Full text of "Mr. Wu"
LOUISE JORDAN MJLN
ia
MR. WU
BY
LOUISE JORDAN MILN
(MRS.
GEORGE CRICHTON
MILN)
Based on the Play "Mr. Wu" by
H. M. VERNON and HAROLD OWEN
NEW YORK
FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY
PUBLISHERS
Copyright, 1918, by
FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY
All rights reserved
FIRST PRINTING, DECEMBER 22, 1919
SECOND PRINTING, FEBRUARY 6, 1920
THIRD PRINTING, FEBRUARY 24, 1920
FOURTH PRINTING, . JULY 1, 1920
FIFTH PRINTING, OCTOBER 13, 1920
SIXTH PRINTING, FEBRUARY 5, 1921
SEVENTH PRINTING, APRIL 19, 1921
EIGHTH PRINTING, . JUNE 9, 1921
NINTH PRINTING, . AUGUST 3, 1921
TENTH PRINTING, NOVEMBER 3, 1921
ELEVENTH PRINTING, FEB. 20, 1922
TWELFTH PRINTING, AUGUST 3, 1922
THIRTEENTH PRINTING, JULY 21, 1923
FOURTEENTH PRINTING, JAN. 8, 1925
Printed in the United States of America
PS
352.5
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PACK
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 SoM*i BALM 45
IX Wu Li Lu 52
X NANG PING .... , 58
XI IN THE LOTUS GARDEN . * . . 62
XII O CURSE OP 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
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGB
XXVIII SOMETHING TO Go ON 203
XXIX "WILL You VISIT SING KUNG YAH?" . . 207
XXX SMILING WELCOME 220
XXXI FACE TO FACE 228
XXXII "CUB!" 236
XXXIII A CHINESE TEACHING 241
XXXIV ALONE IN CHINA 246
XXXV THE STORY OP 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
1
2 MR. WU
stiffly embroidered robe of yellow silk was worn ovei
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 unencum
bered 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 role, 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.
WU CHING YU AND WU LI CHANG 3
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 accept
ance. "Most glad, 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
4 MR. WU
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 make
weight, 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 Em
pire older bridegrooms were the rule. If the dreaded
exile were not to begin until after his marriage, years
WU CHING YU AND WU LI CHANG 5
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 yester
day with the letter of her honorable father."
Little "Wu was interested. He had read of such mar
riages and he knew that they really took place some
times. 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 glow
ing 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.
6 MR. WU
"Rice," the master said, and held out his hand to
the child.
"Lean on me, lean en 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 finger
nail, Wu Ching Yu, astute and contemplative even be
yond his peers, searching the future anxiously saw
strange things ahead of this native land of his burning
7
6 MR. WU
"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 finger
nail, Wu Ching Yu, astute and contemplative even be
yond his peers, searching the future anxiously saw
strange things ahead of this native land of his burning
7
10 MR. WU
wrestle and tilt, and once he had beaten his grandfather
at chess.
He had worked well with Muir, and Muir w.th him.
They liked each other. And after three years of con
stant 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 gentle
man. Each had self-control, generosity, deliberation,
taste and a glowing soul. Three years of daily inter
course, and something of intimacy, had destroyed com
pletely 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 in
structs aliens in theirs.
AT RICE 11
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 rail
ing of the balcony was carved with dragons, gods, bam
boos 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 thej' began a soft chant to the tinkling accom
paniment of their instruments. One played an ivory
lute, one a lacquered flute, the third cymbals and bells;
and the eunurh drew a deeper, more throbbing note from
his chin or rvtudent'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
12 MR. WU
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 burn
ing 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 glace persimmon,
and smiled at the woman. He knew them all by name
(there were a score or more in the "fragrant apart
ments"), and he liked most of them and often played
with them. The mandarin paid no heed to them what
ever. 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 dis
card 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 dif
fer in different districts, but, after all, their difference
AT RICE 13
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 PeichL.
hli, brightened by anticipation; the more wonderful re
turn journey, not a little dulled by homesickness for his
bride and by the near-drawing of his voyage to Eng
land; 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
14
THE MARRIAGE JOURNEY 15
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 sprijig, 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 engage
ment 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 role of leading seer,
and then changed his fortune-teller. It had only hap
pened once, and was not likely to happen again. Wu
Ching Yu was a very fine clairvoyant himself.
16 MR. WU
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 circum
locution) 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 gentle
men 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 al
ways, 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 bam-
THE MARRIAGE JOURNEY 17
boo straps from the shoulders of the carrying coolies.
There were three hundred bales in all, their precious
contents of silk and crepe 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 wore 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
i8 MR. WU
gongs the women carried in chairs, the men on foot.
There was much, much more, and at long last the man
darin'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 lin
net 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.
THE MARRIAGE JOURNEY 19
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 syl-
lab^s.
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 bam
boo 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 throb
bing 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
20 MR. WU
rocks, perched on the crags, hung beside the waterfalls.
Wood-cutters, grass-cutters, charcoal-burners passed
them hourly and made obeisant way for the shen-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 un
polluted 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
THE MARRIAGE JOURNEY 21
yin teng "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 mar
riage of "Wu Li Chang and Li Lu, and thinking some
times, 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 volunteer
ing for the vicarious role. 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 'y
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 mar
riage 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.
22
WEE MRS. WU 23
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 dai's, 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 de
light 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.
24 MR. WU
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 cank^
ered 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 yamer furniture to the boy, and were no in
trusion.
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 grum
bled 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 woman
hood.
Mrs. Li did not neglect her baby, and she was too
WEE MRS. WU 25
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 hus
band'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 busi
ness in Pekin, aside from the paramount marriage busi
ness that had brought him so far; he had not been in
Pekin for years till now, although his official yamen
was still here, and much of his revenue. The yamen
was a bleak, empty place that he had never used as
''home," and now given up to compradores and other
26 MR. WU
underlings. He visited it daily after the wedding had
been completed, and well scrutinized his deputies' ac
counts 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 ventur<
ing 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 prop
erty 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 glint
ing 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 way
side 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.
27
28 MR. WU
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 puls
ing 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, a3
HOMING 29
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 illus
trious 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 inheri
tance and a tradition.
Wu Li Chang just remembered his own mother, and
his father's grief at her death. The father had died be
fore 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 sec
ond time had killed the only son the father of this one
child.
