“NOTHING so pleasant”—and the perfect placidity of his voice was more cruel than any outburst could have been.
“Well,” the other said desperately, “but there’ll be a reckoning for all this—my father——”
“Not necessarily, my young seducer,” the Chinese said softly. “Your father I do not regard as a man at all formidable. I had a most interesting interview with him—to-day. And I formed a low opinion of his abilities. There is a positive hue and cry after you, of course—almost a paper-chase. The walls of Hong Kong city are plastered with your portrait, and even here, on the mainland, it is to be seen. It is a very nice portrait, too—the nice likeness of a nice English—gentleman—the portrait of a very handsome young—seducer.” Wu Li Chang was not quite his own master now. The storm was rising, threatening his own insolent calm. He rose and moved a little up and down the carpet—quietly but stealthily, as hungry-for-flesh and thirstily-dry-for-blood cats move through the jungle in the night.
His last word cut Basil Gregory. Wu was behaving like the yellow dog he was; but he—Basil—was not entirely blameless: he had said as much to himself, alone in the pagoda—that cursed pagoda. Oh, well!
“Your daughter loved me,” he began. And at a something manlier in his tone than Wu Li Chang had237 expected to hear, Wu paused still and met the English eyes squarely. “We are both young.” And after a pause, so throbbing that even the three automaton servants must have felt it beat, he added slowly, “Except that the two races don’t mingle, I would——”
“Marry her?” Wu interrupted haughtily.
“Yes,” Gregory replied, as if proclaiming a determination and a promise. “Yes—if she still wishes it.”
“A very interesting suggestion,” Wu sneered. “In your country, when a woman has been dishonored, marriage is called ‘making an honest woman of her.’ It is a quaint notion. To me it seems a nasty one—plastering some putrid sore with gold-leaf! Here we have other methods. To us a woman’s honor, once stained, no more can be clean again than the petals of a rose, torn and scattered by the storm, can be gathered back into their opening bud to perfume the dawn and glisten with its dew. If marriage, and with such as you, would redeem the honor of a ruined girl, what would redeem the honor of a father and a house so desecrated as mine? Nothing! And nothing is left me but to avenge. And I avenge it now.” He turned and confronted the trembling wretch with a look before which a braver and a less guilt-stained man might well have quailed, and each word curled and hissed from his mouth like a snake.
Basil moistened his lips, tried to speak, but failed.
“However,” Wu continued, “I was going to say that although your disappearance has become a matter of public advertisement, yet the last place where you are looked for happens to be your present, if temporary, abode. I say ‘temporary’ because in this life everything is temporary—even life itself. You might be buried here—though I don’t say you will be—without any one being the wiser outside my own household. At one word238 from me you would be taken and crucified beside the pagoda, and left there until the carrion birds came and plucked your vitals out, and your eyes, and no one would suspect, or, if they suspected, dare make a move. Your people at your Government House! They could do nothing. My Government would dare do nothing, even if they wished to, for in an hour I could pull half China tumbling down about their ears. By the way, your father is a ruined man to-day. His ships are sinking, his credit gone. In China we punish parents for their children’s sin—and our gods have punished Robert Gregory for yours and for his own: his own sin in having begotten such a thing as you, and his daily sin of impertinence to my countrymen. Well, my virtuous young English gentleman, our interview is drawing to its close. What is it that you wish to say—if your quivering nerves will let you speak?”
“If”—Basil Gregory spoke humbly enough now—“if you would grant me one favor.”
Wu Li Chang laughed aloud. “Optimist!” he sneered. “Well?”
“That—that before anything”—his voice shook, and the words were not very clear—“anything happens to me, you will let me write a letter to my mother.”
“To your mother?” Wu said softly. But his triumph leapt in his veins.
“To my mother! I—I beg you that one thing. It would not mention this place or your name, of course”—Wu laughed—“but,” the tortured man went on, “but if you would see that it reached her——” There was a sob in his voice.
“And—so you would like to write to your mother?”
“Oh!” Basil Gregory cried, “double the torture you have planned, but let me write to my mother.”
239 “This is very interesting,” the mandarin said, sitting down again. “Very interesting—very. As for the torture I am preparing for you, I shall not increase it, because it cannot be increased. Largest cannot be enlarged. To the utmost one cannot add. So,” he laughed softly, “you wish very much to write to your mother—a virtuous lady who bore a son in wedlock!”
Basil Gregory dropped his head. He could no longer meet the eyes of the father of Nang Ping.
“I suppose you would scarcely credit,” the Chinese voice went on softly, “that my consideration for you had gone even beyond that? Would you like—not to write to your mother—but to see her?”
“See her!”
“Because you shall.”
“See her!” Basil cried, trembling as he had not trembled before. “Oh! Mr. Wu!”
“Yes,” Wu said slowly (and it says something of him and of his race that it did not occur to the other to doubt him—nor would have occurred to any one), “you shall. And you shall see her soon. You may even go home with her this very evening and sail for Europe next week. It is quite possible.” He spoke with quiet emphasis.
“Mr. Wu!” the blanched face was twitching hideously, “oh! I would do anything!” The frightened eyes leapt and burned. Gregory’s revulsion was terrible—the great revulsion of reprieve, or nightmare torture past and gone, the revulsion of a starving man at sudden meat and plenty, of one dying of thirst who finds a brimming mountain-pool cool to his reach, of the mother who from hours of agony slips towards sleep with the warm velvet of her baby snuggled to her breast. He took one eager step forward, and so far the men beside him let240 him go, and Ah Sing made no sign. “If you would give me your daughter——” he said earnestly, but at a look from Wu he paused.
“Give you my daughter?” Wu Li Chang said terribly. He rose and crossed to Gregory and stood before him—very near. “I have no daughter,” he said gravely, and his meaning was unmistakable, “to give you or any man!”
The pinioned man recoiled with a sob. “Oh! my God!” he cried under his breath. And he knew himself for the murderer of a girl who had given him—all—and a child. And his own soul rose against him, and cursed him, and called him “Cur!”
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