inch a -man. There is no one I respect more, and very, very few of my own race -I respect as much. We are friends, I tell you. And I think he likes me. -I went to beg a great favor of him.” - -“H’m!” the clerk mused aloud. “And he wouldn’t see you?” - -“And I couldn’t get in. I have never been refused ‘come in and welcome’ -at Wu’s before, and I must have been there fifty times. But I couldn’t -get past the outer gate yesterday. The mandarin didn’t refuse to see -me; I just couldn’t get in.” - -“Much the same thing----” - -“Not at all! I was met at the gate and turned away from it with every -courtesy. If Wu had wished to avoid me, I might still have been made -free of the grounds, as I have been a dozen times when he has been away -or too busy to chat. But I was driven--with the utmost politeness--from -the gate. Why? Because there was something in there I was not to see--I -believe, Basil. And if Basil, Basil alive. A dead Englishman would have -been obliterated.” - -“But could not a living one be hidden beyond your suspicion, even by so -astute a Chinaman as Wu Li Chang?” - -The clergyman looked puzzled. “Yes--yes--undoubtedly, most probably, -but such men as Wu take no chance, and there is always just one chance -that any living prisoner may make himself heard or seen. But dead men -tell no tales.” - -Holman shook his head. He was unconvinced. - -And Holman was right. Wu Li Chang would, had he chosen to do so, have -let all Anglo-Hong Kong stroll through his gardens, and have kept -twenty prisoners there undiscovered at the same time. He had had -Bradley denied entrance at his gate because his home was the home of -mourning, and in it there was no room or welcome for any Englishman, -except the one grimly guarded guest in the pagoda by the lake. - -“Well,” Bradley said, rising again, “I can only repeat, as you value -Basil’s life, let Mr. Gregory do nothing to rasp Wu Li Chang. See him, -I must and will. But it will have to be at his convenience and consent, -not at mine. I don’t know why I should hope to influence him. But I can -only try.” He picked up his hat, and continued looking at the girl in -the frame. “Wu may be coaxed; he cannot be coerced. There is no force -to which we could appeal, even if we had anything to go upon, and we -have nothing. The Tsungli yamên itself, at Pekin, could neither coerce -nor punish Wu Li Chang if it were minded to----” - -“You know that Mr. Basil was seen here on the island after they had all -returned from their visit to Wu’s daughter?” - -John Bradley waved that aside contemptuously. “Rubbish!” - -“Precisely what I think,” Holman acquiesced tersely. - -At the door the priest turned to say earnestly, “Remember, Mr. Gregory -must do nothing to annoy Wu now--absolutely nothing. Basil’s very life -may depend on that.” - -“I’ll do my best,” Holman said, none too confidently, rising wearily -and taking a step towards the other. - -“And, Holman, not one word about Ah Wong--that you think she has been -to me. It would serve no purpose, and it might cause her trouble--so--I -expressly ask you, not one word.” - -“Not one word, then,” the other man said, taking Bradley’s outheld hand. - -And they parted with a grip long and strong. They were brother Masons. - - - - -CHAPTER XXII - -SING KUNG YAH’S FLOWERS - - -That afternoon Florence Gregory, coming in with Hilda and Ah Wong from -a weary, distracted searching--searching here, there, everywhere--found -in her sitting-room such a basket of flowers as she had never seen -before, and a red Chinese visiting card, three inches wide and fully -eight inches long. Ah Wong eyed it dismayed, and at her lady’s command -translated the ideographic characters reluctantly. “No like,” she -added. “Chlinese lady no make vlisit so way--Chlinese lady no have -vlisitling clard chit. No like.” - -“But who is Sing Kung Yah?” Mrs. Gregory asked wearily, not interested -to know, except that any straw might prove a clew to the only thing on -earth that mattered now, and so must be clutched. - -“Lido wuman,” the amah said contemptuously, her fine, acrid Mongolian -disgust in no way softened by the unhappy fact that she herself was a -widow also. - -“Whose widow is she?” Mrs. Gregory was puzzled. - -“Not know.” - -“Who is she? Why has she called?” - -“Not know--whly she clome--or send slweet blossoms. Not know if she -clome itself.” - -“Find out.” - -“Madam, can do,” the woman said, running off on her errand reluctantly. - -“Did,” she reported presently. “Top-side chair. Plenty coolie.” - -“Who is she?”--the English voice implied that the English mistress -intended to be answered explicitly this time. - -And Ah Wong answered desperately, “Her all same klinsloman Wu Li Chang. -Live Kowloon yamên. Be mock mother lonorable miss-child we dlink tea.” - -“Great Scot!” Hilda exclaimed. “What a time to choose to force her -acquaintance on us--a Chinawoman! Even they must have heard of Basil’s -disappearance, with every wall and corner in Hong Kong placarded with -his description and his picture.” - -“Oh! be quiet,” the mother told her. Florence was thinking--thinking -hard. - -Ah Wong was thinking too, and on the Chinese face, usually so -inscrutable, there was an unmistakable pinch of anxiety, and her -dog-like, devoted eyes were growing haggard. - -“Take them away--where Mr. Gregory will not see them. But take care of -them. Let the hotel servants see that we are treating them with the -greatest respect. Do you understand?” - -“Ah Wong understland,” the woman said. “Can do.” And she did do; but -she only just could, for the great gilded bamboo basket of flowers was -so heavy and so huge that she could scarcely lift it; she staggered a -little as she carried it from the room. - -And Basil Gregory’s mother went on thinking--on and on. - -The mandarin Wu was said to be the most powerful man in China--at least -in this part of China. Surely he could help them to find Basil. And -he was a kind man--his girl had said so. And his near kinswoman--the -aunt who had been on a visit at a Taoist nunnery or something when they -were in Kowloon--had called and brought a garden full of flowers. That -call should be returned, post-haste. Perhaps she could help, the woman -who had left the flowers and the absurd red card; and the girl, the -little girl who had given them tea, she could help, too, to persuade -the all-powerful mandarin, if it needed much to persuade him; of course -she could and she would; of course she would--she had had the kindest -eyes and a soft, girlish mouth. How she, his mother, wished that Basil -might have shown little Miss Wu just a little more attention--not too -much, of course; that might have alarmed or even offended a Chinese -girl--you never could tell about such oddities; but if only he’d shown -a little less--yes--a good deal less cold indifference--indifference so -cold that it had been almost a rudeness--and girls felt such things, -and resented them too--even Chinese girls, probably. Of course, she, -his mother, rejoiced in the niceness of her boy, and that he was not -as other young Englishmen were in China--some of them--but manly -Aryan self-respect was one thing, and an almost brutal display of -racial superiority and masculine indifference was quite another. She -wished indeed, that he had treated the only child of the great Wu less -cavalierly, for his manner to the pretty Chinese creature had been very -cavalier--Chinese, but a girl for all that. Still, his fault was in his -favor, and it was no part of a mother’s office to forget that. Basil -was innately and intrinsically--and she believed irradicately--nice. -Thank God for it! He had been a little wild at school--the best boys -always were (repeating to herself the foolish old threadbare paternal -fallacy); a trifle lax at Oxford too--but, her son and always nice! - -There was nothing cavalier about the way in which Ah Wong carried -her fragrant burden through the hotel corridors. Her manner to the -honorable flowers grown in the garden of the jade-like mandarin, and -gathered by noble, jeweled hands, was conspicuously obsequious. - -But when she had placed them in a cool, dark room, sacred to an adjunct -of her lady’s toilet, and into which Robert Gregory never came, nor -the hotel servants, her manner changed. She put them down abruptly, -fastened the doors (there were two) feverishly and securely, and -gestured angrily towards the gleaming golden basket of bloom, with -a use of arms and fingers strangely identical with the motions with -which the Neapolitan peasant averts the evil eye. Then she ran one -matting-blind up, letting such breeze as there was blow across the -flowers and out of the room through the window. - -She even knelt down by the big basket, and with a guttural groan -sniffed--not at the blossoms, but at the stems, and at the gilded -wicker-work. But if there was some insidious poison hidden in the gift, -to kill or disfigure whoever smelt or touched, Ah Wong could not detect -it. - -But how could she? Why should she hope to pit her wit against the wit -of Wu? - -Next, the woman got a sharp bamboo, and, kneeling down again, prodded -cautiously but thoroughly among the leaves and stems and the depths of -moss. She trembled as she worked, for she was prodding for some small -poison-snake or asp, and was terribly afraid; but because another woman -had treated her decently for a whole year, and kindly more than once, -she worked on until convinced that nothing that crawled or stung was -hidden in the glowing gift. - -Then she unlocked one door and made several hurried journeys into the -adjacent sleeping-room, carrying a small tub, a spirit-lamp, a box, a -manicure set, a dozen sundries, and arranging them as best she could, -first locking the dressing-room door from the bedroom side and hiding -the key in her bosom. - -The flowers seemed innocent enough, but Ah Wong would die before her -English lady should touch them or inhale their breath. - -Ah Wong was absurdly wrong--if devotion can ever be absurd; the flowers -were exactly what they seemed. Wu Li Chang was no crude bungler. When -he unsheathed his knife the knife would cut, but it would leave no -trace of Wu. - -Of the tragedy that had been enacted at Kowloon Ah Wong knew exactly -nothing; but she suspected almost all, and the details of her suspicion -were uncannily accurate. She was Chinese. - - - - -CHAPTER XXIII - -AH WONG - - -That same night, at midnight, Tom Carruthers and Hilda Gregory sat hand -in hand on a verandah that looked down the Peak on to the city and -the water beyond. The midnight sky was thick with stars, and up and -down the Peak’s town-side thin snakes of light crept now and then--the -lantern lights of late-sojourning natives, or of those pulling and -pushing the rickshaws, and carrying the chairs of European merry-makers -returning to the Peak to sleep in its comparative cool--a party that -had dined at Government House, a dozen who had made moonlight picnic in -the grounds of Douglas’ Folly or at Wong-ma-kok, a man who had worked -late at the bank, three who had played late at the club, several who -had been at a dance, and perhaps fifty who had been yawning over the -Richelieu of a very scratch Australian company. In Hong Kong--the -town itself--the lights were still many, for Hong Kong both works and -revels late o’ nights, and on the nearer water dimmer lights blinked -sleepily. And from the mastheads of many a ship larger lights hung -bright and clear--red, green, blue, orange. There were half a dozen -that Carruthers could identify as theirs--lanterns slung from craft of -the Gregory Steamship Company--and he pointed them out to Hilda. - -They spoke to each other but fitfully. Each was trying to think of some -worth-while suggestion to make about poor Basil, and neither could. - -A window that led from the balcony to the room beyond was open, and -Robert Gregory and his wife were sitting in there, not silent like the -two on the verandah, but going together over and over again a dozen -sorry theories of their son’s disappearance, a dozen feverish plans for -his rescue. - -The island and the mainland beyond had been well beaten by now. All -the Europeans, the Government House, the Civil Service, residents, -officials big and small, had tried to help in the search. For Robert -Gregory was a power in Hong Kong, and Mrs. Gregory was well liked. And -many of the natives were trying, too, to help in the search, or seemed -to be. - -In the Company’s offices on the bund, a light still burned in the -manager’s room, and Holman and William Simpson sat there in earnest, -anxious conclave. - -“Nothing could look much blacker,” Simpson was saying. - -“Nothing.” - -“The bottom seems about out!” - -Holman nodded grimly. - -And indeed the affairs of the great Company seemed desperate, and -all in the last few weeks, chiefly in the last few days! Strike had -followed strike among the dock hands, inexcusably, inexplicably. -Demands for increased wages, made when some important contract, already -overdelayed, must be fulfilled quickly, or lost, were scarcely acceded -to when they were renewed. It looked as if their hands were determined -to ruin and shut down the Company by which they all lived and that had -treated and paid them well for years. It was one of Robert Gregory’s -boasts that he believed in keeping his tools bright and his machinery -well oiled. The _Fee Chow_ must not miss the next morning’s tide, -and yet her loading had been hindered and bungled consistently. A -dozen mishaps and a dozen odd financial backsets had followed each -other, and it looked as if disaster had come to the Gregory Steamship -Company, and come to stay. - -Too anxious for the house they had served long and staunchly to rest, -and anxious for their own salt too, the two men had returned after -office hours to talk it over--to find a way out, if they could. - -And the deeper they went into their canvass of affairs, the -more difficult and bad it all seemed. And certainly the strange -disappearance of young Gregory was far and away the worst feature of -the entire complication. The Gregory purse was long, the Gregory credit -enormous; both would stand a great deal of strain. But the accident (or -whatever it was) to his boy was beginning to tell upon the father--that -had been evident all day; and when Robert Gregory’s nerve went, the -greatest asset of the firm went. - -And for this reason, rather than for any keen feeling for the young man -who had shown but little for the business at which they toiled loyally -early, and late, while he neglected it or played at it flippantly, and -from which, as a rule, he drew in a day rather more in the way of cash -than they together did in a week, it was of his disappearance and of -the chance of his return that they spoke and planned, much more than of -the ledger that lay between them, or the more immediate affairs of the -office. - -And while the six--two here, four in the hotel on the Peak--were trying -to think and to contrive, two others, but quite separately, were doing -something more active. - -John Bradley, just at midnight, came out of a tiny house in Po -Yan Street, not far from the Tung Wah Hospital, in the heart of -Tai-pingshan, the poorest part of the Chinese quarter--a malodorous -hovel in which a native miscreant, whom Bradley had befriended more -than once, and whom, rightly or wrongly, the clergyman thought he could -trust, lived. Sung Fo would have come to the Englishman on receipt of -a message, but Bradley had thought it best to manage otherwise. And he -feared nothing in Hong Kong, and indeed had nothing to fear, not even -here in its worst quarter of slime and dirt and worse, tucked away -behind the cobblers’ lanes. - -He had found Sung Fo at home, and had made the bargain he had come to -make. Sung Fo had promised to “look-see” and “try-find,” and for the -rest Bradley thought he could do nothing but wait and watch and pray. - -Like Ah Wong, he knew nothing but suspected everything, but with much -less accuracy than she. - -Unlike Ah Wong, all John Bradley’s sympathies were with Wu Li Chang. - -He would do anything that a man might do to find Basil Gregory. - -He would do anything that a man might to avoid injuring Wu Li Chang. - -And to spare Wu he would have gone even a little farther than he was -prepared to go for Basil’s sake, had not Basil been Hilda’s brother. - -But if his sympathy was all Wu Li Chang’s, his anxiety was not. He had -a firm conviction that nothing he could do, by purpose or by accident, -could harm or imperil Wu Li Chang. - -When he had been walking away from Sung’s--perhaps for ten -minutes--picking his way over garbage heaps and broken side-paths, he -paused to look curiously at a house of which he had heard a great deal -but had never entered--a well-kept brick edifice, taller and better -built than many houses in that quarter, painted a dull light blue, and -owned and inhabited by a Chinese apothecary who was infamously famous -throughout the Empire. - -It looked an innocent house, clean and law-abiding. It was lightless, -and each of its shutters was tightly closed; but at midnight--a -quarter-past midnight now--that it was darkened and closed but added to -its air of trim respectability. And yet, to this quiet blue house half -the poisoning crimes in China were attributed by the native and the -European authorities alike--attributed, but not one ever traced. - -The authorities had raided the place again and again, but always -uselessly. Nothing incriminating was ever found--nothing but the -ordinary wares of a well-stocked apothecary: glass bowls of Korean -ginseng-plant roots (one, five inches long, was worth ten pounds, and -a little of its dust would give vigor to the old, hair to the bald), -skins of black cats and dogs (stewed, they prevent disease, and are -the best hot-weather diet), musk, rhubarb and silk-covered packets of -dragons’ blood (invaluable medicinally, but not what it sounds--a dry -resinous powder scraped from Sumatra rattan), cups of rhinoceros’ horn, -skins and horns ground into powdered doses, antidotes to poison, or -guaranteed to impart the qualities of the animal which it had protected -or adorned. Horns of cornigerous animals hung in tidy rows, and formed -a conspicuous part of the stock-in-trade, for they give the human -partaker strength and courage, still silly nerves, quell fearfulness. A -pyramid of the hoofs of young deer, specific to inculcate fleet gait, -half-screened the chief treasure of the place: a lacquer cabinet of -hearts. There were three hearts, each in its own well-sealed jar: a -lion’s heart, and two that were human--a pirate’s and a young girl’s. -The criminal’s was preserved in alcohol, the maiden’s in honey; and -each was of fabulous value. There was no secret about their being here. -They had been honorably bought: one from the criminal himself just -as he bent down smilingly on the Kowloon execution ground, the other -from a widowed grandmother who was a holy woman and very poor. The -girl had been very lovely, and some rich man would buy her heart one -day, no doubt, to enhance the marriage chances of a plain but favorite -daughter. The pirate had been a monster of ferocity, and to eat his -heart would be to become forever brave. Chinese warriors have eaten -the hearts of their bravest foes. They can pay no greater compliment, -none more sincere. Two alabaster boxes were stowed carefully beneath -the counter: one held charms; the other held smaller boxes of p’ingan -tan (pills of peace and tranquillity), the choicest drug in China. -Tze-Shi sent boxes of p’ingan tan to troops sorely pressed or whom she -wished greatly to reward. There were ointments here made from the gums -of trees that surrounded the tomb of Confucius, and precious medicines -brewed or pounded beside the Elephant’s Pool, where Pusien washed -his elephant after crossing the great mountain from the west; some -in Pootoo, the sacred isle of Nan Hai, and still others in a garden -that Marco Polo knew. There were simples here that would cure women of -vanity, and one (but this the apothecary would by no means guarantee) -that healed them from overtalkativeness. But all this was as it should -be, and the police had never been able to find here anything nefarious -or even objectionable. - -Something about the building fascinated Bradley--probably the -contrast between its docile and pleasant seeming and its sinister -reputation--and he stood some time gazing at it, scrutinizing each -closely shuttered window--there was not a balcony; it was unique in -that--and the tight-shut door with the apothecary sign hanging from the -lintel. - -“It looks a peaceful place, innocently asleep after a day of honest -industry,” he said to himself; and then some old words that were great -favorites of his, from a book he never tired of reading, came to his -memory, and he bespoke them aloud softly to the star-emblazoned Chinese -night: “He it is who ordaineth the night as a garment, and sleep for -rest, and ordaineth the day for waking up to life.” - -But the apothecary’s house was not quite asleep. A thin line of light -trickled out from below the door, and then the door opened narrowly -and a woman, shrouded from crown to shoe in humble blue, came into the -street. - -He did not see her face, although, as by law obliged, she carried a -lantern, but she saw his, clear-cut in the white moonlight, a late, -just-rising moon, and for an instant she turned as if to speak to him; -but she thought better of it, and walked quietly but quickly away. - -Bradley wondered who she was--up to no special harm, he hoped. It did -not occur to him that her gait was familiar, at least not individually -so--thousands of amahs walk so. But he noticed that her coarse blue -clothes looked very clean--as clean and as blue as the blue house of -Yat Jung How. - -He went home then, and Ah Wong went too, back to the hotel, slipping -out of the Chinese quarter stealthily, but going along the Praya -unconcernedly and through Queen’s Road and Ice House Street, and up the -long climb to the Peak, and past the night watchman at the hotel door. -She had a night-police pass; and her mistress had given her leave to -spend the evening on some errand of her own. - -It’s a long climb up Hong Kong Peak. Ah Wong was very strong, but -her indefatigable little feet ached when she slipped into the room -where she had locked the flowers almost twelve hours ago, and day was -slipping rosy up the sky. - -Day was coming, but she did not lift a blind. She lit a candle. And -when she had laid off the long blue cloth in which she had veiled -herself, closely in the Chinese quarter, carelessly in English-town, -she took from her dress the spoil of her visit to Yat Jung How’s blue -house: three bottles. - -The smallest of the three was filled (it was very small) with a few -drops of opalescent green liquid. Ah Wong studied it grimly awhile, and -then she knotted the phial in some corner of her garments, and tucked -it securely back inside her dress. - -The second bottle held about a dram of something that smelt -disagreeably when she uncorked it; but she kept it well away from her -own face and nose, and turned it instantly into the moss in the basket. -It was deadly poison this, and would destroy any reptile or scorpion -thing that came within a yard of it, and so potent was it that being -near it would render any other poison quite innocuous--Yat had told -her so. And she trusted Yat Jung How. She had known a way to make him -trustworthy. - -The third bottle was a generous, roomy receptacle, squat but wide. It -held nearly a pint. And this was disinfectant, warranted to purify a -poisoned room, and smelt of an acceptable cool pungence as Ah Wong -threw it lavishly about the room, until she had spilled the last drop. - -Then she lit several handfuls of joss-sticks and pulled up the blinds. -But she did not unlock the doors, or leave one unlocked when at last -she left the room, to sit outside it till her lady called. She intended -that no one but she should pass into that room until the Kowloon -flowers were all dead, and she had won Mrs. Gregory’s permission to -burn them herself, basket and all. - -The sweet pungence of the joss-sticks came to her from under the door. -From under the room’s other door no doubt it was filling her mistress’s -chamber with thick sweetness--but that was well, for the English lady -loved the smell. Mr. Gregory did not especially. Quite possibly he -might swear a little in his sleep. But he often swore in his sleep. Ah -Wong had heard him. - -She leaned back her head against the cool corridor wall, anxious and -tired, but well content with her night’s work. - -And she had left her three jade bangles (and they were good) and her -seven silver ones and her stick-pin of seed pearls and coral with Yat -Jung How. And almost she had pawned her soul to him, and had quite -pawned all she would earn for years. - -Heathen Chinee! - - - - -CHAPTER XXIV - -IN THE CLUTCH OF THE TONGS - - -The next day there was still no word of Basil, and at the Steamship -Company’s hong the tangle was steadily tightening. - -Holman sat glowering at a telegram he was reading for the third or -fourth time, but looked up impatiently as a Chinese clerk came in and -stood waiting to speak. - -“What now?” - -“Coolie men talkee muchee. No plenty money, no can do plenty work.” - -“Fetch the compradore here,” Holman snapped, thrusting the telegram -into his waistcoat. - -“Can do,” the clerk said, and went out. - -Tom Carruthers stood by the window, doing nothing in particular, but -watching with a rueful, puzzled face the seething, jabbering coolies -outside. He swung round as the clerk went. “I say, Holman, what is all -this? A third demand to-day for more wages!” - -Holman pushed a ledger aside abruptly. “That’s what I am trying to find -out, young man,” he said--“just exactly what it all means.” - -The compradore came in a moment--a middle-aged Chinese, as capable -looking in his way as Holman was in his. He stood waiting stolidly for -the manager to speak, but Holman delayed a little, measuring the Mongol -with his shrewd blue eyes before he said: “Look here, compradore, what -the devil is the matter with your coolies now? Why have they struck -work again, and why the blue blazes have you let them, when you know -how late we’re with the loading of the _Fee Chow_ already, that -she’ll miss the tide if there’s more delay, and that she _must not -miss_ the tide? Eh?” - -“Coolie men talkee muchee”--the compradore said it sadly. “They talkee -stlikee.” - -“Strike!” Tom Carruthers cried. “Strike! That’s the limit! A strike -halfway through loading. You damn well tell them----” - -But Holman interrupted sharply, “Hush, Mr. Carruthers, please. Leave -this to me. Now, compradore, what’s the grievance? Come, out with it, -chop, chop!” - -“Coolie man likee work,” the compradore replied gently, “no likee -money. No plenty money, no can catchee plenty Chow-chow. They talkee me -they wantee more money.” - -“All right, then----” Holman began crisply. - -“What?” Carruthers broke in excitedly. Holman paid no attention to -that, but continued to the Chinese, “Tell them double pay if she’s -loaded up to time.” - -“Can do,” the other answered, and went slowly out. - -“Well, I’m blowed!” Tom gasped. - -Holman went wearily to the window, and stood watching moodily the human -yellow kaleidoscope. The compradore was among them now, and gradually -the trouble cooled and slacked, and the men began to slouch off to -work, but reluctantly, the manager thought. Things looked ugly to -him--very ugly. - -“I say, Holman,” Carruthers persisted impatiently, “isn’t that playing -rather into those chaps’ hands?” - -Holman was furious--he had been furious for days now--and he welcomed -some human thing upon which he dared to vent his rage. He was “about -fed up” with the frets and troubles of the last week. He fixed -Tom Carruthers with a vindictive eye. “See here, Mr. Carruthers,” -he spat out, “if I have any further interference I’ll resign -instantly--understand? I managed this branch for years, until the -governor took a notion to come out. Well--he’s a genius at business, -and I’m proud to take my orders from him. But somehow, the very devil’s -in it these last two weeks, and we’re up against a bigger proposition -than you--or the governor either--have any idea of. I’m doing my best -to cope with it, and, by heaven----” - -“Sorry to upset you, old chap,” the other interrupted regretfully, -“but, believe me, this succession of disasters has just about whacked -me.” - -“Oh! all right,” the older man said, relieved by his own explosion, -and easily mollified after having let slip the snappy little dogs of -his badly over-tried temper, “I haven’t the heart to show this to Mr. -Gregory,” he said, taking the wire from his pocket into which he had -thrust it, “damned if I have.” He spread the flimsy paper out on the -desk, and sent Tom a glance that was an invitation. He wanted sympathy, -even that of the “somebody’s son sent out to learn the business,” -as he contemptuously said of Carruthers when he did not call him “a -flannelled fool.” The latter gibe was not quite fair. Tom usually wore -ducks, as Holman himself did--you had to in Hong Kong--and though the -younger man did squander (if it were squandering) a good deal of time -with Hilda Gregory, he only gave a reasonable, wholesome amount to -rackets, cricket, and Happy Valley racecourse. - -“On top of all else,” Holman continued, “look here!” - -Tom came and stood at Holman’s chair, and read over his shoulder. “Good -God, Holman!” he cried, “the _Feima_ sent to the bottom!” - -“The biggest and finest ship in our fleet,” the other said bitterly. -“Mutiny of the coolies--they scuttle the ship and bolt with the boats -two days out!” - -“This will about kill him!” - -Holman nodded. “And look here”--he struck the ledger near him with an -angry fist--“I say, do you know anything about safes?” - -“Not much.” - -“Well, ours is the finest made. And the one make that _is_ ‘safe.’ -There probably aren’t a dozen artists that could pick it--all told, -Sing Sing, Portland, Joliet--that could pick it in a week. Well, look -here; this ledger was taken from the safe--I suppose one night a week -or more ago--the page referring to the dock negotiation torn out--and -so prettily you can’t see that it was ever in, except for the missing -number--and the ledger returned to its place and the safe relocked -without so much as a scratch being left to show how it was done.” - -“No wonder we were outbid for the site--_somebody_ knew our price!” - -“Knew our price!”--he closed the ledger with a bang, and slapped it. -“Why, damn it, man, somebody’s got us tied in a knot, and it’s being -drawn tighter every day--every hour.” - -“It’s beyond me, Holman!” - -Holman rose and laid his hands on Tom Carruthers’ shoulders. “Mr. -Carruthers, you don’t for one moment believe this awful--simply -awful--sequence of disasters to be due to accident, do you? Sunken -ships, docks burnt to the water’s edge, strikes on shore, mutinies -afloat, and--and above all--the disappearance of Mr. Basil?” - -“I don’t know what to believe--I simply don’t. What does it all mean, -Holman? I say it looks like some curse, don’t you know, come home to -roost!” - -“You are in the confidence, quite outside of business, of Mr. Gregory,” -the manager said, sitting down again heavily--“of Mr. Gregory and his -family. I want to ask you a straight question.” - -“Yes?” - -“Do you know of any one thing, however slight, that Mr. Gregory may -have done to upset Wu Li Chang?” - -“Wu Li Chang?” - -“Yes, or ‘Mr. Wu,’ as he’s mostly called by the Europeans.” - -“No,” Tom said decidedly, seating himself on the table--that was one of -his ways that ruffled Holman--“no, absolutely no. Why, only the other -day--Thursday, wasn’t it?--we visited at his place--it was there, you -know, that the last was seen of Basil, except for his having been seen -here, on the island, with two other Europeans later that same evening.” - -Holman smiled sourly. “Who saw him?” - -“Why, those Chinese johnnies who brought the information to Government -House.” - -Holman grunted. “Volunteered the information, didn’t they? Went direct -to the Governor instead of lodging information with the police in the -usual way?” - -“Yes.” - -“Basil Gregory was no more seen by those Chinamen than I possess the -Koh-i-noor.” - -“What?” Carruthers stood up in his surprise. - -“Take it from me,” the other said emphatically, “in some manner Mr. -Gregory has stung Wu Li Chang, and, by Jove, that wound will want some -healing.” - -Tom Carruthers was hopelessly puzzled. “Well,” he said slowly, “just -who is this chap, Wu Li Chang? And what’s his strength?” - -“I’ve been here for twenty years,” Holman told him, “and in all that -time there’s been just one man I’ve made it a point to steer clear of, -in business and out of it--a strong personality, possessed of unlimited -wealth, mixed up in every big deal in Hong Kong, swaying a sinister -power that we Europeans cannot understand. Mr. Wu is hardly the man -to cross swords with. No European can afford to; and there’s only one -of his own race who ever got the better of him, and that was only -momentary, for he was never seen again.” - -“You mean----” - -“The inevitable where Wu is concerned!” - -“But how on earth,” Carruthers said, “could Mr. Gregory have offended -such a man?” - -Holman gestured his inability to answer that, but persisted, “There’s -no doubt about it. To you all Chinamen look alike, but they don’t -to me. And I’ve seen men, whom I know to be in Wu’s employ, mixing -with our coolies for days now. There are two of them down there -now--to my knowledge--and probably more. And I know for a fact that -several such shipped in the _Feima_; every man jack of ’em is a -Highbinder--member of one or other of the rival tongs.” - -“Tongs?” Tom queried. “That means secret societies, doesn’t it?” - -“You bet your life it does: secret societies that _are_ secret, -guilds that are a monster-power--the greatest power in China, the -only power that Tze-Shi is afraid of. There are two or three in every -province--a heap more in some. And our friend Wu is Past Master of the -whole bally lot of ’em. Most of the mandarins hate the tongs, and -are in deadly fear of them. But Wu knows a game worth ten of that: he -handles them--the ‘White Lily’ (about the dirtiest of them all), the -Triad (that bunch made the T’aiping Rebellion), the Shangti Hui (the -Association of the Almighty, if you please), and that prize band of -villains, the Hunsing Tzu, and the devil knows how many more. I tell -you, Mr. Carruthers, we’ve got to get to the bottom of this thing, and -get there quick, or there won’t be a stick left in China belonging to -the Company, or a vessel on the high seas flying its flag.” - -“Well, old chap,” the junior said cheerfully, “Mr. Gregory is no -schoolboy. He’ll give this cursed gentleman of tongs and mystery a run -for his money--a damned fine run--I’ll have a bet with you, any odds -you like--and we’ll have a damned lot of fun watching him do it. But, I -say, we don’t know that you are barking up the right tree; but if you -are--and admitting for argument’s sake that Mr. Gregory has offended -this top-dog Chink or whatever he is--I say, why the deuce should Lord -High Pigtail want to take it out of Basil?” - -Holman--his mother had been a Scotchwoman--had a tingling suspicion -why, but he shrugged his shoulders and evaded, saying didactically, -“When you’ve been in China as long as I have, you’ll know as much about -their ways and their motives as I do, and that’s--_nothing_!” - - - - -CHAPTER XXV - -WORSE AND WORSE - - -The hot day burned on towards its hottest, and the troubles at -the Gregory Steamship Company boiled and bubbled like a veritable -hell-broth. - -At eleven a coolie was caught smuggling paraffin, disguised as a chest -of tea, on to the _Fee Chow_. Not a word could be got out of -him as to what or who had instigated him; neither threats nor bribes -would make him speak, and indeed Holman had little time or nerve to -spare to try the application of either coaxing or kicking. He knew -that he needed all he had of both to save what was undoubtedly the -ugliest situation he had ever faced. The tide _must_ be caught at -Shanghai: it was vital. And yet the ship must be searched, every inch -of her--and the crew. That was even more imperative. One tin of the -deadly, dangerous stuff had been detected going aboard--a dozen might -be aboard undetected, hidden among the cargo. - -It was terribly exasperating; but now that things were at their worst -Holman faced them coolly enough, a resolute, resourceful man--strong, -crisp and vigorous still after twenty years of seething Hong Kong -business life. For several of those years he had, until Robert -Gregory’s arrival, managed the firm’s affairs efficiently. He looked -capable of doing so still for quite a number of years. - -He gripped the situation hard, and dealt with it briskly, and Tom -Carruthers looked on fuming, and Simpson and the other half-dozen -European subordinate old hands obeyed him with confident alacrity. -Carruthers would have “wrung every dirty yellow neck,” “kicked them -to blazes,” “boiled them in their own paraffin”; but Simpson and the -English others thought that old Holman would win through somehow--if -he couldn’t, no one could--and they were serenely confident that every -troubling coolie there would get his drastic deserts to the full--when -Holman thought wise and had time, but not before. - -But just once Holman forgot himself. When the searching was over (sure -enough one tin had been successfully smuggled on and hidden) and the -reloading half done, the coolies struck again. And the over-tired -manager felt with Tom that that was too much. - -Tom was nearly maudlin with rage by now, and when, in reply to Holman’s -angry, “The men never behaved so like hell before. What the thunder -does it mean?” the compradore had said oilily, “Me no savee--no catchee -more money--no can do work,” Holman lost grip on himself and blurted -out thunderously, “They work damn well for Wu Li Chang, don’t they?” -and regretted it as soon as he had said it. - -Murder flashed through the compradore’s eyes for an infinitesimal -instant, and a venomous hiss snarled through his teeth. Holman had -heard and seen a rabid dog snarl so once. But the Chinese commanded -himself again instantly, and said meekly, almost sweetly: “Me no savee. -Wantee more money, lelse no can do work.” - -Holman commanded himself as quickly and as well as the native had, -and said, speaking as calmly (and almost as slowly), “Get that ship -loaded--three days’ pay--understand?” - -“Savee. Can do.” - -But Tom Carruthers collapsed upon the window-seat. “If this was lording -it over the poor, over-worked, underpaid natives, all he could say -was----” - -But the bitter and brilliant remark was never made, for as the -compradore padded softly out, Murray, a senior clerk and the -book-keeper, rushed in excitedly. And European clerks do not rush -about much between noon and three in Hong Kong, not even indoors with -drenched tatties at the windows and punkahs well manned. There were no -tatties in this room--its occupants too often desired to keep an eye on -the wharf. - -“Out, John,” the book-keeper ripped at a Chinese clerk who had come in -while Holman was speaking to the compradore, mounted his high stool, -and began to write busily. At Murray’s order he slid off the stool, -closed his book, and went out impassively. - -Scarcely waiting until the door had closed, Murray said anxiously, -“But, Mr. Holman, I understood you to say that the overdraft for the -new dock had been arranged with the Bank--I drew up the exchange -accordingly----” - -“Quite correct--the transfer is to be made to-day.” But Holman’s voice -was less sanguine than his words. He scented more trouble still, and he -eyed askance the letter in Murray’s hand. - -“There must be some mistake, sir,” Murray said desperately. “The Bank -has just notified our accountancy department that an overdraft is -impossible.” - -“Why?” - -“They write that our security is insufficient and further we must -vacate these premises immediately.” - -“What?” Carruthers sprang up as if some inimical concussion had -impelled him. - -“The landlord having disposed of the property,” Murray continued. -And he perched himself dejectedly on one of the Chinese clerks’ high -stools, as if the accumulated strain of a few morning hours had -unnerved his sturdy legs. - -“What about the Company’s lease?” Tom persisted miserably. - -“Expired in March,” Holman said doggedly. “We’re here on monthly -arrangement--I supposed you knew that; every one else does--we expected -to move to the new buildings at our own docks. The very roof taken from -our own heads!” he concluded bitterly, dropping down heavily into his -chair. - -Tom looked at him ruefully for a moment, and then went up to Murray. “I -say, how much do we need? That’ll be all right. I’ll cable over to my -father----” - -“I’m afraid it’s no use, sir,” the book-keeper said regretfully. “You -see, it’s this way: the Wang Hi Company refuse to go on with the -negotiations; all their principal shareholders are natives, and these -threaten to withdraw their capital if any business whatsoever is done -with us.” - -Tom Carruthers gave a long, sharp whistle. - -Holman looked up. “Precisely,” he said dryly. - -“But--but--something’s got to be done. We can’t sit here and see -the ship go down--I’m blowed if we can. And I’m damned if I will. -Something’s got to be done. But I say, you two, what shall it be? What?” - -He spoke to them, but he had picked up Hilda’s photograph, and was -looking not at them but at it. - -They paid his question as little heed as the photograph did in its -frame. They had no answer to give him. And he got none--unless he -could piece one out from the hubbub that bubbled up from the sweating, -teeming wharf, from the screaming, pushing coolie women in the -sampans, from the pandemonium of noises and of smells that seethed up -from a hundred junks, and from the mighty conglomerate waterside life -and boat life that is the Greater Hong Kong. For there are two Hong -Kongs--one old and shabby and battered, one smiling and well kept; and -the smiling city on the hill-sides is Hong Kong the Little. - - - - -CHAPTER XXVI - -SUSPENSE - - -The three sat brooding in silence for several minutes, until one of the -native clerks came in and held the door open respectfully. That meant -that the chief was coming, and Murray slid off his perch and slipped -quietly out as Gregory came slowly in. - -In the unsparing afternoon light he looked a broken lion--an old -king-beast with sagging skin and weakened mouth, but with fierce fight -still in his tired and anxious eyes. - -Hunters know that the smaller breeds of lions are the most dangerous. -Robert Gregory was not a large man--he barely reached his wife’s good -inches. But he was jungle-fierce and jungle-strong. He had fought many -a hard fight and had been torn and scarred in fights, but he had never -lost one yet. He had pounded his way through the world, butted his way -to victory and wealth. He had no finesse and no super-judgment, but he -had splendid pluck, lion courage, bulldog pertinacity; and often for -his wife, and for his daughter always, he had the charming tenderness -that bulldogs show to children. - -There was a hint of unscrupulousness in his face, and he had a jaw of -iron. He was a very thin man, and it saved him from looking a very -common one. - -He was scrupulously dressed--now as ever--and, now as ever, just -a shade over-dressed. His appearance would have gained had his -watch-chain been a trifle slenderer, his cummerbund a less youthful -rose, the canary-colored diamond in his ring half its size, or, -better still, not worn. But his small, well-kept hands were dark, -and unmistakably the hands of a man. He wore a bangle--just a thread -of twined gold set with two or three inferior turquoise, and it kept -slipping down his arm, almost over his knuckles--a cheap thing that had -cost less than his cravat. Hilda had given it to him several years ago. - -He came in deliberately--almost as if he too were very tired or beaten -by the day’s terrific heat--but with a determined air of briskness, and -nodded crisply to Carruthers and Holman as he took his own chair at his -own desk. - -He was at bay. And he was going to fight--to the very end, let the end -be what it might. But, in spite of his fierce self-control and genuine -grit, he did not look a man “fit” to put up a big fight. For two nights -he had had little sleep, and none that was restful. And to Holman’s -friendly, searching eyes he betrayed several signs of the hideous -strain and worry with which he was battling. The business catastrophes -that had heaped up about him were bad enough--enough to unnerve any -man, and he was palpably unnerved--but the first thought in his mind, -the burning object of its ceaseless search, was--his son. He was -holding his head defiantly, but the veins at his temples were twitching. - -Holman took the telegram out of his pocket, and, with emotion that he -could not quite conceal, leaned across the desk, holding it out to -Gregory. - -“Mr. Gregory,” he said--“the _Feima_----” But he did not have to -finish. - -“Oh, yes! I know, I know,” Gregory said listlessly. - -“I’m sorry,” Tom Carruthers began; “I’m awfully sorry for this, Mr. -Gregory.” - -Robert Gregory swung round in his chair and banged the desk fiercely -with his clenched fist. “Sorry--Tom! By God, I’ll make some one pay -for this--but _who_? What have we got to fight? Holman, you still -think it’s this man Wu? Eh?” - -“I don’t think, governor,” Holman said, leaning across the desk in his -earnestness, “I’m positive. In some way we’ve run up against the most -powerful man in China.” - -“Well, I’m testing your theory, Holman. I’m having that cursed Chinaman -here.” - -Tom Carruthers turned in his insecure seat on the window-ledge, so -astonished that he very nearly slid off it; and Holman was distinctly -perturbed. - -“I sent him a chit this morning from the club, telling him I wished -to see him here urgently at two o’clock on a matter of the gravest -importance.” - -William Holman shook his head. - -“Take it from me, sir, Wu Li Chang is not the man to call upon any -one,” he said; “they must go to him.” - -“Indeed!” Gregory snapped. - -“And did you see him at two?” Tom said eagerly. - -“No, Tom; he sent a coolie with a chit to say that he would call here -at three--unless he found it inconvenient--_unless he found it -inconvenient_! Look. I’ve hurried over from the club to see him.” - -Tom came across the room and picked up the note Gregory had tossed -towards him, and stood studying it closely. - -The trouble on Holman’s face thickened. “If Mr. Wu condescends to -answer such a summons,” he said earnestly, “why, that very fact -strengthens my belief. I tell you he never discusses anything outside -his own offices--never! And if for once he breaks that rule, he has -some terrible reason for doing it--some damnably sinister motive.” - -“Pretty cool sort of johnnie, anyway,” Tom commented, still -scrutinizing Wu’s note. “But I say, what an educated, professional sort -of fist he writes.” - -“Oh!” Holman said impatiently, “he’s got us both ways. He has all -the advantages of a Western education without having lost a scrap of -his Eastern cunning. I came out once with the skipper who took Wu to -Europe--Wu and an English tutor he’d had for years--he was only a -kid then, but Watson said he played a better game of chess than any -white man on board--unless it was the tutor chap--had ever seen played -before, bar none. Wu was nine or ten then. He’s forty now, and no doubt -his chess has been improving every day since.” - -Gregory smiled nastily. “Well,” he said, “you may be perfectly correct -in all you say, Holman, but it seems to me that you’re all afraid of -these Chinamen.” - -“I am, for one then,” Holman muttered. “And I’ve been here twenty -years.” - -“Unnecessarily afraid. I think you’ll find that I’m perfectly capable -of dealing with the fellow when he comes--and he’ll come all right--oh, -yes! he’ll come.” - -“I wonder,” Holman said. - -“I’m sure I hope so,” Tom Carruthers said heartily. - -Holman devoutly hoped not, but he did not say it. - -“He’ll come,” Gregory repeated didactically, almost truculently; “he’ll -come, as full of oil as a pound of butter. What the devil!” he added, -with a displeased change of voice, as silk skirts and high-heeled -shoes sounded in the hall. “I told you not to leave the hotel,” he -complained, with affection and dismay mingled in his voice, as his -wife and daughter came through the door. - -“Of course you did, poor old dear,” Hilda told him soothingly, seating -herself on the corner of his desk and patting him encouragingly on -his shoulder. “But Mother can’t rest. How can she? And if she isn’t -scouring the island--she must know every inch of it by now--she is -hunting on the mainland with Ah Wong.” - -“Oh! I know, I know,” Florence Gregory said wearily, subsiding -indifferently into the chair Holman placed for her. - -“You’ll wear yourself out,” her husband said roughly, but not unkindly. - -The mother smiled, contemptuous of the fatigue from which she was wan -and trembling. “It’s no use saying anything to me. I can’t rest. Have -you heard anything? That’s all I’ve come for.” - -“Not yet, dear. I’ve seen the Governor again. He was most kind--really -very kind. Everything is being done--everything--and will be--and it is -foolish to go on wearing yourself out like this.” - -“I am not wearing myself out,” his wife returned petulantly. “The -suspense is wearing my heart out--and no one seems to care--no one!” - -“Yes, I know how you feel, dear,” her husband answered her gently, “and -what you must be suffering. But try to spare yourself just a little, -for my sake. And believe me--you can--all that is possible is being -done--and this--this is man’s work.” - -“Is it?” the mother said dully. “I’m not so sure, I’m not so sure.” She -closed her eyes and leaned back in the big office chair, burning and -shivering with excitement, and terribly, terribly tired. - -Ah Wong looked about the office desperately. She wanted cushions, -but there were no cushions there, and she went and stood very close -behind her mistress; and when Mrs. Gregory moved her head restlessly, -the Chinese woman slid her hand between it and the sharp edge of the -chair’s hard back. - -And they might well be tired--the amah too, as well as the frailer, -fairer woman. For they had indeed been beating the island and the -mainland for days now--searching, searching, and often in quarters of -whose existence the English woman could not have suspected, and whose -nature she had but dimly grasped--some of them quarters into which no -European woman, nice or otherwise, had penetrated before. But Mrs. -Gregory had been in no peril. She had not suffered rudeness even. Ah -Wong had guarded her well. Ah Wong had known how to do it. - -But not one clew, not even the hint of a clew, had they found. Nor had -John Bradley, who, in a different and quieter way, had been hunting as -indefatigably--and was hunting now. - -Robert Gregory sat crouched a little forward now, leaning on the -desk, watching his wife miserably, but saying no more--tortured for -her (almost forgetting his own pain in hers, or feeling his own only -through hers), but pathetically glad to have her rest even this little. - -Holman slipped over to the window and stood looking moodily out to the -Chinese-and-Mongol-teeming dockside. Tom Carruthers sat quietly down on -the big desk too and took Hilda’s hand in his. - -For several moments there was a silence in the room that was broken -only by the ticking of the clock and the incessant echo of hubbub that -buzzed in through the windows, the other five all conspiring eagerly -to hold and guard Mrs. Gregory’s rest undisturbed until she broke it -herself. Even the Chinese clerk who had come in just after Ah Wong, -and who sat, with his face to the wall, writing in the farthest corner, -began to drive a noiseless pen, without looking round. - -But the clock struck three, and after a startled glance thrown up at -it, Mr. Gregory said softly, “Florence.” - -“Yes?” his wife answered drearily, without moving; she did not even -open her eyes. - -The husband sighed remorsefully. “Dear, I’m afraid you’ll have to go.” - -“Why?” she asked indifferently, as if the answer could not interest -her, and still without moving her head or opening her eyes. - -“Well, you see, I’ve made an appointment here at three--and it may, it -just may, prove important, with--with a man.” - -“Who?” Her voice was still devoid of interest. - -“I expect Mr. Wu here.” - -Before her husband had spoken the last word Mrs. Gregory was bolt -upright in her chair, wide-eyed, alert--as if galvanized, revitalized, -tense and acute. - -“Mr. Wu?” she whispered eagerly. - -“Yes,” he told her. - -And the amah fingered softly something hidden in her gown. - -“About Basil!” - -“About a lot of things,” Gregory said grimly. “And Basil in particular.” - -“Oh! and he can help us! You think so, don’t you, Robert?” - -“He can help us all right, Mrs. Gregory,” William Holman said sternly, -“if he will.” - -“Oh! he must. He shall!” she said hoarsely. - -“At any rate, he’s coming. And that’s more than I thought,” Holman -said, as a new degree and quality of hubbub belched up from the yard. -And as he spoke Murray came in with two cards--a long, thin slip of -crimson paper, the mandarin’s name and title inscribed on it in black -Chinese characters, and an ordinary English visiting card, simply -engraved “Mr. Wu.” - -“He’s getting out of his rickshaw, sir,” Murray told his employer. - -“And every man jack of the coolies is ko’towing to him as if he was a -god,” Holman grunted from the window. - -Gregory rose to his feet with a careful show of calm. “Well,” he -remarked cheerfully, “we’ll soon see now what sort of stuff this -well-advertised Chinaman is made of. Show him in, Murray. Holman, take -my wife to the den near the counting-house. She’ll want to stay, of -course, to hear the result. Now, please, off you all go.” - -The others turned to the door to which he had pointed--not the door -that led to the hall, but at the other end of the long room--but -Florence Gregory went up to her husband. “Robert----” she began, but -she could not say more, and her eyes were swimming. - -Her husband cupped her face in his hands. “There, Mother, there,” he -said tenderly, and just a little brokenly, “I know, dear, I know. I -understand. There--there. It’s all right. I’ll be careful--very, very -careful. Ah Wong!” But he need not have called Ah Wong--she was there -already, waiting to serve; and though Hilda turned to her mother as if -to help her, and Tom Carruthers and Holman did too, it was Ah Wong who -led her out, Ah Wong to whose hand she held and leaned on a little as -she went. - - - - -CHAPTER XXVII - -THE BEGINNING OF THE DUEL - - -At the door Holman, as devoted a servant in his masculine and British -way as Ah Wong was in her way, turned back almost peremptorily, and -coming close to Robert Gregory said sharply, “Governor!” There was -entreaty in the word, and there was command. - -Gregory recognized both, and accepted both loyally from so tried and -loyal a servant. It was one of his strengths that he recognized and -appreciated valuable subordinates. “Well?” he said. - -“Handle this man carefully,” the old clerk said, speaking more -emphatically than he had ever spoken to any one before--and he was an -emphatic man always. - -Gregory nodded. - -As Tom held open the door behind his chief’s desk, Murray opened the -other door and announced, “Mr. Wu, sir.” - -“Ah! show him in,” Mr. Gregory said, rather too indifferently, and -so scoring the first mistake in the duel of which it was the first -thrust. Holman knotted vexed brows, and the wife threw an imploring -look. But Gregory saw neither, but busied himself ostentatiously with -his papers, writing with head down, posing as being deeply immersed in -business--and just a little overdoing it. - -The mandarin stood in the doorway. - -It was dim there, and at first glance he might have been thought -an Englishman. A second look showed his Chinese nationality but -accentuated by his European clothes--a light summer suit, a little -better cut, if that were possible, than Robert Gregory’s, and more -quietly worn. No silk handkerchief showed from a pocket, no gay -cummerbund swathed his waist, and Wu wore no jewelry, for the short, -black fob of watered silk that hung from his vest was plain as -plain. He stood a moment in the doorway perfectly at ease, dignified -but urbane. As tortured by the tragedy in which he had played -high-sacrificial priest as Robert Gregory, who did not even guess at -its crux, could possibly be, Wu showed of that torture no trace. In -appearance, in demeanor and in breeding the advantage seemed with the -Chinese man, not with the English. And why not? For the advantage in -all was Wu’s. - -The slenderness of the Oxford days and the Alpine climbing was gone; -but no man could have looked less “full of oil,” less fat. “Mr. Wu” was -tall and powerfully built, pleasant visaged and altogether gentlemanly, -and unmistakably, in spite of his “smart” tailoring, an athlete. - -The two English women in the other doorway turned to look at him, and -he bowed to them quietly, catching the elder’s eyes and for an instant -holding them. Something in his quiet, respectful gaze fascinated -while it disturbed her. She turned again to go, but on the door-ledge -turned and looked at him again, almost as if some power of mesmerism -had brushed against her. Wu almost smiled--not quite--and bowed -again, lower than before, but not too low. And she went out a little -hurriedly, the others with her. But Ah Wong, who naturally went last, -looked at the great man deliberately--a strange thing for a Chinese -woman of her caste to do. And as he looked, she read his face and saw -the tragedy hidden there. But Ah Wong and the Mandarin Wu had met -before. - -The Chinese clerk had slid off his stool and crept cringing towards -Wu--cringing, almost grovelling. Wu snarled at him noiselessly, and -the fellow almost crawled from the room; and Murray went after him and -closed the door. Holman had already closed the other. The duellists -were alone. - -They had no seconds. - -Neither spoke. The clock tocked on. - -Outside a new note, a note of exultation, had come into the incessant -coolie chorus; and Wu’s jinrickshaw man--for Wu had not come in state, -but very simply--squatted between the shafts and smoked. - -Gregory continued to write. Wu watched him with a faint, contemptuous -smile, and then he made a slight gesture towards the Englishman. -Gregory did not see, but he felt it, and he obeyed it, and fidgeted -uncomfortably, and then spoke, saying, still writing and without -looking up, “Sit down, Wu.” - -A deeper smile flitted across the Chinese face. “I beg your pardon, Mr. -Gregory?” - -At the man’s voice Gregory almost started--it was at once so masterful, -so pleasantly pitched and so highly bred. It was a clear voice--as the -Chinese voice almost invariably is--but it was deep and rich, which in -the Chinese is very rare. “I beg your pardon, Mr. Gregory?” Wu had said. - -And Gregory recognized and regretted his blunder. But he stood by -it--there was nothing else to do, he thought--and said again, “Sit -down, Wu.” - -“I would suggest,” the Chinese remarked smoothly, “that Mr. Gregory -should not call me ‘Wu,’ but ‘Mr. Wu’----” - -Robert Gregory looked up sharply, and, when he had looked, rose less -sharply and even a little less confidently. He had never seen Wu -before. And he was not a little taken aback at the man’s dress, his -splendid size and undeniably superior manner. And with that first look -something very like a touch of fear came to Robert Gregory, and a -subtle, vague sense of the almost hypnotic power of Wu’s personality. - -“--Otherwise,” the Chinese continued--just the faintest hint of -amusement in the quiet, courteous voice--“I shall be compelled to call -Mr. Gregory plain ‘Gregory’ to reciprocate the honor he has done me, -and I do not think we are sufficiently intimate to allow of such a -familiarity--on my part.” - -“Oh!” the other said, as nonchalantly as he could, and looking not -at his visitor but at the letters he was holding, “I’m a busy man.” -He felt the prick. Wu had drawn first blood. The duel was far from -fair--one foe played a rapier with a master-wrist; one bungled with a -bludgeon awkwardly. - -“Quite so,” Wu agreed; “but such a fraction of a second only--Wu is so -short a name that you could say ‘Mr. Wu’ while I was saying ‘Gregory.’” -A threat was never made more delicately--or with a nicer smile--but it -was made, and recorded in both minds, and with it a sinister something -of prophecy. - -Robert Gregory winced. “Oh! sit down,” he said uneasily. - -The reply was easy and pleasant, “Thank you!” And, laying his hat on -the desk, Wu sat. - -Gregory remained standing--fussing at the papers and his pigeon-holes. -And his tone was mandatory. “Now, Mr. Wu”--Wu inclined his head -slightly--“I’m not given to fine shades, equivocations, diplomatic -finesse or any other Eastern method of wasting time.” - -“Quite so.” Wu’s tone was as polite as his words. But the -amusement--imperceptible to Gregory--was a little less, the contempt a -little more. - -“And so,” the Englishman continued, “If I’m blunt, it’s because--I mean -business.” - -“Business!” the mandarin exclaimed, “Ah! I wondered what had procured -me the honor of this invitation--somewhat peremptorily conveyed, I fear -I must remark. But doubtless that was done to save time too. However, -if it is upon a matter of business----” - -“If you’ll allow me to tell you first,” Gregory broke in irritably (and -he was irritated almost beyond endurance), “then you’ll know better, -won’t you?” - -“One moment,” Wu interposed, slightly smilingly, “pardon me, but I do -not like to remain seated whilst you are----” - -“Never mind me,” the other said gruffly. - -“Oh!” Wu returned simply, “I don’t. But still----” - -“I think a man may please himself in his own office”--Gregory’s voice -was querulous with irritation. - -“Quite so,” the bland voice replied, “when he is alone.” - -“Then”--pugnaciously--“if you don’t object, I think I’ll remain as I -am.” - -“Not at all,” Wu said gravely, and rising; “in that case, we’ll both -stand.” - -For a moment the two men measured each other and themselves against -each other--Wu very politely, but with a thin, cold smile just lurking -at one corner of his mouth. Gregory fumbled for a cigarette, lit it -clumsily, drew a whiff, then threw it down and stamped on it, Wu -waiting patiently, and watching with an almost flattering evidence of -interest. - -“The fact is, Mr. Gregory,” Wu continued, “I have my own little -prejudices; and if you remain standing whilst I am seated, it will seem -to me--possibly very unreasonably--that you are standing, not out of -courtesy to me, but to exhibit to me a minatory and even overbearing -presence.” - -For a moment Gregory fought with himself. He was hotly angry, and more -chagrined than angry. And he knew now that he was completely at sea. -But he made a brave effort to control himself. He had promised Holman -and his wife--tacitly--in response to Holman’s earnest word and the -pleading in her eyes as she had turned to go. And he wanted to find or -trace his son. - -“Pray be seated, Mr. Wu,” he said, after an instant, and indicated with -a bow a chair. But Wu caught the irony, of course, in the elaborate bow -and the mock-courtesy of the request. But he bowed quite gravely in -return, and again said, “Thank you,” as he sat down. - -Gregory sat also; he did not dare to have his own way in this small -thing, and the little defeat irked him and contributed to his -thickening uneasiness. However, if he _had_ to sit, whether he -chose or not, he could sit as he liked, in his own chair, in his own -office, he’d be damned if he couldn’t--and he did. He put his elbows -decidedly on the desk, rested his chin firmly on his knuckles, and -faced Wu with a fixed look and fighting eyes, his face thrust forward -aggressively. - -Wu regarded the Englishman placidly. - -“Now, Mr. Wu, what the hell are you up to?” Gregory spoke quietly but -decisively, and he leaned still farther across the table. - -Wu took his time before he returned blandly, “Would you mind repeating -your question?” - -“I think you heard it plainly enough.” - -“Quite plainly, thank you--quite. Most audible. But I thought you would -perhaps welcome the opportunity of expressing yourself a little more -politely.” - -“I’m not out for a ceremonious talk,” Gregory blurted. “You’ll notice -there’s none of your customary tea on the table--no whiskey and soda -either--no cigars.” He was too good a business man not to know that, -young as the interview was, he was losing ground already, but he was -not skilful enough, and far too overwrought, to conceal the anger he -felt at the unwelcome knowledge. - -“Thank you,” Wu replied lazily, and with nice good humor, “I do not -smoke”--that was not quite true. He smoked a water-pipe at home. He had -smoked so with Nang Ping a thousand times. “I never drink whiskey, and -I am degraded enough to prefer tea made in our Chinese way. However, I -have perceived, as you say, that this is not--a ceremonious occasion.” - -“Meanwhile,” Gregory snapped, “I’d like an answer to my question.” - -“Which was----” the Chinese asked gently, but there was a narrow glint -of contemptuous laughter in his eyes. - -“My question,” Gregory almost thundered, “was--‘what the hell are you -up to, Mr. Wu?’” - -“Pray be a little more explicit,” Wu said coldly. - -“I have every intention of being so,” was the sharp reply. “Now, please -listen to me very carefully.” - -“I am all attention.” A very stupid listener might have thought the -smoothness of the mandarin’s voice meekness. Gregory did not make that -mistake. - -“Let me preface what I have to say,” he said warningly, “by remarking -that I have the reputation of being a very good friend--but a dangerous -enemy.” - -“Who could doubt it?” Wu murmured, bowing admiringly. - -“He is a rash man who dares to oppose me, Mr. Wu. Do you know my method -of dealing with such a man?” - -“I tremble to contemplate his fate. But I am never rash.” Wu’s voice -_was_ meek now--for no counterfeit could be so fine. - -“I crush him, sir--crush him relentlessly.” - -“It is always interesting”--giving Gregory a half look--“to hear about -the methods of great men.” - -“I mention these things to you by way of warning.” The Englishman spoke -gropingly; his irritation was growing. - -“Warning?” Wu raised his delicate eyebrows delicately. “Really”--he -sighed--“I’m almost afraid to follow you.” - -“I think my meaning is sufficiently clear.” - -“To yourself, no doubt; but to my limited understanding--if I might beg -you to speak a little more plainly.” - -“I will. I will ask you a plain question. Are you my friend, Mr. Wu, or -are you my enemy?” - -Wu smiled openly, and there was a slight drawl in his voice answering, -“Could I aspire to be the one, or presume to be the other? Can the -rush-light claim friendship with the sun, or the mountain-stream -declare war against the ocean?” - -“Oh, yes, yes! you’re very plausible!” Gregory threw himself back in -his chair wearily, and he was weary. - -“‘Plausible’ is not a very pleasant word, Mr. Gregory,” Wu said -quietly, but in a tone of curt resentment. - -“You ask me to speak plainly.” - -“But not to speak rudely. I do not employ rudeness, nor do I accept -it. And now may I ask how this hypothetical hostility of mine has been -manifested?” - -“In a number of ways,” Gregory returned, a little sneeringly. - -“Will you name _one_?” Wu was entirely bland again. - -“You must be aware,” the other told him, “that my firm has recently -sustained a somewhat extraordinary series of setbacks.” - -“I regret to hear that you have been somewhat unfortunate”--Wu said it -sympathetically. - -“I am determined that these annoyances shall cease”--Robert Gregory -said it doggedly. - -“But even Mr. Gregory,” the Chinese man said sadly, “can hardly hope to -order the workings of Fate.” - -“But are they workings of Fate”--Gregory leaned across the table -aggressively again, his bullet head thrust out--“or of Mr. Wu?” - -For a moment Wu regarded him in silence. Then, “Surely you are joking?” - -“I know pretty well as much about you as you know yourself”--Gregory’s -voice was as insolent as his words. - -“Why should you not?” Wu replied cheerfully. “My life is an open book. -All who run may read.” - -“But there’s one thing I don’t know!” - -“Surely not?” - -“Your object. Now you see I speak frankly--I lay my cards on the table. -What is your motive? What do you want? Come, Mr. Wu, I’m willing to -meet you on a friendly footing.” - -“You are very kind,” Wu said subtly. - -Gregory made an impatient gesture, and the framed picture fell between -them. The Chinese picked it up--“Mrs. Gregory?” he said courteously. - -“Our daughter.” The English father bit his lip. He was convinced that -to press the quarrel further with this opponent would be to press to -his own defeat. But he restrained himself with heroism. To see Hilda’s -photograph in Wu’s Chinese hand, Wu’s Chinese eyes on Hilda’s face, -maddened him. Twenty Europeans had lifted the picture from his desk, -held it so, and commented on it admiringly--and her father had been -highly pleased. Wu merely bowed and replaced it quietly, face towards -Gregory--and Gregory itched to throttle him. - -If Robert Gregory had known of his son’s spoiling of the Chinese -girl--a girl of gentler birth and softer rearing than Hilda’s--he -would not have considered Basil’s crime unforgivably heinous. “Damned -foolish!” would have been his stricture. But that this Chinese man--a -father too, as he knew, and, for all he knew, as clean-lived and as -nice-minded as himself--had held Hilda’s portrait in his hand, and look -at it quietly, seemed to Gregory hideous, and his gorge rose at it. - -Wu Li Chang read the other clearly, and, quite indifferent alike to -the man and to his narrow folly, he stiffened coldly, for he knew what -Robert Gregory did not, and he was thinking of Nang Ping as he had -looked down upon her last, heaped and stricken in final expiation on -his floor. - -But, both through an instinct of breeding and through utter -indifference, he made no comment on the picture, either in flattery or -in admiration, as he replaced it. But he bent his head congratulatory -toward the other and said: “Ah! yes. Miss Gregory reminds -me--slightly--of some one I have known. Probably an English lady--I -met years ago when I lived in England. I regretted not being at home -when Mrs. Gregory and your daughter so honored my poor garden--and my -daughter.” - -He did not admire Hilda’s picture, and it was far too much trouble to -pretend an appreciation he did not feel. And he thought her dress, or -lack of it, disgusting, precisely as he had thought the décolletage -of “honorable” (and entirely “honest”) English ladies abominable when -he had been a boy at Portland Place. And his Chinese taste (good or -bad) would never have put a picture of Nang Ping in his offices, where -casual callers and mere business acquaintances might scrutinize and -comment on it. He had killed his girl--this man sitting easily there; -calm and imperturbable--not a week since, and neither waking nor -sleeping had he regretted it--not even for an instant. But a scented -bead that he had found beneath her robe, when they had lifted up what -had been his only child, lay now secure in an inner pocket. He could -feel it where it lay. - -“On a friendly footing, Mr. Gregory?” Wu took up the broken thread. -“You Westerners are truly magnanimous. ‘Friendship’ is usually actuated -either by hope of gain or by--fear.” - -“Don’t you trifle with me, _Mister_ Wu,” Gregory said hotly, -rising and beginning to pace up and down the long room--an ugly and -determined look hardening on his face--“I’ll have no more of this -beating about the bush. To begin with,”--controlling himself a little -better: there was so much at stake--“to begin with, Mr. Wu, the -mysterious disappearance of my son is only one of the long series of -unexplained disasters that have recently fallen on me, and concerning -which I want an explanation.” - -“Then why not seek it from those who can enlighten you?” - -“There’s no one more capable of doing that than yourself,” the -Englishman said, swinging round on the Chinese fiercely. “What’s -behind it all, Mr. Wu? What’s the game you are playing at? Why have -you devoted your sinister attentions to me and mine? What have we -done to start you on this career of kidnapping--of ship-scuttling--of -incendiarism, among the coolies out there--and all the rest of it?” - -Wu looked at his watch, put it back in his pocket, picked up his hat, -and rose deliberately. “Mr. Gregory,” he said coldly, “my time is of a -certain value. Time is money, you Westerners say. Well, I never waste -time--although I am never in a hurry. You will excuse me if I wish you -a very good afternoon.” - -“No so fast, Mr. Wu,” the shipper said ferociously, thrusting himself -between Wu and the door. “My time’s precious too, but I’m going to -devote all that’s requisite to getting an answer to my question. I’ve -got the conviction lodged in this obstinate British head of mine that -you know quite well what I want to know--and what I am going to know. -And that’s what I’ve got you here for--to tell me what I want to know. -And, by the Lord, you will before you leave this room. I know that you -can lay hands on my son--dead or alive. I know that you can--by God! I -know that you can----” - -“Can you lay hands on him?” - -“I? No! No!” the English father almost sobbed it, recoiling. - -“Well, when you can----” - -“But I can lay hands on you if you don’t satisfy me----” - -“I do not think that Mr. Gregory will commit that--indiscretion,” Wu -said significantly. - -There was a bitter pause. When Gregory broke it his voice wavered; -he was greatly moved. “You’re ruining my business,” he cried, “you’re -hanging over me like a sword of Damocles.” - -“That sword may have had two edges, Mr. Gregory,” Wu said quietly. “The -man who wounds his enemy with one is apt to cut himself with the other. -The sword,” he added, strolling to the window, “is not my weapon.” - -Robert Gregory backed stealthily up to the door and fumbled with his -right hand in his pocket. And Wu, turning to go, saw that his face was -twitching. - -Wu Li Chang had no thought of sparing this other father--Basil -Gregory’s father--but he was sorry for him now; and it may be -recorded--as a modest contribution to the study of racial comparisons. - -Wu moved to the door which Gregory stood barring. “And now, if you will -kindly allow me to pass----” - -And Robert Gregory thrust his revolver in Wu Li Chang’s face. - -The Chinese looked into the shining barrel. He smiled. “Ah! A Webley, -I observe. Very good make. I have made excellent practice with them -myself.” - - - - -CHAPTER XXVIII - -SOMETHING TO GO ON - - -Gregory, nearly exasperated by the other’s coolness, made a threatening -gesture. And then came the sudden blazing out of ferocious rage -that smolders always under the quietest Oriental seeming, and that, -enkindled instantly by the tiniest spark, transforms a peaceful, -obliging native into a spitting, hissing human volcano. - -“You fool! You white-eyed dodderer, you green-hatted goat-man!” Wu Li -Chang barked, “do you think I care for your shiny barrel? You English -idiot! The slightest signal from me”--he pointed to the window--“and -those coolies would swarm in here like so many devils.” - -“Yes, but you’d have gone to blazes first,” Gregory said grimly, the -revolver still well aimed, “to join those damned ancestors of yours.” - -Something as terrible as the death-rattle in a mad dog’s throat tangled -and gurgled in Wu’s and a fiendish look leapt into his eyes--they -narrowed until they were mere slits. But he recontrolled himself -almost instantly--angry still, but coldly so, and imperturbable again. -“I would have gone to blazes first?” There were snarl and sneer in -the low-pitched voice. “Then we should have been able to resume this -interesting conversation elsewhere! Come, come! Put your toy back into -your pocket. If you insist upon playing the play out on these lines -(but I think you will not), believe me, this is not the stage for it. -And you know where I live. You also, I understand, broke and honored my -unworthy bread the other day. And I am an easy man to find.” - -Robert Gregory deliberately pointed his revolver at Wu Li Chang’s -heart, and said as pointedly, “Pray be seated, Mr. Wu.” - -Wu bent his head politely to the pointed pistol, as if to thank it for -the invitation. “With pleasure,” he said, moving leisurely back to his -chair. Gregory, eyeing Wu stormily, passed too to his own chair. For -just a fraction of a second his back was turned to Wu; but that thin -shred of time sufficed the Chinese to whip a revolver from his pocket, -concealing it in his hand and in the loose sleeve of his tussore coat. -Gregory banged down his chair, and, covered by the ill-humored noise, -Wu clicked his revolver open. - -They sat and faced each other in ugly silence, dislike and defiance -very differently expressed, but expressed, on each face. Even wider -apart by caste and by breeding than by race, Wu’s tranquillity was -terrible, his quiet at once a menace and a taunt, while Gregory’s -growing nervousness would have been a little comical if its primary -cause had not been so pitiful. - -“I perceive, Mr. Gregory,” Wu Li Chang said pleasantly, “that you still -keep your toy in your hand; kindly cease holding it. I do not fear -it, but the implication of its presence is somewhat aggressive and -offensive. Let us pretend, at least,” he added lazily, “that we are -gentlemen.” - -That taunt got through. Gregory winced, and after a moment of sulky -hesitation put the revolver on his knee under the desk. - -“Now then, Mr. Wu----” he began. - -“One moment,” Wu interrupted him. “Excuse my seeming so exacting, but -I believe that revolver is loaded.” - -“It is--in every chamber,” the other snapped. - -“Well,” the mandarin spoke so indifferently that he almost drawled, -but his voice was honeyed, “if we are to arrive at an amicable -understanding, I think I should prefer, as a matter of politeness--we -Chinese lay such foolish stress on politeness--not to feel that I was -discussing matters at the cannon’s mouth, so to speak. Retain the -weapon, by all means, but be so good as to remove the cartridges.” - -Gregory fidgeted, hesitating nervously. - -“Merely as a matter of good faith,” Wu urged conciliatorily. “That -weapon might go off, you know--by pure accident.” He stretched his -hand, palm up, across the desk. - -Gregory looked at the open palm oddly, embarrassed, and then looked -round anxiously at the window. Then, shrugging his shoulders and trying -to speak indifferently, “Why not?” he said, and lifting the pistol, -jerked it, and the cartridges fell out onto the desk. - -“Thank you,” Wu said genially. “That makes the interesting -conversation much more possible.” He began playing with them lightly, -throwing and catching them as nimble-fingered boys do jackstones; -and Gregory watched the deft, sinewy yellow hand, fascinated. -“One--two--three--four--five--beautifully made little things, are they -not?” Wu’s voice was dove-like. “Now we can start fair. Pray continue, -Mr. Gregory, from the point where you left off.” One yellow hand -dropped nonchalantly on to Wu’s knee below the table, two cartridges in -the subtle fingers. “But please omit to make any further disrespectful -allusion to my ancestors.” He was leaning forward on the desk, both -hands beneath it now, and the revolver had slipped from his sleeve. -“I do not misunderstand your having made the offensive remark--it was -a mere mark of difference of caste and education. But do not repeat -it,” he added smilingly, “or in any way allude to my ancestors”--the -bullets were in his pistol, and Gregory was putting his emptied -weapon irritably into a drawer. “You were asking me, I think, what I -knew about the disappearance of your son and of certain commercial -catastrophes which, I regret to hear, have lately overtaken you. Well, -I will be perfectly frank with you--perfectly frank, Mr. Gregory, -perfectly frank. I will conceal nothing.” The yellow hands slipped up -quietly on to the desk. “And the first thing I have to say is”--the -barrel of the pistol thrust forward--“look at this!” - -Robert Gregory sprang up with a smothered oath, and his hand went -convulsively towards the bell on the desk, “Ah, no!” Wu said, “don’t -move, or it might go off by pure accident.” Gregory shifted out of -Wu’s aim and made a foolish furtive attempt to ring. Wu covered him -instantly, smiling still. “Don’t move, I say! Sit down! Sit down, -Gregory!” - -And Robert Gregory very slowly sat down--obedient partly in fear, -partly in defeat, and a little in a somewhat hypnotized subjection to a -bigger, more skillful man. Then suddenly he pulled the drawer open to -look at his own revolver. - -“No,” Wu told him, “not sleight of hand. This is not your revolver, but -it’s identical----” - -“That’s my son’s revolver. I know. I gave it to him myself. Now, damn -you, I have got something to go on!” - - - - -CHAPTER XXIX - -“WILL YOU VISIT SING KUNG YAH?” - - -“Quite right,” Wu Li Chang said cordially. “This is--or was--your -son’s property. My servants found it in my garden, after your son had -left there. I intended to give myself pleasure of returning it to you -in person”--that was perfectly true--“although I hardly anticipated -doing so in so--humorous a manner. Now kindly ring your bell”--his -voice stiffened suddenly, still low and easy; it had a new percussive -note, and the words came quicker. “When it is answered, merely say -to whomever enters, ‘Pray desire Mrs. Gregory to step this way.’ Do -nothing more, say nothing more. Because”--the voice grew beautifully -soft again--“if you should draw attention to this, or anything of that -kind, my hand might tremble so much with fear that it might go off, and -that would be too ridiculous, with one of your own cartridges! Please -ring.” - -At the mention of his wife--by Wu--Robert Gregory drew himself up -stiffly. “What do you want with Mrs. Gregory?” - -“I might merely wish to show her how foolish her husband has been -in trying to bully and intimidate me instead of dealing with me -reasonably. But also I have a message I have promised my daughter to -deliver for her to your wife. Chancing to see Mrs. Gregory here reminds -me of it, and it will be more convenient to me to deliver it here -than to call at your hotel”--Gregory’s eyes blazed--“and possibly as -agreeable to the lady. Also I have a message--but less important--from -Madame Sing, my relative.” (Gregory grunted curtly.) “Ring!” - -“Ring--yourself,” the Englishman at bay said sullenly. - -“That is a liberty I would not dream of taking in another man’s office. -You’ll ring”--the revolver’s barrel repointed insinuatingly. “You will -ring now, Mr. Gregory.” - -Robert Gregory pressed the bell push on his desk and leaned back -heavily in his chair, with an unhappy sigh, defeated. - -As Murray came in, Wu so moved his body that the clerk could not see -the little pistol which still covered Gregory. “Murray,” his employer -said wearily, “ask Mrs. Gregory to step this way a moment.” Then he -began breathlessly, “_Ce sacré Chinois me_----” - -But Wu interrupted with a contented laugh and, “Oh! this damned -Chinaman understands French perfectly. And I’ve often heard Englishmen -pronounce it very much as you do. You are a linguist too, Mr. Murray? -_E’um dom util--o dom das linguas--e de alto valar em cidades -cosmopolitas!