A great-great-aunt of the mandarin 's had been a noted
mathematician. Another ancestress had invented an as
tronomical 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 heredi
tary 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.
3 o MR. WU
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 grand
father's love and approval yes, everything, even his
wife.
CHAPTER VI
HEART ACHE
BUT it was summer again before he went. The man
darin 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 bet
ter, 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 genera
tions 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 multi
colored, spring up like mushrooms, and decay as soon.
Houses last a few generations perhaps. Great cities
31
32 MR. WU
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 Mos
cow, 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 Kwei-
chow 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
HEART ACHE 33
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 expres
sionless and his lips motionless.
Villages, cities, gorges, lakes, hills, highways and by-
34
MR. WU
ways, lie regarded them all gravely, and made no com
ment. 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 over
spread, 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
HEART ACHE 35
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.
CHAPTEE 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 cap
tain, 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
36
A TORTURED BOYHOOD 37
pick her way across the malodorous street slime in a low
and squalid neighborhood.
It was late afternoon, and as they were not expected
%t 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. Ana 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 ex
ulted, 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 try
ing to make up his homesick little mind which was
nastiest, apple tart or salt beef and carrots, and wonder
ing 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, re
served) 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 yamen of a dis
tant kinsman. This would be better almost something
of home. They expected him here. But it was not bet-
38 MR. WU
ter; it was worse a purgatory and a drab, dull one.
Even James Muir was struck that the hall and the draw
ing-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 attache, 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 magnifi
cently 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 attache he of the
fair, sleek locks suffered from conscience. He sus
pected that he might never shine at international diplo
macy, 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 fur
nishers and decorators. The red and yellow, about
equally proportioned, of the hall and the reception-
rooms were not his own first favorites. A nice Cam
bridge 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
A TORTURED BOYHOOD 39
saw both the intended kindness and the joke, and en
joyed the joke very much indeed, laughing slyly and
good-naturedly up his long, dove-colored crepe sleeve.
The Minister was out, the attache 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-ehuan, 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
40 MR. WU
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 throb
bing 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 sunshme 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 placid
ity 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 be
yond 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
A TORTURED BOYHOOD 41
satins. He was sincerely indifferent to it. When Eng
lish 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 de
scendant of an interminable mandarinate. He under
stood 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 JEsop '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 acquaint
ance 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 veiy bitter.
In ten years the Chinese in exile made many acquaint
ances, but only one friend. Probably he niched 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 attache'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
42 MR. WU
staff to cold-shoulder, much less to snub, Mrs. Cholmon-
deley-Piggot. And so she came to Portland Place fre
quently 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 lib
erties 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 Gar
dens.
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 over
much 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
A TORTURED BOYHOOD 43
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 con
siderably 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 in
deed, 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,
44 MR. WU
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 re
minded "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 country
men at such places he avoided, partly by his own good
sense and partly by Muir's counsel and the dead man
darin'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 furnish
ing 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
45
46 MR. WU
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 indus
triously. He enjoyed the work. There were some bril
liant 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 for
got it or swerved from it for an hour. None of his fel
low undergraduates particularly liked him, but few dis
liked him, and he interested many. Several of the dona
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 en
tire 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
SOME BALM 47
no English girl stirred his pulse or fogged his subtle
shrewdness. James Muir, who watched over him faith-
ful 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 wel
come 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 unprece
dented 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 flum
meries 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
48 MR. WU
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 he 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 din
ner-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 silk
worm 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
SOME BALM 49
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, volun
tarily, and interspersed among men, he thought abomni-
able. Ellen Muir did not dine in decolletage.
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 re
ceiving 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 obedi
ence. The keeper of many of the most valuable trea
sures 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 Scot
land'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, n undergraduate at Cambridge whose
name was Ku, who had misstepped and slid down into
the engulfing ice. But the mistake reached Oxford, and
50 MR. WU
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 mo
ments. 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
SOME BALM 51
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 yamen
gate.
CHAPTER IX
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 approach
ing 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 recep
tion and the housing of his wife, and laying the founda
tions of his own relations with the inumerable "tongs"
or secret societies that in China play so powerful and so
indescribable a part in all things of great pith and mo
ment, and more particularly in everything touching in
ternational affairs and the treatment of aliens in China.
Sociology and political economy had been no small
52
WU LI LU 53
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 mis
take that some highly intelligent Chinese have made
after years of European study and travel the mistake
of underestimating the quality, the power, and the per
manence 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 be
lieved 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, be
cause he saw clearly that so he could serve best, and with
the surest, tightest grip.
54 MR. WU
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 dis
pensed 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 pro
jecting 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
WU LI LU 55
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, sit
ting 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 Ms, 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 role, 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.
56 MR. WU
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, indicat
ing 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 obesiance 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,
WU LI LU 57
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 daugh
ter, and in bearing died.
CHAPTER X
NANG PING
HE years passed, and Wu took no other wife. Time
_L 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 tne old
mandarin long ago, the bachelor habit grew upon him
and encrusted him with its self-sufficient and not un
selfish 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 establish
ment 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 first
born. 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's was widowed at about the
time of Wu Lu's death, widowed while still a bride and
childless. She begged to come and ba foster-mother and
servant to the motherless babe; and Wu had consented
NANG PING 59
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 un
precedented 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 indispen
sable. He could not die without a son. Without a son
he could not be properly buried, or mourned and wor
shiped.
6o MR. WU
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 rami
fications 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 hol
low of his hand.
Wu wore a mandarin 's button now. And he had pre
sented 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 HO 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 mag-
NANG PING 61
nate'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 min
strel 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 moyed 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 Shore-
ditch, 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 back
ground 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
62
IN THE LOTUS GARDEN 63
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 en
circling 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 bril
liance 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.
54 MR. WU
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 new), 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 Eill 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!"
IN THE LOTUS GARDEN 65
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 im
patiently, "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 trea
sure-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
66 MR. WU
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 pic
turesque 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 acquaint
ance 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 tt
IN THE LOTUS GARDEN 67
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 fel
low 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 Brit
ish 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 wrcrte
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
68 MR. WU
too close, and repeated her grave question, "Is thy
honorable sister like Nang Ping, or even more beauti
ful?"
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 secre
tary, 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 an
swered, 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 gar
den with tiny points of fire. Nang Ping called them
by a prettier name : kwang yin teng, 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.