_” - -Poor Murray stood bewildered, quite uncertain what to do. And Wu turned -pleasantly to Mr. Gregory with, “Please repeat your instructions, as -Mr. Murray does not seem to understand quite.” - -And Gregory said at once--broken, defeated--in a whipped tone his clerk -had never heard from those thin lips before, “Please ask Mrs. Gregory -to come here.” - -And indeed the hard little man was broken and defeated, and he knew it. -The Chinese duellist had made but little lunge, but with a gentleness -more cruel than any storm, and a suave persistence that under such -circumstances no mere European nerve could outfight, he had borne his -opponent to the knees; slowly, deftly had worn him out. His method and -his touch had been--almost consistently--velvet, but through the velvet -of the fur that hid them, relentless claws had found and torn and -jagged the English adversary. - -Robert Gregory was down and out. - -“Now,” Wu said in a changed tone, speaking briskly and quick, as the -door closed on Murray, “I will open the matter to Mrs. Gregory--if you -please.” - -“What’s your object in wanting to humiliate me before my wife?” Gregory -asked drearily. - -Wu smiled. “Merely a ‘Chinaman’s’ idea of--humor, let us say.” He slid -the Webley lazily into his sleeve. - -Florence Gregory came in eagerly. Knowing less than her husband did of -the mandarin’s important place in international finance, yet she had -a far clearer estimate of Wu Li Chang’s personal potency than Gregory -had. Ah Wong had coached her--if only with a hint or two--and she had -her own woman’s instinct, fine and alert. - -Wu had risen instantly, and taken a courteous step towards her. He -paused as she did. For a moment she stood looking from one man to the -other questioningly, and then she fixed her anxious eyes on Wu, and -they stood measuring each other quietly. - -For once the English eyes were the quicker. Perhaps sex and motherhood -combined outweighed any and every superiority of race. Perhaps he gave -her a much more careless gaze than she gave him. Perhaps her exquisite -anxiety gave her sharper sight. At all events, as they looked, she -almost recognized him, but he had no such experience concerning her. -For a puzzled instant her mind trembled towards “When? Where?” and in -a few moments, or in less mental turbulence, her half-awakened memory -might have caught up a broken thread, a forgotten acquaintance; but Wu -spoke, and in the tension of her anxiety the chance passed. - -“Mrs. Gregory,” Wu Li Chang began, deferentially bowing and going a -little nearer, “I am sorry to be compelled to ask your presence, but, -before I explain, will you take this weapon from me? You see”---he -laughed a little, lightly--“I present it to you with the barrel toward -my own breast--but”--and this he added with quiet emphasis--“do not -give it to your husband.” As he indicated Gregory he gave him a -straight look. “I trust to your honor.” And he bowed again as he held -the pistol out towards her. - -She took it wonderingly, and held it so. She was not one of the women -who have an exaggerated fear of weapons, but neither was she one of -those who rather affect them. She had never hunted, and she had never -practiced pistol shooting (Hilda had done both). Ordinarily Florence -Gregory would have declined to hold a revolver. But she took this and -held it steadily--puzzled but not afraid. She was in an abject terror -for her boy that left no room for petty, personal, bodily qualms. - -“What--what is all this?” she said ruefully. “Robert, what have you -been doing?” - -He sighed heavily before he answered her. “Mr. Wu has rather -over-reached me in--a little transaction.” - -“Oh! pardon, pardon,” Wu protested pleasantly. “You over-reached -yourself. May we be seated?” he asked Florence Gregory; and as she -sat down he drew himself a chair conveniently towards her, and -convenient for an unimpeded view of Gregory. “I called here to-day,” he -continued suavely, “at your husband’s invitation, on a matter of grave -importance.” - -The woman leaned forward towards him quickly, her hands knotted at her -knee. “Yes--yes--my son,” she began eagerly. - -“What the matter was,” Wu went on smoothly, “he did not say. Of course, -I knew of your son’s disappearance--everybody in Hong Kong knows -that--so I fancied that your husband wished, perhaps, to ask me that -any influence I might possess among my countrymen should be exerted to -assist you in your search----” - -“Yes--yes,” she said, “if you could!” - -“Could!” Gregory muttered, “he knows all about it.” - -“To assist you in your search,” Wu repeated blandly. “His reception of -me, however, was strangely unlike that of a man--asking a favor.” - -“Favor!” Gregory flamed out--he couldn’t help it--“I was going to ask -no favor, I can tell you.” - -His wife sent him a peremptory glance, but Wu paid him no attention, -but continued: - -“And in the end, Mrs. Gregory, he presented a revolver at me, and -practically held me prisoner.” - -“Yes,” Gregory snarled, “and by a cunning ruse, like a man of your -crafty nature----” - -Wu Li Chang smiled deprecatingly. “Listen to him, Mrs. Gregory! It is -cunning of me to endeavor to save my own life. It is not cunning of him -to beguile me here under the pretext of----” - -“Pretext be damned!” Gregory blustered, beside himself now, rising and -going to the window. His face was twitching. He stood looking out at -the seething humans on the dock-side, but it is doubtful if he saw them. - -“You see,” Wu said gently, “the strange means by which your husband -seeks to enlist my help and sympathy.” - -Florence Gregory hung her head. - -Wu moved his chair an inch towards hers. Gregory did not turn round -at the sound. The Chinese spoke lower, and the sympathy in his voice -seemed very real, “And all your natural maternal anxiety----” He paused -eloquently, and the mother looked up at him, eagerly, gratefully. -And in return he gave her a long direct look--there were respect and -friendship in it. And after a moment she rose abruptly and went to the -window. - -“Robert!” - -He did not answer. She touched his shoulder. He paid no attention. -“Leave me to talk to Mr. Wu! Please!” But her tone was imperative. - -A smile, a glint of triumph, flickered across the Chinese’s face. “You, -Mrs. Gregory?” he said, just stepping towards her--he had risen when -she rose--“that would be different.” - -“He needs a man’s methods of dealing with him!” Gregory growled, -without turning. - -“But they don’t seem to have been very effective in your hands, do -they? Robert,” she urged more appealingly, “I want to find my boy! Let -me try--my way.” - -“I’ll send Ah Wong to you,” was the grudging reply, and Robert Gregory -shuffled awkwardly from the room. He did not even look at Wu again--and -Wu barely looked at him. - -“And who is Ah Wong, Mrs. Gregory?” Wu asked amiably, as the door -closed. - -“My servant,” she told him. - -“Your amah? But I do not need an interpreter,” he laughed. - -“She rarely leaves me.” - -“Who could?” he said with a little bow. - -Ah Wong came noiselessly into the room. - -“And now, Mr. Wu,” the woman asked earnestly, her voice low and tense, -“will you help us?” - -“You, if I can--but--I am not sure if----” He broke off and gave Mrs. -Gregory a little inquiring gesture that said, “Are you going to let her -stand there?” For Ah Wong had come steadily across the room until she -stood quite at his elbow. - -“Wait, Ah Wong,” her mistress told her, with a gesture of the head -towards the door. And Ah Wong moved back as quietly as she had come, -and waited just inside the door, immovable, expressionless. But not -for an instant, never once, did her eyes leave Wu Li Chang. A critic -at a “first night” could not have watched and listened more closely or -seemed less interested. - -Ah Wong and the mandarin were ill matched, but better matched than he -and Robert Gregory had been. - -Mrs. Gregory wasted no time on preliminaries. She forgot that he was a -stranger. That he was man, she woman, she forgot that she was English -and he Chinese. She had but one thought, one memory--Basil. “Oh! Mr. -Wu,” she pleaded--urged--at once, “if you can help us, if you could -even give us your advice as to the best way of appealing to the natives -or of offering a reward----” - -“Ah!” Wu interjected gently, “for your sake, Mrs. Gregory--as his -mother--I would do much.” He picked up his hat and moved towards the -door. But Ah Wong did not trouble to move from it--she knew that he -was not going yet. But Florence Gregory did not know--and she followed -him a step. Wu bowed to her with the utmost courtesy, and said--as if -considering the situation--“Well, we must meet again.” - -“Oh! I hope so, Mr. Wu. But now--when every moment is so precious----” - -“I am thinking, Mrs. Gregory, and I will not waste one of them, you may -trust me.” - -“I do,” she said impulsively. - -Wu bent his head gratefully--perhaps, too, to veil a smile--“But I will -venture to take just two of those precious moments, to ask a great -favor of you.” - -“Oh, anything!” - -“You were visited yesterday by a lady of my house, Madame Sing, a -kinswoman who has, since my wife’s death, taken a mother’s part--so far -as it ever can be taken--to my daughter. Sing Kung Yah suffers a great -humiliation and an intolerable loneliness----” - -“I was sorry I was out----” - -“And she was grieved to find you not at home. May I solicit your -kindness for Madame Sing, Mrs. Gregory?” - -“Oh--indeed--anything. But what can I do?” - -“Much,” Wu said. “She is ostracized by the ladies of our race. I am a -powerful man among my own people, madame, but I cannot influence or -soften the prejudices of Chinese femininity in the slightest. Because -she is a widow, she should, according to one of the absurdest of the -many absurd canons of our race, live in seclusion, sackcloth and -discomfort. She is a nice creature, Mrs. Gregory, and she longs for -friends. Will you visit Sing Kung Yah?” - -“Oh--of course--gladly.” - -“It will open many doors to her, for Mr. Gregory’s wife is a social -power in Hong Kong. Chinese doors we are both powerless to open--in any -real sense. Chinese cordiality I am not rich enough to buy for her or -strong enough to seize. But life will be less dull for her if she can -sometimes exchange visits with English ladies.” - -“I shall be so glad.” - -“Soon--perhaps?” - -“Indeed, yes. Of course, until this terrible anxiety is removed----” - -“It would be cruel of me to ask you to come to Kowloon to drink tea -with Sing Kung Yah. And yet I do ask it--but for your own sake too. -Yes, if you will be so kind--it will delight Sing--you shall be my -guest.” - -“We have been already, Mr. Wu,” she said a little sadly. “You remember -it was in your house, or rather in your gardens, that I last saw my -son. It was there he left us--and disappeared as completely as though -the earth had swallowed him up.” - -“And it is from that point that we will begin our investigations--you -and I--his mother and a Chinese who is honored to serve her. We will -take the thread up from that moment--when you last saw him--from that -place--my own house.” - -“But you know that he was seen afterwards here--in Hong Kong?” - -“I know that it was said so,” Wu replied judicially. “It may, or it -may not, be true, and we will begin at the beginning--and end by -discovering the truth. That at least I can promise you.” - -“Oh! You do?” she almost sobbed. - -“I am sure of it.” - -“Then when may we come? If we must.” - -“Must,” the man deprecated. “My dear Mrs. Gregory, I employ no such -word where you are concerned. I merely point out to you, and I hope as -delicately as possible, that--aside from the very real kindness your -visit would be to a Chinese woman somewhat pathetically placed--that -the--the circumstances of my visit here this afternoon hardly make this -a--a propitious place--indeed, I am sure you will understand I am only -too anxious to find myself outside this room--and to forget--as far as -such things can be forgotten----” - -“Yes--yes!” Mrs. Gregory interjected contritely, “I do indeed -understand. I am so ashamed----” - -Wu waved that aside, and then he broke out with sudden feeling--it was -finely done; even to Ah Wong it almost rang true--“Why, I wonder, do -some Europeans--Mr. Robert Gregory and others--think God in heaven came -to be guilty of making the Chinese race? You come here and reap the -harvest of our centuries of sowing, and affront us while you fatten on -our industry; teach the foolish among us to suck and smoke the poppy, -and condemn us for it while it enriches you; brand the vice ‘Chinese’ -while you revenue India from it--you treat us a thousand times worse -than the leech-like fops of Venice treated the Jews they exploited and -plundered--at least the Venetian cads were in their own country--you -are in ours. I tell you, madame, a Chinese _hath_ eyes, hands, -organs, dimensions, senses, affections--_yes, affections_, -passions--fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject -to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by -the same winter and summer, as you English Christians are! If you prick -us, we bleed. If you tickle us, we laugh. If you poison us, we die. If -you wrong us, shall we not revenge? For sufferance is _not_ the -badge of _our_ great tribe. Oh! forgive me, dear lady,” and his -voice that had been a shaking whirlwind was regretful, soft and humble. -“Forgive me--not you--I do not mean you. Mrs. Gregory,” he said with -deep earnestness, “I _will_ help _you_--to my utmost, to find -your boy. And I _am_ powerful. But, Mrs. Gregory, I will not help -your husband. Nor shall he have the satisfaction of knowing that I have -been instrumental in restoring Mr. Basil Gregory to you.” - -“Oh! I do not blame you,” Basil Gregory’s mother said. And her eyes -were full of tears. - -“Thank you,” Wu said softly. “I will help you to find your son. I swear -it. Trust me--and I shall not fail.” - -“I do.” - -Wu bent his head. - -“And try to believe how much I regret to seem petty; but, really, Mrs. -Gregory, frankly, if your husband and I were to meet again, even under -the restraining influence of your presence, his strange animosity, -his extraordinary prejudice against me, and his curious ideas of the -language which a European may use to a Chinese gentleman--if I may -so describe myself--would, I fear, tempt me to wash my hands of the -whole affair. In short, I can not again enter any place that is Mr. -Gregory’s, and he has made it impossible for me to invite him to my -house or to receive him there; but if you will so far honor me, and my -kinswoman Sing Kung Yah, and my daughter--bring your amah with you” (he -indicated Ah Wong with a gesture), “she has a loyal face, and I am sure -you can trust her not to report your visit--and indeed,” he added in a -low tone, “she need not know how far I aid you. But all that I leave -to you, naturally. All I ask is your promise that Mr. Gregory shall be -ignorant always that your son has been restored to you by a ‘damned -Chinaman’; promise me that, and----” - -She bowed her head. - -“I promise you that it shall not be my fault if your son is not -restored to you within a few hours.” - -“Then you know----” - -“I know nothing,” Wu Li Chang said earnestly, “Mrs. Gregory, that you -yourself shall not know--at Kowloon.” - -“When may I come?” she begged. - -“To-morrow, at four? I will be entirely at your service----” - -“To-morrow?” Her voice broke on the word. - -“To-night, then?” He glanced at the clock consideringly. “Yes, the -time is short--but I think I can contrive it. I will employ myself so -diligently in the meantime that I think I can promise you that your son -shall be brought into your presence before you leave mine. I cannot put -in words how much I shall rejoice to see that meeting--and how proud to -have achieved it.” His voice trembled at the last words. And she could -scarcely command hers to say, “At what hour?” - -“Six, or six-thirty? That will give time for the visit to which I shall -so look forward--and my daughter and her aunt--and time to permit you -to return while it is light, in time to dress for dinner.” - -“Return--with Basil?” - -Wu Li Chang smiled kindly. “I believe--with--Basil.” He spoke the name -as tenderly as she had, or as Nang Ping might have done. - -“Oh! Mr. Wu!” the woman cried, and held out to him both her hands. He -took them and bent over them gravely. - -“Oh! tell me,” she begged, her hands still in his, “Mr. Wu, do you -think he is safe and well?” - -“I have no doubt of it,” Wu said earnestly. “And that it is merely a -question of making terms with those who are detaining him. And now,” -he said in a bright, brisk tone, turning alertly to the door, and this -time Ah Wong drew aside, “there is so much to do, and I have put -myself upon my honor not to fail in my--promise--if you do not fail----” - -“I fail!” the mother said. “And you promise that I shall see my boy -to-night?” - -“I promise!” - -“Oh!” she went to him impulsively again and held out her hand. But he -seemed not to see it. - -“Till six,” he said bowing, and was gone. - -The woman sat down in the nearest chair and began to cry softly. Ah -Wong huddled over to her quickly and bundled down at her feet. “No, -no,” the amah said, catching her lady’s hand, clutching her dress. “No, -no, madame. Not go! Not go!” - - - - -CHAPTER XXX - -SMILING WELCOME - - -Again, as Wu Li Chang passed through the office yards, the coolies -almost groveled at his feet, and this time he threw a curt but not -unpleasant word to one or two of them. - -He had been with the Gregorys some time, the afternoon seemed at its -hottest, but he was as fresh and crisp as when the close duel began; -and yet in a more resilient, a more stimulated way, he had felt the -strain as they had not, for he had known the story of Basil and Nang -Ping. - -But “crisp” and “fresh” were the last words that could be applied -to the shipper or his wife, or, for that matter, to any of their -companions. Robert Gregory was having a stiff “peg,” and needed it; and -Mrs. Gregory, less unnerved, was tired and anxious enough. And Holman -and his fellow faithful few were on desperate tenterhooks both for -their chief (he was roughly lovable and not a mean master) and for the -threatened business to which they were sincerely and doggedly devoted. - -Perhaps Tom Carruthers and Ah Wong were the two Gregoryites least -unhinged by the day’s fusillade of miscarriage and by its recurrent -stalemate. Ah Wong was anxious, but she had been racked by no surprise. -Of the Steamship Company’s business she knew little--and cared less. -But, even so, she probably had, next to Wu Li Chang, a correcter -estimate of the whole complicated situation than any one else. Bradley -and Holman came next in prescience, but neither of them suspected, much -less knew of, the particular slant the diabolism of Wu’s vengeance had -taken, or of the appointment he had made with Basil’s mother. - -Tom Carruthers was “no end” sorry, and sincerely so. But he could not -quite help getting a certain enjoyment out of it all. He was built -that way--and he was only twenty-four--and he had come to China to -have an occasional nibble at the spice of things, almost as much as he -had come to master the details of a business to which his father had -assigned him not too sanguinely. The bankruptcy that positively seemed -to threaten the great firm could not even embarrass him. His father was -a very rich man (as mere British wealth went), and he himself an only -child. Mr. Gregory’s wealth had not in the least added to Hilda’s charm -in Tom Carruthers’ eyes. - -But the depression at the office was growing tormenting, and so was the -heat, and Robert Gregory’s nervous irritability was a bit trying, so -when Hilda announced her determination to “go home” Tom resigned the -affairs of the business cheerfully enough and picked up his hat. - -Hilda saw that she could do nothing for her father by “hanging round.” -And “hanging round” was an occupation she particularly disliked. And -when she learned that her mother had slipped off with Ah Wong without a -word, she said, “How shabby!” and prepared to follow suit. - -Robert Gregory scarcely noticed his wife’s defalcation--and certainly -did not resent it. The business turmoil did not lesson with the -lessening day; it increased. His tired, unsteadied hands were -overflowing full, and towards dinner-time (another whiskey and soda had -taken the place of tea) he deputed Murray to ’phone Mrs. Gregory that -he would not be home till very late that night, if at all. Hilda had -answered the ’phone, and had said, “All right,” Murray reported. And -Gregory grunted an acknowledgment, paying little attention, engrossed -in other things. - -Florence Gregory was a just and a good-humored mistress, not an -indulgent one. And she was in no way of the class of women who court -or accept the advice of their servants. Even in the days of her modest -Oxford housekeeping, when her own youthfulness and the deficiencies -of the vicarage purse would have made most girls so placed peculiarly -vulnerable to the insidious encroachment of hireling “I wills,” and “I -won’ts,” she had been truly mistress of that manse, adamant towards -would-be familiarity. And that natural smooth caste hardness had not -softened under the flux of travel or the sunshine of affluence. From -their first quarter of an hour together she had commanded distinctly, -and Ah Wong, without comment, had obeyed. During the last week Mrs. -Gregory had leaned not a little on her amah, sensing in the Chinese -woman, who too was a mother, a something of sympathy that even Hilda -could not give her, but she had in no way abrogated any of her personal -autocracy to Ah Wong or let the space of discipline between them -lessen. When Ah Wong had exclaimed, “No, no, madame! Not go!” the first -liberty Ah Wong had ever taken, the mistress had scarcely heard and had -not heeded; but when, on their return to the Peak, the amah had again -urged “Not go!” Mrs. Gregory had checked her sternly, and Ah Wong had -known that it was worse than useless to repeat the entreaty. To appeal -to any one else, against her mistress--to Missee Hilda, to the master, -or even to John Bradley--never occurred to her. And she submitted -silently, only venturing a piteous, “Me clome? Madame take Ah Wong?” - -“Of course,” Mrs. Gregory said, not unkindly. “He expressly said I -should bring you.” - -That there could be no question between them as to who “He” was told -clearly of how Wu Li Chang had gripped the thought of both these women, -and (at least of one) had gripped also the imagination. - -At five o’clock--the hotness of the terrific day was scarcely waning -yet, and Hilda and Tom in the darkened sitting-room were eating ices -with their tea--Mrs. Gregory and Ah Wong went quietly out and took -the next car down the Peak. On the level (such level as terraced -Victoria City can show) the amah hailed two rickshaws, and they bowled -inconspicuously to the water’s edge. - -They did not use the ferry. A little boat was waiting for them. Ah Wong -had secured it by messenger; and she took care that the jinrickshaw men -should hear her tell the boatmen where they were to pole--which they -already knew perfectly. - -And then she sat down at her mistress’s feet and waited. She had done -all she could. - -The boat slipped slowly through the gurgling water, the coolies -sing-singing droningly as they poled her. Neither of the women spoke -until the little vessel grated against the shore. Ah Wong was strangely -calm, her very nerves hushed but alert in her lady’s service, and the -Englishwoman felt calmer than she had been for days, soothed that she -was doing something definite at last, and not a little confident in the -promise of Wu Li Chang. - -She had made a special and somewhat magnificent toilet for this visit, -pathetically anxious to seem to pay every honor to the Chinese lady -for whose social peace of mind the mandarin had seemed so anxious. -Mrs. Gregory was wearing more jewelry than she had ever worn before -in the daytime, so thinking to do honor to a hostess who was of -the inordinately jewelry-loving Chinese race. Even the wonderful -bracelet--kept until now for functions of real importance--was hidden -beneath the laces of her sleeve. - -The boat grated in the gritty earth, and Mrs. Gregory looked up, glad -to have arrived, confident of her reception and of the wisdom of her -visit. - -Wu Li Chang need not have been at such pains to tempt his prey and to -bait his trap. Convention did not exist for Florence Gregory now, or -fear. Basil and Basil’s plight left her no thought, no consciousness of -lesser things. And she had as little thought of the safety or danger -of her act as she had of its propriety or impropriety. But if she -had known her coming at Wu’s bidding to Kowloon to be as imperilled -as it was, and as Ah Wong sensed it, still she would have come, as -unflinchingly, for Basil. Wu Li Chang had squandered inducement -needlessly. And he need not have played poor Sing Kung Yah for trumps. - -That widowed gentlewoman was greatly bewildered and scarcely less -perturbed. Never before had she returned home ungreeted by Nang Ping. -And of Nang Ping she could hear nothing. To all her questions the -servants were deaf. The honorable master would tell his honorable -kinslady all to interest her in his own honorable time. To them he had -commanded silence. - -She could not see Low Soong; it was forbidden--for a time. Wu Li Chang -she scarcely saw; and, when she did, him she dared not question. -He sent her to call on an English lady in the Barbarians’ Hotel on -the Peak, and she went, half dead with embarrassment, and carrying -a splendid offering of flowers. The lady was out--the mandarin had -almost counted on that--and Sing Kung Yah scudded back home, as fast -as she could induce the servants to carry her, and burned a score of -“thank-you” joss-sticks. - -That she was to receive that same lady to-day, and at the very gates, -was a care, but one that sat on her more lightly. She was at home here, -surrounded by her customary servants, and she might know more or less -what to do, how to conduct herself in the unprecedented presence of a -foreign guest. And she was thinking of Nang Ping far more than of her -own approaching social ordeal, as she sat in her own apartment eating -perfumed ginger and quails dressed with sour clotted cream, and waiting -for the summons to the gate. - -Both were very good: the ginger embedded in jelly-of-rose leaves, and -the hot, hot quail smothered in thick ice-cold sauce. She was very -nervous, but somewhat phlegmatically resigned, plying her delicate -chop-sticks industriously, now in the deep blue and white Nankin-ware -jar of fragrant confiture, now in the silver dish where the sizzling, -savory quail was too hot to be cooled by the icy cream, the sour cream -too cold to be lukewarmed by the quail. - -Just at six her summons came. She sighed a little, gulped down a tiny -bowlful of bright green tea, and toddled off almost confidently to play -hostess to the lady of the mandarin’s latest whim, a little at a loss -for herself, but happily and proudly confident that Wu Li Chang could -do no wrong, much less blunder, and toddling fantastically because her -feet were very small--Sing Kung Yah had no claim to Manchu blood, had -had no traveled eccentric for a father and lord, and so, unlike Nang -Ping, her feet had been well bound. Because she was a widow she used no -cosmetics. But her clothes could not have been gayer: she was gorgeous. - -She was standing smiling at the gate, servants on either side, when -the Englishwoman reached it. And when Mrs. Gregory held out her hand -she took it warmly, giggled and held it to her cheek, said a gurgling -something that sounded Italian but wasn’t, and drew her guest along the -path to Wu Li Chang’s threshold. - -The two women went hand in hand, and Ah Wong walked close behind, -carrying a tortoise-shell card-case in her hand. If anxiety and torture -had made Basil’s mother oblivious of conventions as they affected -herself, they made her acutely careful to avoid every possible giving -of offense and appearance of slight. And she would not forget to leave -three cards, of her own and Hilda’s, one for each of the ladies of Wu’s -household. - -Her reception encouraged her. This little creature was very friendly, -and it was nice of Mr. Wu to have stationed her at the gate, for he -was master of the smallest details here, she made no doubt of that. -She wondered at what point Miss Wu would appear, and the funny, -pigeon-plump cousin. - -They went along the tortuous paths, through the lovely, elaborate -gardens (not Nang Ping’s garden), hand in hand up to the very door, -and Sing Kung Yah chatted incessantly in her pretty, musical mandarin -Chinese, and the guest said an amiable word now and then. Neither -understood a word the other said, or ever could, and Sing Kung Yah -thought that screamingly funny--and screamed with high-pitched, tinkly -laughter. - -The sun was brilliant still. Flowers leaned with friendly welcome from -every ledge and corner. How perfectly absurd Ah Wong had been! - -And Ah Wong kept closer and closer, growing more terrified every moment. - -At the door Sing Kung Yah slid her hand gently away, and, toddling back -a step, gestured laughing that Mrs. Gregory was to go in first. - -When the door had closed again, the guest was surprised to find that -the hostess had stayed outside. On what “Martha” errand had the little -housewife thought it necessary to go herself, in this household -overflowing with servants? But she was not altogether sorry. It was the -mandarin she wished to see--to hear what his success had been. Perhaps -it was his kindness that had arranged it so. But she must not forget to -ask the Wu ladies to lunch, and, above all, she must remember to leave -cards. The Chinese set such store on such things. - -She caught her breath. The servant who was conducting her paused at a -door. Probably she would see the mandarin now. - - - - -CHAPTER XXXI - -FACE TO FACE - - -It was four when Wu Li Chang reached Kowloon and his own home. Barely -two hours in which to arrange the details, the scenic background, of -the last act of the tragedy--the exquisitely horrible details of his -revenge. But it was time enough, for he had planned it all down to the -smallest point as he sat with Nang Ping dead at his feet. A few moments -would suffice for the orders he had still to give Ah Sing, and upon the -implicit obedience of his servants he could depend absolutely. - -He bathed, dressed in the garments of his country, took rice, spoke -briefly to Ah Sing, then sent for Sing Kung Yah and coached that -surprised and flustered lady in the part she was to play in the events -of the afternoon. She was not a particularly skillful or astute -coadjutor--indeed, for a Chinese woman, she was dull, inept and dense; -but for seventeen years it had been her invariable habit to give him -minute obedience, and the habit would stand her in good stead to-day. -And, too, she had, of course, a Chinese memory--the most wonderful -memory bestowed on any race. He had little fear of Sing Kung Yah, and, -for that matter, the rôle he had assigned to her was but that of a -well-dressed supernumerary with a few unimportant lines to speak. She -was not essential to the movement of the piece, and her rôle might well -enough have been “cut” from the cast, but with the evil seething at his -heart all the native artist in him was aflame. He intended to carve -his victims delicately--a dish for the gods. On the terrible altar of -his hatred, yes, and of his just resentment, he would lay an English -woman who had never wronged him and an English son who----. But he -intended it all to be done as exquisitely as some finest ivory carving -cut by a master Chinese hand. - -When he had dismissed Sing Kung Yah he went into his study and waited. - -It was the room in which perhaps he had lived most. It was here -he studied; and in the many long hours of leisure which he always -relentlessly kept for himself, Wu Li Chang was a devoted student. -It was here he wrote; and Wu was an author of some distinction in -the current literature of China--the land in which a genuine love of -letters counts as nothing else does, a fine skill in literature is -respected as no other human quality is. There were poems to his credit -in the Imperial library at the pink-walled palace in Pekin, a book of -philosophy, a comedy, and a history of the women of his house. And he -contributed almost regularly to the _Pekin Gazette_ and at long -intervals to _Le Journal Asiatique_--in French, of course. - -The hour-glass--he had turned it when Sing Kung Yah had left him--was -running down; almost was run. - -Wu rose, and stood looking out into his garden, saying good-night to -it something as Nang Ping had said “good-by” to hers four mornings -ago--saying good-night, for it would be dark when Mrs. Gregory left him. - -He had no doubt that she would come. - -He turned from the window, and walked gravely into the next room, where -he intended--in less than an hour now--to receive his guest. - -It was a curious room: Chinese, but with some differences from other -Chinese rooms. For this man dared to tamper with custom when it suited -his convenience, and to modify an architecture that had been unaltered -almost since Kublai Khan ordered every grave in China to be plowed up -remorselessly, and so made room for homes and crops for the living, -till then out-crowded by the honorable dead. - -This was a very beautiful room, and so richly furnished that its -opulence must have been oppressive had it been less beautiful, its -taste less distinguished. - -Essentially and strikingly like Nang Ping’s room, unlike hers it -was not so exclusively Chinese, and it was more nearly crowded. The -Chinese--like all Orientals--are fantastic collectors, even of European -flotsam and jetsam, though more discriminatingly so than the Turk, the -Indian, or the Japanese. In the remotest yamên in Honan or Kwei Chau -you may find a Dresden vase, a music-box from Geneva, a silver dish -from Regent Street, and--most probably of all--half a dozen clocks, -made anywhere from Newhaven, Connecticut to Novgorod, and all ticking -away together, but quite independently, and all giving a different lie -to the old dial in the sunny Chinese garden. (There were eighty-five -clocks--and all “going”--in one of the Pekin throne-rooms.) But you are -not apt to find, except in the poorer quarters of the treaty ports, the -gimcrack chandeliers and tawdry vases, Europe-made, which will astonish -and shame you in a palace in Patialla or Kashmere. - -Wu had collected in princely fashion during his years in Europe. -There was a Venetian harp, a German grand piano, and an English -organ in an adjacent music-room. And in this, the smaller of -his own reception rooms, there were several European treasures. -Unlike most Chinese rooms, this was carpeted, not with one of the -beautiful native carpets, but with a great mat of silk and mellow -splendor--Constantinople was the poorer since Wu had purchased it. - -It was an octagonal room--perhaps the only one in China--and when all -the sliding panels were closed its only ventilation came from a small -window or opening high up against the ceiling. The panels were made -to slide back or up, and out of sight; each was in the center of one -of the apartment’s eight walls, and cut into about half of the wall’s -width. The widest panel was open wide, and through it Wu could see his -garden, with all its pretty architecture of pagoda, bridge, pavilion -and “tinkly temple bells,” all its lush and flush of flowers, all its -affected labyrinth of yellow path and costly forests of dwarf trees, -and, beyond the garden, the bay, terraced Hong Kong, the imperial -Chinese sky. - -The room was furnished in ebony, as costly and as carved as ebony could -be made. There were no chairs, but several stools. A stool stood on -each side of the moderately-sized square table, behind which stood the -most noticeable article in the room--the huge bronze gong, swinging in -a frame of chiselled ebony lace and silver and onyx, which no hand but -the mandarin’s ever struck. - -There were several cabinets, Chinese masterpieces, holding china and -bric-à-brac, chiefly Chinese and all priceless. - -Chinese antiquities of every description were on the walls and on -narrow tables against the walls--bronze from Soochow, porcelain from -Kintêching, cornelians from Luchow cut into gods and reptiles, jades -from the quarries of Central Asia, bowls, weapons, vases, statues, -armor, a piece of Satsuma that Yeddo could not match. - -There were two scrolls inscribed with lofty sentiments Tze-Shi -herself had brushed one, and Kwang-Hsu had given it to Wu with his -yellow-jacket. Aside from its imperial association it was very -beautiful--even a European could see that, and Bradley had spent -much covetous time gazing on it--for in all China, where the cult of -“handwriting” is an obsession, no one has ever written more beautifully -than her majesty. The other said in the original Arabic, “Es-salam -aleika.” (John Bradley had another verse from the same Sura over his -bed.) - -And, as in Nang Ping’s room, there was just one picture--this one a -bird perched on a spray of azalea painted by Ting Yüch’uan. - -Wu prostrated himself before the altar which proclaimed the owner’s -importance. He had come here to do worse than butchery, but to do it -as a priest--to sacrifice to his gods and to his ancestors, to scourge -in their service a woman who had never injured him or them, as much as -to scourge a man who had; but he had vocation in his heart rather than -personal vengeance--and such is Chinese justice. - -Fantastic--is it not?--the Chinese code that ennobles and flagellates -the dead ancestors and the living kindred in punishment of the raw -present sin! And yet, even for it, there is a poor, feeble something to -be said. We dig down into the earth and uproot the diseased tree, burn -it _all_, search out and burn, too, its suckers and its saplings -lest all our orchard suffer worm-breeding blight. - -From an alabaster box, gold-lined, he took a handful of yellow powder, -dribbled it into the tiny saucer of sacred oil burning before the -tablet, and as the pungent blue flames hissed up, prostrated himself -again, and knelt for a long time--in prayer. - -When he rose Ah Sing had entered, and stood waiting to say, “Your -honorable instructions have been obeyed.” - -“Good,” Wu said grimly, throwing more powder, from a different box, on -to the votive oil. A thin smoke curled up, thickening as it rose into -perfumed clouds that broke in waves of jade hues until all the room was -a glow of green. - -“Bring him now!” the mandarin said, seating himself beside the table -and waiting with an expressionless face. - -Ah Sing said something to a servant waiting outside the door through -which he had come, and presently feet came along the passage. They were -bringing Basil Gregory to Wu Li Chang. - -They had not met or exchanged a message since Wu had bent and gathered -up Nang Ping where she had swooned at Basil’s feet. Since then no -slightest message from the outer world had reached the prisoner in the -pagoda. Wu’s servants had brought him food, and, on the second night, -even a rug; but not once had they spoken to him or appeared to hear -what he said to them. - -The hours in the pagoda had marked him. And--why not? Those other hours -there had marked Nang Ping down to doom. The man does not go scot-free. -Never! That is immemorial fallacy. Nature would be full-moon mad if -that were so--and nature is very wise and sane, as wise as she is old. -The partners foot the bill both--always. Nang Ping had paid her share. -Now he was paying his. - -He looked ill and haggard, and his wrists were bound together. Two -Chinese servants stood guarding him, close on either side. Almost at -the threshold Ah Sing halted the three. - -Basil Gregory had no doubt that he was about to die and little hope -that he would not be tortured first. And the horrors of Chinese -tortures lose little hideousness in the telling at English clubs in -China. Basil was abjectly tormented. - -The mandarin sat and studied his prisoner curiously. His lip curled, -and his soul. What had his daughter, bred for centuries from China’s -best and finest, descended from Wu Sankwei and from the two supreme -Sages, and who might well have made an Imperial marriage, seen in this? -He had known such slight men by the dozens and twenties at Oxford, -scant-minded, uncultured, clad like popinjays; and for this--this -English nothing, this manling thing too slight for Wu Li Chang’s hate, -almost unworth his crushing--she had made the father that had adored -and cherished her grandsire to a mongrel of shame. The pain at Wu -Li Chang’s heart was greater and gnawed sharper than that at Basil -Gregory’s. The Chinese was the bigger man, and paid the bigger penalty. - -And Nang Ping had died for this: degraded herself beneath Chinese -forgiveness, beyond pity, for this: disgraced him, her father, and the -great ancestry of a thousand years for this! _This!_--and she -might have been the bride of a _man_!--loved as he had loved her -mother, cherished as he had cherished Wu Lu--and the mother of sons, -honorable, love-begotten Chinese sons! - -Almost Wu Li Chang’s Chinese imperturbability cracked under his strain. -His sorrow and his rage panted in his throat, battled, almost squealed -aloud. But he was master yet a little, and he said smoothly, “Well, are -your thumbs more comfortable?” - -“If I were only free, I’d throttle you.” Basil said it, of course, to -cover his own terror--but, too, he meant it. He was insanely angry -with Wu. The offender rarely forgives! - -“The heated language of youth!” the mandarin said with contemptuous -patronage. “But I will be indulgent. You will admit, I think, -that, so far, you have been dealt with leniently--considering the -resourcefulness usually attributed to us in the matter of ingenious -torture.” - -“I presume you have not yet exhausted your ingenuity,” Gregory said -with sullen, trembling lips. - -“By no means,” was the bland reply. - -“And that is why I am brought here; I supposed so.” - -“Partly,” the Chinese replied coldly; “also to prepare you for a shock.” - -“Death”--Basil tried to say it stoically. And, too, since it was to -come, it would almost be welcome in place of such suspense. - -“Nothing so pleasant,” Wu replied. - - - - -CHAPTER XXXII - -“CUR!” - - -“Nothing so pleasant”--and the perfect placidity of his voice was more -cruel than any outburst could have been. - -“Well,” the other said desperately, “but there’ll be a reckoning for -all this--my father----” - -“Not necessarily, my young seducer,” the Chinese said softly. “Your -father I do not regard as a man at all formidable. I had a most -interesting interview with him--to-day. And I formed a low opinion -of his abilities. There is a positive hue and cry after you, of -course--almost a paper-chase. The walls of Hong Kong city are plastered -with your portrait, and even here, on the mainland, it is to be -seen. It is a very nice portrait, too--the nice likeness of a nice -English--gentleman--the portrait of a very handsome young--seducer.” -Wu Li Chang was not quite his own master now. The storm was rising, -threatening his own insolent calm. He rose and moved a little up and -down the carpet--quietly but stealthily, as hungry-for-flesh and -thirstily-dry-for-blood cats move through the jungle in the night. - -His last word cut Basil Gregory. Wu was behaving like the yellow dog he -was; but he--Basil--was not entirely blameless: he had said as much to -himself, alone in the pagoda--that cursed pagoda. Oh, well! - -“Your daughter loved me,” he began. And at a something manlier in his -tone than Wu Li Chang had expected to hear, Wu paused still and met -the English eyes squarely. “We are both young.” And after a pause, -so throbbing that even the three automaton servants must have felt -it beat, he added slowly, “Except that the two races don’t mingle, I -would----” - -“Marry her?” Wu interrupted haughtily. - -“Yes,” Gregory replied, as if proclaiming a determination and a -promise. “Yes--if she still wishes it.” - -“A very interesting suggestion,” Wu sneered. “In your country, when a -woman has been dishonored, marriage is called ‘making an honest woman -of her.’ It is a quaint notion. To me it seems a nasty one--plastering -some putrid sore with gold-leaf! _Here_ we have other methods. To -us a woman’s honor, once stained, no more can be clean again than the -petals of a rose, torn and scattered by the storm, can be gathered back -into their opening bud to perfume the dawn and glisten with its dew. -If marriage, and with such as you, would redeem the honor of a ruined -girl, what would redeem the honor of a father and a house so desecrated -as mine? Nothing! And nothing is left me but to avenge. And I avenge it -now.” He turned and confronted the trembling wretch with a look before -which a braver and a less guilt-stained man might well have quailed, -and each word curled and hissed from his mouth like a snake. - -Basil moistened his lips, tried to speak, but failed. - -“However,” Wu continued, “I was going to say that although your -disappearance has become a matter of public advertisement, yet the -last place where you are looked for happens to be your present, if -temporary, abode. I say ‘temporary’ because in this life everything -is temporary--even life itself. You might be buried here--though I -don’t say you will be--without any one being the wiser outside my -own household. At one word from me you would be taken and crucified -beside the pagoda, and left there until the carrion birds came and -plucked your vitals out, and your eyes, and no one would suspect, or, -if they suspected, dare make a move. Your people at your Government -House! They could do nothing. My Government would dare do nothing, -_even if they wished to_, for in an hour I could pull half China -tumbling down about their ears. By the way, your father is a ruined -man to-day. His ships are sinking, his credit gone. In China we punish -parents for their children’s sin--and our gods have punished Robert -Gregory for yours and for his own: his own sin in having begotten -such a _thing_ as you, and his daily sin of impertinence to my -countrymen. Well, my virtuous young English gentleman, our interview -is drawing to its close. What is it that you wish to say--if your -quivering nerves will let you speak?” - -“If”--Basil Gregory spoke humbly enough now--“if you would grant me one -favor.” - -Wu Li Chang laughed aloud. “Optimist!” he sneered. “Well?” - -“That--that before anything”--his voice shook, and the words were not -very clear--“anything happens to me, you will let me write a letter to -my mother.” - -“To your mother?” Wu said softly. But his triumph leapt in his veins. - -“To my mother! I--I _beg_ you that one thing. It would not mention -this place or your name, of course”--Wu laughed--“but,” the tortured -man went on, “but if you would see that it reached her----” There was a -sob in his voice. - -“And--so you would like to write to your mother?” - -“Oh!” Basil Gregory cried, “double the torture you have planned, but -let me write to my mother.” - -“This is very interesting,” the mandarin said, sitting down again. -“Very interesting--very. As for the torture I am preparing for you, I -shall not increase it, because it cannot be increased. Largest cannot -be enlarged. To the utmost one cannot add. So,” he laughed softly, “you -wish very much to write to your mother--a virtuous lady who bore a son -in wedlock!” - -Basil Gregory dropped his head. He could no longer meet the eyes of the -father of Nang Ping. - -“I suppose you would scarcely credit,” the Chinese voice went on -softly, “that my consideration for you had gone even beyond that? Would -you like--not to write to your mother--but to _see_ her?” - -“See her!” - -“Because you shall.” - -“See her!” Basil cried, trembling as he had not trembled before. “Oh! -Mr. Wu!” - -“Yes,” Wu said slowly (and it says something of him and of his race -that it did not occur to the other to doubt him--nor would have -occurred to any one), “you shall. And you shall see her soon. You may -even go home with her this very evening and sail for Europe next week. -It is quite possible.” He spoke with quiet emphasis. - -“Mr. Wu!” the blanched face was twitching hideously, “oh! I would do -anything!” The frightened eyes leapt and burned. Gregory’s revulsion -was terrible--the great revulsion of reprieve, or nightmare torture -past and gone, the revulsion of a starving man at sudden meat and -plenty, of one dying of thirst who finds a brimming mountain-pool cool -to his reach, of the mother who from hours of agony slips towards sleep -with the warm velvet of her baby snuggled to her breast. He took one -eager step forward, and so far the men beside him let him go, and Ah -Sing made no sign. “If you would give me your daughter----” he said -earnestly, but at a look from Wu he paused. - -“Give you my daughter?” Wu Li Chang said terribly. He rose and crossed -to Gregory and stood before him--very near. “I have no daughter,” he -said gravely, and his meaning was unmistakable, “to give you or any -man!” - -The pinioned man recoiled with a sob. “Oh! my God!” he cried under his -breath. And he knew himself for the murderer of a girl who had given -him--all--and a child. And his own soul rose against him, and cursed -him, and called him “Cur!” - - - - -CHAPTER XXXIII - -A CHINESE TEACHING - - -There was terrible silence between them. Great puffs of sweet smell -came in at the window where the headheavy wistaria hung and the lemon -verbena crowded at its gnarled roots, and bursts of sweet sound from -birds singing in the sun. - -They looked at each other, weighing each the other--the man who had -given Nang Ping life and the man who had given her shame. - -They each had given her death: one in guilt, one in love. - -Basil Gregory looked into Wu’s eyes and could not look -away--fascinated, horror-held. - -Wu looked his fill, then turned away and went slowly to the shrine. - -Again he put the pungent votive powders to the flame, and all the room -quivered with deeply opalescent lights, and the odors of the garden -were as naught. - -The mandarin bent his head to the tablet, and walked away from the -shrine, speaking in a changed tone--quite lightly. - -“But I was speaking of your mother. I am expecting her here.” - -“Expecting her! Here?” - -“Here,” the Chinese repeated, standing close to Basil, eyeing him -narrowly. - -“Then they know----” Basil began, but could not finish. - -“No”--Wu smiled faintly--“they do not know. She is coming here, your -mother, as my guest--to learn, amongst other things, the truth about -you!” - -“If you could spare me that!” Basil said hoarsely. “We have been more -like brother and sister,” he pleaded. - -Wu took it up as a cue, and on it began, with a little leer, the -hideous part he had planned to play. “Yes, she is very young----” - -“Tell my father, if you will----” - -“Your father?” Wu said sharply. - -“Yes, tell _him_, but----” - -“I have nothing to do with your father!” Wu Li Chang said sternly, each -word an emphasis. - -“But you said----” - -“I said that your mother was coming here. She is coming--alone. She is -a devoted mother. I am going to test her devotion.” - -Again there was a pause--while the horror sank in. Basil Gregory did -not grasp it at first, and could not grasp it very quickly. But it -crept into his soul little by little, and while its agony seized and -strangled him, Wu stood and watched him intently, Wu with the panther -light of intensest hatred in his half-closed eyes. - -“You--you fiend!” The Englishwoman’s son screamed it, writhing. - -Ah Sing slid a little nearer him. The two guarding moved on his either -side a little closer. But neither on their faces nor on Ah Sing’s was -there the slightest expression or any sign of interest. - -“Why?” Wu laughed as he spoke. “Other countries, other ways! In -China a daughter often sacrifices herself for a father, a son for -his mother--to the utmost. You--English--reverse it, and the mother -sacrifices herself for her son.” - -“You fiend of hell!” And with a yell of torment the Englishman sprang -almost too quick for the vigilants beside him. He wrenched one pinioned -hand free and swung it up mightily. But Ah Sing--still with an -expressionless face--leaned across the table, leaned between the blow -and Wu Li Chang. - -And almost as Gregory sprang the other servants seized and held -him--they, too, with indifferent, blank faces. They would have shown -far more interest sweeping wistaria leaves from the graveled paths, -far, far more watching a quail fight. - -“An eye for an eye!” the mandarin cried fiercely. “A tooth for a tooth. -_That is what you teach us, you Christian gentlemen!_ And,” he -hissed, from enfoamed, protruding lips, “Woman for woman! _We’ll -teach you that!_” - -Basil Gregory hid his face in his hand and buried it on his shoulder. - -For a space Wu Li Chang stood looking grimly at the foreigner. He did -not mean to see him again. Then he spoke emphatically to Ah Sing--in -Chinese--and at each sentence of the master’s Ah Sing bowed his head -with an earnestness that was a promise that each word of Wu Li Chang’s -should be obeyed strictly and minutely. - -“Ah Sing,” the mandarin said, rising slowly and taking the beater from -where it hung beside the gong. He said something slowly, and then -struck once on the great brazen disk, gave a further direction, and -struck the gong twice. And Basil Gregory uncovered his eyes, lifted his -head limply and stood watching and listening, agonized, fascinated. -When Wu had finished his orders Ah Sing bowed still lower than he had -done before, and then went slowly from the room, but not by the door -through which they had brought Basil into it. - -Wu turned to the Englishman. “You do not understand our barbaric -tongue. I have been telling my servants that when they next hear me -strike upon that gong they may release you to come here. You will -find your mother here. It will be a tremendous meeting. Back to the -pagoda! To-morrow it will be destroyed. Back to the pagoda, and wait -there, thinking of my daughter, and listen for the gong to sound--for -when it strikes you will know that you are free. These doors and all -the gates of my garden will be reopened then, and you will be free to -go--wherever you will--with her.” - -“With her?” Basil Gregory gasped, bewildered and dazed. - -“Yes,” Wu Li Chang told him with a curt smile, “for with my striking -of this gong your debt will be fully discharged. Your mother will have -paid it.” - -Gregory made one supreme, straining effort to get at Wu. “You monster!” -he sobbed, “you monster of hell!” - -“Quite so,” the Chinese said calmly. “Western logic is an unfathomable -mystery. You dishonored my daughter,” he began fiercely, and then broke -off abruptly. He’d waste no more words on this English thing. He’d -punish--strike to the quick, flay to the raw nerve--but not wrangle -with his condemned. “The sound of that gong will ring in your ears as -long as you live. Go where you will, you will hear it. Go where you -will, you will see, waking and sleeping, a pagoda by a lotus lake, -while you live; and when you die, you will feel the vengeance of a Wu. -Never again will you look upon your mother’s face without seeing too -the dead face of Wu Nang Ping--and mine.” - -“Oh!” Basil moaned imploringly, “you can’t--you can’t do this awful -thing.” - -“Take him away,” the mandarin said in his own tongue. - -Basil Gregory understood the tone, though not the words. Dumb with -terror, he scarcely resisted as the two servants dragged him through -the door. - -Wu Li Chang stood motionless. He heard the bolts shut. He heard the -footsteps die away. But still he did not move. - -He was thinking of Nang Ping--not as he had seen her last, not as he -had known her for years now, but of Nang Ping, a laughing, imperious -baby. And then he thought of that other, dearer baby--the baby he had -married in Pekin--and a great, silent sob shook him roughly as he -stood. - - - - -CHAPTER XXXIV - -ALONE IN CHINA - - -“The lady has arrived,” Ah Sing said with an obeisance, and speaking, -of course, as he always did to his master, in Chinese; “she is coming -through the honorable garden.” - -“Show her in.” Ah Sing went out again, leaving open the wide sliding -doors through which he had come. And Wu, too, went from the room, -lifting his hands high in symbol to the altar as he passed it. He left -the room through its fourth door and closed it close behind him. He had -gone into his sleeping-room. - -In a few moments Ah Sing returned, bowing at the threshold for Mrs. -Gregory to enter. She came in eagerly, Ah Wong close at her heel. -Absorbed as the mother was in her own exquisite anxiety and in the -paramount errand that had brought her here, still she was struck with -the distinction and the character of the room; and at any time less -engrossed it would have delighted and absorbed her. She had seen many -rich interiors in Europe, and not a little of colonial extravagance -in home decoration, but she had not seen such luxury as this. And the -quiet taste of the place, for some reason, surprised her, but not more -than its spotless cleanliness did. - -Ah Sing watched the English lady with inscrutable eyes as she moved a -little curiously about the room; and to Ah Wong, watching him, it was -significant that for this once his scrutiny was open, almost frank. -And as he passed from the room, the two Chinese servants interchanged a -long, grave look. Ah Sing closed the door behind him. - -“How stifling it is here!” Mrs. Gregory said, unfastening her cloak and -drawing off her gloves. “I wonder where my hostess has gone off to. How -very droll of her! Ah Wong”--putting her hand a moment on the other’s -arm--“I’m glad I have you with me!” The amah took the cloak and the -gloves; put the gloves in the cloak, the cloak over her arm. And after -a moment Mrs. Gregory moved wearily across the room. - -Ah Wong looked hurriedly about the room--searchingly. She gave a little -quick breath when she saw the one high window. Without a sound she went -to Mrs. Gregory and touched her arm. Florence turned questioningly, and -Ah Wong pointed eloquently up to the high orifice; then, watching first -one door and then another, she moved a carved bench a little nearer the -window--without a sound--while the mistress stood and watched her half -curious, half amused. Again the amah pointed--this time from bench to -window, and from the window to the bench. She thrust her hand into her -dress, clutching at something hidden there, and bent her face close -to her mistress’s ear. But her own ear caught an almost imperceptible -sound, and when Wu came from his bedroom Ah Wong was standing some -distance from her lady, stolid but bored, her empty hands folded in -front of her, idly. - -The mandarin stood just inside the door, gravely watching. He did not -speak. His face was very calm, priestly even. - -Florence Gregory felt his presence, and turned with eager, welcoming -eyes. But when she saw him she recoiled a little, with a slight breath -of surprise. This morning in Hong Kong Wu had only half seemed to her -un-English. Here, in his own house, and clad as she had never seen any -one--stiff, gorgeous robes, tiny fan of ivory and silk, a mandarin’s -necklace of cornelian beads--he was intensely Chinese, barbarian, -unknown, and she felt very far from home. - -Wu made the motion of salutation with his fan--it is so the Chinese -“bow”--before he said reverentially, “This is indeed an honor--none the -less felt because it was expected.” - -Mrs. Gregory laughed a little nervously, but somewhat reassured by his -voice, as he had intended her to be. “You startled me, Mr. Wu,” she -said. “I hardly expected----” - -“This dress?” he said pleasantly. “It is put on in your honor. To -have received you in my Chinese home in other than Chinese garb would -have been a rudeness--and so, impossible. Hong Kong is your Queen’s -now, even its city’s legal name--though custom-ridden tongues still -stubbornly say ‘Hong Kong’--and there, where I am but a business man -among business men, I dress as Europeans do. I find it more convenient. -And a long residence in Europe makes it easy. But this is China. You -are indeed in China now, madame--as truly in China as if you were -within the vermilion walls of the great imperial palace or in evil -Hwangchukki. The Kowloon territory ceded to England in 1860 ends a -yard beyond my gates. My kinswoman seems remiss to you, I fear,” he -continued. “But pray dismiss the thought. She has gone to give an -order for your entertainment and to assume her best robes in your -honor--robes she may not wear to the gate.” - -“Oh! but she was very splendid, and I thought how beautifully -dressed.” The mandarin fluttered his fan in grateful acknowledgment. -“And your daughter? I hope Miss Wu is well?” - -Wu Li Chang bowed--his head as well as his fan this time. - -“And now, Mr. Wu”--she could wait no longer, and as she spoke she moved -a few steps towards him--“what news?” - -“Good,” Wu said assuringly. “So that it does not need to travel fast,” -he added suavely, moving to the table, motioning her deferentially to a -seat beyond it. - -“Ah! thank God!” She was tremulous with the intensity of her relief, -for she had feared the worst. It’s a sorry trick that mother-hearts -have. “And thank you, Mr. Wu,” she added earnestly, with a pretty, -friendly gesture that was very womanly and very English. But she was -too restless, and too anxious still for details, to take at once the -seat Wu again indicated. And she moved about the room a little, hoping -Wu would volunteer more, and a little at a loss what to say next if he -did not of his own accord immediately slake in full the burning torment -of her anxiety. “Ah Wong, take my scarf,” she said, unwinding it. It -was light and lacy, but even it seemed to stifle her. Ah Wong came for -the gauze, and backed away again, standing immovable, uninterested, by -the door. - -Mrs. Gregory waited, a little pantingly, but Wu said nothing. She -looked round the room, not at its treasures, but looking for her own -next words, piteously afraid of blundering, unable to be patient. - -Wu Li Chang did not misunderstand, but he pretended to, and said in a -pleased voice, “You find my modest treasures interesting?” - -“Very,” she forced herself to lie. She had heard a great deal of -Oriental deliberateness, and she was heroically determined to commit no -social solecism, give this man no smallest affront. “Oh! very.” If he -wished his possessions admired by her, admired by her they should be, -and to his vanity’s content, cost her heart the delay what it might. -“I had no idea----” she nerved herself to begin, but stopped abruptly, -embarrassed and at a loss. - -“That a Chinese house could be so civilized a place?” Wu quizzed -good-naturedly. - -Really, she must do better than this. She _would not_ give -offense. “Not only civilized,” she said, contriving a slight laugh--it -was an awkward one--“but refined to the last degree.” - -There was very fine sarcasm and some contempt in the little bow he -gave her--not a Chinese bow--but his voice was sincere and almost -pleading. “My dear Mrs. Gregory,” he began, “there is not so very much -difference between the East and West, after all. Perhaps we in the -East have a finer sense of art; certainly we care more for nature. But -we _all_ have the same desires--ambitions--the same passions, -hate, revenge--and love!” There was honey in the slow, well-bred -voice now--honey and something else. It jarred on the Englishwoman, -and she turned with a slightly uncomfortable look. Instantly his tone -changed to one entirely courteous still, but ordinary and commonplace. -“Will you not be seated?” he said simply. “Or shall I describe some -of my ornaments? You look about you as if you were good enough to be -interested in my Chinese bric-à-brac.” - -“Yes--do--do,” she stammered desperately; “that--that wonderful thing -there? That gorgeous-looking duck!” - -“Ah!” Wu said, “that is a very precious treasure. Our Chinese potters, -as probably you know, are very fond of reproducing members of the -animal kingdom.” - -“I have never seen a finer piece of that kind of pottery in my life,” -Mrs. Gregory said with almost breathless enthusiasm, gazing at the -curio with eyes that scarcely saw it and fumbling her rings. - -Wu Li Chang smiled. “And it is a very sacred object,” he said. - -“Oh?” she asked. - -“It is a mandarin duck,” Wu told her significantly. “And the mandarin -duck with us, you know, is the emblem of conjugal fidelity!” He ended -with a strange, low, sinister laugh. It was slight and very low, but -it affected Florence Gregory weirdly. To cover up her own disconcerted -inquietude she moved--at random--to one of the magnificent carved cedar -columns beside the altar (Wu watching her with a grinning face) and -pointed to the weapon hanging there. “And that sword up there?” - -“That?” Wu laughed, and at the sound Ah Wong’s blood curdled in her -breast; “yes, that’s an interesting thing. It has rather a curious -history.” - -Her procrastinated anxiety for her son, her thwarted hunger to see him, -were unnerving her, and she was growing anxious on her own account, -though that she scarcely realized and in no way could have explained. - -“Oh?” she forced herself to say. But she said it lamely, and she could -say no more. - -Apparently Wu noticed nothing amiss. “Perhaps rather a gruesome one,” -he said with a note of apology. - -“Oh!” his guest said with a shudder; “well, then, don’t tell me! At the -moment I don’t quite feel----” - -“Then,” Wu interrupted her quickly, solicitously, even, “I will spare -you its story,” but added more crisply, “for the present, at any rate.” - -He moved easily about the room and proceeded in the most leisurely way -to point out his treasures. “This,” he said, lifting a bowl from its -place in one of the cabinets and bringing it to her, “will interest you -very much. This is one of the famous dragon bowls--one of the first -three ever made.” - -“Indeed,” she said, “how very interesting!” But she could not hide her -torture or her indifference. - -Wu smiled cruelly into the priceless dragon bowl, and carried it back -to its shelf even more slowly than he had brought it. “Up here”--he -pointed to over one door--“I have what your English collectors call -a three-border plate. I have a set of six. Up there”--he pointed to -the top of another cabinet--“is another with five borders. It is -almost unique. Li Hung Chang has one, Her Imperial Majesty the Dowager -Empress has one, but they are very, very rare. And this”--indicating -another bowl conspicuously placed on a carved ebony stand of its own -on a malachite pedestal--malachite carved into coarse but exquisite -lace--“is a Shangsi bowl. There are several in the house. Each one is -worth something like two thousand pounds.” He took it in his hands and -turned it about very, very slowly, now this way, now that, gloating -over it as if he’d never be done. The woman could have screamed; and, -in spite of her, a heavy sigh escaped. But Wu seemed not to hear it. -He returned the Shangsi to its stand at last and crossed the room to -a larger stand, and, laying down his fan, which he had held till now, -took up a sea-green vase, beautifully molded, enormously glazed. “You -must look at this, dear Mrs. Gregory,” he told her cordially, “you -must look at this well. This is a particularly fine piece--this sea -green glaze, Mrs. Gregory--one of the earliest productions of the -ceramic art.” - -Her face was twitching now with nervousness. He seemed to notice her -perturbation for the first time, and said contritely, “But I fear I -weary you with my treasures,” and carried the glaze back, very, very -slowly, and put it down. - -“No--no,” she said hastily, “no, Mr. Wu, not that--not that at all. But -I have come here with only one object----” - -“With two, dear lady,” he interrupted her gently; “you forget Madame -Sing.” - -“Indeed, oh, no--I--I did not mean that, forgive me--but my boy--his -safety--to see him--my mind is full of that----” The mandarin smiled -indulgently and took up his fan again. “I should like to come again, if -I may, some other time--when we are older friends”--she was pleading -now--“I should like to come again and spend hours examining all -your wonderful treasures--if you will let me. I hope you will. But -now--now--I have only one thought in my mind. I can have but the one.” -Her voice trembled pitifully. - -Wu Li Chang smiled indulgently. “I have been waiting, Mrs. Gregory,” he -said explanatorily, “for you to dismiss your servant.” - -Ah Wong fixed her eyes on her mistress, entreaty and misery in their -narrow depths. - -Mrs. Gregory looked at Wu in startled astonishment. “Dismiss her--Ah -Wong? Do you mean send her away?” - -“Only out of the room,” the mandarin said carelessly. “She can wait in -the courtyard.” - -“But--but I couldn’t possibly do that,” the visitor stammered. She was -frightened now, and knew that she was. - -“Nevertheless,” Wu returned, in a tone he had not used before, “I fear -I must insist.” - -Their eyes met. The Chinese eyes of the man, inscrutable, the English -eyes of the woman, appealing, terrorized. And Ah Wong half thrust a -hand in her bosom, then dropped it back quickly to her side. - -“But, Mr. Wu,” Mrs. Gregory faltered, “it is such an extraordinary -request to make--under the circumstances.” - -“Not in the least,” Wu said smoothly--and he seemed somewhat amused. -“Do you in England usually bring your servants into the drawing-rooms -of your friends?” - -“No-o. No,” she admitted lamely, “but--that seems different, somehow. I -think, under the circumstances--and Madame Sing----” - -Sing Kung Yah’s remissness as a hostess received no further comment -from her kinsman. But he said emphatically, “I could not possibly -offend the spirits of my ancestors by sitting down in the room with -your servant.” - -“Your ancestors, Mr. Wu! What on earth have they to do with a matter of -modern propriety?” - -“I said I should offend them,” the mandarin replied with ominous -quietude. - -“Well then,” the Englishwoman retorted, just a shade contemptuously, -“they must be very thin-skinned.” - -“Mrs. Gregory!” Wu Li Chang said so sternly that she turned and looked -at him alarmed, “this afternoon your husband grievously offended me by -certain disrespectful allusions to my ancestors. He knew better--or he -should have done. You do not, for you are unacquainted with China. -So you must pardon me if I point out to you that in China we pay the -memory of our ancestors the deepest respect.” - -“Oh!” she said unhappily, “I’m sorry--I’m so sorry. I wouldn’t offend -you for the world.” - -“Then will you kindly send your servant away?” Wu put his words in the -sequence of a question, but there was neither interrogation nor request -in his voice: it was cold, imperative and final. - -The Englishwoman hesitated miserably. She was thoroughly alarmed now. -“But,” she begged (for it was supplication--open, not implied), “Mr. -Wu, I--I hope that I shall myself be going soon.” - -Wu took no notice of what she said, and, for the time no further notice -of Florence Gregory. He clapped his hands sharply, and at their sound -Ah Sing stood in the doorway. - -“Analiaotang,” the mandarin said quietly. The frightened Englishwoman -understood no Chinese. But Wu’s tone--quiet as it was--said unmistakably, -“Take her away.” - -Ah Sing moved quietly on Ah Wong, and she, looking pathetically at her -mistress, backed as slowly as she dared through the open door, from the -room. But at the threshold she paused, glanced for an instant up at the -high window, looked her mistress squarely in the eyes, bowed her head -and was gone. - -And Mrs. Gregory had returned her amah’s signal, look for look. - -It was two women against one man; and one of those women was Chinese. - - - - -CHAPTER XXXV - -THE STORY OF THE SWORD - - -“You--you shouldn’t have done that,” Mrs. Gregory faltered as the door -closed again behind Ah Sing. “She is very devoted to me,” she added -feebly. - -“No doubt,” the mandarin answered tersely. “But I fancy my authority is -even more powerful than her devotion.” - -The woman’s uneasiness was growing rapidly. “I don’t think I ought to -have come,” she said, looking about her nervously. “But now,” with an -effort to speak ordinarily and to assume an unconcern she no longer -felt, “Mr. Wu, what is the news?” - -“Oh! pray, Mrs. Gregory,” the Chinese begged, all the blandness in his -voice again, “do not let so trifling an incident disturb you in the -least.” - -A sudden throb of Chinese music came from the garden, and at the first -note a change crept into his face. It was such music--but softly -thrummed, almost timid--as he and Wu Lu had heard together on their -first hours alone in Sze-chuan. Chinese music is strange to European -ears; they rarely learn to hear it for what it is. It is not discord. -It is not crude. At its best it is the pulse of passion turned into -sound. No other music is so passionate, no other music so provocative. -And this was Chinese music at its best. Wu laid down his fan softly, -and stood listening, his head thrust a little towards the sound. Mrs. -Gregory listened too for a moment, startled; then, in a spasm of -nervous tension, she covered her ears with her hands. - -Wu took a step towards her. “Do you not find the music agreeable?” he -asked her in a creamy voice. - -“No,” she almost sobbed, “it is horrible! Horrible! I--I can’t bear -it--as I feel now.” And she sank down miserably on a stool and leaned a -little against the table. - -Wu smiled--a cruel, relentless smile. But he moved to the low, wide -window, pushed back the opaque slide, and called out abruptly, -“Changhoopoh.” The music stopped instantly. - -“Oh, thank you!” the woman cried. - -“I am sorry it distressed you,” he said in an odd voice; “perhaps these -notes----” - -“They jarred on me dreadfully,” she sighed. - -“It is a pity,” the mandarin told her, “for the music was in your -honor.” - -“I’m sorry,” she faltered, twisting and untwisting her little -handkerchief--Wu was fanning himself again, slowly, contentedly--“not -to appreciate it more. You must please forgive me,” she pled, “but I -am so dreadfully overwrought.” She turned to him with a wan smile that -tried to be confident, but failed, and with a brave attempt to appear -at ease that was sadder than her tears would have been, “Now, Mr. Wu, -please tell me. Where is my son? What do you know about him? Oh! if you -only understood a mother’s anxiety!” - -Wu Li Chang looked into her eyes with a narrow smile that was half -a taunt, half a caress. “Ah!” he said, laughing a little, “the old, -old mother-vanity. Why is it, I wonder, that motherhood lays claim to -all the love, all the tenderness, and to all the misery of parentage? -And it is so, world-wide. Our own women are so. But”--his voice grew -stern--“fathers feel too! Fathers love their young. Fathers dote, -brood, fear, suffer.” He ended with a slight, bitter laugh that was -a sneer and frightened the woman oddly, and then he added smoothly, -imperturbably, “I was about to say, Mrs. Gregory, that that music, -performed in your honor, is one of our classical love-songs.” - -“Really,” she responded lamely. “Well, I hope your love-making is not -so----” She broke off, painfully at a loss, and turned her head away. - -Wu, still standing, leaned towards her, resting his hands on the -table between them. “Not so--violent?” he suggested with a leer, -“Displeasing? Passionate? What was the word you were about to use, Mrs. -Gregory?” He almost whispered her name. - -“Oh! Mr. Wu!” Florence exclaimed, rising hysterically--the torture -was telling on her cruelly now; the handkerchief was torn and -knotted--“please have mercy on a mother’s agony!” - -Wu Li Chang bent down, across the table still, and laid a hand very -gently on hers. At his touch her self-control, already worn to a -thread, snapped, and she screamed violently. Wu moved his fingers -softly across her wrist, and smiled down at her amiably. “I’ll scream -the house down!” she gasped pantingly. Wu looked at her calmly, shook -his head deprecatingly, and folded his hands upon his arms beneath -his sleeves. Nothing answered her cry of terror--unless the absolute -stillness of the garden did, or its rich, penetrating perfume. “I’m -sorry,” she murmured distractedly, recognizing her mistake, and that to -show fear would both affront him and invite annoyance. “I didn’t mean -that,” she said, choking back a second scream; “I only mean that--oh! -I’m tortured by all this suspense.” In spite of her new resolve, a low -sob broke from her, and she huddled down upon the stool again, crying -like a tired and frightened child. - -The man stood a moment watching her grimly. Her head was bowed and -she could not see his face. There was bitter determination on it, -remorselessness, but no desire. He moved slowly across the room and -closed and fastened the thick screen-slide of the window that looked -upon the garden. And now again, except for the high narrow window, -through which no one could look out or in, the room was shut and barred -from all the rest of the world. - -They two were entirely alone. - -The mandarin moved slowly back until he stood beside the woman. “Pray -compose yourself, dear lady,” he said very quietly. “That weakness was -unworthy of you, and hardly complimentary to your host.” He took her -hand quietly in his, and she made no remonstrance, made no attempt to -draw her hand away again. He put his other hand on her arm, and pushed -her gently down upon her seat, and released his hold. - -“I’m so sorry,” the woman said brokenly, brushing her hand across her -eyes. “I--I am not myself. Please forgive me.” Wu flicked that aside -with a courteous gesture. “And now,” her voice was little more than a -whispered gasp, “Mr. Wu, please tell me----” - -“I am about to do so. Patience!” Wu said silkenly. “In China things -move slowly. China is the tortoise of the world, not the hare. I was -going to tell you”--he spoke with a deliberation that was a torture in -itself. - -“Yes?” she interrupted his vindictive procrastination feverishly. - -“About that sword.” The mandarin pointed to where it hung. - -Mrs. Gregory half smothered a moan. - -“The sword with rather a gruesome history----” - -“Oh! don’t, please, Mr. Wu,” she broke in, “please--I--I couldn’t bear -it now.” - -“But, my dear Mrs. Gregory,” he persisted blandly, “good news will -keep. Time is not pressing. Besides, tea has not yet been brought in.” - -“Tea!” she panted distractedly; “oh! Mr. Wu, you must please excuse me.” - -“I beg _you_ to excuse _me_,” the Chinese corrected, a little -arrogantly. “For countless generations my ancestors have drunk tea at -this hour, and our tradition must be kept up. You have been long enough -in China to know, perhaps, that tea-drinking with us as a matter of -ceremony is an indispensable custom----” - -“Yes, I do know that,” she said quickly, “but--I----” - -“And so,” Wu continued pleasantly, “whilst we are waiting for tea I -will tell you the story of the sword.” And he moved as if to lift it -down. - -With half-closed eyes, wearied with terror, Florence Gregory half -crouched against the table, prepared to listen. Her rings were cutting -into her hands. Her handkerchief lay at her feet, a ball of rag. -Suddenly Wu turned from the weapon, left it hanging in its place and -swung back to her; standing behind her, his hands on the table, almost -touching her, bending over her, he said, “By the way, Mrs. Gregory, you -must love your son very much.” - -“Oh!” she told him, rising and turning to him with supplication in -voice and gesture, “I do.” - -“Otherwise you would not be here?” the Chinese asked her calmly. - -“Otherwise I should not be here,” she said a little proudly, stung for -the moment back to a sort of self-assertiveness. - -“Alone,” he added with a horrid emphasis. “But a mother’s love is -capable of any sacrifice, is it not?” - -“It is capable of _much_ sacrifice,” the woman returned, some -dignity lingering in her voice. - -“If your son were in any peril, you would----” - -“Oh!” the mother said sadly, “I would give--my very life.” - -“Your life!” the mandarin exclaimed almost contemptuously. “In China -life is cheap. Is there nothing you value even more?” - -“Why?” she asked feebly, at bay now, and putting up such poor fight as -she could for time, in the desperate hope that some outside help might -come--from Ah Wong or from somewhere. “Why, what can one value more -than life?” - -“Let us rather say,” the Chinese insinuated, bending until his breath -fanned her cheek, “what can a woman value more than her own life--or -the life of her son?” He paused, not for a reply--he expected none--but -to watch the effect upon her of his poisoned words; to watch and gloat. -She, poor creature, no longer made any pretense. Her strength was gone: -worn away by the persistent drip, drip of his long, slow cruelty. She -looked about the room wildly, saw the face leering close to hers, and -shrank away shuddering. “When I have your attention, Mrs. Gregory,” Wu -said determinedly, but falling back a pace or two. - -The entrapped woman summoned up all her courage. “You shall have it, -Mr. Wu,” she said steadily, rising, “from the moment you tell me what I -came to hear.” - -“If you will be seated again,” the mandarin said suavely, “I will -proceed to do so. But you must allow me to choose my own route.” - -Florence Gregory looked at her tormentor squarely, then beseechingly. -She hesitated. And then she sank back listlessly on to the seat. - -“And so,” the man continued, “I will commence with--the sword.” - -Mrs. Gregory closed her aching eyes and caught her cold hands -together--and waited. - -The mandarin moved, and spoke more and more deliberately. Slowness -could not be slower than his was now. He took down the sword--he -remembered how he had touched it last--his face was ice, his voice as -cold. “As I told you,” he began, standing in front of her, the sword -resting on its point, held between them, “it belonged to an ancestor of -mine who lived many generations ago, Wu Li Chang, whose name I bear. -Perhaps you would like to look at it more closely.” There was a note of -command in his voice, and the woman, obeying, lifted her head a little -and fixed her agonized eyes on the weapon he held, edge towards her. -“I will show it to you, and then restore it to its place. You see, -the blade is no longer keen----” But the point was. She saw neither. -“I keep it merely for its history.” He laid it on the table, laid it -between the Englishwoman and himself, as he might have laid a covenant -or some vital document of evidence, a terrible accusation, a great deed -of gift. - -The torture of the merciless leisurely recital was telling on the woman -visibly. She had held a pistol stoically enough this morning. But when, -at a weary movement of her own, the lace in her sleeve caught in the -old sword’s hilt, she shuddered and shrank back. She made no pretense -of listening. She was “done,” for then at least; and of her diplomatic -courteousness not a shred was left. But yet she heard each word. - -Wu sat down again, and the slow, cold voice went on evenly. “My -ancestor had only one child, a very beautiful daughter. He worshiped -her with more devotion than is common in China--for you know we do -not often (unless of pure Manchu blood) esteem daughters so highly as -sons. But he was an admirable man--a good neighbor, unselfish, upright, -charitable (and--is it not strange?--for all this was before the -missionaries came to China), a faithful husband--he was a very devoted -father. She was, in your Western phrase, the apple of his eye. Well, -one day when the time came for her marriage to a mandarin to whom she -was betrothed, her father discovered that she--that her marriage was -no longer possible.” Basil Gregory’s mother was listening now, not -listlessly. The ears of a mother’s soul are terribly acute. “He dragged -from her her lover’s name, and then, without a word of reproach or of -warning, he slew the being that he loved--with that sword.” - -The English mother moaned. She understood. - -“And after that, her lover too was slain; and not only he, but also his -sister, his mother, his entire family. My old sword has drunk deep, -Mrs. Gregory,” and he drew a finger lovingly along its blade. - -“Don’t--don’t tell me any more,” Florence Gregory whispered. - -Wu lifted the weapon and laid it across his knee--reverently. “I warned -you that it was rather a gruesome story,” he said gravely. - -“Yes--well,” she stumbled, playing still for time, trying to think, -“thank Heaven we are more civilized to-day than--than anything so -horrible as that!” - -Wu smiled. “Much more civilized, no doubt. Methods change; and since -I have had the advantage of a European education, if I found myself -in such a case, I would not adopt so bloodthirsty a revenge. Indeed -I think, if anything, my ancestors erred on the side of leniency.” -Wu Li Chang paused. Less light was coming through the one high window -now. Florence Gregory was well-nigh strangled by the beating of her -tortured, frightened heart. And almost Wu could hear its beat. - -“He was robbed of honor,” he said sternly; “he took merely life -in exchange, whilst he might have taken--from the sister or the -mother--that which they would have held dearer than life. Are you -listening to me, Mrs. Gregory?” for she had buried her face in her -hands on the table where the sword had laid. - -She lifted her head heavily--her face was ashen and lifeless--and -looked at him with stricken, agonized eyes. - -“I have wearied you,” Wu said contritely. “Your husband would reproach -me--or your honorable son. My story was too long, and unpleasant in an -English lady’s ears. Yet I have said no word that does not bring me -nearer to my point. I, too, had a daughter----” - -“Had!” the woman’s lips just breathed it. - -“And family history has repeated itself--so far.” - -For some moments there was silence in the room--a silence far -more poignant than any words--a silence chill and kindless as the -voicelessness of death. Then Florence Gregory started up at the sounds -of bolts withdrawn and of panels sliding in their grooves. - -Wu rose too, carried the sword, and put it beside the gong. “It is -growing dark,” he said. - - - - -CHAPTER XXXVI - -IN THE PAGODA AND ON THE BENCH - - -So long as he may live Basil Gregory will never understand how he -lived through those hours in the pagoda--his last hours in the pagoda -by the lotus lake. So long as he lives he must remember them, and -shudder newly at each remembering--waiting again in torture and alone -to hear the deep-throated damnation of Wu Li Chang’s gong telling him -that--that he was branded forever, soul-scarred. Wu Li Chang had hit -upon something that not even a man could forget. - -How he got there he never knew. He remembered being taken to the -mandarin, the terrible interview, the news of Nang Ping’s death, the -demoniac threat of his mother’s ordeal and agony, but nothing of his -return to the pagoda. For a time--he had no way of knowing how long -or how brief--a merciful space of blank had been vouchsafed him. And -the utmost fury need not have grudged him it. For, if the mother in -the house suffered more than a death, the son in the pagoda, when -consciousness crept back, suffered her sufferings multiplied. She was -his mother, and he loved her. Always she had been very good to him. And -he had been so proud of her. Could he ever feel quite that pride again? -Her very sacrifice must smirch her in the eyes of the son for whom -it was made, and whose crime it punished. Even his love for her must -be a little tarnished, a little weaker, after the clang out of that -brazen gong. Wu Li Chang had found a great revenge. His own honor had -never burdened Basil Gregory; but his mother’s honor--ah! Or, for that -matter, even Hilda’s, or his cousin May Gregory’s--for, like so many -such men, Basil Gregory leaned his soul (such as he had) and his pride -upon the women of his blood. To be virtuous vicariously is a positive -talent with some men. - -His mother! He writhed. His mother! He tore against the pagoda’s -walls with his hands, all pinioned as they were--for his freed hand -was bound again--until his knuckles bled. If such punishment as Wu -had devised could be shown vividly, anticipatorily, to men about to -stray, the gravest of the social problems must be so somewhat solved, -the most stinging of the burning questions somewhat answered. If sons, -light, selfish, weak, could expect such chastisement as Basil Gregory -was enduring now, a famous commandment would be honored in observance -an hundredfold, dishonored by breach miraculously less. A daughter’s -shame--a sister’s--that scourges most men; a wife’s--oh! well, there -are wives and wives, there are men and men, but a mother’s--ah! That -touches all manhood on its quick. Brand the scarlet initial of adultery -on his mother’s brow in punishment of him, and what son would commit -the fault? Fewer! - -From the sun--for there were spaces pierced in the elaborate stonework -of the pagoda’s thick sides, and he could see through some of them--he -thought that he must have escaped nearly an hour of the misery of -consciousness. - -Heaven knows the scene enacted in the smaller audience hall was -exquisitely terrible enough; but the man alone in the pagoda pictured -it ten times more terrible, more hideous, more stenched than it was. -Made an artist in fiendishness by his love for his child, Wu was most -fiendish, most exquisite, in his enmaddening deliberateness. He drew -out the woman’s agony until the sinews of her soul seemed to crack and -bleat. The hideous hour seemed an age to her. To Basil, waiting alone -in the pagoda, the hour seemed ages piled on ages. - -Alone? But no, he was not alone. This was Nang Ping’s pagoda. She had -given him “free” of it, and shared it with him. She shared it with him -still. A ghost--a girlish Chinese ghost--stood beside him and looked at -him adoringly, accusingly, with death and motherhood in her eyes. “Oh! -Nang Ping! Nang Ping! Forgive, forgive!” he cried, and hid his face on -his pinioned arm. Then he looked up with a cry--wide-eyed, for he had -seen his mother in the room he’d left, the room where the gong was, -and Wu--he saw his mother, and the Chinese moving towards her, and he -turned and cursed the girl-ghost at his side--the poor dishonored ghost -with a tiny nestling in her arms. - -Angry at punishment self-entailed, to shift, or seek to shift, the -blame, or some part of it, upon shoulders other than our own, is a -common phase of human frailty. “The woman tempted me.” And so the fault -is really hers. Punish the temptress and let me go. “The woman tempted -me”: it is the oldest and the meanest of the complaints. But sadly -often it is true enough. - -A man never had less cause to urge it, in self-extenuation, or even in -explanation, than Basil Gregory had. Nang Ping had never tempted him. -Even in the consummation of their loves, the heyday of her infatuation, -she had never wooed him. In their first acquaintance, contrived in part -by him, brought about in part by a fan of Low Soong’s, lost and found, -Nang Ping had been as shy and unassertive as a violet. She had never -tempted except with her own sweet reserve and the fragrant piquancy of -her picturesque novelty. And that she had not sought him, or, for some -time, allowed him advance, had been her chief charm for him. And on the -day that he had told her that he was returning to Europe, and at once, -leaving her to face their dilemma alone, she had uttered no reproach, -made no outcry--just a quiet expostulation abandoned as soon as made. -“You will not come back,” she had said quietly, and had gone from him -calmly, with dignity. - -Never lover had less just cause to reproach mistress than he had to -reproach or blame Nang Ping. But for his mother’s sake, and, too, -perhaps, for his craven own, he did, and cursed the girl who had died -for him, as he raged futilely here in the pagoda, where he had taken, -and she had given, her all. - -It is a big thing to be a manly man. - -It is a tragedy to be a woman--except when it’s the very best of great -good luck. - - * * * * * - -Very little of the good luck of life, very little of the joyousness of -womanhood, had ever been Ah Wong’s. All her life she had worked hard -for scant pay and no thanks. All her life she had yearned passionately -for companionship, and been lonely. From a brutal father she had -escaped to a brutal husband. Her children were dead, and had not -promised much while they lived. God knows, Mrs. Gregory had given her -little enough--almost nothing. And yet Mrs. Gregory had given her her -best time--the nearest approach to a “good time” she’d ever known. And -she was pathetically grateful to have had even so much of creature -comfort, such crumbs of kindness, so shabby and lukewarm a sipping -of the wine of life. The Englishwoman did not even know that she had -been kind to the amah. Indeed, Ah Wong had merely warmed her cramped -and frozen being in the careless overflow of a nature that, by happy -accident, was full of sunshine and brimmed with radiance. - -Ah Wong was grateful, and Ah Wong was honest. She meant to repay. She -hated debt; almost all Chinese do. She had loyalty. She had grit. She -had Chinese wit. And she had the light wrist of her sex at subterfuge: -it is world-wide. - -Ejected from the house, she sat down contentedly in the courtyard and -began to knit--an industry foreign to Chinese eyes. It brought curious -women of the household about her. She had intended that it should. They -brought her liangkao and melon seeds--for hospitality was the rule of -the house--and she ate all the liangkao and cracked all the melon seeds -while the other women chattered to her and to each other. - -She said that she was very tired--her lady was a hard taskmistress. -She didn’t like the English. She was very tired, but she’d like to -see something of so beautiful a place, now that she was here, and she -tottered about a little wearily from treasure to treasure, but never -far from the house, from tiny forest trees a few inches high, in pots -the size of thimbles, to an evergreen that was a century old and that -had its widest branches cut into birds in full flight. She cried out in -ecstasy at a great dragon sprawling on the grass, a dragon of geraniums -and foliage plants. And presently she yawned and said that she was very -tired, and sat down heavily on a carved stone bench. After a little -she fell asleep, and the women giggled at her good-naturedly and left -her. The bench was not far from the window that high up looked into the -mandarin’s sitting-room. - - - - -CHAPTER XXXVII - -THE FAN - - -“It is growing dark,” Wu said, as he put the sword down beside the gong. - -Three other servants followed Ah Sing through the sliding door that he -had opened from the other side. Two were tea-bearers and the other a -servant of the lamps. - -The tray of tea was laid on the table. The lamp-man moved about -the room, and a dozen dim lights broke out, like disks of radiant -alabaster, so dim, so beautiful, and so unexpectedly placed that their -shrouded brilliance made the wonderful room seem even eerier than -before. - -The woman watched it all, inert and motionless. She felt, without -thinking about it--she was almost worn past thinking now--how more -than useless it would be to appeal to these wooden-faced Chinese, the -creatures and automatons of Wu Li Chang. And an instinct of dignity -that was very English held her from making to foreign servants a -prayer that would, she knew, be denied. She would make no exhibition -of a plight they would not pity or of an emotion that would not move -them--unless it moved them to mirth. - -But when, their service done, the servants went out, soft-footed as -they had come, and after the door closed, bolts clanged, she realized -that she and Wu were again alone--the room locked--and she sprang up -and dashed to the door. - -Wu watched her, smiling. “Come,” he said--almost as he might have -spoken to a restless child--“tea is served.” - -And she turned, in obedience to his voice, and looked at him. “I -couldn’t, Mr. Wu,” she said with plaintive petulance, “I couldn’t -possibly.” The distress in her voice was more than the annoyance. - -Wu ignored her words good-naturedly, and began pouring out the tea. “I -have sugar and cream, you see, quite in the Western way.” - -“No--no, I couldn’t,” she reiterated impatiently, but coming back to -the table and watching the cups as he filled them. “Please tell me of -my son and let me go.” - -For answer, the mandarin held out to her a cup of tea. “Pray take -this cup of tea, Mrs. Gregory,” he said with grave politeness. “Oh! -I understand,” he added with a slight, chill smile, when she paid no -attention to the cup he proffered her. He put it down. “You would -prefer to see me drink first.” With an inclination of his head to her, -he lifted his own cup and drained it at a draught. “So! perhaps that -will reassure you.” He put his cup down and refilled it. “Pray take the -tea,” he urged hospitably: “it will not only be refreshing--and your -lips look dry and parched--but it will also be a politeness to do so.” - -She stood looking at him dully, and then sank slowly down on to a stool. - -“Sugar--and--cream,” the mandarin said brightly. There was more of -Mayfair and of Oxford in tone and in manner than there was of Cathay. -And the anachronism was gruesome rather than droll, as he stood in his -mandarin’s robes fanning himself with his left hand (the sons of Han -are more nearly ambidextrous than they of any other race) and with his -right hand plying the silver sugar-tongs with slow dexterity. “So!” he -held out the perfected cup. “It is the choicest growth of the Empire, -Mrs. Gregory, sun-dried with the flowers of jasmine.” - -She took the cup, and he took up his. Just as she was forcing herself -to drink--his own cup almost to his lip--he said with the same suave -manner, “Have you no curiosity, Mrs. Gregory, to learn the name”--a -poisonous change came in his voice--“of my daughter’s seducer?” - -The Englishwoman put down her cup quickly, with a hand so unnerved and -trembling that it scarcely served to guide its small burden. She tried -to drop her eyes, but she couldn’t--he held them with his relentlessly. -“I don’t understand you,” she faltered. “Your--your manner is so -strange.” - -Wu said nothing, but he smiled into her gaze coldly, and she rose with -a shudder. Wu smiled at her still, and with a sudden wild cry she -darted to the sliding doors and beat on them hysterically. But she -realized at once that they were locked and were strong. And she turned -around, at bay but hopeless, leaning her back against the door, and -faced Wu miserably, her smarting hands hanging limp at her sides. - -Wu Li Chang unfolded his fan and began to churn the air towards his -face with it. - -No European ever has understood what his fan means to a Chinese. -Probably no European ever will be able to understand that. With their -fans the Chinese hide emotion, express emotion, and, when it reaches -the danger point, give it vent. Often a Chinese man’s frail, tiny fan -is his safety valve. China’s greatest warriors have carried their -fans into battle. Criminals fan themselves on the execution ground. -Frightened Chinese girls, in the torment of first child-birth, fan -themselves. Wu was fanning himself in triumph. And he spoke to her -quickly, his voice ringing with triumph. “There are several ways into -this room, Mrs. Gregory, but only one way out.” The fan shut with an -ominous click--a rattle of ivory, a hiss and a rustle of silk. “It lies -by that door”--he pointed it with his fan--“which leads to _my own -inner chamber_.” - -The woman smothered a scream, but she could not smother a groan. - -Wu laughed. He took a step towards her. “Have you no desire to hear my -news of your son?” he asked softly. “Good news? I promised that you -should--I am here to keep my promise.” The terrible significance of his -words could not have been clearer, but he emphasized it hideously by -gliding still a little nearer to the stricken, appalled woman. - -“Oh! don’t torture me,” she implored, moving away. - -“He is well--comparatively. His hands have received a trifling -injury--quite trifling. But he is quite well”--nearing the woman -again--“and he is here.” - -“Here?” she sobbed, “here?” - -“Almost within sound of your voice”--still nearer. - -“O my God! where?” she cried, looking about her frantically. The third -door caught her attention, and she ran to it weakly and beat against -it, crying, “Basil! Basil!” - -“Do not be so impetuous, dear lady,” Wu said with insolent gentleness; -“I did not say he was there. And it is not good that he should hear -your voice, for the sound would only distress him.” - -She looked at Wu questioningly, and he gave her the cruel explanation. -“You see, he is not at liberty to come until the right signal is given. -It lies with you whether that signal shall be given or not!” He was -very close to her now. - -Wu Li Chang intended to use no physical force with this woman. He would -not grant her degradation even that poor loop-hole of excuse. - -That she would yield, he had no doubt. And her own tortured soul knew -that it wavered now, and it was sick. - -Wu laid his hand on her arm. And she scarcely shrank back, but drew -herself up, proud in her sorrow, and said slowly in his smiling face, -“You--you devil!” - -“Harsh words will not help him, Mrs. Gregory,” the mandarin said. “Only -one thing can.” Face almost brushed face--they were so close. - -She hid hers in her hands and sobbed in fear. - -“I will leave you whilst you decide,” Wu said, and turned to the door -that was, he had told her, her only way “out.” - -In a sudden frenzy and palsied with nausea, she dashed at the other -doors, sobbing, “Let me go!”--panting--“let me go, I tell you!” - -Wu watched her a little before he said calmly, still smiling gravely, -“This door is the only door which remains unlocked. If you should -decide to enter it before I return, I should not be unresponsive to the -honor you will do me. If not, I shall return soon myself--to assist -you, if I may, to decide.” - -“My husband knows that I have come here!” Mrs. Gregory cried defiantly. -“I told him!” (Wu smiled.) “He will be here at any moment, and -then----! Oh! I am not afraid of you!” - -“Oh! I am glad of that!” Wu Li Chang said eagerly, “I desire only to -inspire trust--and confidence--and the tenderest sympathy! But I know -that your husband--that amiable, estimable Mr. Gregory--an odd, subtle -creature, but so lovable--does not know you are here. You have not the -remotest hope of seeing him--or you would not have told me! You would -have temporized--delayed--said nothing.” - -“He _does_ know!” she stormed. “He may be here at any moment! And -if he is not admitted he will batter your gates and doors down!” - -The mandarin laughed softly and shook his head at her indulgently. - -“You scoundrel!” she told him, infuriated. - -“Oh! I forgive your trying to deceive me, Mrs. Gregory,” Wu said -calmly; “it is only natural. Oh! that window,” he added, in answer to -an involuntary look toward it. “Yes, it leads out on to the courtyard -where your devoted servant is waiting; but the architect has placed it -so very high, and has made it so very small. Now”--he made her a little -bow--“I will leave you, but not for long.” And he passed through the -unlocked door and closed it behind him very gently. - - - - -CHAPTER XXXVIII - -THE GONG - - -Distracted, not knowing what she did, or why, like some wild thing -trapped and helpless, Florence Gregory looked about the room, searching -it with eyes almost too fright-blinded for sight. Again she tried -the doors--all but one. She made a desperate, useless effort to push -the window apart. “Basil!” she cried, “Basil!” Then she checked -herself. “No! I mustn’t do that! O God!” she moaned, turning to driven -humanity’s last great resort, “help me!” - -She groped her way unsteadily across the room, and climbed with -trembling legs upon the bench and reached her hands up toward the -little window. - -“No,” she sobbed in a whisper, “I can’t,” for she could not reach to -half the opening’s height. She looked about her stealthily, rose on her -very tiptoes, and called towards the window, “Ah Wong! Ah Wong! can -you hear me? Go quickly, for the love of Heaven! Fetch them! Help me, -Ah Wong! Help me! I am alone, Ah Wong--but he will be back--very soon. -Quick, amah, quick! Ah Wong, are you there?” - -And then she waited. - -Oh! that waiting. - -There was no sound except the panting of her heart. From Wu’s -inner room nothing came but silence. The house and the garden were -midnight-still. - -Ah! - -Through the window came a sound so soft it scarcely grazed the silence. - -Something fell, almost noiselessly, at her feet. She swooped upon it -with a smothered sob of thankfulness. It was her own scarf. Her hands -shook so she could scarcely unroll it for the message or the help it -hid. She knew it hid one or the other, or Ah Wong would not have thrown -it. Or was it only a signal that the other woman heard her? With her -eyes riveted in agony on Wu’s door, her heart beating almost to her -suffocation, her cold fingers worked distractedly at the matted gauze. -Yes--there was something there. Oh! Ah Wong! Ah Wong! It was something -hard and small. - -She looked at the tiny phial wonderingly. But only for a moment. Then -she knew. And her white face grew whiter. The last drop of coward blood -dripped back from her quivering lips. Poison, of course! Must she? -Dared she? Could she? And Basil? The boy that she had borne--her son -and chum. Should she desert him so? Save her honor and leave him to -death and to long fiendish torture ten thousand times worse than death? -Was _any_ price too great, too hideous to pay for his rescue from -such burning hell? To so save herself at such cost to him, was not that -an even greater dishonor than the other? The woman began to whimper, -like some terrified child. And could she die? Could she face such -death? Here--all alone--in China? God hear her prayer!