IN THE LOTUS GARDEN 69
"Could what, Nang Ping?" He asked it a little un
easily 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 care
ful," 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. "Oil,
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
70 MR. WU
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 mar
ried 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 him
self : 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 re
morse. She felt the passion and the tenderness. He
broke from her gently and moved away, standing look
ing down moodily at the darkening lotus flowers, dis
tressed, all his light-hearted happiness of idle, selfish
weeks gone, gone forever. "Oh, Nang Ping!" pres
ently he said ruefully, "it would be better if you had
never met me," and he moved restlessly still a little
farther away.
IN THE LOTUS GARDEN 71
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, "be
cause 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, cling
ing 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 gentle
ness 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 pou?
72 MR. WU
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 blos
som 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
IN THE LOTUS GARDEN 73
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 sleep
ing 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 in
deed 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 "
74 MR. WU
' ' So soon ! ' ' But her face brightened, in spite of her
self, 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 ha
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, not" she cried hotly. "If the bird of love once
IN THE LOTUS GARDEN 75
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 man
darin 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 consterna
tion.
"Yes, beca ise now I do not wish to live."
' ' You musl not tell him ! " he said roughly.
' ' Only whf n you are gone, or he would kill you too ! ' '
Nang said, simply and without bitterness. The Eng
lishman winced. "He will ask me why I disobey him,
and I shall toll 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
76 MR. WU
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 s*en 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 bril
liantly 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 en
riched 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 amphi
theater 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
77
78 MR. WU
neck on the race-course, rehearsing the ponies for to-mor.
row'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, cham
pagne-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 won
dered 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 per
simmon 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
O CURSE OF ASIA! 79
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 tremu
lous 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 judg
ment than his own.
His mother was his chum, and had been from his
birth they had stood together and pulled together al
ways; 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 industrious-
ness 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
8o MR. WU
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 com
mercial life of a sort for which a few years' business
training in Chicago would have been more useful prepa
ration than any amount of term-keeping at Oxford.
But Gregory the father, who had had a very limited ed
ucation, was, as is usual with such men of means, ob
sessed 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 Ox
ford knowing a little less than when he went.
O CURSE OF ASIA! 81
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
82 MR. WU
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 '11 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.
O CURSE OF ASIA! 83
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
84 MR. WU
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 notf 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 him
self he ought not to forgive for having let a Chinese
girl out and unwatched so with us English about. He '11
punish you both, and what Wu does he does well.
There'll be no escaping him. No boat will take you be
yond his reach, no spot on earth hide you. You can't
stay in China with her. Her position would be too in-
O CURSE OF ASIA! 85
tolerable, 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 mon
strous mess you Ve made of life for youT*self and for her,
you '11 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 de
spised 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 in
tention.
"Yes," he said presently, "and if only for that reason,
the children, don't you see that it would better end here
86 MB. WU
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 con
sequences 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 can
celled 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's) 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:
37:
88 MR. WU
"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
MRS. GREGORY 89
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 re
ferred again to the hideous discomfort of mixed mar
riages.
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 mar
riages 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 in-
90 MR. WU
different, 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 lit
tle 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 mut
ton, 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 suf
fered 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 oc
curred to him that any one else was not. That would be
preposterous, and certainly Florence was not preposter
ous. 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 wort
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 hand
some 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 acknowl
edged it to himself, and boasted of it to all his cronies.
MRS. GREGORY 91
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 Ox
ford 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 reas
sured her with an odd smile.
She was greatly puzzled. She had always supposed
92 MR. WU
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
NANQ'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 country
men, 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 te 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.
93
94 MR. WU
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 mer
chants, anxious to conciliate the powerful Wu, en
couraged their womenkind to friendliness with his kins
woman. 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 personal
ity. 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
NANG'S VIGIL 95
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, be
neath 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
96 MR. WU
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 peas
ants 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 sensi
tives. 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. Writ
ten 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
NANG'S VIGIL 97
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 Erglishmen 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 ex
perience of masculine fidgets. She had seen her country
women 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 hat
ing 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
THE MEETING OF THE MOTHERS 99
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 inter
jected 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.
ioo MR. WU
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 color
ing, 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 crepe
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 serv
ants 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.
THE MEETING OF THE MOTHERS ipi
Each was natural, each was artificial sweet, elaborate,
decorated, highly bred.
Nang Ping's face and lips were painted; Mrs. Greg
ory '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 marceled 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 consider
ably. 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
102 MR. WU
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 mother
hood. 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
THE MEETING OF THE MOTHERS 103
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 thou
sands 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 ! Some
thing 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 acquaint
ance of Miss Wu. ' '
He gestured courteously toward Nang as he spoke,
and Mrs. Gregory moved to the girl and held out her
104 MR - wu
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 Greg
ory, 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
THE MEETING OF THE MOTHERS 105
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 ex
cellent English."
"My honorable teacher was English. My honor
able 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" I Basil's mother smiled too, a prettily pathetic
smile which - ras half good manners and half sincere
"I am afrai<\ 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 he 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 'in afraid I ought to be off to the office.
106 MR. WU
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 anx
ious 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 pan
tomime, 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. "Chi-
THE MEETING OF THE MOTHERS 107
nese, 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 quiv
ered. 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 gar
dener 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 be
side 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 emo
tionless, 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 th
treasures of the garden.
108 MR. WU
All 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 sweet
meat-cabinets, glazed porcelain tea-bowls as thin as
gauze and painted by master craftsmen, trays of candied
fruit, and several delicacies of which Florence Greg
ory 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 gentle
man 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 dis
tinctly 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 axe,
you know, so old."
THE MEETING OF THE MOTHERS 1109
"Wu." The English woman said it slowly, as if try
ing 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 honor
able 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
no MR. WU
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."
THE MEETING OF THE MOTHERS 111
"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 c ' 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 crea
ture said it with a smile.
"Oh, yes!" Hilda said, joining them, "some day, per
haps, 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 ac
companiment of many bows from the cousins. "How
perfectly jolly!"
"Delightful!" agreed her mother. And Nang Ping,
112 MR. WU
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 Gov
ernment 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 out
rageous act. Nang Ping immediately helped herself
even more generously than Hilda had, and Low Soong,
113
114 MR. WU
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 hos
tess with new respect, convinced again that Nang Ping
was exquisitely "grande dame," and beginning to sus
pect 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 im
passive as her face? What did motherhood itself mean
to such dolls, and could wif ehood 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 un
reality might lessen pain more than it dwarfed hap
piness. 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, be
neath 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. Some
thing 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
GRIT 1 15
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 pondf ul
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," Eobert 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, pre
senting 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
ii6 MR. WU
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 WuT"
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 business-
like 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 ap
preciate Chinese customs. That's the worst of being a
real Englishman, Miss Wu one misses English com
forts."
Tom Carruthers saw a tiny shadow of disgust cloud
across Xang Ping's painted mouth, and he knew, with-
GRIT 117
out 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 disap
proved 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 for
ward, bowed lower, and then took the offending handle-
less 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
btaccato between sugared mouthfuls he had appropri
ated 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 of
fend."
"Yes, so am I. Of course, business is business. I ad
mit 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 in-
u8 MR. WU
dispensable 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, Hol
man, 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.
"Bobert." she greeted him, "you can scarcely expect
GRIT
119
Miss Wu to be interested in your business disappoint
ments." 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 per
sisted 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. "Eobert," she said
severely, ' ' I am sure Mr. Wu does not trouble his daugh
ter 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 expos
tulation. "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 Kow-
loon, and that he was here for a while yesterday, and yet
120 MR. WU
I don't see him about anywhere, and I particularly wanV
to see him."
' ' In that San Fong make a mistake, ' ' Nang Ping said
quietly. But she had risen to her feet in evident disv
tress, though she controlled it bravely, and the others
had all risen too, as if her sudden motion was a cue 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 un
derstand 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 un
concernedly.
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?" lie paused at that to let them all
appreciate his unique discovery, and wondered im
patiently why the dickens Carruthers grinned. "I sup
pose 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
GRIT 221
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; buf
fer 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 re
turned/' 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. ' '
122 MR. WU
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 inter
esting 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 '11 give you the prime stuff.
Good-by." He added to himself only half under his
GRIT 123
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 OP 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 blood
hound, 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, clutch
ing 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 1"
1 '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
124
THE SIGNAL OF THE GONG 125
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 al
ways 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 un
covered, 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
u6 MR. WU
too, just a little, of the brute, grim aiid 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 direc
tion, 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 he could.
With a supreme effort or did that still figure on the
bridge give a slight signal that Ah Sing caught? per
haps 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.
THE SIGNAL OF THE GONG 127
' ' 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 OP KWAYIN 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 1 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.
128
AT THE FEET OF KWANYIN KO 129
Where was Low Soong? Had Low been caught too in
the coil? If not, surely Low would come to her pres
ently, 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 price
less. And no other room had been plenished with such
lavish tenderness as had this room of his one child.
130 MR. WU
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 some'
thing 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
AT THE FEET OF KWANYIN KO 131
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
PREPAKATION
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 Eng
lish brides have. She had seen several at a confec
tioner '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.
132
PREPARATION 133
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 com
fort 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 when
ever she was "dressed" she wore the fantastic orna
ments, 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 care
fully.
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 her
self. "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
134 MR. WU
festival. On days of homely ease and uncerernonied
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 nice-
ness has permeated the other Chinese races. And in
China a maid would be held not chary, but prodigal in
deed, 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 r 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 taint
ing 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 every
wherein 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
PREPARATION
135
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 color
ing 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 pro
portioned; 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 delieate 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 com
monplace. 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,
136 MR. WU
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 al
ways, 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 ab
solute. 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 favori
tism 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 wise-
ness. 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 punish-
137
138 MR. WU
ment) 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 n action.
WHAT WU DID IN PROOF OF IOVE 139
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 al
ways, 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, am I was done. For herself fear had no place
in her now. Her father would not torture her that she
knew. But fhe thought that she should scarcely have
winced if he 1 lad. 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 hus
band's obseqries; and one a queen had burned to her
death, lightin/f 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 unkindlyc
140 MR. WU
And this was the first time he had couched command tf
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 relation
ship 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, creep
ing to share your lot, and begging to speak with you.
Do you care to see her ? ' '
"I wish to see no one, 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.
WHAT WU DID IN PROOF OF LOVE 141
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 blame
less from this hour. My venerable, honorable grand
father, 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 thou
sand 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. Some
times, 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
142 MR. WU
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 peo
ple 's. I shall wed now, and give my honorable ancestors
other sons, China men-Wus to be her rulers and her serv
ants. That I have not done so before is my crime. 1
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 hon
orable, decreed of our sages, countenanced of our gods,
WHAT WU DID IN PROOF OF LOVE 143
but only for those to whom sons of their bodies are de
nied. 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 un
harmed." Nang Ping swayed a little on her stool and
caught at her knees with her hands. "Tell me all."
"0 honorable sir," she sobbed, huddling at his feet,
"I cannot."
Wu smiled. "All! Omit nothing. You can save
\Jm 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 tor
tured 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
144 MR. WU
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 al
ready 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
WHAT WU DID IN PROOF OF LOVE 145
that shoe. It was an old, easy shoe. She had em
broidered 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 casement 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 be
side 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 prin
ciple. " 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 wis
dom 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 English
woman, 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
146
A CONFERENCE
H7
?>y courting, winning (and meriting) the dislike of In
dian 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 mem-
sahib. 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 waald not have
done for her English mistress. And the story of it is
148 MR. WU
this: Mrs. Gregory had nev&r 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 in
ordinately 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.
A CONFERENCE 149
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 con
fessed 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 decollete 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 pic
ture 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 steam-
150 MR. WU
ships and shipping industries. Docks and shipping in
the near distance looked even nearer in the clear mag
nifying 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 fun
nels, 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.
A CONFERENCE 151
"All I care to say. I've strained a point to say that
much. ' '
"And you will not tell me where you got your infor
mation? 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 con
fidence ; 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 search
ing 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
152 MR. WU
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 Kow-
loon 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 CONFERENCE 153
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 de#d 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 un
doubtedly, 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
154
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 in
fluence 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 yamen
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, "Re
member, 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 pur
pose, and it might cause her trouble so I expressly
ask you, not one word."
A CONFERENCE 155
"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
HPHAT afternoon Florence Gregory, coming in with
JL 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 dis
mayed, and at her lady's command translated the ideo
graphic 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 mat
tered 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."
1 ' Who is she ? Why has she called ? ' '
"Not know whly she dome or send slweet blos
soms. 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."