--she could not -think to word it. God have mercy! Life was sweet--the sun warm on the -grass. And there were cowslips in the meadows at home, and the lilacs -were wine-sweet, and the roses wine-red against the sun-drenched old -stone wall in the vicarage garden--in England. - -She tottered, sobbing silently, across the room, clutching the phial in -her ice-cold hand. - -England! At the thought of England she stiffened--proudly. She was -English--and a woman. English and a woman: the two proudest things -under Heaven. Basil must suffer. The body that had borne him must not, -even for him, be dishonored. The unalterable chastity of centuries -of gentle womanhood reasserted itself and claimed her--pure of soul, -pure of body--claimed her and made her proud and strong as it had the -English women of an earlier day who threw themselves rejoicing upon -the horns of the Roman cattle rather than yield themselves--English -women--to the lust of the Roman legionaries. As Abraham had prepared to -sacrifice Isaac--Abraham! Abraham was only a man, only a father. She -was a woman--she was a mother--and English! - -With a smile as cold as any smile of Wu’s, and more superb than smile -ever ermined on the lip of man--she looked about for means: determined -now--yet hoping still against hope for escape. She would die. Oh yes! -she would die--here--now. But she hoped the stuff was not too bitter. -She drew out the cork and smelt the liquid. It had no smell. Or had -fright paralyzed her gift of smell? And all her senses? Her fingers -could scarcely feel the glass they clutched. And need she drink it yet? -Help might come. Surely Ah Wong had gone! But dared she wait? Wu would -be back. Hark! Was he coming? Did his door move? He must not see her -drink it. He would prevent her. But need she die quite yet? - -She saw the cup of tea she had put down, and gave a little gasp of -hope: at such poor straws do we clutch! - -Yes--yes--she’d pour the poison into her tea--and drink it, if she must! - -The cup was full. She drank a little chokingly. That was enough. Room -now! She looked in terror at Wu’s door, then emptied the tiny phial -into her cup. - -Wu’s cup did not occur to her--she was too distraught. - -Shaking pitifully, she wound the scarf again about the little bottle -and dropped both into a satsuma vase. - -She tottered gropingly back to her seat beside the table, the poisoned -cup close to her hand. “My God!” she whispered, not to herself, “if it -must come to that, give me strength.” - -Until the door opened and Wu came in, she sat cowering, her eyes -riveted on her cup, her fingers knotting and unknotting in her lap, and -under the lace of her sleeve the costly jewel she had worn to pay honor -to Sing Kung Yah winked and danced. - -She did not look up at the mandarin’s step, and for a space he stood -and studied her, hatred and contempt for Basil Gregory’s mother ugly -on his face, pity for his vicarious victim--and she a woman--in -his Chinese eyes. And in his heart there was self-pity too: his -sacrificial office was in no way to the liking of Wu Li Chang. He was -sacrificing to his ancestors and to his gods. But the flesh reeking -from his priestly knife, hissing in the fire, smoking on the altar of -his tremendous rage, was repugnant to his appetite, a stench in the -nostrils of this Chinese. - -He wore now loosened garments of crimson crêpe--color and stuff an -Empress might don for her bridal. He carried no fan. It was laid away. -But on the hem of his gorgeous negligée a border of peacocks’ feathers -was embroidered, each plume the fine work of an artist. - -“Well, chère madame!” he said softly, and then she looked up and saw -him and his relentless purpose, and shrank back with a little moan. - -Wu smiled and drew nearer. “Do I now find favor in your eyes?” he -murmured wickedly--insinuation and masterly in his honeyed tone. “No? -Oh! unhappy Wu Li Chang! My heart bleeds, stabbed by your coldness, -you lovely and oh! so desired English creature, you fair, fair rose -of English womanhood. Ah! well--I have no vanity, luckily for me, -and so that is not hurt also, since it does not exist. One important -matter,” he said, almost at his side, drawing slowly nearer still, “I -did not mention. It is only fair that you should understand fully my -terms--only fair to say that your son knows that your sacrifice will -set him free----” - -Florence Gregory rose to her feet. She searched his face. “You--you -_will_ set him free?” - -Wu Li Chang bowed his head in promise. And she did not for one -instant doubt his word. It was her unconscious tribute paid to his -individuality--and, too, it was tribute of Christian Europe to heathen -China. Undeserved? That’s as you read history and the sorry story of -the treaty ports. Verdicts differ. - -“That, of course, is understood--and pledged,” the mandarin said -quietly, “when--you--have paid--his debt.” - -She shuddered sickly. Wu smiled, and then his choler broke a little -through its smooth veneer. “It is just payment I exact--no jot of -usury: virtue for virtue. I might have seized your daughter--for -myself, or to toss to one of my servants--but that could not have -been payment in full. You, you in your country, you of your race, -prize virginity above all else; we hold maternity to be the highest -expression of human being, and the most sacred. So, because he -took what should have been most sacred in the eyes of an English -gentleman--and he a guest, both in my daughter’s country and in -her home--I take what is, in my eyes, a higher, purer thing--and I -your host. And, too”--his voice hissed and quivered with hate--“the -degradation of his sister would not have afflicted him enough--he does -not love his sister with any great love. His love of you, his mother, -is the one quality of manhood in his abominable being. He would have -suffered at her shame and outlived the pain; yours he will remember -while he lives--and writhe. It will spoil his life, make every hour -of his life more bitter than any death, every inch of earth a burning -hell.” He paused and waited, and then--he slid behind the table, put -his arms about the palsied woman, and whispered, pointing to the other -room, his face brushing hers, “And now, dear lady, will you not come to -me?” - -For an instant they two stood so--she paralyzed, unable to move. - -Music high and sublimely sweet pierced through the shuttered window: -a nightingale was singing in Nang Ping’s garden, near the pagoda by -the lotus lake. Wu Li Chang had heard many nightingales, and from his -babyhood. Florence Gregory had heard but one before--once, long ago, in -England. - -She wrenched away from Wu with a cry--of despair; and he let her go. - -She sank on to her stool and took up her cup--she tried to do it -meaninglessly--and slowly raised it to her lips. - -“Oh!” Wu told her tenderly, “my lips also are dry and parched with the -heat of my desire----” - -But he had no desire of her. And even in her torment she knew it, and -that in the coldness of his intention lay the inflexibility of her -peril. - -“I too would drink.” He lifted up his own cup. “Ah!” he exclaimed, -putting it quickly down again, “I see that you have sipped from your -cup--your lips have blessed its rim.” Standing behind her, he slipped -his hands slowly about her neck, took her cup in them, and lifted it -over her head, and faced her. “Let me also drink from the cup that has -touched your lovely lips.” - -With a cruel look of mock love--to torment her even this little more, -and in no way because he suspected the contents of either cup--with a -slow look into her terror-dilating eyes, he slowly drained the cup. And -Florence Gregory watched him, motionless, horror-stricken--scarcely -realizing that he had given her her release--by a way it had not -occurred to her even to attempt. - -“So,” Wu said, putting down the cup, “I have paid you the highest -compliment. For I do not like your sugar or your cream. Indeed, I -cannot imagine how any one can spoil the delicious beverage----” His -voice broke on the word. Something gurgled in his throat. “It was even -nastier than I thought,” he whispered hoarsely. - -Suddenly he reeled. He staggered and caught at the table’s edge. Had -he gone drunk, he wondered, with the intoxication of his smothered, -inexorable rage? The room was spinning like a top plaything. His -head ached. He thought a vein must burst. The room was turning more -maddeningly now--like a dervish at the climax of his dance. And he was -spinning too--not with the room but in a counter-circle. He tottered to -a stool and sank on to it, his face horribly contorted with pain. - -Mrs. Gregory moaned, half in fear for herself, half in horror at the -ugly agony from which she could not take her eyes. She moaned, and then -Wu knew. - -He gripped the table with hands as contorted as his face, and leaned -towards her muttering in his own Chinese words of terrible imprecation -of her and hers. Curses and hatred beyond words even the most terrible -blazed from his dying eyes. - -He was dying like a dog--outwitted by an Englishwoman. And then he -laughed, a laugh more terrible than the death-rattle already crackling -in his throat like spun glass burning or dry salt aflame: the damnéd -burning may laugh so. Dying like a pariah dog! He laughed with -glee--hell’s own mirth; for now the signal would never be given, the -Englishman would never go free. He would starve and rot in Nang Ping’s -pagoda. Did she realize that? Oh! for the strength to make her know it! -But only Chinese words would come to his thickening tongue or to his -reeling brain. Of all that he had learned or known of English, or of -the England where he had lived so long, nothing was left him--nothing -but his hate. - -Was it for this--this death degraded and worse than alone, no son to -worship at his tomb--that Wu Ching Yu had banished him to exile and to -excruciating homesickness? - -Where was the old sword? He would slay this foreign devil where she -stood. Who was she? Why was she here--here in the room with the tablets -of his ancestors? Who was she? Ah! he remembered now: she was the -mother-pig--the foul thing that had borne the seducer of Nang Ping! - -With a hideous yell, with a supreme effort, he tottered to his feet and -lunged at her with his writhing hands outstretched like claws, his -feet fumbling beneath him. - -She shrank back in terror, and raised her arm as if to ward off a blow. - -And the jewel on her arm slipped down and flashed and blazed and -jangled on her wrist. - -And Wu Li Chang knew it. His eyes were glazing now and setting in -death, but he knew her too. He remembered now--Oxford, the purgatory of -Portland Place, the country vicarage, an organ he’d given a church, an -English girl he had liked and befriended in a gentle, reverent way. And -this--_this_--was the reaping of the kindness and the tolerance he -had sown--in England! - -Rage heroic and terrible convulsed and nerved him. With an effort -that almost tore the sinews of his passing soul asunder he turned and -looked--yes--there it was--he wanted it--he reached it--and with a -scream of fury he caught it up--the sword--and lunged again at the -woman cringing and panting there--he gained upon her--she screamed and -ran from him feebly--he followed--he lifted the great weapon and clove -the air--he struck out wildly with it again, and again cut only the air. - -Twice they circled the room--she sobbing in terror, he blubbering with -rage and with the agony of death. - -Ah! he had almost reached her. One more effort!--he knew it was his -last. - -He raised the sword with both his hands, raised it above his head, and -struck. - -It only missed her, and in missing her it struck the gong--once, then -twice. - -At the tragedy of that miscarriage, life throbbed again through all -his tortured pores. Meaning to kill, he had saved. And he had released -the Englishman. That knowledge broke his heart--a mighty Chinese -heart--the great heart of the mandarin Wu Li Chang. - -For a moment he stood very still, motionless but not quelled, silent, -superb in his defeat. And then he fell, and moved no more. - - * * * * * - -When Florence Gregory looked about her--when she was able to--the doors -were open, and the wide window opened noiselessly from without. No one -had entered the room. They were quite alone, she and what had been Wu -Li Chang. And there was not a sound except the love-sick ecstasy of -a nightingale singing his devoted desire through the jasmine-scented -garden. - -Very slowly, horror-stricken, watching him till the last, she crept -from the room, leaving it, by chance, through the door at which she had -entered it. - -She had aged in that room. - - - - -CHAPTER XXXIX - -AFTERWARDS - - -As she passed from the house into the garden, moving crazily on--not -knowing why, how or where--the frenzied mother met her son coming -blindly toward the door, his arms still trussed at his sides. - -Neither could speak. - -But a Chinese woman, coming to them stealthily through the gloaming, -spoke as she reached them. “Clome, me tlake,” she said. - -And almost literally she did take them, one on either side of her, each -touched by her hand, impelled by her will. - -“No talk,” she whispered sternly. - -But she need not have said it. Neither of them had word or voice. - -They met no one. They heard nothing--except once the far-off trilling -of a nightingale, telling the day good-by. - -For such was the quality of Wu Li Chang. He had commanded the servants -to their quarters, on the other side of the estate, when they should -have undone the doors and gates. - -But Ah Wong did not slacken her anxious pace, or let them slacken -theirs, until the shore was almost reached. - -Then, just before they were within sight of the waiting boat and of -the boatmen’s eyes, she stopped and untied Basil’s arms. It was not -easy work, although she had a knife. And Mrs. Gregory could give no -help. - -They stumbled into the boat as best they could, but not without aiding -hands, the mother and son. Ah Wong scrambled in nimbly. And at a word -from her the watermen lifted their poles--and they had left Kowloon. - -They leaned against each other, the English mother and her boy, as the -small craft crossed the bay, but not a word was spoken by either of -them or to either of them. They huddled together dumb with relief and -with exhaustion, and almost numb with the horror they had known. - -Unobtrusive, stolid, commonplace in manner as in her humble amah garb, -Ah Wong directed and enforced everything. - -Ten million stars came out and specked with diamond dust the grave, -blue sky. The moon came up and rippled with silver and with gold the -rippling water. And before the night-flowers of Kowloon had ceased -to lave their faces with the fragrance which was “good-night,” the -fragrance of the night-flowers of Hong Kong Island rushed out to them -and buffeted them with sweetness. - -The world was very placid. The night was radiant. The night was very -still. And the smiling indifference of the night was cruel. At least, -the English woman felt it so. Basil felt nothing. Ah Wong was scheming. - -She disembarked them. She paid the boatmen. She tidied her mistress, -and tidied Basil as best she could. She got them up the Peak, and she -smuggled them into the hotel at last, almost unobserved. - -“Too tlired talk to-night,” she told Hilda imperatively. And she said -it as imperatively to Robert Gregory himself when he hurried in from -the office in answer to Hilda’s telephoned good news. - -It was Ah Wong who sent the news of Basil Gregory’s safe return -spreading like wildest fire through gossipy Hong Kong--not only the -news of the return but the detailed story of his absence. It was a very -pretty story, and beautifully simple: nothing more out of the common -than a slightly sprained ankle and an undelivered chit. The chit had -been entrusted to one vellee bad coolie man--needless to say, a victim -of the opium habit of which one hears so much in books on China and -sees so absurdly little in China itself. Some believed the story--as -started by Ah Wong--some did not. But it might have been true (a merit -such fabrications often lack) and it served, although one cynic at the -English Club said of it that it reminded him of the curate’s celebrated -egg, “quite good in parts.” - -And John Bradley wondered. - -But the next day the Gregorys and their affairs were well-nigh -forgotten in the greater flare of news that flamed from the mainland. -Mr. Wu was dead, and so was his daughter, an only child. She had died -suddenly, and the shock had killed him--his heart, you know--fatty -degeneration, probably--all those rich Chinamen over-eat. - -Again, some believed the story as it was told, and more did not. But -Wu had died on the mainland, not on English soil, and it was no one’s -business in Hong Kong. - -John Bradley’s face grew very stern when he heard that Wu Li Chang -had “become a guest on high,” and he went at once to Kowloon. And, -almost to his surprise, Ah Sing admitted him. The mandarin would have -commanded it so, Ah Sing thought. - -Bradley learnt nothing on the mainland. He saw his dead friend, and -prayed an English prayer beside him, kneeling down between him and a -grinning, long, red-tongued Chinese god. That was all. - -When he reached his own bungalow, he went into his tiny study, locked -its door, and knelt again--at the _prie-Dieu_ that stood against -the wall between the little silver crucifix and an engraving of a -tender, sorrowful face beneath a crown of thorns. - -Between the elder Gregory’s relief at his son’s return and his -exultation at Wu’s death, the younger Gregory came off nearly scot-free -of paternal reprimand, and quite free of any real parental wrath. - -“Where the very dickens have you been?” was the father’s greeting when -they met at breakfast. “A pretty state we’ve been in!--upsetting the -entire family--and me--and the business! You shall answer to me for -this, young man. Why the devil don’t you pass that toast?” - -“I’ve--I’ve only been a short trip, pater, off the island,” Basil -replied, not greatly perturbed. - -“I’ll short trip you!” the father said with beetling brows; and the -tone in which he laconically said, “More,” as he thrust his coffee cup -to Hilda was very fierce indeed, but he winked at her with just the -corner of his left eye; Basil was on his other side. And presently -Robert Gregory chuckled openly as he helped himself to marmalade. And -when he was leaving the table he slapped his boy on the back, but not -too roughly. - -“Dead broke?” he demanded. - -Basil was about to say, “No, indeed!” but he caught Ah Wong’s sudden -eye, and said instead, “Well, yes, I’m afraid I am rather.” - -Robert Gregory chuckled again. “I’ve a damned good notion to send you -home in the steerage--jolly good idea; and while I’m thinking it over, -you’d better mind your P’s and your little Q’s. Show up at the office -about three, and I dare say I’ll be ass enough to find you a fiver.” - -Hilda followed her father to the door. She always “saw him off.” - -Ah Wong at the sideboard continued to select tit-bits for the tray she -was going to carry to her mistress’s room. She intended, by fair means -or by foul, to coax Florence Gregory to eat. - -Basil pushed back his plate. He had been pretending to eat, but the -food was revolting. - -He was longing to see his mother, and he was dreading it. They had not -spoken together yet. - -He was terribly anxious to know if there were any truth in the report -of Wu’s death. Probably Ah Wong knew. He looked at her curiously as she -carried her tray away; but somehow he could not question her. - -On the whole, he wished his mother would send for him and get it over. -This suspense was only a little less terrible than his suspense in the -pagoda had been. - -But all Robert Gregory’s anxieties were laid. He reached the office in -high good humor. Government House confirmed the rumor of Wu’s death. -And Gregory felt assured that, his formidable (for the Chink had been -formidable) rival wiped out, the only heavy disasters that had ever -threatened his own almost monotonously successful business career would -disperse under his astute, firm management as summer clouds beneath the -sun, and that disaster would not menace him again. - -And by the time he reached the club for lunch, he was quite too highly -pleased with himself and with his world, and more particularly with his -share in it, to keep up any longer even a pretended anger at his son. -He chuckled boastfully over “the usual sort of escapade,” and said -he’d “be glad to get the rascal home--back in sober old England”--“no -harm done”--“devil of a good time, no doubt; hadn’t got a yen, and only -had his allowance eight days ago, a quarterly allowance, and the Lord -Harry only knows how much he’s bled his mother!” “But, after all”--and -then he delivered himself of the amazing originality that “Boys will be -boys!” - -If there are many men who like to be virtuous vicariously, there are a -few, even odder specimens of our wonderfully variegated humanity, who -like to sin--in one direction--by proxy. Robert Gregory, in the big -thing of life, was an exemplary husband. If Florence Gregory dwelt but -in the suburbs of his good pleasure, he lived--in the one sense--on -an island on to which no other woman ever put her foot. The Gregory -Steamship Company was his adored mistress and his wedded wife. But -Florence came next nearest to his warmth--and she had no human rival, -never had had or would have one. She knew this. Even a much duller -woman must have known it. And perhaps it had enabled her to hold up her -head and go smiling through some hard years of disillusion and chagrin. - -But Robert Gregory had a very soft spot in his stupid heart for his -boy’s gallantries. Secretly he was not a little proud of them--of -course, they mustn’t go too far or cost too much--and of this last -escapade he almost boasted as he smoked his after-tiffin cigar--boasted -with an unctuous hint of reminiscent glee that insinuated--and was -meant to--that he’d been a bit gay “in the same old way” in his younger -days. - -Which most emphatically he had not. - - - - -CHAPTER XL - -A GUEST ON HIGH - - -And in the K’o-tang--the smaller audience hall--where he had died, Wu -Li Chang lay as he had fallen. For none had dared to disturb him for -a long time, unless he summoned them. And now, discovered by an early -sweeper whose duty it was to open the casements to the summer dawn, -he still lay undisturbed, and would lay so until the soothsayer had -determined to where the body should be lifted and just how. - -He lay upon his back, his face lifted to the paneled and painted -ceiling. - -Almost as Florence Gregory’s footsteps died from his house, a great -change swept his face. The contortions of poisoned death had left it -set and agonized. That passed away. He was smiling when they found -him, as even Nang Ping had never seen him smile. Only one had ever -seen that look upon his face. And she had only seen it once--in quite -the fullness of its beauty, the majesty of its declaration, all its -exquisite tenderness. A living man smiles so but once. Some men never -smile so--they have frittered its possibility away--some of them, and -some are small men, and it is not for them. It is a hall-mark. - -It is a hall-mark, and now and again death stamps it caressingly and -regally upon some dead man’s face; and always he is a man who has put -up a fine good fight, and always it tells that there _is_ marriage -in Heaven. - -Wu Lu had seen that smile--once--in Sze-chuan; and now, in that near -garden-place where she had waited for him all these years, he took her -in his arms and held her close; and she gave all herself to him again. -And he looked down and smiled at her, his bride. - -Wu Li Chang lay dead on the K’o-tang floor, and his face was very -beautiful. - - - - -CHAPTER XLI - -“JUST WITH US” - - -Between breakfast and tiffin Florence Gregory sent for Basil, and he -went to her heavily. His feet were lead, his heart, his head; and his -hands grew very cold. - -The interview was inevitable. They each knew that. - -It would be difficult to say which dreaded it the more, or which -suffered more during it: probably the mother--both; for she was -guiltless and made of the finer clay. - -It was simple--almost commonplace, the meeting and the short talk -between the weary woman and her son; as every interview of intense and -indeterminable human tragedy is apt to be. There are no fripperies in -true tragedy, but little romance, no poetry. The rocks of life are -hard and naked. Not even a stunted lichen can grow on such soilless -barrenness. - -But this was a very different reckoning from that with his father, -jocund and magnificently indifferent to details. Basil realized, of -course, that settling up with his mother must be--very different. - -She was dressed for going out, elaborately dressed; for she and Ah Wong -had decided that she must be seen about Hong Kong to-day, carefully -dressed and debonair. - -She sat in a low chair beside her dressing-table, her long gloves and -her purse of gold mesh at her hand. And because her reputation, and -Basil’s, were at stake, she and Ah Wong between them had contrived to -banish the yesterday’s ravages from her face--almost. - -Basil looked shockingly ill. Any eyes less self-satisfied than a Robert -Gregory’s must have seen it. - -“You should go and lie down,” his mother greeted him. - -“Yes, I must,” he nodded, “when you’ve done with me.” - -Ah Wong went out and closed the door. - -Florence Gregory waited then for him to begin. It was the first -unkindness she had ever done him. But she was very, very tired. And in -the sleepless watches of the night, she had seen clearly Wu Li Chang’s -point of view, and not altogether without some sharp, acrid conviction -that it had some justice on its side--rough, terrible, primeval, -barbaric, but still undeniable justice of a sort. - -Mrs. Gregory waited for her son to speak, and he did not speak soon. - -“Are you all right, Mother?” he said at last. - -“I am very tired,” she told him. - -“Yes--yes, of course you are. But----” - -“Oh--yes,” she said gently, “I am all right.” - -“Sure?” - -“Yes, Basil!” - -“Quite, Mother?” he persisted. - -“Yes, Basil!” she told him again, with emphasis this time. And then -she smiled a little, very sadly, thinking how sardonic it was that he -should be standing there cross-examining her. - -“Thank God!” he whispered fervently--all that was best in him welling -up in gratitude that his mother had escaped a more cruel wrong than he -had inflicted on murdered Nang. For Nang had loved him! - -And then he shuddered sickly at the sudden thought that always his -mother would know that he had betrayed a girl to her death and worse, -a girl who had trusted him--that always his mother would be thinking -of it, condemning him--that all the clean sweetness of their old-time, -life-long intimacy was tainted--gone! Always his mother must feel -towards him regret--despisal. Could he ever wipe that out? Never. -Banish it or even dim it for a moment? Be “her boy” again, if but for -an hour? - -He looked at her searchingly, and at his eyes she blanched. For she -read in them his fear, and knew its echo in her own heart. It would be -with them both--always; nothing could ever allay it: the estrangement -that was born to-day! She saw it all! She read it all--his soul, and -hers--and suffered as she had not suffered in the K’o-tang of Wu Li -Chang. And her soul quailed and grew very sick before the vengeance of -Wu, a greater vengeance and a more terrible even than he had planned. - -We need never snatch at vengeance with our poor, feeble, fumbling -hands. God always repays. And sometimes it seems as if He, like the -Chinese, enforces vicarious atonement--daughters scourged for fathers, -mothers for sons, and even friend for friend. But sooner or later the -great ax of retribution always falls. - -Basil Gregory saw the grief and the torture in his mother’s face. “Oh! -well, then,” he said, strolling to the window, and standing there -looking out across the bay--towards Kowloon--“that’s all right. They -say he’s dead--Wu--you’ve heard it?” - -“Yes.” - -“I wish I knew if it’s true.” - -“It is true.” - -He turned back to her quickly. “How do you know, Mother? Are you dead -sure?” - -“I saw him die,” she said. - -At that her boy came and knelt down and took her hands in his. - -And she told him--just the bare facts of yesterday. - -Nang Ping, or his own fault, was not mentioned between them, then or -ever. Florence Gregory uttered no reproach. She said none, and she -tried to look none. It is so that such women most reproach the men that -they have borne--and nursed. - -She asked no details of his amour or of his capture and detention; and -he offered none. - -And it was better so. The burden of their common memory was heavy -enough--a memory from which nothing could ever purge her soul or his. - -“What will happen--about it all? He was a devil of a big man among the -Chinks,” Basil said anxiously when he spoke again. - -“Yes, I know. What will happen? By the Chinese, you mean? Ah Wong -thinks nothing----” - -“Ah Wong!” Basil said contemptuously. - -“She saved my life--and yours----” - -“By a Chinese trick.” - -“It served,” Mrs. Gregory said gravely. “Ah Wong knows her people. And -she thinks nothing will be done--soon, if ever. And we will leave China -at once. I think your father’ll be glad to--he’s been anxious enough to -get back to float the new Company. But, if for any reason he wishes to -wait even a little, why, I must get Hilda to coax him to go at once. -You, at least, must go by the next boat.” - -Basil nodded. “Yes, I’d like to catch the next comfortable boat.” - -“We’ll all catch it, if we can,” his mother said emphatically. - -“Is that all, Mother?” he asked her gently. - -“All?” she was puzzled. - -“All you want of me?” - -“Oh! Yes, dear,” she said brightly. - -“Then I believe I’ll go and lie down again. I’m jolly tired and jolly -weak.” - -“Yes--do,” Florence said. - -But at the door he turned back and came to her and took her in his arms. - -“God bless you, Mother!” he whispered with his lips against her hair. - -“God bless my boy!” she answered brokenly. - -Then he kissed her passionately, and turned away sobbing. - -“Wait a moment,” she said when he had smothered back his emotion and -had put his hand again on the door. “I did forget one thing. Make no -explanation--not to any one.” - -“What about the governor?” - -“Least of all to him. Your father will ask you not another question; he -has promised me.” - -“I say, Mother,” Basil said, flushing painfully, “you are a bit of a -brick--aren’t you?” - -“I am your mother, Basil,” she returned, smiling into his eyes. -“Remember, not one word to any human creature. Promise me. Let it rest -where it is forever--just with us.” - -And there they left it--glad to be rid of it, as far as words went, but -knowing that, waking or sleeping, neither could ever be rid of it in -thought again. It was a poison cooked into their blood. - -For years they did not speak of it again, except that Basil said when -she came to him later with a cup of tea--he had slept through tiffin, -and she would not have him called--“What about Ah Wong? She knows.” - -His mother answered him proudly: “I trust Ah Wong. Ah Wong knows, of -course--part at least. But it will be always precisely as if she knew -nothing.” - -Basil shrugged skeptically, sitting up among his pillows. And his -mother put the tray down and left him a little hurriedly. There is -little a woman finds harder to bear than a man’s ingratitude. Florence -Gregory was ashamed of her son. - -She had tiffined early, and before tiffin and since she had been out -and about: shopping, paying calls, laughing, chatting, the brightest -woman in Hong Kong, the best dressed, and the most care-free. And -now she went out again, sitting radiant and chic in her smart chair, -carried wherever she would be most seen. She stayed a little at the -racquets court and at the cricket club. But she did not leave her -chair. She was too tired--almost at the end of her woman’s long tether. - - - - -CHAPTER XLII - -THE DUST OF CHINA FROM THEIR FEET - - -The Gregorys sailed from Hong Kong the next week, and half the Colony -saw them off. One means, of course, half the Europeans: the Chinese -don’t count--in China. But John Bradley did not see them off--nor -had he come to wish them good-by. Hilda was offended, and Basil was -grateful. (He could be grateful at times.) Except Florence, none of -them had seen the priest since the night Basil had consulted him. Mrs. -Gregory called upon him two days after her escape. She had sent a note -asking him to come to her at the hotel. He had replied asking if she -could, and kindly would, come to him instead; he knew she’d been out -continuously the day before. And she had gone at once. - -Of Kowloon she had told him nothing: when she had enjoined silence on -Basil, she had meant silence; and she had no thought of breaking it -towards any one. - -She had wished to see him before they left Hong Kong, she said, and -they were going home at once now. - -Mrs. Gregory had a very sincere affection for John Bradley. If she had -been in Hilda’s shoes, she’d not have given him for a wilderness of Tom -Carrutherses, she thought. And in leaving Hong Kong she was leaving -behind her nothing that she regretted more than her talks with Bradley; -except Ah Wong. That was her great regret, for she was leaving Ah Wong. - -The amah had refused to quit her country. Mrs. Gregory had pleaded at -last. Ah Wong would not budge. Hilda was indifferent, Mr. Gregory not -sorry, and Basil Gregory was meanly glad. - -And John Bradley was glad, too, when he heard it, but not meanly. He -knew that the amah knew more than any other living person did of all -that had happened--far more than he knew or even suspected--and he was -sure that her presence with them in England would make for a blight -upon the entire Gregory family--a blight which all her devotion and all -her deft service could not counterbalance. - -It was partly concerning Ah Wong that Mrs. Gregory had called. Would he -befriend the woman--her amah, perhaps he’d noticed her?--if he could -ever? - -“Oh, yes!” he said, he “had noticed her, several times.” He did not -add how well he knew her, or how highly he valued her, or that he -had received her in this very room, and in the middle of the night, -not long ago. But he promised cordially to do any earthly thing -he ever could for the Chinese woman. It was a queer legacy for a -bachelor priest, he said, laughing, but all was fish that came to his -net--pastoral or otherwise--and he accepted Ah Wong heartily. She -should come into his service, if she would--potter about the bungalow, -sit hunched up on the verandah and sew, or play a guitar or a native -drum or something in the compound--and, if she declined his service, -still he’d try to contrive to look after her some other way. He’d keep -an eye on her, a friendly, helpful eye--if she’d let him--seriously he -would. - -And he echoed fervently the amah’s entreaty that the Gregorys should -leave China at once--_at once_--let the order of their going be -what it would, the comforts or discomforts of the first outgoing boat -just what they might. Nothing mattered, absolutely nothing, except for -them to go--to go at once, and never to return. - -“You’ll say good-by to them all for me?” he begged, “I--I may be called -away for a few days by any post. But please say my good-bys to them -all: your husband--and Basil--and to your daughter. And, Mrs. Gregory, -young Carruthers is staying here, you said. I’ll look him up as soon -as I know you’ve sailed, and I’ll look after him a bit, be a sort of -parson his-man-Friday, if the boy’ll let me.” - -“Tom?--Tom’s a nice boy--I think,” Mrs. Gregory said a trifle -hesitantly. - -“I think so too,” the priest said cordially. - -She was going into the city when she left him, and he went almost to -the level with her, walking beside her chair. - -“Remember,” he said at parting, “you’ll go at once. And you’ll none of -you come back--ever.” - -“We will go at once,” she told him earnestly. “And we will not come -back.” But to that last there was a small reservation at the far -back of her mind. She thought it just possible that Hilda might come -back--some day. Not that Hilda particularly liked China; she did -not--she greatly preferred Kensington. But, if Holman thought well of -Tom Carruthers, it was probable that he--now that Basil was definitely -out of the Hong Kong running--might be permanently attached to that -branch, and ultimately its head. - -And with one slight deviation, Mrs. Gregory kept the promise she made -John Bradley as he stood bare-headed beside her chair. For they did -sail--almost at once. And only one of them ever came back--Hilda. - -The long voyage home differed in nothing from all other such voyages. -Not one voyage in ten thousand ever does differ from other voyages. It -is impossible. They made the same stops, the same changes, ate the same -food, had the same fellow passengers. Nothing short of pirates or a -shoal of ship-devouring Jonah’s whales could differentiate one P. & O. -passage from another. - -But Hilda Gregory found this one a little dull at first, and was driven -in self-respect to appropriate the ship’s surgeon and two homing -subalterns. - -For Basil and their mother were inseparable, and the father who -heretofore had been her faithful, if not too picturesque, knight lived -in the smoking-room, telling again and again the story of his cowing of -the great Chinese “I Am,” Wu Li Chang. Robert Gregory, never a wordless -man, had never talked so much in all his life. - -It was impossible to pass the smoking-room door without catching some -such scrap of English masterpiece as: “I put him through it.” “The -damned nigger was only bluffing. Well, I damn well called his bluff!” -“... and that’s where a knowledge of the Chinaman comes in--an inside, -intelligent knowledge. They like to be thought clever, I tell you. -Don’t you see that it flattered him that I should think--_seem_ -to think, of course--that he was a sort of Mister Know-All?--and he -was sly enough to play up to it. Oh! he was sly, I grant you that. -But no match for me; no real ability.” “Yes; as I told you, he hummed -and hawed a bit at first, until I simply turned him inside out, and -then I could see he knew nothing. It was only tickling his vanity to -let him imagine I thought he was a little local god. That’s why I -left him to Mrs. Gregory. I saw it was a mere waste of my time. And -it pleased her, and, too, it took her mind off the boy a bit. She was -fretting over him--the young dog!--until I thought she’d make herself -downright ill.” “Oh! we flatter these damned Chinamen too much in -thinking them so clever.” “Oh! if you know the way to manage Chinamen. -You should have seen the way I talked to that compradore. I frightened -the beggar--just as I’d frightened Wu the day before. He saw it was -a bit dangerous to play any games with me, by the Lord Harry, and so -he called off the strike. I scared him stiff. And I scared Wu half to -death, I can tell you.” “Oh, yes! he’s dead, right enough. No, I don’t -know how he died. Perhaps he was ordered to commit suicide. Well, I -had no objection, I can tell you. And I shan’t go into much black for -him.” “He always was a bit of a handful. Kept his school-masters busy. -But that did them good and him no harm. And they were well paid for it. -Boys will be boys, you know. Why, when I was his age....” - -In the smoking-room other men came and went all day and a good bit of -the night, but Robert Gregory’s voice went on forever. And Mrs. Gregory -and Basil, walking up and down, grew careful to keep at the other end -of the big ship. For the smoking-room was near the front, and opened on -to both sides of the promenade deck. - -Basil Gregory scarcely left his mother from Hong Kong to Liverpool. - -As the great ship drew anchor, he drew her arm in his, and they stood -together so and watched Hong Kong until their sight had gone from it -quite. This was their passing from China, but not from tragedy, and the -woman knew it. - -They did not speak of Wu Li Chang. They had spoken of him definitely -together for the last time. They did not speak at all as the island -faded slowly away from them. But they knew that to-day the mandarin’s -interminable funeral cortège started from Kowloon to Sze-chuan. For -they were taking the dead man to his old home--taking him tenderly -with shriek of fife and howl of drum, coffined almost as splendidly -as the Macedonian in his casket of gold. And no son followed Wu Li -Chang! But behind the mandarin’s coffin they carried, more meekly, a -simpler, smaller one. And Sing Kung Yah walked behind them both, almost -bare-footed, clad in coarse unbleached hemp. This was her last secular -function, if one may speak so of any human burial rite; for when at -last Wu Li Chang and Wu Nang Ping were laid beside their dead ancestors -in far-off Sze-chuan, Sing Kung Yah, if she lived so far--the road was -long and rough--would seek life-long sanctuary in the Taoist nunnery of -her abbess cousin. - -As long as Anglo-Hong Kong’s eyes had been upon her, Mrs. Gregory had -borne herself bravely--gayly even. But she was breaking now, and with -each revolution of the ship’s great wheel she showed a little older, -a little more limp. “You’re looking downright washed out,” Gregory -told her; “high time we got you home.” Already she was no longer Basil -Gregory’s young and pretty mother. No passenger among them all mistook -her for his sister. She would never be so mistaken again. But he was -very tender of her, and offered her a daily atonement of constant -companionship and of those little tendings which mean so much more to a -woman than any great sacrifice or big climax of devotion ever can. (If -women are small in this, they are also exquisite by it.) - -They clung together pathetically. And, at the same time, each shrank -from the other a little, almost unconsciously, and quite in spite of -themselves. Their souls shrank; their hearts clung. - -Basil sensed that she grieved over his crime, and, as he thought, out -of all proportion to its real seriousness, and that also she condemned -and despised it. He was far from self-absolution. His conscience was -not dead. But he resented her disapproval and the implied “charity” of -her careful considerateness and studied cheerfulness. - -Her soul-withdrawal from him was more justified, and of more moment and -dignity than his from her. For once or twice she just glimpsed almost -an antagonism, a seed of hatred--born of his writhing conscience--that -was slowly cankering in his mind. That he should doubt the -all-forgiveness of her love grieved her sorely, but she recognized that -it certainly was involuntary, and probably was inevitable; but that, -even so, he presumed to arraign her at the judgment seat of his peccant -soul, blaming her that she could not forget, could not quite condone, -incensed her bitterly. - -The grave secret that they shared, and that no one else now of their -world even suspected, linked them tightly--too tightly: the gyves hurt. -And while it linked it separated. They were closer together than they -had ever been before; closer than even a mother and son should be; -closer than any two human creatures should be. They violated, with the -hideousness of their mutual knowledge, each other’s utmost right of -privacy--the soul-privacy which God and nature command that with each -human entity shall be forever inviolable. - -He suffered at her suffering. He brooded over her. He was very tender -of his mother. But between them, and in them mutually, a poison worked. -Their love was exquisite and human still; their companionship, and even -their sympathy, warm and sincere. But a slight cloud hung over them, a -cloud no bigger than a dead man’s hand. It grew a little darker every -day. - - - - -CHAPTER XLIII - -ENGLISH WEDDING BELLS - - -Basil Gregory’s wedding day was warm and clear. June and England were -at their best. - -It was a sweetly pretty wedding. Every one said so. - -And the girlish bride was prettier than her wedding--prettier than -any mere picture could be; as pretty and as sweet as the June roses -she wore, and very like them: pink and white, delicate, fair-haired, -violet-eyed Alice Lee, the motherless daughter of the incumbent of the -old gray vicarage in which Basil Gregory’s mother had been born. - -Homesick for the old days and the old ways, Florence Gregory had gone -to Oxfordshire soon after their return to England, hoping to bathe -and to heal her stained and torn spirit in the quiet of old places, -the ointment of pure memories. She had failed. But she had made fast -friends with her dead father’s successor, and had gone back to the -cordial hospice of her old home again and again in the three years -that had elapsed since she had come from China. A year ago Basil had -accompanied her, none too willingly, for a week-end, had stayed a -month; hence these wedding bells! - -Florence Gregory was an old woman now, old and limp. Robert Gregory was -no longer proud of his wife. Her white hair was very beautiful, but he -resented it, and it rasped and angered him that she had prematurely -aged. He had married her, as he had loved her, for her buoyant good -looks, and he felt that he was defrauded by the change in her--a change -so marked that even his careless and ledger-bound eyes could not fail -to see it. And secretly his poor mundane spirit groaned aloud that -_his_ missus--the best-dressed woman in Hong Kong three years -ago, and every bit as smart as her clothes--had degenerated into a -frumpish nobody, looked older than he did, by the Lord Harry, and -without an ounce of snap in her or a word to say to any one. Greatly -to his credit, he had kept all this to himself loyally. He had never -spoken of it, not even hinted at it, to any one, beyond plaintive and -repeated entreaties to Hilda to help him find some way to buck Mother -up. He had never been unkind to his wife. He still bought flowers for -her--the bouquet she carried at their son’s wedding had cost five -guineas--and burdened her with gifts of jewelry almost inappropriate -to his means. And Mr. Gregory was growing very rich indeed. The wounds -that “Mr. Wu” had dealt his fortune had soon healed, and left no scar. -He was still a faithful husband. Such pride and consolation as a woman -may take from the continence that is chiefly the outcome of a husband’s -indifference to her sex and of his absorption in business and in self -were Mrs. Gregory’s. And in all their married life they had had but one -quarrel--a unique quarrel, as husbands and wives go. It had occurred -two years ago, and had been over a dressmaker’s bill. - -Such quarrels are common? They are scarcely uncommon--certainly not -unique. But this was one with a difference. Mr. Gregory had always -seen and paid his wife’s dressmakers’ bills. It had been one of his -greatest pleasures. Madame Eloise had taken less pleasure in concocting -those princely accounts, and in receipting them, than Robert Gregory -had taken in writing the cheques that had discharged them. Two years -ago a quarterly account had come in in two figures. That was too much. -Gregory raged at his wife, and after an impatient word or two, she had -bit her lip, smiled and promised reform. And she had kept her word; for -she had seen his point of view and the justice of his complaint. But -the latest fashions no longer suited her. Still less did she now suit -them. Wu Li Chang and Basil Gregory had sapped her of the courage and -the carriage to wear smart gowns. Her _beauté de diable_ was quite -gone--she had left it in a Chinese K’o-tang; and the finer beauty that -had replaced it this husband had no eyes to see. - -But Hilda saw, and between the mother and daughter had grown a -tenderness and a friendship that had not been theirs before. “Your -mouth is the most beautiful thing I ever saw, Mother,” the girl said -sometimes. And it was very beautiful, with an exquisite loveliness that -only the lips that have been steeped in hyssop can ever show. - -Hilda was the only bridesmaid to-day. She had none of the bride’s soft -prettiness, and only a fair amount of the splendid good looks that -her own mother had lost. But she had gained in charm, in tact, in -womanliness, and, too, even in girlishness. - -Her engagement to Tom Carruthers was broken. The breaking had grieved -her--at the time. The day Carruthers had sailed for England to claim -Hilda and to take her back to China, a Chinese girl had thrown herself -into Hong Kong harbor. Oddly, the story had reached England--oddly, -because such stories are so common. But this one had in some way -trickled across the world, and to Hilda. Hilda had probed it, and had -given Tom back his ring. It had not been a very black case, as such -things go. The Chinese girl was nobody’s daughter. Carruthers had never -deceived her, and had promised her nothing that he had not given. But -she had grown to care for him. O curse of womanhood! - -And Hilda had a sturdy, wholesome instinct of virtue, a -matter-of-course as towards herself, relentless towards others, that -she had inherited from her mother, but not from her mother alone; and -she also had a quick, curt, businesslike method of dealing with the -facts and incidents of life that she had inherited solely from Robert -Gregory. She considered her engagement to Tom Carruthers a bad debt; -and she wrote it off with a steady hand. Basil was angry with her, and -had upbraided her. “Girls don’t understand such things!” he told her -petulantly. “But I thought you had more sense.” - -“I understand myself,” she had retorted haughtily. - -Needless to say, Carruthers also was angry, and shared his anger with -generous, masculine impartiality between Hilda Gregory and I Matt So. -Mrs. Gregory was glad. And it was she who mentioned the news (but not -its circumstance) in her next letter to Hong Kong. Hilda’s father was -indifferent. There was time enough for so rich a man’s daughter, and -the finest girl in England, by the Lord Harry, any day; and as for Tom, -she might do worse, of course, but, on the other hand, she might do a -long sight better. - -It was not Basil’s old misdemeanor that had so broken his mother, -nor was it her experience in the K’o-tang of Wu Li Chang. It was the -estrangement that had grown between her and her son--an estrangement -that had become almost a bitterness. At times it was a bitterness. - -A great secret shared between two, and inviolably kept by both, must be -either a great bond or a great alienation. The terrific secret shared -by Florence Gregory and her boy proved both. They never spoke of it. -But, for that, it burdened and haunted them the more. - -So far as she blamed him for his old fault his mother had quite -forgiven Basil. - -But he could not forgive her. - -It cut her to the quick. But she could not blame Basil for it. And she -sorrowed for him, more than she did for herself, that she was powerless -to give him conviction of the good truth that her forgiveness was -“perfect and entire, wanting nothing,” her love unchanged. - -And sometimes when the soul-poison scummed thickest in him, because of -it, Basil Gregory loved his mother a little less. The high place to -which sons in their souls set mothers carries a great price. - -But this was not the worst between them. At times--and these were his -blackest--Basil Gregory wondered if, at the absolute last, his mother -would have failed him, would have refused to spare, at her supremest -cost, the life she had given him. Would she at the last hideous resort -have grudged him her all? Sometimes he thought that she would. And when -he thought so he blamed her. And for that blame, his mother, who read -his very soul, a little despised him, and she could not forgive it. - -Wu Li Chang had wreaked a vengeance more terrible than he had planned. -For when in a mother’s soul there is something that she cannot forgive -the son she has borne and nursed and still loves, human tragedy has -reached its depth. - - - - -CHAPTER XLIV - -THE SOUND OF A CHINESE GONG - - -It was a pretty wedding, and very simple. The Lees were simple English -gentlefolk. - -It was a quiet ceremony, quietly performed. There was but little music; -no fife, no drum, no clang. The old organist played softly. (Neither -he nor Mrs. Gregory gave a thought to who had given the instrument; -and no one else there had ever known.) No incense burned. The English -sunshine, perfumed by the roses that grew about the village graves, -drifted softly through the old church windows and dappled on the -chancel floor and on the altar rails and on the organ’s pipes. And the -holy place was sweet with quiet harmony. - -Even Robert Gregory, spruce and straight, wearing the whitest pair of -gloves, and almost tightest into which human hands were ever packed, -was content. He was glad to see Basil settled. The girl had no “dot,” -but she was pretty enough to eat; and his manliness was of a straight, -sturdy stuff, and held that a man should earn and provide for his wife, -by the Lord Harry, every time. And for once he was satisfied again with -Mrs. Gregory’s appearance. She looked fine in her gray and gold, and -the emeralds at her breast and pinning the scrap of bonnet on her white -curls were some style. - -Hilda listened to the old service with a rapt, tender face. John -Bradley was coming home for six months of holiday next week. She had no -doubt that he’d come to see her mother. - -Mrs. Gregory was not displeased. It was no part of her regret to -wish that Basil should live all his life wifeless and childless. -And the rift between her boy and her saved her the jealousy that -happier mothers must suffer when their first-born son weds. Sorry -recompense--but recompense. - -Basil Gregory did not make a very brave bridegroom. But only his mother -noticed it. Most wedding-guests have little eye to spare for mere -bridegrooms. And there is something about the function so trying to -masculine sensitiveness that before now kings and heroes have carried -themselves a little craven at their happiest triumph. - -Basil Gregory saw two girls beside him at God’s altar. - -As he passed down the aisle with his wife’s shy hand on his arm, he -felt the touch of a smaller, tawnier hand. Its weight hurt him; it was -heavy with fabulous nail-protectors and with priceless rings. He was -madly in love with his wife, and, too, he was madly miserable, because -he knew now that they two would never be quite alone--neither by day -nor by night. His mother saw and knew. Just before they passed her he -stumbled a little, startled by the sound of a Chinese gong. - -And a few hours later, in the still sweetness of the dark, it smote him -again. - -Rest, Wu Li Chang! Be satisfied! The Englishman is punished. He has -broken his mother’s heart. Your curse is fulfilled. Basil Gregory heard -your gong cry out a soul’s damnation to-day above his wife’s “I will.” -So long as he lives he will hear it, a bitter, relentless knell. When -ginger is hottest in his mouth, when wine bubbles reddest in his cup, -when the English girl he loves lifts with tired, triumphant hands their -firstborn toward his arms, through the young mother’s misty smile -he will see Nang’s face, above the baby’s first cry he will hear the -throbbing note of a Chinese gong. - -Rest! Sleep in your Sze-chuan grave! Your hideous vengeance is -complete, life-long, soul-deep. It is greater than even you could have -planned. Almost it is adequate. - - _“The great mountain must crumble, - The strong beam must break, - The wise man must wither away like a plant,” - Confucius crooned as he died._ - - -THE END - - - - -Transcriber’s Note: - -Punctuation has been standardised while hyphenation has been retained -as it appears in the original publication. Changes have been made as -follows: - - Page 25 - The yamén was a bleak, empty place _changed to_ - The yamên was a bleak, empty place - - Page 52 - relations with the inumerable _changed to_ - relations with the innumerable - - Page 56 - made repeated obesiance and withdrew _changed to_ - made repeated obeisance and withdrew - - Page 101 - the blonde hair was marceled into _changed to_ - the blonde hair was marcelled into - - Page 126 - body with hers, as far as he could _changed to_ - body with hers, as far as she could - - Page 128 - At the Feet of Kwayin Ko _changed to_ - At the Feet of Kwanyin Ko - - Page 189 - ordinary English visting card _changed to_ - ordinary English visiting card - - Page 209 - Gregory asked dearily _changed to_ - Gregory asked drearily - - Page 255 - the mandarin said quiety _changed to_ - the mandarin said quietly - - Page 261 - of any sacrifice, it it not _changed to_ - of any sacrifice, is it not - - Page 273 - Almost wthin sound of your _changed to_ - Almost within sound of your - - Page 313 - Basil Grgory saw two girls _changed to_ - Basil Gregory saw two girls - -*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MR. 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clear: both; page-break-before: avoid;} - h2 {line-height: 2em;} - h2 span {font-size: .8em;} - p {margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1em;} - em, cite {font-style: italic;} - ins {text-decoration: none;} - - /* General */ - .noi {text-indent: 0em;} - .p180 {font-size: 1.8em;} - .p140 {font-size: 1.4em;} - .p120 {font-size: 1.2em;} - .center {text-align: center; text-indent: 0;} - .italic {font-style: italic;} - .mt3 {margin-top: 3em;} - .mt0 {margin-top: 0em;} - .mb0 {margin-bottom: 0em;} - .smcap {font-variant: small-caps;} - .allsmcap {font-size: .8em;} - - /* Drop caps */ - .dropcap {clear:left; float:left; font-size:3em; line-height:0.8; - vertical-align: top; font-weight: normal;} - .dropcap2 {font-size: .3em; line-height: 100%; vertical-align: top;} - - /* Notes */ - .tn {width: 80%; margin: 2em 12% 2em 8%; background: #f5f5f5; padding: 1em;} - .tn li {padding-bottom: 1em;} - - /* Horizontal rules */ - hr {border-style: solid; border-color: #dc6f50; 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padding-right: 1em;} - .tdr2 {vertical-align: bottom; padding-left: 1em;} - - /* Poetry */ - .poetry-container {text-align: center;} - .poetry {text-align: left; margin-left: 5%; margin-right: 5%;} - .poetry {display: inline-block;} - .poetry .stanza {margin: 1em auto;} - .poetry .verse {text-indent: -3em; padding-left: 3em;} - - /* Poetry indents */ - .poetry .indent10 {text-indent: 2em;} - .poetry .indent2 {text-indent: -2em;} - .poetry .indent4 {text-indent: -1em;} - .poetry .indent6 {text-indent: 0em;} - .poetry .outdent {text-indent: -2.4em;} - - @media print { .poetry {display: block;} } - @media print { - hr.divider, hr.divider2 {border-width: 0; margin: 0;} - a:link, a:visited, a:hover, a:active {text-decoration: none; color: inherit;} - } - - /* ebookmaker */ - body.x-ebookmaker {margin: .5em; padding: 0; width: 98%;} - .x-ebookmaker p {margin-top: .1em; margin-bottom: .1em;} - .x-ebookmaker table {width: 98%;} - .x-ebookmaker .tn {width: 90%; margin: 2em 4% 2em 2%; padding: 1em;} - .x-ebookmaker img {width: 100%;} - .x-ebookmaker .poetry {display: block;} - .x-ebookmaker .width500 {width: 100%;} - .x-ebookmaker .width150 {width: 10em;} - x-ebookmaker-drop, .x-ebookmaker-drop {} - .x-ebookmaker span.dropcap { - clear:left; float:left; font-size:3em; line-height:0.8; - vertical-align: top; } - .x-ebookmaker span.dropcap2 { - font-size: .3em; line-height: 100%; vertical-align: top;} - /* ]]> */ </style> - </head> -<body> -<p style='text-align:center; font-size:1.2em; font-weight:bold'>The Project Gutenberg eBook of Mr. Wu, by Louise Jordan Miln</p> -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and -most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions -whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms -of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online -at <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a>. If you -are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the -country where you are located before using this eBook. -</div> - -<p style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:0; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Title: Mr. Wu</p> -<p style='display:block; margin-left:2em; text-indent:0; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:1em;'>Based on the Play “Mr. Wu” by H. M. Vernon and Harold Owen</p> - <p style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:0; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Author: Louise Jordan Miln</p> - <p style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:0; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Contributors: H. M. Vernon</p> - <p style='display:block; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0; margin-left:2em;'>Harold Owen</p> -<p style='display:block; text-indent:0; margin:1em 0'>Release Date: December 4, 2021 [eBook #66877]</p> -<p style='display:block; text-indent:0; margin:1em 0'>Language: English</p> - <p style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:0; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em; text-align:left'>Produced by: Stephen Hutcheson and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net</p> -<div style='margin-top:2em; margin-bottom:4em'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MR. WU ***</div> - -<div class="section"> -<hr class="divider" /> -<h1>MR. WU</h1> -<hr class="divider2" /> -</div> - -<div class="x-ebookmaker-drop figcenter width500" id="cover2"> - <img src="images/cover.jpg" width="697" height="1000" alt="Cover" /> -</div> - - -<div class="section"> -<hr class="x-ebookmaker-drop divider2" /> -</div> -<p class="center p180">MR. WU</p> - -<p class="center smcap mt3 mb0"><span class="p140">By LOUISE JORDON MILN</span></p> - -<p class="center mt0">(<span class="allsmcap">MRS. GEORGE CRICHTON MILN</span>)</p> - -<p class="center smcap mt3">Based on the Play “Mr. Wu”<br /> -<span class="p120">By H. M. VERNON and HAROLD OWEN</span></p> - -<div class="figcenter width150" id="title"> - <img src="images/title.png" width="150" height="150" alt="Title page" /> -</div> - -<p class="center">A. L. BURT COMPANY<br /> -Publishers       New York</p> - -<p class="center mt3">Published by arrangement with Frederick A. Stokes Company</p> - - - - -<div class="section"> -<hr class="x-ebookmaker-drop divider2" /> - -<p class="center italic">Copyright, 1918, by</p> - -<p class="center smcap">Frederick A. Stokes Company</p> - -<p class="center italic">All rights reserved</p> - - -<p class="center mt3 italic">First published in the United States -of America, 1920</p> - -<p class="center">PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA</p> -</div> - - - - -<div class="section"> -<hr class="x-ebookmaker-drop divider" /> -<h2 id="contents">CONTENTS</h2> - -<table> -<tr> -<th class="tdr">CHAPTER</th> -<th class="tdl"> </th> -<th class="tdr2">PAGE</th> -</tr> -<tr> -<td class="tdr">I</td> -<td class="tdl smcap">Wu Ching Yu and Wu Li Chang</td> -<td class="tdr2"><a href="#i">1</a></td> -</tr> -<tr> -<td class="tdr">II</td> -<td class="tdl smcap">At Rice</td> -<td class="tdr2"><a href="#ii">7</a></td> -</tr> -<tr> -<td class="tdr">III</td> -<td class="tdl smcap">The Marriage Journey</td> -<td class="tdr2"><a href="#iii">14</a></td> -</tr> -<tr> -<td class="tdr">IV</td> -<td class="tdl smcap">Wee Mrs. Wu</td> -<td class="tdr2"><a href="#iv">22</a></td> -</tr> -<tr> -<td class="tdr">V</td> -<td class="tdl smcap">Homing</td> -<td class="tdr2"><a href="#v">27</a></td> -</tr> -<tr> -<td class="tdr">VI</td> -<td class="tdl smcap">Heart Ache</td> -<td class="tdr2"><a href="#vi">31</a></td> -</tr> -<tr> -<td class="tdr">VII</td> -<td class="tdl smcap">A Tortured Boyhood</td> -<td class="tdr2"><a href="#vii">36</a></td> -</tr> -<tr> -<td class="tdr">VIII</td> -<td class="tdl smcap">Some Balm</td> -<td class="tdr2"><a href="#viii">45</a></td> -</tr> -<tr> -<td class="tdr">IX</td> -<td class="tdl smcap">Wu Li Lu</td> -<td class="tdr2"><a href="#ix">52</a></td> -</tr> -<tr> -<td class="tdr">X</td> -<td class="tdl smcap">Nang Ping</td> -<td class="tdr2"><a href="#x">58</a></td> -</tr> -<tr> -<td class="tdr">XI</td> -<td class="tdl smcap">In the Lotus Garden</td> -<td class="tdr2"><a href="#xi">62</a></td> -</tr> -<tr> -<td class="tdr">XII</td> -<td class="tdl smcap">O Curse of Asia!</td> -<td class="tdr2"><a href="#xii">77</a></td> -</tr> -<tr> -<td class="tdr">XIII</td> -<td class="tdl smcap">Mrs. Gregory</td> -<td class="tdr2"><a href="#xiii">87</a></td> -</tr> -<tr> -<td class="tdr">XIV</td> -<td class="tdl smcap">Nang’s Vigil</td> -<td class="tdr2"><a href="#xiv">93</a></td> -</tr> -<tr> -<td class="tdr">XV</td> -<td class="tdl smcap">The Meeting of the Mothers</td> -<td class="tdr2"><a href="#xv">98</a></td> -</tr> -<tr> -<td class="tdr">XVI</td> -<td class="tdl smcap">Grit</td> -<td class="tdr2"><a href="#xvi">113</a></td> -</tr> -<tr> -<td class="tdr">XVII</td> -<td class="tdl smcap">The Signal of the Gong</td> -<td class="tdr2"><a href="#xvii">124</a></td> -</tr> -<tr> -<td class="tdr">XVIII</td> -<td class="tdl smcap">At the Feet of Kwanyin Ko</td> -<td class="tdr2"><a href="#xviii">128</a></td> -</tr> -<tr> -<td class="tdr">XIX</td> -<td class="tdl smcap">Preparation</td> -<td class="tdr2"><a href="#xix">132</a></td> -</tr> -<tr> -<td class="tdr">XX</td> -<td class="tdl smcap">What Wu did in Proof of Love</td> -<td class="tdr2"><a href="#xx">137</a></td> -</tr> -<tr> -<td class="tdr">XXI</td> -<td class="tdl smcap">A Conference</td> -<td class="tdr2"><a href="#xxi">146</a></td> -</tr> -<tr> -<td class="tdr">XXII</td> -<td class="tdl smcap">Sing Kung Yah’s Flowers</td> -<td class="tdr2"><a href="#xxii">156</a></td> -</tr> -<tr> -<td class="tdr">XXIII</td> -<td class="tdl smcap">Ah Wong</td> -<td class="tdr2"><a href="#xxiii">161</a></td> -</tr> -<tr> -<td class="tdr">XXIV</td> -<td class="tdl smcap">In the Clutch of the Tongs</td> -<td class="tdr2"><a href="#xxiv">170</a></td> -</tr> -<tr> -<td class="tdr">XXV</td> -<td class="tdl smcap">Worse and Worse</td> -<td class="tdr2"><a href="#xxv">177</a></td> -</tr> -<tr> -<td class="tdr">XXVI</td> -<td class="tdl smcap">Suspense</td> -<td class="tdr2"><a href="#xxvi">182</a></td> -</tr> -<tr> -<td class="tdr">XXVII</td> -<td class="tdl smcap">The Beginning of the Duel</td> -<td class="tdr2"><a href="#xxvii">190</a></td> -</tr> -<tr> -<td class="tdr">XXVIII</td> -<td class="tdl smcap">Something to Go On</td> -<td class="tdr2"><a href="#xxviii">203</a></td> -</tr> -<tr> -<td class="tdr">XXIX</td> -<td class="tdl smcap">“Will You Visit Sing Kung Yah?”</td> -<td class="tdr2"><a href="#xxix">207</a></td> -</tr> -<tr> -<td class="tdr">XXX</td> -<td class="tdl smcap">Smiling Welcome</td> -<td class="tdr2"><a href="#xxx">220</a></td> -</tr> -<tr> -<td class="tdr">XXXI</td> -<td class="tdl smcap">Face to Face</td> -<td class="tdr2"><a href="#xxxi">228</a></td> -</tr> -<tr> -<td class="tdr">XXXII</td> -<td class="tdl smcap">“Cur!”</td> -<td class="tdr2"><a href="#xxxii">236</a></td> -</tr> -<tr> -<td class="tdr">XXXIII</td> -<td class="tdl smcap">A Chinese Teaching</td> -<td class="tdr2"><a href="#xxxiii">241</a></td> -</tr> -<tr> -<td class="tdr">XXXIV</td> -<td class="tdl smcap">Alone in China</td> -<td class="tdr2"><a href="#xxxiv">246</a></td> -</tr> -<tr> -<td class="tdr">XXXV</td> -<td class="tdl smcap">The Story of the Sword</td> -<td class="tdr2"><a href="#xxxv">256</a></td> -</tr> -<tr> -<td class="tdr">XXXVI</td> -<td class="tdl smcap">In the Pagoda and on the Bench</td> -<td class="tdr2"><a href="#xxxvi">265</a></td> -</tr> -<tr> -<td class="tdr">XXXVII</td> -<td class="tdl smcap">The Fan</td> -<td class="tdr2"><a href="#xxxvii">270</a></td> -</tr> -<tr> -<td class="tdr">XXXVIII</td> -<td class="tdl smcap">The Gong</td> -<td class="tdr2"><a href="#xxxviii">276</a></td> -</tr> -<tr> -<td class="tdr">XXXIX</td> -<td class="tdl smcap">Afterwards</td> -<td class="tdr2"><a href="#xxxix">286</a></td> -</tr> -<tr> -<td class="tdr">XL</td> -<td class="tdl smcap">A Guest on High</td> -<td class="tdr2"><a href="#xl">292</a></td> -</tr> -<tr> -<td class="tdr">XLI</td> -<td class="tdl smcap">“Just with Us”</td> -<td class="tdr2"><a href="#xli">294</a></td> -</tr> -<tr> -<td class="tdr">XLII</td> -<td class="tdl smcap">The Dust of China from Their Feet</td> -<td class="tdr2"><a href="#xlii">300</a></td> -</tr> -<tr> -<td class="tdr">XLIII</td> -<td class="tdl smcap">English Wedding Bells</td> -<td class="tdr2"><a href="#xliii">307</a></td> -</tr> -<tr> -<td class="tdr">XLIV</td> -<td class="tdl smcap">The Sound of a Chinese Gong</td> -<td class="tdr2"><a href="#xliv">312</a></td> -</tr> -</table> -</div> - - -<div class="chapter"> -<hr class="x-ebookmaker-drop divider" /> -<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_1"></a>1</span> -</div> - -<p class="center p180 mt3">MR. WU</p> - -<h2 id="i">CHAPTER I<br /> -<span class="smcap">Wu Ching Yu and Wu Li Chang</span></h2> - -<p class="noi"><span class="dropcap">A</span> LOOK of terror glinted across the eyes slit in the child’s -moon-shaped yellow face, but he stood stock still and -silent—respectful and obedient.</p> - -<p>The very old man in the chair of carved and inlaid teak wood saw the -glint of fear, and he liked it fiercely, although he came of a clan -renowned for fearlessness, even in a race that for personal courage -has never been matched—unless by the British, the race which of all -others it most resembles. Old Wu adored little Wu, and was proud of him -with a jealous pride, but he knew that there was nothing craven in the -fear that had looked for one uncontrolled instant from his grandson’s -narrow eye—nothing craven, but love for himself, love of home, and -a reluctance to leave both; a reluctance that he was the last man in -China to resent or to misestimate.</p> - -<p>Wu the grandfather was eighty. Wu the grandson was ten.</p> - -<p>Rich almost beyond the dreams of even Chinese avarice, the mandarin -was warmly wrapped in clothes almost coolie-plain; but the youngster, -who was but his senior’s chattel, would have pawned for a fortune as -he stood, a ridiculous, gorgeous figure of warmth and of affluence, -almost half as broad as long, by virtue of padding. His<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_2"></a>2</span> stiffly -embroidered robe of yellow silk was worn over three quilted coats, silk -too, and well wadded with down of the Manchurian eider duck, and above -the yellow silk surcoat he wore a slightly shorter one of rich fur, -fur-lined and also wadded. The fur top-coat was buttoned with jewels. -The yellow coat was sewn with pearls and with emeralds. Jewels winked -on the thick little padded shoes and blazed on his little skull cap.</p> - -<p>For himself the mandarin took his ease in unencumbered old clothes, -but it pleased his arrogant pride and his love of the gorgeous that -his small grandson should be garbed, even in the semi-seclusion of -their isolated country estate, as if paying a visit of state to the boy -Emperor at Pekin. As little Wu was of royal blood himself, he might -indeed by some right of caste so have visited in no servile rôle, for -on his mother’s side the lad was of more than royal blood, descended -from the two supreme Chinese, descent from whom confers the only -hereditary nobility of China. Perhaps the yellows that he often wore -hinted at this discreetly. The sartorial boast (if boast it was) was -well controlled, for true yellow was the imperial color, sacred to the -Emperor, and young Wu’s yellows were always on the amber side, or on -the lemon; and even so he might have worn them less in Pekin than he -did here in the Sze-chuan stronghold of his house.</p> - -<p>The room was very warm, and seemed no cooler for the scented -prayer-sticks that were burning profusely in the carved recess where -the ancestral tablet hung, and as he talked with and studied the boy, -whom he had studied for every hour of the young life, the upright -old man with the gaunt, withered, pockmarked face fanned himself -incessantly. Little Wu had run in from his play in the bitterly cold -garden, all fur-clad as he was.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_3"></a>3</span> The mandarin had sent for him, and he -had not stayed to throw off even one of his thick garments. Old Wu was -not accustomed to be kept waiting or the grandchild to delay.</p> - -<p>“Well?” the old man demanded, “you have heard. What do you say?”</p> - -<p>The quaint little figure kotowed almost to the ground. It was wonderful -that a form so swathed and padded could bend so low, wonderful that -the jewel-heavy cap kept its place. His little cue swept the polished -floor, and his stiff embroideries of gem-sewn kingfisher feathers -creaked as he bent. He bent thrice before he answered, his hands meekly -crossed, his eyes humbly on the ground: “Most Honorable, thou art a -thousand years old, and, O thrice Honorable Sir, ten thousand times -wise. Thy despicable worm entreats thy jadelike pardon that he pollutes -with his putrid presence thy plum-blossomed eyes. Thou hast spoken. I -thank thee for thy gracious words.”</p> - -<p>“Art thou glad to go?”</p> - -<p>“Thy child is glad, Sir most renowned and venerable, to obey thy wish.”</p> - -<p>“Art glad to go?”</p> - -<p>The boy swept again to the ground, and, bending up, spread out his -pink palms in a gesture of pleased acceptance. “Most glad, O ancient -long-beard.”</p> - -<p>The grandfather laughed. “Nay, thou liest. Thou art loth to go. And I -am loth to have thee go. But it is best, and so I send thee.” He held -out his yellow, claw-like hand, and little Wu came and caught it to -his forehead, then stood leaning against the other’s knee, and began -playing with the long string of scented beads that hung about the man’s -neck.</p> - -<p>“Well,” the mandarin said again, “say all that is<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_4"></a>4</span> in thy heart. Leave -off the words of ceremony. Speak simply. Say what thou wilt.”</p> - -<p>“When do I go?” It was characteristically Chinese that such was the -question, and not “Must I go?” or even “Why must I go?” The grandfather -had said that he was to go: that point was settled. From that will -there was no appeal. The boy scarcely knew that there were children -who did not obey their parents implicitly and always. That there -were countries—in the far off foreign-devils’ land—where filial -disobedience was almost the rule, he had never heard and could not have -believed. Of course, in the classics, which even now he read easily, -there were runaway marriages and undutiful offspring now and then. But -the end of all such offenders was beyond horror horrible, and even so -little Wu had always regarded them as literary makeweight, artistic -shades to throw up the high lights whiter, shadows grotesque and -devilish as some of his grandsire’s most precious carvings were, and -scarcely as flesh and blood possibilities.</p> - -<p>In all their ten years together there had been between these two -nothing but love and kindness. No child in China (where children are -adored) had ever been more indulged; no child in China (where children -are guarded) more strictly disciplined. The older Wu had loved and -ruled; the younger Wu had loved and obeyed always. They live life so in -China.</p> - -<p>“When do I go?” was all the boy said.</p> - -<p>“Soon after your marriage moon: the third next moon, as I plan it.”</p> - -<p>The child’s face glowed and creamed with relief. He was only ten, -and—at least in that part of the Empire—older bridegrooms were the -rule. If the dreaded exile were not to begin until after his marriage, -years<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_5"></a>5</span> hence, all its intricate ceremonial, all its long-drawn-out -preliminaries, and happily to be delayed again and again by the -astrologers, why, then here was respite indeed.</p> - -<p>“Nay,” the mandarin said, shaking his old head a little sadly, “think -not so. Thy marriage will be when the cherry trees in Honan next bloom.”</p> - -<p>“Oh!” the boy just breathed his surprise.</p> - -<p>“I think it best,” the old man added. “Your wife was born last month. -The runners reached me yesterday with the letter of her honorable -father.”</p> - -<p>Little Wu was interested. He had read of such marriages and he knew -that they really took place sometimes. He rather liked the scheme—if -only he need not go to England for hideous years of wifeless honeymoon! -He had heard none of the details of his exile—only the hateful fact. -But his Chinese instinct divined that in all probability young Mrs. -Wu would not accompany him. Yes, he rather liked the idea of a wife. -He was desperately fond of babies, and often had two or three brought -from the retainers’ quarters that he might play with them and feed them -perfumed sugar-flowers. He hoped his grandfather would tell him more of -his baby-betrothed.</p> - -<p>But the grandfather did not, now at all events, nor did he add anything -to the less pleasant piece of news, but rose stiffly from his chair, -saying, “Strike the gong.”</p> - -<p>The boy went quickly to a great disk of beaten and filigreed gold that -hung over a big porcelain tub of glowing azaleas, caught up an ivory -snake-entwined rod of tortoise-shell, and beat upon the gong. He struck -it but once, but at the sound servants came running—half a dozen or -more, clad in blue linen, the “Wu” crest worked between the shoulders.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_6"></a>6</span> -“Rice,” the master said, and held out his hand to the child.</p> - -<p>“Lean on me, lean on me hard,” pleaded the boy; “thy venerable bones -are tired.”</p> - -<p>“They ache to-day,” the octogenarian admitted grimly. “But untie -thyself first, my frogling. Thou canst not eat so—we are going to -rice, and not into thy beloved snow and ice.”</p> - -<p>The child slipped out of his fur, and cast it from him. His quick -fingers made light work of buttons, clasps and cords. Garment followed -garment to the floor, and as they fell servants ran and knelt and -picked them up almost reverently, until the boy drew a long free -breath, clad only in a flowing robe of thin crimson tussore: a little -upright figure, graceful, and for a Chinese boy very thin. Then the old -man laid his hand, not lightly, on the young shoulder; and so they went -together to their rice.</p> - - - - -<div class="chapter"> -<hr class="x-ebookmaker-drop divider" /> -<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_7"></a>7</span> -</div> - -<h2 id="ii">CHAPTER II<br /> -<span class="smcap">At Rice</span></h2> - -<p class="noi"><span class="dropcap">J</span>AMES MUIR was waiting for them in the room where their meal was -served. There were but two meals in that household—breakfast and -dinner—or rather but two for the mandarin and those who shared his -rice; the servants ate three times a day, such few of them as ate in -the house at all. But there was a fine mastery of the art of dining, as -well as a good deal of clockwork, in the old Chinese’s constitution; -and Muir, at liberty to command food when and where he would, found it -convenient and entertaining to eat with his pupil and his host.</p> - -<p>For three years the young Scot had held, and filled admirably, a chair -in the University of Pekin. The post had been well paid, and he had -enjoyed it hugely, and the Pekin background of life no less; but old Wu -had lured him from it with a salary four times as generous, and with -an opportunity to study China and Chinese life from the inside such as -probably no Briton had had before, and far more complete and intimate -than the no mean opportunity afforded by his professorship in the -capital.</p> - -<p>Chinese to the core and Chinese to the remotest tip of his longest -spiral-twisted and silver-shielded fingernail, Wu Ching Yu, astute and -contemplative even beyond his peers, searching the future anxiously saw -strange things ahead of this native land of his burning<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_8"></a>8</span> love, and he -had boldly mapped out an unique education for his grandson.</p> - -<p>Europe was coming into China. It was too late to prevent that now; Wu -Ching Yu doubted if it had not always been too late. Well, what would -be would be; Confucius had said so. Europe was coming into China, and -Wu Li Chang, his grandson, should meet it at an advantage which other -Chinese were not wise enough to prepare for themselves. Wu Li Chang -should know Europe before Europe came to reap the wealth of Shantung -and Peichihli and to fatten on the golden harvest of four thousand -years of Chinese thrift, frugality, and sagacity. The boy should have -an English education and a facile understanding of English thought and -of English ways.</p> - -<p>Quietly, remorselessly, the grandfather had studied the individuals -of the Aryan races already permeating in official and mercantile -trickles into Pekin, Hong Kong, Shanghai and Hankow. The Germans -commended themselves to him in much. His Chinese thoroughness liked -their thoroughness. His concentration liked theirs. But they had other -qualities he liked less. The French and the Americans he understood -least, and he somewhat under-estimated both. He liked the Russians; -but he gauged them to be threatened by the future rather than being -themselves seriously threateners of China.</p> - -<p>It was the British, he decided deliberately, who most threatened China -and promised her most; they, above all others, were to be dreaded as -foes, desired as friends. He thought that they had staying powers -beyond all other races save his own, honorableness and breeding. He -disliked their manners often, but he liked the quality of their given -word. He suspected that the English would win in the long run in any -contest of peoples to<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_9"></a>9</span> which they set their shoulders and their will: -and it was to England that he determined to send his boy, that there -the child might learn to hold his Chinese own in China in the years to -come, let come to China from the West what would. Cost them both what -it might—and would—of heartache, the boy should go, but he should go -with such equipment, such armor of <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">savoir faire</i> as was possible -or could be made possible. He should learn to speak English, to ride a -horse English fashion, and to use a fork before he went. And so James -Muir was selected and secured as tutor, mentor and general leader to -the little yellow Chinese bear.</p> - -<p>Mandarin Wu had met Muir in Pekin, had studied and liked him. And Wu’s -great crony, Li Hung Chang, knew the Scot and respected him. The rest -was easy; for Wu was masterful, diplomatic, and the length of his purse -was almost endless. Muir had lived with the Wus for three years now, -and had known from the first what little Wu had only learned an hour -ago: that the boy was going to England and Oxford.</p> - -<p>Not for a moment had the mandarin neglected the Chinese furnituring -and decorating of the boy’s mind. Such a course would have been -unthinkable. Already almost the lad might have been presented at -the great national examination, and very possibly ennobled as one -of the literati, but the mandarin had not thought it necessary. The -boy could recite the Li Ki (the old, old Book of Rites that has had -more influence than any other secular book ever written, and has done -more to make and shape Chinese character and Chinese customs than -have all other books put together) and recite it without mistake or -hesitation; he could write decorous verse, paint swiftly and accurately -the intricate Chinese characters, and he knew his people’s history. -He could<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_10"></a>10</span> wrestle and tilt, and once he had beaten his grandfather at -chess.</p> - -<p>He had worked well with Muir, and Muir with him. They liked each -other. And after three years of constant drilling, always followed -industriously and often enthusiastically, the young Chinese had a glib -smattering of European lore, dates, grammar, facts. Europe itself—real -Europe—was a closed book to him, of course. The mandarin understood -that. But a few years in the West would mend all that: and then the -beloved boy should come home, to serve China and to rule his own -destiny.</p> - -<p>Between the old Chinese mandarin and the young Scotchman a sincere -friendship had grown—and almost inevitably, for they had so much in -common, and so much mutual respect. Each was honest, manly, and a -gentleman. Each had self-control, generosity, deliberation, taste and -a glowing soul. Three years of daily intercourse, and something of -intimacy, had destroyed completely such slight remaining prejudice as -either had had against the other’s race when they met at Pekin.</p> - -<p>Wu the grandfather was never long or far from the side of Wu the -grandson. James Muir had taught one Wu almost as much (though not as -systematically) as he had taught the other. And they had taught him -more than he had taught them: the child unconsciously, the mandarin -with conscious glee. All three had been eager to learn, the men more -eager than the boy; and the teacher who is at home always has a -wide and deep advantage over the teacher who is abroad. Background, -environment, each smallest detail and petty reiteration of daily life, -aid the teacher who instructs in his own country, but impede and thwart -the teacher who instructs aliens in theirs.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_11"></a>11</span> -Chinese families who live in some state usually eat in the great -hall—the k’o-tang, or guest-hall—of their house, as far as they have -any usual eating place. But more often than not when in residence here -the Wus “dined” (of course, they used for it no such term: it was, as -were all their meals, just “rice”) in the chamber in which the two men -and the child now sat. This house had more than one great hall, and -several rooms larger than this, though it was far from small.</p> - -<p>It was a passionate room. It throbbed with color, with perfume, with -flowers, with quaint picked music and with a dozen glows and warmths of -wealth.</p> - -<p>High towards the red and sea-green lacquered roof, carved and scrolled -with silver and blue, a balcony of pungent sandal-wood jutted from -the wall. The floor of the balcony was solid, and from it hung three -splendid but delicate lamps, filled with burning attar. The railing of -the balcony was carved with dragons, gods, bamboos and lotus flowers, -and within the railing sat three sing-song girls. They were silent -and motionless until, at a gesture of the master’s hand, the eunuch, -who was their choirmaster and their guardian, spoke a syllable, and -then they began a soft chant to the tinkling accompaniment of their -instruments. One played an ivory lute, one a lacquered flute, the third -cymbals and bells; and the eunuch drew a deeper, more throbbing note -from his chin or student’s lute—five feet long, with seven strings -of silk, its office to soothe man’s soul and drive all evil from his -heart. In the corner farthest from the table squatted, on the mosaic -floor, a life-size figure of the belly-god. He wore many very valuable -rings, an unctuous smirk, a wreath—about his shoulders—of fresh -flowers, and very little else. He was fleshed of priceless majolica, -but his figure would have been the despair of<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_12"></a>12</span> the most ingenious -corset shop in Paris; his abdomen protruded several feet in front of -his knees; his was a masterly embonpoint of glut.</p> - -<p>There must have been a hundred big joss-sticks burning in the room—not -the poor, slight things sold in Europe, but Chinese incense at its best -and most pungent.</p> - -<p>The mandarin used chop-sticks. The boy and his tutor ate with silver -forks.</p> - -<p>The food was delicious, and Muir ate heartily. But the child and the -old man ate little. Both were sick at heart. Five of the mandarin’s -concubines brought in fruit and sweetmeats. The boy took a glacé -persimmon, and smiled at the woman. He knew them all by name (there -were a score or more in the “fragrant apartments”), and he liked most -of them and often played with them. The mandarin paid no heed to -them whatever. Such of their names as he had once known he had quite -forgotten. The old celibate lived for China and for his grandson. But -he kept his Chinese state in China, and always would. And his women -were well clad, well fed, well treated and reasonably happy. And if one -of them died she was replaced, and so was one that took the smallpox -and was disfigured. But one was rarely scolded, and never was one -beaten. Wu Ching Yu rarely remembered their existence. When he did it -bored him. But they were part of his retinue, and it no more occurs to -an important Chinese to discard his retinue than it does to a portly -and decent Scot to discard his kilt in broad daylight on Princes -Street. The one discard would be as indecent as the other. Manners make -men everywhere, and they have no small share in making manhood, in -China as in Edinburgh. They differ in different districts, but, after -all, their difference<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_13"></a>13</span> is but of thinskin depth. It is their observance -that matters: it is vital.</p> - -<p>A great snake waddled in and came across the floor—a fat, over-fed, -hideous thing. Muir knew the creature well, and that it was perfectly -tame and harmless, but, for all that, he tucked his feet between the -rungs of his chair. Little Wu flung sweetmeats and bits of sugared -fat pork to the monster, and presently it waddled off again, crawling -fatly, and curled up at the feet of the belly-god, and went to sleep -with its sleek, slimy, wrinkled head under the lea of the god’s wide -paunch.</p> - - - - -<div class="chapter"> -<hr class="x-ebookmaker-drop divider" /> -<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_14"></a>14</span> -</div> - -<h2 id="iii">CHAPTER III<br /> -<span class="smcap">The Marriage Journey</span></h2> - -<p class="noi"><span class="dropcap">W</span>U LI CHANG enjoyed his wedding very much. He enjoyed all of it (except -the enforced parting with his young wife)—the wonderful journey to -Peichihli, brightened by anticipation; the more wonderful return -journey, not a little dulled by homesickness for his bride and by the -near-drawing of his voyage to England; the six weeks’ stay in the -palace of the Lis; and most of all—decidedly most of all—his wife.</p> - -<p>He would have been ingratitude itself if he had not enjoyed his visit -at his father-in-law’s. Never went marriage bells more happily. Never -was bridegroom more warmly welcomed or more kindly entertained. The -wedding ceremonies interested him intensely; they went without a hitch, -and never in China was bridal more gorgeous. The honeymoon was best of -all—if only it might have been longer!—and had but one jar. (Most -honeymoons—at least in Europe—have more.) The one in Wu Li Chang’s -and Wu Lu’s honeymoon was acute and plaintive: it was the day that his -wife had the colic and wailed bitterly. Wu Li Chang had colic too—in -sympathy, the women said, but James Muir suspected an over-feed of -stolen bride-cake, gray and soggy, stuffed with sugared pork fat and -roasted almonds. Probably the women were right, for Wu Li Chang was not -a gluttonous boy, and he had eaten sugared pork fat with impunity all -his life; but, caused no matter by<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_15"></a>15</span> what, the colic was real enough, -and Wu Li Chang could have wailed too, had such relief been permissible -to a Chinese gentleman.</p> - -<p>The cavalcade started at dawn on an auspicious day in early spring, -when the nut trees were just blushing into bloom and the heavy buds -of the wistaria forests were showing faint hints of violet on their -lips. The return journey was made when the short summer of Northern and -North Central China was turning towards autumn, and the great wistarias -creaked in the wind and flung their purple splendor across the bamboos -and the varnish trees, and the green baubles of the lychees were -turning pink and russet.</p> - -<p>The marriage ceremonial took quite a month, for the mandarins would -skimp it of nothing; and a Chinese wedding of any elegance is never -brief. The engagement had been unprecedentedly brief—made so by -the exigencies of Wu Ching Yu’s plans—and to have laid on the lady -the further slight of shabby or hurried nuptials would have been -unthinkable, and most possibly would have been punished by three -generations of hunchbacked Wus.</p> - -<p>Mandarin Wu kept his own soothsayer, of course, and equally of course -that psychic had pronounced for the brevity of the engagement, and -himself had selected the day of the bridegroom’s departure and -the marriage days. His commandments had synchronised exactly with -his patron’s desire. The mandarin’s wishes and the necromancer’s -pronouncements almost invariably dovetailed to a nicety; and when they -did not the mandarin took upon himself the rôle of leading seer, and -then changed his fortune-teller. It had only happened once, and was -not likely to happen again. Wu Ching Yu was a very fine clairvoyant -himself.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_16"></a>16</span> -The prospective parents-in-law were old and warm friends, Wu Li’s -senior by thirty years. The older mandarin had dreamed a dream one -night, just a year ago, and in the morning had sent a runner to Pekin -with a letter to his friend:</p> - -<p>“Thy honorable wife, who has laid at thy feet so many jeweled sons, -will bear to thy matchless house a daughter when next the snow lies -thick upon the lower hills of Han-yang. Thy contemptible friend sues -to thee for that matchless maiden’s incomparable golden hand to be -bestowed upon his worm of a grandson and heir”—and several yards more -to the same effect, beautifully written on fine red paper.</p> - -<p>The offer had been cordially (but with Mongol circumlocution) accepted. -The match was desirable in every conceivable way. And when Li Lu was -born she was already as good as “wooed and married and a’” to the young -Wu, at that moment teaching James Muir a new form of leap-frog.</p> - -<p>The cavalcade formed at daybreak, and Wu—both Wus—and the tutor came -out of the great house’s only door, mounted their horses, and the -journey began. It was a musical start, for each saddle horse wore a -collar of bells that the pedestrians might be warned to stand aside.</p> - -<p>The palanquins of state and their ornate sedan chairs were carried by -liveried coolies that the three gentlemen might travel so when they -chose; and those provided for Muir were as splendid as those for the -mandarin and little Wu. Teachers are treated so in China always, though -not always are they paid as the mandarin paid Muir.</p> - -<p>The presents for the bride were packed in bales and baskets—pei -tsz—of scented grass, slung by plaited bamboo<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_17"></a>17</span> straps from the -shoulders of the carrying coolies. There were three hundred bales in -all, their precious contents of silk and crêpe and jade and gems, of -spices and porcelains and lacquers, wrapped in invulnerable oiled silk -of finest texture and impervious to the sharpest rain. There were silks -enough to clothe Li Lu and Li Lu’s daughters forever, and the materials -for her bridal robes were as fine as the Emperor’s bride had worn.</p> - -<p>There were five hundred bride’s cakes, sodden gray things, quite small -in size but heavy with fat pork. There were sixty tiny pipes—all -for the bride—of every conceivable pipe material and design. There -were a hundred pairs of shoes, to be worn a few years hence when her -feet had been bound. There were birds to sing to her—living birds in -jeweled cages, and birds made of gold, of coral and of amber. There -were ivories and rare pottery and mirrors of burnished steel. There -were jades—such as Europe has not yet seen—bronzes beyond price, -tea, tortoiseshell and musk, paint for her face, and a bale of hair -ornaments. There were a score of slave-girls—ten for her, ten for -her mother. In a great bottle-shaped cage of rush a tame tortoise -rode at ease. It had been procured from Ceylon at great expense for -a maharajah’s children in Southern India, and trained to carry them -on its back. It were jeweled anklets now, and was for Li Lu when she -should be old enough to straddle it. Wu Li Chang had tried it, and he -said that its gait was good. And Muir had named it “Nizam.” But it had -its own servants; for the tortoise is one of the four sacred animals -in China. A hundred and thirty musicians followed the mandarin’s cooks -and bakers—a musician for each instrument of Chinese melody, and for -many two; ten more for the flutes, four for the harps, nine for the -bells, and a dozen for trumpets, drums and<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_18"></a>18</span> gongs—the women carried in -chairs, the men on foot. There was much, much more, and at long last -the mandarin’s bannerman brought up the slow rear.</p> - -<p>Beside the old noble’s palfrey a servant carried his master’s favorite -linnet in its cage.</p> - -<p>There was a long wait at the temple, some yards from the house. Wu and -his grandchild went in to make obeisance and to worship before the -temple tablets of their dead, while Muir sat outside and smoked an -honest meerschaum pipe and drank scalding tea.</p> - -<p>The road climbed hillward, and soon after they left the temple they -passed a magnificent paifang. The mandarin bowed to it reverently, -dismounted, and passed it on foot; and so did the child, knowing -that it marked the spot where his grandfather’s mother had hanged -herself—in her best robes—at her husband’s funeral.</p> - -<p>On the summit of the first hill they halted again. The old man and the -boy took soup and sweetmeats and tea, and Muir munched fishcakes and -savory rice; and the child looked long at the house in which he had -been born.</p> - -<p>The carved screen, standing a few feet before the door to keep the evil -spirits out, was dyed deep with sunlight, and its peaked roof’s green -and blue and yellow tiles were darkly iridescent, as were the green and -yellow and blue tiles of the old dwelling’s many tent-shaped roofs.</p> - -<p>When they moved on, the boy trotted on foot beside his grandfather and -twittered to the linnet, and the linnet twittered back; the mandarin -smiled down at them, and Muir lit another pipeful.</p> - -<p>All this was most irregular—so irregular that only a Wu could have -compassed it. The bride should have been coming to her husband, not the -bridegroom going to his wife. But Wu and the necromancer had managed -it.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_19"></a>19</span> Wu was an iconoclast—China is full of iconoclasts. Moreover, it -was scarcely feasible to bring so young a bride across China in the -early spring—treacherous often and uncertain always. And Mrs. Li, who -was not well and who hated travel, had insisted upon conducting the -details of the wedding herself. That clinched it. Mrs. Li ruled her -husband. It is so in China oftener than it is in Europe.</p> - -<p>It would be delightful to chronicle every hour of that marriage journey -and of the splendid festivity that closed it. But this is the history -of an incident in Wu Li Chang’s maturity, and the boyhood that was -father to that manhood must be hinted in few, swift syllables.</p> - -<p>They traveled as in some highly colored royal progress. Now and again -they passed an inn. But they stopped at none. They squatted by the -roadside for “rice” whenever they would, and they fared sumptuously -every day. There was whisky and mutton for the Scot, and any number of -other things that he liked almost as well. When it rained—and in the -month it took them to reach Pekin it rained in angry torrents four or -five times—they stretched out in their padded palanquins and slept. -Each night they rested in comfortable bamboo huts that relays of the -mandarin’s servants had erected in advance; and when they had eaten -and had wearied of chess, the musicians sat outside and tinkled them -to sleep, and often the crickets joined in the throbbing music—and -sometimes the pet linnet too.</p> - -<p>Because they traveled in such state, the peasants, with which many of -the districts through which they passed teemed, never pressed near -them. But in the wildest parts there were a hundred evidences of human -life and industries. Tiny homesteads jutted from the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_20"></a>20</span> rocks, perched -on the crags, hung beside the waterfalls. Wood-cutters, grass-cutters, -charcoal-burners passed them hourly and made obeisant way for the -shên-shih or sash-wearers, as the Chinese term their gentry. On every -sandstone precipice some great god was carved—Buddha usually—or a -devout inscription cut in gigantic letters—gilded, as a rule. Each -day they passed some old temple, ruined or spruce and splendid; some -days they passed a score; and nearing or leaving each temple was its -inevitable stream of pilgrims with yellow incense bags slung across -their shoulders—for Buddha shares the imperial yellow in Northern -China. Each pilgrim cried out “Teh fu”—acquire bliss—or “Teh lieo -fuh”—we have acquired bliss—and to them all the mandarin sent cash -and rice or doles of cowry shells, and sometimes bowls of liangkao, the -delicious rice-flour blancmange, colder than ice and more sustaining -than beef-tea, or plates of bean-curd, the staff of Chinese coolie life.</p> - -<p>They passed through groves of tallow trees, winged willow, hoangko, -walnut, acacia, poplar, camellia and bamboo; through miles of brilliant -fire-weed, arbutus, peanut and golden millet; through jungles of -loquat, yellow lily and strawberry.</p> - -<p>Everywhere there was running water, jade-green or musk-yellow or -frothing white: water clear and unpolluted always, for in Asia it is a -crime to befoul or misuse water.</p> - -<p>When the short twilight died into the dark, from every temple or hut, -by path or on hill, glints of lamp radiance sprang into the night, -and lamps glowed along the river banks; from every traveler’s hand a -jocund silk or paper lantern danced, and everywhere the kwang<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_21"></a>21</span> yin -têng—“lamps of mercy” the Chinese name these will-o’-the-wisps—darted -and burned.</p> - -<p>The days were golden, and the nights smelt sweet.</p> - -<p>And from then Muir had but one quarrel with China: it had made Japan -seem to him forever commonplace.</p> - -<p>James Muir had never enjoyed himself so intensely before: every moment -was a picture and a feast. And often now, sitting alone in London, he -closes his book-tired eyes and dreams that he is back once more in -China, crossing the Sze-chuan hills with a mandarin he admired and -a boy he loved, or sipping hot perfumed wine at the indescribable -kaleidoscope that was the marriage of Wu Li Chang and Li Lu, and -thinking sometimes, not without a sigh, of all he relinquished when the -great boat on which Wu Li Chang went to England took him—the tutor—as -he well knew, forever from China.</p> - - - - -<div class="chapter"> -<hr class="x-ebookmaker-drop divider" /> -<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_22"></a>22</span> -</div> - -<h2 id="iv">CHAPTER IV<br /> -<span class="smcap">Wee Mrs. Wu</span></h2> - -<p class="noi"><span class="dropcap">I</span>T was love at first sight. The bride crowed at the bridegroom, and he -forgot his grave new dignity and his ceremonial mandarin robes, and -clapped his little yellow hands and danced with delight.