156
SING KUNG YAH'S FLOWERS 157
"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 yamen. Be
mock mother lonorable miss-child we dlink tea."
"Great Scot!" Hilda exclaimed. "Wbat 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
158 MR. WU
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 man
darin, 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 in
difference 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 irradi-
cately 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
SING KUNG YAH'S FLOWERS 159
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 dis
figure 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
160 MR. WU
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 un
sheathed 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 al
most all, and the details of her suspicion were uncannily
accurate. She was Chinese.
AH WONG
same night, at midnight, Tom Carruthers and
A 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-sojourn
ing natives, or of those pulling and pushing the rick
shaws, and carrying the chairs of European merry-mak
ers 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 mast
heads 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 try
ing to think of some worth-while suggestion to make
about poor Basil, and neither could.
161
162 MR. WU
A window that led from the balcony to the room be
yond 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 in
creased wages, made when some important contract, al
ready 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
AH WONG 163
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 ac
cident (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 Wall
164 MR. WU
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 every
thing, 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 per
haps 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
AH WONG 165
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 apoth
ecary who was infamously famous throughout the Em
pire.
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 at
tributed, 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 dis
ease, 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 rhinoce
ros' horn, skins and horns ground into powdered doses,
antidotes to poison, or guaranteed to impart the quali
ties 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-
166 MR. WU
sealed jar: a lion's heart, and two that were human a
pirate's and a young girl's. The criminal's was pre
served in alcohol, the maiden's in honey; and each was
of fabulous value. There was no secret about their be
ing 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 warriort
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
AH WONG 167
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 hang
ing 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.
Hie 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
168 MR. WU
hotel door. She had a night-police pass; and her mis
tress 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 trust
worthy.
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
AH WONG 169
/
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 pos
sibly 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
170
IN THE CLUTCH OF THE TONGS 171
why the blue blazes have you let them, when you know
how late we 're with the loading of the Fee Chow alreacty,
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. Car
ruthers, please. Leave this to me. Now, compradore,
what 's the grievance ? Come, out with it, ehop, 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 bio wed!" 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
172 MR. WU
Tom Carruthers with a vindictive eye. "See here, Mr.
Carruthers," he spat out, "if I have any further inter
ference 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!"
IN THE CLUTCH OF THE TONGS 173
"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 nego
tiation 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
174 MR. WU
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 ? ' '
"WuLi Chang?"
"Yes, or 'Mr. Wu,' as he's mostly called by the Euro
peans. ' '
"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 Thurs
day, 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 in
formation 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
IN THE CLUTCH OF THE TONGS 175
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 China
men 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 socie
ties, 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
tally lot of 'em. Most of the mandarins hate the tongs,
i?6 MR. WU
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 gentle
man of tongs and mystery a run for his money a
damned fine run I '11 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 impera
tive. One tin of the deadly, dangerous stuff had been
detected going aboard a dozen might be aboard un
detected, 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
177
1 78 MR. WU
briskly, and Tom Carnithers looked on fuming, and
Simpson and the other half-dozen European subordinate
old hands obeyed him with confident alacrity. Carru-
thers 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 suc
cessfully 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 Jeply to Holman 's angry, "The men never behaved
so tfke ftell 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 ? ' '
WORSE AND WORSE 179
"Savee. Can do."
But Tom Carruthers collapsed upon the window-seat.
"If this was lording it over the poor, over- worked, un
derpaid 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 oc
cupants 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 ar
ranged with the Bank I drew up the exchange accord
ingly "
"Quite correct the transfer is to be made to-day."
But Holman 's voice was less sanguine than his words.
He scented mere 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 account
ancy department that an overdraft is impossible. ' '
"Why?"
"They write that our security is insufficient and fur
ther we must vacate these premises immediately."
"What?" Carruthers sprang up as if some inimical
concussion had impelled him.
i8o MR. WU
"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 ac
cumulated 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, drop
ping 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 Com
pany 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 photo
graph, and was looking not at them but at it.
They paid his question as little heed as the photo
graph 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
WORSE AND WORSE 181
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
HP HE three sat brooding in silence for several minutes,
J. 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
182
SUSPENSE 183
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 de
termined air of briskness, and nodded crisply to Car-
ruthers 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 Fdima " But he
did not have to finish.
"Oh, yes! I know, I know," Gregory said listlessly.
184 MR. WU
"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, 111 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
Mm 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 hur
ried 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
SUSPENSE 185
tell you he never discusses anything outside his own of
fices 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 com
mented, 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 '11 come all right oh, yes ! he '11 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 but
ter. 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
186 MR. WU
voice, as his wife and daughter came through the deor.
''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 any
thing ? 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 excite
ment, and terribly, terribly tired.
Ah Wong looked about the office desperately. She
wanted cushions, but there were no cushions there, and
SUSPENSE 187
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
i88 MR. WU
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 '11 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,
Eobert?"
"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
SUSPENSE 189
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 Eng
lish visting 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 win
dow.
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 '11 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 '11 be careful very, very care
ful. 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 band she held and
leaned on a little as she went.
CHAPTER
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 in
differently, 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.
190
THE BEGINNING OF THE DUEL 191
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 ad
vantage 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 gentle
manly, and unmistakably, in spite of his "smart" tailor
ing, 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. Some
thing 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 al.
most smiled not quite and bowed again, lower than
before, but not too low. And she went out a little hur
riedly, the others with her. But Ah Wong, who natur
ally went last, looked at the great man deliberately a
192 MR. WU
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 squat
ted 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 uncomfort
ably, 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,
THE BEGINNING OF THE DUEL 193
"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 un
deniably 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 un
easily.
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.
194 MR - wu
"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 invi
tation 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 endur
ance), "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 '11 remain as I am. ' '
"Not at all," Wu said gravely, and rising; "in that
case, we '11 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.
THE BEGINNING OF THE DUEL 195
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 over
bearing 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 Hoi-
man 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
yes, 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.
196 MR. WU
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 oppor
tunity 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 over
wrought, 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.
THE BEGINNING OF THE DUEL 197
"Let me preface what I have to say," he said warn-
ingly, "by remarking that I have the reputation of being
a very good friend but a dangerous enemy."
"Who could doubt it?" Wu murmured, bowing admir
ingly.
"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 understand
ing 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. Greg
ory," Wu said quietly, but in a tone of curt resentment*
"You ask me to speak plainly."