</p> - -<p>The bride’s part might have been performed by proxy, and there had been -some talk of this, Mrs. Li volunteering for the vicarious rôle. But Wu -Li Chang’s lip had quivered mutinously, and so the suggestion had gone -no farther.</p> - -<p>All was performed punctiliously—or nearly all. One “essential” had -been discarded perforce. The baby bride had torn off her red veil -and screamed her refusal to wear it. So Wu Li Chang had seen his -betrothed’s face some hours before he should. It was a brazen bride, -but very bonnie. She wore less paint than an older bride would have -worn, for Mrs. Li feared for the new, tender skin. Li Lu was a gleeful -bride. The feigned reluctance and the daughterly wailing had to be -omitted with the veil. She played with the strings of bright beads that -hung over her from the bridal crown, and peeped through them giggling -at her bridegroom. She laughed when their wrists were tied together -with the crimson cord. Wu Li Chang thought the hot marriage wine less -nice than that he usually drank at home; but when a few drops from his -cup were poured upon her mouth she sucked her lips eagerly and pursed -them up for more.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_23"></a>23</span> -Even Muir, who had small flair for babies, thought this one very -pretty. She was as fat as butter, but not nearly as yellow as Devon -butter is when creamed from kine that feed on buttercups and clover -there. Her tints were more the color of a pale tea-rose. She had -bewitching dimples and the exquisitely lovely eyes which are a Chinese -birthright. And her grandfather-in-law thought that she would be -surpassingly lovely as a woman; for Mrs. Li, whom he saw now for the -first time, was as beautiful as any woman he had ever seen, and his -proud old heart was much content, for he knew well how a wife’s beauty -comforts her husband’s years.</p> - -<p>She was married on a daïs, of course, but instead of sitting—as she -should have done—on a chair of state, she was tied upright in her -cradle, the perpendicular bamboo cradle of Chinese babyhood, very much -the size and exactly the shape of the huge tins in which farmers send -milk to London—to be seen in their hundreds any morning at Victoria or -Paddington.</p> - -<p>When the last of the hundred rites was over, Li lifted up the mite to -carry her to her own room; but she stretched out her arms to little -Wu in unmistakable desire, and he sprang to her and gathered her into -his arms and carried her himself up to her nursery and her women: the -happiest and the proudest bridegroom that ever was—and the mandarins -almost chuckled with delight and the Scot felt oddly queer.</p> - -<p>After that the boy was free of the women’s quarters (the fragrant -apartments) in the inner court. He had many a good game of battledore -and of kites in the spacious grounds and in the courtyards with his -wife’s brothers—she had six, and they were all very kind to him; but -most of his time he spent squatted on the polished cherry-wood floor -of her room, nursing the babe.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_24"></a>24</span> He liked that best of all. She was a -placid mite, but she seemed to like his arms, that never tired of her, -almost as much as they loved nesting her so—and she slept longest or, -waking, smiled sunniest when they encradled her. Even the day the foul -fiend colic came and cankered them both, she seemed less tortured in -his holding, and it was he who soothed her first.</p> - -<p>And so they spent their spotless honeymoon. And much of it they spent -alone. Her amah watched them from the balcony where she sat sewing, -and Li’s prettiest concubine tottered in now and then on her tiny -feet, sent by Mrs. Li to see that all was well. But amah and concubine -counted scarcely as more than useful, necessary yamên furniture to the -boy, and were no intrusion.</p> - -<p>No man of his rank in all China had more or comelier concubines than -Li, and none concubines that were finer dressed. Mrs. Li saw to that. -She was a strict and punctilious stickler in such things. Her lord had -grumbled sometimes at the expensiveness of “so many dolls”—for he -was thrifty—and once he had flatly refused another semi-matrimonial -plunge. But Mrs. Li had lost her temper then, called him bad things, -and smacked him with her fan, and after that he had let her be, and -she had enlarged his string of handmaidens as she chose, and he had -paid for them; for he loved his wife, and feared her too, and she had -borne him six strong sons. But he saw to it that all the concubines -served her well. In English (and in the other tongues of Europe) more -exquisitely ignorant nonsense has been written about China than about -any other subject, and far the silliest and crassest of it all about -the facts of Chinese womanhood.</p> - -<p>Mrs. Li did not neglect her baby, and she was too<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_25"></a>25</span> good a mother and -too proud not to nurse the little girl herself, and she toddled into -the nursery as often as the hour-glass was turned thrice, coming in -slowly, leaning on an attendant’s arm because her own feet were so -very small and useless. As a matter of fact, she could move about -quickly enough, and run too (as many of the small-footed women can), so -skillfully had her “golden lilies” been bound. But she did it privately -only or when she forgot. It was not a fashionable thing to do.</p> - -<p>She nursed little Mrs. Wu, but she did not linger in the baby’s -room overmuch. The mother of six sons was not inordinately proud -of a daughter’s arrival, although the great marriage had gilded it -considerably. And she was greatly occupied in playing hostess to her -husband’s older guest. It is not etiquette for a Chinese lady to chat -with men friends or to flutter about her husband’s home beyond the -female apartments, but a great many Chinese ladies do—ladies in most -things as canonical sticklers as Mrs. Li. Of course she never went -beyond her home gates except in the seclusion of her closed chair. The -Emperor himself would as soon have thought of showing his face freely -on the Pekin streets.</p> - -<p>So the boy and the baby were practically alone much of the time. He sat -and crooned to her and rocked her in his arms, and she crooned to him -and grew fast into his warm young heart. And each week passed in added -delight.</p> - -<p>But they passed! Wu the mandarin had much business in Pekin, aside from -the paramount marriage business that had brought him so far; he had not -been in Pekin for years till now, although his official yamên was still -here, and much of his revenue. The -<a id="yamen"></a><ins title="Original has 'yamén'">yamên</ins> -was a bleak, empty -place that he had never used as “home,” and now given up to compradores -and other<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_26"></a>26</span> underlings. He visited it daily after the wedding had been -completed, and well scrutinized his deputies’ accounts and doings. -It took time. Nothing is hurried in China except the waterfalls. But -Lord Wu’s Pekin business was done at last, and he took his elaborate -farewells of the Lis, and turned towards home, taking Wu Li Chang -reluctant with him.</p> - -<p>The boy had asked to take the baby too, even venturing to urge that she -belonged to them now. (And to Muir he confided in an unreticent moment -that he’d dearly like to include her in the ill-anticipated trip to -England.)</p> - -<p>The grandfather agreed that she was indeed theirs now. Of course she -was. A Chinese wife is the property of her husband’s patriarch. That -is alphabetic Chinese fact. But they would lend her to the Lis until -her husband returned from Europe. The boy grieved secretly and at -heart rebelled, but outwardly he was smiling and calm, made the thrice -obeisance of respect and fealty, saying, “Thy honorable will is good, -and shall by me, thy worthless slave, be gladly done,” took a stolid -(but inwardly convulsive) leave of Mrs. Wu, fast asleep on her crimson -cushion, and turned his slow feet heavily toward his homing palanquin.</p> - - - - -<div class="chapter"> -<hr class="x-ebookmaker-drop divider" /> -<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_27"></a>27</span> -</div> - -<h2 id="v">CHAPTER V<br /> -<span class="smcap">Homing</span></h2> - -<p class="noi"><span class="dropcap">B</span>UT the homeward journey was even more delightful than the journey -coming had been. The mandarin was very good to the boy, even a little -kinder than his wont, watching him narrowly with a gentle smile -glinting in the narrow old eyes.</p> - -<p>The air was pungent with the smells of coming autumn. In the wayside -orchards the trees bent with ripening fruit and were heavy with thick -harvest of glistening and prickly-sheathed nuts.</p> - -<p>There were still strawberries for the gathering, and the raspberries -and blackberries were ripe. The wayside was flushed with great waxen -pink begonia flowers and fringed by a thousand ferns. The air was sweet -and succulent for miles from the blossoms of the orange trees, and on -the same trees the great gold globes hung ripe. And the feathery bamboo -was everywhere—the fairest thing that grows in Asia.</p> - -<p>They passed groups of girls gathering the precious deposit of insect -wax off the camellia trees—blue-clad, sunburnt girls, singing as they -worked.</p> - -<p>Once—for a great lark, and just to see what such common places were -really like—Wu Li Chang and Muir had tea at an inn, a three-roofed -peaked thing built astride the road. The mandarin did not join them, -but stayed to pray at a wayside shrine dedicated to Lingwun—the soul.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_28"></a>28</span> -One day the three friends (for they were deeply that) saw the great -Sie’tu, the Buddhist thanksgiving-to-the-earth service, in a great -straggling monastery that twisted about a mountain’s snowcovered -crest, and blinked and twinkled like some monster thing of life and -electricity, for its dozen tent-shaped, curling roofs were of beaten -brass.</p> - -<p>The Scot got a deal of human sight-seeing out of that return -journeying. But it was its silent pictures and its wide solitudes that -the boy, child though he was, liked best. They moved on homewards -through a pulsing sea of flowers and fruit and ripening grain, of -song and light and warmth and vivid color, but above them towered the -everlasting hills, imperial as China herself, white, cold, snow-wrapped.</p> - -<p>The soul of China pulsed and flushed at their feet; the soul of China -watched them from her far height: China, Titan, mighty, insolent, older -than history; China, lovely, laughing, coquetting with her babbling -brooks, playing—like the child she is—with her little wild flowers.</p> - -<p>There was a tang of autumn in the air, and the cherries were growing -very ripe.</p> - -<p>Often at night they lit a fire of brush beside their wayside camp, -and sitting in its glow the old man talked long and earnestly to the -child. To much of their talk Muir listened, smoking his sweet cob in -silence. Some of it was intimate even from his trusted hearing. Nothing -was said of the voyage to England or of the years to be lived out -there. It had been said for the most already, and almost the subject -was taboo. But of the home-coming to follow and the long years to be -lived at home the old man said much. And most of all he talked to the -boy of—women. Again and again he told him, as<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_29"></a>29</span> he often had even from -his cradle-days, of the women of their clan. There are several great -families in China noted above all else for their women, and the Wu -family was the most notable of all.</p> - -<p>Most of the ladies Wu had been beautiful. Many of them had been great, -wise, gifted, scholarly. Their paifangs speckled the home provinces. -One had been espoused by an Emperor and had borne his more illustrious -Emperor-son. All had been virtuous. All had been loved and obeyed. To -treat their women well was an instinct with the Wus; to be proud of -them an inheritance and a tradition.</p> - -<p>Wu Li Chang just remembered his own mother, and his father’s grief at -her death. The father had died before he had laid aside the coarse -white hempen garments of grief that he had worn for her. The epidemic -of smallpox that had pitted the mandarin’s face for a second time had -killed the only son—the father of this one child.</p> - -<p>A great-great-aunt of the mandarin had been a noted mathematician. -Another ancestress had invented an astronomical instrument still used -in the great observatory at Pekin. On the distaff side the old man and -the boy could prove descent from both the two great sages—descent in -the male line from whom alone gives hereditary and titled nobility -in China, except in such rare, Emperor-bestowed instances as that of -Prince Kung. Wu Ching Yu and Wu Li Chang were descended through their -mothers from Confucius and from Mencius. One foremother of theirs had -written a book that still ranked high in Chinese classics, and one had -worn the smallest shoes in all the eighteen provinces.</p> - -<p>They had cause to be proud of their women, and to boast it intimately -from generation to generation.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_30"></a>30</span> -Li—perhaps in compliment for the tortoise—had given his son-in-law -a tame trained bear and a skilled juggler, and Mrs. Li had presented -Wu Ching Yu with two of her husband’s choicest concubines. The -older mandarin had graciously appointed them attendants upon his -granddaughter and to stay with her in Pekin. But the bear and the -juggler were traveling with the home-returning Wus; and when the -inevitable chess-board and its jeweled chessmen and the flagons of hot -spiced wine were laid between Muir and the mandarin, Bruin—Kung Fo -Lo was his name—danced and pranced in the firelight for the boy, who -clapped his hands and shook with laughter; the heart of a man-child -cannot be for ever sad for a baby-girl, known but two months and not -able to crawl yet. But Wu Li Chang did not forget Wu Lu. He often -wished that she might have come with them. He’d willingly have traded -the dancing bear for her, with the juggler thrown in (he had two better -jugglers at home); and for permission to forego the journey to Europe -he would have given everything he had: his favorite Kweichow pony (a -dwarfed survival from the fleet white Arabs that the Turkish horde -of Genghis Khan brought into China), his best robes, the little gold -pagoda that was his very own, everything except his cue, his ancestral -tablets, and his grandfather’s love and approval—yes, everything, even -his wife.</p> - - - - -<div class="chapter"> -<hr class="x-ebookmaker-drop divider" /> -<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_31"></a>31</span> -</div> - -<h2 id="vi">CHAPTER VI<br /> -<span class="smcap">Heart Ache</span></h2> - -<p class="noi"><span class="dropcap">B</span>UT it was summer again before he went. The mandarin was taken ill soon -on their home-coming, and all through the cold northern winter only -just lived. Death means little to the Chinese, but somehow, for all his -relentlessness of purpose, for all his iron of will, the old man could -not bring himself to part with the child while his megrim was sharp. -With spring he grew better, and when the great tassels of the wistaria -were plump and deeply purpled he sent the boy with his tutor to Hong -Kong.</p> - -<p>They took their parting in a room in which they had passed much of -their close and pleasant companionship. James Muir understood that -the old man avoided, both for himself and the lad, the strain of the -parting, long drawn out, that the cross-country journey must have been. -And Muir suspected also that the mandarin did not dare the bodily -fatigue of such a journey, no matter how easily and luxuriously taken.</p> - -<p>Muir was right. But chiefly, Wu chose to say good-by in their home—the -home that had been theirs for generations and for centuries.</p> - -<p>Except a few pagodas there is not an old building in China. The -picturesque houses, with their pavilions and their triple roofs, -flower-pot hung, curling and multicolored, spring up like mushrooms, -and decay as soon. Houses last a few generations—perhaps. Great -cities<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_32"></a>32</span> crumble, disappear, and every trace of them is obliterated -in a brief century or two. The Chinese rebuild, or move on and -build elsewhere, but they do not repair. Their style and scheme -of architecture never alter. The tent-like roofs (or ship-prow -survivals—have it as you will, for no one knows), painted as gayly -as the roofs of Moscow, make all China tuliptinted, and looking from -a hillside at a Chinese city is often oddly like looking down upon -the Kremlin. It is very beautiful, and it looks old. But unlike the -Muscovite city, it is all new.</p> - -<p>But this house of Wu, where both the old man and his grandson had been -born, was far older than a house in China often is. The Wus were a -tenacious race, even in much that their countrymen usually let slide; -and here, in these same buildings, or in others built on the same site, -the Wus had made their stronghold and kept their state since before the -great Venetian came to China to learn and to report her and her cause -aright.</p> - -<p>And it was because of this, far more than because his old bones ached -and his breath cut and rasped in his side, that Wu Ching Yu chose to -take here what must be a long and might well be a last farewell.</p> - -<p>The actual “good-by” was said standing beside the costly coffin which -had been the man’s gift from his wife the year their son was born. Wu -the grandson had played beside it when still almost a baby. He knew its -significance, its great value, and that there was no finer coffin in -China. The precious Shi-mu wood, from one solid piece of which it had -been carved, was hidden beneath layer after layer of priceless lacquer -and Kweichow varnish, both inside and out. And little Wu, who knew -each of its elaborate, fantastic details as well as if it had been a -favorite picture-book, had never been able to determine which was the -more gorgeous—the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_33"></a>33</span> vermilion of its surface or the gold leaf of the -arabesque that decorated it.</p> - -<p>The old man laid one thin claw-hand on the casket, the bleached and -taloned other on the young shoulder. “I hope that you will be here to -stretch and straighten me in it at my ease when my repose comes, and I -take my jade-like sleep in this matchless Longevity Wood. If so, <span class="italic">or -if not</span>, remember always that you are Wu, my grandson, a master of -men, the son and the father of good women, and a Chinese. You have -always pleased me well. Now go.”</p> - -<p>The boy prostrated himself and laid his forehead on the old man’s foot. -The old man bent and blessed him. The child rose.</p> - -<p>“Go!”</p> - -<p>Without a word, without a look, Wu Li Chang went. And James Muir, -waiting at the outer door, noticed that not once did the child look -back—not when they came round the devil-protection screen, not -when they passed the ancestral graves, not when they went beneath -his great-grandmother’s memorial arch, not when they crested the -hill—nowhere, not at all, not once. He folded his hands together in -his long sleeves and went calmly, with his head held high and with a -sick smile on his pale face. They were to sail from Hong Kong in a few -days, but that was a small thing: this was his passing from China and -from childhood.</p> - -<p>And as they passed south, bearing east, the boy said little. He neither -sulked nor grieved—or, if he grieved, he hid it well. But he wrapped -himself in reticence as in a thick cloak.</p> - -<p>His eyes went everywhere, but his face was expressionless and his lips -motionless.</p> - -<p>Villages, cities, gorges, lakes, hills, highways and by-ways,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_34"></a>34</span> he -regarded them all gravely, and made no comment. Even when they crossed -the Yangtze-Kiang, he looked but showed no interest. And when at last -Muir pointed into the distance, the boy just smiled a cold perfunctory -smile, and bent his head slightly in courtesy; nor did he display a -warmer interest when the exquisite island lay close before them.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>The old rock that used to be the Chinese pirates’ stronghold and -tall look-out, but on which England has now built Greater Britain’s -loveliest holding—there is no lovelier spot on earth—sparkled in the -hot sunlight. The bamboos quivered on the peak, the blue bay danced and -laughed. The sampans pushed and crowded in the harbor, the rickshaws -rolled and ran along the bund, Europe and Asia jostled each other on -the streets and on the boats.</p> - -<p>Muir stood on the ship’s white deck holding Wu Li Chang’s hand, and -taking a long last look at the city of Victoria and at the old island -it threatened to overspread, and in parts did, bulging out into and -over the sea. His thoughts were long thoughts too. He had come to Hong -Kong little more than a boy, academic honors thick upon him, but life -all untasted. Few Europeans had seen China as he had, and almost he -sickened to leave her. He was going home. In a month or two he would -see his mother, who was very much to him. But China quickened and -pulled at his heart. He knew that he would not forget China.</p> - -<p>The boat slipped slowly off, backing like a courtier from the queenly -place. And the man and the boy stood without a word and watched the -unmatched panorama dim to nothingness. The small yellow hand lay cold -and passive in the big, warm, white one. Presently Wu<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_35"></a>35</span> drew his palm -gently from his friend’s, and turned quietly away and walked to the -saloon stairs. Muir turned too, and watched the quaint, gorgeous figure -as it went—so pitifully magnificent, so pathetically lonely—but did -not follow. He understood that the boy wished to be alone. And he -himself was glad to be alone just then.</p> - -<p>Two hours later, when the dressing warning went, he found his charge in -their cabin. Wu had no wish for dinner. He had been crying—almost for -the first time in his life; the Chinese rarely weep—and besides, he -was very sick. Muir dressed without speaking much, and when dinner was -served mercifully left the boy to himself and his pillows.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Across China an old man in shabby robes left his rice untouched, and -bowed long before the ancestral tablets of his race.</p> - -<p>And that night in her sleep Wu Li Lu gave a little cry; she had cut a -tooth.</p> - - - - -<div class="chapter"> -<hr class="x-ebookmaker-drop divider" /> -<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_36"></a>36</span> -</div> - -<h2 id="vii">CHAPTER VII<br /> -<span class="smcap">A Tortured Boyhood</span></h2> - -<p class="noi"><span class="dropcap">O</span>N the whole, young Wu enjoyed the voyage. He liked the way the foreign -women eyed his clothes; not one of them had garments half so fine. He -liked the motion of the boat when once he had mastered it. There were -snatches of absorbing sightseeing at Colombo and at Malta. And in those -days one had to change boats between Hong Kong and Southampton. He had -much to think of when he chose to sit alone. He had Muir to talk with -when he liked to talk. And the captain, on whose left hand he sat at -table from Hong Kong to Colombo, was friendly without patronage and -played a good game of chess.</p> - -<p>And by some strength of will and childhood’s splendid resilience -he had thrown off (or laid away) his heart-broken apathy with his -sea-sickness. He enjoyed the voyage, on the whole.</p> - -<p>When they landed at Southampton Wu thought that he had found Bedlam, -and wondered, as he had not done before, why his grandfather had -condemned him to such hideous exile. Everything he saw revolted him. He -thought that nothing could be uglier. He was not even interested. The -very novelty had no charm. His little gorge rose. Europe—seen so and -so sounding—was a stench in his nostrils and rank offense to his eyes. -He held up his heavy embroidered satin skirts and tucked them about -him close, as a girl in Sunday-best might<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_37"></a>37</span> pick her way across the -malodorous street slime in a low and squalid neighborhood.</p> - -<p>It was late afternoon, and as they were not expected at their London -destination until the next morning, Muir put up at the hotel of which -Southampton was proudest. Wu was measurably accustomed to English food. -The mandarin had seen to it. And on the liner the young Chinese, eating -tit-bits and prime cuts from the joints at the captain’s table, had -found them good. But this was English food with a difference. James -Muir was not a selfish man—far from it—but he exulted, for the time -at least, at being at home; and he ordered a truly British dinner in a -burst of patriotism (not the less deep because its expression took such -homely form), forgetting to consult the boy’s tastes, which he knew -perfectly. They began with oxtail soup and finished with three kinds -of inferior cheese and a brew of “small” coffee which <em>was</em> very -small indeed. Wu thought it would have been an unkindness to the palate -of a coolie. And in the big, strange bed he lay awake half the night, -grieving for his old grandfather, and trying to make up his homesick -little mind which was nastiest, apple tart or salt beef and carrots, -and wondering why the gods let a people be who made and ate such salad. -His tutor had taken two helpings, and had praised the abominable beef.</p> - -<p>The train frightened him. The little (first class, reserved) box -into which they were locked, appalled and then offended. Waterloo -was purgatory. The hansom he liked. They drove to Portland Place, -and Wu went up the steps with dignified eagerness. This he knew, was -the Chinese Legation—the London yamên of a distant kinsman. This -would be better—almost something of home. They expected him here. -But it was not better;<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_38"></a>38</span> it was worse—a purgatory and a drab, dull -one. Even James Muir was struck that the hall and the drawing-room -had been subjected to unhappy furnishing. And instead of the friendly -countryman that Wu had expected to greet him at the threshold, a sleek -young English attaché, with oiled yellow hair and a lisp, came forward -leisurely, saying, “Oh, it’s you. Hello then! Come on in.” A Chinese -servant opened the door to them, but he scarcely seemed real to the -disappointed lad, and there was nothing else in the least Chinese to be -seen.</p> - -<p>Why the Chinese Legation in London should have been furnished from -the Tottenham Court Road passes respectful understanding; but it had. -It was magnificently furnished. It had been done completely and with -no stint by a famous firm. Probably that firm would have done the -work less crudely if it had been left to its own well-experienced -professional devices. But it by no means had. The youngest attaché—he -of the fair, sleek locks—suffered from conscience. He suspected that -he might never shine at international diplomacy, but he intended -to do what he could to earn his “ripping” emolument. And among -other self-imposed activities he had elected to direct the great -house furnishers and decorators. The red and yellow, about equally -proportioned, of the hall and the reception-rooms were not his own -first favorites. A nice Cambridge blue with rose trimmings he’d have -liked better for himself. But the Chinese Government was paying him, -and he meant to play the game by that Imperial Body of an imperial -people; and he played it by some hundreds of yards of red silk plush -and bright marigold-yellow satin that he considered utterly Chinese. -Wu thought it barbaric, demoniac. The Chinese Minister<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_39"></a>39</span> saw both the -intended kindness and the joke, and enjoyed the joke very much indeed, -laughing slyly and good-naturedly up his long, dove-colored crêpe -sleeve.</p> - -<p>The Minister was out, the attaché explained: had had to go—“to the F. -O., don’t you know?”—Wu had no idea what “F. O.” meant—“sorry not to -be here. Back soon,” and he ushered them up into the long, draped and -padded barrack of a drawing-room, and said again, “Hello!” but added in -a verbose burst, “I say, sit down.”</p> - -<p>It was better when the Minister returned at last from the Foreign -Office. And after lunch he took Wu into an inner room more like China, -less like Hades. But until he died Wu hated the Chinese Legation at -Portland Place. And he stayed there for five years. Then he went to -Oxford.</p> - -<p>London he never learned to like. There was no reason why he should. -But he did learn to like the country places all over the kingdom’s two -islands. For he and Muir traveled together at Christmas and at Easter -and in the summer.</p> - -<p>Muir had a British Museum appointment—it was waiting for him when they -landed. But his hours and his duties were easy, and he still drew his -larger income from the coffers of the mandarin in Sze-chuan, and he -gave much of his time and labor to his old pupil. But for the Scot and -a few of the Chinese at No. 49 the exiled boy might have gone mad, so -shaken and cramped was he by homesickness. But they were an enormous -help and refuge. He worked hard and learned prodigiously, as only a -Chinese can learn. And, being Chinese, what he once learned he never in -the least forgot.</p> - -<p>Oxford he liked from the first. Always his soul ached for China, for -her people (<em>his</em> people), her ways and her<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_40"></a>40</span> scenes: the smell of -her, the sound of her, the heart and soul of her matching to his: the -haze of her peaceful atmosphere, pricked by the music of her lutes, and -throbbing with the mystic beat, beat of the tom-tom. He thought there -were no flowers in Europe, no repose, no balance, no art, no friendship.</p> - -<p>But, for all that, Oxford thrilled him, and though he counted every -hour that brought him nearer to China, he counted them not a little -good in themselves because they passed by the Isis and in the classic -droning of Oxford days and ways.</p> - -<p>All the sunshine seemed to find him in Oxfordshire, all the shadow at -Portland Place.</p> - -<p>Small things rasped him at the Legation, and two heavy trials—one a -humiliation, the other a grief—found him out there. A few months after -his arrival they cut his cue and dressed him in an Eton suit. His rage -and shame were terrible. For months he did not forgive it—if he ever -quite did. Child as he was, they might not have encompassed it had they -not assured him that it was his grandfather’s will. That silenced but -did not console him. And he treated his new garments to more than one -paroxysm of ugly rage. Chinese calm is as great a national asset as -any of the many assets of that wonderful race. Heart disease is almost -unknown among the Chinese, and probably they owe their happy immunity -from that painful scourge to their own placidity and equable behavior. -But when they do “boil over,” as they do at times, the eruption is -indescribable—they foam and froth, and until the fit ( for it is -that) has spent itself and them they are uncontrollable and beyond all -self-control or semblance of it.</p> - -<p>Wu did not mind being laughed at in the London streets for his -“pig-tail” and his gold-embroidered<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_41"></a>41</span> satins. He was sincerely -indifferent to it. When English urchins called after him, “Chin-chin -Chinaman, chop, chop, chop,” he did not care a whit. Partly this -was good-nature—for he was good-natured as yet—and partly it was -vanity: the centuries-old vanity of a descendant of an interminable -mandarinate. He understood how immeasurably superior he was to those -who presumed to laugh at him—how much better clad, how much better -bred—and tolerated them and their peasant mirth very much in the -spirit of the old fellow in Æsop’s fable who scorned to resent the -kicks his donkey gave him because he “considered the source,” and -with, too, the quiet pride of the MacGregor who, when his acquaintance -expressed surprise that the great “Mac” had been seated below the salt -at some feast, asserted with bland arrogance, “Where MacGregor sits -is the head of the table.” But to be shorn of the cue and stripped of -the finery at which the canaille jeered maddened him and made him very -bitter.</p> - -<p>In ten years the Chinese in exile made many acquaintances, but only -one friend. Probably he filched some profit, some equipment for his -years to come, from each of the acquaintances; but, for all that, he -found most of them no small nuisance. A Mrs. Cholmondeley-Piggot was -his infliction in chief. She was a distant connection of the blond -attaché’s mother, and had gone to school with a second or third cousin -of Sir Halliday Macartney. And she had no doubt that those two facts, -by the strength and the charm of their union, made her <span class="italic">persona -grata</span> at the Chinese Legation. She called there at the oddest -times, and dropped in to lunch uninvited; and the Chinese Minister, -trained from his birth to make great and chivalrous allowance for the -vagaries of women and of lunatics, would not permit his exasperated<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_42"></a>42</span> -staff to cold-shoulder, much less to snub, Mrs. Cholmondeley-Piggot. -And so she came to Portland Place frequently and unrebuked. She called -the Minister “my dear Mandarin.” She doted on China, and did so hope to -go there some glad day. She loved the Chinese, poor dears. And once, -when she gave a dinner party, she borrowed the Legation cook; but she -only did this once. The Minister would have condoned a second time, but -the cook would not. Mrs. Cholmondeley-Piggot had called him “John,” and -asked him if Chinese children loved their mothers, and the kitchen-maid -had taken liberties with his cue.</p> - -<p>But there were others of his race—more highly born than he—whom this -lady also called “John,” among them the Minister’s private secretary, a -very proud and solemn man who was a nobleman by inheritance—there are -a few in China—and who often longed to boil the friendly Englishwoman -alive in oil.</p> - -<p>She took Wu to her heart at once; and, what was far worse, she took him -for “a nice long day” in Kew Gardens.</p> - -<p>That awful day! And she meant so well! At first she merely bored him. -Then she infuriated him. It was scarcely fair to ask a Chinese boy to -think overmuch of Kew’s prized Wistaria sinensis—there were miles of -better on the estate at home. He thought the picture of the House of -Confucius hanging in the Museum an impertinence—no red scroll of honor -above it, no joss-stick burning in homage beneath it. The Chambers -imitation of a pagoda was to him even more unpardonable. What right -had this English tea-garden sort of place with a shabby mockery of a -sacred thing of China? And the bamboos and the golden-leaf flowers of -the hamamelis and the fragrant cream blossoms of the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_43"></a>43</span> syringa made him -newly homesick. What right had the dear home-flowers to grow in Europe, -transplanted, dwarfed, caged, exhibited—as he was? And his hostess’s -remarks upon opium, as they stood beside the poppy beds, did not tend -to soothe him. Wu Li Chang did not know much about opium in those days, -but he knew considerably more than Mrs. Cholmondeley-Piggot did, and -he knew that these were not opium poppies, for all the lady or the -guide-books said—she had presented him with a guide-book, of course. -There was not much poppy culture in his part of Sze-chuan, but he knew -that much. Decent brands of opium were made from the white poppy. Some -inferior sorts, such as coolies chew, are made from the red-flowered -plants, but not such as these.</p> - -<p>To his angry young eyes the expatriated lotus plants seemed little -better than weeds; and when she expatiated upon the wonders of Kew’s -banyan tree (a picture rather of banyan fragments) he scorned to tell -her of banyans he knew well at home, trees under any one of which a -thousand men could shelter from the rain, and of one his grandfather -had seen under which twenty thousand men could hide from storm or sun.</p> - -<p>The day at Kew was a ghastly failure. But happily Mrs. -Cholmondeley-Piggot never suspected it, and was sincerely and -generously sorry that the boy could never seem to find time to go -anywhere with her again.</p> - -<p>The second trouble that came to him was on a grander scale than the -cutting of hair or the enforced wearing of strange, uncomfortable -garments. It was tragedy indeed, and almost broke his affectionate, -homesick heart. When he had been in England about a year word came that -his grandfather was dead.</p> - -<p>Wu was desperate. And now he was quite alone.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_44"></a>44</span> He belonged to no one -in all the world. And in all the world no one belonged to him except a -baby-girl just learning to walk across a floor of polished cherry-wood, -nearly eight thousand miles away in old Pekin.</p> - - - - -<div class="chapter"> -<hr class="x-ebookmaker-drop divider" /> -<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_45"></a>45</span> -</div> - -<h2 id="viii">CHAPTER VIII<br /> -<span class="smcap">Some Balm</span></h2> - -<p class="noi"><span class="dropcap">T</span>HERE was a great deal in the Oxford life that reminded Wu of China: -the beauty and the dignity, the repose, the dedication (and of some -the devotion too) to the finer things, and not less the riot of -the “wines,” the crash and clash of the “rows,” the luxury and the -elaborations. It was reminder that he found, and not resemblance. -Oxford was intensely English. He liked it none the less for that. -Nothing at Portland Place had annoyed him more than the mongrel mix-up -of West and East, the fatuous attempt to blend the unblendable. It was -neither English goose nor Chinese mongoose, and he loathed it. Oxford -was good, downright English dog, and well pedigreed; he liked the bark -and the bite of it and the honest look in its eyes.</p> - -<p>The crass mistakes so often made by his rich countrymen at such places -he avoided, partly by his own good sense and partly by Muir’s counsel -and the dead mandarin’s command. He spent of his great income lavishly, -but not too lavishly. He kept good horses, but not too good; and he -kept no valet. His entertainment was generous, but nothing much out -of the common, and never beyond the convenient return of the richer -men. He made much pleasant and useful acquaintance, but no friends. -He indulged himself a little in the furnishing of his rooms, but they -scarcely smacked of China. His jade lamp had cost a great deal, but a -young duke had one that had cost more. He had a little bronze and<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_46"></a>46</span> some -lacquer, but he had no kakemonos and burned no incense. Quite a number -of the other students had kakemonos by the half-dozen, and burned -joss-sticks elaborately.</p> - -<p>Wu worked prodigiously at Oxford and played industriously. He enjoyed -the work. There were some brilliant men at Oxford then, but no mind -better than his, and no industriousness to equal his. He took nothing -much in honors—that was not in his grandfather’s scheme; but he -assimilated an immense amount of alien fact and thought. He learned -Englishmen. He read many books and mastered them. But he had been sent -to Europe to study men and peoples, and he never forgot it or swerved -from it for an hour. None of his fellow undergraduates particularly -liked him, but few disliked him, and he interested many. Several of -the dons and fellows did like him; with one he might have had intimacy -if he had cared to, and from studying Wu two of the wisest reversed a -lifelong estimate of China and the Chinese.</p> - -<p>He excelled at all he did there. But almost always he was at pains to -be surpassed at the last lap; and when now and then he won, he made it -his inexorable rule to win by but a hair’s breadth.</p> - -<p>Not all his fellow undergraduates treated him with entire courtesy. -Some laughed at him openly at times and called him “Chops.” And because -these presumably were gentlemen he was not so altogether indifferent -to it as he had been to the gibes of the gamins on the London streets. -He was young enough to wince at the criticisms of companions he was -Chinese enough to despise.</p> - -<p>He studied women too when he had the chance, but with all them his -relations were impeccably ceremonial and on the surface. His being -was in China still, and<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_47"></a>47</span> no English girl stirred his pulse or fogged -his subtle shrewdness. James Muir, who watched over him faithful as a -mother, had somewhat feared for him when the passing of adolescence -into first raw manhood should come pounding at the door of sex. Muir -knew that in that experience Englishmen in exile usually found some -impulse toward vagary irresistible. But Wu lived on unruffled—alone in -Europe, and content with loneliness.</p> - -<p>He did not forget Li Lu, but he rarely thought of her now. No doubt she -would do well enough when the time came to assert his ownership and -desire sons. In the meantime, he was absorbed in carrying out to the -minutest particle his grandfather’s behest.</p> - -<p>There was a girl at a parsonage where he sometimes visited that he -thought less uninteresting than the others he met, less like a horse -or a tornado or a pudding, more like a girl. And Florence Grey made -him shyly welcome at her tea-table and taught him to play croquet. -She played a beautiful game, and in their second match he could have -beaten her. He gave her father’s church a new organ, and made her -first bazaar an unprecedented success: he half stocked the tables, -and then saw that they were swiftly stripped. She knew of many of his -“kind contributions,” though not of all his re-purchases—they were -indirectly made, and Mrs. Muir in Scotland was not a little aghast at -the frills and flummeries her son sent her in three big packing-cases. -And the Vicar looked a little askance at the presence of a smirking -heathen god, conspicuous, but not for being overdressed, on his -daughter’s stall.</p> - -<p>After the Oxford years came several years of travel, sometimes with -Muir, sometimes not. One summer Wu was the Muirs’ guest in their simple -Scottish home.</p> - -<p>After her first sternly concealed qualm or two, the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_48"></a>48</span> friend’s mother -took an immense liking to the young Chinese, and her he liked at once, -perhaps better than he had ever liked any one but his grandfather and -her son. And it was in no way an attraction of opposites. Worth and -courage recognized worth and courage, and felt at home with them. Ellen -Muir and young Wu were both indomitable, naturally upright, proud, -clannish. They had twenty qualities and several prejudices in common.</p> - -<p>They talked together gravely for hours. He helped her often as she -moved keenly about her housework, and Muir rocked with silent laughter -at the sight, knowing that those delicate yellow hands had never -performed anything menial before, and in all human probability never -would again.</p> - -<p>Wu watched his hostess with lynx eyes, and the more he watched the more -be respected and admired. Late at night, in the hour he invariably -spent alone, and had done so from his first coming to England—the hour -in which he read and wrote and spoke and thought in Chinese, when in -spirit, and bodily too, he made obeisance to his ancestors’ tablets -across the world—he wrote down carefully much that she had said and -that he had learned from her. Among his many sons the gods might send a -daughter, and if they did she too should learn of Ellen Muir.</p> - -<p>Wu knew, of course, that many of the English ladies he had seen at -theaters and had met at aristocratic dinner-tables were respectable, -above reproach. But he had never yet escaped a shudder of contempt when -he had seen one “dressed” for evening. He had seen the coolie women, -in the cocoon sheds on his grandfather’s silkworm farms, scantily -clad in one brief garment, that by their own chilliness they might be -warned if the room grew too cold for the delicate spinners, and that -they<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_49"></a>49</span> might easily shelter the hatching worms beneath their breasts, -but that semi-nudity was a necessity and had a use, and rarely was -the privacy of the shed invaded; but women undressed (as he termed -it) collectively, voluntarily, and interspersed among men, he thought -abominable. Ellen Muir did not dine in décolletage.</p> - -<p>The eminent scholar—for as such the scholar world now recognized Wu’s -once tutor—she commanded, and even at times reprimanded, sharply, -exacting and receiving the docile obedience of a tractable child. -And that appealed to Wu as inevitably as did the high-necked stuff -gowns. Mother ruled sons so in China. And in China sons showed their -mothers just such meek obedience. The keeper of many of the most -valuable treasures at the British Museum spilled marmalade on her best -tablecloth one day, and she scolded him roundly, and Wu saw nothing -funny in it, and would not, had he known that the son had bought the -cloth and kept up the home.</p> - -<p>The little house stood on one of the loveliest of Scotland’s hillsides. -A brown burn rushed by the door. Great birds wheeled and whirred above -the eaves. This woman almost worshiped the beauty of her homeland, and -it touched her to see how much their strange guest saw and felt it. He -saw even more of it than she did—though, fortunately for their mutual -liking, she could not suspect that—and he felt it very much indeed. It -reminded him of the country beside the Yangtze in the neighborhood of -the Falls of Chung Shui.</p> - -<p>One long vacation Wu and Muir climbed the Alps and the London papers -reported Wu killed. But it was another Chinese, an undergraduate at -Cambridge whose name was Ku, who had misstepped and slid down into the -engulfing ice. But the mistake reached Oxford, and<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_50"></a>50</span> several there were -sorry to hear it. And Florence Grey, who had been married the week -before, heard it on her honeymoon, and felt a little saddened for a few -moments. He had always seemed a nice boy, and he was so far from home.</p> - -<p>Once he lived for three months in Tours, alone with the people and the -language.</p> - -<p>After Oxford he traveled carefully, as he had done everything so far, -sometimes alone, sometimes with Muir, searching Europe for every -experience that might serve his grandfather’s desire and plan.</p> - -<p>When Wu was twenty-four he went home. James Muir had half expected to -be asked to go also, but Wu did not suggest it.</p> - -<p>His European phase was over, and he wished to be alone with his own -people in his own land.</p> - -<p>Bland and courteous to all, yet he spoke little on the long voyage, but -sat looking out across the waters towards China. And he did not trouble -to leave the boat either at Malta or at Colombo.</p> - -<p>But he was not dreaming as he sat brooding, looking out to sea. He was -planning, for himself and for his race.</p> - -<p>There were international clouds ahead. Wu saw them.</p> - -<p>A week in Hong Kong—he had much to do there—and then he pushed across -the mainland that was still China, where feet of Europe rarely trod, -and journeyed to his home.</p> - -<p>When he had paid his long respects to the graves and the tablets, he -set his house in order, and the estate. But indeed all had been well -kept in his absence. It seemed as if the old mandarin’s spirit still -brooded there and his adamant will still ruled.</p> - -<p>To visit all he owned took Wu some months, though he<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_51"></a>51</span> went swiftly, by -boat, by horse, and in chairs with which the coolies ran, for there -were several wide estates and a score of smaller holdings.</p> - -<p>All seen at last and ordered to his mind, he took the old winding road -to Pekin and knocked at Li’s yamén gate.</p> - - - - -<div class="chapter"> -<hr class="x-ebookmaker-drop divider" /> -<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_52"></a>52</span> -</div> - -<h2 id="ix">CHAPTER IX<br /> -<span class="smcap">Wu Li Lu</span></h2> - -<p class="noi"><span class="dropcap">W</span>U did not see his wife in Pekin. He stayed with Li several days, and -long and earnest was their talk, many and deep their interchanged -kot’ows, and the cups of boiling tea and tiny bowls of hot spiced wine -they drank together innumerable. Mrs. Wu was well, they assured him, -and utterly inconsolable at her approaching departure from her parents. -She wept and wailed continuously, and would not be comforted. Wu bowed -and smiled. For this was as it should be. No Chinese maiden would do -otherwise, and his bride’s high estate predicated an utmost excess of -grief. And once he caught through a wide courtyard the noisy storm of -her grief. Evidently she had been well brought up, and Wu was highly -satisfied.</p> - -<p>He took profoundly respectful farewells of Mr. and Mrs. Li and hurried -home.</p> - -<p>And while he waited for the coming of his bride, some days thinking of -it a good deal, some days thinking of it not at all, he had twofold -and strenuous occupation. He divided his time between preparation for -the reception and the housing of his wife, and laying the foundations -of his own relations with the -<a id="innumerable"></a><ins title="Original has 'inumerable'">innumerable</ins> -“tongs” or secret societies that in China play so powerful and so -indescribable a part in all things of great pith and moment, and more -particularly in everything touching international affairs and the treatment -of aliens in China.</p> - -<p>Sociology and political economy had been no small<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_53"></a>53</span> part of Wu’s studies -in Europe; there he had observed and gleaned much on those lines that -he planned to graft upon the sociological and political methods of his -own people.</p> - -<p>While studying Europe he had kept in passionate touch with China. He -knew that the mighty current of her being ran underground. He was -permeated by things European now, for the time at least, but was in -no way enmeshed by them. He did not make the mistake that some highly -intelligent Chinese have made after years of European study and -travel—the mistake of underestimating the quality, the power, and the -permanence of the “tongs,” of which so comparatively little is heard, -so much felt, in every part of China.</p> - -<p>He knew that who ruled China in deed must rule through the secret -societies of that tong-ridden and yet tong-buttressed land; he knew -that who would influence and serve China greatly must work through the -tongs, or work but half effectually.</p> - -<p>He intended to rule in China, to be one of the supreme powers behind -and beneath her throne; for he was loyal to the Imperial Manchu, in -his heart held no traffic with republicanism or rebellion, and meant -to hold none with his hands. He intended to rule because dominance was -his nature and his delight, and equally because he believed it to be -his duty—his duty to China and to the house of Wu. Even more than he -intended to rule he intended to serve. He was his country’s servant. -He had dedicated his life to China, and sworn her his fealty on almost -every day of his exile.</p> - -<p>He determined to rule and to serve with and through the established -tongs, and himself to establish others, because he saw clearly that so -he could serve best, and with the surest, tightest grip.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_54"></a>54</span> -While he waited for the girl to come with noise and cavalcade, he -stayed at home and in the neighborhood of home; but every day odd -messengers came and went, quiet, unobtrusive men. Often Wu was closeted -for hours with some shabby-looking coolie, footsore and travel-torn. Wu -was seeking and making affiliation with tong after tong. He was sowing -seed all over vast China.</p> - -<p>But he found time, or took it, to oversee every item of the bridal -preparation. So lavish had been his orders on his first home-coming, -and so well had they been obeyed, that further preparation might have -been dispensed with—only a Chinese mind could have detected blemish or -contrived improvement or addition. Wu’s mind was very Chinese. Thirteen -years in banishment had not discolored it in the least. Everything that -Lu would touch, every place that she would see, was in some way or -detail given additional beauty or comfort. In her garden he lavished a -wealth of care. The very flowers seemed to respond to his urging, as -things much more inanimate than flowers do respond to such a master -will as that of Wu. Wu Lu’s garden foamed and glowed with bud, perfume -and flower, until even in China there could scarcely have been another -spot so roseate or so full of rapture.</p> - -<p>There was a pagoda of course, a bridge, a lotus lake, a sun-dial and a -forest of tiny dwarf trees.</p> - -<p>The pagoda had eleven storeys. Each storey’s projecting roof had eight -corners, and from each corner Wu had hung a bell of precious blue -porcelain, silver lined, silver clappered. The slightest breeze that -came must set one or more of the delicate things a-ringing, and by a -costly and ingenious device each motion of a bell threw down on the -garden not only music, but<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_55"></a>55</span> sweet, aromatic smell—a different odor, as -a different note, from each bell.</p> - -<p>That was the last thing Wu could find to do.</p> - -<p>And then they gave him his wife. They brought her to him through the -gloaming one balmy autumn eve, sitting hidden in her flowery chair, -carried through the paifang which he had regilded and newly crimsoned -in her honor and in that of his never-to-be-forgotten great-grandmother.</p> - -<p>She came in greatest state, and much of the glittering ceremonial -they had enacted fourteen years ago they re-enacted now; and all that -necessarily had been omitted before because of her tender days, and of -the marriage having been (irregularly) celebrated at her home in lieu -of his, was scrupulously performed now.</p> - -<p>At the house door he bent and lifted her from her chair, which the -bearers had put down on the ground. She shrank back on her cushions -into the farthest corner when he drew the curtains aside, and when -he reached to touch her she panted delicately like some frightened -pigeon. He could not see her, even when he held her in his arms, for -she was shrouded from crown to toe in her voluminous veil of crimson -gauze. There had been no difficulty about her wearing it this time. -She knew all the niceties of her important rôle, of which she had -been so outrageously ignorant before, and performed them to a Chinese -perfection. He saw only a red-wrapped bundle—it felt soft and tender -to his gentle grip—with an under-gleam of jewels and gold, and the -iridescent glitter of the strings of many-colored beads hanging from -her crown thickly over her face. And no one else saw even that much, -for when the chair had been laid at his feet the bearers and all her -retinue and his had turned away and stood backs to the chair.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_56"></a>56</span> -He carried her in, holding her over a dish of smoking charcoal at the -threshold, that all ill-luck might be for ever fumed away from her.</p> - -<p>In the great hall he sat her high up upon her chair of state and took -his seat on his. For more than an hour they sat so, and neither spoke. -But when the wild goose which the medicine-man flung from a lacquered -cage circled about her head and not about his own, indicating that she -would rule, not he, Wu laughed aloud, and under her red veil the girl -looked down at her half-inch embroidered shoe and smiled well pleased.</p> - -<p>They drank from one cup. The crimson cord was tied about her wrist and -his, fastening them together now for weal or woe.</p> - -<p>At length he rose and led her to the tablets of his ancestors—hers too -now, for Li was no longer her father—and there they bent together and -paid homage again and again.</p> - -<p>Then came the marriage feast.</p> - -<p>And through all the incense burned, the tom-toms bleated brazenly, -a hundred instruments gave out their unchorded melodies, and the -slave-girls shrilled Chinese love-songs in their sweet falsetto voices -and a marriage hymn that is four thousand years old.</p> - -<p>And all this time he had not seen her face, and she but dimly his.</p> - -<p>But at last they were left alone. One by one the horde of people who -had witnessed and served them made repeated -<a id="obeisance"></a><ins title="Original has 'obesiance'">obeisance</ins> -and withdrew.</p> - -<p>They were alone.</p> - -<p>Gently, carefully, slowly he led her into an inner room, and there -he lifted the red veil and looked at her face. After a long moment -she raised her pretty almond eyes and looked in his—two gorgeous, -bedizened figures,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_57"></a>57</span> standing very still, with a cloud of red silk gauze -heaped at their feet.</p> - -<p>Wu made a sudden sound that was almost a sob, and held out his arms.</p> - -<p>“My flower,” he said.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>All night long the perfume of the flowers, the sweet, shrill voices of -the sing-song girls, and the soundings of the guitar and the flutes -stole softly in through the chamber casements; all night long they -heard the throb, throb of the drums and of old barbaric love-songs; and -all night long each felt the beating of the other’s heart.</p> - -<p>After that Wu Li Lu forgot that she had had a father and a mother, -brothers, girl-friends and a home in Pekin. And Wu let all the days -slip by, forgetting business of his own, affairs of China, life-plans, -life-schemes, almost forgetting his grandfather; scarcely remembering, -his wife’s soft hand in his, to make obeisance before the old, old -tablet in front of which their children would bow and worship them in -far-off years to come, when he and Wu Lu should be dead.</p> - -<p>For a year they lived in paradise, the pretty paradise that comes but -once and does not come to all.</p> - -<p>Mrs. Wu was as sweet, as delicate, as the graceful pet names he called -her. She had no great strength of character, and little distinction of -mind. How long it would have taken the infatuated man to learn this is -impossible to guess. Whether, when learned, it would have diminished -her fascination in the least is as difficult to determine, but, on the -whole, probably not, Wu being Wu in China China.</p> - -<p>When their first year closed in she bore him a daughter, and in bearing -died.</p> - - - - -<div class="chapter"> -<hr class="x-ebookmaker-drop divider" /> -<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_58"></a>58</span> -</div> - -<h2 id="x">CHAPTER X<br /> -<span class="smcap">Nang Ping</span></h2> - -<p class="noi"><span class="dropcap">T</span>HE years passed, and Wu took no other wife. Time enough, he reasoned; -and while he devoted himself, body and soul and seething, subtle -intellect, to the big tasks he had set himself and had had set him -by the old mandarin long ago, the bachelor habit grew upon him and -encrusted him with its self-sufficient and not unselfish little -customs, as it does so many men of Europe. Perhaps in this and in some -other things Europe had marked and tinged him more than he knew.</p> - -<p>Except for his wifelessness, he kept all such establishment as a -Chinese gentleman should; there were flower-girls in his retinue and -much in his life of which Ellen Muir would have disapproved violently.</p> - -<p>He had felt no disappointment at the sex of his firstborn. Perhaps -his grief (it was very great) at Wu Lu’s death made him indifferent -to the great sex-blemish in the child. Or possibly his descent from -Queen Yenfi and from a score of ladies little less able or less -famed gave him an unconscious estimate of the woman-sex strangely -un-Chinese—unless China be misreported.</p> - -<p>Mrs. Li had petitioned for the custody of the babe, but Wu had refused -sternly. “She is a Wu. She stays with Wu.” But he conceded a point—a -minor point. A younger sister of Mrs. Li was widowed at about the time -of Wu Lu’s death, widowed while still a bride and childless. She begged -to come and be foster-mother and servant to the motherless babe; and Wu -had consented<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_59"></a>59</span> to her coming, for a time at least, partly because he -had known and liked her husband, partly in pity for her widowhood—the -most uncomfortable condition in Chinese life, and abjectly deplorable -when the indignity of childlessness is added—partly because he had no -kinswoman of his own to fill a post which he instinctively hesitated to -confer on any hireling. Sing Kung Yah came; Wu found her amiable and -tractable, and, he thought, fairly efficient. Of her fondness for the -child or the child’s fondness for her there could be no doubt, and her -place in their household soon came to be one of established permanency. -From the first Wu exacted for her treatment from his retainers such -as Eastern widows rarely enjoy, and gradually he gave her some real -authority, as well as much show of it, in addition to the lavish -courtesy he paid and enforced for her. Sing Kung Yah was pathetically -grateful. She never heard of Ellen Muir, and little thought that she -owed her unprecedented ease of widowhood to the dignity and firm -despotism with which an Aryan woman had worn her weeds in Fife.</p> - -<p>When Nang Ping was three her father brought her to Kowloon, and when -she was thirteen established her as mistress of the tiny and very -charming estate he had bought and perfected there, just beyond the -English holding, and where he made his home when his business lay, as -it did more often than not, in Hong Kong.</p> - -<p>He knew now that he should take no wife. He had no wish to, and he -saw no necessity. For he could adopt a son—presently. There was time -enough. A wife was neither here nor there, but certainly a son was -indispensable. He could not die without a son. Without a son he could -not be properly buried, or mourned and worshiped.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_60"></a>60</span> -Upon the great wealth his grandfather had left him he piled wealth -far greater. But far beyond the riches he amassed he amassed power -and influence. The ramifications of his influence were endless and -tortuous. Tze-Shi felt Wu’s influence as she decreed policies, signed -edicts and enacted laws of tremendous reach, weaving and fraying out -the destiny of China, and there was not a coolie in Hong Kong but felt -and obeyed it. No one in China—unless it was Tze-Shi herself—wielded -more power than Wu.</p> - -<p>He held the Chinese in Shanghai, in Penang and in Rangoon, in Bentick -Street and in Yokohoma, in the hollow of his hand.</p> - -<p>Wu wore a mandarin’s button now. And he had presented himself at one of -the great national examinations in the first year of his fatherhood. To -be enrolled among the literati served him and his purposes, as it did -to wear the coveted peacock feather. But he did not overvalue either of -the showy distinctions, or often wear them conspicuously. Chinese to -the core, superficially he was no little cosmopolitan. All that he had -found good in English life and in English ways he adopted frankly, but -always for a Chinese purpose, with a Chinese heart. At home he usually -wore the dress and ate the food of his country, but not always. Out -of his home, at least in the treaty ports, he was usually dressed as -Englishmen dress, but not always.</p> - -<p>Nang Ping had more apparent freedom than other Chinese girls of fair -birth have; and some of it was real. She had English governesses from -time to time. She spoke English almost as purely as her father did, but -with less vocabulary and far less command of idiom, and French quite as -well as he; she played Grieg and Chopin better than Hilda Gregory—the -rich steamship magnate’s<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_61"></a>61</span> only daughter, and not a contemptible -pianist—so the German music master who taught them both had told the -Governor’s wife.</p> - -<p>The Gregorys had been in Hong Kong for a year—the mother, the son and -daughter, as well as Mr. Gregory himself. But the two girls had never -met. Hilda Gregory went everywhere, but Nang Ping did not often leave -Kowloon.</p> - - - - -<div class="chapter"> -<hr class="x-ebookmaker-drop divider" /> -<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_62"></a>62</span> -</div> - -<h2 id="xi">CHAPTER XI<br /> -<span class="smcap">In the Lotus Garden</span></h2> - -<p class="noi"><span class="dropcap">K</span>OWLOON was drenched with sunlight, and the lotus garden was drenched -with music. A minstrel paused a moment to drink in the beauty of the -great lilies, white, yellow, pink, amber and mauve, one that had cost a -fortune, clear pale blue, one that had cost more, a delicate jade green.</p> - -<p>The strolling singer retuned his lute and moved across the garden, -singing as he went.</p> - -<p>It was the typical garden of a rich Chinese home—so repeatedly -caricatured on the “willow-tree-pattern” crockery of cheap European -commerce—caricatured but also somewhat accurately portrayed. But the -gardens on the plates for sale in half the pawnshops in outer London -(the aristocracy of the pawnbrokers will not look at them any more), in -every household furnisher’s in Marylebone and Camberwell, in Battersea -and Shoreditch, and on the business streets of every British town and -village, are of one uniform Chinese blue—the blue the sampsan women -wear when their clothes are new—and background of white, Chinese -white, appropriately enough. This living garden in Kowloon was of every -vivid hue on nature’s prodigal palette, and its background was of blue -hills and purple haze and blue, white and limpid golden sky.</p> - -<p>A twisted camel’s back bridge of carved stonework, like coarse lace in -its pierced tracery, dragons squatting and guarding its corners, and -flowers hung from it<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_63"></a>63</span> everywhere in baskets of bamboo, of crystal, of -painted porcelain and of lacquer, spanned one corner of the lake, above -which a crooked flight of steps at each bridge-end lifted it high. -Dwarf trees in glazed pots, some on the ground, rarer specimens on -carved stands of teak wood and of ebony, stood here and there. And in -the artificial water, half river, half lake, which the miniature bridge -crossed, the priceless lotus grew and glowed. Most of the great lily -cups were pink, others were deeply red.</p> - -<p>Some distance from the house there was a pagoda open to the garden, its -plaid floor strewn with cushions, a book or two, a woman’s scarf, and -from every outer point and eave hung a pot or a basket in which flowers -of every brilliant hue grew and bloomed.</p> - -<p>A sinuous gravel path turned from the dwelling-house to the outer wall, -twisting and turning ingeniously all over the garden, passing close -to the cypress bush at the foot of the steps that led to the bridge, -skirting the baby grove of dwarf orange and lemon trees, and encircling -the gnarled old cherry tree.</p> - -<p>Whatever we may think of China, the sun thinks well, and shines so -gloriously nowhere else. It made the flowers in Nang Ping’s garden -glow with a vivid brilliance that was part their own, part his; it -touched the summits of the hills seen in the distance with a light blue -haze which deepened to purple at their base. Against that dark purple -background the sumptuous little garden foreground glowed with a riot of -color, and quivered with pulsing, scent-breathing flowers.</p> - -<p>A servant squatted on his yellow heels, picking up dead leaves and -broken flowers heads, gathering them into his tidy basket. Another -gardener was sweeping the gravel path as carefully as if it had been -the velvet carpet than which it was no less soft.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_64"></a>64</span> -Four girls tripped down the bridge, chattering and laughing as they -came, and the gardeners took up basket and broom and moved away.</p> - -<p>Hearing the singer (he had left the garden now), the girls rushed -with one accord, and climbed and clambered up until they could peer -at him over the wall. One poised like a fat balloon-shaped butterfly -on the high edge of a great flower-pot, two jostled together tip-toe -on a majolica bench, and one (the smallest footed of the lot) climbed -squirrel-nimble up a tulip tree. They pelted him with flowers, tearing -blossoms ruthlessly from shrub and vase and vine and tree, and each -commanded him shrilly to sing to her her favorite song.</p> - -<p>“Chong-chong er-ti” (professional singer), “sing on,” one cried; “Yao -won chong” (let us play with him), another; and the girl in the tree -tore the jasmine from her hair and tossed it into his hands.</p> - -<p>He leaned against the wall and sang:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse outdent">“Over green fields and meadows Tiny Rill ran</div> - <div class="verse indent10">(The little precocious coquette!);</div> - <div class="verse indent2">She was pretty, she knew, and thus early began</div> - <div class="verse indent10">Gayly flirting with all that she met.</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Her favors on both sides she’d gracefully shower;</div> - <div class="verse indent2">One moment she’d kiss the sweet lips of a flower,</div> - <div class="verse indent10">The next lave the root of a tree;”</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="noi">and as he sang, Nang Ping, with Low Soong, her cousin, in her -wake, came slowly from the house, and stood listening too, one finger -on her lips, her eyes far on the fading hills.</p> - -<p>They did not see their mistress—they were her play-girls, in -attendance on rich Wu’s child—until the man had done and gone. But -when they did they rushed to her, laughing and pelting her with speech. -“Nang Ping! Nang Ping! Come, play with us! Come, play!”<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_65"></a>65</span> But she beat -them off, saying, “Go away. I do not want you now. Go away.”</p> - -<p>But they clustered the closer and girdled her with their arms, but -again she shook them off, repeating impatiently, “Pa choopa, pa -choopa;” and realizing that she meant it, they went, tumbling against -each other as they ran laughing and singing, and turning as they went, -and hurling flowers at her, and crying, “Pu yao choopa,” that they did -not wish to go away.</p> - -<p>When they had gone the cousins went to the pagoda, looked in it, and -then about it, carefully. Then they beat the garden as some careful -watchman might some treasure-place of price.</p> - -<p>It was growing dusk.</p> - -<p>The girls went together to the lotus basin, and stood a long time -looking down into its darkling glass. But neither spoke. The brilliant -lilies were softer-colored now, turning to pink and blue-greys, and the -red few almost to ruddy black.</p> - -<p>A long, low whistle pierced through the gloaming from beyond the wall.</p> - -<p>Nang Ping’s tiny hand clutched excitedly at her sash. “Soetzo”—“go and -watch over the bridge,” she told her cousin quickly. But Low Soong had -already gone.</p> - -<p>The blackbird whistle came again, nearer, but very soft.</p> - -<p>Nang Ping answered it with a high falsetto crooning, and in a moment -more a man cautiously parted the bamboos that grew clumped beyond the -wall, vaulted it, and stood within the garden. Nang Ping ran to him -with a little gurgling cry, and he caught her in his arms.</p> - -<p>No Chinese lover this, in Oriental gala dress, with glancing amber eyes -and coarse threads of strong red<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_66"></a>66</span> silk prolonging his long braid of -straight hair, but a Saxon, wide gray-eyed, a distinct wave in his fair -short hair, trim and British in his well-cut suit of white duck, with -the crimson cummerbund wound about his waist.</p> - -<p>He looked down with laughing tenderness at the picturesque little -creature in his clasp, half-affectionate, half-amused, and she looked -up at him with all a woman’s soul—soul aflame—and all a nation’s -passion in her eyes, adoring and perfect trustfulness.</p> - -<p>“Oh! my celestial little angel,” he murmured at her flushing cheek.</p> - -<p>The girl nestled closely and sighed with content, and he held her, and -played with the dangling jewel in her fantastic hair.</p> - -<p>“You have been so cruel long, Basil,” the girl told him gently, but -moving not at all.</p> - -<p>Basil Gregory laughed lightly. “So? I could not come before. You’re an -impatient puss.”</p> - -<p>Nang Ping shook her sheeny head, and the red flower in her wonderfully -dressed hair shook and quivered, and all the jade stick-pins and the -hanging emeralds and turquoise jangled against the tassel of small -pearls that she wore pendant from her comb. “No. I am never impatient. -But the sun-dial tells not lies. You came not soon, and I did miss you -hard.”</p> - -<p>“Well, I’ve brought you news. Guess.”</p> - -<p>“Thy honorable mother——”</p> - -<p>“Good girl! You’ve guessed it first go. My mother and Hilda are coming -to-morrow to make the acquaintance of pretty Miss Wu and to see her -very honorable garden.”</p> - -<p>“Your mother and your sister,” the girl said under her breath softly. -“Ah!”</p> - -<p>“They were no end pleased to come, especially the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_67"></a>67</span> mater. She’d come -quick enough anywhere I told her to. We’ve been the greatest chums -always, the mater and I. Hilda pals with the governor, but she’s no end -keen on China, the motherkin—goes into all sorts of smelly dives and -dens after blue plates and shaky ivory balls, and—and all that sort -of thing, you know; reads the rummiest books, knows all about spotted -dragons and crinkly gods. She bought one yesterday, a rum, fat fellow -made out of some sort of crockery stuff; he sits squatted on the floor -this minute in her own room, and if you pat him on his noddle the old -chap nods it, and goes on nodding it, too, for a blessed hour by the -clock”—Nang Ping understood less than half of this truly British -ramble, and listened to it with a puzzled smile—“and she is no end -keen to come, to see how things are done in real China. I wouldn’t -wonder if she wrote an article for one of the picture papers at -home—‘The Chinese at Home,’ or some such stuff. I say, you’ll be sure -to give her tea Chinese fashion. No borrowed European tricks, you know; -just pucka Chinaman way!”</p> - -<p>Nang Ping understood the drift, if not quite all his words. “It shall -be as you wish: Chinese reception, Chinese delicacies, offered Chinese -way.”</p> - -<p>“That will be ripping then.”</p> - -<p>“How strange it will be to talk with thy honorable mother!” the girl -said wistfully. “And thy sister! Is she like me, or more beautiful?” -she asked most seriously. And that he might judge his answer the more -nicely and adjust his answer to exact truth, she went from him a few -paces, opened her fan wide, spread out her arms, and stood very still, -a pathetic figure of Chinese girlhood on view, waiting, anxious but -meek, an Englishman’s verdict. And then, remembering that the light -was somewhat dim, she came a little nearer, but not<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_68"></a>68</span> too close, and -repeated her grave question, “Is thy honorable sister like Nang Ping, -or even more beautiful?”</p> - -<p>Basil laughed with kindly patronage. “Hilda?” Strolling to the wide -stone bench he threw his hat on to it and sat down. “All nice girls are -like each other, Nang Ping. Hilda’s so-so. But Tom Carruthers thinks -she’s ‘top-side’ nice. Carruthers, the governor’s secretary, and I -rather think he’s going to be my honorable brother-in-law. The governor -won’t object. Tom’s right enough, and old Carruthers got any amount of -tin. The Right Reverend John B. thinks Sis nice too, or I’m greatly -mistaken. It’s a queer freak for a parson, for Hilda isn’t exactly -churchified, but Bradley finds her nice all right.”</p> - -<p>“And my lord finds me nice?”</p> - -<p>The gray eyes narrowed. “Very nice,” the man answered, and held out his -arms.</p> - -<p>She went at once and sat down on the other end of the bench. Gregory -bent and kissed her, and presently she kissed him in return. And the -sudden darkness thickened, creeping closer, for there is no true -gloaming, no lingering dusk, in the Orient. It is day there, or else it -is night.</p> - -<p>The glow-worms came out then and speckled the garden with tiny points -of fire. Nang Ping called them by a prettier name: kwang yin têng, -lamps of mercy, as her father had called them when, as a boy of ten, he -crossed Sze-chuan to wed her baby mother in Pekin.</p> - -<p>They kissed again, the man and the girl. Kissing is not a Chinese art. -Basil Gregory had taught Wu Nang Ping to kiss.</p> - -<p>“Oh! if only I could!” the girl said impulsively, and then broke off as -suddenly as she had begun.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_69"></a>69</span> -“Could what, Nang Ping?” He asked it a little uneasily—uneasy at a -something in her voice.</p> - -<p>“Tell them all about us,” she replied simply, but her voice aglow with -ecstasy at the thought.</p> - -<p>Gregory was aghast. “Tell them all about us!” he cried hoarsely.</p> - -<p>“Oh! not all things,” she whispered, creeping a little closer in his -arms. “There are some things one would not tell, even to the birds.”</p> - -<p>Basil Gregory’s conscience, to its credit, shuddered sickly then, and -his arm trembled, not in tenderness, but in shame.</p> - -<p>But self-preservation is indeed the first law of much man-nature, and -he said quickly, “I don’t mind what you tell to the birds, but you must -be extremely careful not to let my mother or sister know. <span class="italic">Extremely -careful</span>,” he repeated with dictatorial emphasis.</p> - -<p>“Why?”</p> - -<p>“They would not understand.”</p> - -<p>“Why?”</p> - -<p>He made no answer, and after a little she questioned on, “They would -not like to know that <em>you</em> are happy?”</p> - -<p>“Of course they would, but——”</p> - -<p>“And that it is I that make you happy?” the light young voice pestered -on wistfully.</p> - -<p>The Englishman shifted uneasily on his seat. “Oh, no! nothing of -that sort, to them, Nang Ping,” he said petulantly. “Don’t try to -understand. Just leave it all to me.”</p> - -<p>“But,” the girl persisted, “do they not understand love?” She put her -arms about him.</p> - -<p>“Oh! well,” he parried, “you see, they are English—very English.”</p> - -<p>“But they are women.” The Chinese girl shook her<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_70"></a>70</span> head, smiling -unconvinced, and all its jeweled filigree twinkled and winked in the -opalescent half light. “They are women. All women understand love, even -before the man comes to teach them. We are born so. Your honorable -mother and the honorable Hilda, they understand; Nang Ping is sure they -do, the wise and virtuous ladies.”</p> - -<p>“Not—not altogether. You see, things are different with us. Secret -love is not looked upon like—like married love.”</p> - -<p>The girl laughed softly. “Then let it be no longer secret!” she purred -contentedly, warmly willing to make his people hers, their ways her -ways. “You shall tell them!” she said brightly, laying her little hands -palm down on his.</p> - -<p>“Oh! but, Nang Ping,” Basil began miserably. But Nang would have none -of that. She nestled to him closer still. “Basil,” she interrupted, -“if our love were not secret, but married love, and I flew away with -you before my honorable father came back, then would thy honorable -mother like me in her house?—if I did that—for love make brave for -everything?”</p> - -<p>Gregory was almost choking. But he controlled himself: that was the -least he could do for her now. “Dear child!” he said huskily, and then -he kissed her. There was tenderness in his kiss, and passion and bitter -remorse. She felt the passion and the tenderness. He broke from her -gently and moved away, standing looking down moodily at the darkening -lotus flowers, distressed, all his light-hearted happiness of idle, -selfish weeks gone, gone forever. “Oh, Nang Ping!” presently he said -ruefully, “it would be better if you had never met me,” and he moved -restlessly still a little farther away.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_71"></a>71</span> -But still she would not understand. She rose and went to him, and put -her little arms about him again. “No,” she said with tender, caressing -emphasis, “because I am happy.” And then she added—for it was growing -dark, something that lay warm on her heart to say—that must be said -soon now, “Basil’s honorable mother would like me then, if—if I gave a -son to worship at the grave of thy ancestors!”</p> - -<p>Gregory recoiled a little from the girl’s gentle, clinging -arms—recoiled with a startled cry: the world-old cry of man confronted -for the first time with very self; the cry of man hoist at last with -his own petard. But pity, too, for her, as yet so free from pity -for herself, welled up in him (he was not all bad—who is?), and he -controlled himself again for her sake. It was difficult, but even so -it was not much to do in return for what she had done for him. And it -was the only return that he could make, or would, the giving her some -gentleness of treatment even in the crash of his own dismay. He came -back, and caught her elbows in his hands, and held her from him so—at -arm’s length. “Nang Ping,” he tried to say it lightly, “what amazing -ideas you get into your head!”</p> - -<p>“No,” she said stoutly, “not so! Listen! All the women in China make -one big prayer in the temples to the goddess Kwan-Yin”—he released her -arms, letting his fall at his sides helplessly, his fingers clenched in -his palms—“a prayer to her to bring them a son!”</p> - -<p>Her lover turned away, distressed, tormented.</p> - -<p>“Oh!” he said brokenly, “what a fool I’ve been!” It is almost the -oldest of the man-cries, almost as old as “I love you” and “I take you -for my own.”</p> - -<p>Nang Ping ran to him, crying, “Oh! how I love you, Basil! I want to -fill my hands with happiness to pour<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_72"></a>72</span> it at <em>your</em> feet. Do you -know how my mother died? She died when she bore me to her lord my -father. And I would gladly die so, only the child must be a son, to -worship at your grave and to teach his sons and his sons’ sons to -worship so.” The pretty, delicate creature clung to him in an ecstasy -of devotion, all her fresh womanhood dedicated to him, and then she -laughed softly, pressed her hands together in a lightened mood. “Oh! I -would gather the dew from the cherry blossoms to bathe me in its scent, -to make me more beautiful to thee!” And this, too, was an old, old cry, -as old as woman-sex.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent4">“You see me, Lord Bassanio, where I stand,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Such as I am: though for myself alone</div> - <div class="verse indent2">I would not be ambitious in my wish,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">To wish myself much better; yet, for you</div> - <div class="verse indent2">I would be trebled twenty times myself.”</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>A girl in Belmont put it so, in a dream a man dreamed beneath an -English mulberry tree. And girls have said it countless times, each -girl after her own sweet fashion, and men have accepted it, some in -manhood splendidly, some in dastardy cravenly. Basil accepted it in -shame, drinking the bitter cup of his selfish brewing.</p> - -<p>“But,” he said, bending over her tenderly as she clung to him, “you are -as beautiful as the cherry blossom itself, Nang Ping.”</p> - -<p>She bent back and looked up searchingly into his face, and then she -broke away and danced a little from him, as if too quick with her own -joy to stand longer still. “And as happy as heaven!” she cried. “Ah! -and when they see me, will they not guess?”</p> - -<p>“Oh! but you mustn’t let them; you must not,” his answer came quickly.</p> - -<p>She shook her head slowly. “But I am all happiness<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_73"></a>73</span> that I cannot -hide.” Then a new thought caught and frightened her, and she turned -back to him anxiously. “If they guessed, would they take you from me?”</p> - -<p>“Why, yes,” he told her quickly, snatching at her idea; “they -might—yes—yes—certainly they would.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, no, no! That would kill me.” She shuddered as she spoke.</p> - -<p>He went to her now, and standing behind her put his arms about her -again. “Oh!” he said contritely, “you mustn’t think so much of me, Nang -Ping. You were happy before—before you met me——”</p> - -<p>“But I was only waiting for you to come,” she said.</p> - -<p>At that he kissed her. How could he help doing it?</p> - -<p>“I was really only two moons old. I was only sleeping and waiting, like -those lotus flowers, waiting for you to come and wake me. You are my -summer and my sun.”</p> - -<p>“That’s all very poetical, Nang Ping,” he said, fondling at her -elaborate and stiffened hair, “but you must not take all this too -seriously, you know.”</p> - -<p>She broke away from him at that, speaking wistfully as she moved. “I do -not understand you. You are the poem of my life and the song that sings -in my heart!”</p> - -<p>The man’s face darkened with trouble. He was indeed troubled. But -still he spoke kindly, and he went to her and caressed her lightly, -soothingly, as he said, “Listen, Celeste.”</p> - -<p>“Ah!” the girl cried, “you gave me that name. That makes me yours. I am -Nang Ping no more.”</p> - -<p>“Listen, Celeste”—at a change, a chilliness in his tone, she stiffened -a little; it is so most women face a blow—“my people are going -home—father, mother, my sister Hilda——”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_74"></a>74</span> -“So soon!” But her face brightened, in spite of herself, as she said -it; it was not such very bad news after all. “How can they bear to -leave you?” she added wonderingly.</p> - -<p>“They can’t,” Gregory said desperately. She did indeed stiffen then. -And there was piteous accusation in her eyes. But she said nothing; and -presently he went on lamely enough, “and that is what I had to tell -you.”</p> - -<p>“You—you are leaving me?” the girl said very quietly.</p> - -<p>“I must.”</p> - -<p>“But,” she said intensely, “you will not go. You will tell them that -you cannot go—<em>now</em>!”</p> - -<p>He must have understood her then, if he had failed, as he had tried to -fail, to do so before. “I couldn’t tell them about you, dear.” Poor -wretch! it was the best that he could find to say. “With us, things -like that are not so easy,” he added weakly.</p> - -<p>“But you could tell them that you cannot leave me,” Nang Ping pleaded. -“You <em>must</em> tell them that,” she whispered desperately.</p> - -<p>“But I am not leaving you forever, little one,” the man faltered. -“England is not many weeks from here.”</p> - -<p>“Yes, but I cannot follow you!”</p> - -<p>Follow him! The heavens forbid! “No, of course not,” he said quickly, -“of course not, you silly little Celeste. But I shall come back. Some -day, when you least expect me, I shall be here in the lotus garden or -in the pagoda.”</p> - -<p>“The pagoda!” she moaned.</p> - -<p>“The pagoda,” he hurried on, “where we learned to love.” He tried to -draw her to him, but she recoiled. “No, no!” she cried hotly. “If the -bird of love once<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_75"></a>75</span> leaves its nest, the nest grows cold.” And then she -broke quite down and threw herself sobbing on the steps of the bridge.</p> - -<p>“Oh, Celeste!” Basil Gregory said wretchedly, humbly—he was humbled, -for the hour at least, and wretchedly uncomfortable—“I—I didn’t know -your love could mean so much, but—but—oh! well, don’t you see?—won’t -you see?—even if I didn’t go it could not last forever, this.” That -was bad and crude enough; but he went on and made it worse (such men -usually do). “I—I am not a mandarin in my own country, not even the -son of one; and you know <em>you</em> are to marry a mandarin here in -your—your own country.” (He had heard that more than once in Hong -Kong; and really he had supposed she knew he knew. It was commonly -known. And many wondered why Wu Li Chang had let it wait so long.)</p> - -<p>Nang Ping looked up at him, her narrow eyes wide with horror. “Not -now!” she said tensely. “And when I tell my august father why, he will -kill me,” she added as quietly.</p> - -<p>“You—tell him why?” the man cried in consternation.</p> - -<p>“Yes, because now I do not wish to live.”</p> - -<p>“You must not tell him!” he said roughly.</p> - -<p>“Only when you are gone, or he would kill you too!” Nang said, simply -and without bitterness. The Englishman winced. “He will ask me why I -disobey him, and I shall tell him.”</p> - -<p>“Don’t do that—not that! I couldn’t have it on my conscience!” And -indeed he tried to believe that he said it for her sake. “Keep our -secret, Celeste,” he begged. “Think of the perils we have run whilst -he was here”—the Chinese girl smiled a little at that<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_76"></a>76</span> wanly—“of the -happiness we have had when he has been away, as he is now. Tell him -nothing, for fear, for fear, dear, that when I came back we should -never again be able to meet.”</p> - -<p>“You will never come back.”</p> - -<p>“I will, Celeste—I swear it! I swear it now! I see things differently.”</p> - -<p>“You will never come back.” She turned slowly, and without looking back -went on into the house.</p> - -<p>“Celeste, come back! Nang Ping! Nang Ping!” he called, and she knew -that he was calling her to say at least good night, as was their -custom, in the pagoda. But she neither slowed her quiet step nor turned -her head. The pagoda had sheltered her happiness; it should not be -soiled by her despair. She went on and left him standing alone by the -lotus lake.</p> - -<p>He waited there a while, confident that she would come back to him; but -presently, convinced that she would not come that night, or perhaps -could not, he went stealthily away, very sorry for himself and not a -little vexed with Nang Ping: the offender is easily vexed.</p> - -<p>Low Soong came from the coign of watch, looking after him curiously, -and wondering what had happened. She had seen little and heard nothing, -but she sensed trouble in the air. Basil did not turn or speak to her, -and when he had gone she passed slowly into the house.</p> - -<p>There was not a sound in the garden. The darkness had come. Nothing was -visible except the gay lanterns and many lamps lit on the walls and -at the house-door, and in the deserted garden itself the vivid pulse -of the glow-worms poised on shrubs and trees or winging brilliantly -through the purple night.</p> - - - - -<div class="chapter"> -<hr class="x-ebookmaker-drop divider" /> -<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_77"></a>77</span> -</div> - -<h2 id="xii">CHAPTER XII<br /> -<span class="smcap">O Curse of Asia!</span></h2> - -<p class="noi"><span class="dropcap">D</span>O you know Hong Kong? If not, you are poor with poverty indeed. Except -in China earth has no lovelier spot, and heaven itself needs none. The -interior of the island is almost bleak, not beautiful, but its edge is -paradise.</p> - -<p>Other unknown wonder-places you may a little learn from books, from -travelers and from pictures, but not Hong Kong. No words can in the -least describe it. The attempt is an impertinence. Canvas and camera -are useless too. “Hong Kong,” the gazetteers say, means “Fragrant -Streams” or “Place of Sweet Lagoons.” But they are absurd. “Hong -Kong” means “superbly beautiful.” If you know it, your eyes have been -enriched forever. Climb the Peak, feathered with fern and bamboos, you -are enwalled in beauty. Go far along the island by-ways, beauty leans -toward you from every side, and beckons you on and still on. Pause on -the bamboo-outlined path that bisects the great amphitheater of Happy -Valley, and you may bathe your spirit and your sight in beauty, whether -you look to the right, where the graves of European dead in China rest -beneath their sumptuous coverlets of flowers, or to the left, where the -Chinese jockeys, with their blue petticoats tucked up above their brown -hips, and their bright satin jackets showing up their dancing cues, and -English boys in regimental colors—gentlemen riders—canter neck to<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_78"></a>78</span> -neck on the race-course, rehearsing the ponies for to-morrow’s race.</p> - -<p>It is a unique juxtaposition, that sweet and perfumed bit of God’s -acreage, and the lurid, teeming race-course, the dead men’s bones -(and women’s, too, and babes’) just under the grass, and the betting, -straining, champagne-drinking, well-dressed crowd, with only a narrow -strip of yellow, bamboo-fringed path between; unique as is the old -juxtaposition of life and death, and, too, strangely eloquent and -appropriate of Anglo-Chinese life.</p> - -<p>Hong Kong! Heaven and Hell in one. Hong Kong a gem of lovely, laughing -China given to Britain—or, perhaps, loaned for a century or two. Wu -often wondered which.</p> - -<p>Every light in Victoria seemed twinkling hard as Basil Gregory’s boat -gained the shore, a lamp in every window, a thousand painted paper -lanterns, no two shaped or colored alike, swaying ambiently in the -hands of coolies who trotted along the bund and up the hill paths, -along the Bowen Road and peak-climbing streets, carrying chairs, -pulling rickshaws, or running errands, uninterested but faithful, the -most reliable hirelings on earth, and often, when the European employer -gives himself half a chance with them, the most devoted.</p> - -<p>Basil walked some distance from the spot where he had landed before he -hailed a rickshaw. The naked coolie grunted a little at the address the -Englishman gave him, but said grimly, “Can do.” For Gregory had named -a bungalow that nestled in a tiny grove of persimmon and loquat trees, -nearly halfway up the Peak—and Hong Kong Peak is steep.</p> - -<p>It was not his home address that he had given, nor that of any club -respectable or otherwise, or tree-hidden<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_79"></a>79</span> wayside tea-house, but the -bungalow of a man he had treated none too well, and to call upon whom -this was an odd hour.</p> - -<p>In our moments of greatest personal dilemma and peril we seek the -strangest confidants: sometimes in half-crazed desperation, sometimes -in shame and fear of our nearer and dearer, sometimes instinctively, -and <em>then</em> oddly often it proves well done. But whatever the most -general explanation, most of us are prone at such tremulous times to -lean upon some one not of our constant or closest entourage.</p> - -<p>Basil Gregory had little estimate of Wu’s position and power, and -none at all of Chinese character. But he had heard something of Wu, -of course, and had read unconsciously something of her father between -the pretty lines of Nang Ping’s gilded home life, and the young fellow -realized that he was in personal peril, though he had not the least -impression of how much.</p> - -<p>He knew that he needed advice and a sounder judgment than his own.</p> - -<p>His mother was his chum, and had been from his birth—they had stood -together and pulled together always; but he could not take this to -his mother. And he hoped to goodness it need not reach his father’s -ear. He feared his father’s anger far less than he did his mother’s -sorrow, and he divined that the paternal anger would be nine-tenths -financial and not more than one-tenth moral. But such an escapade as -his was calculated to injure a business that depended considerably -upon a nice balance of British interests and Chinese industriousness -and acquiescence. And the elder Gregory could be nasty at times, and -disconcertingly close-fisted too. Certainly he could turn to neither -parent now. He was not brave, but he certainly would have thrown -himself<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_80"></a>80</span> into Hong Kong harbor or into the deadlier foaming rapid of -Tsin-Tan rather than have had his mother know the truth about Nang Ping.</p> - -<p>In his schooldays he had made half friends, half foes with a boy a few -years his senior, whose influence, the little way it had gone, had all -been to the good for Basil.</p> - -<p>Basil had not done well at school or at ’Varsity. But ’Varsities -are fairly used to that, and are built of long-suffering stuff, and -young Gregory’s shortcomings had not over-mattered at Queen’s. But at -school—a nice school, strictly run—he had been in serious trouble -more than once, and once had been saved from expulsion by Jack Bradley, -and at some sacrifices on Bradley’s part.</p> - -<p>Both the school and the ’Varsity had been rather inappropriately -selected. Basil came of commercial stock and was dedicated to a -commercial life, and commercial life of a sort for which a few years’ -business training in Chicago would have been more useful preparation -than any amount of term-keeping at Oxford. But Gregory the father, who -had had a very limited education, was, as is usual with such men of -means, obsessed that his son should have the public-school and ’Varsity -hallmark that he himself lacked. And Mrs. Gregory had wished it no less -ardently. She had Oxford associations in her blood and of her girlhood, -and her own father had worn an Oxford hood and held a modest incumbency -near the town.</p> - -<p>Basil Gregory learned some of the prescribed lessons at public school: -he had to. And he might have learned something of books and other -erudite lore at Oxford, for they do teach at the ’Varsities any one who -insists upon being taught. But Basil had not insisted, and left Oxford -knowing a little less than when he went.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_81"></a>81</span> -Bradley had been at Queen’s, but had worked while Basil played, and -such intimacy as had been between them died away, naturally enough, -in the wider life and the greater individual freedom and scope of -’Varsity. But they had met sometimes; and once Bradley had been of -great service to Gregory.</p> - -<p>When Basil had reached Hong Kong a year ago, John Bradley had been -serving there for some time as a curate in the Cathedral Church of St. -John.</p> - -<p>The young priest had held out an eager, friendly hand at once, but -Basil had almost ignored it. It was shabby of him, and he knew it at -the time. He knew that the other’s overtures were not in the least to -the rich ship-owner’s son, but altogether to an old schoolmate newly -come to a foreign country.</p> - -<p>The priest—he lived quite alone—was just sitting down to his solitary -dinner when Basil’s rickshaw came through the gate, ran up the path -between the tall lychee trees, and stopped at the door.</p> - -<p>The older man gave the younger the cordial greeting of their old days, -and added, “Come and eat. Oh! but you must. I’m famished.”</p> - -<p>And Basil sat down, both glad and sorry to postpone even by half an -hour the unpleasant tale he had come to tell.</p> - -<p>The priest was no anchorite, and his simple food was good, his -wine sound. Both had their flattering tonic effect upon the easily -influenced peccant, and as he ate and drank his misdemeanor dwindled -away in his own eyes, until almost it seemed to him that he had been -more sinned against than sinner.</p> - -<p>But it seemed nothing of the sort to John Bradley, and it was soon -evident as Gregory unfolded his errand while they smoked on the tiny -balcony that jutted out<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_82"></a>82</span> into the begonias and laburnums of the little -garden. The priest was sorrowful, but the man was furious. With some -effort he heard the other through, and then he ripped out an ugly oath.</p> - -<p>The visitor was astonished. Old John had always been a bit particular, -of course—had to, don’t you know, and all that—but a man of the world -and a thorough good sort. And this was not the first confession his -schoolfellow had made to him.</p> - -<p>“I say, easy all,” Gregory protested. “I wish it hadn’t happened”—you -nearly always do—“but you needn’t play Peter Prigg. It isn’t one of -your flock. The girl’s a nice little girl. I’m fond of her, I tell you. -But she isn’t one of your reserved flock. She’s Chinese——”</p> - -<p>“Oh, hell and damnation!” interrupted Bradley, striking the well-built -railing with a fist so angry that the interlaced bamboos quivered and -shook, “that’s the infamy of it. If you had to be a beast, don’t you -see how much less loathsome you’d have been if you had seduced some -girl of your own race?”</p> - -<p>The other was too dumbfounded to reply, and the priest pounded on: -“O curse of Europe! That such men as you pour into Asia and do this -damnable thing! You’ll boil in oil for this. You insufferable ass! -Don’t you realize in the least who and what her father is? You might -better have affronted Tze-Shi herself. Boil in oil, I tell you, and, by -God, so you ought! If it were not for your mother, I’d help Wu to heat -it. How would you like some Chinese man to do to your sister what you -have done to this girl? Oh! you needn’t spring up like that. You’ll not -put a finger to me. I could pitch you over there, down to the road a -thousand feet below, and for half a string of counterfeit cash I’d do -it too.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_83"></a>83</span> Oh! Basil, old chap, how could you, how could you——”</p> - -<p>“Well,” sulkily, “I’m not the first.”</p> - -<p>“No,” brokenly, “and you’ll not be the last. And where will it end, -where will it end!”</p> - -<p>“I thought you——”</p> - -<p>“Oh! I don’t mean where will this special case end—for you and for -that poor child I know how it will end—but how will it all end?—the -putrid inter-racial welter and tangle that we Christians have made! -And we—misunderstanding China, spoiling China, insulting her people, -fattening on her industry—we, we English call ourselves men! We push -our way into China. We laugh at everything she holds sacred, mock what -we should admire, condemn what we lack the brain to understand, spit on -a culture four thousand years older and in a good deal as much deeper -and more sincere than ours, we steal what we want—oh, yes! it’s just -that, most of it—we teach her boys to smoke opium, we show her a dozen -new corruptions, teach her twenty new sins, we seize and spill her -thimbleful of saki and give her a tumbler of brandy, and her women—her -women——” he broke off.</p> - -<p>The other man winced now. He knew there were tears in Bradley’s eyes, -perhaps on his face. Just once before he had known John in tears, and -he thought of it now, a never-to-be-forgotten radiant summer day when -a young boy, an only child, had been publicly expelled from school for -the saddest of young crimes—the one crime that even the laxest of our -public schools neither forgive nor condone—and sent broken home to his -mother, a widow.</p> - -<p>“You’d like to throttle me when I dare say, ‘How would you like it, -what would you think of it then, if a Chinese man treated your sister -as you have treated this<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_84"></a>84</span> Chinese girl?’ Well, I say it again—and I -hold your sister very dear—I say it again. And I say more: I say, -‘<em>Why not?</em>’ You have set the example—you and some generations of -Christian gentlemen! And I tell you the day of reckoning will come.” -With a gesture of despair he picked up his discarded pipe and filled it -with nice men’s opium—tobacco.</p> - -<p>When he had lit his pipe, Bradley sat and pulled at it moodily, and for -a while Basil, thrashed and sore, sat and watched him. But the prick -of personal dilemma could not give way long to, or even be dwarfed by, -any thought of a general tragedy, be it as great and terrible even as -Bradley averred.</p> - -<p>“You said you knew how this was going to end for me——”</p> - -<p>“And for her! Yes. It began in selfishness. It will go on, forever, in -misery. It will end in misery. But there is just one thing now. A crime -can never be so damned black that it can’t be made blacker. Yours is -black enough, and it is going to stop right there. You must marry her.”</p> - -<p>“I say——”</p> - -<p>“You needn’t. There is nothing for you to say; you have come to me for -help, and I am going to help you, as far as I can.”</p> - -<p>“But——”</p> - -<p>“Oh! there’ll be trouble—plenty of trouble. Wu will never forgive -you or the poor child; though it’s he himself he ought not to forgive -for having let a Chinese girl out and unwatched so <span class="italic">with us English -about</span>. He’ll punish you both, and what Wu does he does well. -There’ll be no escaping him. No boat will take you beyond his reach, no -spot on earth hide you. You can’t stay in China with her. Her position -would be too intolerable,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_85"></a>85</span> even for one of us to inflict on a woman. -You must take her to England—if you can get there. And even if Wu lets -you do the best you can with the monstrous mess you’ve made of life for -yourself and for her, you’ll both be miserable there, but not quite so -miserable as you’d be in China. England is the one country on earth -where the Eurasian, the poor innocent mongrel result of such conduct as -yours, is treated a little better than contagion and vermin. Think what -chance your children would have here! You have seen such children here, -and how they fare!”</p> - -<p>Little as he, in common with most of his race, had troubled to observe -in Asia, Basil Gregory knew well enough how those half-European, -half-Chinese were despised and treated in Hong Kong, and how much -more despised by the Chinese than by the Europeans. And he knew -too—though not so thoroughly as Bradley did—that to the Chinese at -least such Eurasians were doubly despised when born in wedlock. The -Chinese mind has some contemptuous shrug of “n’importe” for such racial -misdemeanor that is unaffectedly wanton, but to that mind marriage -makes the gross miscarriage ten times more putrid. Such few attempts at -European-Chinese marriage as are braved in China are between, almost -always, European men and Chinese women. Exiled, the Chinese will marry -and treat well and honorably the women of the race of the place in -which he lives—he does it in Singapore, in Chicago and in Rio—but -never for him such mixed marriage in China.</p> - -<p>Basil had no intention of making the experiment in China or otherwise. -Escape, not atonement, was his intention.</p> - -<p>“Yes,” he said presently, “and if only for that reason, the children, -don’t you see that it would better end here<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_86"></a>86</span> and now? At the -worst—now—one. But if—if I did marry Nang and take her to England, -there might be others.”</p> - -<p>Bradley groaned. “It is all very difficult. The consequences of wrong -always are. I don’t see my way. You must let me think a bit; perhaps -to-morrow I’ll see what’s best, least bad!” He groaned again, but -he did not tell Gregory that it had just occurred to him that legal -marriage without Wu’s consent might prove impossible. Wu’s consent -would never be had, he thought. They solve such problems differently in -China. They cut them.</p> - - - - -<div class="chapter"> -<hr class="x-ebookmaker-drop divider" /> -<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_87"></a>87</span> -</div> - -<h2 id="xiii">CHAPTER XIII<br /> -<span class="smcap">Mrs. Gregory</span></h2> - -<p class="noi"><span class="dropcap">O</span>N one point, and on just one, John and Basil had agreed last night: -Mrs. Gregory was to be spared as much as possible. She and Hilda were -to remain happily ignorant of what had happened—ignorant of it in its -worst form, if that could be compassed.</p> - -<p>Basil had carefully omitted telling the clergyman of the proposed visit -of the morrow. He would have cancelled it if he could have thought of -any way. But he had not a devisive brain. His mother had quite set her -heart on the excursion. He felt safe that he could trust to Nang Ping’s -pride. Her pride would carry her through, and save and screen him, as -such outraged womanly pride has saved and screened such men ever since -Eve gave an apple to a man in Eden.</p> - -<p>In this episode of Nang Ping (a little nefarious episode of his life; -the soul-crux, the supreme tragedy of the girl) Basil Gregory cut -the sorriest figure, for he had but toyed with her, he had indulged -passion, passion had not mastered him, she was his toy, he her god; he -felt tenderness for her, but not love; he had not the great excuse of -a great love. His lingering by the sun-drenched lotus pond and in the -scented dark of the old pagoda had been mere dalliance, not obsession. -And yet the young Englishman was not all bad—far from that. To no one -do the wise lines of the Western genius apply more closely:</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_88"></a>88</span></p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse outdent">“In men, whom men proclaim divine,</div> - <div class="verse indent4">I find so much of sin and blot;</div> - <div class="verse indent6">In men, whom men condemn as ill,</div> - <div class="verse indent6">I find so much of goodness still—</div> - <div class="verse indent2">I hesitate to draw the line</div> - <div class="verse indent4">Between the two where God has not.”</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>There is a streak, at least, of angel in most women and in all men. -Basil had a rich vein of angel. All that was best in him leapt to his -mother. They had been sweethearts from the first. Such love as he had -loved as yet was hers. It was a chivalrous love, and passionate. The -other primal love, the love of man for his mate, might come to him: -probably it would; it comes to most, but it would never equal the love -he bore his mother. No other woman would ever be to him half that his -mother was, or have from him half that he gave her.</p> - -<p>Mothers that are loved so can face most sorrows with some buoyancy. -This mother had sorrow, and she fronted it almost blithely.</p> - -<p>Between these two, in a very beautiful sense, the spiritual umbilical -cord had never been cut, and never would or could be cut.</p> - -<p>She appealed to him in a dozen ways. She was gifted with youth. She -laughed at the years, and they laughed back at her and caressed her. -She looked his own age, scarcely more, and some days, in some moods and -in some lights, she looked his junior. And, too, hers was a radiant -personality. Her son joyed in her. He was proud of her, and proud to -be seen with her. And she gave him love for love. But her love for him -needs no explanation, nor merits one; he was her boy and her firstborn.</p> - -<p>The night before, after Bradley had cried, “I don’t see my way. You -must let me think,” the two men<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_89"></a>89</span> had sat silent for a time, and then -the clergyman had re-begun, trying again to thrash it out, breaking -nervously the silence he himself had enjoined. And he had referred -again to the hideous discomfort of mixed marriages.</p> - -<p>The waters of the Tigris do not mingle with the salt water of the -sea until they have flowed through it a long, long way from the -river-mouth. And so, it seemed to him, many suffering generations -must pass before, if ever, any marriage could in truth unite races of -East and West, or result in descendants less than sorely unhappy and -bitterly resentful.</p> - -<p>But marriages that tie the bloods of alien races are not the only -mixed marriages. There are mixed marriages of another sort that bring -as much, perhaps more, discomfort to the two most directly concerned, -although they entail no social inconvenience: marriages of alien -individualities. Such his mother’s marriage had proved, and Basil -sensed it, and that she winced daily. He had never definitely realized -it. He had never thought about it clearly. But he felt it. And this had -roused all the angel in him to her defense, and made him very true and -knightly to her.</p> - -<p>The daughter of a poor Oxford cleric, Florence Grey had married -“surprisingly well.” Robert Gregory was rich even then, good-looking, -jovial, and to his young and pretty wife indulgent. He was indulgent to -her still.</p> - -<p>She had married him quite gladly, and for a time been well enough -content. But after a year or two the sag had come and the disillusion. -What in him had seemed once tonic and individuality came to seem -brusque, and even boorish at times. She grew used to silken raiment -and spiced meats, used and a little indifferent,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_90"></a>90</span> though doubtless she -would have missed them had she lost them, a tinge contemptuous of them. -And often in the whirl of life—in Manchester, in Paris, in Calcutta, -and now in gay Hong Kong—she longed a little for the Oxford quiet and -Oxford ways, cool, green lanes, a dim old church, a shabby old library, -dim too, full of well-worn books, simple usual things—roast mutton, -milk pudding, and soft English rain, gray English skies.</p> - -<p>But, too, she enjoyed life, and reaped from it with both hands. And her -husband had been and was well content. He had married her for love, -and he loved her still. But he had had no exultation and no opalescent -anticipations. And so, reasonably enough, he had suffered no relapse. -Such extremes of feeling, such quiver and ardor as he had ever known, -had come to him in office and shipping yard. Business was his cult. -And so far he had proved an excellent business man. He was perfectly -satisfied with himself; and it never occurred to him that any one else -was not. That would be preposterous, and certainly Florence was not -preposterous. He was magnificently satisfied with himself, and in a -suitably smaller way he was satisfied with his wife.</p> - -<p>She had given him no cause to be dissatisfied. And they got on well -together. They always had. She wore well. She dressed well. She never -tried to understand his business, or to talk to him when he was reading -the market reports or the shipping news. She was a handsome creature. -People liked her. And she had borne him two children. He would have -resented a third; to have had none would have enraged him as much as if -he’d been a “Chinaman.”</p> - -<p>Yes, Florence had done him very well, and he acknowledged it to -himself, and boasted of it to all his cronies.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_91"></a>91</span> And he had done her -well too, by Jove! He was always kind to her. He let her have her own -way absolutely when her way did not cross his, and their ways too -rarely met (in any soul-sense) to cross often. And he was generous -to her. He began that way, and, it is no little to the credit of so -busy and business-bound a man, he had always kept it up. They had been -married twenty-five years, and he bought flowers for her still. And -jewelry he gave her constantly. No woman, unless she was the wife of a -rich noble or a millionaire, had more good jewelry.</p> - -<p>Mr. Gregory had given his wife some good jewelry for a wedding present. -But the handsomest gifts she had received then had been sent her by an -acquaintance he had never seen: a Chinese undergrad who had left Oxford -the year before—“damned rich Chink,” as Robert Gregory expressed it, -when he did not put it even more chastely, “a Rothschild of a nigger.”</p> - -<p>The Chinese gift, a bracelet of emeralds and turquoise and jacinths and -pearls, still was the most beautiful and the most valuable jewel Basil -Gregory’s mother had, and she wore it on every occasion that justified -such splendor. And Hilda, watching its green fire and blue softness on -their mother’s fine white arm, could but wonder hungrily whether it -would become ultimately the possession of herself or of Basil’s wife.</p> - -<p>“It is the most beautiful jewel I have ever seen,” John Bradley said -when he first saw it.</p> - -<p>“Yes, isn’t it?” its owner acquiesced; “but when I have it on, I always -feel as if I were wearing a bit of Revelation.”</p> - -<p>“More like a bit of the Koran,” the priest had reassured her with an -odd smile.</p> - -<p>She was greatly puzzled. She had always supposed<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_92"></a>92</span> the Koran was a -somewhat indecent book, quite the sort of book a clergyman would not -mention to a lady. She resolved to get a cheap copy—she believed there -were cheap editions; there were of almost everything now—the next time -she sent to Kelly and Walsh’s.</p> - -<p>And this resolve was not born of any wish to sample a questionable -classic, but of a wish to repair an injustice she was regretful to have -done even to a book or a heathen faith. Mrs. Gregory was a thoroughly -nice woman.</p> - - - - -<div class="chapter"> -<hr class="x-ebookmaker-drop divider" /> -<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_93"></a>93</span> -</div> - -<h2 id="xiv">CHAPTER XIV<br /> -<span class="smcap">Nang’s Vigil</span></h2> - -<p class="noi"><span class="dropcap">S</span>ING KUNG YAH was away temporarily from her important post as Wu -Nang Ping’s chaperone-guard, spending a few weeks of semi-religious -villeggiatura in a Taoist nunnery with a kinswoman who was its abbess.</p> - -<p>So powerful was Wu’s personality and his wealth that he had been able -to command for his widowed kinswoman and for her participation in the -gala things of life, even from the most conventional of his countrymen, -considerable courteous toleration. But it was toleration only, and -never approval. His influence was enormous. Every tong in China would -have torn at the vitals of any one rash enough to exercise against -Sing Kung Yah a social ostracism contrary to his wish. And so the -unprecedented festivity of the kinswoman’s widowhood was tolerated even -by the Chinese whom it both shocked and affronted.</p> - -<p>But anything more, or kindlier, than tolerance, even the great Wu was -powerless to win for her—at least from the Chinese. And both he and -she knew this, and it was the one fly in her very nice amber. She -would have been ostracized fiercely if those of their own caste had -dared; but, they not daring, she was tolerated coldly. And feeling it -(approving it even in her thoroughly Chinese heart) she was often glad -to steal away into the quiet, and behind the screen, of the Taoist -nunnery on the cool, far-off hillside.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_94"></a>94</span> -She had quite a number of English friends in Hong Kong and at Sha-mien. -The English thought her great fun, and she was eagerly sociable. And -English merchants, anxious to conciliate the powerful Wu, encouraged -their womenkind to friendliness with his kinswoman. But she longed -for friends of her own race; and except Nang and Wu she had none. She -longed for cronies, and she had not one, except the Taoist abbess.</p> - -<p>Strange that a people so implacable to comforted and comfortable -widowhood should be ruled by a widow! But so it is. And, after all, the -Chinese race has a right to its share of human inconsistency. Tze-Shi -was an Empress, the mother of a son, and had a great personality. -Sing Kung Yah had been born a long way from the imperial yellow, was -childless, and had little personality of her own. And so Nang Ping, in -the sweetest way, had run a little wild, as roses and honeysuckle do, -and so the frequent visits—that were something of a skurrying too—to -the Taoist convent on the hills.</p> - -<p>The Wus were not Taoists, strictly. Like most Chinese of their class, -they mingled a loyal observance of the rites of all three of the great -Chinese sects and an anxious acceptance of their tripled superstitions, -with an easy and respectful contempt for them all—certainly for all -except the Confucianism that has made and welded China for twenty-five -centuries, but that every Chinese of half Wu’s intelligence knows is, -in fact, a magnificent irreligion, a philosophy, a patriotism, but no -God-cult.</p> - -<p>In her aunt’s absence, as well as her father’s, Nang Ping was -absolutely mistress of herself and of all in her father’s house. When -she left Basil Gregory she had closed the door panel of her own room, -hanging a purple scarf in its outer carving, and no one, not even Low -Soong, dared disregard the imperative silken signal that<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_95"></a>95</span> she would be -alone and unmolested. Even when the gong brayed out the call of evening -rice she made no sign. Wu Low Soong brought a tray of food and laid -it gently on the floor, with a timid supplicatory clatter, beneath -the purple scarf, and, after listening a moment as she knelt with her -hands still on the tray, crept ruefully away. She had shared in the -outer edges of all Nang Ping’s love raptures, shared the dangers of the -forbidden sweetnesses, and it was very hard to be shut out from the -newer excitement of what was evidently a jagged love-rift.</p> - -<p>Nang Ping lay very still all night, uncushioned and uncovered on her -polished floor. Her frightened eyes were closed, but she was wide -awake—wider awake than she had ever been before.</p> - -<p>She felt Basil linger. She heard him go. She heard each night-sound all -the night long. She heard her household’s every stir, and heard it hush.</p> - -<p>In the morning, before any but the night-watchman stirred, she stole -out into the garden and wandered about it aimlessly. But she did not -enter the pagoda.</p> - -<p>While it was still very early she went back to her own room, beat on -her own gong, a little burnished steel disk, summoning her women. And -when they hurried to her, surprised and heavy with sleep, she bathed -and put on fresh garments. It was her habit to chatter gayly with her -women while they dressed her, but to-day she scarcely spoke and they -scarcely dared speak. She sat quite motionless in her ivory chair while -Tieng Po dressed her hair. Tieng Po was one of the cleverest tire maids -in China, and wonderfully quick. It rarely took her more than three -hours to do her lady’s hair, and to-day she did it in even a little -less. But she had never done it more elaborately, and all the time her -mistress watched<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_96"></a>96</span> her with cold, critical eyes. For Nang Ping had a -glass, a very lovely one that Wu had bought in Venice. It had been her -mother’s, and reflected more clearly and with less strain on the eyes -than the mirrors that most Chinese women consult.</p> - -<p>When Nang was dressed—she was very fine—she sent for Low Soong and -ordered food.</p> - -<p>The two girls breakfasted together in silence, and were silent -afterwards as they paced the Peacock Terrace together until the sun was -high and cruel. But Low Soong began to understand, and as each moment -passed understood more and more. The women and the peasants of no other -race chatter so much or so incessantly as the Chinese do; only the -gentlemen and the children are often still. But no other race has so -little need of words. The Chinese is the psychic of all the races. Even -the women have wizard minds. They are all sensitives. And as the girls -paced silently, but arm in arm, Low Soong learned it all.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>In the early afternoon Basil contrived to send a note to Miss Wu, and -it reached her safely. Indeed, it ill needed the subterfuge he spent -upon its delivery, for its few formal lines, saying that he would, -as promised, have the honor to wait upon her presently, and have -the pleasure of begging her acquaintance for his mother and sister, -might have been cried aloud from the Kowloon housetops, or published -in the <cite>Pekin Gazette</cite> and the <cite>Shanghai Mercury</cite> or the -<cite>Hong Kong Telegraph</cite>. Written words could not have been less -compromising; such a love-letter could not have compromised a nun or -a female fly. And it was the last that he would write her. (It was -almost the first.) Nang’s little lip quivered as she read it, and she -made to tear it into bits; then the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_97"></a>97</span> little painted lip quivered more -piteously, and she thrust the paper inside her robe. He had had no need -to warn her. She should play her part. He might have trusted her in -that, and in all.</p> - -<p>She began to think that Englishmen were timid. And she wondered too if -they might not be dense, some of them, sometimes.</p> - - - - -<div class="chapter"> -<hr class="x-ebookmaker-drop divider" /> -<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_98"></a>98</span> -</div> - -<h2 id="xv">CHAPTER XV<br /> -<span class="smcap">The Meeting of the Mothers</span></h2> - -<p class="noi"><span class="dropcap">B</span>ASIL GREGORY had written his formally couched note of warning in a -fidget. Nang Ping had no experience of masculine fidgets. She had seen -her countrywomen fidget, but never her countrymen.</p> - -<p>And Basil was in a fidget still when he came to her presently, not by -stealth this time, no whistle heralding him, but walking swiftly from -beyond the bridge.</p> - -<p>She greeted him placidly, too proud to show the hauteur she felt now; -but Low Soong knew that Nang Ping’s heart was fluttering sickly under -her jade and coral girdle.</p> - -<p>Low returned his greeting with a placid face, but her narrow eyes were -yellow with hate, and she turned at once and went to her old place of -watch on the bridge.</p> - -<p>“They will come soon?” Nang asked.</p> - -<p>“Yes, they are lingering by the big lake, in the outer garden, and -that gave me the chance to speak to you a moment. Oh! my darling.” He -had been near to hating her as he had been coming to her across the -rippling water—hating her because he had wronged her, and now feared -that he might not escape quite all share in her punishment; but now, as -she stood there in all her pretty feminine trappings among her flowers, -he longed to take her into his arms. She had never looked so altogether -desirable to him before—probably because he had made up his mind to -leave her, to snap his life and his years<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_99"></a>99</span> from hers. “Have you missed -me? Why did you leave me so? How are you, dear?”</p> - -<p>Nang Ping smiled oddly. She said nothing.</p> - -<p>And Low Soong called from the bridge, “Chillee! Chillee!”</p> - -<p>Women’s voices, deeper throated than Nang’s and Low’s, European voices, -could be heard coming that way, and Basil said nervously, “Yes,” adding -in English what Low had just said, “They are coming. I shall leave them -when they are going—make some excuse, and I shall go and hide in the -pagoda by the lake——”</p> - -<p>“Oh, that pagoda—by the lake!” Nang Ping interjected softly, but her -voice was grim.</p> - -<p>“I shall see them pass, and when they have quite gone I will come back. -Wait for me when they are gone. I must speak to you. Remember!” He -moved away from her, and went and stood beside an old stone lantern, as -if examining and admiring it for the first time.</p> - -<p>“Low Soong!” Nang Ping said breathlessly, and Low hurried to her from -the bridge and put her arms about her. And they stood so for a moment.</p> - -<p>But the voices and the footsteps were close now, and Nang Ping released -herself from Low’s comforting arms, and stood gracious and alone.</p> - -<p>This was one of Florence Gregory’s young days—one of her very -youngest. Still in her early forties, she looked a radiant twenty-five -as she stood an instant on the bridge, and then came gayly down it. -And her radiant English beauty—blue eyes, golden hair, cream and rose -face—looked all the more radiant because of the delicate gray of her -gown—a dress of artificial simplicity, Paris-made. It had not cost as -much as Chinese Nang’s fantastic clothes had, but it had cost a great -deal, and it was the more perishable.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_100"></a>100</span> -Hilda Gregory, walking beside her mother, quite a pretty girl seen by -herself, seemed in the mother’s wake rather than side by side, though -far the more brightly clad, and was a dim afterglow of the matron’s -glory—as Low Soong, for all her gay apparel and own high coloring, -standing a little apart, seemed too of Nang Ping’s. And Florence -Gregory looked as much Basil’s sister as Hilda, who was a few years his -junior.</p> - -<p>A Chinese serving woman followed the Gregory ladies. She was palpably -Mrs. Gregory’s maid, and not Hilda’s; why, it is impossible to say, -unless because the mother was unmistakably of the woman-type to which -servants and dogs attach themselves, that claims them, and to which -they belong. Hilda Gregory probably played tennis and golf better than -her mother, and plied a more useful needle; but she buttoned her own -boots as naturally as it came to the mother to lean well back at ease -against down cushions and have her hair brushed by a servant. Ah Wong, -the amah, carried a closed parasol, a costly European thing of lace -and mother-o’-pearl, that would have suited Miss Gregory’s rose crêpe -quite as well as it did Mrs. Gregory’s silver ninon; but the sturdy -Chinese figure, plainly clad in dark blue cotton, was unmistakably in -attendance on the mother.</p> - -<p>There were six here now, not counting the Wu servants moving on the -outskirts of the group, silent and busied. But Mrs. Gregory and Wu Nang -Ping held the stage: English womanhood and Chinese something at their -best.</p> - -<p>They made a great contrast than which the old beauty-packed garden had -seen nothing prettier: two living, sentient expressions of womanhood, -greatly different, greatly alike.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_101"></a>101</span> -Each was natural, each was artificial—sweet, elaborate, decorated, -highly bred.</p> - -<p>Nang Ping’s face and lips were painted; Mrs. Gregory’s were not. But -her nails were slightly, beneath her gloves, and so were Nang’s that -had never worn a glove. Mrs. Gregory’s eyebrows were lightly penciled. -Nang Ping’s were not. Nang Ping’s hair had taken the longer to dress, -but the dressing of the other’s had cost an hour. The black hair was -stiffened into shape with thick scented gum; the blonde hair was -<a id="marcelled"></a><ins title="Original has 'marceled'">marcelled</ins> -into shape by hot tongs. And Mrs. Gregory had -the slightly smaller feet, and far less comfortably shod. For Wu had -set his face against one custom of his country, and braved the anger -of his ancestors. Nang smoked a pipe—Basil Gregory could not insert -his smallest finger-tip into its tiny bowl—Florence Gregory smoked -cigarettes; and they both inhaled sometimes. And each considered the -other of inferior race.</p> - -<p>They looked at each other curiously—Mrs. Gregory frankly so. Nang -veiled her keen interest. But her interest was the more. The English -woman was keenly interested in China and in things Chinese. The country -had fascinated her powerfully, its odd people considerably. But she did -not take Chinese womanhood very seriously. Every one of intelligence -knew by now that many Chinese men were clever, almost hideously so, -but equally every one knew that Chinese women were limited—very. Of -course, the terrible old woman who ruled at Pekin was shrewd, unless -her ministers, Li Hung Chang and the rest, did it all for her, which -was probable; and then, too, she wasn’t Chinese really, Tartar not -Mongol. And Mrs. Gregory had no suspicion of what must have interested -her in Nang Ping indeed. She was<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_102"></a>102</span> keener to see the garden, and, if -possible, the house—it was said to be very wonderful—than to exploit -little Miss Wu. But she thought the girl pretty after a grotesque -Chinese fashion, “cute” and not unattractive, and she looked at her -with sincerely friendly eyes.</p> - -<p>The young eyes that looked back at her were mingled adoration and -resentment. This was Basil’s mother, and she was like him. This was the -honorable mother who had given him life and nursed him at her breast. -And this was the woman because of whom he was going to forsake her, and -shut her out forever from peace, honor and paradise. Because of this -woman standing smiling at her here he forbade her Europe and joyful -motherhood. And he had shut her forever out of China! Why? Oh! why?</p> - -<p>There are three supreme moments in the life of every Chinese girl to -whom the gods are not hideously unkind: the moment when her unknown -bridegroom lifts up her red veil and looks upon her face—perhaps to -love and cherish, perhaps to loathe and punish; the moment when the -midwife says, “Hail, Lady, it is an honorable <em>son</em>,” and lays -the funny little red, squirming firstborn on her breast to be adored, -and always to adore her; and the moment when she meets eyes with her -husband’s mother, and they look a little into each other’s souls. And -this last is <em>the</em> supreme moment of her fate. In all the small -ways that make up the most of every woman’s life, her comfort and -happiness will depend upon this mother-in-law even more than upon her -husband—and mothers-in-law live long in China. Women are the pampered -class in China, as they are almost everywhere, and will be until “new” -hermaphrodite “movements” have pulled nature from her throne. And in -the quiet ways, the ways that count, the supremacy of the Chinese<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_103"></a>103</span> -mother is even greater than the autocratic supremacy of the Chinese -father. Occidental readers may believe this or disbelieve it as they -like; superficial travelers, ill-equipped for Asian sojourn, may see or -miss it, but the fact remains. Motherhood has ruled China for thousands -of years. It is not the fair young wife or the favorite daughter who -rules a Chinese, but his mother, old, wrinkled, toothless, bent. -From the thraldom of his father, from the thraldom of his gods, he -<em>may</em> escape; from the thraldom of his mother, never! Nang Ping -knew now that she would never wear the soft red veil. That great moment -had been, and passed, for her when Basil had kissed her first in the -pagoda. The child that even now just fluttered beneath her breast—a -son, she thought, and surely blue-eyed—must die unborn; she knew that -now. He would never purl and pull and purr at her exultant breast. But -this was Basil’s mother, the honorable grandmother to whom she had -given a first grandson! What this moment might have been! Something of -the agony of the disappointment gnawing at her baffled heart crept into -her narrow eyes, and turned her faint and sick, and almost she swayed -an instant standing proud and gracious among her flowers—and the child -leapt.</p> - -<p>Basil Gregory stood irresolute, embarrassed, looking from his mother to -Nang Ping, from Nang Ping to his mother.</p> - -<p>Mrs. Gregory turned to him with a happy smile. “Ah! Basil, there you -are.”</p> - -<p>“Yes, Mother, I missed you,” he said as lightly as he could, “and found -my way here to make the acquaintance of Miss Wu.”</p> - -<p>He gestured courteously toward Nang as he spoke, and Mrs. Gregory moved -to the girl and held out her<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_104"></a>104</span> hand. Nang Ping moved too, a little -towards her guest, and made the elaborate gesture, hands clasped, of -Eastern greeting. Mrs. Gregory still held out her hand, and wondered, -when she gained the girl’s, which was the softer or the better kept, -Nang’s or her own. Basil had wondered it often.</p> - -<p>“This visit to your beautiful garden is the greatest treat I’ve had -since I arrived in China, Miss Wu,” she began.</p> - -<p>Wu Nang Ping bowed. “I am pleased to receive you in my honorable -father’s absence. He has had much kindness in England. It is his -command that always English friends have most honorable welcome here, -and it gives me happiness. My cousin, Low Soong.”</p> - -<p>“How do you do?” Mrs. Gregory said cordially. “And this is my -daughter.” The three girls bowed, the two Chinese with grave formality, -a gesture of the arms more than a bending.</p> - -<p>“Such a perfectly beautiful place!” Mrs. Gregory said it sincerely, her -beauty-loving eyes here, there and everywhere gloating.</p> - -<p>“This is my own garden, where I walk with my women,” Nang Ping told her.</p> - -<p>“It beats our poor little garden, Hilda,” the mother said gayly.</p> - -<p>“Into fits.” Just a trifle of the surface vulgarity which, with its -hard coating of adamant varnish, covered and hid Robert Gregory’s soul -side—even from his wife—and wronged him, had caught and scorched, -slightly, the delicacy of Hilda’s breeding. Even Florence Gregory, some -rare times, used a slight word of slang: “As the husband is, the wife -is.”</p> - -<p>Low Soong listened to Hilda with polite indifference. Low Soong had -no English. But Nang Ping wondered<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_105"></a>105</span> dully how a garden could have a -fit; she thought an epileptic garden must be very horrid. But she said -smoothly, “Ah! in London you have only walls and roofs, I think.”</p> - -<p>“You have been there, Miss Wu, of course?” Mrs. Gregory asked.</p> - -<p>“I have never been to any country.”</p> - -<p>“Really? But—you must excuse me—but your excellent English.”</p> - -<p>“My honorable teacher was English. My honorable father knows it like -you; he has been there—to Oxford.”</p> - -<p>“Really! I was born at Oxford. And my son”—she turned to him a little, -meaning to coax him into the talk, and wondering to see him stand so -awkwardly and wordless—he was not often so socially inept, and never -gauche—“my son was there.”</p> - -<p>“And my honorable father has taught me to esteem English people because -they are all”—she paused an instant, but she did not glance towards -Basil, and added with a grave, deferential smile—“all honorable men.”</p> - -<p>“Well”—Basil’s mother smiled too, a prettily pathetic smile which -was half good manners and half sincere—“I am afraid there are a few -exceptions, sometimes.” She went up to her boy and laid her hand fondly -on his arm. “But”—not speaking to him, but still to Nang—“it is the -duty of all Englishmen to live up to such a high reputation.”</p> - -<p>“I must be off, Mother,” the man said hurriedly, releasing himself -gently, “if Miss Wu will excuse me. I thought Father was coming.”</p> - -<p>“He has. We left them down by the fish-pond, him and Tom, talking to a -quaint old gardener.”</p> - -<p>“Oh! Well, I’m afraid I ought to be off—to the office.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_106"></a>106</span> I’ll go -straight to the hotel afterwards—dinner usual time?”</p> - -<p>“Of course, dear, unless you’d like it earlier or later. Do you know, -Basil, you haven’t dined with us for days?”—Nang Ping knew it. “I’m -getting quite anxious about your health, dear. Bother that fusty -office! You don’t seem a bit yourself.”</p> - -<p>Her boy laughed at her and put his hand under her chin. (And Nang Ping -watched them curiously.) “You dear—why—I—I’m as right as rain.”</p> - -<p>“Then prove it, my son—a big man’s dinner at eight. Now, if Miss Wu -will excuse you”—for evidently he was uncomfortable here—and why -not, the dear English child? How should he be anything else in this -funny Chinese nook with these Chinese girls? Probably he could not -even see how pretty this smaller one was, for all her narrow eyes and -absurd, grotesque clothes and paint, and it was plain that he could -not find a word to say to either of them, not even to this one who -was playing hostess so nicely, and who understood English and spoke -it surprisingly. His silence towards the plump dumpling of a cousin, -who was showing Hilda about the garden with quaint bobbings and solemn -pantomime, was excusable enough. She didn’t know a word of English, -it seemed; though you never could tell what a Chinese did or didn’t -know, John Bradley said, and Ah Wong said so too. But really, Basil -might have made an effort, and said a little something civil to the -English-knowing hostess; he was not often so shy—he <em>had</em> been at -Oxford, and he was her son. Robert had no <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">savoir faire</i>, but, as -a rule, the boy had some.</p> - -<p>When he was free from his mother, Basil moved to Nang Ping to take -leave of her. She received him with a quiet dignity that seemed -perfectly natural. “Chinese,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_107"></a>107</span> but quite the grande dame,” the mother -thought.</p> - -<p>He uncovered and looked down at Nang. “Good-day, Miss Wu.” She shook -her hands at him in Chinese-salutation way, and straightening up -looked at him with just the edge of a courteous smile—not an eyelash -quivered. He turned and looked towards the other girls, but Low Soong -had turned her back and was bending and gesticulating over a peony bed.</p> - -<p>“By the way, Basil,” his mother said as he passed her, but paused to -give her one more smile, “the gardener was telling your father that he -knew you.” She wished him to go, and yet she stayed him.</p> - -<p>Basil shot Nang a look—of consternation—taken aback and off his -guard. Mrs. Gregory did not catch it, but both Hilda and Low Soong -did. Nang Ping held herself impassive, but distress flickered for a -moment in her eyes. Then he turned back to his mother, trying to seem -unconcerned.</p> - -<p>“Knew me? Why, I—he’s never seen me here in his life.”</p> - -<p>“He didn’t say he had, silly,” Hilda Gregory said, strolling towards -them, Low Soong tottering deftly beside her—Low’s feet were bound—“he -said he’d seen you in Hong Kong.”</p> - -<p>“Oh!” her brother laughed feebly, “in Hong Kong—that’s quite possible. -Well, now, I really am off. Good-by, Miss Wu.” And Nang Ping bowed to -him once more, in the prescribed ceremonial way, her face perfectly -emotionless, dismissing him suavely, turning from him before he had -quite gone.</p> - -<p>“Will you not be seated?” she asked Mrs. Gregory, with a deferential -gesture pointing to the old stone seat.</p> - -<p>Hilda and Low Soong still strolled about among the treasures of the -garden.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_108"></a>108</span> -Ah Sing and perhaps half a dozen other servants moved about on padded, -noiseless feet, preparing Miss Wu’s tea-table with all its picturesque -paraphernalia of elaborate teakwood stools and benches, lacquer -sweetmeat-cabinets, glazed porcelain tea-bowls as thin as gauze and -painted by master craftsmen, trays of candied fruit, and several -delicacies of which Florence Gregory did not know the name and could -not guess the nature.</p> - -<p>“So,” she said, surprised to find how comfortable a stone bench could -be, “Mr. Wu was at Oxford. How interesting! I wonder when. I knew a -Chinese gentleman—a student there—when I was quite a girl. We lived -at Oxford, my father and I. I forget his name. I have the saddest -memory, especially for names, and it could not have been your father -whom I knew, for I distinctly remember hearing, the year after I was -married—or some time about then—that my friend was dead, killed in a -climbing accident somewhere on the Alps. He was a fine sportsman.”</p> - -<p>“Many Chinese gentlemen are sent to Oxford, I have heard my honorable -father say,” Nang Ping rejoined. “The Japanese go more to Cambridge.”</p> - -<p>“Yes—and yet,” Mrs. Gregory said musingly, but more interested in -watching the servants than she was in her talk with this rather wooden -and very painted-faced child of the East, “your name—‘Wu,’ I mean—has -seemed familiar to me from the first, and now I seem to remember that -the man I knew at Oxford had a surname rather like that—or even that. -How odd!”</p> - -<p>“There are many Wus in China,” the girl said. “It is a most large clan. -All our clans are very large. We are, you know, so old.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_109"></a>109</span> -“Wu.” The English woman said it slowly, as if trying to send, on the -sound of it, her peccant memory back to some forgotten hour.</p> - -<p>“Oh! it is a most general name. It means Military. I do not know -why, for,” she added almost hastily, “we have had no soldiers in our -family—everything almost but that. All Chinese names mean something, -but of most of them—they are so old—the meaning is lost in the mists -of far, far back, uncounted years before history was written or kept -in record. And perhaps I ought to have remembered that one Wu was a -soldier once. Wu Sankwei defended Ningyuan against T’ientsung when -the Manchus first overran China. But that was, oh! so many years ago, -and since then none of my honorable ancestors have been soldiers—or -at least very few,” she added, with a sudden blush beneath her paint, -too honest to conceal from Basil’s mother, who was also her guest, her -military forbears, descent from whom she felt to be a bitter disgrace, -though she knew, as every educated Chinese must, that in all China’s -long history there are few greater names than that of Wu Sankwei, the -defender of Ningyuan. “‘Li’ is the name in China the most common and -perhaps the most proud. It is our ‘Smith’ name. And we are very proud -of it, because many of its men have been great and noble, and because -their honorable wives have borne them many children. Scarcely the -census-takers can count the Lis. My honorable mother was a Li before -my honorable father married her to be Mrs. Wu. They were cousins, but -more than a century away—‘twenty times removed,’ as you would call it -in your English. The honorable Li Hung Chang’s our distant kinsman, my -honorable kinsman on both sides. My own honorable father has ‘Li’ blood -on the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_110"></a>110</span> side of distaff; his honorable name is Wu Li Chang. We are -Chinese, we of our house, but now in some of our blood we are Manchu -too.”</p> - -<p>Mrs. Gregory smiled up at the girl. “Will you not sit here too?” And -Nang Ping bowed and curled up on the other end of the big seat.</p> - -<p>Ah Wong opened her mistress’s parasol and brought it, and Mrs. Gregory -took it with a grateful “Ah!” “We have enjoyed ourselves so much in -your wonderful country, Miss Wu,” she went on; “we are quite sorry -our time here is drawing to a close. You know—but I forgot, you know -nothing of us, of course—well, we are going soon, going home.”</p> - -<p>“All of you go?” Nang Ping knew that they all were to go, but she could -not resist the self-inflicted pain of hearing it again.</p> - -<p>“Yes, all four of us—we are just the four—and I think my son will be -glad to get home again, after a year in the East.”</p> - -<p>“I doubt that not,” the girl replied, in an odd, quiet voice. “But,” -she added, reaching up one ring-heavy hand to pull down a flower, only -to pitch it aside when she had smelt it once—the Chinese rarely do -that—“but he said he liked the East.”</p> - -<p>“Oh! yes, indeed he does. We all do. Who could help it? But, after -all, it is not quite the same thing as home, you know, especially to a -man; and, besides, Basil has many friends whom he longs to see again. -And”—adding this good-naturedly, anxious to interest the girl and -smiling significantly—“we don’t want an old bachelor in our family, -you know; we have but the one son.”</p> - -<p>“‘Bachelor’—that is one English word I do not know.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_111"></a>111</span> -“Well, what I mean is that Basil must return home before all the -eligible young ladies of his acquaintance forget him.”</p> - -<p>“That means”—the girl’s voice hurt her throat—“he is going home to -marry?”</p> - -<p>“Well,” his mother admitted, “there is a young lady at home, I believe, -who will be very glad to see him again, so I hope it will eventually -come to that.”</p> - -<p>Nang Ping laughed. And Mrs. Gregory thought, “How very oddly the -Chinese laugh! It’s anything but gay.”</p> - -<p>“And he will never come back?”—the strange creature said it with a -smile.</p> - -<p>“Oh, yes!” Hilda said, joining them, “some day, perhaps, when he has -settled down, to take charge of this branch.”</p> - -<p>“I’m afraid Basil is the sort of son who never settles down,” his -mother said lightly. Nang Ping thought it most strange, and not nice, -that the mother should say it at all, but she quite believed—now—that -it was true. She rose, and clapped her hands for Ah Sing.</p> - -<p>“If you will honor me by taking tea,” she said, and led the way to the -highly decorated table where the ornate meal was elaborately laid, the -blue-clad servants standing about it in a circle, as still as stones. -At their young mistress’s approach they bowed almost to the ground—so -low that their cues swept the grass, and one caught and tangled in -a verbena bed. Mrs. Gregory suppressed a smile, but Hilda could not -suppress a low giggle. But she tried to, and that much is to her credit.</p> - -<p>“How jolly!” she cried, as they sat down to an accompaniment of many -bows from the cousins. “How perfectly jolly!”</p> - -<p>“Delightful!” agreed her mother. And Nang Ping,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_112"></a>112</span> in spite of the -choking misery in her throat and smarting in her breast, was pleased -at their pleasure. She thought it sincere, and both Low Soong and Ah -Wong, watching lynx-eyed and imperturbable, knew that it was. Low Soong -was but an obliging mannequin this afternoon, Ah Wong but a lay figure, -expressionless and almost motionless, but neither had missed a word, a -look, or a meaning from the first, although Ah Wong had little English -and Low Soong had none.</p> - - - - -<div class="chapter"> -<hr class="x-ebookmaker-drop divider" /> -<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_113"></a>113</span> -</div> - -<h2 id="xvi">CHAPTER XVI<br /> -<span class="smcap">Grit</span></h2> - -<p class="noi"><span class="dropcap">M</span>RS. GREGORY bore her part in the pretty little function with -creditable imitation of Chinese propriety. She had been coached by a -woman at Government House. She blessed her own foresight that she had, -and reproached herself that Hilda had not.</p> - -<p>Nang Ping raised her bowl of scalding tea almost to her forehead, and -then held it out first towards Mrs. Gregory and then towards Hilda, and -waited for them to drink—and so did Low Soong; and when they drank, -the two girls bowed several times and then drained their tiny bowls.</p> - -<p>When the sweetmeats were pressed upon them Mrs. Gregory took one -candied rose petal, and then—after much urging—took, with a fine -display of reluctance, the smallest crystallized violet on the dish. -But when Miss Wu entreated Hilda, “I beg you to condescend to accept -and pardon my abominable food,” Hilda helped herself generously to five -or six of the glittering dainties. A guest at a London dinner-table who -had seized in her own hands a roast fowl by its stark legs, conveyed it -to her own plate, and then began to gnaw it, without even wrenching it -into portions as Tudor Elizabeth would have wrenched it, would not have -committed a more outrageous act. Nang Ping immediately helped herself -even more generously than Hilda had, and Low Soong,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_114"></a>114</span> after one startled -instant, did the same. Mrs. Gregory saw it all, and wondered, with a -social conscience abashed and chastened, if she would have had the fine -courage, had the situation been reversed, to seize the second chicken -and chew at it noisily. And she looked at her little hostess with -new respect, convinced again that Nang Ping was exquisitely “grande -dame,” and beginning to suspect that the pretty, painted doll-thing -had something in her after all, if only one knew how to get at it. She -wondered what a girl living so, amid such a riot of fantastic ornament -and seemingly meaningless petty ceremony, thought and felt. Did she -think? Did she feel? Or was her mind as blank, her soul as impassive -as her face? What did motherhood itself mean to such dolls, and could -wifehood mean anything? Ah! well, if marriage was but a gilded mirage -on the horizon of such opera-bouffe existence—as, for all she could -see, the existence of well-to-do Chinese women was—that unreality -might lessen pain more than it dwarfed happiness. The English woman -sighed a little. But they must love their babies, these funny little -creatures. Every mother loved her baby. And there was something gentle -and loving, she thought, in this girl’s face, beneath the paint and the -conventional mask. She looked up and searched the younger face with -kindly, motherly eyes. Yes; it would be pretty to see a baby cuddled in -those gay silken sleeves. She smiled at the thought and at the girl, -and Nang Ping smiled back at her. Something cried and fluttered at -Nang’s heart, and flashed softly from her eyes, and found a moment’s -nesting in the older woman’s heart. And for an instant the Chinese girl -and the English woman were in close touch; and, if they had been alone, -perhaps—who knows—</p> - -<p>But before the tea-bowls had been replenished four<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_115"></a>115</span> times they heard -the truants, Mr. Gregory and Tom Carruthers, coming.</p> - -<p>Carruthers was speaking. “There, Mr. Gregory, there’s a pond full of -goldfish—and such goldfish! By Jove!”</p> - -<p>“My dear Tom,” an older voice said impatiently, “there’s more sense in -a bowl of herrings than a pondful of silly goldfish.”</p> - -<p>“Ah!—still,” the younger persisted, as the two men came in sight, “you -must admit this is another lovely spot.”</p> - -<p>“H’m, yes,” Robert Gregory allowed, pursing up his lips deprecatingly -in a way he often had when bartering in boats or rates. “Rather reminds -me of Kew Gardens, but inferior—too gimcrack!”</p> - -<p>But Carruthers saw the others then. “Ah! There they are! Taking tea -under rather better conditions than Kew, I fancy.”</p> - -<p>Nang Ping rose and went towards Gregory hospitably. He lifted his hat -perfunctorily and spoke to her crisply, not waiting for the welcome she -had risen to accord. “How do you do? Miss Wu, I presume? It’s awfully -good of you to let us have a look around.”</p> - -<p>Mrs. Gregory rose too, and came up to Nang Ping, feeling the girl’s -resentment at a tone to which she was unaccustomed—a resentment she in -no way showed.</p> - -<p>“My husband, Miss Wu,” the English lady said, presenting him to the -girl, and speaking to her with pointed respect, and the man took the -hint a little, and bowed pleasantly enough as Nang Ping almost ko’towed.</p> - -<p>So this was the father—Basil’s honorable father! She liked him least -of the three—the three who might have been her relatives—more to her -than her own father, whom she had known so long and loved so well. He -was<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_116"></a>116</span> not like Basil, but like the daughter. Of the three she liked the -honorable mother best—much. “You are just in time to take tea, if you -will honor me,” she said.</p> - -<p>“May I present Mr. Carruthers to you, Miss Wu?” Mrs. Gregory asked.</p> - -<p>Nang Ping greeted the additional guest with the widest outpush of her -joined hands and the most stiffly formal bow she had made yet. But she -liked this face; he looked, she thought, indeed an “honorable man.”</p> - -<p>“Tea! By all means,” Mr. Gregory said briskly, steering for the richly -laden toy tea-table in a businesslike way. He thought there’d been -bowing and arm-shaking enough for a month o’ Sundays.</p> - -<p>Low Soong giggled a little when Tom Carruthers lifted his hat to -her—Nang shot her cousin a severe look—and then, to Mr. Gregory’s -disgust, all the bowing and arm-waving was to do again.</p> - -<p>“I am sorry not to serve tea in the English way,” Nang Ping said, as -she returned to her seat. (Gregory had already taken his.)</p> - -<p>“Why!” Mrs. Gregory protested, “what can be more delightful than to -serve China tea in the Chinese way in China? And this is such a real -treat to me! I can have my tea in our stupid home way—half cold and -quite insipid—any day.”</p> - -<p>“Well,” Gregory commented, leaning back negligently in his chair and -stretching out his legs in comfortable abandon, “perhaps I’ve not been -here long enough to appreciate Chinese customs. That’s the worst of -being a real Englishman, Miss Wu—one misses English comforts.”</p> - -<p>Tom Carruthers saw a tiny shadow of disgust cloud across Nang Ping’s -painted mouth, and he knew, without<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_117"></a>117</span> looking, the distress on Florence -Gregory’s face. “Mr. Gregory,” he interposed, “your tea,” and pointed -to Gregory’s waiting cup.</p> - -<p>They all were waiting to drink together; not to have done so would have -been a rudeness.</p> - -<p>“Oh!” Gregory vouchsafed, lifting the tiny piece of porcelain -critically and tasting the brew gingerly when he had discarded the -covering saucer a little roughly. And when he drank, the others drank -with him.</p> - -<p>He tasted the delicate tea superciliously, and disapproved it frankly. -“Here, boy,” he called to one of the Wu servants, and holding out the -cup with a disgusted grimace, “take it away.” The servant with the Wu -crest embroidered on his back bowed low, stepped forward, bowed lower, -and then took the offending handleless cup and gravely bore it away. -And the four women looked on, Hilda amused, his wife distressed, the -two Chinese girls smilingly imperturbable. It is difficult to decide -which owes China the more apology—English missionaries or English -manners.</p> - -<p>“By the way, Miss Wu,” Gregory said, speaking staccato between sugared -mouthfuls—he had appropriated the nearest dish of sweetmeats to his -sole use, and evidently approved its candied contents as much as he had -disapproved the tea—“I’m very dissatisfied with your father.”</p> - -<p>Nang Ping smiled a little haughtily, rising as she spoke. “I am sorry -my honorable father should offend.”</p> - -<p>“Yes, so am I. Of course, business is business. I admit I live up to -that myself, and I must expect others to. But I have heard that he has -just bought over my head—over my head, mind you—a dock site which is -indispensable<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_118"></a>118</span> for my new line of ships to Australia. I wrote him about -it, and reply seemed, I must admit—well, a trifle vindictive.”</p> - -<p>The girl sat down again quietly, but Tom Carruthers, who had risen when -she had, stood still leaning a little on his chair and watching her -closely.</p> - -<p>“But you have not seen my honorable father for a long time,” Nang told -the financier.</p> - -<p>“Oh!” he returned, “I, personally, have never seen your father, Miss -Wu; but my manager, Holman, saw him a couple of hours ago.”</p> - -<p>Nang Ping’s fingers tangled quickly in her girdle. Only Ah Wong saw it, -but several of them noticed Low Soong’s start—it was noticeable. “It -cannot be so,” Nang said.</p> - -<p>“Eh? Of course it is so. Old Holman’s got both his eyes; he sees all -right.”</p> - -<p>“But”—and, in spite of her, a little of the concern she felt crept -into her voice—“but he has been in Canton for twenty days.”</p> - -<p>“Oh! well,” Mr. Gregory returned indifferently, “then he must have come -back. It’s scarcely two hours since Holman met him and told him we were -visiting Kowloon. And your father particularly requested that we should -visit his garden. He said any member of my family would be made very -welcome. Holman said those were Wu’s exact words—exact old josser, -Holman, always. Any member of my family would be made very welcome. -And, you know, that’s all very well when you’ve just done a man down in -business—any one can afford to be polite then.” He got up and dragged -his chair a few feet and reseated himself beside his wife.</p> - -<p>“Robert,” she greeted him, “you can scarcely expect<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_119"></a>119</span> Miss Wu to be -interested in your business disappointments.” She turned then to the -girl. “It will be a pleasant surprise for you; you did not know your -father had returned?”</p> - -<p>Nang shook her head a little. “No. It is strange, for he is never -unkind to me.”</p> - -<p>“Oh! I know what brought him back,” Gregory persisted bellicosely, “and -it’s a dog-in-a-manger business, and I wrote and told him so, because -the dock site isn’t any earthly good to him.”</p> - -<p>Florence Gregory sighed. “Robert,” she said severely, “I am sure Mr. Wu -does not trouble his daughter with his business worries.”</p> - -<p>“My dear,” her husband snapped irritably, “it is not his worries we are -discussing, but mine. By the way, Miss Wu, has your right honorable -father by any chance a brother?”</p> - -<p>“Alas!” the girl replied sorrowfully—she had missed the slur in that -“right honorable” (no one else had missed it, not even Low)—“alas! His -honorable mother was unfortunate in only having one son.”</p> - -<p>“Well,” almost grunted the Englishman, “I could have sworn she’d had -twins.”</p> - -<p>“Robert!”—his wife’s voice was coldly angry. But Hilda giggled.</p> - -<p>“Twins!” Carruthers said, a little fatuously. He was puzzled, and he -liked to understand things as he went along.</p> - -<p>Gregory answered his wife’s expostulation with expostulation. “My dear, -it’s scarcely two hours ago since Holman saw him in Hong Kong. And yet, -as soon as we get this side of the water, your gardener, Miss Wu, tells -me that your father has just arrived here in Kowloon, and that he was -here for a while yesterday, and yet<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_120"></a>120</span> I don’t see him about anywhere, -and I particularly want to see him.”</p> - -<p>“In that San Fong make a mistake,” Nang Ping said quietly. But she -had risen to her feet in evident distress, though she controlled it -bravely, and the others had all risen too, as if her sudden motion was -a one that prompted them. Even Gregory saw that he had made a <span class="italic">faux -pas</span>, and looked awkwardly towards his wife, saying, “Oh! well, -maybe he did, but I don’t believe it. I’m not educated up to green tea -and chop-sticks, but I’ve lived in China off and on some good few years -now, and I understand your lingo right enough, at least the ‘pigeon’ -variety of it, and that’s what the gardener said, and if you ask me, he -savvied what he was talking about.”</p> - -<p>Low Soong had slipped round to Nang’s side, and stood very close to it.</p> - -<p>“Robert,” his wife said bitterly, “I really don’t know which is worse, -a bull in a china-shop or you in a Chinese lady’s garden. You make -one understand why they call us foreign devils.” He shrugged his big -shoulders sulkily in reply, and moved off to the pond, whistling -unconcernedly.</p> - -<p>Mrs. Gregory followed him, and he turned towards Nang and said -patronisingly (but that was unintentional—he couldn’t help it), “It’s -really quite a charming place, Miss Wu, ’pon my word it is—charming. -Quite Oriental, isn’t it?” He paused at that to let them all appreciate -his unique discovery, and wondered impatiently why the dickens -Carruthers grinned. “I suppose every country has the landscape that -suits it best, but there are some little bits of England that take a -lot of beating.”</p> - -<p>“The light is failing now,” Florence said—she had<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_121"></a>121</span> quite relinquished -her hope of seeing the interior of the house—“and I am afraid we are -keeping Miss Wu long after her tea-time.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, no!” Nang Ping said, “not at the least; but”—for she knew her -strength was ebbing fast, and she felt very ill—“I—I am not strong -to-day. And—I must seek my apartments early, as my honorable father -has returned.” She turned to Ah Sing, who had not moved from his -sentinel place in front of the pagoda, and said to him, “Tsu tang yang -ur!” And he bowed and went to summon the lantern-bearers.</p> - -<p>Florence Gregory took both the Chinese girl’s little hands in hers. -“How cold they feel, even through my gloves!” she thought. “Good-by,” -she said very gently. “Good-by, Miss Wu, and let me thank you for the -great treat you have given us.”</p> - -<p>Nang Ping made no reply—she couldn’t—but she looked up at her going -guest with something so pathetic in her odd eyes and something so -nearly a-tremble on her mouth that the older woman almost bent and -kissed her.</p> - -<p>“Where’s Basil?” Tom Carruthers asked. “Has he cleared off, Hilda?”</p> - -<p>“Yes,” she told him, “he had a conscientious fit and has gone to the -office to work. Good-by, Miss Wu,” she said to Nang Ping, “and thanks -awfully. It’s been quite too ripping.”</p> - -<p>Nang felt too faint by now to wonder what the odd English words the -other girl used meant. But she smiled up at Basil’s sister very kindly.</p> - -<p>“You shall be attended to the gates,” she said to her, and added to -Carruthers, as he came to take leave, “My own garden is locked at -sunset.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_122"></a>122</span> -Carruthers said something brief, and then looked about to take his -leave of the cousin, and wondered to see her slipping stealthily away -and out of sight. She was a funny little bunch, he thought.</p> - -<p>“Father hardly brought his garden-party manners with him, did he?” -Hilda said unconcernedly to her mother, as they and Carruthers passed -from the garden, four blue-robed Chinese, with great lanterns swinging -from their hands, in close attendance, and Ah Wong just behind them.</p> - -<p>“No,” his wife said wearily. “And I’m afraid he didn’t leave many -behind, either.”</p> - -<p>Except for a group of silent, motionless serving-men, Robert Gregory -and Wu Nang Ping were alone in the darkening garden now.</p> - -<p>He held out his hand to her. “Good-by, Miss Wu.”</p> - -<p>She did not take it, but she bowed to him deeply, and because he was -Basil’s father and she thought that she should not see him again she -gave him the utmost obeisance of Chinese ceremony, sinking quite down -to the ground. That extremest collapse of leg and knee, the ko’tow of -utmost reverence, is reserved, as a rule, for an Emperor, an imperial -mother or first wife, the grave of Confucius in the Kung cemetery, -outside K’iuh-fu (where only the crystal tree will grow) and for the -tablets of one’s own ancestral dead.</p> - -<p>“Oh! To be sure,” he said good-naturedly enough, letting his extended -hand drop to his side. “Well, good-by and good luck. I had hoped to -meet our interesting friend. I had quite a lot to say to him. But I’m -pleased to have met you, even if I don’t think much of your tea. You -must come up to our hotel one day, and Mrs. Gregory and Hilda’ll give -you the prime stuff. Good-by.” He added to himself only half under -his<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_123"></a>123</span> breath, as he marched off, “And I hope my visit isn’t going to be -wasted!”</p> - -<p>Nang Ping stood motionless and watched him till he was out of sight.</p> - - - - -<div class="chapter"> -<hr class="x-ebookmaker-drop divider" /> -<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_124"></a>124</span> -</div> - -<h2 id="xvii">CHAPTER XVII<br /> -<span class="smcap">The Signal of the Gong</span></h2> - -<p class="noi"><span class="dropcap">A</span>ND then the breakdown came, and she sank down, weeping and distracted, -on the long stone seat. Her father in Kowloon! Her father who was -almost omniscient! How long had he been there? What had he learned?</p> - -<p>Somewhere in the house a great gong sounded—seven slow beats, deep -throated as the braying of some bloodhound, but low and soft at first, -growing louder, then soft again, all musical, but almost uncannily -significant. As the second note beat into the garden, Nang Ping -roused herself, and sat up against the seat’s back, clutching at it -desperately. She listened in fear that grew to anguish as note followed -note. Only one hand ever struck that gong! As the brazened signal died -away in the scented evening air, she sprang up and ran distracted on to -the bridge, calling, “Basil! Basil!” thinking no longer of herself but -only to save the lover who had spoiled her life. Women are like that in -China—and in England.</p> - -<p>He came at once, and she bent over the bridge to him and said, as he -stood on the path he had come by, “You must go. My father! Go quickly!”</p> - -<p>“Your father!”</p> - -<p>“Go—go now! Quick!”</p> - -<p>“But we’re safe here—for the moment.” He was glad of an excuse to -leave her, and yet he wanted too to<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_125"></a>125</span> stay, to toy, if but for a moment, -by the lotus lake where he had found the dalliance sweet that had -proved fatal to poor Nang Ping.</p> - -<p>“No, no!” she told him frantically. “Not safe. Safe nowhere. Never safe -again. But most dangerous here. Go! Fly, Basil, fly! Before my father’s -wrath falls on you, fly! Take the path by the Peacock Terrace and go.”</p> - -<p>She had infected him now with her own breathless fear, but even so he -hesitated an instant longer, for she had urged him to go; and when is -not the man reluctant to go whom a woman forbids to stay?</p> - -<p>“Celeste”—he called her by the name with which he had wooed her and -never wooed in vain—“little flower, our happiness has been too great, -too perfect. There must be some other way: there shall!”</p> - -<p>“None! None!” the girl said solemnly.</p> - -<p>“I love you, dear,” he whispered passionately.</p> - -<p>“No,” Nang Ping said gently, “your love has flown away from me, and the -nest of my heart is cold for always now.”</p> - -<p>“It isn’t true,” he protested hotly. “It is not true.”</p> - -<p>“Go!”</p> - -<p>“I will come back to you.”</p> - -<p>“No!” Nang Ping’s voice was soft and clear and tender as a flute. “Go. -Go, and forget.”</p> - -<p>“Then”—he lifted his hat and came towards her uncovered, his arms -outstretched—“farewell, Celeste.”</p> - -<p>But she turned and moved a little away, not even facing him again. -She was afraid to trust those arms, a thousand times afraid to trust -herself. “Farewell to life and love,” she said under her breath, -smiling wanly but moving steadily towards the house.</p> - -<p>With a cry—half remorse, half passion, and something<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_126"></a>126</span> too, just -a little, of the brute, grim and primal, not to be baulked of his -prey—Basil Gregory sprang after her to catch her in his arms. But -before he reached her, just before, other arms caught him and held him -in a vice.</p> - -<p>Ah Sing had glided like some upright indigo-colored snake from the -pagoda—“the pagoda by the lake”—and, springing seemingly from space, -one from one direction, one from another, two of the gardeners, -almost as quick as he, reached the Englishman almost as soon. Six -arms pinioned him, without a word, without a sound. And there was -no expression on the Chinese faces of the three—no hatred, no -determination, not even interest.</p> - -<p>But another man, a dark-robed figure, stood on the bridge, above them -all, and slowly he smiled—a terrible smile.</p> - -<p>Nang Ping had not heard the four Chinese—no one could have heard them. -But she caught the slight sound of Basil’s desperate struggles—he was -struggling too frantically to waste any of his strength on voluntary -noise. She turned and ran to him, crying, “Oh, Basil!”—no matter who -heard her now. The end had come, and Nang Ping knew it. She threw -herself in front of him, thrust herself into the seething coil, to -protect his body with hers, as far as -<a id="she"></a><ins title="Original has 'he'">she</ins> could.</p> - -<p>With a supreme effort—or did that still figure on the bridge give a -slight signal that Ah Sing caught?—perhaps both—for a moment Basil’s -right arm was free. He whipped out his revolver. But with a touch of Ah -Sing’s finger-tips—it looked an indifferent touch, and the servant’s -eyes had not turned even for the smallest space of time from that quiet -figure on the bridge—the English arm fell helpless at Gregory’s side, -the revolver clattered down the stone step, and Basil, turning his head -up in pain, saw the motionless looker-on.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_127"></a>127</span> -“My God!” the boy cried. “Mr. Wu!”</p> - -<p>Nang Ping turned slowly round, looked at her father as if entranced and -dazed, then with a scream that cut through the hot air like the voice -of a child that had been knifed and was dying, fell prostrate at the -foot of the bridge, and lay moaning with her face on Basil Gregory’s -shoe, her hands, with some last instinct to protect him, clasped about -his silk-clad ankle.</p> - - - - -<div class="chapter"> -<hr class="x-ebookmaker-drop divider" /> -<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_128"></a>128</span> -</div> - -<h2 id="xviii">CHAPTER XVIII<br /> -<span class="smcap">At the Feet of -<a id="Kwanyin"></a><ins title="Original has 'Kwayin'">Kwanyin</ins> -Ko</span></h2> - -<p class="noi"><span class="dropcap">N</span>ANG PING sat crouched at the feet of Kwanyin Ko, the Goddess of Mercy, -on the floor of her own room. She had been alone all night.</p> - -<p>She remembered seeing her father on the bridge. She remembered falling -at Basil’s feet. She remembered nothing more—clearly. She thought she -recalled, as from a dream, being carried from the garden and laid here. -She thought it had been gently done. Whose arms had lifted and borne -her? She thought that she had been laid on her bed; across the room -her sleeping-mats were unrolled, and a light down coverlet was tossed -across the hard little cylinder which was her pillow. Some one had laid -her down to sleep. Who? And some one had brought her food and drink, -for on a tray near the mats there were fresh fruit and a dish of wine.</p> - -<p>Had she been awake when she crawled here to lay her sorrow at Kwanyin’s -feet? Or had she thrown off the coverlet and crept across the floor in -her sleep?</p> - -<p>A nightlight burned dimly in an opalescent cup, and across the garden -she could hear a cricket call and some big insect buzzing in the dark.</p> - -<p>She tried to think, but she was too tired. She turned her face to the -floor and laid so, prone before the painted graven figure which was the -only succor left, the only semblance of woman’s companionship within -her reach.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_129"></a>129</span> Where was Low Soong? Had Low been caught too in the coil? -If not, surely Low would come to her presently, if she could. What had -they done to Basil? She clenched her hands together in supplication -so frenzied that her nails cut into her palms and her rings tore her -flesh. What would come now? Or, rather, when would it come, and how? -She knew what was to come.</p> - -<p>But she could think no more. She could suffer. That faculty was left -her, but she could neither reason nor plan. And why should she? The end -was absolute, and absolute the uselessness of thought.</p> - -<p>Towards morning she found the little tinder-box, stuffed her pipe, -and began to smoke. It was innocuous enough a drugging, but gave her -growing nervousness something to do. Three or four whiffs empty those -tiny pipes. To throw out the ash took a moment, to refill the bowl took -another; the drawing on the stem killed a third—over and over again, -and one of the terrible night hours had gone. And still the Chinese -girl lay on her hard wood floor smoking mechanically, as in Europe -a girl so placed might have crocheted, or a woman older but no less -desperate have played patience, or tried to play.</p> - -<p>When the first streaks of day came to sharpen the familiar outlines -of the room and of its furnishings, and sharpen her sense of pain and -peril, she threw the tiny silver pipe across the floor. It fell with a -clatter on the arabesque of the hard inlaying.</p> - -<p>This Kowloon house of Wu was a veritable treasure-house. Not an -apartment in it (for the servants lived, and cooked even, outside) but -held much that was priceless. And no other room had been plenished with -such lavish tenderness as had this room of his one child.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_130"></a>130</span> -The old bronze table that pedestalled and throned Kwanyin Ko had not -its match in Europe, neither in palace nor museum, and Kwanyin Ko, -herself looted from a palace six hundred years ago, was worth something -fabulous: no dealer would have sold her for sixty thousand yen.</p> - -<p>The lapis-lazuli peacock, so exquisitely carved that its feathers -were fine and delicate as those of the big birds that strutted in the -sunshine on the terrace beyond the lotus pond (and the emerald points -that studded each feather thickly and the threads of gold and silver -that just showed their threads of burnishing here and there were real) -was worth its weight in rubies.</p> - -<p>In all the room—and it was large—there was not one thing that of -its own kind was not the best. Wu had skimmed China relentlessly, and -much of its cream was embowled here: Nang Ping’s. And China is wide -and rich. Every inlaid instrument of music that strewed the cushions -and the floor, every classic book, the picture on the wall (there was -only one picture, of course—a landscape by Ma Yuan—heavily framed in -carved and inlaid camphor-wood) was a masterpiece, the culmination of -some imperial art of an imperial people, art begotten of a spiritual -and indomitable race’s genius, and nursed and perfected by centuries of -unfatigued patience. Cedar and sandal-wood and ivory hung and jutted -from walls and painted ceiling in cornice and lambrequins cut into -lace-work, as fine (though thicker) and as beautiful as any ever made -on a Belgian pillow. Three hundred robes, each in its scented bag of -silk, each costlier than the others, were piled on the next room’s -shelves of camphor-wood, and the lacquer chests of drawers and the -carved coffers that stood beyond the sleeping mats were crammed with -jewels. Nang Ping had sapphires that<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_131"></a>131</span> Maria Theresa had worn and a ruby -that had been Josephine’s, a pearl that had blinked on the hand of -England’s Elizabeth. She had, and often wore, a diamond that Hwangti’s -Queen Yenfi had worn four thousand years before. And the girl’s best -gems had been her mother’s.</p> - -<p>And in this toyed temple of Chinese maidenhood and her father’s -devotion Nang Ping lay huddled on the floor, “by Love’s simplicity -betrayed, all soiled, low i’ the dust.”</p> - -<p>Remember Nang Ping so long as you live, English Basil—while you live -and after!</p> - -<p>The day came in, a lovely, laughing day of perfect Chinese summer, and -Kwanyin Ko blinked and grinned in the early radiance.</p> - -<p>Nang Ping rose up a little and knelt before the joss, praying, as she -had never prayed before, the old, old prayer of tortured womanhood, -Magdalene’s petition, echoing, moaning in every corner of earth, -girdling the world with a hymn of shame and with terrible entreaty, the -saddest—save one other—of all prayers; never to be answered on earth, -never to be disregarded or coldly heard in heaven.</p> - -<p>And in another room, ko’towed before an uglier, sterner joss—the God -of Justice—Wu the mandarin was praying too.</p> - -<p>And in the pagoda—for it was there that it had been Wu’s humor to -prison him—Basil Gregory was praying, trying to remember words of -simple, tender supplication that his mother had taught him in England -when he was a little child.</p> - - - - -<div class="chapter"> -<hr class="x-ebookmaker-drop divider" /> -<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_132"></a>132</span> -</div> - -<h2 id="xix">CHAPTER XIX<br /> -<span class="smcap">Preparation</span></h2> - -<p class="noi"><span class="dropcap">A</span> BIRD was singing rapturously in a honagko tree as Nang Ping rose -from her knees. She stood awhile at her open casement—it had been -flung wide all night—listening to the little feathered flutist, saying -good-by to her garden. The pagoda gleamed like rose-stained snow in the -rosy sunrise, and the girl smiled wanly, thinking how like a bride’s -cake it looked—the high tapering towers, white-sugared and fantastic, -that English brides have. She had seen several at a confectioner’s in -Hong Kong, and she had seen an English bride cut one with her husband’s -sword at a bridal in Pekin. It was far prettier, Nang had thought, than -the little cakes, gray and heavy, that Chinese brides have, but not so -nice to the taste—flat and dry. The lotus flowers were waking now, -slowly opening their painted cups of carmine, white, rose and amethyst; -the peacocks were preening to the day, the king-bird of them all -flinging out his jewels to the sun, and the shabbily-garbed hens, in -the red kissing of the sunrise refulgence, looking to wear breasts of -rose. A lark swayed and tuned on the yellow tassel of a laburnum, and a -bullfinch see-sawed and throated on the acacia tree. And every gorgeous -tulip was a chalice filled with dew.</p> - -<p>“Good-by,” the girl said gently, and turned away.</p> - -<p>She still wore the rich festive robes of yesterday.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_133"></a>133</span> She began to take -them off, slowly, drawing strings from their knottings, slipping hooks -from their silver eyes, pushing jewel-buttons out of their holes, -letting the loosened garments fall one by one in a rainbow heap of silk -upon the floor (as Wu, when a boy, had shed furs and gems upon a floor -in Sze-chuan). Her women would find and fold them presently. But it -mattered nothing. Nothing mattered now.</p> - -<p>She still was wearing her nail-protectors, two on each hand—necessary -adjuncts to the toilet and to the comfort of many Chinese ladies, whose -long spiral nails would be a torture if unprotected. But it had been -Wu’s pleasure to have Nang Ping taught the piano, and so, of course, -she had to wear her nails short. But whenever she was “dressed” she -wore the fantastic ornaments, to indicate that Wu’s daughter did not -work. She discarded them now, and listlessly let them fall upon the -silks heaped at her feet: two were of green jade (one finely carved, -one studded with diamonds), one was silver set with rubies, the fourth -was gold set with pearls and moonstones.</p> - -<p>When all the finery—such finery as Europe never sees, except -burlesqued on the stage—had been cast off, she began to re-dress -herself, steadily and very carefully.</p> - -<p>From the silver ewer she poured water into the silver basin. It needed -both her hands and much of her strength to lift the ewer; it was heavy -with the precious metal’s weight, and she had never lifted it before. -In all her life she had never once dressed or undressed herself. -When the attar and the sweet vinegars had creamed in the basin she -bathed her face again and again until all the paint was gone. She only -wore rouge and thick-crusted white paint on days of function and of<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_134"></a>134</span> -festival. On days of homely ease and unceremonied home-keeping her skin -was as clean and unprofaned as a baby’s.</p> - -<p>It is a canon of Chinese womanhood never quite to undress -unnecessarily. Modesty at her toilet, even when performing it alone, is -enjoined the Manchu girl as it is the Catholic girl of Europe. And this -Manchu niceness has permeated the other Chinese races. And in China -a maid would be held not chary, but prodigal indeed, did “she unmask -her beauty to the moon.” A land of several peoples sharply distinct in -much, China is in much else the land of great racial amalgamation. And -it is impossible to trace back to their source many of this wonderful -people’s most salient qualities. Tartar has infected Mongol, Mongol -inoculated Tartar, Taoist taught Mohammedan, Confucianism and Buddhism -have mixed and fused, Teng-Shui tinged all, sometimes tainting and -degrading, occasionally idealizing and lifting up to poetry. And -modesty of body is simple instinct with Chinese girls of every blend -and caste. Nor is it lost—as so many of youth’s sweetnesses always -must be everywhere—in the gray slough of old age. Nowhere in China -will you encounter the unique exhibitions of antique female nudity that -occasionally startle one so extraordinarily in Japan. The old women -of China, even the poorest, are always clad, and a Chinese girl slips -from the screening of her smock into the screening of her bubbling bath -without an instant’s flash of interim.</p> - -<p>The early daylight showed Nang Ping very lovely, as she stood there in -her one last garment. Chinese women of the mandarin class are often -exquisitely lovely, especially those of mingled Manchu and Mongol -bloods. Nang’s sorrow was too new to have bleared or blowsed<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_135"></a>135</span> her yet; -it had but thrown a gracious, pathetic delicacy about her as a veil. -And even the charming coloring of her was not impaired.</p> - -<p>There is no greater beauty of coloring than the coloring of such -girls—not in England, not in Spain. Nang Ping’s skin was no darker -than the liquor of the finest Chinese tea, and not unlike it in hue, -not green, not buff, but white, just hinting of each, and in her cheeks -the delicate pink of a tea rose told how red the blood at her heart -was, and how thin the patrician skin that masked and yet revealed it. -The little figure, tall for a Chinese, was tenderly drawn and perfectly -proportioned; the young presence, for all its gentleness, was queenly; -the firmly modeled head was well set on the straight shoulders. Hair -could not be blacker or arched jet brows more beautifully drawn. The -girl’s mobile mouth was large, but exquisitely shaped, and her red lips -parted and closed over teeth that could not have been whiter, more -faultless or more prettily set. There was a dimple in the obstinate -chin, and one beneath the tiny mole on her right cheek; and her black, -velvet eyes (soft now, and almost purple with unshed tears) were as -straight set in the small head as the eyes of any Venus in Vatican or -Louvre.</p> - -<p>She stood a moment, gazing into space, clad only in her delicate smock, -and then slowly she redressed herself in her simplest robes—soft, -loose and gray. She had many such gowns, and wore them often. The -Chinese are too greatly, too finely artist to let the gorgeousness -in which they gloat degenerate by over-use into a commonplace. The -blare of their brazen music has its long reliefs of slow, soft minor -passages; their gayest gardens have prominent heaps of dull, barren -stone, long stretches of cold, gray walls; each sumptuous room has its -empty,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_136"></a>136</span> restful corner. Nang Ping had fifty pictures of great price, -and more ivories, each a gem, but all the pictures save one, all the -ivories save one, were stowed away always, and just one at a time -placed where it might joy her sight; and most often she moved softly -about her home habited in plain raiment of neutral tints as gentle as a -dove’s.</p> - -<p>Her hair took her longest. She had never brushed it before, and the -unguent took time to remove. But at last even that was done, the -jeweled pins heaped away, the long black strands braided about her head.</p> - -<p>And then she sat down on the floor again, her cold, ringless hands -clasped at her knees, and waited and listened until her father’s gong -should strike.</p> - -<p>She knew that she should hear it presently.</p> - -<p>Once she started, and caught up from the floor a little scented bead. -She held it to her face, and then laid it away in her bosom. It was -her father’s, one of a string he often wore, and in her bitter misery -she was pathetically a little happier for the proof it gave her that -his own hands had carried her here. She would keep it in her bosom -always—while she lived.</p> - -<p>Twice servants came in with trays of food and drink; blanc-mange, soup, -tea and wine. They made deep obeisance to her when they came and when -they went. But she did not speak to them, nor they to her.</p> - -<p>And no message came until the message of the great gong’s soft boom.</p> - - - - -<div class="chapter"> -<hr class="x-ebookmaker-drop divider" /> -<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_137"></a>137</span> -</div> - -<h2 id="xx">CHAPTER XX<br /> -<span class="smcap">What Wu Did in Proof of Love</span></h2> - -<p class="noi"><span class="dropcap">W</span>U, when he had laid Nang Ping on her mats and covered her, went to his -library, and sat thinking through the night.</p> - -<p>When he had lifted her, he had not glanced at the Englishman, nor -had he even looked in the direction of prison or prisoner since. The -servants had their orders. Those orders would be obeyed. With Basil -Gregory, Wu had nothing more to do—yet.</p> - -<p>All night long he scarcely moved by so much as the drumming of finger -or toe, by so much as the quiver of a lash. None of Nang Ping’s -restlessness was shared by him. He was beyond restlessness. His agony -was absolute. Mothers suffer acutely when daughters “fall”—good -mothers and bad. But such mothers’ sorrow can never equal the red -torment of fatherhood so punished. Nature holds stricter justice -between sex and sex than she is credited. And such partiality and -unfair favoritism as he does show now and then is given, as is the -gross favoritism of man-made laws constantly (in Europe and in Asia), -to women.</p> - -<p>Analyze what law of life you will, and the resultant conclusion will -have something to testify of Chinese wiseness. The punishment of a -crime never falls solely upon the direct miscreant. Blood and love must -pay their debt. And the Chinese legal code which allows and decrees -that kindred shall suffer (even to capital punishment)<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_138"></a>138</span> for a kinsman’s -crime is less fantastic and less fatuous than it seems to Western minds.</p> - -<p>Basil Gregory and Nang Ping had sinned. Wu and Florence Gregory were to -be punished with them. And because Nature forgives man less than she -forgives woman, the sharper, surer punishment was to fall on the father -and the son.</p> - -<p>Compared with one year in Wu’s life, the joy Nang Ping had stolen in -the garden was but “as water unto wine.” And, suffering now to her -sharp young utmost, she was suffering less than he.</p> - -<p>When day came he rose, as Nang Ping did, and went to the window. Her -room was on the one higher floor; his looked almost level with the -garden—his own garden. For he too had his own private pleasance, -taboo to all, unless expressly bidden there. And Wu rarely gave that -permission, even to Nang Ping. That bit of garden was his outer -solitude, and this room was his indoor privacy. It was here and there -he kept alone.</p> - -<p>No race prizes privacy more, more realizes its value, conserves and -guards it with more dignity and skill, or with so much. A people of -interminable clans, knit together and interdependent as is no other -people, yet it is with the Chinese people, both Mongol and Tartar, that -individuality has its fullest rights, its surest safety.</p> - -<p>Towards noon he bathed, put on again his plain dark robes, went into -the great hall and ate a little rice. He had work ahead, much work, and -he intended to do it well. He had no more time for thought, nor need. -His thinking was done. His years of selfishness were past. He no longer -saw or felt “a divided duty.” He was China’s now—Wu the mandarin. Each -hour should be full. He would serve assiduously and relentlessly, not -with brooding thought, but with action piled on action.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_139"></a>139</span> -At dusk he smote upon the gong hanging in the smaller audience hall, an -apartment half of state and half of intimacy.</p> - -<p>Nang Ping heard the deep notes reverberate through the house—she had -been listening for the sound all day—and rose to her feet before -they died away. She was standing ready at her door when her father’s -message came, and she followed the servant, for herself relieved that -her waiting was done, for herself feeling little else, but miserable -for Wu. He had been tender to her always, and she had loved him with -an absorbing love, until the Englishman had come to kiss her face, -dislocate her life and change her soul.</p> - -<p>She went in steadily and alone, bent in obeisance three times, and then -stood before her father quietly, her hands folded meekly at her breast, -her eyes patient and sorrowful, but not afraid.</p> - -<p>And she was not afraid. Basil was dead by now—she made no doubt -of that; the spoiler of Wu’s daughter could not have lived in Wu’s -vengeance for a day. There was no more to fear for Basil. For him the -worst had come, and was done. For herself fear had no place in her now. -Her father would not torture her—that she knew. But she thought that -she should scarcely have winced if he had. A slight, slip of a girl, -slim as willow in her scant dull robe, she came of a race whose women -had hung themselves more than once to honor a husband’s obsequies; and -one—a queen—had burned to her death, lighting beside the imperial -grave her own funeral pile of teak- and sandal-woods, oil-and-perfume -drenched, Nang Ping was not afraid.</p> - -<p>Wu met her eyes, and she met his; and his were not unkind.</p> - -<p>“Will you tell me all?” Wu did not speak unkindly.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_140"></a>140</span> And this was the -first time he had couched command to her in interrogative.