198 MR. WU
"But not to speak rudely. I do not employ rudeness,
nor do I accept it. And now may I ask how this hypo
thetical 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 un
fortunate" 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.
THE BEGINNING OF THE DUEL 199
* ' 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 photo
graph in "VWs 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 com
mented 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 rear
ing 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 indif
ferent 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 expia
tion 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."
zoo MR. WU
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, pre
cisely as he had thought the decolletage 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 mag
nanimous. '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 explana
tion."
"Then why not seek it from those who can enlighten
you?"
"There's no one more capable of doing that than your-
THE BEGINNING OF THE DUEL 201
self," 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. Greg
ory," 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
202 MR. WU
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. ' '
Eobert 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 contri
bution 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 al
ways under the quietest Oriental seeming, and that, en
kindled 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, fhe revolver still well aimed, ''to join those
damned ancestors of yours."
Something as terrible as the death-rattle in a mad
dog's throat 'angled and gurgled in "Wu's and a fiendish
look leapt info his eyes they narrowed until they were
mere slits. IVut he recontrolled himself almost instantly
angry still, but coldly so, and imperturbable again. ' ' I
would have g me to blazes first ? ' ' There were snarl and
sneer in the low-pitched voice. "Then we should have
been able to resume this interesting conversation else
where! 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
203
204 MR. WU
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, eye
ing 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 breed
ing 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 pleas
antly, "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
SOMETHING TO GO ON 205
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 dis
cussing matters at the cannon 's mouth, so to speak. Re
tain the weapon, by all means, but be so good as to re
move the cartridges."
Gregory fidgeted, hesitating nervously.
"Merely as a matter of good faith," Wu urged con-
ciliatorily. "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 be
gan 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 car
tridges 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
206 MR. WU
now, and the revolver had slipped from his sleeve "I
do not misunderstand your having made the offensive re
mark it was a mere mark of difference of caste and edu
cation. 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 per
fectly 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 some
what 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 sud
denly, 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 hus
band has been in trying to bully and intimidate me in
stead 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.
207
208 MR. WU
Also I have a message but less important from
Madame Sing, my relative." (Gregory grunted curtly.)
"Eing!"
"Ring yourself," the Englishman at bay said sul
lenly.
"That is a liberty I would not dream of taking in
another man's office. You'll ring" the revolver's bar
rel 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 be
gan breathlessly, "Ce sacre Chinois me "
But Wu interrupted with a contented laugh and,
"Oh! this damned Chinaman understands French per
fectly. And I've often heard Englishmen pronounce it
very much as you do. You are a linguist too, Mr. Mur
ray? E'um dom util o dom das linguas e de alto
valar em cidades cosmopolitans!"
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 de
feated, 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 cir-
WILL YOU VISIT SING KUNG YAH<? 209
cumstances 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 al
most 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 be
fore my wife?" Gregory asked dearily.
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
210 MR. WU
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 ten
sion of her anxiety the chance passed.
"Mrs. Gregory," Wu Li Chang began, deferentially
bowing and going a little nearer, ' ' I am sorry to be com
pelled 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 wea
pons, but neither was she one of those who rather affect
them. She had never hunted, and she had never prac
ticed 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 invita
tion, on a matter of grave importance. ' '
WILL YOU VISIT SING KUNG YAH? 211
The woman leaned forward towards him quickly, her
knotted at her knee. "Yes yes my son," she
eagerly.
''What the matter was," Wu went on smoothly, "he
d'd not say. Of course, I knew of your son's disappear
ance everybody in Hong Kong knows that so I fancied
'/hat 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 revol
ver 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 him
self 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 sym
pathy."
Florence Gregory hung her head.
212 MR. WU
"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, ea
gerly, gratefully. And in return he gave her a long di
rect 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 appeal-
ingly, "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,
WILL YOU VISIT SING KUNG YAH? 213
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 ges
ture 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 bet
ter matched than he and Eobert 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. " On ! 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 ut
most courtesy, and said as if considering the situation
"Well, we must meet again."
* ' Oh ! I hope so, Mr. Wu. But now when every mo
ment is so precious ' '
"I am thinking, Mrs. Gregory, and I will not waste
one of them, you may trust me. ' '
214 MR - wu
' *
"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 peo
ple, madame, but I cannot influence or soften the preju
dices of Chinese femininity in the slightest. Because
she is a widow, she should, according to one of the ab-
surdest of the many absurd canons of our race, live in
seclusion, sackcloth and discomfort. She is a nice crea
ture, 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 "
WILL YOU VISIT SING KUNG YAH? 215
"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. Greg
ory, 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 "
216 MR. WU
"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 Euro
peans 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 in
dustry; 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 Chris
tians 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 earnest
ness, "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."
WILL YOU VISIT SING KUNG YAH? 217
"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 lan
guage which a European may use to a Chinese gentle
man 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,
218 MR. WU
"Mrs. Gregory, that you yourself shal^ not kixow at
Kowloon. ' '
"When may I come?" she begged.
"To-morrow, at four? I will be entirely at your serv
ice "
"To-morrow?" Her voice broke on the word.
"To-night, then?" He glanced at the clock consider
ingly. "Yes, the time is short but I think I can con-
trive it. I will employ myself so diligently in the mean
time 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
WILL YOU VISIT SING KUNG YAH? 219
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, mfidame. 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 after
noon 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 des
perate 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 de
voted.
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 s, she probably had, next to
220
SMILING WELCOME 221
Wu Li Chang, a corrector estimate of the whole compli
cated 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 en
joyment 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 torment
ing, 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 af
fairs 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 defalca
tion and certainly did not resent it. The business
turmoil did not lessen with the lessening day; it in-
222 MR. WU
creased. 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 de
ficiencies 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. Greg
ory had checked her sternly, and Ah Wong had known
that it was worse than useless to repeat the entreaty.
SMILING WELCOME
223
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 dome? 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 Torn in the darkened
sitting-room were eating ices with their tea Mrs. Greg
ory 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.
224 MR. WU
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 be
neath the laces of her sleeve.
The boat grated in the gritty earth, and Mrs. Gregory
looked up, glad to have arrived, confident of her recep-
tion 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 re
turned 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
SMILING WELCOME 225
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 unpre
cedented presence of a foreign guest. And she was
thinking of Nang Ping far more than of her own ap
proaching 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 luke-
warmed 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 her
self, 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
226 MR. WU
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. Be
cause 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 some
thing 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.