</p> - -<p>“My honorable father,” the girl said sadly, “I will tell you nothing.”</p> - -<p>The mandarin smiled. This was too grave a time for anger. And he had a -bribe that he knew could be trusted to buy from her what he would, let -the telling cost her what it might.</p> - -<p>He had never bribed his child, not even with sugar-plums for her smiles -when she was a babe. But he would bribe her now. Their old days were -done, and with them some old principles of conduct. And their old -relationship—spoiled now—was drawing to its close.</p> - -<p>“You fear to injure the Englishman!” But even that he did not say -roughly.</p> - -<p>“My honorable father, not that. He is past beyond injury now; Nang Ping -knows that.”</p> - -<p>Again he smiled. But he only said, “You fear to implicate Low Soong?”</p> - -<p>At that Nang Ping raised her eyes to his in entreaty.</p> - -<p>“Have no fear. No punishment shall fall on her. She is not worth it. -She shall be well dowered and honorably wed soon. She has dealt ill by -me, and by you, her kinswoman, foully; but even so, I will not do her -an injustice to you. She never betrayed you. In her first panic the -slight, silly frog-thing fled—to save her own dishonest skin—but she -came back but now, creeping to share your lot, and begging to speak -with you. Do you care to see her?”</p> - -<p>“I wish to see no one, O honorable sir.”</p> - -<p>“I thought you would answer so. Be at rest for her. She shall fare -well.” He did not add that he would keep his word. There was no need: -Nang Ping knew it.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_141"></a>141</span> -He called for lights, and when the red candles were lit and the sweet -torches in their sconces until all the room flamed with light, and the -noiseless servants had withdrawn to await his next command, whether it -came in a moment or in a year, he began to speak again. And because he -was Chinese, and because he still loved her well, his words were long.</p> - -<p>“Sit. Listen. I am not blameless. I shall be blameless from this hour. -My venerable, honorable grandfather, the sainted Wu Ching Yu, dedicated -me to a great task. I have obeyed him for the most, fulfilled it in the -main, but not with the single purpose such high duty claims. I loved -your mother. That was most right. Less would have wronged her; and she -was fragrant as the yellow musk, holy as the queen-star. But for one -celestial year, at her plum-blossom side, I forgot my task; at least I -let it wait, and sometimes I have let it wait for you. Not again shall -I do so. Scarcely time for suitable penance will I allow myself. I am -Wu, and the house of Wu shall be avenged. I shall live for that and for -China. My venerable grandfather, three thousand times wise, did well -to send me to England. And he bade me study Englishmen closely. But I -did ill to take to myself too much of their custom. We have learned too -much of Europe. It is well to learn of every nation, but to accept too -much from inferior peoples is a hideous crime; and in that crime I have -shared to China’s hurt—and yours. You are undone. China is threatened -with the loss of all that has made her for thousands of years paramount -and exquisite. Sometimes, alone at night, I have thought that I have -heard the wind cry, and Heaven sob, and the parting knell of China -toll. And I have thrown myself prostrate before our gods, and entreated -that China—our China—may<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_142"></a>142</span> prove stronger than her enemies, stronger -than her fools. But my soul aches. For I realize that change is in our -air, from Canton to Pekin, from Ningpo to Tibet, and that any hour -revolution may strike our mighty empire to the heart. The rebel, the -missionary, the fanatic and the adventurer, the foe without and the -dolt within, press her hard. Her plight is sore to-day. But China has -held together longer than any other empire in history. We Chinese never -forget, and we do not meekly forgive. Again and again we have seemed -to accept innovations, have tried them, have found them unacceptable, -and then we have discarded them once and forever. We are in peril now; -but the end is not yet. Already the word passes over China, as a breath -of summer over the head-heavy poppy fields, ‘Back to Confucius’! And -I—I descended from that great sage—I, too, who love China as I did -not love your mother—I, too, have betrayed China—and you! I have -given you a freedom that was in itself a soil to a maiden. I ask your -pardon. All night long I have asked your honorable mother’s, and the -forgiveness of my most noble ancestors. You have been to me both son -and daughter; the women of the Wus have often been so, and endowed in -it with great merit. But in me it was a sin. But from this I shall -be wholly China’s. This moon I perform a duty to our house—my last -selfish rite. It done, I am my country’s, my people’s. I shall wed now, -and give my honorable ancestors other sons, China men-Wus to be her -rulers and her servants. That I have not done so before is my crime. I -thought to adopt your husband, or if that might not be, he too highly -ranked in his own great clan, one of your younger sons, that all I -had might go to you and to one you had borne. I sinned to think it. -Adoption is honorable, decreed of our sages, countenanced of our gods,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_143"></a>143</span> -but only for those to whom sons of their bodies are denied. A man -should beget men, father his own heir.”</p> - -<p>He said much more. It was his last indulgence of self, for even his -stern resolve yearned over her, and his tortured heart delayed the -parting with the girl. He spoke of her childhood and of his own. But of -the high traditions of the women of its blood, upon which their great -house was built as on an impregnable rock, he did not speak again. He -spared her that—his only child, the first woman of her name to err in -the degree that is not forgiven Chinese gentlewomen.</p> - -<p>Presently he commanded again—and no question now—that she should tell -him all, and commanding turned his screw.</p> - -<p>“He is not dead,” he said. “He lives. He is unharmed.” Nang Ping swayed -a little on her stool and caught at her knees with her hands. “Tell me -all.”</p> - -<p>“O honorable sir,” she sobbed, huddling at his feet, “I cannot.”</p> - -<p>Wu smiled. “All! Omit nothing. You can save him so!”</p> - -<p>Nang Ping started up, sitting bolt on her heels, and searched her -father’s face with narrow eyes widened and piteous.</p> - -<p>“All! And he shall live. Even, he shall go free!”</p> - -<p>Nang Ping moaned, hung down her head, and began to speak, for she knew -that Wu Li Chang would keep his word. And even this price of shame her -discarded love would pay to save her man. Her words came with tortured -breath—in gasps. But it was for Basil, and she kept her bond. She told -of their first meeting and their last. She told it all—all but those -utmost things that never have been told, and never can, and in China -least of all.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_144"></a>144</span> -Why Wu exacted it was hard to say. Perhaps he could not have told -himself. If it tortured her, more it tortured him an hundred fold. -And there was little of it in detail, nothing of it in essential, -that he did not already know. Much of it he knew better and deeper -than she did. Perhaps to hear it from her lips was no small part of a -self-inflicted punishment he had decreed his scourge since he had been -so lax a father—lax a father, and he Chinese! And she motherless!</p> - -<p>He heard her in silence—without once a word of prompting or of -interruption. And not once did she raise her head or look at him. -If she had looked, her faltering words must have died. For his face -twitched with convulsive pain again and again, and foam beaded white on -his clenched lips.</p> - -<p>There was a long silence when she had done, and neither moved.</p> - -<p>At last he said, “Is there something you would ask of me, some message -you would give?”</p> - -<p>Nang Ping trembled violently. But the message her soul cried out to -send she dared not speak; and if she had dared, surely she must have -spared him it, for she was gentle, and he had always loved her well -and shown her tenderness. When she could command herself a little, she -said, falteringly, “If Low Soong might have a jewel or a robe—one, -from me.”</p> - -<p>“Of all that was not your mother’s or my mother’s, or any mothers’ of -theirs, Low Soong shall choose all that she will. And I promise you -that I will bear that frail no ill-will. It was not for her to guard -what I, your father, failed to guard.”</p> - -<p>Nang Ping tried to thank him, but she could only bow her head and lay -it near his shoe. She dared not touch<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_145"></a>145</span> that shoe. It was an old, easy -shoe. She had embroidered it when a child.</p> - -<p>“The day grows warm,” Wu said presently, rising and bidding her rise. -And when she stood before him, he laid his hand a moment on her -shoulder and said softly, “Nang Ping!” for she was motherless, and very -young, and he loved her still.</p> - -<p>“The day grows warm. Go to the easement and tell me if the sun is on -the tulip tree.” And as she moved away, without a sound he seized the -great sword hanging beside the shrine and struck her once.</p> - -<p>It was enough.</p> - -<p>She scarcely moaned—just a soft quick sigh—and one smothered word.</p> - -<p>Wu Li Chang caught the sigh but not the word. Surely Kwanyin Ko had -granted something of Nang Ping’s prayer, and was merciful to Wu in -that. For the Chinese girl had died speaking an English name.</p> - -<p>He did not catch the word; but he saw something fall from her dress and -roll towards the altar, and he rose and found it—a little scented bead.</p> - -<p>And all night long, until the day broke over China, Wu sat motionless -and alone in the room where he had played with her often in her baby -days, taught her as a child, decorated her fresh young womanhood with -gems and love: sat immovable and alone, while the heart’s blood of his -only child clotted and crusted at his feet.</p> - - - - -<div class="chapter"> -<hr class="x-ebookmaker-drop divider" /> -<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_146"></a>146</span> -</div> - -<h2 id="xxi">CHAPTER XXI<br /> -<span class="smcap">A Conference</span></h2> - -<p class="noi"><span class="dropcap">L</span>ORD MELBOURNE once said that “nobody has ever done a very foolish -thing except for some great principle.” Well, it would be difficult -to find the great principle underlying most of the very foolish -things the average European does in Asia. As a nation we British are -very wise in our conduct there. As a race we deal honorably with the -Oriental peoples—when once we’ve conquered them—and honorable conduct -is a high wisdom in itself, and from it we reap a fine reward—the -respect of the Eastern races. But as individuals we perpetrate a long -series of crass blunders, of petty daily idiocies, whose sum total is -tragedy and sometimes threatens international holocaust. And it is -the Englishwoman, not the Englishman, who is the worst offender. Our -security in Asia is built up on Oriental respect and liking, and Mrs. -Montmorency-Jones can do more in a day to undermine it than a Sir Harry -Parkes can do in a month to build it. Insolence is her method; fair -dealing is his.</p> - -<p>The average British man in Asia learns little enough, Heaven knows! -of the natives among whom he lives; the average British woman learns -nothing. She does not decline to know the natives; no, indeed—she -simply ignores them. Woman rules in Asia—and especially in China—as -(if a woman may be allowed to hint it) she does almost everywhere. And -Englishwomen living in Calcutta or Shanghai do English interests grave -injury,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_147"></a>147</span> by courting, winning (and meriting) the dislike of Indian and -Chinese women. The Englishwoman does it not by any overt act or series -of acts, but by a consistent supercilious contemptuousness of attitude. -I am a memsahib. You do not exist. The secret societies—the tongs and -the brotherhoods—are responsible for much of our Asiatic difficulties; -our own women are responsible for more. If the Boxers made Pekin run -red with European blood, some women of the European Legations did even -more to bring down the trouble and to foment it.</p> - -<p>And the pity of it is its absolute unnecessariness: just a cup of cold -water now and then, just a little human kindliness now and then, and -the liking and sympathy of Oriental womanhood were ours. Some one has -written of “the heart that must beat somewhere beneath the impenetrable -Oriental mask.” The mask is not impenetrable. An honest, friendly smile -will pierce it. The Oriental is nine-tenths heart. A typical Asiatic -can be won by moderate kindness to great loyalty and devotion. Page -after page of the history of the Indian mutiny proves it.</p> - -<p>And of the Chinese people this is even truer.</p> - -<p>Florence Gregory was a kindly, likeable woman, and during her year in -Hong Kong she had not thought it necessary to make herself detestable -to the Chinese with whom she came in contact.</p> - -<p>On her part this was neither tact nor studied policy. They interested -her and she liked them, and in return they liked her. She gave them -courtesy and decent treatment, and sometimes a sunny word or two, and -in return they gave her of their best and served her loyally. Ah Wong, -her amah, adored her.</p> - -<p>There was nothing that Ah Wong would not have done for her English -mistress. And the story of it is<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_148"></a>148</span> this: Mrs. Gregory had never saved Ah -Wong’s life or rescued her son from slavery. She had just been quietly -and decently kind to her in the little daily ways. Oh! those little -ways, the little things—too small to chronicle, almost too small to -sense sometimes—but to women they are <em>everything</em>! The big -things scarcely count to women; but the little things—they count.</p> - -<p>When Basil Gregory did not keep his promise to dine at their hotel -his mother was disappointed, but not inordinately surprised, and only -moderately hurt. It had happened before.</p> - -<p>They waited dinner half an hour. Robert Gregory would not allow a -longer waiting. And even the mother dined with an unruffled appetite. -Even when midnight came without him it occurred to no one to be in the -least alarmed—to no one but Ah Wong.</p> - -<p>Ah Wong had seen the impalpable intrinsic stalking in the garden at -Kowloon. And what she saw alarmed her then. Basil’s continued absence -alarmed her more and more. She was alarmed for her mistress’s peace of -mind. Basil himself she neither liked nor disliked. She thought Robert -Gregory a funny old chap. The son did not interest her.</p> - -<p>When Basil did not appear at the office the next day his father was -angry. When three days passed, and no word came of the truant, they -were alarmed—all of them. And in a week the island rang with hue and -cry for him.</p> - -<p>Mrs. Gregory was distraught.</p> - -<p>Perhaps the son’s disappearance might have worried the father even more -if there had been no other pressing anxieties. But there were—several.</p> - -<p>There was the very deuce to pay at the Hong Kong branch of the Gregory -Steamship Company, and a good deal of inadequacy with which to pay it.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_149"></a>149</span> -It was a bright, hot day—a blue and gold day, without a trace of Hong -Kong mist and murk—and the windows in the manager’s room were open -wide. The furniture was sparse but rich; it was Robert Gregory’s own -room, and he was of the type of business man who likes to do himself -well in the format of his office routine, more in a sincere pride in -his business cult than in personal vanity or any pampering of self, and -also in a well-defined theory of advertisement: Persian carpets and -Spanish mahogany desks indicate a firm’s prosperity clearly. Gregory’s -furniture was very expensive, but sensible, solid and untrimmed. He -earned and amassed money in big ways and in small, but, in the main, -he left the spending of it on fripperies to Hilda and his wife. A -photograph of Hilda—the one ornament the office confessed to—stood -on her father’s desk, in a splendid wide frame that might have been -Chinese, so costly and so barbaric was it, had only the design and the -workmanship been better. But if the picture was somewhat over-framed, -its girl-subject was not over-dressed, for English Hilda, who from her -father’s office table smiled up at all the world, was several inches -more décolleté than even the moon had ever seen Nang Ping.</p> - -<p>But modesty and even decency are as much virtues of the eye that looks -as of the creatures of its glance; and John Bradley, sitting in Robert -Gregory’s chair, saw only maidenhood delectable and flawless in the -picture his eyes sought again and again. And any man who, to Robert -Gregory’s knowledge, had seen anything coarser, Robert Gregory would -have shot cheerfully.</p> - -<p>Holman, Gregory’s head clerk, sat moodily opposite the priest, looking -out into the quay. The long window he faced was the apartment’s most -conspicuous feature, and through it outrolled a teeming panorama of -steamships<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_150"></a>150</span> and shipping industries. Docks and shipping in the near -distance looked even nearer in the clear magnifying atmosphere, and -close at hand smoke curled up from the funnels of a large steamer, -flying the house flag of the company—a noticeable pennant even in that -harbor, where noticeable objects jostle each other by the hundreds. -The big lettering—“G. S. S. Co.”—was as bright and blue as the -sky against whose brilliant background the smoke belched forth from -the fat funnels, and the bunting that backgrounded the letters was -yellow—impertinently yellow, for it was of the precise shade that in -Pekin would have spelled death to any other who wore it or showed it on -his chair, so sacred was it to reigning Emperor and Empress. But Robert -Gregory did not know that, nor did Holman. But they should have known -it—certainly Holman should, for he had lived in China many years now, -and was far from being so crassly stupid concerning the Chinese as his -chief was.</p> - -<p>Between the big ship and the office building a constant procession of -coolies passed up and down the dock, and the hum of their incessant -intoned chatter filled the room with a noisy sing-song that rose and -fell but never rested or drew breath.</p> - -<p>On a rostrum behind the <em>Fee Chow’s</em> side, Simpson, an old and -trusted clerk, was watching the coolies load, and a Chinese clerk -perched near him on a high stool, checking each bale and box. A -compradore sat at his desk on the wharf, wrangling with a knot of -loin-clothed coolies who were gesticulating wildly with arms and poles -and chattering like angry chimpanzees.</p> - -<p>“And that is all you can tell me?” Holman said, as Bradley rose to go.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_151"></a>151</span> -“All I care to say. I’ve strained a point to say that much.”</p> - -<p>“And you will not tell me where you got your information? Is that quite -fair?”</p> - -<p>John Bradley shook his head. “Not information. I have no -information—none. But I have my suspicion, and I believe it is well -based.”</p> - -<p>“Built on Chinese rock!”</p> - -<p>“Well—yes—in part. And I have a great deal of respect for Chinese -rock. As for being unfair, that is the last thing I’d be willingly. And -I have tried to look at this from every side. A man likes to respect -confidence; with a priest it is a duty, solemn and imperative. But if I -chose to blab, I have not one concrete fact to state. A Chinese woman, -I will not tell you her name—if I know it—comes to me in the middle -of the night, getting into the grounds somehow over the wall or up the -hill, certainly not through the gate, and begs me to find some way of -getting Basil Gregory’s people out of China. She urges me to let them -lose no time in searching for him, because no searching will find him; -and they, she insists, are in danger that will grow deadlier every hour -they stay on here. I did not know that Basil was missing until she told -me; it’s two nights ago. I had been expecting him to call—to complete -some talk we’d begun——”</p> - -<p>“About a girl?”</p> - -<p>“But I was not particularly surprised that he delayed keeping -an appointment that was not very definite. Basil was always a -procrastinator. The woman does not know where he is or what has -happened to him. Take that from me. She said so, and she was speaking -the truth. It is part of my business to know when people<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_152"></a>152</span> are telling -the truth and when they are lying to me. She had some suspicion—what -it was I have no idea, or whether it was right or wrong—but she would -tell me nothing, except that she risked her life to warn me that at all -costs the Gregorys must go from China, and go now.”</p> - -<p>“And leave poor Mr. Basil to his fate?”</p> - -<p>Bradley made a gesture of baffled helplessness.</p> - -<p>The clerk’s lip curled. “You have a poor idea of my intelligence. I -know it all now—all that you know—and what you suspect.”</p> - -<p>“Then you do not know much,” the other retorted hotly.</p> - -<p>“No,” Holman admitted grimly. “Not much to chew on, and nothing at -all to go upon. Ah Wong comes to you in the middle of the night—it -<em>was</em> Ah Wong; she is devoted to Mrs. Gregory, and quite -indifferent to Mr. Basil, dead or alive. You learn from her, or from -some one else, the next morning, of the visit three days ago to Wu’s -garden at Kowloon, and off you go to Kowloon to dig it all out. You -said you went to Kowloon to try to interest your friend Wu in the case, -because he is the one man who can do anything that can be done in -China. Now, you did not go—excuse me, Mr. Bradley—to Kowloon to try -to interest Wu in the case; you went to find Mr. Basil.”</p> - -<p>Bradley threw down the hat he had taken up and sat down again. “You -are wrong there,” he said. “For I too believe that Basil Gregory will -not be found. But I did go to try to interest Wu Li Chang in what is -very urgent to me—for—for several reasons—because I know him to be, -humanly speaking, almost omnipotent, and because I trust and like him.”</p> - -<p>“Trust and like Wu Li Chang!”</p> - -<p>“Emphatically,” was the quiet answer. “I’ve seen<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_153"></a>153</span> a great deal of -Mandarin Wu since I first came out. He’s a gentleman, and every inch a -man. There is no one I respect more, and very, very few of my own race -I respect as much. We are friends, I tell you. And I think he likes me. -I went to beg a great favor of him.”</p> - -<p>“H’m!” the clerk mused aloud. “And he wouldn’t see you?”</p> - -<p>“And I couldn’t get in. I have never been refused ‘come in and welcome’ -at Wu’s before, and I must have been there fifty times. But I couldn’t -get past the outer gate yesterday. The mandarin didn’t refuse to see -me; I just couldn’t get in.”</p> - -<p>“Much the same thing——”</p> - -<p>“Not at all! I was met at the gate and turned away from it with every -courtesy. If Wu had wished to avoid me, I might still have been made -free of the grounds, as I have been a dozen times when he has been away -or too busy to chat. But I was driven—with the utmost politeness—from -the gate. Why? Because there was something in there I was not to see—I -believe, Basil. And if Basil, Basil alive. A dead Englishman would have -been obliterated.”</p> - -<p>“But could not a living one be hidden beyond your suspicion, even by so -astute a Chinaman as Wu Li Chang?”</p> - -<p>The clergyman looked puzzled. “Yes—yes—undoubtedly, most probably, -but such men as Wu take no chance, and there is always just one chance -that any living prisoner may make himself heard or seen. But dead men -tell no tales.”</p> - -<p>Holman shook his head. He was unconvinced.</p> - -<p>And Holman was right. Wu Li Chang would, had he chosen to do so, have -let all Anglo-Hong Kong stroll through his gardens, and have kept -twenty prisoners<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_154"></a>154</span> there undiscovered at the same time. He had had -Bradley denied entrance at his gate because his home was the home of -mourning, and in it there was no room or welcome for any Englishman, -except the one grimly guarded guest in the pagoda by the lake.</p> - -<p>“Well,” Bradley said, rising again, “I can only repeat, as you value -Basil’s life, let Mr. Gregory do nothing to rasp Wu Li Chang. See him, -I must and will. But it will have to be at his convenience and consent, -not at mine. I don’t know why I should hope to influence him. But I can -only try.” He picked up his hat, and continued looking at the girl in -the frame. “Wu may be coaxed; he cannot be coerced. There is no force -to which we could appeal, even if we had anything to go upon, and we -have nothing. The Tsungli yamên itself, at Pekin, could neither coerce -nor punish Wu Li Chang if it were minded to——”</p> - -<p>“You know that Mr. Basil was seen here on the island after they had all -returned from their visit to Wu’s daughter?”</p> - -<p>John Bradley waved that aside contemptuously. “Rubbish!”</p> - -<p>“Precisely what I think,” Holman acquiesced tersely.</p> - -<p>At the door the priest turned to say earnestly, “Remember, Mr. Gregory -must do nothing to annoy Wu now—absolutely nothing. Basil’s very life -may depend on that.”</p> - -<p>“I’ll do my best,” Holman said, none too confidently, rising wearily -and taking a step towards the other.</p> - -<p>“And, Holman, not one word about Ah Wong—that you think she has been -to me. It would serve no purpose, and it might cause her trouble—so—I -expressly ask you, not one word.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_155"></a>155</span> -“Not one word, then,” the other man said, taking Bradley’s outheld hand.</p> - -<p>And they parted with a grip long and strong. They were brother Masons.</p> - - - - -<div class="chapter"> -<hr class="x-ebookmaker-drop divider" /> -<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_156"></a>156</span> -</div> - -<h2 id="xxii">CHAPTER XXII<br /> -<span class="smcap">Sing Kung Yah’s Flowers</span></h2> - -<p class="noi"><span class="dropcap">T</span>HAT afternoon Florence Gregory, coming in with Hilda and Ah Wong from -a weary, distracted searching—searching here, there, everywhere—found -in her sitting-room such a basket of flowers as she had never seen -before, and a red Chinese visiting card, three inches wide and fully -eight inches long. Ah Wong eyed it dismayed, and at her lady’s command -translated the ideographic characters reluctantly. “No like,” she -added. “Chlinese lady no make vlisit so way—Chlinese lady no have -vlisitling clard chit. No like.”</p> - -<p>“But who is Sing Kung Yah?” Mrs. Gregory asked wearily, not interested -to know, except that any straw might prove a clew to the only thing on -earth that mattered now, and so must be clutched.</p> - -<p>“Lido wuman,” the amah said contemptuously, her fine, acrid Mongolian -disgust in no way softened by the unhappy fact that she herself was a -widow also.</p> - -<p>“Whose widow is she?” Mrs. Gregory was puzzled.</p> - -<p>“Not know.”</p> - -<p>“Who is she? Why has she called?”</p> - -<p>“Not know—whly she clome—or send slweet blossoms. Not know if she -clome itself.”</p> - -<p>“Find out.”</p> - -<p>“Madam, can do,” the woman said, running off on her errand reluctantly.</p> - -<p>“Did,” she reported presently. “Top-side chair. Plenty coolie.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_157"></a>157</span> -“Who is she?”—the English voice implied that the English mistress -intended to be answered explicitly this time.</p> - -<p>And Ah Wong answered desperately, “Her all same klinsloman Wu Li Chang. -Live Kowloon yamên. Be mock mother lonorable miss-child we dlink tea.”</p> - -<p>“Great Scot!” Hilda exclaimed. “What a time to choose to force her -acquaintance on us—a Chinawoman! Even they must have heard of Basil’s -disappearance, with every wall and corner in Hong Kong placarded with -his description and his picture.”</p> - -<p>“Oh! be quiet,” the mother told her. Florence was thinking—thinking -hard.</p> - -<p>Ah Wong was thinking too, and on the Chinese face, usually so -inscrutable, there was an unmistakable pinch of anxiety, and her -dog-like, devoted eyes were growing haggard.</p> - -<p>“Take them away—where Mr. Gregory will not see them. But take care of -them. Let the hotel servants see that we are treating them with the -greatest respect. Do you understand?”</p> - -<p>“Ah Wong understland,” the woman said. “Can do.” And she did do; but -she only just could, for the great gilded bamboo basket of flowers was -so heavy and so huge that she could scarcely lift it; she staggered a -little as she carried it from the room.</p> - -<p>And Basil Gregory’s mother went on thinking—on and on.</p> - -<p>The mandarin Wu was said to be the most powerful man in China—at least -in this part of China. Surely he could help them to find Basil. And -he was a kind man—his girl had said so. And his near kinswoman—the -aunt who had been on a visit at a Taoist nunnery or something when they -were in Kowloon—had called and<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_158"></a>158</span> brought a garden full of flowers. That -call should be returned, post-haste. Perhaps she could help, the woman -who had left the flowers and the absurd red card; and the girl, the -little girl who had given them tea, she could help, too, to persuade -the all-powerful mandarin, if it needed much to persuade him; of course -she could and she would; of course she would—she had had the kindest -eyes and a soft, girlish mouth. How she, his mother, wished that Basil -might have shown little Miss Wu just a little more attention—not too -much, of course; that might have alarmed or even offended a Chinese -girl—you never could tell about such oddities; but if only he’d shown -a little less—yes—a good deal less cold indifference—indifference so -cold that it had been almost a rudeness—and girls felt such things, -and resented them too—even Chinese girls, probably. Of course, she, -his mother, rejoiced in the niceness of her boy, and that he was not -as other young Englishmen were in China—some of them—but manly -Aryan self-respect was one thing, and an almost brutal display of -racial superiority and masculine indifference was quite another. She -wished indeed, that he had treated the only child of the great Wu less -cavalierly, for his manner to the pretty Chinese creature had been very -cavalier—Chinese, but a girl for all that. Still, his fault was in his -favor, and it was no part of a mother’s office to forget that. Basil -was innately and intrinsically—and she believed irradicately—nice. -Thank God for it! He had been a little wild at school—the best boys -always were (repeating to herself the foolish old threadbare paternal -fallacy); a trifle lax at Oxford too—but, her son and always nice!</p> - -<p>There was nothing cavalier about the way in which Ah Wong carried -her fragrant burden through the hotel corridors. Her manner to the -honorable flowers grown<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_159"></a>159</span> in the garden of the jade-like mandarin, and -gathered by noble, jeweled hands, was conspicuously obsequious.</p> - -<p>But when she had placed them in a cool, dark room, sacred to an adjunct -of her lady’s toilet, and into which Robert Gregory never came, nor -the hotel servants, her manner changed. She put them down abruptly, -fastened the doors (there were two) feverishly and securely, and -gestured angrily towards the gleaming golden basket of bloom, with -a use of arms and fingers strangely identical with the motions with -which the Neapolitan peasant averts the evil eye. Then she ran one -matting-blind up, letting such breeze as there was blow across the -flowers and out of the room through the window.</p> - -<p>She even knelt down by the big basket, and with a guttural groan -sniffed—not at the blossoms, but at the stems, and at the gilded -wicker-work. But if there was some insidious poison hidden in the gift, -to kill or disfigure whoever smelt or touched, Ah Wong could not detect -it.</p> - -<p>But how could she? Why should she hope to pit her wit against the wit -of Wu?</p> - -<p>Next, the woman got a sharp bamboo, and, kneeling down again, prodded -cautiously but thoroughly among the leaves and stems and the depths of -moss. She trembled as she worked, for she was prodding for some small -poison-snake or asp, and was terribly afraid; but because another woman -had treated her decently for a whole year, and kindly more than once, -she worked on until convinced that nothing that crawled or stung was -hidden in the glowing gift.</p> - -<p>Then she unlocked one door and made several hurried journeys into the -adjacent sleeping-room, carrying a small tub, a spirit-lamp, a box, a -manicure set, a dozen<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_160"></a>160</span> sundries, and arranging them as best she could, -first locking the dressing-room door from the bedroom side and hiding -the key in her bosom.</p> - -<p>The flowers seemed innocent enough, but Ah Wong would die before her -English lady should touch them or inhale their breath.</p> - -<p>Ah Wong was absurdly wrong—if devotion can ever be absurd; the flowers -were exactly what they seemed. Wu Li Chang was no crude bungler. When -he unsheathed his knife the knife would cut, but it would leave no -trace of Wu.</p> - -<p>Of the tragedy that had been enacted at Kowloon Ah Wong knew exactly -nothing; but she suspected almost all, and the details of her suspicion -were uncannily accurate. She was Chinese.</p> - - - - -<div class="chapter"> -<hr class="x-ebookmaker-drop divider" /> -<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_161"></a>161</span> -</div> - -<h2 id="xxiii">CHAPTER XXIII<br /> -<span class="smcap">Ah Wong</span></h2> - -<p class="noi"><span class="dropcap">T</span>HAT same night, at midnight, Tom Carruthers and Hilda Gregory sat hand -in hand on a verandah that looked down the Peak on to the city and -the water beyond. The midnight sky was thick with stars, and up and -down the Peak’s town-side thin snakes of light crept now and then—the -lantern lights of late-sojourning natives, or of those pulling and -pushing the rickshaws, and carrying the chairs of European merry-makers -returning to the Peak to sleep in its comparative cool—a party that -had dined at Government House, a dozen who had made moonlight picnic in -the grounds of Douglas’ Folly or at Wong-ma-kok, a man who had worked -late at the bank, three who had played late at the club, several who -had been at a dance, and perhaps fifty who had been yawning over the -Richelieu of a very scratch Australian company. In Hong Kong—the -town itself—the lights were still many, for Hong Kong both works and -revels late o’ nights, and on the nearer water dimmer lights blinked -sleepily. And from the mastheads of many a ship larger lights hung -bright and clear—red, green, blue, orange. There were half a dozen -that Carruthers could identify as theirs—lanterns slung from craft of -the Gregory Steamship Company—and he pointed them out to Hilda.</p> - -<p>They spoke to each other but fitfully. Each was trying to think of some -worth-while suggestion to make about poor Basil, and neither could.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_162"></a>162</span> -A window that led from the balcony to the room beyond was open, and -Robert Gregory and his wife were sitting in there, not silent like the -two on the verandah, but going together over and over again a dozen -sorry theories of their son’s disappearance, a dozen feverish plans for -his rescue.</p> - -<p>The island and the mainland beyond had been well beaten by now. All -the Europeans, the Government House, the Civil Service, residents, -officials big and small, had tried to help in the search. For Robert -Gregory was a power in Hong Kong, and Mrs. Gregory was well liked. And -many of the natives were trying, too, to help in the search, or seemed -to be.</p> - -<p>In the Company’s offices on the bund, a light still burned in the -manager’s room, and Holman and William Simpson sat there in earnest, -anxious conclave.</p> - -<p>“Nothing could look much blacker,” Simpson was saying.</p> - -<p>“Nothing.”</p> - -<p>“The bottom seems about out!”</p> - -<p>Holman nodded grimly.</p> - -<p>And indeed the affairs of the great Company seemed desperate, and -all in the last few weeks, chiefly in the last few days! Strike had -followed strike among the dock hands, inexcusably, inexplicably. -Demands for increased wages, made when some important contract, already -overdelayed, must be fulfilled quickly, or lost, were scarcely acceded -to when they were renewed. It looked as if their hands were determined -to ruin and shut down the Company by which they all lived and that had -treated and paid them well for years. It was one of Robert Gregory’s -boasts that he believed in keeping his tools bright and his machinery -well oiled. The <em>Fee Chow</em> must not miss the next morning’s tide, -and yet her<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_163"></a>163</span> loading had been hindered and bungled consistently. A -dozen mishaps and a dozen odd financial backsets had followed each -other, and it looked as if disaster had come to the Gregory Steamship -Company, and come to stay.</p> - -<p>Too anxious for the house they had served long and staunchly to rest, -and anxious for their own salt too, the two men had returned after -office hours to talk it over—to find a way out, if they could.</p> - -<p>And the deeper they went into their canvass of affairs, the -more difficult and bad it all seemed. And certainly the strange -disappearance of young Gregory was far and away the worst feature of -the entire complication. The Gregory purse was long, the Gregory credit -enormous; both would stand a great deal of strain. But the accident (or -whatever it was) to his boy was beginning to tell upon the father—that -had been evident all day; and when Robert Gregory’s nerve went, the -greatest asset of the firm went.</p> - -<p>And for this reason, rather than for any keen feeling for the young man -who had shown but little for the business at which they toiled loyally -early, and late, while he neglected it or played at it flippantly, and -from which, as a rule, he drew in a day rather more in the way of cash -than they together did in a week, it was of his disappearance and of -the chance of his return that they spoke and planned, much more than of -the ledger that lay between them, or the more immediate affairs of the -office.</p> - -<p>And while the six—two here, four in the hotel on the Peak—were trying -to think and to contrive, two others, but quite separately, were doing -something more active.</p> - -<p>John Bradley, just at midnight, came out of a tiny house in Po -Yan Street, not far from the Tung Wah<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_164"></a>164</span> Hospital, in the heart of -Tai-pingshan, the poorest part of the Chinese quarter—a malodorous -hovel in which a native miscreant, whom Bradley had befriended more -than once, and whom, rightly or wrongly, the clergyman thought he could -trust, lived. Sung Fo would have come to the Englishman on receipt of -a message, but Bradley had thought it best to manage otherwise. And he -feared nothing in Hong Kong, and indeed had nothing to fear, not even -here in its worst quarter of slime and dirt and worse, tucked away -behind the cobblers’ lanes.</p> - -<p>He had found Sung Fo at home, and had made the bargain he had come to -make. Sung Fo had promised to “look-see” and “try-find,” and for the -rest Bradley thought he could do nothing but wait and watch and pray.</p> - -<p>Like Ah Wong, he knew nothing but suspected everything, but with much -less accuracy than she.</p> - -<p>Unlike Ah Wong, all John Bradley’s sympathies were with Wu Li Chang.</p> - -<p>He would do anything that a man might do to find Basil Gregory.</p> - -<p>He would do anything that a man might to avoid injuring Wu Li Chang.</p> - -<p>And to spare Wu he would have gone even a little farther than he was -prepared to go for Basil’s sake, had not Basil been Hilda’s brother.</p> - -<p>But if his sympathy was all Wu Li Chang’s, his anxiety was not. He had -a firm conviction that nothing he could do, by purpose or by accident, -could harm or imperil Wu Li Chang.</p> - -<p>When he had been walking away from Sung’s—perhaps for ten -minutes—picking his way over garbage heaps and broken side-paths, he -paused to look curiously at a house of which he had heard a great deal -but had<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_165"></a>165</span> never entered—a well-kept brick edifice, taller and better -built than many houses in that quarter, painted a dull light blue, and -owned and inhabited by a Chinese apothecary who was infamously famous -throughout the Empire.</p> - -<p>It looked an innocent house, clean and law-abiding. It was lightless, -and each of its shutters was tightly closed; but at midnight—a -quarter-past midnight now—that it was darkened and closed but added to -its air of trim respectability. And yet, to this quiet blue house half -the poisoning crimes in China were attributed by the native and the -European authorities alike—attributed, but not one ever traced.</p> - -<p>The authorities had raided the place again and again, but always -uselessly. Nothing incriminating was ever found—nothing but the -ordinary wares of a well-stocked apothecary: glass bowls of Korean -ginseng-plant roots (one, five inches long, was worth ten pounds, and -a little of its dust would give vigor to the old, hair to the bald), -skins of black cats and dogs (stewed, they prevent disease, and are -the best hot-weather diet), musk, rhubarb and silk-covered packets of -dragons’ blood (invaluable medicinally, but not what it sounds—a dry -resinous powder scraped from Sumatra rattan), cups of rhinoceros’ horn, -skins and horns ground into powdered doses, antidotes to poison, or -guaranteed to impart the qualities of the animal which it had protected -or adorned. Horns of cornigerous animals hung in tidy rows, and formed -a conspicuous part of the stock-in-trade, for they give the human -partaker strength and courage, still silly nerves, quell fearfulness. A -pyramid of the hoofs of young deer, specific to inculcate fleet gait, -half-screened the chief treasure of the place: a lacquer cabinet of -hearts. There were three hearts, each in its own well-sealed<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_166"></a>166</span> jar: a -lion’s heart, and two that were human—a pirate’s and a young girl’s. -The criminal’s was preserved in alcohol, the maiden’s in honey; and -each was of fabulous value. There was no secret about their being here. -They had been honorably bought: one from the criminal himself just -as he bent down smilingly on the Kowloon execution ground, the other -from a widowed grandmother who was a holy woman and very poor. The -girl had been very lovely, and some rich man would buy her heart one -day, no doubt, to enhance the marriage chances of a plain but favorite -daughter. The pirate had been a monster of ferocity, and to eat his -heart would be to become forever brave. Chinese warriors have eaten -the hearts of their bravest foes. They can pay no greater compliment, -none more sincere. Two alabaster boxes were stowed carefully beneath -the counter: one held charms; the other held smaller boxes of p’ingan -tan (pills of peace and tranquillity), the choicest drug in China. -Tze-Shi sent boxes of p’ingan tan to troops sorely pressed or whom she -wished greatly to reward. There were ointments here made from the gums -of trees that surrounded the tomb of Confucius, and precious medicines -brewed or pounded beside the Elephant’s Pool, where Pusien washed -his elephant after crossing the great mountain from the west; some -in Pootoo, the sacred isle of Nan Hai, and still others in a garden -that Marco Polo knew. There were simples here that would cure women of -vanity, and one (but this the apothecary would by no means guarantee) -that healed them from overtalkativeness. But all this was as it should -be, and the police had never been able to find here anything nefarious -or even objectionable.</p> - -<p>Something about the building fascinated Bradley—probably the -contrast between its docile and pleasant<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_167"></a>167</span> seeming and its sinister -reputation—and he stood some time gazing at it, scrutinizing each -closely shuttered window—there was not a balcony; it was unique in -that—and the tight-shut door with the apothecary sign hanging from the -lintel.</p> - -<p>“It looks a peaceful place, innocently asleep after a day of honest -industry,” he said to himself; and then some old words that were great -favorites of his, from a book he never tired of reading, came to his -memory, and he bespoke them aloud softly to the star-emblazoned Chinese -night: “He it is who ordaineth the night as a garment, and sleep for -rest, and ordaineth the day for waking up to life.”</p> - -<p>But the apothecary’s house was not quite asleep. A thin line of light -trickled out from below the door, and then the door opened narrowly -and a woman, shrouded from crown to shoe in humble blue, came into the -street.</p> - -<p>He did not see her face, although, as by law obliged, she carried a -lantern, but she saw his, clear-cut in the white moonlight, a late, -just-rising moon, and for an instant she turned as if to speak to him; -but she thought better of it, and walked quietly but quickly away.</p> - -<p>Bradley wondered who she was—up to no special harm, he hoped. It did -not occur to him that her gait was familiar, at least not individually -so—thousands of amahs walk so. But he noticed that her coarse blue -clothes looked very clean—as clean and as blue as the blue house of -Yat Jung How.</p> - -<p>He went home then, and Ah Wong went too, back to the hotel, slipping -out of the Chinese quarter stealthily, but going along the Praya -unconcernedly and through Queen’s Road and Ice House Street, and up the -long climb to the Peak, and past the night watchman at the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_168"></a>168</span> hotel door. -She had a night-police pass; and her mistress had given her leave to -spend the evening on some errand of her own.</p> - -<p>It’s a long climb up Hong Kong Peak. Ah Wong was very strong, but -her indefatigable little feet ached when she slipped into the room -where she had locked the flowers almost twelve hours ago, and day was -slipping rosy up the sky.</p> - -<p>Day was coming, but she did not lift a blind. She lit a candle. And -when she had laid off the long blue cloth in which she had veiled -herself, closely in the Chinese quarter, carelessly in English-town, -she took from her dress the spoil of her visit to Yat Jung How’s blue -house: three bottles.</p> - -<p>The smallest of the three was filled (it was very small) with a few -drops of opalescent green liquid. Ah Wong studied it grimly awhile, and -then she knotted the phial in some corner of her garments, and tucked -it securely back inside her dress.</p> - -<p>The second bottle held about a dram of something that smelt -disagreeably when she uncorked it; but she kept it well away from her -own face and nose, and turned it instantly into the moss in the basket. -It was deadly poison this, and would destroy any reptile or scorpion -thing that came within a yard of it, and so potent was it that being -near it would render any other poison quite innocuous—Yat had told -her so. And she trusted Yat Jung How. She had known a way to make him -trustworthy.</p> - -<p>The third bottle was a generous, roomy receptacle, squat but wide. It -held nearly a pint. And this was disinfectant, warranted to purify a -poisoned room, and smelt of an acceptable cool pungence as Ah Wong -threw<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_169"></a>169</span> it lavishly about the room, until she had spilled the last drop.</p> - -<p>Then she lit several handfuls of joss-sticks and pulled up the blinds. -But she did not unlock the doors, or leave one unlocked when at last -she left the room, to sit outside it till her lady called. She intended -that no one but she should pass into that room until the Kowloon -flowers were all dead, and she had won Mrs. Gregory’s permission to -burn them herself, basket and all.</p> - -<p>The sweet pungence of the joss-sticks came to her from under the door. -From under the room’s other door no doubt it was filling her mistress’s -chamber with thick sweetness—but that was well, for the English lady -loved the smell. Mr. Gregory did not especially. Quite possibly he -might swear a little in his sleep. But he often swore in his sleep. Ah -Wong had heard him.</p> - -<p>She leaned back her head against the cool corridor wall, anxious and -tired, but well content with her night’s work.</p> - -<p>And she had left her three jade bangles (and they were good) and her -seven silver ones and her stick-pin of seed pearls and coral with Yat -Jung How. And almost she had pawned her soul to him, and had quite -pawned all she would earn for years.</p> - -<p>Heathen Chinee!</p> - - - - -<div class="chapter"> -<hr class="x-ebookmaker-drop divider" /> -<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_170"></a>170</span> -</div> - -<h2 id="xxiv">CHAPTER XXIV<br /> -<span class="smcap">In the Clutch of the Tongs</span></h2> - -<p class="noi"><span class="dropcap">T</span>HE next day there was still no word of Basil, and at the Steamship -Company’s hong the tangle was steadily tightening.</p> - -<p>Holman sat glowering at a telegram he was reading for the third or -fourth time, but looked up impatiently as a Chinese clerk came in and -stood waiting to speak.</p> - -<p>“What now?”</p> - -<p>“Coolie men talkee muchee. No plenty money, no can do plenty work.”</p> - -<p>“Fetch the compradore here,” Holman snapped, thrusting the telegram -into his waistcoat.</p> - -<p>“Can do,” the clerk said, and went out.</p> - -<p>Tom Carruthers stood by the window, doing nothing in particular, but -watching with a rueful, puzzled face the seething, jabbering coolies -outside. He swung round as the clerk went. “I say, Holman, what is all -this? A third demand to-day for more wages!”</p> - -<p>Holman pushed a ledger aside abruptly. “That’s what I am trying to find -out, young man,” he said—“just exactly what it all means.”</p> - -<p>The compradore came in a moment—a middle-aged Chinese, as capable -looking in his way as Holman was in his. He stood waiting stolidly for -the manager to speak, but Holman delayed a little, measuring the Mongol -with his shrewd blue eyes before he said: “Look here, compradore, what -the devil is the matter with your coolies now? Why have they struck -work again, and<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_171"></a>171</span> why the blue blazes have you let them, when you know -how late we’re with the loading of the <em>Fee Chow</em> already, that -she’ll miss the tide if there’s more delay, and that she <span class="italic">must not -miss</span> the tide? Eh?”</p> - -<p>“Coolie men talkee muchee”—the compradore said it sadly. “They talkee -stlikee.”</p> - -<p>“Strike!” Tom Carruthers cried. “Strike! That’s the limit! A strike -halfway through loading. You damn well tell them——”</p> - -<p>But Holman interrupted sharply, “Hush, Mr. Carruthers, please. Leave -this to me. Now, compradore, what’s the grievance? Come, out with it, -chop, chop!”</p> - -<p>“Coolie man likee work,” the compradore replied gently, “no likee -money. No plenty money, no can catchee plenty Chow-chow. They talkee me -they wantee more money.”</p> - -<p>“All right, then——” Holman began crisply.</p> - -<p>“What?” Carruthers broke in excitedly. Holman paid no attention to -that, but continued to the Chinese, “Tell them double pay if she’s -loaded up to time.”</p> - -<p>“Can do,” the other answered, and went slowly out.</p> - -<p>“Well, I’m blowed!” Tom gasped.</p> - -<p>Holman went wearily to the window, and stood watching moodily the human -yellow kaleidoscope. The compradore was among them now, and gradually -the trouble cooled and slacked, and the men began to slouch off to -work, but reluctantly, the manager thought. Things looked ugly to -him—very ugly.</p> - -<p>“I say, Holman,” Carruthers persisted impatiently, “isn’t that playing -rather into those chaps’ hands?”</p> - -<p>Holman was furious—he had been furious for days now—and he welcomed -some human thing upon which he dared to vent his rage. He was “about -fed up” with the frets and troubles of the last week. He fixed<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_172"></a>172</span> -Tom Carruthers with a vindictive eye. “See here, Mr. Carruthers,” -he spat out, “if I have any further interference I’ll resign -instantly—understand? I managed this branch for years, until the -governor took a notion to come out. Well—he’s a genius at business, -and I’m proud to take my orders from him. But somehow, the very devil’s -in it these last two weeks, and we’re up against a bigger proposition -than you—or the governor either—have any idea of. I’m doing my best -to cope with it, and, by heaven——”</p> - -<p>“Sorry to upset you, old chap,” the other interrupted regretfully, -“but, believe me, this succession of disasters has just about whacked -me.”</p> - -<p>“Oh! all right,” the older man said, relieved by his own explosion, -and easily mollified after having let slip the snappy little dogs of -his badly over-tried temper, “I haven’t the heart to show this to Mr. -Gregory,” he said, taking the wire from his pocket into which he had -thrust it, “damned if I have.” He spread the flimsy paper out on the -desk, and sent Tom a glance that was an invitation. He wanted sympathy, -even that of the “somebody’s son sent out to learn the business,” -as he contemptuously said of Carruthers when he did not call him “a -flannelled fool.” The latter gibe was not quite fair. Tom usually wore -ducks, as Holman himself did—you had to in Hong Kong—and though the -younger man did squander (if it were squandering) a good deal of time -with Hilda Gregory, he only gave a reasonable, wholesome amount to -rackets, cricket, and Happy Valley racecourse.</p> - -<p>“On top of all else,” Holman continued, “look here!”</p> - -<p>Tom came and stood at Holman’s chair, and read over his shoulder. “Good -God, Holman!” he cried, “the <em>Feima</em> sent to the bottom!”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_173"></a>173</span> -“The biggest and finest ship in our fleet,” the other said bitterly. -“Mutiny of the coolies—they scuttle the ship and bolt with the boats -two days out!”</p> - -<p>“This will about kill him!”</p> - -<p>Holman nodded. “And look here”—he struck the ledger near him with an -angry fist—“I say, do you know anything about safes?”</p> - -<p>“Not much.”</p> - -<p>“Well, ours is the finest made. And the one make that <em>is</em> ‘safe.’ -There probably aren’t a dozen artists that could pick it—all told, -Sing Sing, Portland, Joliet—that could pick it in a week. Well, look -here; this ledger was taken from the safe—I suppose one night a week -or more ago—the page referring to the dock negotiation torn out—and -so prettily you can’t see that it was ever in, except for the missing -number—and the ledger returned to its place and the safe relocked -without so much as a scratch being left to show how it was done.”</p> - -<p>“No wonder we were outbid for the site—<em>somebody</em> knew our price!”</p> - -<p>“Knew our price!”—he closed the ledger with a bang, and slapped it. -“Why, damn it, man, somebody’s got us tied in a knot, and it’s being -drawn tighter every day—every hour.”</p> - -<p>“It’s beyond me, Holman!”</p> - -<p>Holman rose and laid his hands on Tom Carruthers’ shoulders. “Mr. -Carruthers, you don’t for one moment believe this awful—simply -awful—sequence of disasters to be due to accident, do you? Sunken -ships, docks burnt to the water’s edge, strikes on shore, mutinies -afloat, and—and above all—the disappearance of Mr. Basil?”</p> - -<p>“I don’t know what to believe—I simply don’t. What<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_174"></a>174</span> does it all mean, -Holman? I say it looks like some curse, don’t you know, come home to -roost!”</p> - -<p>“You are in the confidence, quite outside of business, of Mr. Gregory,” -the manager said, sitting down again heavily—“of Mr. Gregory and his -family. I want to ask you a straight question.”</p> - -<p>“Yes?”</p> - -<p>“Do you know of any one thing, however slight, that Mr. Gregory may -have done to upset Wu Li Chang?”</p> - -<p>“Wu Li Chang?”</p> - -<p>“Yes, or ‘Mr. Wu,’ as he’s mostly called by the Europeans.”</p> - -<p>“No,” Tom said decidedly, seating himself on the table—that was one of -his ways that ruffled Holman—“no, absolutely no. Why, only the other -day—Thursday, wasn’t it?—we visited at his place—it was there, you -know, that the last was seen of Basil, except for his having been seen -here, on the island, with two other Europeans later that same evening.”</p> - -<p>Holman smiled sourly. “Who saw him?”</p> - -<p>“Why, those Chinese johnnies who brought the information to Government -House.”</p> - -<p>Holman grunted. “Volunteered the information, didn’t they? Went direct -to the Governor instead of lodging information with the police in the -usual way?”</p> - -<p>“Yes.”</p> - -<p>“Basil Gregory was no more seen by those Chinamen than I possess the -Koh-i-noor.”</p> - -<p>“What?” Carruthers stood up in his surprise.</p> - -<p>“Take it from me,” the other said emphatically, “in some manner Mr. -Gregory has stung Wu Li Chang, and, by Jove, that wound will want some -healing.”</p> - -<p>Tom Carruthers was hopelessly puzzled. “Well,” he<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_175"></a>175</span> said slowly, “just -who is this chap, Wu Li Chang? And what’s his strength?”</p> - -<p>“I’ve been here for twenty years,” Holman told him, “and in all that -time there’s been just one man I’ve made it a point to steer clear of, -in business and out of it—a strong personality, possessed of unlimited -wealth, mixed up in every big deal in Hong Kong, swaying a sinister -power that we Europeans cannot understand. Mr. Wu is hardly the man -to cross swords with. No European can afford to; and there’s only one -of his own race who ever got the better of him, and that was only -momentary, for he was never seen again.”</p> - -<p>“You mean——”</p> - -<p>“The inevitable where Wu is concerned!”</p> - -<p>“But how on earth,” Carruthers said, “could Mr. Gregory have offended -such a man?”</p> - -<p>Holman gestured his inability to answer that, but persisted, “There’s -no doubt about it. To you all Chinamen look alike, but they don’t -to me. And I’ve seen men, whom I know to be in Wu’s employ, mixing -with our coolies for days now. There are two of them down there -now—to my knowledge—and probably more. And I know for a fact that -several such shipped in the <em>Feima</em>; every man jack of ’em is a -Highbinder—member of one or other of the rival tongs.”</p> - -<p>“Tongs?” Tom queried. “That means secret societies, doesn’t it?”</p> - -<p>“You bet your life it does: secret societies that <em>are</em> secret, -guilds that are a monster-power—the greatest power in China, the -only power that Tze-Shi is afraid of. There are two or three in every -province—a heap more in some. And our friend Wu is Past Master of the -whole bally lot of ’em. Most of the mandarins hate the tongs,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_176"></a>176</span> and -are in deadly fear of them. But Wu knows a game worth ten of that: he -handles them—the ‘White Lily’ (about the dirtiest of them all), the -Triad (that bunch made the T’aiping Rebellion), the Shangti Hui (the -Association of the Almighty, if you please), and that prize band of -villains, the Hunsing Tzu, and the devil knows how many more. I tell -you, Mr. Carruthers, we’ve got to get to the bottom of this thing, and -get there quick, or there won’t be a stick left in China belonging to -the Company, or a vessel on the high seas flying its flag.”</p> - -<p>“Well, old chap,” the junior said cheerfully, “Mr. Gregory is no -schoolboy. He’ll give this cursed gentleman of tongs and mystery a run -for his money—a damned fine run—I’ll have a bet with you, any odds -you like—and we’ll have a damned lot of fun watching him do it. But, I -say, we don’t know that you are barking up the right tree; but if you -are—and admitting for argument’s sake that Mr. Gregory has offended -this top-dog Chink or whatever he is—I say, why the deuce should Lord -High Pigtail want to take it out of Basil?”</p> - -<p>Holman—his mother had been a Scotchwoman—had a tingling suspicion -why, but he shrugged his shoulders and evaded, saying didactically, -“When you’ve been in China as long as I have, you’ll know as much about -their ways and their motives as I do, and that’s—<em>nothing</em>!”</p> - - - - -<div class="chapter"> -<hr class="x-ebookmaker-drop divider" /> -<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_177"></a>177</span> -</div> - -<h2 id="xxv">CHAPTER XXV<br /> -<span class="smcap">Worse and Worse</span></h2> - -<p class="noi"><span class="dropcap">T</span>HE hot day burned on towards its hottest, and the troubles at -the Gregory Steamship Company boiled and bubbled like a veritable -hell-broth.</p> - -<p>At eleven a coolie was caught smuggling paraffin, disguised as a chest -of tea, on to the <em>Fee Chow</em>. Not a word could be got out of -him as to what or who had instigated him; neither threats nor bribes -would make him speak, and indeed Holman had little time or nerve to -spare to try the application of either coaxing or kicking. He knew -that he needed all he had of both to save what was undoubtedly the -ugliest situation he had ever faced. The tide <em>must</em> be caught at -Shanghai: it was vital. And yet the ship must be searched, every inch -of her—and the crew. That was even more imperative. One tin of the -deadly, dangerous stuff had been detected going aboard—a dozen might -be aboard undetected, hidden among the cargo.</p> - -<p>It was terribly exasperating; but now that things were at their worst -Holman faced them coolly enough, a resolute, resourceful man—strong, -crisp and vigorous still after twenty years of seething Hong Kong -business life. For several of those years he had, until Robert -Gregory’s arrival, managed the firm’s affairs efficiently. He looked -capable of doing so still for quite a number of years.</p> - -<p>He gripped the situation hard, and dealt with it<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_178"></a>178</span> briskly, and Tom -Carruthers looked on fuming, and Simpson and the other half-dozen -European subordinate old hands obeyed him with confident alacrity. -Carruthers would have “wrung every dirty yellow neck,” “kicked them -to blazes,” “boiled them in their own paraffin”; but Simpson and the -English others thought that old Holman would win through somehow—if -he couldn’t, no one could—and they were serenely confident that every -troubling coolie there would get his drastic deserts to the full—when -Holman thought wise and had time, but not before.</p> - -<p>But just once Holman forgot himself. When the searching was over (sure -enough one tin had been successfully smuggled on and hidden) and the -reloading half done, the coolies struck again. And the over-tired -manager felt with Tom that that was too much.</p> - -<p>Tom was nearly maudlin with rage by now, and when, in reply to Holman’s -angry, “The men never behaved so like hell before. What the thunder -does it mean?” the compradore had said oilily, “Me no savee—no catchee -more money—no can do work,” Holman lost grip on himself and blurted -out thunderously, “They work damn well for Wu Li Chang, don’t they?” -and regretted it as soon as he had said it.</p> - -<p>Murder flashed through the compradore’s eyes for an infinitesimal -instant, and a venomous hiss snarled through his teeth. Holman had -heard and seen a rabid dog snarl so once. But the Chinese commanded -himself again instantly, and said meekly, almost sweetly: “Me no savee. -Wantee more money, lelse no can do work.”</p> - -<p>Holman commanded himself as quickly and as well as the native had, -and said, speaking as calmly (and almost as slowly), “Get that ship -loaded—three days’ pay—understand?”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_179"></a>179</span> -“Savee. Can do.”</p> - -<p>But Tom Carruthers collapsed upon the window-seat. “If this was lording -it over the poor, over-worked, underpaid natives, all he could say -was——”</p> - -<p>But the bitter and brilliant remark was never made, for as the -compradore padded softly out, Murray, a senior clerk and the -book-keeper, rushed in excitedly. And European clerks do not rush -about much between noon and three in Hong Kong, not even indoors with -drenched tatties at the windows and punkahs well manned. There were no -tatties in this room—its occupants too often desired to keep an eye on -the wharf.</p> - -<p>“Out, John,” the book-keeper ripped at a Chinese clerk who had come in -while Holman was speaking to the compradore, mounted his high stool, -and began to write busily. At Murray’s order he slid off the stool, -closed his book, and went out impassively.</p> - -<p>Scarcely waiting until the door had closed, Murray said anxiously, -“But, Mr. Holman, I understood you to say that the overdraft for the -new dock had been arranged with the Bank—I drew up the exchange -accordingly——”</p> - -<p>“Quite correct—the transfer is to be made to-day.” But Holman’s voice -was less sanguine than his words. He scented more trouble still, and he -eyed askance the letter in Murray’s hand.</p> - -<p>“There must be some mistake, sir,” Murray said desperately. “The Bank -has just notified our accountancy department that an overdraft is -impossible.”</p> - -<p>“Why?”</p> - -<p>“They write that our security is insufficient and further we must -vacate these premises immediately.”</p> - -<p>“What?” Carruthers sprang up as if some inimical concussion had -impelled him.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_180"></a>180</span> -“The landlord having disposed of the property,” Murray continued. -And he perched himself dejectedly on one of the Chinese clerks’ high -stools, as if the accumulated strain of a few morning hours had -unnerved his sturdy legs.</p> - -<p>“What about the Company’s lease?” Tom persisted miserably.</p> - -<p>“Expired in March,” Holman said doggedly. “We’re here on monthly -arrangement—I supposed you knew that; every one else does—we expected -to move to the new buildings at our own docks. The very roof taken from -our own heads!” he concluded bitterly, dropping down heavily into his -chair.</p> - -<p>Tom looked at him ruefully for a moment, and then went up to Murray. “I -say, how much do we need? That’ll be all right. I’ll cable over to my -father——”</p> - -<p>“I’m afraid it’s no use, sir,” the book-keeper said regretfully. “You -see, it’s this way: the Wang Hi Company refuse to go on with the -negotiations; all their principal shareholders are natives, and these -threaten to withdraw their capital if any business whatsoever is done -with us.”</p> - -<p>Tom Carruthers gave a long, sharp whistle.</p> - -<p>Holman looked up. “Precisely,” he said dryly.</p> - -<p>“But—but—something’s got to be done. We can’t sit here and see -the ship go down—I’m blowed if we can. And I’m damned if I will. -Something’s got to be done. But I say, you two, what shall it be? What?”</p> - -<p>He spoke to them, but he had picked up Hilda’s photograph, and was -looking not at them but at it.</p> - -<p>They paid his question as little heed as the photograph did in its -frame. They had no answer to give him. And he got none—unless he -could piece one out from the hubbub that bubbled up from the sweating, -teeming<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_181"></a>181</span> wharf, from the screaming, pushing coolie women in the -sampans, from the pandemonium of noises and of smells that seethed up -from a hundred junks, and from the mighty conglomerate waterside life -and boat life that is the Greater Hong Kong. For there are two Hong -Kongs—one old and shabby and battered, one smiling and well kept; and -the smiling city on the hill-sides is Hong Kong the Little.</p> - - - - -<div class="chapter"> -<hr class="x-ebookmaker-drop divider" /> -<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_182"></a>182</span> -</div> - -<h2 id="xxvi">CHAPTER XXVI<br /> -<span class="smcap">Suspense</span></h2> - -<p class="noi"><span class="dropcap">T</span>HE three sat brooding in silence for several minutes, until one of the -native clerks came in and held the door open respectfully. That meant -that the chief was coming, and Murray slid off his perch and slipped -quietly out as Gregory came slowly in.</p> - -<p>In the unsparing afternoon light he looked a broken lion—an old -king-beast with sagging skin and weakened mouth, but with fierce fight -still in his tired and anxious eyes.</p> - -<p>Hunters know that the smaller breeds of lions are the most dangerous. -Robert Gregory was not a large man—he barely reached his wife’s good -inches. But he was jungle-fierce and jungle-strong. He had fought many -a hard fight and had been torn and scarred in fights, but he had never -lost one yet. He had pounded his way through the world, butted his way -to victory and wealth. He had no finesse and no super-judgment, but he -had splendid pluck, lion courage, bulldog pertinacity; and often for -his wife, and for his daughter always, he had the charming tenderness -that bulldogs show to children.</p> - -<p>There was a hint of unscrupulousness in his face, and he had a jaw of -iron. He was a very thin man, and it saved him from looking a very -common one.</p> - -<p>He was scrupulously dressed—now as ever—and, now as ever, just -a shade over-dressed. His appearance<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_183"></a>183</span> would have gained had his -watch-chain been a trifle slenderer, his cummerbund a less youthful -rose, the canary-colored diamond in his ring half its size, or, -better still, not worn. But his small, well-kept hands were dark, -and unmistakably the hands of a man. He wore a bangle—just a thread -of twined gold set with two or three inferior turquoise, and it kept -slipping down his arm, almost over his knuckles—a cheap thing that had -cost less than his cravat. Hilda had given it to him several years ago.</p> - -<p>He came in deliberately—almost as if he too were very tired or beaten -by the day’s terrific heat—but with a determined air of briskness, and -nodded crisply to Carruthers and Holman as he took his own chair at his -own desk.</p> - -<p>He was at bay. And he was going to fight—to the very end, let the end -be what it might. But, in spite of his fierce self-control and genuine -grit, he did not look a man “fit” to put up a big fight. For two nights -he had had little sleep, and none that was restful. And to Holman’s -friendly, searching eyes he betrayed several signs of the hideous -strain and worry with which he was battling. The business catastrophes -that had heaped up about him were bad enough—enough to unnerve any -man, and he was palpably unnerved—but the first thought in his mind, -the burning object of its ceaseless search, was—his son. He was -holding his head defiantly, but the veins at his temples were twitching.</p> - -<p>Holman took the telegram out of his pocket, and, with emotion that he -could not quite conceal, leaned across the desk, holding it out to -Gregory.</p> - -<p>“Mr. Gregory,” he said—“the <em>Feima</em>——” But he did not have to -finish.</p> - -<p>“Oh, yes! I know, I know,” Gregory said listlessly.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_184"></a>184</span> -“I’m sorry,” Tom Carruthers began; “I’m awfully sorry for this, Mr. -Gregory.”</p> - -<p>Robert Gregory swung round in his chair and banged the desk fiercely -with his clenched fist. “Sorry—Tom! By God, I’ll make some one pay -for this—but <em>who</em>? What have we got to fight? Holman, you still -think it’s this man Wu? Eh?”</p> - -<p>“I don’t think, governor,” Holman said, leaning across the desk in his -earnestness, “I’m positive. In some way we’ve run up against the most -powerful man in China.”</p> - -<p>“Well, I’m testing your theory, Holman. I’m having that cursed Chinaman -here.”</p> - -<p>Tom Carruthers turned in his insecure seat on the window-ledge, so -astonished that he very nearly slid off it; and Holman was distinctly -perturbed.</p> - -<p>“I sent him a chit this morning from the club, telling him I wished -to see him here urgently at two o’clock on a matter of the gravest -importance.”</p> - -<p>William Holman shook his head.</p> - -<p>“Take it from me, sir, Wu Li Chang is not the man to call upon any -one,” he said; “they must go to him.”</p> - -<p>“Indeed!” Gregory snapped.</p> - -<p>“And did you see him at two?” Tom said eagerly.</p> - -<p>“No, Tom; he sent a coolie with a chit to say that he would call here -at three—unless he found it inconvenient—<span class="italic">unless he found it -inconvenient</span>! Look. I’ve hurried over from the club to see him.”</p> - -<p>Tom came across the room and picked up the note Gregory had tossed -towards him, and stood studying it closely.</p> - -<p>The trouble on Holman’s face thickened. “If Mr. Wu condescends to -answer such a summons,” he said earnestly, “why, that very fact -strengthens my belief. I<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_185"></a>185</span> tell you he never discusses anything outside -his own offices—never! And if for once he breaks that rule, he has -some terrible reason for doing it—some damnably sinister motive.”</p> - -<p>“Pretty cool sort of johnnie, anyway,” Tom commented, still -scrutinizing Wu’s note. “But I say, what an educated, professional sort -of fist he writes.”</p> - -<p>“Oh!” Holman said impatiently, “he’s got us both ways. He has all -the advantages of a Western education without having lost a scrap of -his Eastern cunning. I came out once with the skipper who took Wu to -Europe—Wu and an English tutor he’d had for years—he was only a -kid then, but Watson said he played a better game of chess than any -white man on board—unless it was the tutor chap—had ever seen played -before, bar none. Wu was nine or ten then. He’s forty now, and no doubt -his chess has been improving every day since.”</p> - -<p>Gregory smiled nastily. “Well,” he said, “you may be perfectly correct -in all you say, Holman, but it seems to me that you’re all afraid of -these Chinamen.”</p> - -<p>“I am, for one then,” Holman muttered. “And I’ve been here twenty -years.”</p> - -<p>“Unnecessarily afraid. I think you’ll find that I’m perfectly capable -of dealing with the fellow when he comes—and he’ll come all right—oh, -yes! he’ll come.”</p> - -<p>“I wonder,” Holman said.</p> - -<p>“I’m sure I hope so,” Tom Carruthers said heartily.</p> - -<p>Holman devoutly hoped not, but he did not say it.</p> - -<p>“He’ll come,” Gregory repeated didactically, almost truculently; “he’ll -come, as full of oil as a pound of butter. What the devil!” he added, -with a displeased change of voice, as silk skirts and high-heeled -shoes sounded in the hall. “I told you not to leave the hotel,” he -complained, with affection and dismay mingled in his<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_186"></a>186</span> voice, as his -wife and daughter came through the door.</p> - -<p>“Of course you did, poor old dear,” Hilda told him soothingly, seating -herself on the corner of his desk and patting him encouragingly on -his shoulder. “But Mother can’t rest. How can she? And if she isn’t -scouring the island—she must know every inch of it by now—she is -hunting on the mainland with Ah Wong.”</p> - -<p>“Oh! I know, I know,” Florence Gregory said wearily, subsiding -indifferently into the chair Holman placed for her.</p> - -<p>“You’ll wear yourself out,” her husband said roughly, but not unkindly.</p> - -<p>The mother smiled, contemptuous of the fatigue from which she was wan -and trembling. “It’s no use saying anything to me. I can’t rest. Have -you heard anything? That’s all I’ve come for.”</p> - -<p>“Not yet, dear. I’ve seen the Governor again. He was most kind—really -very kind. Everything is being done—everything—and will be—and it is -foolish to go on wearing yourself out like this.”</p> - -<p>“I am not wearing myself out,” his wife returned petulantly. “The -suspense is wearing my heart out—and no one seems to care—no one!”</p> - -<p>“Yes, I know how you feel, dear,” her husband answered her gently, “and -what you must be suffering. But try to spare yourself just a little, -for my sake. And believe me—you can—all that is possible is being -done—and this—this is man’s work.”</p> - -<p>“Is it?” the mother said dully. “I’m not so sure, I’m not so sure.” She -closed her eyes and leaned back in the big office chair, burning and -shivering with excitement, and terribly, terribly tired.</p> - -<p>Ah Wong looked about the office desperately. She wanted cushions, -but there were no cushions there, and<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_187"></a>187</span> she went and stood very close -behind her mistress; and when Mrs. Gregory moved her head restlessly, -the Chinese woman slid her hand between it and the sharp edge of the -chair’s hard back.</p> - -<p>And they might well be tired—the amah too, as well as the frailer, -fairer woman. For they had indeed been beating the island and the -mainland for days now—searching, searching, and often in quarters of -whose existence the English woman could not have suspected, and whose -nature she had but dimly grasped—some of them quarters into which no -European woman, nice or otherwise, had penetrated before. But Mrs. -Gregory had been in no peril. She had not suffered rudeness even. Ah -Wong had guarded her well. Ah Wong had known how to do it.</p> - -<p>But not one clew, not even the hint of a clew, had they found. Nor had -John Bradley, who, in a different and quieter way, had been hunting as -indefatigably—and was hunting now.</p> - -<p>Robert Gregory sat crouched a little forward now, leaning on the -desk, watching his wife miserably, but saying no more—tortured for -her (almost forgetting his own pain in hers, or feeling his own only -through hers), but pathetically glad to have her rest even this little.</p> - -<p>Holman slipped over to the window and stood looking moodily out to the -Chinese-and-Mongol-teeming dockside. Tom Carruthers sat quietly down on -the big desk too and took Hilda’s hand in his.</p> - -<p>For several moments there was a silence in the room that was broken -only by the ticking of the clock and the incessant echo of hubbub that -buzzed in through the windows, the other five all conspiring eagerly -to hold and guard Mrs. Gregory’s rest undisturbed until she broke it -herself. Even the Chinese clerk who had come<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_188"></a>188</span> in just after Ah Wong, -and who sat, with his face to the wall, writing in the farthest corner, -began to drive a noiseless pen, without looking round.</p> - -<p>But the clock struck three, and after a startled glance thrown up at -it, Mr. Gregory said softly, “Florence.”</p> - -<p>“Yes?” his wife answered drearily, without moving; she did not even -open her eyes.</p> - -<p>The husband sighed remorsefully. “Dear, I’m afraid you’ll have to go.”</p> - -<p>“Why?” she asked indifferently, as if the answer could not interest -her, and still without moving her head or opening her eyes.</p> - -<p>“Well, you see, I’ve made an appointment here at three—and it may, it -just may, prove important, with—with a man.”</p> - -<p>“Who?” Her voice was still devoid of interest.</p> - -<p>“I expect Mr. Wu here.”</p> - -<p>Before her husband had spoken the last word Mrs. Gregory was bolt -upright in her chair, wide-eyed, alert—as if galvanized, revitalized, -tense and acute.</p> - -<p>“Mr. Wu?” she whispered eagerly.</p> - -<p>“Yes,” he told her.</p> - -<p>And the amah fingered softly something hidden in her gown.</p> - -<p>“About Basil!”</p> - -<p>“About a lot of things,” Gregory said grimly. “And Basil in particular.”</p> - -<p>“Oh! and he can help us! You think so, don’t you, Robert?”</p> - -<p>“He can help us all right, Mrs. Gregory,” William Holman said sternly, -“if he will.”</p> - -<p>“Oh! he must. He shall!” she said hoarsely.</p> - -<p>“At any rate, he’s coming. And that’s more than I thought,” Holman -said, as a new degree and quality of<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_189"></a>189</span> hubbub belched up from the yard. -And as he spoke Murray came in with two cards—a long, thin slip of -crimson paper, the mandarin’s name and title inscribed on it in black -Chinese characters, and an ordinary English -<a id="visiting"></a><ins title="Original has 'visting'">visiting</ins> -card, simply engraved “Mr. Wu.”</p> - -<p>“He’s getting out of his rickshaw, sir,” Murray told his employer.</p> - -<p>“And every man jack of the coolies is ko’towing to him as if he was a -god,” Holman grunted from the window.</p> - -<p>Gregory rose to his feet with a careful show of calm. “Well,” he -remarked cheerfully, “we’ll soon see now what sort of stuff this -well-advertised Chinaman is made of. Show him in, Murray. Holman, take -my wife to the den near the counting-house. She’ll want to stay, of -course, to hear the result. Now, please, off you all go.”</p> - -<p>The others turned to the door to which he had pointed—not the door -that led to the hall, but at the other end of the long room—but -Florence Gregory went up to her husband. “Robert——” she began, but -she could not say more, and her eyes were swimming.</p> - -<p>Her husband cupped her face in his hands. “There, Mother, there,” he -said tenderly, and just a little brokenly, “I know, dear, I know. I -understand. There—there. It’s all right. I’ll be careful—very, very -careful. Ah Wong!” But he need not have called Ah Wong—she was there -already, waiting to serve; and though Hilda turned to her mother as if -to help her, and Tom Carruthers and Holman did too, it was Ah Wong who -led her out, Ah Wong to whose hand she held and leaned on a little as -she went.</p> - - - - -<div class="chapter"> -<hr class="x-ebookmaker-drop divider" /> -<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_190"></a>190</span> -</div> - -<h2 id="xxvii">CHAPTER XXVII<br /> -<span class="smcap">The Beginning of the Duel</span></h2> - -<p class="noi"><span class="dropcap">A</span>T the door Holman, as devoted a servant in his masculine and British -way as Ah Wong was in her way, turned back almost peremptorily, and -coming close to Robert Gregory said sharply, “Governor!” There was -entreaty in the word, and there was command.</p> - -<p>Gregory recognized both, and accepted both loyally from so tried and -loyal a servant. It was one of his strengths that he recognized and -appreciated valuable subordinates. “Well?” he said.</p> - -<p>“Handle this man carefully,” the old clerk said, speaking more -emphatically than he had ever spoken to any one before—and he was an -emphatic man always.</p> - -<p>Gregory nodded.</p> - -<p>As Tom held open the door behind his chief’s desk, Murray opened the -other door and announced, “Mr. Wu, sir.”</p> - -<p>“Ah! show him in,” Mr. Gregory said, rather too indifferently, and -so scoring the first mistake in the duel of which it was the first -thrust. Holman knotted vexed brows, and the wife threw an imploring -look. But Gregory saw neither, but busied himself ostentatiously with -his papers, writing with head down, posing as being deeply immersed in -business—and just a little overdoing it.</p> - -<p>The mandarin stood in the doorway.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_191"></a>191</span> -It was dim there, and at first glance he might have been thought -an Englishman. A second look showed his Chinese nationality but -accentuated by his European clothes—a light summer suit, a little -better cut, if that were possible, than Robert Gregory’s, and more -quietly worn. No silk handkerchief showed from a pocket, no gay -cummerbund swathed his waist, and Wu wore no jewelry, for the short, -black fob of watered silk that hung from his vest was plain as -plain. He stood a moment in the doorway perfectly at ease, dignified -but urbane. As tortured by the tragedy in which he had played -high-sacrificial priest as Robert Gregory, who did not even guess at -its crux, could possibly be, Wu showed of that torture no trace. In -appearance, in demeanor and in breeding the advantage seemed with the -Chinese man, not with the English. And why not? For the advantage in -all was Wu’s.</p> - -<p>The slenderness of the Oxford days and the Alpine climbing was gone; -but no man could have looked less “full of oil,” less fat. “Mr. Wu” was -tall and powerfully built, pleasant visaged and altogether gentlemanly, -and unmistakably, in spite of his “smart” tailoring, an athlete.</p> - -<p>The two English women in the other doorway turned to look at him, and -he bowed to them quietly, catching the elder’s eyes and for an instant -holding them. Something in his quiet, respectful gaze fascinated -while it disturbed her. She turned again to go, but on the door-ledge -turned and looked at him again, almost as if some power of mesmerism -had brushed against her. Wu almost smiled—not quite—and bowed -again, lower than before, but not too low. And she went out a little -hurriedly, the others with her. But Ah Wong, who naturally went last, -looked at the great man deliberately—a<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_192"></a>192</span> strange thing for a Chinese -woman of her caste to do. And as he looked, she read his face and saw -the tragedy hidden there. But Ah Wong and the Mandarin Wu had met -before.</p> - -<p>The Chinese clerk had slid off his stool and crept cringing towards -Wu—cringing, almost grovelling. Wu snarled at him noiselessly, and -the fellow almost crawled from the room; and Murray went after him and -closed the door. Holman had already closed the other. The duellists -were alone.</p> - -<p>They had no seconds.</p> - -<p>Neither spoke. The clock tocked on.</p> - -<p>Outside a new note, a note of exultation, had come into the incessant -coolie chorus; and Wu’s jinrickshaw man—for Wu had not come in state, -but very simply—squatted between the shafts and smoked.</p> - -<p>Gregory continued to write. Wu watched him with a faint, contemptuous -smile, and then he made a slight gesture towards the Englishman. -Gregory did not see, but he felt it, and he obeyed it, and fidgeted -uncomfortably, and then spoke, saying, still writing and without -looking up, “Sit down, Wu.”</p> - -<p>A deeper smile flitted across the Chinese face. “I beg your pardon, Mr. -Gregory?”</p> - -<p>At the man’s voice Gregory almost started—it was at once so masterful, -so pleasantly pitched and so highly bred. It was a clear voice—as the -Chinese voice almost invariably is—but it was deep and rich, which in -the Chinese is very rare. “I beg your pardon, Mr. Gregory?” Wu had said.</p> - -<p>And Gregory recognized and regretted his blunder. But he stood by -it—there was nothing else to do, he thought—and said again, “Sit -down, Wu.”</p> - -<p>“I would suggest,” the Chinese remarked smoothly,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_193"></a>193</span> “that Mr. Gregory -should not call me ‘Wu,’ but ‘Mr. Wu’——”</p> - -<p>Robert Gregory looked up sharply, and, when he had looked, rose less -sharply and even a little less confidently. He had never seen Wu -before. And he was not a little taken aback at the man’s dress, his -splendid size and undeniably superior manner. And with that first look -something very like a touch of fear came to Robert Gregory, and a -subtle, vague sense of the almost hypnotic power of Wu’s personality.</p> - -<p>“—Otherwise,” the Chinese continued—just the faintest hint of -amusement in the quiet, courteous voice—“I shall be compelled to call -Mr. Gregory plain ‘Gregory’ to reciprocate the honor he has done me, -and I do not think we are sufficiently intimate to allow of such a -familiarity—on my part.”</p> - -<p>“Oh!” the other said, as nonchalantly as he could, and looking not -at his visitor but at the letters he was holding, “I’m a busy man.” -He felt the prick. Wu had drawn first blood. The duel was far from -fair—one foe played a rapier with a master-wrist; one bungled with a -bludgeon awkwardly.</p> - -<p>“Quite so,” Wu agreed; “but such a fraction of a second only—Wu is so -short a name that you could say ‘Mr. Wu’ while I was saying ‘Gregory.’” -A threat was never made more delicately—or with a nicer smile—but it -was made, and recorded in both minds, and with it a sinister something -of prophecy.</p> - -<p>Robert Gregory winced. “Oh! sit down,” he said uneasily.</p> - -<p>The reply was easy and pleasant, “Thank you!” And, laying his hat on -the desk, Wu sat.</p> - -<p>Gregory remained standing—fussing at the papers and his pigeon-holes. -And his tone was mandatory.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_194"></a>194</span> “Now, Mr. Wu”—Wu inclined his head -slightly—“I’m not given to fine shades, equivocations, diplomatic -finesse or any other Eastern method of wasting time.”</p> - -<p>“Quite so.” Wu’s tone was as polite as his words. But the -amusement—imperceptible to Gregory—was a little less, the contempt a -little more.</p> - -<p>“And so,” the Englishman continued, “If I’m blunt, it’s because—I mean -business.”</p> - -<p>“Business!” the mandarin exclaimed, “Ah! I wondered what had procured -me the honor of this invitation—somewhat peremptorily conveyed, I fear -I must remark. But doubtless that was done to save time too. However, -if it is upon a matter of business——”</p> - -<p>“If you’ll allow me to tell you first,” Gregory broke in irritably (and -he was irritated almost beyond endurance), “then you’ll know better, -won’t you?”</p> - -<p>“One moment,” Wu interposed, slightly smilingly, “pardon me, but I do -not like to remain seated whilst you are——”</p> - -<p>“Never mind me,” the other said gruffly.</p> - -<p>“Oh!” Wu returned simply, “I don’t. But still——”</p> - -<p>“I think a man may please himself in his own office”—Gregory’s voice -was querulous with irritation.</p> - -<p>“Quite so,” the bland voice replied, “when he is alone.”</p> - -<p>“Then”—pugnaciously—“if you don’t object, I think I’ll remain as I -am.”</p> - -<p>“Not at all,” Wu said gravely, and rising; “in that case, we’ll both -stand.”</p> - -<p>For a moment the two men measured each other and themselves against -each other—Wu very politely, but with a thin, cold smile just lurking -at one corner of his mouth. Gregory fumbled for a cigarette, lit it -clumsily, drew a whiff, then threw it down and stamped on it,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_195"></a>195</span> Wu -waiting patiently, and watching with an almost flattering evidence of -interest.</p> - -<p>“The fact is, Mr. Gregory,” Wu continued, “I have my own little -prejudices; and if you remain standing whilst I am seated, it will seem -to me—possibly very unreasonably—that you are standing, not out of -courtesy to me, but to exhibit to me a minatory and even overbearing -presence.”</p> - -<p>For a moment Gregory fought with himself. He was hotly angry, and more -chagrined than angry. And he knew now that he was completely at sea. -But he made a brave effort to control himself. He had promised Holman -and his wife—tacitly—in response to Holman’s earnest word and the -pleading in her eyes as she had turned to go. And he wanted to find or -trace his son.</p> - -<p>“Pray be seated, Mr. Wu,” he said, after an instant, and indicated with -a bow a chair. But Wu caught the irony, of course, in the elaborate bow -and the mock-courtesy of the request. But he bowed quite gravely in -return, and again said, “Thank you,” as he sat down.</p> - -<p>Gregory sat also; he did not dare to have his own way in this small -thing, and the little defeat irked him and contributed to his -thickening uneasiness. However, if he <em>had</em> to sit, whether he -chose or not, he could sit as he liked, in his own chair, in his own -office, he’d be damned if he couldn’t—and he did. He put his elbows -decidedly on the desk, rested his chin firmly on his knuckles, and -faced Wu with a fixed look and fighting eyes, his face thrust forward -aggressively.</p> - -<p>Wu regarded the Englishman placidly.</p> - -<p>“Now, Mr. Wu, what the hell are you up to?” Gregory spoke quietly but -decisively, and he leaned still farther across the table.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_196"></a>196</span> -Wu took his time before he returned blandly, “Would you mind repeating -your question?”</p> - -<p>“I think you heard it plainly enough.”</p> - -<p>“Quite plainly, thank you—quite. Most audible. But I thought you would -perhaps welcome the opportunity of expressing yourself a little more -politely.”</p> - -<p>“I’m not out for a ceremonious talk,” Gregory blurted. “You’ll notice -there’s none of your customary tea on the table—no whiskey and soda -either—no cigars.” He was too good a business man not to know that, -young as the interview was, he was losing ground already, but he was -not skilful enough, and far too overwrought, to conceal the anger he -felt at the unwelcome knowledge.</p> - -<p>“Thank you,” Wu replied lazily, and with nice good humor, “I do not -smoke”—that was not quite true. He smoked a water-pipe at home. He had -smoked so with Nang Ping a thousand times. “I never drink whiskey, and -I am degraded enough to prefer tea made in our Chinese way. However, I -have perceived, as you say, that this is not—a ceremonious occasion.”</p> - -<p>“Meanwhile,” Gregory snapped, “I’d like an answer to my question.”</p> - -<p>“Which was——” the Chinese asked gently, but there was a narrow glint -of contemptuous laughter in his eyes.</p> - -<p>“My question,” Gregory almost thundered, “was—‘what the hell are you -up to, Mr. Wu?’”</p> - -<p>“Pray be a little more explicit,” Wu said coldly.</p> - -<p>“I have every intention of being so,” was the sharp reply. “Now, please -listen to me very carefully.”</p> - -<p>“I am all attention.” A very stupid listener might have thought the -smoothness of the mandarin’s voice meekness. Gregory did not make that -mistake.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_197"></a>197</span> -“Let me preface what I have to say,” he said warningly, “by remarking -that I have the reputation of being a very good friend—but a dangerous -enemy.”</p> - -<p>“Who could doubt it?” Wu murmured, bowing admiringly.</p> - -<p>“He is a rash man who dares to oppose me, Mr. Wu. Do you know my method -of dealing with such a man?”</p> - -<p>“I tremble to contemplate his fate. But I am never rash.” Wu’s voice -<em>was</em> meek now—for no counterfeit could be so fine.</p> - -<p>“I crush him, sir—crush him relentlessly.”</p> - -<p>“It is always interesting”—giving Gregory a half look—“to hear about -the methods of great men.”</p> - -<p>“I mention these things to you by way of warning.” The Englishman spoke -gropingly; his irritation was growing.</p> - -<p>“Warning?” Wu raised his delicate eyebrows delicately. “Really”—he -sighed—“I’m almost afraid to follow you.”</p> - -<p>“I think my meaning is sufficiently clear.”</p> - -<p>“To yourself, no doubt; but to my limited understanding—if I might beg -you to speak a little more plainly.”</p> - -<p>“I will. I will ask you a plain question. Are you my friend, Mr. Wu, or -are you my enemy?”</p> - -<p>Wu smiled openly, and there was a slight drawl in his voice answering, -“Could I aspire to be the one, or presume to be the other? Can the -rush-light claim friendship with the sun, or the mountain-stream -declare war against the ocean?”</p> - -<p>“Oh, yes, yes! you’re very plausible!” Gregory threw himself back in -his chair wearily, and he was weary.</p> - -<p>“‘Plausible’ is not a very pleasant word, Mr. Gregory,” Wu said -quietly, but in a tone of curt resentment.</p> - -<p>“You ask me to speak plainly.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_198"></a>198</span> -“But not to speak rudely. I do not employ rudeness, nor do I accept -it. And now may I ask how this hypothetical hostility of mine has been -manifested?”</p> - -<p>“In a number of ways,” Gregory returned, a little sneeringly.</p> - -<p>“Will you name <em>one</em>?” Wu was entirely bland again.</p> - -<p>“You must be aware,” the other told him, “that my firm has recently -sustained a somewhat extraordinary series of setbacks.”</p> - -<p>“I regret to hear that you have been somewhat unfortunate”—Wu said it -sympathetically.</p> - -<p>“I am determined that these annoyances shall cease”—Robert Gregory -said it doggedly.</p> - -<p>“But even Mr. Gregory,” the Chinese man said sadly, “can hardly hope to -order the workings of Fate.”</p> - -<p>“But are they workings of Fate”—Gregory leaned across the table -aggressively again, his bullet head thrust out—“or of Mr. Wu?”</p> - -<p>For a moment Wu regarded him in silence. Then, “Surely you are joking?”</p> - -<p>“I know pretty well as much about you as you know yourself”—Gregory’s -voice was as insolent as his words.</p> - -<p>“Why should you not?” Wu replied cheerfully. “My life is an open book. -All who run may read.”</p> - -<p>“But there’s one thing I don’t know!”</p> - -<p>“Surely not?”</p> - -<p>“Your object. Now you see I speak frankly—I lay my cards on the table. -What is your motive? What do you want? Come, Mr. Wu, I’m willing to -meet you on a friendly footing.”</p> - -<p>“You are very kind,” Wu said subtly.</p> - -<p>Gregory made an impatient gesture, and the framed picture fell between -them. The Chinese picked it up—“Mrs. Gregory?” he said courteously.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_199"></a>199</span> -“Our daughter.” The English father bit his lip. He was convinced that -to press the quarrel further with this opponent would be to press to -his own defeat. But he restrained himself with heroism. To see Hilda’s -photograph in Wu’s Chinese hand, Wu’s Chinese eyes on Hilda’s face, -maddened him. Twenty Europeans had lifted the picture from his desk, -held it so, and commented on it admiringly—and her father had been -highly pleased. Wu merely bowed and replaced it quietly, face towards -Gregory—and Gregory itched to throttle him.</p> - -<p>If Robert Gregory had known of his son’s spoiling of the Chinese -girl—a girl of gentler birth and softer rearing than Hilda’s—he -would not have considered Basil’s crime unforgivably heinous. “Damned -foolish!” would have been his stricture. But that this Chinese man—a -father too, as he knew, and, for all he knew, as clean-lived and as -nice-minded as himself—had held Hilda’s portrait in his hand, and look -at it quietly, seemed to Gregory hideous, and his gorge rose at it.</p> - -<p>Wu Li Chang read the other clearly, and, quite indifferent alike to -the man and to his narrow folly, he stiffened coldly, for he knew what -Robert Gregory did not, and he was thinking of Nang Ping as he had -looked down upon her last, heaped and stricken in final expiation on -his floor.</p> - -<p>But, both through an instinct of breeding and through utter -indifference, he made no comment on the picture, either in flattery or -in admiration, as he replaced it. But he bent his head congratulatory -toward the other and said: “Ah! yes. Miss Gregory reminds -me—slightly—of some one I have known. Probably an English lady—I -met years ago when I lived in England. I regretted not being at home -when Mrs. Gregory and your daughter so honored my poor garden—and my -daughter.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_200"></a>200</span> -He did not admire Hilda’s picture, and it was far too much trouble to -pretend an appreciation he did not feel. And he thought her dress, or -lack of it, disgusting, precisely as he had thought the décolletage -of “honorable” (and entirely “honest”) English ladies abominable when -he had been a boy at Portland Place. And his Chinese taste (good or -bad) would never have put a picture of Nang Ping in his offices, where -casual callers and mere business acquaintances might scrutinize and -comment on it. He had killed his girl—this man sitting easily there; -calm and imperturbable—not a week since, and neither waking nor -sleeping had he regretted it—not even for an instant. But a scented -bead that he had found beneath her robe, when they had lifted up what -had been his only child, lay now secure in an inner pocket. He could -feel it where it lay.</p> - -<p>“On a friendly footing, Mr. Gregory?” Wu took up the broken thread. -“You Westerners are truly magnanimous. ‘Friendship’ is usually actuated -either by hope of gain or by—fear.”</p> - -<p>“Don’t you trifle with me, <em>Mister</em> Wu,” Gregory said hotly, -rising and beginning to pace up and down the long room—an ugly and -determined look hardening on his face—“I’ll have no more of this -beating about the bush. To begin with,”—controlling himself a little -better: there was so much at stake—“to begin with, Mr. Wu, the -mysterious disappearance of my son is only one of the long series of -unexplained disasters that have recently fallen on me, and concerning -which I want an explanation.”</p> - -<p>“Then why not seek it from those who can enlighten you?”</p> - -<p>“There’s no one more capable of doing that than yourself,”<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_201"></a>201</span> the -Englishman said, swinging round on the Chinese fiercely. “What’s -behind it all, Mr. Wu? What’s the game you are playing at? Why have -you devoted your sinister attentions to me and mine? What have we -done to start you on this career of kidnapping—of ship-scuttling—of -incendiarism, among the coolies out there—and all the rest of it?”</p> - -<p>Wu looked at his watch, put it back in his pocket, picked up his hat, -and rose deliberately. “Mr. Gregory,” he said coldly, “my time is of a -certain value. Time is money, you Westerners say. Well, I never waste -time—although I am never in a hurry. You will excuse me if I wish you -a very good afternoon.”</p> - -<p>“No so fast, Mr. Wu,” the shipper said ferociously, thrusting himself -between Wu and the door. “My time’s precious too, but I’m going to -devote all that’s requisite to getting an answer to my question. I’ve -got the conviction lodged in this obstinate British head of mine that -you know quite well what I want to know—and what I am going to know. -And that’s what I’ve got you here for—to tell me what I want to know. -And, by the Lord, you will before you leave this room. I know that you -can lay hands on my son—dead or alive. I know that you can—by God! I -know that you can——”</p> - -<p>“Can you lay hands on him?”</p> - -<p>“I? No! No!” the English father almost sobbed it, recoiling.</p> - -<p>“Well, when you can——”</p> - -<p>“But I can lay hands on you if you don’t satisfy me——”</p> - -<p>“I do not think that Mr. Gregory will commit that—indiscretion,” Wu -said significantly.</p> - -<p>There was a bitter pause. When Gregory broke it<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_202"></a>202</span> his voice wavered; -he was greatly moved. “You’re ruining my business,” he cried, “you’re -hanging over me like a sword of Damocles.”</p> - -<p>“That sword may have had two edges, Mr. Gregory,” Wu said quietly. “The -man who wounds his enemy with one is apt to cut himself with the other. -The sword,” he added, strolling to the window, “is not my weapon.”</p> - -<p>Robert Gregory backed stealthily up to the door and fumbled with his -right hand in his pocket. And Wu, turning to go, saw that his face was -twitching.</p> - -<p>Wu Li Chang had no thought of sparing this other father—Basil -Gregory’s father—but he was sorry for him now; and it may be -recorded—as a modest contribution to the study of racial comparisons.</p> - -<p>Wu moved to the door which Gregory stood barring. “And now, if you will -kindly allow me to pass——”</p> - -<p>And Robert Gregory thrust his revolver in Wu Li Chang’s face.</p> - -<p>The Chinese looked into the shining barrel. He smiled. “Ah! A Webley, -I observe. Very good make. I have made excellent practice with them -myself.”</p> - - - - -<div class="chapter"> -<hr class="x-ebookmaker-drop divider" /> -<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_203"></a>203</span> -</div> - -<h2 id="xxviii">CHAPTER XXVIII<br /> -<span class="smcap">Something to Go On</span></h2> - -<p class="noi"><span class="dropcap">G</span>REGORY, nearly exasperated by the other’s coolness, made a threatening -gesture. And then came the sudden blazing out of ferocious rage -that smolders always under the quietest Oriental seeming, and that, -enkindled instantly by the tiniest spark, transforms a peaceful, -obliging native into a spitting, hissing human volcano.</p> - -<p>“You fool! You white-eyed dodderer, you green-hatted goat-man!” Wu Li -Chang barked, “do you think I care for your shiny barrel? You English -idiot! The slightest signal from me”—he pointed to the window—“and -those coolies would swarm in here like so many devils.”</p> - -<p>“Yes, but you’d have gone to blazes first,” Gregory said grimly, the -revolver still well aimed, “to join those damned ancestors of yours.”</p> - -<p>Something as terrible as the death-rattle in a mad dog’s throat tangled -and gurgled in Wu’s and a fiendish look leapt into his eyes—they -narrowed until they were mere slits. But he recontrolled himself -almost instantly—angry still, but coldly so, and imperturbable again. -“I would have gone to blazes first?” There were snarl and sneer in -the low-pitched voice. “Then we should have been able to resume this -interesting conversation elsewhere! Come, come! Put your toy back into -your pocket. If you insist upon playing the play out on these lines -(but I think you will not), believe me, this is not<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_204"></a>204</span> the stage for it. -And you know where I live. You also, I understand, broke and honored my -unworthy bread the other day. And I am an easy man to find.”</p> - -<p>Robert Gregory deliberately pointed his revolver at Wu Li Chang’s -heart, and said as pointedly, “Pray be seated, Mr. Wu.”</p> - -<p>Wu bent his head politely to the pointed pistol, as if to thank it for -the invitation. “With pleasure,” he said, moving leisurely back to his -chair. Gregory, eyeing Wu stormily, passed too to his own chair. For -just a fraction of a second his back was turned to Wu; but that thin -shred of time sufficed the Chinese to whip a revolver from his pocket, -concealing it in his hand and in the loose sleeve of his tussore coat. -Gregory banged down his chair, and, covered by the ill-humored noise, -Wu clicked his revolver open.</p> - -<p>They sat and faced each other in ugly silence, dislike and defiance -very differently expressed, but expressed, on each face. Even wider -apart by caste and by breeding than by race, Wu’s tranquillity was -terrible, his quiet at once a menace and a taunt, while Gregory’s -growing nervousness would have been a little comical if its primary -cause had not been so pitiful.</p> - -<p>“I perceive, Mr. Gregory,” Wu Li Chang said pleasantly, “that you still -keep your toy in your hand; kindly cease holding it. I do not fear -it, but the implication of its presence is somewhat aggressive and -offensive. Let us pretend, at least,” he added lazily, “that we are -gentlemen.”</p> - -<p>That taunt got through. Gregory winced, and after a moment of sulky -hesitation put the revolver on his knee under the desk.</p> - -<p>“Now then, Mr. Wu——” he began.</p> - -<p>“One moment,” Wu interrupted him. “Excuse my<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_205"></a>205</span> seeming so exacting, but -I believe that revolver is loaded.”</p> - -<p>“It is—in every chamber,” the other snapped.</p> - -<p>“Well,” the mandarin spoke so indifferently that he almost drawled, -but his voice was honeyed, “if we are to arrive at an amicable -understanding, I think I should prefer, as a matter of politeness—we -Chinese lay such foolish stress on politeness—not to feel that I was -discussing matters at the cannon’s mouth, so to speak. Retain the -weapon, by all means, but be so good as to remove the cartridges.”</p> - -<p>Gregory fidgeted, hesitating nervously.</p> - -<p>“Merely as a matter of good faith,” Wu urged conciliatorily. “That -weapon might go off, you know—by pure accident.” He stretched his -hand, palm up, across the desk.</p> - -<p>Gregory looked at the open palm oddly, embarrassed, and then looked -round anxiously at the window. Then, shrugging his shoulders and trying -to speak indifferently, “Why not?” he said, and lifting the pistol, -jerked it, and the cartridges fell out onto the desk.</p> - -<p>“Thank you,” Wu said genially. “That makes the interesting -conversation much more possible.” He began playing with them lightly, -throwing and catching them as nimble-fingered boys do jackstones; -and Gregory watched the deft, sinewy yellow hand, fascinated. -“One—two—three—four—five—beautifully made little things, are they -not?” Wu’s voice was dove-like. “Now we can start fair. Pray continue, -Mr. Gregory, from the point where you left off.” One yellow hand -dropped nonchalantly on to Wu’s knee below the table, two cartridges in -the subtle fingers. “But please omit to make any further disrespectful -allusion to my ancestors.” He was leaning forward on the desk, both -hands beneath it<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_206"></a>206</span> now, and the revolver had slipped from his sleeve. -“I do not misunderstand your having made the offensive remark—it was -a mere mark of difference of caste and education. But do not repeat -it,” he added smilingly, “or in any way allude to my ancestors”—the -bullets were in his pistol, and Gregory was putting his emptied -weapon irritably into a drawer. “You were asking me, I think, what I -knew about the disappearance of your son and of certain commercial -catastrophes which, I regret to hear, have lately overtaken you. Well, -I will be perfectly frank with you—perfectly frank, Mr. Gregory, -perfectly frank. I will conceal nothing.” The yellow hands slipped up -quietly on to the desk. “And the first thing I have to say is”—the -barrel of the pistol thrust forward—“look at this!”</p> - -<p>Robert Gregory sprang up with a smothered oath, and his hand went -convulsively towards the bell on the desk, “Ah, no!” Wu said, “don’t -move, or it might go off by pure accident.” Gregory shifted out of -Wu’s aim and made a foolish furtive attempt to ring. Wu covered him -instantly, smiling still. “Don’t move, I say! Sit down! Sit down, -Gregory!”</p> - -<p>And Robert Gregory very slowly sat down—obedient partly in fear, -partly in defeat, and a little in a somewhat hypnotized subjection to a -bigger, more skillful man. Then suddenly he pulled the drawer open to -look at his own revolver.</p> - -<p>“No,” Wu told him, “not sleight of hand. This is not your revolver, but -it’s identical——”</p> - -<p>“That’s my son’s revolver. I know. I gave it to him myself. Now, damn -you, I have got something to go on!”</p> - - - -<div class="chapter"> -<hr class="x-ebookmaker-drop divider" /> -<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_207"></a>207</span> -</div> - -<h2 id="xxix">CHAPTER XXIX<br /> -<span class="smcap">“Will You Visit Sing Kung Yah?”</span></h2> - -<p class="noi"><span class="dropcap"><span class="dropcap2">“</span>Q</span>UITE right,” Wu Li Chang said cordially. “This is—or was—your -son’s property. My servants found it in my garden, after your son had -left there. I intended to give myself pleasure of returning it to you -in person”—that was perfectly true—“although I hardly anticipated -doing so in so—humorous a manner. Now kindly ring your bell”—his -voice stiffened suddenly, still low and easy; it had a new percussive -note, and the words came quicker. “When it is answered, merely say -to whomever enters, ‘Pray desire Mrs. Gregory to step this way.’ Do -nothing more, say nothing more. Because”—the voice grew beautifully -soft again—“if you should draw attention to this, or anything of that -kind, my hand might tremble so much with fear that it might go off, and -that would be too ridiculous, with one of your own cartridges! Please -ring.”</p> - -<p>At the mention of his wife—by Wu—Robert Gregory drew himself up -stiffly. “What do you want with Mrs. Gregory?”</p> - -<p>“I might merely wish to show her how foolish her husband has been -in trying to bully and intimidate me instead of dealing with me -reasonably. But also I have a message I have promised my daughter to -deliver for her to your wife. Chancing to see Mrs. Gregory here reminds -me of it, and it will be more convenient to me to deliver it here -than to call at your hotel”—Gregory’s eyes blazed—“and possibly as -agreeable to the lady.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_208"></a>208</span> Also I have a message—but less important—from -Madame Sing, my relative.” (Gregory grunted curtly.) “Ring!”</p> - -<p>“Ring—yourself,” the Englishman at bay said sullenly.</p> - -<p>“That is a liberty I would not dream of taking in another man’s office. -You’ll ring”—the revolver’s barrel repointed insinuatingly. “You will -ring now, Mr. Gregory.”</p> - -<p>Robert Gregory pressed the bell push on his desk and leaned back -heavily in his chair, with an unhappy sigh, defeated.</p> - -<p>As Murray came in, Wu so moved his body that the clerk could not see -the little pistol which still covered Gregory. “Murray,” his employer -said wearily, “ask Mrs. Gregory to step this way a moment.” Then he -began breathlessly, “<i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Ce sacré Chinois me</i>——”</p> - -<p>But Wu interrupted with a contented laugh and, “Oh! this damned -Chinaman understands French perfectly. And I’ve often heard Englishmen -pronounce it very much as you do. You are a linguist too, Mr. Murray? -<span class="italic">E’um dom util—o dom das linguas—e de alto valar em cidades -cosmopolitas!</span>”</p> - -<p>Poor Murray stood bewildered, quite uncertain what to do. And Wu turned -pleasantly to Mr. Gregory with, “Please repeat your instructions, as -Mr. Murray does not seem to understand quite.”</p> - -<p>And Gregory said at once—broken, defeated—in a whipped tone his clerk -had never heard from those thin lips before, “Please ask Mrs. Gregory -to come here.”</p> - -<p>And indeed the hard little man was broken and defeated, and he knew it. -The Chinese duellist had made but little lunge, but with a gentleness -more cruel than any storm, and a suave persistence that under such -circumstances<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_209"></a>209</span> no mere European nerve could outfight, he had borne his -opponent to the knees; slowly, deftly had worn him out. His method and -his touch had been—almost consistently—velvet, but through the velvet -of the fur that hid them, relentless claws had found and torn and -jagged the English adversary.</p> - -<p>Robert Gregory was down and out.</p> - -<p>“Now,” Wu said in a changed tone, speaking briskly and quick, as the -door closed on Murray, “I will open the matter to Mrs. Gregory—if you -please.”</p> - -<p>“What’s your object in wanting to humiliate me before my wife?” Gregory -asked -<a id="drearily"></a><ins title="Original has 'dearily'">drearily</ins>.</p> - -<p>Wu smiled. “Merely a ‘Chinaman’s’ idea of—humor, let us say.” He slid -the Webley lazily into his sleeve.</p> - -<p>Florence Gregory came in eagerly. Knowing less than her husband did of -the mandarin’s important place in international finance, yet she had -a far clearer estimate of Wu Li Chang’s personal potency than Gregory -had. Ah Wong had coached her—if only with a hint or two—and she had -her own woman’s instinct, fine and alert.</p> - -<p>Wu had risen instantly, and taken a courteous step towards her. He -paused as she did. For a moment she stood looking from one man to the -other questioningly, and then she fixed her anxious eyes on Wu, and -they stood measuring each other quietly.</p> - -<p>For once the English eyes were the quicker. Perhaps sex and motherhood -combined outweighed any and every superiority of race. Perhaps he gave -her a much more careless gaze than she gave him. Perhaps her exquisite -anxiety gave her sharper sight. At all events, as they looked, she -almost recognized him, but he had no such experience concerning her. -For a puzzled instant her mind trembled towards “When? Where?” and in -a<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_210"></a>210</span> few moments, or in less mental turbulence, her half-awakened memory -might have caught up a broken thread, a forgotten acquaintance; but Wu -spoke, and in the tension of her anxiety the chance passed.</p> - -<p>“Mrs. Gregory,” Wu Li Chang began, deferentially bowing and going a -little nearer, “I am sorry to be compelled to ask your presence, but, -before I explain, will you take this weapon from me? You see”—-he -laughed a little, lightly—“I present it to you with the barrel toward -my own breast—but”—and this he added with quiet emphasis—“do not -give it to your husband.” As he indicated Gregory he gave him a -straight look. “I trust to your honor.” And he bowed again as he held -the pistol out towards her.</p> - -<p>She took it wonderingly, and held it so. She was not one of the women -who have an exaggerated fear of weapons, but neither was she one of -those who rather affect them. She had never hunted, and she had never -practiced pistol shooting (Hilda had done both). Ordinarily Florence -Gregory would have declined to hold a revolver. But she took this and -held it steadily—puzzled but not afraid. She was in an abject terror -for her boy that left no room for petty, personal, bodily qualms.</p> - -<p>“What—what is all this?” she said ruefully. “Robert, what have you -been doing?”</p> - -<p>He sighed heavily before he answered her. “Mr. Wu has rather -over-reached me in—a little transaction.”</p> - -<p>“Oh! pardon, pardon,” Wu protested pleasantly. “You over-reached -yourself. May we be seated?” he asked Florence Gregory; and as she -sat down he drew himself a chair conveniently towards her, and -convenient for an unimpeded view of Gregory. “I called here to-day,” he -continued suavely, “at your husband’s invitation, on a matter of grave -importance.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_211"></a>211</span> -The woman leaned forward towards him quickly, her hands knotted at her -knee. “Yes—yes—my son,” she began eagerly.</p> - -<p>“What the matter was,” Wu went on smoothly, “he did not say. Of course, -I knew of your son’s disappearance—everybody in Hong Kong knows -that—so I fancied that your husband wished, perhaps, to ask me that -any influence I might possess among my countrymen should be exerted to -assist you in your search——”</p> - -<p>“Yes—yes,” she said, “if you could!”</p> - -<p>“Could!” Gregory muttered, “he knows all about it.”</p> - -<p>“To assist you in your search,” Wu repeated blandly. “His reception of -me, however, was strangely unlike that of a man—asking a favor.”</p> - -<p>“Favor!” Gregory flamed out—he couldn’t help it—“I was going to ask -no favor, I can tell you.”</p> - -<p>His wife sent him a peremptory glance, but Wu paid him no attention, -but continued:</p> - -<p>“And in the end, Mrs. Gregory, he presented a revolver at me, and -practically held me prisoner.”</p> - -<p>“Yes,” Gregory snarled, “and by a cunning ruse, like a man of your -crafty nature——”</p> - -<p>Wu Li Chang smiled deprecatingly. “Listen to him, Mrs. Gregory! It is -cunning of me to endeavor to save my own life. It is not cunning of him -to beguile me here under the pretext of——”</p> - -<p>“Pretext be damned!” Gregory blustered, beside himself now, rising and -going to the window. His face was twitching. He stood looking out at -the seething humans on the dock-side, but it is doubtful if he saw them.</p> - -<p>“You see,” Wu said gently, “the strange means by which your husband -seeks to enlist my help and sympathy.”</p> - -<p>Florence Gregory hung her head.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_212"></a>212</span> -Wu moved his chair an inch towards hers. Gregory did not turn round -at the sound. The Chinese spoke lower, and the sympathy in his voice -seemed very real, “And all your natural maternal anxiety——” He paused -eloquently, and the mother looked up at him, eagerly, gratefully. -And in return he gave her a long direct look—there were respect and -friendship in it. And after a moment she rose abruptly and went to the -window.</p> - -<p>“Robert!”</p> - -<p>He did not answer. She touched his shoulder. He paid no attention. -“Leave me to talk to Mr. Wu! Please!” But her tone was imperative.</p> - -<p>A smile, a glint of triumph, flickered across the Chinese’s face. “You, -Mrs. Gregory?” he said, just stepping towards her—he had risen when -she rose—“that would be different.”</p> - -<p>“He needs a man’s methods of dealing with him!” Gregory growled, -without turning.</p> - -<p>“But they don’t seem to have been very effective in your hands, do -they? Robert,” she urged more appealingly, “I want to find my boy! Let -me try—my way.”</p> - -<p>“I’ll send Ah Wong to you,” was the grudging reply, and Robert Gregory -shuffled awkwardly from the room. He did not even look at Wu again—and -Wu barely looked at him.</p> - -<p>“And who is Ah Wong, Mrs. Gregory?” Wu asked amiably, as the door -closed.</p> - -<p>“My servant,” she told him.</p> - -<p>“Your amah? But I do not need an interpreter,” he laughed.</p> - -<p>“She rarely leaves me.”</p> - -<p>“Who could?” he said with a little bow.</p> - -<p>Ah Wong came noiselessly into the room.</p> - -<p>“And now, Mr. Wu,” the woman asked earnestly,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_213"></a>213</span> her voice low and tense, -“will you help us?”</p> - -<p>“You, if I can—but—I am not sure if——” He broke off and gave Mrs. -Gregory a little inquiring gesture that said, “Are you going to let her -stand there?” For Ah Wong had come steadily across the room until she -stood quite at his elbow.</p> - -<p>“Wait, Ah Wong,” her mistress told her, with a gesture of the head -towards the door. And Ah Wong moved back as quietly as she had come, -and waited just inside the door, immovable, expressionless. But not -for an instant, never once, did her eyes leave Wu Li Chang. A critic -at a “first night” could not have watched and listened more closely or -seemed less interested.</p> - -<p>Ah Wong and the mandarin were ill matched, but better matched than he -and Robert Gregory had been.</p> - -<p>Mrs. Gregory wasted no time on preliminaries. She forgot that he was a -stranger. That he was man, she woman, she forgot that she was English -and he Chinese. She had but one thought, one memory—Basil. “Oh! Mr. -Wu,” she pleaded—urged—at once, “if you can help us, if you could -even give us your advice as to the best way of appealing to the natives -or of offering a reward——”</p> - -<p>“Ah!” Wu interjected gently, “for your sake, Mrs. Gregory—as his -mother—I would do much.” He picked up his hat and moved towards the -door. But Ah Wong did not trouble to move from it—she knew that he -was not going yet. But Florence Gregory did not know—and she followed -him a step. Wu bowed to her with the utmost courtesy, and said—as if -considering the situation—“Well, we must meet again.”</p> - -<p>“Oh! I hope so, Mr. Wu. But now—when every moment is so precious——”</p> - -<p>“I am thinking, Mrs. Gregory, and I will not waste one of them, you may -trust me.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_214"></a>214</span> -“I do,” she said impulsively.</p> - -<p>Wu bent his head gratefully—perhaps, too, to veil a smile—“But I will -venture to take just two of those precious moments, to ask a great -favor of you.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, anything!”</p> - -<p>“You were visited yesterday by a lady of my house, Madame Sing, a -kinswoman who has, since my wife’s death, taken a mother’s part—so far -as it ever can be taken—to my daughter. Sing Kung Yah suffers a great -humiliation and an intolerable loneliness——”</p> - -<p>“I was sorry I was out——”</p> - -<p>“And she was grieved to find you not at home. May I solicit your -kindness for Madame Sing, Mrs. Gregory?”</p> - -<p>“Oh—indeed—anything. But what can I do?”</p> - -<p>“Much,” Wu said. “She is ostracized by the ladies of our race. I am a -powerful man among my own people, madame, but I cannot influence or -soften the prejudices of Chinese femininity in the slightest. Because -she is a widow, she should, according to one of the absurdest of the -many absurd canons of our race, live in seclusion, sackcloth and -discomfort. She is a nice creature, Mrs. Gregory, and she longs for -friends. Will you visit Sing Kung Yah?”</p> - -<p>“Oh—of course—gladly.”</p> - -<p>“It will open many doors to her, for Mr. Gregory’s wife is a social -power in Hong Kong. Chinese doors we are both powerless to open—in any -real sense. Chinese cordiality I am not rich enough to buy for her or -strong enough to seize. But life will be less dull for her if she can -sometimes exchange visits with English ladies.”</p> - -<p>“I shall be so glad.”</p> - -<p>“Soon—perhaps?”</p> - -<p>“Indeed, yes. Of course, until this terrible anxiety is removed——”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_215"></a>215</span> -“It would be cruel of me to ask you to come to Kowloon to drink tea -with Sing Kung Yah. And yet I do ask it—but for your own sake too. -Yes, if you will be so kind—it will delight Sing—you shall be my -guest.”</p> - -<p>“We have been already, Mr. Wu,” she said a little sadly. “You remember -it was in your house, or rather in your gardens, that I last saw my -son. It was there he left us—and disappeared as completely as though -the earth had swallowed him up.”</p> - -<p>“And it is from that point that we will begin our investigations—you -and I—his mother and a Chinese who is honored to serve her. We will -take the thread up from that moment—when you last saw him—from that -place—my own house.”</p> - -<p>“But you know that he was seen afterwards here—in Hong Kong?”</p> - -<p>“I know that it was said so,” Wu replied judicially. “It may, or it -may not, be true, and we will begin at the beginning—and end by -discovering the truth. That at least I can promise you.”</p> - -<p>“Oh! You do?” she almost sobbed.</p> - -<p>“I am sure of it.”</p> - -<p>“Then when may we come? If we must.”</p> - -<p>“Must,” the man deprecated. “My dear Mrs. Gregory, I employ no such -word where you are concerned. I merely point out to you, and I hope as -delicately as possible, that—aside from the very real kindness your -visit would be to a Chinese woman somewhat pathetically placed—that -the—the circumstances of my visit here this afternoon hardly make this -a—a propitious place—indeed, I am sure you will understand I am only -too anxious to find myself outside this room—and to forget—as far as -such things can be forgotten——”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_216"></a>216</span> -“Yes—yes!” Mrs. Gregory interjected contritely, “I do indeed -understand. I am so ashamed——”</p> - -<p>Wu waved that aside, and then he broke out with sudden feeling—it was -finely done; even to Ah Wong it almost rang true—“Why, I wonder, do -some Europeans—Mr. Robert Gregory and others—think God in heaven came -to be guilty of making the Chinese race? You come here and reap the -harvest of our centuries of sowing, and affront us while you fatten on -our industry; teach the foolish among us to suck and smoke the poppy, -and condemn us for it while it enriches you; brand the vice ‘Chinese’ -while you revenue India from it—you treat us a thousand times worse -than the leech-like fops of Venice treated the Jews they exploited and -plundered—at least the Venetian cads were in their own country—you -are in ours. I tell you, madame, a Chinese <em>hath</em> eyes, hands, -organs, dimensions, senses, affections—<em>yes, affections</em>, -passions—fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject -to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by -the same winter and summer, as you English Christians are! If you prick -us, we bleed. If you tickle us, we laugh. If you poison us, we die. If -you wrong us, shall we not revenge? For sufferance is <em>not</em> the -badge of <em>our</em> great tribe. Oh! forgive me, dear lady,” and his -voice that had been a shaking whirlwind was regretful, soft and humble. -“Forgive me—not you—I do not mean you. Mrs. Gregory,” he said with -deep earnestness, “I <em>will</em> help <em>you</em>—to my utmost, to find -your boy. And I <em>am</em> powerful. But, Mrs. Gregory, I will not help -your husband. Nor shall he have the satisfaction of knowing that I have -been instrumental in restoring Mr. Basil Gregory to you.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_217"></a>217</span> -“Oh! I do not blame you,” Basil Gregory’s mother said. And her eyes -were full of tears.</p> - -<p>“Thank you,” Wu said softly. “I will help you to find your son. I swear -it. Trust me—and I shall not fail.”</p> - -<p>“I do.”</p> - -<p>Wu bent his head.</p> - -<p>“And try to believe how much I regret to seem petty; but, really, Mrs. -Gregory, frankly, if your husband and I were to meet again, even under -the restraining influence of your presence, his strange animosity, -his extraordinary prejudice against me, and his curious ideas of the -language which a European may use to a Chinese gentleman—if I may -so describe myself—would, I fear, tempt me to wash my hands of the -whole affair. In short, I can not again enter any place that is Mr. -Gregory’s, and he has made it impossible for me to invite him to my -house or to receive him there; but if you will so far honor me, and my -kinswoman Sing Kung Yah, and my daughter—bring your amah with you” (he -indicated Ah Wong with a gesture), “she has a loyal face, and I am sure -you can trust her not to report your visit—and indeed,” he added in a -low tone, “she need not know how far I aid you. But all that I leave -to you, naturally. All I ask is your promise that Mr. Gregory shall be -ignorant always that your son has been restored to you by a ‘damned -Chinaman’; promise me that, and——”</p> - -<p>She bowed her head.</p> - -<p>“I promise you that it shall not be my fault if your son is not -restored to you within a few hours.”</p> - -<p>“Then you know——”</p> - -<p>“I know nothing,” Wu Li Chang said earnestly,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_218"></a>218</span> “Mrs. Gregory, that you -yourself shall not know—at Kowloon.”</p> - -<p>“When may I come?” she begged.</p> - -<p>“To-morrow, at four? I will be entirely at your service——”</p> - -<p>“To-morrow?” Her voice broke on the word.</p> - -<p>“To-night, then?” He glanced at the clock consideringly. “Yes, the -time is short—but I think I can contrive it. I will employ myself so -diligently in the meantime that I think I can promise you that your son -shall be brought into your presence before you leave mine. I cannot put -in words how much I shall rejoice to see that meeting—and how proud to -have achieved it.” His voice trembled at the last words. And she could -scarcely command hers to say, “At what hour?”</p> - -<p>“Six, or six-thirty? That will give time for the visit to which I shall -so look forward—and my daughter and her aunt—and time to permit you -to return while it is light, in time to dress for dinner.”</p> - -<p>“Return—with Basil?”</p> - -<p>Wu Li Chang smiled kindly. “I believe—with—Basil.” He spoke the name -as tenderly as she had, or as Nang Ping might have done.</p> - -<p>“Oh! Mr. Wu!” the woman cried, and held out to him both her hands. He -took them and bent over them gravely.</p> - -<p>“Oh! tell me,” she begged, her hands still in his, “Mr. Wu, do you -think he is safe and well?”</p> - -<p>“I have no doubt of it,” Wu said earnestly. “And that it is merely a -question of making terms with those who are detaining him. And now,” -he said in a bright, brisk tone, turning alertly to the door, and this -time Ah Wong drew aside, “there is so much to do, and I have<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_219"></a>219</span> put -myself upon my honor not to fail in my—promise—if you do not fail——”</p> - -<p>“I fail!” the mother said. “And you promise that I shall see my boy -to-night?”</p> - -<p>“I promise!”</p> - -<p>“Oh!” she went to him impulsively again and held out her hand. But he -seemed not to see it.</p> - -<p>“Till six,” he said bowing, and was gone.</p> - -<p>The woman sat down in the nearest chair and began to cry softly. Ah -Wong huddled over to her quickly and bundled down at her feet. “No, -no,” the amah said, catching her lady’s hand, clutching her dress. “No, -no, madame. Not go! Not go!”</p> - - - - -<div class="chapter"> -<hr class="x-ebookmaker-drop divider" /> -<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_220"></a>220</span> -</div> - -<h2 id="xxx">CHAPTER XXX<br /> -<span class="smcap">Smiling Welcome</span></h2> - -<p class="noi"><span class="dropcap">A</span>GAIN, as Wu Li Chang passed through the office yards, the coolies -almost groveled at his feet, and this time he threw a curt but not -unpleasant word to one or two of them.</p> - -<p>He had been with the Gregorys some time, the afternoon seemed at its -hottest, but he was as fresh and crisp as when the close duel began; -and yet in a more resilient, a more stimulated way, he had felt the -strain as they had not, for he had known the story of Basil and Nang -Ping.</p> - -<p>But “crisp” and “fresh” were the last words that could be applied -to the shipper or his wife, or, for that matter, to any of their -companions. Robert Gregory was having a stiff “peg,” and needed it; and -Mrs. Gregory, less unnerved, was tired and anxious enough. And Holman -and his fellow faithful few were on desperate tenterhooks both for -their chief (he was roughly lovable and not a mean master) and for the -threatened business to which they were sincerely and doggedly devoted.</p> - -<p>Perhaps Tom Carruthers and Ah Wong were the two Gregoryites least -unhinged by the day’s fusillade of miscarriage and by its recurrent -stalemate. Ah Wong was anxious, but she had been racked by no surprise. -Of the Steamship Company’s business she knew little—and cared less. -But, even so, she probably had, next to<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_221"></a>221</span> Wu Li Chang, a correcter -estimate of the whole complicated situation than any one else. Bradley -and Holman came next in prescience, but neither of them suspected, much -less knew of, the particular slant the diabolism of Wu’s vengeance had -taken, or of the appointment he had made with Basil’s mother.</p> - -<p>Tom Carruthers was “no end” sorry, and sincerely so. But he could not -quite help getting a certain enjoyment out of it all. He was built -that way—and he was only twenty-four—and he had come to China to -have an occasional nibble at the spice of things, almost as much as he -had come to master the details of a business to which his father had -assigned him not too sanguinely. The bankruptcy that positively seemed -to threaten the great firm could not even embarrass him. His father was -a very rich man (as mere British wealth went), and he himself an only -child. Mr. Gregory’s wealth had not in the least added to Hilda’s charm -in Tom Carruthers’ eyes.</p> - -<p>But the depression at the office was growing tormenting, and so was the -heat, and Robert Gregory’s nervous irritability was a bit trying, so -when Hilda announced her determination to “go home” Tom resigned the -affairs of the business cheerfully enough and picked up his hat.</p> - -<p>Hilda saw that she could do nothing for her father by “hanging round.” -And “hanging round” was an occupation she particularly disliked. And -when she learned that her mother had slipped off with Ah Wong without a -word, she said, “How shabby!” and prepared to follow suit.</p> - -<p>Robert Gregory scarcely noticed his wife’s defalcation—and certainly -did not resent it. The business turmoil did not lesson with the -lessening day; it increased.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_222"></a>222</span> His tired, unsteadied hands were -overflowing full, and towards dinner-time (another whiskey and soda had -taken the place of tea) he deputed Murray to ’phone Mrs. Gregory that -he would not be home till very late that night, if at all. Hilda had -answered the ’phone, and had said, “All right,” Murray reported. And -Gregory grunted an acknowledgment, paying little attention, engrossed -in other things.</p> - -<p>Florence Gregory was a just and a good-humored mistress, not an -indulgent one. And she was in no way of the class of women who court -or accept the advice of their servants. Even in the days of her modest -Oxford housekeeping, when her own youthfulness and the deficiencies -of the vicarage purse would have made most girls so placed peculiarly -vulnerable to the insidious encroachment of hireling “I wills,” and “I -won’ts,” she had been truly mistress of that manse, adamant towards -would-be familiarity. And that natural smooth caste hardness had not -softened under the flux of travel or the sunshine of affluence. From -their first quarter of an hour together she had commanded distinctly, -and Ah Wong, without comment, had obeyed. During the last week Mrs. -Gregory had leaned not a little on her amah, sensing in the Chinese -woman, who too was a mother, a something of sympathy that even Hilda -could not give her, but she had in no way abrogated any of her personal -autocracy to Ah Wong or let the space of discipline between them -lessen. When Ah Wong had exclaimed, “No, no, madame! Not go!” the first -liberty Ah Wong had ever taken, the mistress had scarcely heard and had -not heeded; but when, on their return to the Peak, the amah had again -urged “Not go!” Mrs. Gregory had checked her sternly, and Ah Wong had -known that it was worse than useless to repeat the entreaty.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_223"></a>223</span> To appeal -to any one else, against her mistress—to Missee Hilda, to the master, -or even to John Bradley—never occurred to her. And she submitted -silently, only venturing a piteous, “Me clome? Madame take Ah Wong?”</p> - -<p>“Of course,” Mrs. Gregory said, not unkindly. “He expressly said I -should bring you.”</p> - -<p>That there could be no question between them as to who “He” was told -clearly of how Wu Li Chang had gripped the thought of both these women, -and (at least of one) had gripped also the imagination.</p> - -<p>At five o’clock—the hotness of the terrific day was scarcely waning -yet, and Hilda and Tom in the darkened sitting-room were eating ices -with their tea—Mrs. Gregory and Ah Wong went quietly out and took -the next car down the Peak. On the level (such level as terraced -Victoria City can show) the amah hailed two rickshaws, and they bowled -inconspicuously to the water’s edge.</p> - -<p>They did not use the ferry. A little boat was waiting for them. Ah Wong -had secured it by messenger; and she took care that the jinrickshaw men -should hear her tell the boatmen where they were to pole—which they -already knew perfectly.</p> - -<p>And then she sat down at her mistress’s feet and waited. She had done -all she could.</p> - -<p>The boat slipped slowly through the gurgling water, the coolies -sing-singing droningly as they poled her. Neither of the women spoke -until the little vessel grated against the shore. Ah Wong was strangely -calm, her very nerves hushed but alert in her lady’s service, and the -Englishwoman felt calmer than she had been for days, soothed that she -was doing something definite at last, and not a little confident in the -promise of Wu Li Chang.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_224"></a>224</span> -She had made a special and somewhat magnificent toilet for this visit, -pathetically anxious to seem to pay every honor to the Chinese lady -for whose social peace of mind the mandarin had seemed so anxious. -Mrs. Gregory was wearing more jewelry than she had ever worn before -in the daytime, so thinking to do honor to a hostess who was of -the inordinately jewelry-loving Chinese race. Even the wonderful -bracelet—kept until now for functions of real importance—was hidden -beneath the laces of her sleeve.</p> - -<p>The boat grated in the gritty earth, and Mrs. Gregory looked up, glad -to have arrived, confident of her reception and of the wisdom of her -visit.</p> - -<p>Wu Li Chang need not have been at such pains to tempt his prey and to -bait his trap. Convention did not exist for Florence Gregory now, or -fear. Basil and Basil’s plight left her no thought, no consciousness of -lesser things. And she had as little thought of the safety or danger -of her act as she had of its propriety or impropriety. But if she -had known her coming at Wu’s bidding to Kowloon to be as imperilled -as it was, and as Ah Wong sensed it, still she would have come, as -unflinchingly, for Basil. Wu Li Chang had squandered inducement -needlessly. And he need not have played poor Sing Kung Yah for trumps.</p> - -<p>That widowed gentlewoman was greatly bewildered and scarcely less -perturbed. Never before had she returned home ungreeted by Nang Ping. -And of Nang Ping she could hear nothing. To all her questions the -servants were deaf. The honorable master would tell his honorable -kinslady all to interest her in his own honorable time. To them he had -commanded silence.</p> - -<p>She could not see Low Soong; it was forbidden—for a time. Wu Li Chang -she scarcely saw; and, when<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_225"></a>225</span> she did, him she dared not question. -He sent her to call on an English lady in the Barbarians’ Hotel on -the Peak, and she went, half dead with embarrassment, and carrying -a splendid offering of flowers. The lady was out—the mandarin had -almost counted on that—and Sing Kung Yah scudded back home, as fast -as she could induce the servants to carry her, and burned a score of -“thank-you” joss-sticks.</p> - -<p>That she was to receive that same lady to-day, and at the very gates, -was a care, but one that sat on her more lightly. She was at home here, -surrounded by her customary servants, and she might know more or less -what to do, how to conduct herself in the unprecedented presence of a -foreign guest. And she was thinking of Nang Ping far more than of her -own approaching social ordeal, as she sat in her own apartment eating -perfumed ginger and quails dressed with sour clotted cream, and waiting -for the summons to the gate.</p> - -<p>Both were very good: the ginger embedded in jelly-of-rose leaves, and -the hot, hot quail smothered in thick ice-cold sauce. She was very -nervous, but somewhat phlegmatically resigned, plying her delicate -chop-sticks industriously, now in the deep blue and white Nankin-ware -jar of fragrant confiture, now in the silver dish where the sizzling, -savory quail was too hot to be cooled by the icy cream, the sour cream -too cold to be lukewarmed by the quail.</p> - -<p>Just at six her summons came. She sighed a little, gulped down a tiny -bowlful of bright green tea, and toddled off almost confidently to play -hostess to the lady of the mandarin’s latest whim, a little at a loss -for herself, but happily and proudly confident that Wu Li Chang could -do no wrong, much less blunder, and toddling fantastically because her -feet were very small—Sing<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_226"></a>226</span> Kung Yah had no claim to Manchu blood, had -had no traveled eccentric for a father and lord, and so, unlike Nang -Ping, her feet had been well bound. Because she was a widow she used no -cosmetics. But her clothes could not have been gayer: she was gorgeous.</p> - -<p>She was standing smiling at the gate, servants on either side, when -the Englishwoman reached it. And when Mrs. Gregory held out her hand -she took it warmly, giggled and held it to her cheek, said a gurgling -something that sounded Italian but wasn’t, and drew her guest along the -path to Wu Li Chang’s threshold.</p> - -<p>The two women went hand in hand, and Ah Wong walked close behind, -carrying a tortoise-shell card-case in her hand. If anxiety and torture -had made Basil’s mother oblivious of conventions as they affected -herself, they made her acutely careful to avoid every possible giving -of offense and appearance of slight. And she would not forget to leave -three cards, of her own and Hilda’s, one for each of the ladies of Wu’s -household.</p> - -<p>Her reception encouraged her. This little creature was very friendly, -and it was nice of Mr. Wu to have stationed her at the gate, for he -was master of the smallest details here, she made no doubt of that. -She wondered at what point Miss Wu would appear, and the funny, -pigeon-plump cousin.</p> - -<p>They went along the tortuous paths, through the lovely, elaborate -gardens (not Nang Ping’s garden), hand in hand up to the very door, -and Sing Kung Yah chatted incessantly in her pretty, musical mandarin -Chinese, and the guest said an amiable word now and then. Neither -understood a word the other said, or ever could, and Sing Kung Yah -thought that screamingly funny—and screamed with high-pitched, tinkly -laughter.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_227"></a>227</span> -The sun was brilliant still. Flowers leaned with friendly welcome from -every ledge and corner. How perfectly absurd Ah Wong had been!</p> - -<p>And Ah Wong kept closer and closer, growing more terrified every moment.</p> - -<p>At the door Sing Kung Yah slid her hand gently away, and, toddling back -a step, gestured laughing that Mrs. Gregory was to go in first.</p> - -<p>When the door had closed again, the guest was surprised to find that -the hostess had stayed outside. On what “Martha” errand had the little -housewife thought it necessary to go herself, in this household -overflowing with servants? But she was not altogether sorry. It was the -mandarin she wished to see—to hear what his success had been. Perhaps -it was his kindness that had arranged it so. But she must not forget to -ask the Wu ladies to lunch, and, above all, she must remember to leave -cards. The Chinese set such store on such things.</p> - -<p>She caught her breath. The servant who was conducting her paused at a -door. Probably she would see the mandarin now.</p> - - - - -<div class="chapter"> -<hr class="x-ebookmaker-drop divider" /> -<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_228"></a>228</span> -</div> - -<h2 id="xxxi">CHAPTER XXXI<br /> -<span class="smcap">Face to Face</span></h2> - -<p class="noi"><span class="dropcap">I</span>T was four when Wu Li Chang reached Kowloon and his own home. Barely -two hours in which to arrange the details, the scenic background, of -the last act of the tragedy—the exquisitely horrible details of his -revenge. But it was time enough, for he had planned it all down to the -smallest point as he sat with Nang Ping dead at his feet. A few moments -would suffice for the orders he had still to give Ah Sing, and upon the -implicit obedience of his servants he could depend absolutely.</p> - -<p>He bathed, dressed in the garments of his country, took rice, spoke -briefly to Ah Sing, then sent for Sing Kung Yah and coached that -surprised and flustered lady in the part she was to play in the events -of the afternoon. She was not a particularly skillful or astute -coadjutor—indeed, for a Chinese woman, she was dull, inept and dense; -but for seventeen years it had been her invariable habit to give him -minute obedience, and the habit would stand her in good stead to-day. -And, too, she had, of course, a Chinese memory—the most wonderful -memory bestowed on any race. He had little fear of Sing Kung Yah, and, -for that matter, the rôle he had assigned to her was but that of a -well-dressed supernumerary with a few unimportant lines to speak. She -was not essential to the movement of the piece, and her rôle might well -enough have been “cut” from the cast, but with the evil seething at his -heart all the native artist<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_229"></a>229</span> in him was aflame. He intended to carve -his victims delicately—a dish for the gods. On the terrible altar of -his hatred, yes, and of his just resentment, he would lay an English -woman who had never wronged him and an English son who——. But he -intended it all to be done as exquisitely as some finest ivory carving -cut by a master Chinese hand.</p> - -<p>When he had dismissed Sing Kung Yah he went into his study and waited.</p> - -<p>It was the room in which perhaps he had lived most. It was here -he studied; and in the many long hours of leisure which he always -relentlessly kept for himself, Wu Li Chang was a devoted student. -It was here he wrote; and Wu was an author of some distinction in -the current literature of China—the land in which a genuine love of -letters counts as nothing else does, a fine skill in literature is -respected as no other human quality is. There were poems to his credit -in the Imperial library at the pink-walled palace in Pekin, a book of -philosophy, a comedy, and a history of the women of his house. And he -contributed almost regularly to the <cite>Pekin Gazette</cite> and at long -intervals to <cite>Le Journal Asiatique</cite>—in French, of course.</p> - -<p>The hour-glass—he had turned it when Sing Kung Yah had left him—was -running down; almost was run.</p> - -<p>Wu rose, and stood looking out into his garden, saying good-night to -it something as Nang Ping had said “good-by” to hers four mornings -ago—saying good-night, for it would be dark when Mrs. Gregory left him.</p> - -<p>He had no doubt that she would come.</p> - -<p>He turned from the window, and walked gravely into the next room, where -he intended—in less than an hour now—to receive his guest.</p> - -<p>It was a curious room: Chinese, but with some differences<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_230"></a>230</span> from other -Chinese rooms. For this man dared to tamper with custom when it suited -his convenience, and to modify an architecture that had been unaltered -almost since Kublai Khan ordered every grave in China to be plowed up -remorselessly, and so made room for homes and crops for the living, -till then out-crowded by the honorable dead.</p> - -<p>This was a very beautiful room, and so richly furnished that its -opulence must have been oppressive had it been less beautiful, its -taste less distinguished.</p> - -<p>Essentially and strikingly like Nang Ping’s room, unlike hers it -was not so exclusively Chinese, and it was more nearly crowded. The -Chinese—like all Orientals—are fantastic collectors, even of European -flotsam and jetsam, though more discriminatingly so than the Turk, the -Indian, or the Japanese. In the remotest yamên in Honan or Kwei Chau -you may find a Dresden vase, a music-box from Geneva, a silver dish -from Regent Street, and—most probably of all—half a dozen clocks, -made anywhere from Newhaven, Connecticut to Novgorod, and all ticking -away together, but quite independently, and all giving a different lie -to the old dial in the sunny Chinese garden. (There were eighty-five -clocks—and all “going”—in one of the Pekin throne-rooms.) But you are -not apt to find, except in the poorer quarters of the treaty ports, the -gimcrack chandeliers and tawdry vases, Europe-made, which will astonish -and shame you in a palace in Patialla or Kashmere.</p> - -<p>Wu had collected in princely fashion during his years in Europe. -There was a Venetian harp, a German grand piano, and an English -organ in an adjacent music-room. And in this, the smaller of -his own reception rooms, there were several European treasures. -Unlike most Chinese rooms, this was carpeted, not with one of<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_231"></a>231</span> the -beautiful native carpets, but with a great mat of silk and mellow -splendor—Constantinople was the poorer since Wu had purchased it.</p> - -<p>It was an octagonal room—perhaps the only one in China—and when all -the sliding panels were closed its only ventilation came from a small -window or opening high up against the ceiling. The panels were made -to slide back or up, and out of sight; each was in the center of one -of the apartment’s eight walls, and cut into about half of the wall’s -width. The widest panel was open wide, and through it Wu could see his -garden, with all its pretty architecture of pagoda, bridge, pavilion -and “tinkly temple bells,” all its lush and flush of flowers, all its -affected labyrinth of yellow path and costly forests of dwarf trees, -and, beyond the garden, the bay, terraced Hong Kong, the imperial -Chinese sky.</p> - -<p>The room was furnished in ebony, as costly and as carved as ebony could -be made. There were no chairs, but several stools. A stool stood on -each side of the moderately-sized square table, behind which stood the -most noticeable article in the room—the huge bronze gong, swinging in -a frame of chiselled ebony lace and silver and onyx, which no hand but -the mandarin’s ever struck.</p> - -<p>There were several cabinets, Chinese masterpieces, holding china and -bric-à-brac, chiefly Chinese and all priceless.</p> - -<p>Chinese antiquities of every description were on the walls and on -narrow tables against the walls—bronze from Soochow, porcelain from -Kintêching, cornelians from Luchow cut into gods and reptiles, jades -from the quarries of Central Asia, bowls, weapons, vases, statues, -armor, a piece of Satsuma that Yeddo could not match.</p> - -<p>There were two scrolls inscribed with lofty sentiments<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_232"></a>232</span> Tze-Shi -herself had brushed one, and Kwang-Hsu had given it to Wu with his -yellow-jacket. Aside from its imperial association it was very -beautiful—even a European could see that, and Bradley had spent -much covetous time gazing on it—for in all China, where the cult of -“handwriting” is an obsession, no one has ever written more beautifully -than her majesty. The other said in the original Arabic, “Es-salam -aleika.” (John Bradley had another verse from the same Sura over his -bed.)</p> - -<p>And, as in Nang Ping’s room, there was just one picture—this one a -bird perched on a spray of azalea painted by Ting Yüch’uan.</p> - -<p>Wu prostrated himself before the altar which proclaimed the owner’s -importance. He had come here to do worse than butchery, but to do it -as a priest—to sacrifice to his gods and to his ancestors, to scourge -in their service a woman who had never injured him or them, as much as -to scourge a man who had; but he had vocation in his heart rather than -personal vengeance—and such is Chinese justice.</p> - -<p>Fantastic—is it not?—the Chinese code that ennobles and flagellates -the dead ancestors and the living kindred in punishment of the raw -present sin! And yet, even for it, there is a poor, feeble something to -be said. We dig down into the earth and uproot the diseased tree, burn -it <em>all</em>, search out and burn, too, its suckers and its saplings -lest all our orchard suffer worm-breeding blight.</p> - -<p>From an alabaster box, gold-lined, he took a handful of yellow powder, -dribbled it into the tiny saucer of sacred oil burning before the -tablet, and as the pungent blue flames hissed up, prostrated himself -again, and knelt for a long time—in prayer.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_233"></a>233</span> -When he rose Ah Sing had entered, and stood waiting to say, “Your -honorable instructions have been obeyed.”</p> - -<p>“Good,” Wu said grimly, throwing more powder, from a different box, on -to the votive oil. A thin smoke curled up, thickening as it rose into -perfumed clouds that broke in waves of jade hues until all the room was -a glow of green.</p> - -<p>“Bring him now!” the mandarin said, seating himself beside the table -and waiting with an expressionless face.</p> - -<p>Ah Sing said something to a servant waiting outside the door through -which he had come, and presently feet came along the passage. They were -bringing Basil Gregory to Wu Li Chang.</p> - -<p>They had not met or exchanged a message since Wu had bent and gathered -up Nang Ping where she had swooned at Basil’s feet. Since then no -slightest message from the outer world had reached the prisoner in the -pagoda. Wu’s servants had brought him food, and, on the second night, -even a rug; but not once had they spoken to him or appeared to hear -what he said to them.</p> - -<p>The hours in the pagoda had marked him. And—why not? Those other hours -there had marked Nang Ping down to doom. The man does not go scot-free. -Never! That is immemorial fallacy. Nature would be full-moon mad if -that were so—and nature is very wise and sane, as wise as she is old. -The partners foot the bill both—always. Nang Ping had paid her share. -Now he was paying his.</p> - -<p>He looked ill and haggard, and his wrists were bound together. Two -Chinese servants stood guarding him, close on either side. Almost at -the threshold Ah Sing halted the three.</p> - -<p>Basil Gregory had no doubt that he was about to die<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_234"></a>234</span> and little hope -that he would not be tortured first. And the horrors of Chinese -tortures lose little hideousness in the telling at English clubs in -China. Basil was abjectly tormented.</p> - -<p>The mandarin sat and studied his prisoner curiously. His lip curled, -and his soul. What had his daughter, bred for centuries from China’s -best and finest, descended from Wu Sankwei and from the two supreme -Sages, and who might well have made an Imperial marriage, seen in this? -He had known such slight men by the dozens and twenties at Oxford, -scant-minded, uncultured, clad like popinjays; and for this—this -English nothing, this manling thing too slight for Wu Li Chang’s hate, -almost unworth his crushing—she had made the father that had adored -and cherished her grandsire to a mongrel of shame. The pain at Wu -Li Chang’s heart was greater and gnawed sharper than that at Basil -Gregory’s. The Chinese was the bigger man, and paid the bigger penalty.</p> - -<p>And Nang Ping had died for this: degraded herself beneath Chinese -forgiveness, beyond pity, for this: disgraced him, her father, and the -great ancestry of a thousand years for this! <em>This!</em>—and she -might have been the bride of a <em>man</em>!—loved as he had loved her -mother, cherished as he had cherished Wu Lu—and the mother of sons, -honorable, love-begotten Chinese sons!</p> - -<p>Almost Wu Li Chang’s Chinese imperturbability cracked under his strain. -His sorrow and his rage panted in his throat, battled, almost squealed -aloud. But he was master yet a little, and he said smoothly, “Well, are -your thumbs more comfortable?”</p> - -<p>“If I were only free, I’d throttle you.” Basil said it, of course, to -cover his own terror—but, too, he meant it.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_235"></a>235</span> He was insanely angry -with Wu. The offender rarely forgives!</p> - -<p>“The heated language of youth!” the mandarin said with contemptuous -patronage. “But I will be indulgent. You will admit, I think, -that, so far, you have been dealt with leniently—considering the -resourcefulness usually attributed to us in the matter of ingenious -torture.”</p> - -<p>“I presume you have not yet exhausted your ingenuity,” Gregory said -with sullen, trembling lips.</p> - -<p>“By no means,” was the bland reply.</p> - -<p>“And that is why I am brought here; I supposed so.”</p> - -<p>“Partly,” the Chinese replied coldly; “also to prepare you for a shock.”</p> - -<p>“Death”—Basil tried to say it stoically. And, too, since it was to -come, it would almost be welcome in place of such suspense.</p> - -<p>“Nothing so pleasant,” Wu replied.</p> - - - - -<div class="chapter"> -<hr class="x-ebookmaker-drop divider" /> -<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_236"></a>236</span> -</div> - -<h2 id="xxxii">CHAPTER XXXII<br /> -<span class="smcap">“Cur!”</span></h2> - -<p class="noi"><span class="dropcap"><span class="dropcap2">“</span>N</span>OTHING so pleasant”—and the perfect placidity of his voice was more -cruel than any outburst could have been.</p> - -<p>“Well,” the other said desperately, “but there’ll be a reckoning for -all this—my father——”</p> - -<p>“Not necessarily, my young seducer,” the Chinese said softly. “Your -father I do not regard as a man at all formidable. I had a most -interesting interview with him—to-day. And I formed a low opinion -of his abilities. There is a positive hue and cry after you, of -course—almost a paper-chase. The walls of Hong Kong city are plastered -with your portrait, and even here, on the mainland, it is to be -seen. It is a very nice portrait, too—the nice likeness of a nice -English—gentleman—the portrait of a very handsome young—seducer.” -Wu Li Chang was not quite his own master now. The storm was rising, -threatening his own insolent calm. He rose and moved a little up and -down the carpet—quietly but stealthily, as hungry-for-flesh and -thirstily-dry-for-blood cats move through the jungle in the night.</p> - -<p>His last word cut Basil Gregory. Wu was behaving like the yellow dog he -was; but he—Basil—was not entirely blameless: he had said as much to -himself, alone in the pagoda—that cursed pagoda. Oh, well!</p> - -<p>“Your daughter loved me,” he began. And at a something manlier in his -tone than Wu Li Chang had<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_237"></a>237</span> expected to hear, Wu paused still and met -the English eyes squarely. “We are both young.” And after a pause, -so throbbing that even the three automaton servants must have felt -it beat, he added slowly, “Except that the two races don’t mingle, I -would——”</p> - -<p>“Marry her?” Wu interrupted haughtily.</p> - -<p>“Yes,” Gregory replied, as if proclaiming a determination and a -promise. “Yes—if she still wishes it.”</p> - -<p>“A very interesting suggestion,” Wu sneered. “In your country, when a -woman has been dishonored, marriage is called ‘making an honest woman -of her.’ It is a quaint notion. To me it seems a nasty one—plastering -some putrid sore with gold-leaf! <em>Here</em> we have other methods. To -us a woman’s honor, once stained, no more can be clean again than the -petals of a rose, torn and scattered by the storm, can be gathered back -into their opening bud to perfume the dawn and glisten with its dew. -If marriage, and with such as you, would redeem the honor of a ruined -girl, what would redeem the honor of a father and a house so desecrated -as mine? Nothing! And nothing is left me but to avenge. And I avenge it -now.” He turned and confronted the trembling wretch with a look before -which a braver and a less guilt-stained man might well have quailed, -and each word curled and hissed from his mouth like a snake.</p> - -<p>Basil moistened his lips, tried to speak, but failed.</p> - -<p>“However,” Wu continued, “I was going to say that although your -disappearance has become a matter of public advertisement, yet the -last place where you are looked for happens to be your present, if -temporary, abode. I say ‘temporary’ because in this life everything -is temporary—even life itself. You might be buried here—though I -don’t say you will be—without any one being the wiser outside my -own household. At one word<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_238"></a>238</span> from me you would be taken and crucified -beside the pagoda, and left there until the carrion birds came and -plucked your vitals out, and your eyes, and no one would suspect, or, -if they suspected, dare make a move. Your people at your Government -House! They could do nothing. My Government would dare do nothing, -<em>even if they wished to</em>, for in an hour I could pull half China -tumbling down about their ears. By the way, your father is a ruined -man to-day. His ships are sinking, his credit gone. In China we punish -parents for their children’s sin—and our gods have punished Robert -Gregory for yours and for his own: his own sin in having begotten -such a <em>thing</em> as you, and his daily sin of impertinence to my -countrymen. Well, my virtuous young English gentleman, our interview -is drawing to its close. What is it that you wish to say—if your -quivering nerves will let you speak?”</p> - -<p>“If”—Basil Gregory spoke humbly enough now—“if you would grant me one -favor.”</p> - -<p>Wu Li Chang laughed aloud. “Optimist!” he sneered. “Well?”</p> - -<p>“That—that before anything”—his voice shook, and the words were not -very clear—“anything happens to me, you will let me write a letter to -my mother.”</p> - -<p>“To your mother?” Wu said softly. But his triumph leapt in his veins.</p> - -<p>“To my mother! I—I <em>beg</em> you that one thing. It would not mention -this place or your name, of course”—Wu laughed—“but,” the tortured -man went on, “but if you would see that it reached her——” There was a -sob in his voice.</p> - -<p>“And—so you would like to write to your mother?”</p> - -<p>“Oh!” Basil Gregory cried, “double the torture you have planned, but -let me write to my mother.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_239"></a>239</span> -“This is very interesting,” the mandarin said, sitting down again. -“Very interesting—very. As for the torture I am preparing for you, I -shall not increase it, because it cannot be increased. Largest cannot -be enlarged. To the utmost one cannot add. So,” he laughed softly, “you -wish very much to write to your mother—a virtuous lady who bore a son -in wedlock!”</p> - -<p>Basil Gregory dropped his head. He could no longer meet the eyes of the -father of Nang Ping.</p> - -<p>“I suppose you would scarcely credit,” the Chinese voice went on -softly, “that my consideration for you had gone even beyond that? Would -you like—not to write to your mother—but to <em>see</em> her?”</p> - -<p>“See her!”</p> - -<p>“Because you shall.”</p> - -<p>“See her!” Basil cried, trembling as he had not trembled before. “Oh! -Mr. Wu!”</p> - -<p>“Yes,” Wu said slowly (and it says something of him and of his race -that it did not occur to the other to doubt him—nor would have -occurred to any one), “you shall. And you shall see her soon. You may -even go home with her this very evening and sail for Europe next week. -It is quite possible.” He spoke with quiet emphasis.</p> - -<p>“Mr. Wu!” the blanched face was twitching hideously, “oh! I would do -anything!” The frightened eyes leapt and burned. Gregory’s revulsion -was terrible—the great revulsion of reprieve, or nightmare torture -past and gone, the revulsion of a starving man at sudden meat and -plenty, of one dying of thirst who finds a brimming mountain-pool cool -to his reach, of the mother who from hours of agony slips towards sleep -with the warm velvet of her baby snuggled to her breast. He took one -eager step forward, and so far the men beside him let<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_240"></a>240</span> him go, and Ah -Sing made no sign. “If you would give me your daughter——” he said -earnestly, but at a look from Wu he paused.</p> - -<p>“Give you my daughter?” Wu Li Chang said terribly. He rose and crossed -to Gregory and stood before him—very near. “I have no daughter,” he -said gravely, and his meaning was unmistakable, “to give you or any -man!”</p> - -<p>The pinioned man recoiled with a sob. “Oh! my God!” he cried under his -breath. And he knew himself for the murderer of a girl who had given -him—all—and a child. And his own soul rose against him, and cursed -him, and called him “Cur!”</p> - - - - -<div class="chapter"> -<hr class="x-ebookmaker-drop divider" /> -<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_241"></a>241</span> -</div> - -<h2 id="xxxiii">CHAPTER XXXIII<br /> -<span class="smcap">A Chinese Teaching</span></h2> - -<p class="noi"><span class="dropcap">T</span>HERE was terrible silence between them. Great puffs of sweet smell -came in at the window where the headheavy wistaria hung and the lemon -verbena crowded at its gnarled roots, and bursts of sweet sound from -birds singing in the sun.</p> - -<p>They looked at each other, weighing each the other—the man who had -given Nang Ping life and the man who had given her shame.</p> - -<p>They each had given her death: one in guilt, one in love.</p> - -<p>Basil Gregory looked into Wu’s eyes and could not look -away—fascinated, horror-held.</p> - -<p>Wu looked his fill, then turned away and went slowly to the shrine.</p> - -<p>Again he put the pungent votive powders to the flame, and all the room -quivered with deeply opalescent lights, and the odors of the garden -were as naught.</p> - -<p>The mandarin bent his head to the tablet, and walked away from the -shrine, speaking in a changed tone—quite lightly.</p> - -<p>“But I was speaking of your mother. I am expecting her here.”</p> - -<p>“Expecting her! Here?”</p> - -<p>“Here,” the Chinese repeated, standing close to Basil, eyeing him -narrowly.</p> - -<p>“Then they know——” Basil began, but could not finish.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_242"></a>242</span> -“No”—Wu smiled faintly—“they do not know. She is coming here, your -mother, as my guest—to learn, amongst other things, the truth about -you!”</p> - -<p>“If you could spare me that!” Basil said hoarsely. “We have been more -like brother and sister,” he pleaded.</p> - -<p>Wu took it up as a cue, and on it began, with a little leer, the -hideous part he had planned to play. “Yes, she is very young——”</p> - -<p>“Tell my father, if you will——”</p> - -<p>“Your father?” Wu said sharply.</p> - -<p>“Yes, tell <em>him</em>, but——”</p> - -<p>“I have nothing to do with your father!” Wu Li Chang said sternly, each -word an emphasis.</p> - -<p>“But you said——”</p> - -<p>“I said that your mother was coming here. She is coming—alone. She is -a devoted mother. I am going to test her devotion.”</p> - -<p>Again there was a pause—while the horror sank in. Basil Gregory did -not grasp it at first, and could not grasp it very quickly. But it -crept into his soul little by little, and while its agony seized and -strangled him, Wu stood and watched him intently, Wu with the panther -light of intensest hatred in his half-closed eyes.</p> - -<p>“You—you fiend!” The Englishwoman’s son screamed it, writhing.</p> - -<p>Ah Sing slid a little nearer him. The two guarding moved on his either -side a little closer. But neither on their faces nor on Ah Sing’s was -there the slightest expression or any sign of interest.</p> - -<p>“Why?” Wu laughed as he spoke. “Other countries, other ways! In -China a daughter often sacrifices herself for a father, a son for -his mother—to the utmost. You—English—reverse it, and the mother -sacrifices herself for her son.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_243"></a>243</span> -“You fiend of hell!” And with a yell of torment the Englishman sprang -almost too quick for the vigilants beside him. He wrenched one pinioned -hand free and swung it up mightily. But Ah Sing—still with an -expressionless face—leaned across the table, leaned between the blow -and Wu Li Chang.</p> - -<p>And almost as Gregory sprang the other servants seized and held -him—they, too, with indifferent, blank faces. They would have shown -far more interest sweeping wistaria leaves from the graveled paths, -far, far more watching a quail fight.</p> - -<p>“An eye for an eye!” the mandarin cried fiercely. “A tooth for a tooth. -<em>That is what you teach us, you Christian gentlemen!</em> And,” he -hissed, from enfoamed, protruding lips, “Woman for woman! <span class="italic">We’ll -teach you that!</span>”</p> - -<p>Basil Gregory hid his face in his hand and buried it on his shoulder.</p> - -<p>For a space Wu Li Chang stood looking grimly at the foreigner. He did -not mean to see him again. Then he spoke emphatically to Ah Sing—in -Chinese—and at each sentence of the master’s Ah Sing bowed his head -with an earnestness that was a promise that each word of Wu Li Chang’s -should be obeyed strictly and minutely.</p> - -<p>“Ah Sing,” the mandarin said, rising slowly and taking the beater from -where it hung beside the gong. He said something slowly, and then -struck once on the great brazen disk, gave a further direction, and -struck the gong twice. And Basil Gregory uncovered his eyes, lifted his -head limply and stood watching and listening, agonized, fascinated. -When Wu had finished his orders Ah Sing bowed still lower than he had -done before, and then went slowly from the room, but not by the door -through which they had brought Basil into it.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_244"></a>244</span> -Wu turned to the Englishman. “You do not understand our barbaric -tongue. I have been telling my servants that when they next hear me -strike upon that gong they may release you to come here. You will -find your mother here. It will be a tremendous meeting. Back to the -pagoda! To-morrow it will be destroyed. Back to the pagoda, and wait -there, thinking of my daughter, and listen for the gong to sound—for -when it strikes you will know that you are free. These doors and all -the gates of my garden will be reopened then, and you will be free to -go—wherever you will—with her.”</p> - -<p>“With her?” Basil Gregory gasped, bewildered and dazed.</p> - -<p>“Yes,” Wu Li Chang told him with a curt smile, “for with my striking -of this gong your debt will be fully discharged. Your mother will have -paid it.”</p> - -<p>Gregory made one supreme, straining effort to get at Wu. “You monster!” -he sobbed, “you monster of hell!”</p> - -<p>“Quite so,” the Chinese said calmly. “Western logic is an unfathomable -mystery. You dishonored my daughter,” he began fiercely, and then broke -off abruptly. He’d waste no more words on this English thing. He’d -punish—strike to the quick, flay to the raw nerve—but not wrangle -with his condemned. “The sound of that gong will ring in your ears as -long as you live. Go where you will, you will hear it. Go where you -will, you will see, waking and sleeping, a pagoda by a lotus lake, -while you live; and when you die, you will feel the vengeance of a Wu. -Never again will you look upon your mother’s face without seeing too -the dead face of Wu Nang Ping—and mine.”</p> - -<p>“Oh!” Basil moaned imploringly, “you can’t—you can’t do this awful -thing.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_245"></a>245</span> -“Take him away,” the mandarin said in his own tongue.</p> - -<p>Basil Gregory understood the tone, though not the words. Dumb with -terror, he scarcely resisted as the two servants dragged him through -the door.</p> - -<p>Wu Li Chang stood motionless. He heard the bolts shut. He heard the -footsteps die away. But still he did not move.</p> - -<p>He was thinking of Nang Ping—not as he had seen her last, not as he -had known her for years now, but of Nang Ping, a laughing, imperious -baby. And then he thought of that other, dearer baby—the baby he had -married in Pekin—and a great, silent sob shook him roughly as he -stood.</p> - - - - -<div class="chapter"> -<hr class="x-ebookmaker-drop divider" /> -<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_246"></a>246</span> -</div> - -<h2 id="xxxiv">CHAPTER XXXIV<br /> -<span class="smcap">Alone in China</span></h2> - -<p class="noi"><span class="dropcap"><span class="dropcap2">“</span>T</span>HE lady has arrived,” Ah Sing said with an obeisance, and speaking, -of course, as he always did to his master, in Chinese; “she is coming -through the honorable garden.”</p> - -<p>“Show her in.” Ah Sing went out again, leaving open the wide sliding -doors through which he had come. And Wu, too, went from the room, -lifting his hands high in symbol to the altar as he passed it. He left -the room through its fourth door and closed it close behind him. He had -gone into his sleeping-room.</p> - -<p>In a few moments Ah Sing returned, bowing at the threshold for Mrs. -Gregory to enter. She came in eagerly, Ah Wong close at her heel. -Absorbed as the mother was in her own exquisite anxiety and in the -paramount errand that had brought her here, still she was struck with -the distinction and the character of the room; and at any time less -engrossed it would have delighted and absorbed her. She had seen many -rich interiors in Europe, and not a little of colonial extravagance -in home decoration, but she had not seen such luxury as this. And the -quiet taste of the place, for some reason, surprised her, but not more -than its spotless cleanliness did.</p> - -<p>Ah Sing watched the English lady with inscrutable eyes as she moved a -little curiously about the room; and to Ah Wong, watching him, it was -significant that<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_247"></a>247</span> for this once his scrutiny was open, almost frank. -And as he passed from the room, the two Chinese servants interchanged a -long, grave look. Ah Sing closed the door behind him.</p> - -<p>“How stifling it is here!” Mrs. Gregory said, unfastening her cloak and -drawing off her gloves. “I wonder where my hostess has gone off to. How -very droll of her! Ah Wong”—putting her hand a moment on the other’s -arm—“I’m glad I have you with me!” The amah took the cloak and the -gloves; put the gloves in the cloak, the cloak over her arm. And after -a moment Mrs. Gregory moved wearily across the room.</p> - -<p>Ah Wong looked hurriedly about the room—searchingly. She gave a little -quick breath when she saw the one high window. Without a sound she went -to Mrs. Gregory and touched her arm. Florence turned questioningly, and -Ah Wong pointed eloquently up to the high orifice; then, watching first -one door and then another, she moved a carved bench a little nearer the -window—without a sound—while the mistress stood and watched her half -curious, half amused. Again the amah pointed—this time from bench to -window, and from the window to the bench. She thrust her hand into her -dress, clutching at something hidden there, and bent her face close -to her mistress’s ear. But her own ear caught an almost imperceptible -sound, and when Wu came from his bedroom Ah Wong was standing some -distance from her lady, stolid but bored, her empty hands folded in -front of her, idly.</p> - -<p>The mandarin stood just inside the door, gravely watching. He did not -speak. His face was very calm, priestly even.</p> - -<p>Florence Gregory felt his presence, and turned with eager, welcoming -eyes. But when she saw him she recoiled<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_248"></a>248</span> a little, with a slight breath -of surprise. This morning in Hong Kong Wu had only half seemed to her -un-English. Here, in his own house, and clad as she had never seen any -one—stiff, gorgeous robes, tiny fan of ivory and silk, a mandarin’s -necklace of cornelian beads—he was intensely Chinese, barbarian, -unknown, and she felt very far from home.</p> - -<p>Wu made the motion of salutation with his fan—it is so the Chinese -“bow”—before he said reverentially, “This is indeed an honor—none the -less felt because it was expected.”</p> - -<p>Mrs. Gregory laughed a little nervously, but somewhat reassured by his -voice, as he had intended her to be. “You startled me, Mr. Wu,” she -said. “I hardly expected——”</p> - -<p>“This dress?” he said pleasantly. “It is put on in your honor. To -have received you in my Chinese home in other than Chinese garb would -have been a rudeness—and so, impossible. Hong Kong is your Queen’s -now, even its city’s legal name—though custom-ridden tongues still -stubbornly say ‘Hong Kong’—and there, where I am but a business man -among business men, I dress as Europeans do. I find it more convenient. -And a long residence in Europe makes it easy. But this is China. You -are indeed in China now, madame—as truly in China as if you were -within the vermilion walls of the great imperial palace or in evil -Hwangchukki. The Kowloon territory ceded to England in 1860 ends a -yard beyond my gates. My kinswoman seems remiss to you, I fear,” he -continued. “But pray dismiss the thought. She has gone to give an -order for your entertainment and to assume her best robes in your -honor—robes she may not wear to the gate.”</p> - -<p>“Oh! but she was very splendid, and I thought how<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_249"></a>249</span> beautifully -dressed.” The mandarin fluttered his fan in grateful acknowledgment. -“And your daughter? I hope Miss Wu is well?”</p> - -<p>Wu Li Chang bowed—his head as well as his fan this time.</p> - -<p>“And now, Mr. Wu”—she could wait no longer, and as she spoke she moved -a few steps towards him—“what news?”</p> - -<p>“Good,” Wu said assuringly. “So that it does not need to travel fast,” -he added suavely, moving to the table, motioning her deferentially to a -seat beyond it.</p> - -<p>“Ah! thank God!” She was tremulous with the intensity of her relief, -for she had feared the worst. It’s a sorry trick that mother-hearts -have. “And thank you, Mr. Wu,” she added earnestly, with a pretty, -friendly gesture that was very womanly and very English. But she was -too restless, and too anxious still for details, to take at once the -seat Wu again indicated. And she moved about the room a little, hoping -Wu would volunteer more, and a little at a loss what to say next if he -did not of his own accord immediately slake in full the burning torment -of her anxiety. “Ah Wong, take my scarf,” she said, unwinding it. It -was light and lacy, but even it seemed to stifle her. Ah Wong came for -the gauze, and backed away again, standing immovable, uninterested, by -the door.</p> - -<p>Mrs. Gregory waited, a little pantingly, but Wu said nothing. She -looked round the room, not at its treasures, but looking for her own -next words, piteously afraid of blundering, unable to be patient.</p> - -<p>Wu Li Chang did not misunderstand, but he pretended to, and said in a -pleased voice, “You find my modest treasures interesting?”</p> - -<p>“Very,” she forced herself to lie. She had heard a<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_250"></a>250</span> great deal of -Oriental deliberateness, and she was heroically determined to commit no -social solecism, give this man no smallest affront. “Oh! very.” If he -wished his possessions admired by her, admired by her they should be, -and to his vanity’s content, cost her heart the delay what it might. -“I had no idea——” she nerved herself to begin, but stopped abruptly, -embarrassed and at a loss.</p> - -<p>“That a Chinese house could be so civilized a place?” Wu quizzed -good-naturedly.</p> - -<p>Really, she must do better than this. She <em>would not</em> give -offense. “Not only civilized,” she said, contriving a slight laugh—it -was an awkward one—“but refined to the last degree.”</p> - -<p>There was very fine sarcasm and some contempt in the little bow he -gave her—not a Chinese bow—but his voice was sincere and almost -pleading. “My dear Mrs. Gregory,” he began, “there is not so very much -difference between the East and West, after all. Perhaps we in the -East have a finer sense of art; certainly we care more for nature. But -we <em>all</em> have the same desires—ambitions—the same passions, -hate, revenge—and love!” There was honey in the slow, well-bred -voice now—honey and something else. It jarred on the Englishwoman, -and she turned with a slightly uncomfortable look. Instantly his tone -changed to one entirely courteous still, but ordinary and commonplace. -“Will you not be seated?” he said simply. “Or shall I describe some -of my ornaments? You look about you as if you were good enough to be -interested in my Chinese bric-à-brac.”</p> - -<p>“Yes—do—do,” she stammered desperately; “that—that wonderful thing -there? That gorgeous-looking duck!”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_251"></a>251</span> -“Ah!” Wu said, “that is a very precious treasure. Our Chinese potters, -as probably you know, are very fond of reproducing members of the -animal kingdom.”</p> - -<p>“I have never seen a finer piece of that kind of pottery in my life,” -Mrs. Gregory said with almost breathless enthusiasm, gazing at the -curio with eyes that scarcely saw it and fumbling her rings.</p> - -<p>Wu Li Chang smiled. “And it is a very sacred object,” he said.</p> - -<p>“Oh?” she asked.</p> - -<p>“It is a mandarin duck,” Wu told her significantly. “And the mandarin -duck with us, you know, is the emblem of conjugal fidelity!” He ended -with a strange, low, sinister laugh. It was slight and very low, but -it affected Florence Gregory weirdly. To cover up her own disconcerted -inquietude she moved—at random—to one of the magnificent carved cedar -columns beside the altar (Wu watching her with a grinning face) and -pointed to the weapon hanging there. “And that sword up there?”</p> - -<p>“That?” Wu laughed, and at the sound Ah Wong’s blood curdled in her -breast; “yes, that’s an interesting thing. It has rather a curious -history.”</p> - -<p>Her procrastinated anxiety for her son, her thwarted hunger to see him, -were unnerving her, and she was growing anxious on her own account, -though that she scarcely realized and in no way could have explained.</p> - -<p>“Oh?” she forced herself to say. But she said it lamely, and she could -say no more.</p> - -<p>Apparently Wu noticed nothing amiss. “Perhaps rather a gruesome one,” -he said with a note of apology.</p> - -<p>“Oh!” his guest said with a shudder; “well, then, don’t tell me! At the -moment I don’t quite feel——”</p> - -<p>“Then,” Wu interrupted her quickly, solicitously,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_252"></a>252</span> even, “I will spare -you its story,” but added more crisply, “for the present, at any rate.”</p> - -<p>He moved easily about the room and proceeded in the most leisurely way -to point out his treasures. “This,” he said, lifting a bowl from its -place in one of the cabinets and bringing it to her, “will interest you -very much. This is one of the famous dragon bowls—one of the first -three ever made.”</p> - -<p>“Indeed,” she said, “how very interesting!” But she could not hide her -torture or her indifference.</p> - -<p>Wu smiled cruelly into the priceless dragon bowl, and carried it back -to its shelf even more slowly than he had brought it. “Up here”—he -pointed to over one door—“I have what your English collectors call -a three-border plate. I have a set of six. Up there”—he pointed to -the top of another cabinet—“is another with five borders. It is -almost unique. Li Hung Chang has one, Her Imperial Majesty the Dowager -Empress has one, but they are very, very rare. And this”—indicating -another bowl conspicuously placed on a carved ebony stand of its own -on a malachite pedestal—malachite carved into coarse but exquisite -lace—“is a Shangsi bowl. There are several in the house. Each one is -worth something like two thousand pounds.” He took it in his hands and -turned it about very, very slowly, now this way, now that, gloating -over it as if he’d never be done. The woman could have screamed; and, -in spite of her, a heavy sigh escaped. But Wu seemed not to hear it. -He returned the Shangsi to its stand at last and crossed the room to -a larger stand, and, laying down his fan, which he had held till now, -took up a sea-green vase, beautifully molded, enormously glazed. “You -must look at this, dear Mrs. Gregory,” he told her cordially, “you -must<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_253"></a>253</span> look at this well. This is a particularly fine piece—this sea -green glaze, Mrs. Gregory—one of the earliest productions of the -ceramic art.”</p> - -<p>Her face was twitching now with nervousness. He seemed to notice her -perturbation for the first time, and said contritely, “But I fear I -weary you with my treasures,” and carried the glaze back, very, very -slowly, and put it down.</p> - -<p>“No—no,” she said hastily, “no, Mr. Wu, not that—not that at all. But -I have come here with only one object——”</p> - -<p>“With two, dear lady,” he interrupted her gently; “you forget Madame -Sing.”</p> - -<p>“Indeed, oh, no—I—I did not mean that, forgive me—but my boy—his -safety—to see him—my mind is full of that——” The mandarin smiled -indulgently and took up his fan again. “I should like to come again, if -I may, some other time—when we are older friends”—she was pleading -now—“I should like to come again and spend hours examining all -your wonderful treasures—if you will let me. I hope you will. But -now—now—I have only one thought in my mind. I can have but the one.” -Her voice trembled pitifully.</p> - -<p>Wu Li Chang smiled indulgently. “I have been waiting, Mrs. Gregory,” he -said explanatorily, “for you to dismiss your servant.”</p> - -<p>Ah Wong fixed her eyes on her mistress, entreaty and misery in their -narrow depths.</p> - -<p>Mrs. Gregory looked at Wu in startled astonishment. “Dismiss her—Ah -Wong? Do you mean send her away?”</p> - -<p>“Only out of the room,” the mandarin said carelessly. “She can wait in -the courtyard.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_254"></a>254</span> -“But—but I couldn’t possibly do that,” the visitor stammered. She was -frightened now, and knew that she was.</p> - -<p>“Nevertheless,” Wu returned, in a tone he had not used before, “I fear -I must insist.”</p> - -<p>Their eyes met. The Chinese eyes of the man, inscrutable, the English -eyes of the woman, appealing, terrorized. And Ah Wong half thrust a -hand in her bosom, then dropped it back quickly to her side.</p> - -<p>“But, Mr. Wu,” Mrs. Gregory faltered, “it is such an extraordinary -request to make—under the circumstances.”</p> - -<p>“Not in the least,” Wu said smoothly—and he seemed somewhat amused. -“Do you in England usually bring your servants into the drawing-rooms -of your friends?”</p> - -<p>“No-o. No,” she admitted lamely, “but—that seems different, somehow. I -think, under the circumstances—and Madame Sing——”</p> - -<p>Sing Kung Yah’s remissness as a hostess received no further comment -from her kinsman. But he said emphatically, “I could not possibly -offend the spirits of my ancestors by sitting down in the room with -your servant.”</p> - -<p>“Your ancestors, Mr. Wu! What on earth have they to do with a matter of -modern propriety?”</p> - -<p>“I said I should offend them,” the mandarin replied with ominous -quietude.</p> - -<p>“Well then,” the Englishwoman retorted, just a shade contemptuously, -“they must be very thin-skinned.”</p> - -<p>“Mrs. Gregory!” Wu Li Chang said so sternly that she turned and looked -at him alarmed, “this afternoon your husband grievously offended me by -certain disrespectful allusions to my ancestors. He knew better—or he -should have done. You do not, for you are unacquainted with<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_255"></a>255</span> China. -So you must pardon me if I point out to you that in China we pay the -memory of our ancestors the deepest respect.”</p> - -<p>“Oh!” she said unhappily, “I’m sorry—I’m so sorry. I wouldn’t offend -you for the world.”</p> - -<p>“Then will you kindly send your servant away?” Wu put his words in the -sequence of a question, but there was neither interrogation nor request -in his voice: it was cold, imperative and final.</p> - -<p>The Englishwoman hesitated miserably. She was thoroughly alarmed now. -“But,” she begged (for it was supplication—open, not implied), “Mr. -Wu, I—I hope that I shall myself be going soon.”</p> - -<p>Wu took no notice of what she said, and, for the time no further notice -of Florence Gregory. He clapped his hands sharply, and at their sound -Ah Sing stood in the doorway.</p> - -<p>“Analiaotang,” the mandarin said -<a id="quietly"></a><ins title="Original has 'quiety'">quietly</ins>. -The frightened Englishwoman understood no Chinese. But Wu’s tone—quiet -as it was—said unmistakably, “Take her away.”</p> - -<p>Ah Sing moved quietly on Ah Wong, and she, looking pathetically at her -mistress, backed as slowly as she dared through the open door, from the -room. But at the threshold she paused, glanced for an instant up at the -high window, looked her mistress squarely in the eyes, bowed her head -and was gone.</p> - -<p>And Mrs. Gregory had returned her amah’s signal, look for look.</p> - -<p>It was two women against one man; and one of those women was Chinese.</p> - - - - -<div class="chapter"> -<hr class="x-ebookmaker-drop divider" /> -<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_256"></a>256</span> -</div> - -<h2 id="xxxv">CHAPTER XXXV<br /> -<span class="smcap">The Story of the Sword</span></h2> - -<p class="noi"><span class="dropcap"><span class="dropcap2">“</span>Y</span>OU—you shouldn’t have done that,” Mrs. Gregory faltered as the door -closed again behind Ah Sing. “She is very devoted to me,” she added -feebly.</p> - -<p>“No doubt,” the mandarin answered tersely. “But I fancy my authority is -even more powerful than her devotion.”</p> - -<p>The woman’s uneasiness was growing rapidly. “I don’t think I ought to -have come,” she said, looking about her nervously. “But now,” with an -effort to speak ordinarily and to assume an unconcern she no longer -felt, “Mr. Wu, what is the news?”</p> - -<p>“Oh! pray, Mrs. Gregory,” the Chinese begged, all the blandness in his -voice again, “do not let so trifling an incident disturb you in the -least.”</p> - -<p>A sudden throb of Chinese music came from the garden, and at the first -note a change crept into his face. It was such music—but softly -thrummed, almost timid—as he and Wu Lu had heard together on their -first hours alone in Sze-chuan. Chinese music is strange to European -ears; they rarely learn to hear it for what it is. It is not discord. -It is not crude. At its best it is the pulse of passion turned into -sound. No other music is so passionate, no other music so provocative. -And this was Chinese music at its best. Wu laid down his fan softly, -and stood listening, his head thrust a little towards the sound. Mrs. -Gregory listened too for a moment,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_257"></a>257</span> startled; then, in a spasm of -nervous tension, she covered her ears with her hands.</p> - -<p>Wu took a step towards her. “Do you not find the music agreeable?” he -asked her in a creamy voice.</p> - -<p>“No,” she almost sobbed, “it is horrible! Horrible! I—I can’t bear -it—as I feel now.” And she sank down miserably on a stool and leaned a -little against the table.</p> - -<p>Wu smiled—a cruel, relentless smile. But he moved to the low, wide -window, pushed back the opaque slide, and called out abruptly, -“Changhoopoh.” The music stopped instantly.</p> - -<p>“Oh, thank you!” the woman cried.</p> - -<p>“I am sorry it distressed you,” he said in an odd voice; “perhaps these -notes——”</p> - -<p>“They jarred on me dreadfully,” she sighed.</p> - -<p>“It is a pity,” the mandarin told her, “for the music was in your -honor.”</p> - -<p>“I’m sorry,” she faltered, twisting and untwisting her little -handkerchief—Wu was fanning himself again, slowly, contentedly—“not -to appreciate it more. You must please forgive me,” she pled, “but I -am so dreadfully overwrought.” She turned to him with a wan smile that -tried to be confident, but failed, and with a brave attempt to appear -at ease that was sadder than her tears would have been, “Now, Mr. Wu, -please tell me. Where is my son? What do you know about him? Oh! if you -only understood a mother’s anxiety!”