SMILING WELCOME 227
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 sur
prised 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 con
ducting 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 after
noon. 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 won
derful memory bestowed on any race. He had little fear
of Sing Kung Yah, and, for that matter, the role he had
assigned to her was but that of a well-dressed super
numerary with a few unimportant lines to speak. She
was not essential to the movement of the piece, and her
role might well enough have been "cut" from the cast,
but with the evil seething at his heart all the native artist
228
FACE TO FACE 229
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 Im
perial 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, say-
Ing 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 dif-
230 MR. WU
f erences 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 fur
nished that its opulence must have been oppressive had
it been less beautiful, its taste less distinguished.
Essentially and strikingly like Nang Ping's room, un.
like 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 yamen 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
FACE TO FACE 231
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-a-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 Kinteching, 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-
232 MR. WU
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 Yiich'uan.
Wu prostrated himself before the altar which pro
claimed the owner's importance. He had come here to
do worse than butchery, but to do it as a priest to sacri
fice 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 voca
tion 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.
FACE TO FACE 233
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 him
self 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 mes
sage 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! Tha'; is immemorial fallacy. Nature would be
full-moon ma ft 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
234 MR. WU
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, de
scended from Wu Sankwei and from the two supreme
Sages, and who might well have made an Imperial mar*
riage, seen in this? He had known such slight men by
the dozens and twenties at Oxford, scant-minded, un
cultured, 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: dis
graced 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.
FACE TO FACE 235
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 nave not yet exhausted your in
genuity," 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
"CUB!"
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 abili
ties. 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 en
tirely 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
236
"CUR!" 237
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 serv
ants 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 deter
mination and a promise. "Yes if she still wishes it."
"A very interesting suggestion," Wu sneered. "In
your country, when a woman has been dishonored, mar
riage is called 'making an honest woman of her.' It
is a quaint notion. To me it seems a nasty one plaster
ing 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 trem
bling 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
238 MR. WU
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 fa
ther is a ruined man to-day. His ships are sinking, his
credit gone. In China we punish parents for their chil
dren'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 yon
have planned, but let me write to my mother."
"CUR!" 239
"This is very interesting," the mandarin said, sitting
down again. "Very interesting very. As for the tor
ture I am preparing for you, I shall not increase it, be
cause it cannot be increased. Largest cannot be en
larged. 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 hide
ously, "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
240 MR. WU
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 ter
ribly. 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
iinish.
241
242 MR. WU
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 coun
tries, 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 her
self for her son. ' '
A CHINESE TEACHING 243
"You fiend of hell ! " And with a yell of torment the
Englishman sprang almost too quick for the vigilants be
side him. He wrenched one pinioned hand free and
swung it up mightily. But Ah Sing still with an ex
pressionless face leaned across the table, leaned be
tween 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 sweep
ing 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 tak
ing 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.
244 MR. WU
Wu turned to the Englishman. "You do not under*
stand our barbaric tongue. I have been telling my serv
ants 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 daugh
ter," 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."
A CHINESE TEACHING 245
"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
HE lady has arrived, ' ' Ah Sing said with an
-L 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 extrava
gance 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
246
ALONE IN CHINA 247
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, un
fastening 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 mo
ment Mrs. Gregory moved wearily across the room.
Ah "Wong looked hurriedly about the room search-
ingly. 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 ques-
tioningly, and Ah Wong pointed eloquently up to the
high orifice ; then, watching first one door and then an
other, she moved a carved bench a little nearer the win
dow 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 re-
248 MR. WU
coiled 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 ex
pected "
"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 rude
ness 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
ALONE IN CHINA 249
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 in
tensity 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 Eng
lish. 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, un
interested, 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
250 MR. WU
great deal of Oriental deliberateness, and she was heroi
cally 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, embar
rassed and at a loss.
' ' That a Chinese house could be so civilized a place ? ' '
"Wu quizzed good-naturedly.
Eeally, 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. Per
haps we in the East have a finer sense of art ; certainly
we care more for nature. But we all have the same de
sires 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 Eng
lishwoman, 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 de
scribe some of my ornaments? You look about you as
if you were good enough to be interested in my Chinese
bric-a-brac. ' '
"Yes do do," she stammered desperately; "that
that wonderful thing there? That gorgeous-looking
duck!"
ALONE IN CHINA 251
"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 ob
ject," 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
252 MR. WU
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 ycai
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-bor
der plate. I have a set of six. Up there" he pointed
to the top of another cabinet "is another with five bor
ders. 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 an
other 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
ALONE IN CHINA 253
look at this well. This is a particularly fine piece this
sea green glaze, Mrs. Gregory one of the earliest pro
ductions 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 trea
sures," 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 waa
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 wait-
ing, 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 care
lessly. "She can wait in the courtyard."
254 MR. WU
"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, in
scrutable, the English eyes of the woman, appealing, ter
rorized. 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 circum
stances."
"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 em
phatically, "I could not possibly offend the spirits of
my ancestors by sitting down in the room with your
servant. ' J
"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
ALONE IN CHINA 255
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 quiety. 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 thres
hold 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 de
votion. ' '
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 ordi
narily 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 gar
den, 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,
256
. THE STORY OF THE SWORD 257
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 dread
fully overwrought. ' ' She turned to him with a wan smile
that tried to be confident, but failed, and with a brave at
tempt 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
258 MR. WU
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. Greg
ory, 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. Greg
ory?" He almost whispered her name.
"Oh! Mr. Wu!" Florence exclaimed, rising hys
terically 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. " 1 11 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 an
swered 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 mis
take, and that to show fear would both affront him and
invite annoyance. ' ' I didn 't mean that, ' ' she said, chok
ing back a second scream; "I only mean that oh! I'm
tortured by all this suspense." In spite of her new re
solve, a low sob broke from her, and she huddled down
THE STORY OF THE SWORD 259
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 ^ery 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 for
give me." Wu flicked that aside with a courteous ges
ture. "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 procrastina
tion feverishly.
"About that sword. ' ' The mandarin pointed to where
it hung.
Mrs. Gregory half smothered a moan.
260 MR. WU
"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 ances
tors 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-as-
sertiveness.