</p> - -<p>Wu Li Chang looked into her eyes with a narrow smile that was half -a taunt, half a caress. “Ah!” he said, laughing a little, “the old, -old mother-vanity. Why is it, I wonder, that motherhood lays claim to -all the love, all the tenderness, and to all the misery of parentage? -And it is so, world-wide. Our own women are so. But”—his voice grew -stern—“fathers feel too! Fathers love<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_258"></a>258</span> their young. Fathers dote, -brood, fear, suffer.” He ended with a slight, bitter laugh that was -a sneer and frightened the woman oddly, and then he added smoothly, -imperturbably, “I was about to say, Mrs. Gregory, that that music, -performed in your honor, is one of our classical love-songs.”</p> - -<p>“Really,” she responded lamely. “Well, I hope your love-making is not -so——” She broke off, painfully at a loss, and turned her head away.</p> - -<p>Wu, still standing, leaned towards her, resting his hands on the -table between them. “Not so—violent?” he suggested with a leer, -“Displeasing? Passionate? What was the word you were about to use, Mrs. -Gregory?” He almost whispered her name.</p> - -<p>“Oh! Mr. Wu!” Florence exclaimed, rising hysterically—the torture -was telling on her cruelly now; the handkerchief was torn and -knotted—“please have mercy on a mother’s agony!”</p> - -<p>Wu Li Chang bent down, across the table still, and laid a hand very -gently on hers. At his touch her self-control, already worn to a -thread, snapped, and she screamed violently. Wu moved his fingers -softly across her wrist, and smiled down at her amiably. “I’ll scream -the house down!” she gasped pantingly. Wu looked at her calmly, shook -his head deprecatingly, and folded his hands upon his arms beneath -his sleeves. Nothing answered her cry of terror—unless the absolute -stillness of the garden did, or its rich, penetrating perfume. “I’m -sorry,” she murmured distractedly, recognizing her mistake, and that to -show fear would both affront him and invite annoyance. “I didn’t mean -that,” she said, choking back a second scream; “I only mean that—oh! -I’m tortured by all this suspense.” In spite of her new resolve, a low -sob broke from her, and she huddled down<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_259"></a>259</span> upon the stool again, crying -like a tired and frightened child.</p> - -<p>The man stood a moment watching her grimly. Her head was bowed and -she could not see his face. There was bitter determination on it, -remorselessness, but no desire. He moved slowly across the room and -closed and fastened the thick screen-slide of the window that looked -upon the garden. And now again, except for the high narrow window, -through which no one could look out or in, the room was shut and barred -from all the rest of the world.</p> - -<p>They two were entirely alone.</p> - -<p>The mandarin moved slowly back until he stood beside the woman. “Pray -compose yourself, dear lady,” he said very quietly. “That weakness was -unworthy of you, and hardly complimentary to your host.” He took her -hand quietly in his, and she made no remonstrance, made no attempt to -draw her hand away again. He put his other hand on her arm, and pushed -her gently down upon her seat, and released his hold.</p> - -<p>“I’m so sorry,” the woman said brokenly, brushing her hand across her -eyes. “I—I am not myself. Please forgive me.” Wu flicked that aside -with a courteous gesture. “And now,” her voice was little more than a -whispered gasp, “Mr. Wu, please tell me——”</p> - -<p>“I am about to do so. Patience!” Wu said silkenly. “In China things -move slowly. China is the tortoise of the world, not the hare. I was -going to tell you”—he spoke with a deliberation that was a torture in -itself.</p> - -<p>“Yes?” she interrupted his vindictive procrastination feverishly.</p> - -<p>“About that sword.” The mandarin pointed to where it hung.</p> - -<p>Mrs. Gregory half smothered a moan.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_260"></a>260</span> -“The sword with rather a gruesome history——”</p> - -<p>“Oh! don’t, please, Mr. Wu,” she broke in, “please—I—I couldn’t bear -it now.”</p> - -<p>“But, my dear Mrs. Gregory,” he persisted blandly, “good news will -keep. Time is not pressing. Besides, tea has not yet been brought in.”</p> - -<p>“Tea!” she panted distractedly; “oh! Mr. Wu, you must please excuse me.”</p> - -<p>“I beg <em>you</em> to excuse <em>me</em>,” the Chinese corrected, a little -arrogantly. “For countless generations my ancestors have drunk tea at -this hour, and our tradition must be kept up. You have been long enough -in China to know, perhaps, that tea-drinking with us as a matter of -ceremony is an indispensable custom——”</p> - -<p>“Yes, I do know that,” she said quickly, “but—I——”</p> - -<p>“And so,” Wu continued pleasantly, “whilst we are waiting for tea I -will tell you the story of the sword.” And he moved as if to lift it -down.</p> - -<p>With half-closed eyes, wearied with terror, Florence Gregory half -crouched against the table, prepared to listen. Her rings were cutting -into her hands. Her handkerchief lay at her feet, a ball of rag. -Suddenly Wu turned from the weapon, left it hanging in its place and -swung back to her; standing behind her, his hands on the table, almost -touching her, bending over her, he said, “By the way, Mrs. Gregory, you -must love your son very much.”</p> - -<p>“Oh!” she told him, rising and turning to him with supplication in -voice and gesture, “I do.”</p> - -<p>“Otherwise you would not be here?” the Chinese asked her calmly.</p> - -<p>“Otherwise I should not be here,” she said a little proudly, stung for -the moment back to a sort of self-assertiveness.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_261"></a>261</span> -“Alone,” he added with a horrid emphasis. “But a mother’s love is -capable of any sacrifice, -<a id="is"></a><ins title="Original has 'it'">is</ins> -it not?”</p> - -<p>“It is capable of <em>much</em> sacrifice,” the woman returned, some -dignity lingering in her voice.</p> - -<p>“If your son were in any peril, you would——”</p> - -<p>“Oh!” the mother said sadly, “I would give—my very life.”</p> - -<p>“Your life!” the mandarin exclaimed almost contemptuously. “In China -life is cheap. Is there nothing you value even more?”</p> - -<p>“Why?” she asked feebly, at bay now, and putting up such poor fight as -she could for time, in the desperate hope that some outside help might -come—from Ah Wong or from somewhere. “Why, what can one value more -than life?”</p> - -<p>“Let us rather say,” the Chinese insinuated, bending until his breath -fanned her cheek, “what can a woman value more than her own life—or -the life of her son?” He paused, not for a reply—he expected none—but -to watch the effect upon her of his poisoned words; to watch and gloat. -She, poor creature, no longer made any pretense. Her strength was gone: -worn away by the persistent drip, drip of his long, slow cruelty. She -looked about the room wildly, saw the face leering close to hers, and -shrank away shuddering. “When I have your attention, Mrs. Gregory,” Wu -said determinedly, but falling back a pace or two.</p> - -<p>The entrapped woman summoned up all her courage. “You shall have it, -Mr. Wu,” she said steadily, rising, “from the moment you tell me what I -came to hear.”</p> - -<p>“If you will be seated again,” the mandarin said suavely, “I will -proceed to do so. But you must allow me to choose my own route.”</p> - -<p>Florence Gregory looked at her tormentor squarely,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_262"></a>262</span> then beseechingly. -She hesitated. And then she sank back listlessly on to the seat.</p> - -<p>“And so,” the man continued, “I will commence with—the sword.”</p> - -<p>Mrs. Gregory closed her aching eyes and caught her cold hands -together—and waited.</p> - -<p>The mandarin moved, and spoke more and more deliberately. Slowness -could not be slower than his was now. He took down the sword—he -remembered how he had touched it last—his face was ice, his voice as -cold. “As I told you,” he began, standing in front of her, the sword -resting on its point, held between them, “it belonged to an ancestor of -mine who lived many generations ago, Wu Li Chang, whose name I bear. -Perhaps you would like to look at it more closely.” There was a note of -command in his voice, and the woman, obeying, lifted her head a little -and fixed her agonized eyes on the weapon he held, edge towards her. -“I will show it to you, and then restore it to its place. You see, -the blade is no longer keen——” But the point was. She saw neither. -“I keep it merely for its history.” He laid it on the table, laid it -between the Englishwoman and himself, as he might have laid a covenant -or some vital document of evidence, a terrible accusation, a great deed -of gift.</p> - -<p>The torture of the merciless leisurely recital was telling on the woman -visibly. She had held a pistol stoically enough this morning. But when, -at a weary movement of her own, the lace in her sleeve caught in the -old sword’s hilt, she shuddered and shrank back. She made no pretense -of listening. She was “done,” for then at least; and of her diplomatic -courteousness not a shred was left. But yet she heard each word.</p> - -<p>Wu sat down again, and the slow, cold voice went on<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_263"></a>263</span> evenly. “My -ancestor had only one child, a very beautiful daughter. He worshiped -her with more devotion than is common in China—for you know we do -not often (unless of pure Manchu blood) esteem daughters so highly as -sons. But he was an admirable man—a good neighbor, unselfish, upright, -charitable (and—is it not strange?—for all this was before the -missionaries came to China), a faithful husband—he was a very devoted -father. She was, in your Western phrase, the apple of his eye. Well, -one day when the time came for her marriage to a mandarin to whom she -was betrothed, her father discovered that she—that her marriage was -no longer possible.” Basil Gregory’s mother was listening now, not -listlessly. The ears of a mother’s soul are terribly acute. “He dragged -from her her lover’s name, and then, without a word of reproach or of -warning, he slew the being that he loved—with that sword.”</p> - -<p>The English mother moaned. She understood.</p> - -<p>“And after that, her lover too was slain; and not only he, but also his -sister, his mother, his entire family. My old sword has drunk deep, -Mrs. Gregory,” and he drew a finger lovingly along its blade.</p> - -<p>“Don’t—don’t tell me any more,” Florence Gregory whispered.</p> - -<p>Wu lifted the weapon and laid it across his knee—reverently. “I warned -you that it was rather a gruesome story,” he said gravely.</p> - -<p>“Yes—well,” she stumbled, playing still for time, trying to think, -“thank Heaven we are more civilized to-day than—than anything so -horrible as that!”</p> - -<p>Wu smiled. “Much more civilized, no doubt. Methods change; and since -I have had the advantage of a European education, if I found myself -in such a case, I would not adopt so bloodthirsty a revenge. Indeed -I<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_264"></a>264</span> think, if anything, my ancestors erred on the side of leniency.” -Wu Li Chang paused. Less light was coming through the one high window -now. Florence Gregory was well-nigh strangled by the beating of her -tortured, frightened heart. And almost Wu could hear its beat.</p> - -<p>“He was robbed of honor,” he said sternly; “he took merely life -in exchange, whilst he might have taken—from the sister or the -mother—that which they would have held dearer than life. Are you -listening to me, Mrs. Gregory?” for she had buried her face in her -hands on the table where the sword had laid.</p> - -<p>She lifted her head heavily—her face was ashen and lifeless—and -looked at him with stricken, agonized eyes.</p> - -<p>“I have wearied you,” Wu said contritely. “Your husband would reproach -me—or your honorable son. My story was too long, and unpleasant in an -English lady’s ears. Yet I have said no word that does not bring me -nearer to my point. I, too, had a daughter——”</p> - -<p>“Had!” the woman’s lips just breathed it.</p> - -<p>“And family history has repeated itself—so far.”</p> - -<p>For some moments there was silence in the room—a silence far -more poignant than any words—a silence chill and kindless as the -voicelessness of death. Then Florence Gregory started up at the sounds -of bolts withdrawn and of panels sliding in their grooves.</p> - -<p>Wu rose too, carried the sword, and put it beside the gong. “It is -growing dark,” he said.</p> - - - - -<div class="chapter"> -<hr class="x-ebookmaker-drop divider" /> -<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_265"></a>265</span> -</div> - -<h2 id="xxxvi">CHAPTER XXXVI<br /> -<span class="smcap">In the Pagoda and on the Bench</span></h2> - -<p class="noi"><span class="dropcap">S</span>O long as he may live Basil Gregory will never understand how he -lived through those hours in the pagoda—his last hours in the pagoda -by the lotus lake. So long as he lives he must remember them, and -shudder newly at each remembering—waiting again in torture and alone -to hear the deep-throated damnation of Wu Li Chang’s gong telling him -that—that he was branded forever, soul-scarred. Wu Li Chang had hit -upon something that not even a man could forget.</p> - -<p>How he got there he never knew. He remembered being taken to the -mandarin, the terrible interview, the news of Nang Ping’s death, the -demoniac threat of his mother’s ordeal and agony, but nothing of his -return to the pagoda. For a time—he had no way of knowing how long -or how brief—a merciful space of blank had been vouchsafed him. And -the utmost fury need not have grudged him it. For, if the mother in -the house suffered more than a death, the son in the pagoda, when -consciousness crept back, suffered her sufferings multiplied. She was -his mother, and he loved her. Always she had been very good to him. And -he had been so proud of her. Could he ever feel quite that pride again? -Her very sacrifice must smirch her in the eyes of the son for whom -it was made, and whose crime it punished. Even his love for her must -be a little tarnished, a little weaker, after the clang out of that -brazen gong. Wu Li Chang had<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_266"></a>266</span> found a great revenge. His own honor had -never burdened Basil Gregory; but his mother’s honor—ah! Or, for that -matter, even Hilda’s, or his cousin May Gregory’s—for, like so many -such men, Basil Gregory leaned his soul (such as he had) and his pride -upon the women of his blood. To be virtuous vicariously is a positive -talent with some men.</p> - -<p>His mother! He writhed. His mother! He tore against the pagoda’s -walls with his hands, all pinioned as they were—for his freed hand -was bound again—until his knuckles bled. If such punishment as Wu -had devised could be shown vividly, anticipatorily, to men about to -stray, the gravest of the social problems must be so somewhat solved, -the most stinging of the burning questions somewhat answered. If sons, -light, selfish, weak, could expect such chastisement as Basil Gregory -was enduring now, a famous commandment would be honored in observance -an hundredfold, dishonored by breach miraculously less. A daughter’s -shame—a sister’s—that scourges most men; a wife’s—oh! well, there -are wives and wives, there are men and men, but a mother’s—ah! That -touches all manhood on its quick. Brand the scarlet initial of adultery -on his mother’s brow in punishment of him, and what son would commit -the fault? Fewer!</p> - -<p>From the sun—for there were spaces pierced in the elaborate stonework -of the pagoda’s thick sides, and he could see through some of them—he -thought that he must have escaped nearly an hour of the misery of -consciousness.</p> - -<p>Heaven knows the scene enacted in the smaller audience hall was -exquisitely terrible enough; but the man alone in the pagoda pictured -it ten times more terrible, more hideous, more stenched than it was. -Made an artist in fiendishness by his love for his child, Wu was<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_267"></a>267</span> most -fiendish, most exquisite, in his enmaddening deliberateness. He drew -out the woman’s agony until the sinews of her soul seemed to crack and -bleat. The hideous hour seemed an age to her. To Basil, waiting alone -in the pagoda, the hour seemed ages piled on ages.</p> - -<p>Alone? But no, he was not alone. This was Nang Ping’s pagoda. She had -given him “free” of it, and shared it with him. She shared it with him -still. A ghost—a girlish Chinese ghost—stood beside him and looked at -him adoringly, accusingly, with death and motherhood in her eyes. “Oh! -Nang Ping! Nang Ping! Forgive, forgive!” he cried, and hid his face on -his pinioned arm. Then he looked up with a cry—wide-eyed, for he had -seen his mother in the room he’d left, the room where the gong was, -and Wu—he saw his mother, and the Chinese moving towards her, and he -turned and cursed the girl-ghost at his side—the poor dishonored ghost -with a tiny nestling in her arms.</p> - -<p>Angry at punishment self-entailed, to shift, or seek to shift, the -blame, or some part of it, upon shoulders other than our own, is a -common phase of human frailty. “The woman tempted me.” And so the fault -is really hers. Punish the temptress and let me go. “The woman tempted -me”: it is the oldest and the meanest of the complaints. But sadly -often it is true enough.</p> - -<p>A man never had less cause to urge it, in self-extenuation, or even in -explanation, than Basil Gregory had. Nang Ping had never tempted him. -Even in the consummation of their loves, the heyday of her infatuation, -she had never wooed him. In their first acquaintance, contrived in part -by him, brought about in part by a fan of Low Soong’s, lost and found, -Nang Ping had been as shy and unassertive as a violet. She had never -tempted except with her own sweet reserve and the fragrant piquancy of -her picturesque novelty. And that she had<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_268"></a>268</span> not sought him, or, for some -time, allowed him advance, had been her chief charm for him. And on the -day that he had told her that he was returning to Europe, and at once, -leaving her to face their dilemma alone, she had uttered no reproach, -made no outcry—just a quiet expostulation abandoned as soon as made. -“You will not come back,” she had said quietly, and had gone from him -calmly, with dignity.</p> - -<p>Never lover had less just cause to reproach mistress than he had to -reproach or blame Nang Ping. But for his mother’s sake, and, too, -perhaps, for his craven own, he did, and cursed the girl who had died -for him, as he raged futilely here in the pagoda, where he had taken, -and she had given, her all.</p> - -<p>It is a big thing to be a manly man.</p> - -<p>It is a tragedy to be a woman—except when it’s the very best of great -good luck.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Very little of the good luck of life, very little of the joyousness of -womanhood, had ever been Ah Wong’s. All her life she had worked hard -for scant pay and no thanks. All her life she had yearned passionately -for companionship, and been lonely. From a brutal father she had -escaped to a brutal husband. Her children were dead, and had not -promised much while they lived. God knows, Mrs. Gregory had given her -little enough—almost nothing. And yet Mrs. Gregory had given her her -best time—the nearest approach to a “good time” she’d ever known. And -she was pathetically grateful to have had even so much of creature -comfort, such crumbs of kindness, so shabby and lukewarm a sipping -of the wine of life. The Englishwoman did not even know that she had -been kind to the amah. Indeed, Ah Wong had<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_269"></a>269</span> merely warmed her cramped -and frozen being in the careless overflow of a nature that, by happy -accident, was full of sunshine and brimmed with radiance.</p> - -<p>Ah Wong was grateful, and Ah Wong was honest. She meant to repay. She -hated debt; almost all Chinese do. She had loyalty. She had grit. She -had Chinese wit. And she had the light wrist of her sex at subterfuge: -it is world-wide.</p> - -<p>Ejected from the house, she sat down contentedly in the courtyard and -began to knit—an industry foreign to Chinese eyes. It brought curious -women of the household about her. She had intended that it should. They -brought her liangkao and melon seeds—for hospitality was the rule of -the house—and she ate all the liangkao and cracked all the melon seeds -while the other women chattered to her and to each other.</p> - -<p>She said that she was very tired—her lady was a hard taskmistress. -She didn’t like the English. She was very tired, but she’d like to -see something of so beautiful a place, now that she was here, and she -tottered about a little wearily from treasure to treasure, but never -far from the house, from tiny forest trees a few inches high, in pots -the size of thimbles, to an evergreen that was a century old and that -had its widest branches cut into birds in full flight. She cried out in -ecstasy at a great dragon sprawling on the grass, a dragon of geraniums -and foliage plants. And presently she yawned and said that she was very -tired, and sat down heavily on a carved stone bench. After a little -she fell asleep, and the women giggled at her good-naturedly and left -her. The bench was not far from the window that high up looked into the -mandarin’s sitting-room.</p> - - - - -<div class="chapter"> -<hr class="x-ebookmaker-drop divider" /> -<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_270"></a>270</span> -</div> - -<h2 id="xxxvii">CHAPTER XXXVII<br /> -<span class="smcap">The Fan</span></h2> - -<p class="noi"><span class="dropcap"><span class="dropcap2">“</span>I</span>T is growing dark,” Wu said, as he put the sword down beside the gong.</p> - -<p>Three other servants followed Ah Sing through the sliding door that he -had opened from the other side. Two were tea-bearers and the other a -servant of the lamps.</p> - -<p>The tray of tea was laid on the table. The lamp-man moved about -the room, and a dozen dim lights broke out, like disks of radiant -alabaster, so dim, so beautiful, and so unexpectedly placed that their -shrouded brilliance made the wonderful room seem even eerier than -before.</p> - -<p>The woman watched it all, inert and motionless. She felt, without -thinking about it—she was almost worn past thinking now—how more -than useless it would be to appeal to these wooden-faced Chinese, the -creatures and automatons of Wu Li Chang. And an instinct of dignity -that was very English held her from making to foreign servants a -prayer that would, she knew, be denied. She would make no exhibition -of a plight they would not pity or of an emotion that would not move -them—unless it moved them to mirth.</p> - -<p>But when, their service done, the servants went out, soft-footed as -they had come, and after the door closed, bolts clanged, she realized -that she and Wu were again alone—the room locked—and she sprang up -and dashed to the door.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_271"></a>271</span> -Wu watched her, smiling. “Come,” he said—almost as he might have -spoken to a restless child—“tea is served.”</p> - -<p>And she turned, in obedience to his voice, and looked at him. “I -couldn’t, Mr. Wu,” she said with plaintive petulance, “I couldn’t -possibly.” The distress in her voice was more than the annoyance.</p> - -<p>Wu ignored her words good-naturedly, and began pouring out the tea. “I -have sugar and cream, you see, quite in the Western way.”</p> - -<p>“No—no, I couldn’t,” she reiterated impatiently, but coming back to -the table and watching the cups as he filled them. “Please tell me of -my son and let me go.”</p> - -<p>For answer, the mandarin held out to her a cup of tea. “Pray take -this cup of tea, Mrs. Gregory,” he said with grave politeness. “Oh! -I understand,” he added with a slight, chill smile, when she paid no -attention to the cup he proffered her. He put it down. “You would -prefer to see me drink first.” With an inclination of his head to her, -he lifted his own cup and drained it at a draught. “So! perhaps that -will reassure you.” He put his cup down and refilled it. “Pray take the -tea,” he urged hospitably: “it will not only be refreshing—and your -lips look dry and parched—but it will also be a politeness to do so.”</p> - -<p>She stood looking at him dully, and then sank slowly down on to a stool.</p> - -<p>“Sugar—and—cream,” the mandarin said brightly. There was more of -Mayfair and of Oxford in tone and in manner than there was of Cathay. -And the anachronism was gruesome rather than droll, as he stood in his -mandarin’s robes fanning himself with his left hand (the sons of Han -are more nearly ambidextrous than they of any other race) and with his -right hand plying the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_272"></a>272</span> silver sugar-tongs with slow dexterity. “So!” he -held out the perfected cup. “It is the choicest growth of the Empire, -Mrs. Gregory, sun-dried with the flowers of jasmine.”</p> - -<p>She took the cup, and he took up his. Just as she was forcing herself -to drink—his own cup almost to his lip—he said with the same suave -manner, “Have you no curiosity, Mrs. Gregory, to learn the name”—a -poisonous change came in his voice—“of my daughter’s seducer?”</p> - -<p>The Englishwoman put down her cup quickly, with a hand so unnerved and -trembling that it scarcely served to guide its small burden. She tried -to drop her eyes, but she couldn’t—he held them with his relentlessly. -“I don’t understand you,” she faltered. “Your—your manner is so -strange.”</p> - -<p>Wu said nothing, but he smiled into her gaze coldly, and she rose with -a shudder. Wu smiled at her still, and with a sudden wild cry she -darted to the sliding doors and beat on them hysterically. But she -realized at once that they were locked and were strong. And she turned -around, at bay but hopeless, leaning her back against the door, and -faced Wu miserably, her smarting hands hanging limp at her sides.</p> - -<p>Wu Li Chang unfolded his fan and began to churn the air towards his -face with it.</p> - -<p>No European ever has understood what his fan means to a Chinese. -Probably no European ever will be able to understand that. With their -fans the Chinese hide emotion, express emotion, and, when it reaches -the danger point, give it vent. Often a Chinese man’s frail, tiny fan -is his safety valve. China’s greatest warriors have carried their -fans into battle. Criminals fan themselves on the execution ground. -Frightened Chinese girls, in<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_273"></a>273</span> the torment of first child-birth, fan -themselves. Wu was fanning himself in triumph. And he spoke to her -quickly, his voice ringing with triumph. “There are several ways into -this room, Mrs. Gregory, but only one way out.” The fan shut with an -ominous click—a rattle of ivory, a hiss and a rustle of silk. “It lies -by that door”—he pointed it with his fan—“which leads to <span class="italic">my own -inner chamber</span>.”</p> - -<p>The woman smothered a scream, but she could not smother a groan.</p> - -<p>Wu laughed. He took a step towards her. “Have you no desire to hear my -news of your son?” he asked softly. “Good news? I promised that you -should—I am here to keep my promise.” The terrible significance of his -words could not have been clearer, but he emphasized it hideously by -gliding still a little nearer to the stricken, appalled woman.</p> - -<p>“Oh! don’t torture me,” she implored, moving away.</p> - -<p>“He is well—comparatively. His hands have received a trifling -injury—quite trifling. But he is quite well”—nearing the woman -again—“and he is here.”</p> - -<p>“Here?” she sobbed, “here?”</p> - -<p>“Almost -<a id="within"></a><ins title="Original has 'wthin'">within</ins> -sound of your voice”—still nearer.</p> - -<p>“O my God! where?” she cried, looking about her frantically. The third -door caught her attention, and she ran to it weakly and beat against -it, crying, “Basil! Basil!”</p> - -<p>“Do not be so impetuous, dear lady,” Wu said with insolent gentleness; -“I did not say he was there. And it is not good that he should hear -your voice, for the sound would only distress him.”</p> - -<p>She looked at Wu questioningly, and he gave her the cruel explanation. -“You see, he is not at liberty to come until the right signal is given. -It lies with you<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_274"></a>274</span> whether that signal shall be given or not!” He was -very close to her now.</p> - -<p>Wu Li Chang intended to use no physical force with this woman. He would -not grant her degradation even that poor loop-hole of excuse.</p> - -<p>That she would yield, he had no doubt. And her own tortured soul knew -that it wavered now, and it was sick.</p> - -<p>Wu laid his hand on her arm. And she scarcely shrank back, but drew -herself up, proud in her sorrow, and said slowly in his smiling face, -“You—you devil!”</p> - -<p>“Harsh words will not help him, Mrs. Gregory,” the mandarin said. “Only -one thing can.” Face almost brushed face—they were so close.</p> - -<p>She hid hers in her hands and sobbed in fear.</p> - -<p>“I will leave you whilst you decide,” Wu said, and turned to the door -that was, he had told her, her only way “out.”</p> - -<p>In a sudden frenzy and palsied with nausea, she dashed at the other -doors, sobbing, “Let me go!”—panting—“let me go, I tell you!”</p> - -<p>Wu watched her a little before he said calmly, still smiling gravely, -“This door is the only door which remains unlocked. If you should -decide to enter it before I return, I should not be unresponsive to the -honor you will do me. If not, I shall return soon myself—to assist -you, if I may, to decide.”</p> - -<p>“My husband knows that I have come here!” Mrs. Gregory cried defiantly. -“I told him!” (Wu smiled.) “He will be here at any moment, and -then——! Oh! I am not afraid of you!”</p> - -<p>“Oh! I am glad of that!” Wu Li Chang said eagerly, “I desire only to -inspire trust—and confidence—and the tenderest sympathy! But I know -that your husband—that amiable, estimable Mr. Gregory—an odd, subtle<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_275"></a>275</span> -creature, but so lovable—does not know you are here. You have not the -remotest hope of seeing him—or you would not have told me! You would -have temporized—delayed—said nothing.”</p> - -<p>“He <em>does</em> know!” she stormed. “He may be here at any moment! And -if he is not admitted he will batter your gates and doors down!”</p> - -<p>The mandarin laughed softly and shook his head at her indulgently.</p> - -<p>“You scoundrel!” she told him, infuriated.</p> - -<p>“Oh! I forgive your trying to deceive me, Mrs. Gregory,” Wu said -calmly; “it is only natural. Oh! that window,” he added, in answer to -an involuntary look toward it. “Yes, it leads out on to the courtyard -where your devoted servant is waiting; but the architect has placed it -so very high, and has made it so very small. Now”—he made her a little -bow—“I will leave you, but not for long.” And he passed through the -unlocked door and closed it behind him very gently.</p> - - - - - -<div class="chapter"> -<hr class="x-ebookmaker-drop divider" /> -<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_276"></a>276</span> -</div> - -<h2 id="xxxviii">CHAPTER XXXVIII<br /> -<span class="smcap">The Gong</span></h2> - -<p class="noi"><span class="dropcap">D</span>ISTRACTED, not knowing what she did, or why, like some wild thing -trapped and helpless, Florence Gregory looked about the room, searching -it with eyes almost too fright-blinded for sight. Again she tried -the doors—all but one. She made a desperate, useless effort to push -the window apart. “Basil!” she cried, “Basil!” Then she checked -herself. “No! I mustn’t do that! O God!” she moaned, turning to driven -humanity’s last great resort, “help me!”</p> - -<p>She groped her way unsteadily across the room, and climbed with -trembling legs upon the bench and reached her hands up toward the -little window.</p> - -<p>“No,” she sobbed in a whisper, “I can’t,” for she could not reach to -half the opening’s height. She looked about her stealthily, rose on her -very tiptoes, and called towards the window, “Ah Wong! Ah Wong! can -you hear me? Go quickly, for the love of Heaven! Fetch them! Help me, -Ah Wong! Help me! I am alone, Ah Wong—but he will be back—very soon. -Quick, amah, quick! Ah Wong, are you there?”</p> - -<p>And then she waited.</p> - -<p>Oh! that waiting.</p> - -<p>There was no sound except the panting of her heart. From Wu’s -inner room nothing came but silence. The house and the garden were -midnight-still.</p> - -<p>Ah!</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_277"></a>277</span> -Through the window came a sound so soft it scarcely grazed the silence.</p> - -<p>Something fell, almost noiselessly, at her feet. She swooped upon it -with a smothered sob of thankfulness. It was her own scarf. Her hands -shook so she could scarcely unroll it for the message or the help it -hid. She knew it hid one or the other, or Ah Wong would not have thrown -it. Or was it only a signal that the other woman heard her? With her -eyes riveted in agony on Wu’s door, her heart beating almost to her -suffocation, her cold fingers worked distractedly at the matted gauze. -Yes—there was something there. Oh! Ah Wong! Ah Wong! It was something -hard and small.</p> - -<p>She looked at the tiny phial wonderingly. But only for a moment. Then -she knew. And her white face grew whiter. The last drop of coward blood -dripped back from her quivering lips. Poison, of course! Must she? -Dared she? Could she? And Basil? The boy that she had borne—her son -and chum. Should she desert him so? Save her honor and leave him to -death and to long fiendish torture ten thousand times worse than death? -Was <em>any</em> price too great, too hideous to pay for his rescue from -such burning hell? To so save herself at such cost to him, was not that -an even greater dishonor than the other? The woman began to whimper, -like some terrified child. And could she die? Could she face such -death? Here—all alone—in China? God hear her prayer!—she could not -think to word it. God have mercy! Life was sweet—the sun warm on the -grass. And there were cowslips in the meadows at home, and the lilacs -were wine-sweet, and the roses wine-red against the sun-drenched old -stone wall in the vicarage garden—in England.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_278"></a>278</span> -She tottered, sobbing silently, across the room, clutching the phial in -her ice-cold hand.</p> - -<p>England! At the thought of England she stiffened—proudly. She was -English—and a woman. English and a woman: the two proudest things -under Heaven. Basil must suffer. The body that had borne him must not, -even for him, be dishonored. The unalterable chastity of centuries -of gentle womanhood reasserted itself and claimed her—pure of soul, -pure of body—claimed her and made her proud and strong as it had the -English women of an earlier day who threw themselves rejoicing upon -the horns of the Roman cattle rather than yield themselves—English -women—to the lust of the Roman legionaries. As Abraham had prepared to -sacrifice Isaac—Abraham! Abraham was only a man, only a father. She -was a woman—she was a mother—and English!</p> - -<p>With a smile as cold as any smile of Wu’s, and more superb than smile -ever ermined on the lip of man—she looked about for means: determined -now—yet hoping still against hope for escape. She would die. Oh yes! -she would die—here—now. But she hoped the stuff was not too bitter. -She drew out the cork and smelt the liquid. It had no smell. Or had -fright paralyzed her gift of smell? And all her senses? Her fingers -could scarcely feel the glass they clutched. And need she drink it yet? -Help might come. Surely Ah Wong had gone! But dared she wait? Wu would -be back. Hark! Was he coming? Did his door move? He must not see her -drink it. He would prevent her. But need she die quite yet?</p> - -<p>She saw the cup of tea she had put down, and gave a little gasp of -hope: at such poor straws do we clutch!</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_279"></a>279</span> -Yes—yes—she’d pour the poison into her tea—and drink it, if she must!</p> - -<p>The cup was full. She drank a little chokingly. That was enough. Room -now! She looked in terror at Wu’s door, then emptied the tiny phial -into her cup.</p> - -<p>Wu’s cup did not occur to her—she was too distraught.</p> - -<p>Shaking pitifully, she wound the scarf again about the little bottle -and dropped both into a satsuma vase.</p> - -<p>She tottered gropingly back to her seat beside the table, the poisoned -cup close to her hand. “My God!” she whispered, not to herself, “if it -must come to that, give me strength.”</p> - -<p>Until the door opened and Wu came in, she sat cowering, her eyes -riveted on her cup, her fingers knotting and unknotting in her lap, and -under the lace of her sleeve the costly jewel she had worn to pay honor -to Sing Kung Yah winked and danced.</p> - -<p>She did not look up at the mandarin’s step, and for a space he stood -and studied her, hatred and contempt for Basil Gregory’s mother ugly -on his face, pity for his vicarious victim—and she a woman—in -his Chinese eyes. And in his heart there was self-pity too: his -sacrificial office was in no way to the liking of Wu Li Chang. He was -sacrificing to his ancestors and to his gods. But the flesh reeking -from his priestly knife, hissing in the fire, smoking on the altar of -his tremendous rage, was repugnant to his appetite, a stench in the -nostrils of this Chinese.</p> - -<p>He wore now loosened garments of crimson crêpe—color and stuff an -Empress might don for her bridal. He carried no fan. It was laid away. -But on the hem of his gorgeous negligée a border of peacocks’ feathers -was embroidered, each plume the fine work of an artist.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_280"></a>280</span> -“Well, chère madame!” he said softly, and then she looked up and saw -him and his relentless purpose, and shrank back with a little moan.</p> - -<p>Wu smiled and drew nearer. “Do I now find favor in your eyes?” he -murmured wickedly—insinuation and masterly in his honeyed tone. “No? -Oh! unhappy Wu Li Chang! My heart bleeds, stabbed by your coldness, -you lovely and oh! so desired English creature, you fair, fair rose -of English womanhood. Ah! well—I have no vanity, luckily for me, -and so that is not hurt also, since it does not exist. One important -matter,” he said, almost at his side, drawing slowly nearer still, “I -did not mention. It is only fair that you should understand fully my -terms—only fair to say that your son knows that your sacrifice will -set him free——”</p> - -<p>Florence Gregory rose to her feet. She searched his face. “You—you -<em>will</em> set him free?”</p> - -<p>Wu Li Chang bowed his head in promise. And she did not for one -instant doubt his word. It was her unconscious tribute paid to his -individuality—and, too, it was tribute of Christian Europe to heathen -China. Undeserved? That’s as you read history and the sorry story of -the treaty ports. Verdicts differ.</p> - -<p>“That, of course, is understood—and pledged,” the mandarin said -quietly, “when—you—have paid—his debt.”</p> - -<p>She shuddered sickly. Wu smiled, and then his choler broke a little -through its smooth veneer. “It is just payment I exact—no jot of -usury: virtue for virtue. I might have seized your daughter—for -myself, or to toss to one of my servants—but that could not have -been payment in full. You, you in your country, you of your race, -prize virginity above all else; we hold maternity to be the highest -expression of human<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_281"></a>281</span> being, and the most sacred. So, because he -took what should have been most sacred in the eyes of an English -gentleman—and he a guest, both in my daughter’s country and in -her home—I take what is, in my eyes, a higher, purer thing—and I -your host. And, too”—his voice hissed and quivered with hate—“the -degradation of his sister would not have afflicted him enough—he does -not love his sister with any great love. His love of you, his mother, -is the one quality of manhood in his abominable being. He would have -suffered at her shame and outlived the pain; yours he will remember -while he lives—and writhe. It will spoil his life, make every hour -of his life more bitter than any death, every inch of earth a burning -hell.” He paused and waited, and then—he slid behind the table, put -his arms about the palsied woman, and whispered, pointing to the other -room, his face brushing hers, “And now, dear lady, will you not come to -me?”</p> - -<p>For an instant they two stood so—she paralyzed, unable to move.</p> - -<p>Music high and sublimely sweet pierced through the shuttered window: -a nightingale was singing in Nang Ping’s garden, near the pagoda by -the lotus lake. Wu Li Chang had heard many nightingales, and from his -babyhood. Florence Gregory had heard but one before—once, long ago, in -England.</p> - -<p>She wrenched away from Wu with a cry—of despair; and he let her go.</p> - -<p>She sank on to her stool and took up her cup—she tried to do it -meaninglessly—and slowly raised it to her lips.</p> - -<p>“Oh!” Wu told her tenderly, “my lips also are dry and parched with the -heat of my desire——”</p> - -<p>But he had no desire of her. And even in her torment<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_282"></a>282</span> she knew it, and -that in the coldness of his intention lay the inflexibility of her -peril.</p> - -<p>“I too would drink.” He lifted up his own cup. “Ah!” he exclaimed, -putting it quickly down again, “I see that you have sipped from your -cup—your lips have blessed its rim.” Standing behind her, he slipped -his hands slowly about her neck, took her cup in them, and lifted it -over her head, and faced her. “Let me also drink from the cup that has -touched your lovely lips.”</p> - -<p>With a cruel look of mock love—to torment her even this little more, -and in no way because he suspected the contents of either cup—with a -slow look into her terror-dilating eyes, he slowly drained the cup. And -Florence Gregory watched him, motionless, horror-stricken—scarcely -realizing that he had given her her release—by a way it had not -occurred to her even to attempt.</p> - -<p>“So,” Wu said, putting down the cup, “I have paid you the highest -compliment. For I do not like your sugar or your cream. Indeed, I -cannot imagine how any one can spoil the delicious beverage——” His -voice broke on the word. Something gurgled in his throat. “It was even -nastier than I thought,” he whispered hoarsely.</p> - -<p>Suddenly he reeled. He staggered and caught at the table’s edge. Had -he gone drunk, he wondered, with the intoxication of his smothered, -inexorable rage? The room was spinning like a top plaything. His -head ached. He thought a vein must burst. The room was turning more -maddeningly now—like a dervish at the climax of his dance. And he was -spinning too—not with the room but in a counter-circle. He tottered to -a stool and sank on to it, his face horribly contorted with pain.</p> - -<p>Mrs. Gregory moaned, half in fear for herself, half<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_283"></a>283</span> in horror at the -ugly agony from which she could not take her eyes. She moaned, and then -Wu knew.</p> - -<p>He gripped the table with hands as contorted as his face, and leaned -towards her muttering in his own Chinese words of terrible imprecation -of her and hers. Curses and hatred beyond words even the most terrible -blazed from his dying eyes.</p> - -<p>He was dying like a dog—outwitted by an Englishwoman. And then he -laughed, a laugh more terrible than the death-rattle already crackling -in his throat like spun glass burning or dry salt aflame: the damnéd -burning may laugh so. Dying like a pariah dog! He laughed with -glee—hell’s own mirth; for now the signal would never be given, the -Englishman would never go free. He would starve and rot in Nang Ping’s -pagoda. Did she realize that? Oh! for the strength to make her know it! -But only Chinese words would come to his thickening tongue or to his -reeling brain. Of all that he had learned or known of English, or of -the England where he had lived so long, nothing was left him—nothing -but his hate.</p> - -<p>Was it for this—this death degraded and worse than alone, no son to -worship at his tomb—that Wu Ching Yu had banished him to exile and to -excruciating homesickness?</p> - -<p>Where was the old sword? He would slay this foreign devil where she -stood. Who was she? Why was she here—here in the room with the tablets -of his ancestors? Who was she? Ah! he remembered now: she was the -mother-pig—the foul thing that had borne the seducer of Nang Ping!</p> - -<p>With a hideous yell, with a supreme effort, he tottered to his feet and -lunged at her with his writhing hands<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_284"></a>284</span> outstretched like claws, his -feet fumbling beneath him.</p> - -<p>She shrank back in terror, and raised her arm as if to ward off a blow.</p> - -<p>And the jewel on her arm slipped down and flashed and blazed and -jangled on her wrist.</p> - -<p>And Wu Li Chang knew it. His eyes were glazing now and setting in -death, but he knew her too. He remembered now—Oxford, the purgatory of -Portland Place, the country vicarage, an organ he’d given a church, an -English girl he had liked and befriended in a gentle, reverent way. And -this—<em>this</em>—was the reaping of the kindness and the tolerance he -had sown—in England!</p> - -<p>Rage heroic and terrible convulsed and nerved him. With an effort -that almost tore the sinews of his passing soul asunder he turned and -looked—yes—there it was—he wanted it—he reached it—and with a -scream of fury he caught it up—the sword—and lunged again at the -woman cringing and panting there—he gained upon her—she screamed and -ran from him feebly—he followed—he lifted the great weapon and clove -the air—he struck out wildly with it again, and again cut only the air.</p> - -<p>Twice they circled the room—she sobbing in terror, he blubbering with -rage and with the agony of death.</p> - -<p>Ah! he had almost reached her. One more effort!—he knew it was his -last.</p> - -<p>He raised the sword with both his hands, raised it above his head, and -struck.</p> - -<p>It only missed her, and in missing her it struck the gong—once, then -twice.</p> - -<p>At the tragedy of that miscarriage, life throbbed again through all -his tortured pores. Meaning to kill, he had saved. And he had released -the Englishman. That<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_285"></a>285</span> knowledge broke his heart—a mighty Chinese -heart—the great heart of the mandarin Wu Li Chang.</p> - -<p>For a moment he stood very still, motionless but not quelled, silent, -superb in his defeat. And then he fell, and moved no more.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - - -<p>When Florence Gregory looked about her—when she was able to—the doors -were open, and the wide window opened noiselessly from without. No one -had entered the room. They were quite alone, she and what had been Wu -Li Chang. And there was not a sound except the love-sick ecstasy of -a nightingale singing his devoted desire through the jasmine-scented -garden.</p> - -<p>Very slowly, horror-stricken, watching him till the last, she crept -from the room, leaving it, by chance, through the door at which she had -entered it.</p> - -<p>She had aged in that room.</p> - - - - -<div class="chapter"> -<hr class="x-ebookmaker-drop divider" /> -<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_286"></a>286</span> -</div> - -<h2 id="xxxix">CHAPTER XXXIX<br /> -<span class="smcap">Afterwards</span></h2> - -<p class="noi"><span class="dropcap">A</span>S she passed from the house into the garden, moving crazily on—not -knowing why, how or where—the frenzied mother met her son coming -blindly toward the door, his arms still trussed at his sides.</p> - -<p>Neither could speak.</p> - -<p>But a Chinese woman, coming to them stealthily through the gloaming, -spoke as she reached them. “Clome, me tlake,” she said.</p> - -<p>And almost literally she did take them, one on either side of her, each -touched by her hand, impelled by her will.</p> - -<p>“No talk,” she whispered sternly.</p> - -<p>But she need not have said it. Neither of them had word or voice.</p> - -<p>They met no one. They heard nothing—except once the far-off trilling -of a nightingale, telling the day good-by.</p> - -<p>For such was the quality of Wu Li Chang. He had commanded the servants -to their quarters, on the other side of the estate, when they should -have undone the doors and gates.</p> - -<p>But Ah Wong did not slacken her anxious pace, or let them slacken -theirs, until the shore was almost reached.</p> - -<p>Then, just before they were within sight of the waiting<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_287"></a>287</span> boat and of -the boatmen’s eyes, she stopped and untied Basil’s arms. It was not -easy work, although she had a knife. And Mrs. Gregory could give no -help.</p> - -<p>They stumbled into the boat as best they could, but not without aiding -hands, the mother and son. Ah Wong scrambled in nimbly. And at a word -from her the watermen lifted their poles—and they had left Kowloon.</p> - -<p>They leaned against each other, the English mother and her boy, as the -small craft crossed the bay, but not a word was spoken by either of -them or to either of them. They huddled together dumb with relief and -with exhaustion, and almost numb with the horror they had known.</p> - -<p>Unobtrusive, stolid, commonplace in manner as in her humble amah garb, -Ah Wong directed and enforced everything.</p> - -<p>Ten million stars came out and specked with diamond dust the grave, -blue sky. The moon came up and rippled with silver and with gold the -rippling water. And before the night-flowers of Kowloon had ceased -to lave their faces with the fragrance which was “good-night,” the -fragrance of the night-flowers of Hong Kong Island rushed out to them -and buffeted them with sweetness.</p> - -<p>The world was very placid. The night was radiant. The night was very -still. And the smiling indifference of the night was cruel. At least, -the English woman felt it so. Basil felt nothing. Ah Wong was scheming.</p> - -<p>She disembarked them. She paid the boatmen. She tidied her mistress, -and tidied Basil as best she could. She got them up the Peak, and she -smuggled them into the hotel at last, almost unobserved.</p> - -<p>“Too tlired talk to-night,” she told Hilda imperatively. And she said -it as imperatively to Robert Gregory<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_288"></a>288</span> himself when he hurried in from -the office in answer to Hilda’s telephoned good news.</p> - -<p>It was Ah Wong who sent the news of Basil Gregory’s safe return -spreading like wildest fire through gossipy Hong Kong—not only the -news of the return but the detailed story of his absence. It was a very -pretty story, and beautifully simple: nothing more out of the common -than a slightly sprained ankle and an undelivered chit. The chit had -been entrusted to one vellee bad coolie man—needless to say, a victim -of the opium habit of which one hears so much in books on China and -sees so absurdly little in China itself. Some believed the story—as -started by Ah Wong—some did not. But it might have been true (a merit -such fabrications often lack) and it served, although one cynic at the -English Club said of it that it reminded him of the curate’s celebrated -egg, “quite good in parts.”</p> - -<p>And John Bradley wondered.</p> - -<p>But the next day the Gregorys and their affairs were well-nigh -forgotten in the greater flare of news that flamed from the mainland. -Mr. Wu was dead, and so was his daughter, an only child. She had died -suddenly, and the shock had killed him—his heart, you know—fatty -degeneration, probably—all those rich Chinamen over-eat.</p> - -<p>Again, some believed the story as it was told, and more did not. But -Wu had died on the mainland, not on English soil, and it was no one’s -business in Hong Kong.</p> - -<p>John Bradley’s face grew very stern when he heard that Wu Li Chang -had “become a guest on high,” and he went at once to Kowloon. And, -almost to his surprise, Ah Sing admitted him. The mandarin would have -commanded it so, Ah Sing thought.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_289"></a>289</span> -Bradley learnt nothing on the mainland. He saw his dead friend, and -prayed an English prayer beside him, kneeling down between him and a -grinning, long, red-tongued Chinese god. That was all.</p> - -<p>When he reached his own bungalow, he went into his tiny study, locked -its door, and knelt again—at the <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">prie-Dieu</i> that stood against -the wall between the little silver crucifix and an engraving of a -tender, sorrowful face beneath a crown of thorns.</p> - -<p>Between the elder Gregory’s relief at his son’s return and his -exultation at Wu’s death, the younger Gregory came off nearly scot-free -of paternal reprimand, and quite free of any real parental wrath.</p> - -<p>“Where the very dickens have you been?” was the father’s greeting when -they met at breakfast. “A pretty state we’ve been in!—upsetting the -entire family—and me—and the business! You shall answer to me for -this, young man. Why the devil don’t you pass that toast?”</p> - -<p>“I’ve—I’ve only been a short trip, pater, off the island,” Basil -replied, not greatly perturbed.</p> - -<p>“I’ll short trip you!” the father said with beetling brows; and the -tone in which he laconically said, “More,” as he thrust his coffee cup -to Hilda was very fierce indeed, but he winked at her with just the -corner of his left eye; Basil was on his other side. And presently -Robert Gregory chuckled openly as he helped himself to marmalade. And -when he was leaving the table he slapped his boy on the back, but not -too roughly.</p> - -<p>“Dead broke?” he demanded.</p> - -<p>Basil was about to say, “No, indeed!” but he caught Ah Wong’s sudden -eye, and said instead, “Well, yes, I’m afraid I am rather.”</p> - -<p>Robert Gregory chuckled again. “I’ve a damned good notion to send you -home in the steerage—jolly<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_290"></a>290</span> good idea; and while I’m thinking it over, -you’d better mind your P’s and your little Q’s. Show up at the office -about three, and I dare say I’ll be ass enough to find you a fiver.”</p> - -<p>Hilda followed her father to the door. She always “saw him off.”</p> - -<p>Ah Wong at the sideboard continued to select tit-bits for the tray she -was going to carry to her mistress’s room. She intended, by fair means -or by foul, to coax Florence Gregory to eat.</p> - -<p>Basil pushed back his plate. He had been pretending to eat, but the -food was revolting.</p> - -<p>He was longing to see his mother, and he was dreading it. They had not -spoken together yet.</p> - -<p>He was terribly anxious to know if there were any truth in the report -of Wu’s death. Probably Ah Wong knew. He looked at her curiously as she -carried her tray away; but somehow he could not question her.</p> - -<p>On the whole, he wished his mother would send for him and get it over. -This suspense was only a little less terrible than his suspense in the -pagoda had been.</p> - -<p>But all Robert Gregory’s anxieties were laid. He reached the office in -high good humor. Government House confirmed the rumor of Wu’s death. -And Gregory felt assured that, his formidable (for the Chink had been -formidable) rival wiped out, the only heavy disasters that had ever -threatened his own almost monotonously successful business career would -disperse under his astute, firm management as summer clouds beneath the -sun, and that disaster would not menace him again.</p> - -<p>And by the time he reached the club for lunch, he was quite too highly -pleased with himself and with his world, and more particularly with his -share in it, to keep up any longer even a pretended anger at his son. -He<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_291"></a>291</span> chuckled boastfully over “the usual sort of escapade,” and said -he’d “be glad to get the rascal home—back in sober old England”—“no -harm done”—“devil of a good time, no doubt; hadn’t got a yen, and only -had his allowance eight days ago, a quarterly allowance, and the Lord -Harry only knows how much he’s bled his mother!” “But, after all”—and -then he delivered himself of the amazing originality that “Boys will be -boys!”</p> - -<p>If there are many men who like to be virtuous vicariously, there are a -few, even odder specimens of our wonderfully variegated humanity, who -like to sin—in one direction—by proxy. Robert Gregory, in the big -thing of life, was an exemplary husband. If Florence Gregory dwelt but -in the suburbs of his good pleasure, he lived—in the one sense—on -an island on to which no other woman ever put her foot. The Gregory -Steamship Company was his adored mistress and his wedded wife. But -Florence came next nearest to his warmth—and she had no human rival, -never had had or would have one. She knew this. Even a much duller -woman must have known it. And perhaps it had enabled her to hold up her -head and go smiling through some hard years of disillusion and chagrin.</p> - -<p>But Robert Gregory had a very soft spot in his stupid heart for his -boy’s gallantries. Secretly he was not a little proud of them—of -course, they mustn’t go too far or cost too much—and of this last -escapade he almost boasted as he smoked his after-tiffin cigar—boasted -with an unctuous hint of reminiscent glee that insinuated—and was -meant to—that he’d been a bit gay “in the same old way” in his younger -days.</p> - -<p>Which most emphatically he had not.</p> - - - - -<div class="chapter"> -<hr class="x-ebookmaker-drop divider" /> -<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_292"></a>292</span> -</div> - -<h2 id="xl">CHAPTER XL<br /> -<span class="smcap">A Guest on High</span></h2> - -<p class="noi"><span class="dropcap">A</span>ND in the K’o-tang—the smaller audience hall—where he had died, Wu -Li Chang lay as he had fallen. For none had dared to disturb him for -a long time, unless he summoned them. And now, discovered by an early -sweeper whose duty it was to open the casements to the summer dawn, -he still lay undisturbed, and would lay so until the soothsayer had -determined to where the body should be lifted and just how.</p> - -<p>He lay upon his back, his face lifted to the paneled and painted -ceiling.</p> - -<p>Almost as Florence Gregory’s footsteps died from his house, a great -change swept his face. The contortions of poisoned death had left it -set and agonized. That passed away. He was smiling when they found -him, as even Nang Ping had never seen him smile. Only one had ever -seen that look upon his face. And she had only seen it once—in quite -the fullness of its beauty, the majesty of its declaration, all its -exquisite tenderness. A living man smiles so but once. Some men never -smile so—they have frittered its possibility away—some of them, and -some are small men, and it is not for them. It is a hall-mark.</p> - -<p>It is a hall-mark, and now and again death stamps it caressingly and -regally upon some dead man’s face; and always he is a man who has put -up a fine good fight, and always it tells that there <em>is</em> marriage -in Heaven.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_293"></a>293</span> -Wu Lu had seen that smile—once—in Sze-chuan; and now, in that near -garden-place where she had waited for him all these years, he took her -in his arms and held her close; and she gave all herself to him again. -And he looked down and smiled at her, his bride.</p> - -<p>Wu Li Chang lay dead on the K’o-tang floor, and his face was very -beautiful.</p> - - - - -<div class="chapter"> -<hr class="x-ebookmaker-drop divider" /> -<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_294"></a>294</span> -</div> - -<h2 id="xli">CHAPTER XLI<br /> -<span class="smcap">“Just With Us”</span></h2> - -<p class="noi"><span class="dropcap">B</span>ETWEEN breakfast and tiffin Florence Gregory sent for Basil, and he -went to her heavily. His feet were lead, his heart, his head; and his -hands grew very cold.</p> - -<p>The interview was inevitable. They each knew that.</p> - -<p>It would be difficult to say which dreaded it the more, or which -suffered more during it: probably the mother—both; for she was -guiltless and made of the finer clay.</p> - -<p>It was simple—almost commonplace, the meeting and the short talk -between the weary woman and her son; as every interview of intense and -indeterminable human tragedy is apt to be. There are no fripperies in -true tragedy, but little romance, no poetry. The rocks of life are -hard and naked. Not even a stunted lichen can grow on such soilless -barrenness.</p> - -<p>But this was a very different reckoning from that with his father, -jocund and magnificently indifferent to details. Basil realized, of -course, that settling up with his mother must be—very different.</p> - -<p>She was dressed for going out, elaborately dressed; for she and Ah Wong -had decided that she must be seen about Hong Kong to-day, carefully -dressed and debonair.</p> - -<p>She sat in a low chair beside her dressing-table, her long gloves and -her purse of gold mesh at her hand. And because her reputation, and -Basil’s, were at stake,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_295"></a>295</span> she and Ah Wong between them had contrived to -banish the yesterday’s ravages from her face—almost.</p> - -<p>Basil looked shockingly ill. Any eyes less self-satisfied than a Robert -Gregory’s must have seen it.</p> - -<p>“You should go and lie down,” his mother greeted him.</p> - -<p>“Yes, I must,” he nodded, “when you’ve done with me.”</p> - -<p>Ah Wong went out and closed the door.</p> - -<p>Florence Gregory waited then for him to begin. It was the first -unkindness she had ever done him. But she was very, very tired. And in -the sleepless watches of the night, she had seen clearly Wu Li Chang’s -point of view, and not altogether without some sharp, acrid conviction -that it had some justice on its side—rough, terrible, primeval, -barbaric, but still undeniable justice of a sort.</p> - -<p>Mrs. Gregory waited for her son to speak, and he did not speak soon.</p> - -<p>“Are you all right, Mother?” he said at last.</p> - -<p>“I am very tired,” she told him.</p> - -<p>“Yes—yes, of course you are. But——”</p> - -<p>“Oh—yes,” she said gently, “I am all right.”</p> - -<p>“Sure?”</p> - -<p>“Yes, Basil!”</p> - -<p>“Quite, Mother?” he persisted.</p> - -<p>“Yes, Basil!” she told him again, with emphasis this time. And then -she smiled a little, very sadly, thinking how sardonic it was that he -should be standing there cross-examining her.</p> - -<p>“Thank God!” he whispered fervently—all that was best in him welling -up in gratitude that his mother had escaped a more cruel wrong than he -had inflicted on murdered Nang. For Nang had loved him!</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_296"></a>296</span> -And then he shuddered sickly at the sudden thought that always his -mother would know that he had betrayed a girl to her death and worse, -a girl who had trusted him—that always his mother would be thinking -of it, condemning him—that all the clean sweetness of their old-time, -life-long intimacy was tainted—gone! Always his mother must feel -towards him regret—despisal. Could he ever wipe that out? Never. -Banish it or even dim it for a moment? Be “her boy” again, if but for -an hour?</p> - -<p>He looked at her searchingly, and at his eyes she blanched. For she -read in them his fear, and knew its echo in her own heart. It would be -with them both—always; nothing could ever allay it: the estrangement -that was born to-day! She saw it all! She read it all—his soul, and -hers—and suffered as she had not suffered in the K’o-tang of Wu Li -Chang. And her soul quailed and grew very sick before the vengeance of -Wu, a greater vengeance and a more terrible even than he had planned.</p> - -<p>We need never snatch at vengeance with our poor, feeble, fumbling -hands. God always repays. And sometimes it seems as if He, like the -Chinese, enforces vicarious atonement—daughters scourged for fathers, -mothers for sons, and even friend for friend. But sooner or later the -great ax of retribution always falls.</p> - -<p>Basil Gregory saw the grief and the torture in his mother’s face. “Oh! -well, then,” he said, strolling to the window, and standing there -looking out across the bay—towards Kowloon—“that’s all right. They -say he’s dead—Wu—you’ve heard it?”</p> - -<p>“Yes.”</p> - -<p>“I wish I knew if it’s true.”</p> - -<p>“It is true.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_297"></a>297</span> -He turned back to her quickly. “How do you know, Mother? Are you dead -sure?”</p> - -<p>“I saw him die,” she said.</p> - -<p>At that her boy came and knelt down and took her hands in his.</p> - -<p>And she told him—just the bare facts of yesterday.</p> - -<p>Nang Ping, or his own fault, was not mentioned between them, then or -ever. Florence Gregory uttered no reproach. She said none, and she -tried to look none. It is so that such women most reproach the men that -they have borne—and nursed.</p> - -<p>She asked no details of his amour or of his capture and detention; and -he offered none.</p> - -<p>And it was better so. The burden of their common memory was heavy -enough—a memory from which nothing could ever purge her soul or his.</p> - -<p>“What will happen—about it all? He was a devil of a big man among the -Chinks,” Basil said anxiously when he spoke again.</p> - -<p>“Yes, I know. What will happen? By the Chinese, you mean? Ah Wong -thinks nothing——”</p> - -<p>“Ah Wong!” Basil said contemptuously.</p> - -<p>“She saved my life—and yours——”</p> - -<p>“By a Chinese trick.”</p> - -<p>“It served,” Mrs. Gregory said gravely. “Ah Wong knows her people. And -she thinks nothing will be done—soon, if ever. And we will leave China -at once. I think your father’ll be glad to—he’s been anxious enough to -get back to float the new Company. But, if for any reason he wishes to -wait even a little, why, I must get Hilda to coax him to go at once. -You, at least, must go by the next boat.”</p> - -<p>Basil nodded. “Yes, I’d like to catch the next comfortable boat.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_298"></a>298</span> -“We’ll all catch it, if we can,” his mother said emphatically.</p> - -<p>“Is that all, Mother?” he asked her gently.</p> - -<p>“All?” she was puzzled.</p> - -<p>“All you want of me?”</p> - -<p>“Oh! Yes, dear,” she said brightly.</p> - -<p>“Then I believe I’ll go and lie down again. I’m jolly tired and jolly -weak.”</p> - -<p>“Yes—do,” Florence said.</p> - -<p>But at the door he turned back and came to her and took her in his arms.</p> - -<p>“God bless you, Mother!” he whispered with his lips against her hair.</p> - -<p>“God bless my boy!” she answered brokenly.</p> - -<p>Then he kissed her passionately, and turned away sobbing.</p> - -<p>“Wait a moment,” she said when he had smothered back his emotion and -had put his hand again on the door. “I did forget one thing. Make no -explanation—not to any one.”</p> - -<p>“What about the governor?”</p> - -<p>“Least of all to him. Your father will ask you not another question; he -has promised me.”</p> - -<p>“I say, Mother,” Basil said, flushing painfully, “you are a bit of a -brick—aren’t you?”</p> - -<p>“I am your mother, Basil,” she returned, smiling into his eyes. -“Remember, not one word to any human creature. Promise me. Let it rest -where it is forever—just with us.”</p> - -<p>And there they left it—glad to be rid of it, as far as words went, but -knowing that, waking or sleeping, neither could ever be rid of it in -thought again. It was a poison cooked into their blood.</p> - -<p>For years they did not speak of it again, except that<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_299"></a>299</span> Basil said when -she came to him later with a cup of tea—he had slept through tiffin, -and she would not have him called—“What about Ah Wong? She knows.”</p> - -<p>His mother answered him proudly: “I trust Ah Wong. Ah Wong knows, of -course—part at least. But it will be always precisely as if she knew -nothing.”</p> - -<p>Basil shrugged skeptically, sitting up among his pillows. And his -mother put the tray down and left him a little hurriedly. There is -little a woman finds harder to bear than a man’s ingratitude. Florence -Gregory was ashamed of her son.</p> - -<p>She had tiffined early, and before tiffin and since she had been out -and about: shopping, paying calls, laughing, chatting, the brightest -woman in Hong Kong, the best dressed, and the most care-free. And -now she went out again, sitting radiant and chic in her smart chair, -carried wherever she would be most seen. She stayed a little at the -racquets court and at the cricket club. But she did not leave her -chair. She was too tired—almost at the end of her woman’s long tether.</p> - - - - -<div class="chapter"> -<hr class="x-ebookmaker-drop divider" /> -<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_300"></a>300</span> -</div> - -<h2 id="xlii">CHAPTER XLII<br /> -<span class="smcap">The Dust of China from Their Feet</span></h2> - -<p class="noi"><span class="dropcap">T</span>HE Gregorys sailed from Hong Kong the next week, and half the Colony -saw them off. One means, of course, half the Europeans: the Chinese -don’t count—in China. But John Bradley did not see them off—nor -had he come to wish them good-by. Hilda was offended, and Basil was -grateful. (He could be grateful at times.) Except Florence, none of -them had seen the priest since the night Basil had consulted him. Mrs. -Gregory called upon him two days after her escape. She had sent a note -asking him to come to her at the hotel. He had replied asking if she -could, and kindly would, come to him instead; he knew she’d been out -continuously the day before. And she had gone at once.</p> - -<p>Of Kowloon she had told him nothing: when she had enjoined silence on -Basil, she had meant silence; and she had no thought of breaking it -towards any one.</p> - -<p>She had wished to see him before they left Hong Kong, she said, and -they were going home at once now.</p> - -<p>Mrs. Gregory had a very sincere affection for John Bradley. If she had -been in Hilda’s shoes, she’d not have given him for a wilderness of Tom -Carrutherses, she thought. And in leaving Hong Kong she was leaving -behind her nothing that she regretted more than her talks with Bradley; -except Ah Wong. That was her great regret, for she was leaving Ah Wong.</p> - -<p>The amah had refused to quit her country. Mrs.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_301"></a>301</span> Gregory had pleaded at -last. Ah Wong would not budge. Hilda was indifferent, Mr. Gregory not -sorry, and Basil Gregory was meanly glad.</p> - -<p>And John Bradley was glad, too, when he heard it, but not meanly. He -knew that the amah knew more than any other living person did of all -that had happened—far more than he knew or even suspected—and he was -sure that her presence with them in England would make for a blight -upon the entire Gregory family—a blight which all her devotion and all -her deft service could not counterbalance.</p> - -<p>It was partly concerning Ah Wong that Mrs. Gregory had called. Would he -befriend the woman—her amah, perhaps he’d noticed her?—if he could -ever?</p> - -<p>“Oh, yes!” he said, he “had noticed her, several times.” He did not -add how well he knew her, or how highly he valued her, or that he -had received her in this very room, and in the middle of the night, -not long ago. But he promised cordially to do any earthly thing -he ever could for the Chinese woman. It was a queer legacy for a -bachelor priest, he said, laughing, but all was fish that came to his -net—pastoral or otherwise—and he accepted Ah Wong heartily. She -should come into his service, if she would—potter about the bungalow, -sit hunched up on the verandah and sew, or play a guitar or a native -drum or something in the compound—and, if she declined his service, -still he’d try to contrive to look after her some other way. He’d keep -an eye on her, a friendly, helpful eye—if she’d let him—seriously he -would.</p> - -<p>And he echoed fervently the amah’s entreaty that the Gregorys should -leave China at once—<em>at once</em>—let the order of their going be -what it would, the comforts or discomforts of the first outgoing boat -just what they<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_302"></a>302</span> might. Nothing mattered, absolutely nothing, except for -them to go—to go at once, and never to return.</p> - -<p>“You’ll say good-by to them all for me?” he begged, “I—I may be called -away for a few days by any post. But please say my good-bys to them -all: your husband—and Basil—and to your daughter. And, Mrs. Gregory, -young Carruthers is staying here, you said. I’ll look him up as soon -as I know you’ve sailed, and I’ll look after him a bit, be a sort of -parson his-man-Friday, if the boy’ll let me.”</p> - -<p>“Tom?—Tom’s a nice boy—I think,” Mrs. Gregory said a trifle -hesitantly.</p> - -<p>“I think so too,” the priest said cordially.</p> - -<p>She was going into the city when she left him, and he went almost to -the level with her, walking beside her chair.</p> - -<p>“Remember,” he said at parting, “you’ll go at once. And you’ll none of -you come back—ever.”</p> - -<p>“We will go at once,” she told him earnestly. “And we will not come -back.” But to that last there was a small reservation at the far -back of her mind. She thought it just possible that Hilda might come -back—some day. Not that Hilda particularly liked China; she did -not—she greatly preferred Kensington. But, if Holman thought well of -Tom Carruthers, it was probable that he—now that Basil was definitely -out of the Hong Kong running—might be permanently attached to that -branch, and ultimately its head.</p> - -<p>And with one slight deviation, Mrs. Gregory kept the promise she made -John Bradley as he stood bare-headed beside her chair. For they did -sail—almost at once. And only one of them ever came back—Hilda.</p> - -<p>The long voyage home differed in nothing from all other such voyages. -Not one voyage in ten thousand<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_303"></a>303</span> ever does differ from other voyages. It -is impossible. They made the same stops, the same changes, ate the same -food, had the same fellow passengers. Nothing short of pirates or a -shoal of ship-devouring Jonah’s whales could differentiate one P. & O. -passage from another.</p> - -<p>But Hilda Gregory found this one a little dull at first, and was driven -in self-respect to appropriate the ship’s surgeon and two homing -subalterns.</p> - -<p>For Basil and their mother were inseparable, and the father who -heretofore had been her faithful, if not too picturesque, knight lived -in the smoking-room, telling again and again the story of his cowing of -the great Chinese “I Am,” Wu Li Chang. Robert Gregory, never a wordless -man, had never talked so much in all his life.</p> - -<p>It was impossible to pass the smoking-room door without catching some -such scrap of English masterpiece as: “I put him through it.” “The -damned nigger was only bluffing. Well, I damn well called his bluff!” -“... and that’s where a knowledge of the Chinaman comes in—an inside, -intelligent knowledge. They like to be thought clever, I tell you. -Don’t you see that it flattered him that I should think—<em>seem</em> -to think, of course—that he was a sort of Mister Know-All?—and he -was sly enough to play up to it. Oh! he was sly, I grant you that. -But no match for me; no real ability.” “Yes; as I told you, he hummed -and hawed a bit at first, until I simply turned him inside out, and -then I could see he knew nothing. It was only tickling his vanity to -let him imagine I thought he was a little local god. That’s why I -left him to Mrs. Gregory. I saw it was a mere waste of my time. And -it pleased her, and, too, it took her mind off the boy a bit. She was -fretting over him—the young dog!—until I thought she’d make<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_304"></a>304</span> herself -downright ill.” “Oh! we flatter these damned Chinamen too much in -thinking them so clever.” “Oh! if you know the way to manage Chinamen. -You should have seen the way I talked to that compradore. I frightened -the beggar—just as I’d frightened Wu the day before. He saw it was -a bit dangerous to play any games with me, by the Lord Harry, and so -he called off the strike. I scared him stiff. And I scared Wu half to -death, I can tell you.” “Oh, yes! he’s dead, right enough. No, I don’t -know how he died. Perhaps he was ordered to commit suicide. Well, I -had no objection, I can tell you. And I shan’t go into much black for -him.” “He always was a bit of a handful. Kept his school-masters busy. -But that did them good and him no harm. And they were well paid for it. -Boys will be boys, you know. Why, when I was his age....”</p> - -<p>In the smoking-room other men came and went all day and a good bit of -the night, but Robert Gregory’s voice went on forever. And Mrs. Gregory -and Basil, walking up and down, grew careful to keep at the other end -of the big ship. For the smoking-room was near the front, and opened on -to both sides of the promenade deck.</p> - -<p>Basil Gregory scarcely left his mother from Hong Kong to Liverpool.</p> - -<p>As the great ship drew anchor, he drew her arm in his, and they stood -together so and watched Hong Kong until their sight had gone from it -quite. This was their passing from China, but not from tragedy, and the -woman knew it.</p> - -<p>They did not speak of Wu Li Chang. They had spoken of him definitely -together for the last time. They did not speak at all as the island -faded slowly away from them. But they knew that to-day the mandarin’s<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_305"></a>305</span> -interminable funeral cortège started from Kowloon to Sze-chuan. For -they were taking the dead man to his old home—taking him tenderly -with shriek of fife and howl of drum, coffined almost as splendidly -as the Macedonian in his casket of gold. And no son followed Wu Li -Chang! But behind the mandarin’s coffin they carried, more meekly, a -simpler, smaller one. And Sing Kung Yah walked behind them both, almost -bare-footed, clad in coarse unbleached hemp. This was her last secular -function, if one may speak so of any human burial rite; for when at -last Wu Li Chang and Wu Nang Ping were laid beside their dead ancestors -in far-off Sze-chuan, Sing Kung Yah, if she lived so far—the road was -long and rough—would seek life-long sanctuary in the Taoist nunnery of -her abbess cousin.</p> - -<p>As long as Anglo-Hong Kong’s eyes had been upon her, Mrs. Gregory had -borne herself bravely—gayly even. But she was breaking now, and with -each revolution of the ship’s great wheel she showed a little older, -a little more limp. “You’re looking downright washed out,” Gregory -told her; “high time we got you home.” Already she was no longer Basil -Gregory’s young and pretty mother. No passenger among them all mistook -her for his sister. She would never be so mistaken again. But he was -very tender of her, and offered her a daily atonement of constant -companionship and of those little tendings which mean so much more to a -woman than any great sacrifice or big climax of devotion ever can. (If -women are small in this, they are also exquisite by it.)</p> - -<p>They clung together pathetically. And, at the same time, each shrank -from the other a little, almost unconsciously, and quite in spite of -themselves. Their souls shrank; their hearts clung.</p> - -<p>Basil sensed that she grieved over his crime, and, as<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_306"></a>306</span> he thought, out -of all proportion to its real seriousness, and that also she condemned -and despised it. He was far from self-absolution. His conscience was -not dead. But he resented her disapproval and the implied “charity” of -her careful considerateness and studied cheerfulness.</p> - -<p>Her soul-withdrawal from him was more justified, and of more moment and -dignity than his from her. For once or twice she just glimpsed almost -an antagonism, a seed of hatred—born of his writhing conscience—that -was slowly cankering in his mind. That he should doubt the -all-forgiveness of her love grieved her sorely, but she recognized that -it certainly was involuntary, and probably was inevitable; but that, -even so, he presumed to arraign her at the judgment seat of his peccant -soul, blaming her that she could not forget, could not quite condone, -incensed her bitterly.</p> - -<p>The grave secret that they shared, and that no one else now of their -world even suspected, linked them tightly—too tightly: the gyves hurt. -And while it linked it separated. They were closer together than they -had ever been before; closer than even a mother and son should be; -closer than any two human creatures should be. They violated, with the -hideousness of their mutual knowledge, each other’s utmost right of -privacy—the soul-privacy which God and nature command that with each -human entity shall be forever inviolable.</p> - -<p>He suffered at her suffering. He brooded over her. He was very tender -of his mother. But between them, and in them mutually, a poison worked. -Their love was exquisite and human still; their companionship, and even -their sympathy, warm and sincere. But a slight cloud hung over them, a -cloud no bigger than a dead man’s hand. It grew a little darker every -day.</p> - - - - -<div class="chapter"> -<hr class="x-ebookmaker-drop divider" /> -<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_307"></a>307</span> -</div> - -<h2 id="xliii">CHAPTER XLIII<br /> -<span class="smcap">English Wedding Bells</span></h2> - -<p class="noi"><span class="dropcap">B</span>ASIL Gregory’s wedding day was warm and clear. June and England were -at their best.</p> - -<p>It was a sweetly pretty wedding. Every one said so.</p> - -<p>And the girlish bride was prettier than her wedding—prettier than -any mere picture could be; as pretty and as sweet as the June roses -she wore, and very like them: pink and white, delicate, fair-haired, -violet-eyed Alice Lee, the motherless daughter of the incumbent of the -old gray vicarage in which Basil Gregory’s mother had been born.</p> - -<p>Homesick for the old days and the old ways, Florence Gregory had gone -to Oxfordshire soon after their return to England, hoping to bathe -and to heal her stained and torn spirit in the quiet of old places, -the ointment of pure memories. She had failed. But she had made fast -friends with her dead father’s successor, and had gone back to the -cordial hospice of her old home again and again in the three years -that had elapsed since she had come from China. A year ago Basil had -accompanied her, none too willingly, for a week-end, had stayed a -month; hence these wedding bells!</p> - -<p>Florence Gregory was an old woman now, old and limp. Robert Gregory was -no longer proud of his wife. Her white hair was very beautiful, but he -resented it, and it rasped and angered him that she had prematurely -aged. He had married her, as he had loved her, for her<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_308"></a>308</span> buoyant good -looks, and he felt that he was defrauded by the change in her—a change -so marked that even his careless and ledger-bound eyes could not fail -to see it. And secretly his poor mundane spirit groaned aloud that -<em>his</em> missus—the best-dressed woman in Hong Kong three years -ago, and every bit as smart as her clothes—had degenerated into a -frumpish nobody, looked older than he did, by the Lord Harry, and -without an ounce of snap in her or a word to say to any one. Greatly -to his credit, he had kept all this to himself loyally. He had never -spoken of it, not even hinted at it, to any one, beyond plaintive and -repeated entreaties to Hilda to help him find some way to buck Mother -up. He had never been unkind to his wife. He still bought flowers for -her—the bouquet she carried at their son’s wedding had cost five -guineas—and burdened her with gifts of jewelry almost inappropriate -to his means. And Mr. Gregory was growing very rich indeed. The wounds -that “Mr. Wu” had dealt his fortune had soon healed, and left no scar. -He was still a faithful husband. Such pride and consolation as a woman -may take from the continence that is chiefly the outcome of a husband’s -indifference to her sex and of his absorption in business and in self -were Mrs. Gregory’s. And in all their married life they had had but one -quarrel—a unique quarrel, as husbands and wives go. It had occurred -two years ago, and had been over a dressmaker’s bill.</p> - -<p>Such quarrels are common? They are scarcely uncommon—certainly not -unique. But this was one with a difference. Mr. Gregory had always -seen and paid his wife’s dressmakers’ bills. It had been one of his -greatest pleasures. Madame Eloise had taken less pleasure in concocting -those princely accounts, and in receipting them, than Robert Gregory -had taken in writing<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_309"></a>309</span> the cheques that had discharged them. Two years -ago a quarterly account had come in in two figures. That was too much. -Gregory raged at his wife, and after an impatient word or two, she had -bit her lip, smiled and promised reform. And she had kept her word; for -she had seen his point of view and the justice of his complaint. But -the latest fashions no longer suited her. Still less did she now suit -them. Wu Li Chang and Basil Gregory had sapped her of the courage and -the carriage to wear smart gowns. Her <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">beauté de diable</i> was quite -gone—she had left it in a Chinese K’o-tang; and the finer beauty that -had replaced it this husband had no eyes to see.</p> - -<p>But Hilda saw, and between the mother and daughter had grown a -tenderness and a friendship that had not been theirs before. “Your -mouth is the most beautiful thing I ever saw, Mother,” the girl said -sometimes. And it was very beautiful, with an exquisite loveliness that -only the lips that have been steeped in hyssop can ever show.</p> - -<p>Hilda was the only bridesmaid to-day. She had none of the bride’s soft -prettiness, and only a fair amount of the splendid good looks that -her own mother had lost. But she had gained in charm, in tact, in -womanliness, and, too, even in girlishness.</p> - -<p>Her engagement to Tom Carruthers was broken. The breaking had grieved -her—at the time. The day Carruthers had sailed for England to claim -Hilda and to take her back to China, a Chinese girl had thrown herself -into Hong Kong harbor. Oddly, the story had reached England—oddly, -because such stories are so common. But this one had in some way -trickled across the world, and to Hilda. Hilda had probed it, and had -given Tom back his ring. It had not been a very black<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_310"></a>310</span> case, as such -things go. The Chinese girl was nobody’s daughter. Carruthers had never -deceived her, and had promised her nothing that he had not given. But -she had grown to care for him. O curse of womanhood!</p> - -<p>And Hilda had a sturdy, wholesome instinct of virtue, a -matter-of-course as towards herself, relentless towards others, that -she had inherited from her mother, but not from her mother alone; and -she also had a quick, curt, businesslike method of dealing with the -facts and incidents of life that she had inherited solely from Robert -Gregory. She considered her engagement to Tom Carruthers a bad debt; -and she wrote it off with a steady hand. Basil was angry with her, and -had upbraided her. “Girls don’t understand such things!” he told her -petulantly. “But I thought you had more sense.”</p> - -<p>“I understand myself,” she had retorted haughtily.</p> - -<p>Needless to say, Carruthers also was angry, and shared his anger with -generous, masculine impartiality between Hilda Gregory and I Matt So. -Mrs. Gregory was glad. And it was she who mentioned the news (but not -its circumstance) in her next letter to Hong Kong. Hilda’s father was -indifferent. There was time enough for so rich a man’s daughter, and -the finest girl in England, by the Lord Harry, any day; and as for Tom, -she might do worse, of course, but, on the other hand, she might do a -long sight better.</p> - -<p>It was not Basil’s old misdemeanor that had so broken his mother, -nor was it her experience in the K’o-tang of Wu Li Chang. It was the -estrangement that had grown between her and her son—an estrangement -that had become almost a bitterness. At times it was a bitterness.</p> - -<p>A great secret shared between two, and inviolably kept by both, must be -either a great bond or a great<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_311"></a>311</span> alienation. The terrific secret shared -by Florence Gregory and her boy proved both. They never spoke of it. -But, for that, it burdened and haunted them the more.</p> - -<p>So far as she blamed him for his old fault his mother had quite -forgiven Basil.</p> - -<p>But he could not forgive her.</p> - -<p>It cut her to the quick. But she could not blame Basil for it. And she -sorrowed for him, more than she did for herself, that she was powerless -to give him conviction of the good truth that her forgiveness was -“perfect and entire, wanting nothing,” her love unchanged.</p> - -<p>And sometimes when the soul-poison scummed thickest in him, because of -it, Basil Gregory loved his mother a little less. The high place to -which sons in their souls set mothers carries a great price.</p> - -<p>But this was not the worst between them. At times—and these were his -blackest—Basil Gregory wondered if, at the absolute last, his mother -would have failed him, would have refused to spare, at her supremest -cost, the life she had given him. Would she at the last hideous resort -have grudged him her all? Sometimes he thought that she would. And when -he thought so he blamed her. And for that blame, his mother, who read -his very soul, a little despised him, and she could not forgive it.</p> - -<p>Wu Li Chang had wreaked a vengeance more terrible than he had planned. -For when in a mother’s soul there is something that she cannot forgive -the son she has borne and nursed and still loves, human tragedy has -reached its depth.</p> - - - - -<div class="chapter"> -<hr class="x-ebookmaker-drop divider" /> -<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_312"></a>312</span> -</div> - -<h2 id="xliv">CHAPTER XLIV<br /> -<span class="smcap">The Sound of a Chinese Gong</span></h2> - -<p class="noi"><span class="dropcap">I</span>T was a pretty wedding, and very simple. The Lees were simple English -gentlefolk.</p> - -<p>It was a quiet ceremony, quietly performed. There was but little music; -no fife, no drum, no clang. The old organist played softly. (Neither -he nor Mrs. Gregory gave a thought to who had given the instrument; -and no one else there had ever known.) No incense burned. The English -sunshine, perfumed by the roses that grew about the village graves, -drifted softly through the old church windows and dappled on the -chancel floor and on the altar rails and on the organ’s pipes. And the -holy place was sweet with quiet harmony.</p> - -<p>Even Robert Gregory, spruce and straight, wearing the whitest pair of -gloves, and almost tightest into which human hands were ever packed, -was content. He was glad to see Basil settled. The girl had no “dot,” -but she was pretty enough to eat; and his manliness was of a straight, -sturdy stuff, and held that a man should earn and provide for his wife, -by the Lord Harry, every time. And for once he was satisfied again with -Mrs. Gregory’s appearance. She looked fine in her gray and gold, and -the emeralds at her breast and pinning the scrap of bonnet on her white -curls were some style.</p> - -<p>Hilda listened to the old service with a rapt, tender face. John -Bradley was coming home for six months of holiday next week. She had no -doubt that he’d come to see her mother.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_313"></a>313</span> -Mrs. Gregory was not displeased. It was no part of her regret to -wish that Basil should live all his life wifeless and childless. -And the rift between her boy and her saved her the jealousy that -happier mothers must suffer when their first-born son weds. Sorry -recompense—but recompense.</p> - -<p>Basil Gregory did not make a very brave bridegroom. But only his mother -noticed it. Most wedding-guests have little eye to spare for mere -bridegrooms. And there is something about the function so trying to -masculine sensitiveness that before now kings and heroes have carried -themselves a little craven at their happiest triumph.</p> - -<p>Basil -<a id="Gregory"></a><ins title="Original has 'Grgory'">Gregory</ins> -saw two girls beside him at God’s altar.</p> - -<p>As he passed down the aisle with his wife’s shy hand on his arm, he -felt the touch of a smaller, tawnier hand. Its weight hurt him; it was -heavy with fabulous nail-protectors and with priceless rings. He was -madly in love with his wife, and, too, he was madly miserable, because -he knew now that they two would never be quite alone—neither by day -nor by night. His mother saw and knew. Just before they passed her he -stumbled a little, startled by the sound of a Chinese gong.</p> - -<p>And a few hours later, in the still sweetness of the dark, it smote him -again.</p> - -<p>Rest, Wu Li Chang! Be satisfied! The Englishman is punished. He has -broken his mother’s heart. Your curse is fulfilled. Basil Gregory heard -your gong cry out a soul’s damnation to-day above his wife’s “I will.” -So long as he lives he will hear it, a bitter, relentless knell. When -ginger is hottest in his mouth, when wine bubbles reddest in his cup, -when the English girl he loves lifts with tired, triumphant hands their -firstborn toward his arms, through the young mother’s misty<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_314"></a>314</span> smile -he will see Nang’s face, above the baby’s first cry he will hear the -throbbing note of a Chinese gong.</p> - -<p>Rest! Sleep in your Sze-chuan grave! Your hideous vengeance is -complete, life-long, soul-deep. It is greater than even you could have -planned. Almost it is adequate.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse outdent italic">“The great mountain must crumble,</div> - <div class="verse indent2 italic">The strong beam must break,</div> - <div class="verse indent2 italic">The wise man must wither away like a plant,”</div> - <div class="verse indent2 italic">Confucius crooned as he died.</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - - -<p class="center mt3">THE END</p> - - - - -<div class="section"> -<hr class="x-ebookmaker-drop divider" /> -</div> -<div class="tn"> -<p class="center">Transcriber’s Note:</p> - -<p class="noi">Punctuation has been standardised while hyphenation has been retained -as it appears in the original publication. Changes have been made as -follows:</p> -<ul> -<li>Page 25<br /> -The yamén was a bleak, empty place <span class="italic">changed to</span><br /> -The <a href="#yamen">yamên</a> was a bleak, empty place</li> - -<li>Page 52<br /> -relations with the inumerable <span class="italic">changed to</span><br /> -relations with the <a href="#innumerable">innumerable</a></li> - -<li>Page 56<br /> -made repeated obesiance and withdrew <span class="italic">changed to</span><br /> -made repeated <a href="#obeisance">obeisance</a> and withdrew</li> - -<li>Page 101<br /> -the blonde hair was marceled into <span class="italic">changed to</span><br /> -the blonde hair was <a href="#marcelled">marcelled</a> into</li> - -<li>Page 126<br /> -body with hers, as far as he could <span class="italic">changed to</span><br /> -body with hers, as far as <a href="#she">she</a> could</li> - -<li>Page 128<br /> -At the Feet of Kwayin Ko <span class="italic">changed to</span><br /> -At the Feet of <a href="#Kwanyin">Kwanyin</a> Ko</li> - -<li>Page 189<br /> -ordinary English visting card <span class="italic">changed to</span><br /> -ordinary English <a href="#visiting">visiting</a> card</li> - -<li>Page 209<br /> -Gregory asked dearily <span class="italic">changed to</span><br /> -Gregory asked <a href="#drearily">drearily</a></li> - -<li>Page 255<br /> -the mandarin said quiety <span class="italic">changed to</span><br /> -the mandarin said <a href="#quietly">quietly</a></li> - -<li>Page 261<br /> -of any sacrifice, it it not <span class="italic">changed to</span><br /> -of any sacrifice, <a href="#is">is</a> it not</li> - -<li>Page 273<br /> -Almost wthin sound of your <span class="italic">changed to</span><br /> -Almost <a href="#within">within</a> sound of your</li> - -<li>Page 313<br /> -Basil Grgory saw two girls <span class="italic">changed to</span><br /> -Basil <a href="#Gregory">Gregory</a> saw two girls</li> -</ul> -</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin-top:4em'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MR. 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