THE STORY OF THE SWORD 261
-Alone," he added with a horrid emphasis. "But a
mother's love is capable of any sacrifice, it 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 con
temptuously. "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 pre
tense. Her strength was gone: worn away by the per
sistent 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 at
tention, Mrs. Gregory," Wu said determinedly, but fall
ing 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,
262 MR. WU
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 <
liberately. Slowness could not be slower than his was
now. He took down the sword he remembered how he
had'touched it Ias1>-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 be
longed 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."
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 tell
ing 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
THE STORY OF THE SWORD 263
evenly. "My ancestor had only one child, a very beauti
ful 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 mar
riage 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 grue
some story, ' ' he said gravely.
Yes well," she stumbled, playing still for time, try
ing 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. IndewjL 7.
264 MR. WU
think, if anything, my ancestors erred on the side of
leniency." Wu Li Chang paused. Less light was com
ing through the one high window now. Florence Greg
ory was well-nigh strangled by the beating of her tor
tured, 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 with
drawn 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 under
stand 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 be
ing 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 conscious
ness 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
265
266 MR. WU
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 Greg
ory'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 de
vised 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 ques
tions somewhat answered. If sons, light, selfish, weak,
could expect such chastisement as Basil Gregory was en
during 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 scar
let 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 conscious
ness.
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 ter
rible, more hideous, more stenched than it was. Made
an artist in fiendishness by his love for his child, Wu was
PAGODA AND BENCH 267
most fiendish, most exquisite, in his enmaddening de-
liberateness. 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 -extenua
tion, or even in explanation, than Basil Gregory had.
Nang Ping had never tempted him. Even in the con
summation 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
268 MR. WU
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 ex
postulation 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 al
most 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
PAGODA AND BENCH 269
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 subter
fuge : 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 house
hold 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 beauti
ful 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. r
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 ap
peal 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.
270
THE FAN 271
"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
272 MR. WU
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 jas.
mine. ' '
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 poison
ous change came in his voice "of my daughter's se
ducer?"
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 <yes,
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 FAN 273
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 rat
tle of ivory, a hiss and a rustle of silk. ' ' It lies by that
door" he pointed it with his fan "which leads to my
oufn 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 signifi
cance 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 wthin 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
274 MR. WU
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 fren2y 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
THE FAN 275
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 bat
ter 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 thatl
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!
276
THE GONG 277
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 suf
focation, 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 whim
per, 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 vic
arage garden in England.
278 MR. WU
She tottered, sobbing silently, across the room, clutch
ing 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
Eoman legionaries. As Abraham had prepared to sacri
fice 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!
THE GONG 279
"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. Koomnow! 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 cower
ing, 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 crepe
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 negligee a border of peacocks' 'feathers
was embroidered, each plume the fine work of an artist.
280 MR. WU
"Well, chere madamc!" 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, al
most 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
THE GONG 281
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 coun
try 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, un
able 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
282 MR. WU
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
THE GONG 283
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 English
woman. 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 damned burn
ing 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 noth
ing 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 home
sickness ?
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
284 MR. WU
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 reap
ing 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 I
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
THE GONG 285
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
erazily 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,
"dome, 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
286
AFTERWARDS 287
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 eould, 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 Kow-
loon.
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 be
fore 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 impera
tively. And she said it as imperatively to Robert Greg-
288 MR. WU
ory 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 ab
surdly 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 sur
prise, Ah Sing admitted him. The mandaritt would
have commanded it so, Ah Sing thought.
AFTERWARDS 289
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 pres
ently Eobert Gregory chuckled openly as he helped him
self 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
290 MR. WU
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 yon
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 Greg
ory felt assured that, his formidable (for the Chink had
been formidable) rival wiped out, the only heavy dis
asters that had ever threatened his own almost monoton
ously 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
AFTERWARDS 291
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 vicari
ously, 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 Steam
ship 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 case
ments 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 then.
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 it marriage in Heaven.
292
A GUEST ON HIGH 293
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,
294
"JUST WITH US" 295
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-satis
fied 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 !
296 MR. WU
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, con
demning 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."
"JUST WITH US" 297
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 noth
ing 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 '11 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 com
fortable boat. "
298 MR. WU
""Well all catch it, if we can," his mother said em
phatically.
"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 jelly
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. "Eemember, 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
"JUST WITH US" 299
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 pil
lows. 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 tetiie:i.
CHAPTER XLII
THE DUST OP CHINA FROM THEIR FEET
Gregorys sailed from Hong Kong the next week,
J_ 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.
200
THE DUST OF CHINA 301
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 hap
pened 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
3 o2 MR. WU
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 111 look
after him a bit, be a sort of parson his-man-Friday, if
the boy '11 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 feft 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 prob
able 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
THE DUST OF CHINA 303
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. & 0. 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 master
piece as : "I put him through it. " " The damned nig
ger 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
304 MR. WU
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 objec
tion, 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
THE DUST OF CHINA 305
interminable funeral cortege 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 Mace
donian in his casket of gold. And no son followed Wu
Li Chang! But behind the mandarin's coffin they car
ried, 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." Al
ready 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 iii this, they are also exquisite by it.)
They clung together pathetically. And, at the same
time, each shrank from the other a little, almost uncon
sciously, and quite in spite of themselves. Their souls
shrank; their hearts clung.
Basil sensed that she grieved over his crime, and, as
306 MR. WU
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 prob
ably 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
307
308 MR. WU
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 hus
bands and wives go. It had occurred two years ago, and
had been over a dressmaker's bill.
Such quarrels are common? They are scarcely un
common 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 plea
sure in concocting those princely accounts, and in re
ceipting them, than Robert Gregory had taken in writing
ENGLISH WEDDING BELLS 309
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 com
plaint. 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 beaut e 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 her
self 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
310 MR. WU
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. 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 inci
dents of life that she had inherited solely from Robert
Gregory. She considered her engagement to Tom Car
ruthers 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 Eng
land, 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 bit
terness.
A great secret shared between two, and inviolably
kept by both, must be either a great bond or a great
ENGLISH WEDDING BELLS 311
alienation. The terrific secret shared by Florence Greg
ory 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 convic
tion 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 OP A CHINESE GONG
IT was a pretty wedding, and very simple. The Leeii
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. Greg
ory 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.
THE SOUND OF A CHINESE GONG 313
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 re
compense 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 Grgory 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, be
cause 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.
Best, 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 first-born
toward his arms, through the young mother's misty
MR. WU
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
Confucius crooned as he died.
THE END
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