“THE lady has arrived,” Ah Sing said with an obeisance, and speaking, of course, as he always did to his master, in Chinese; “she is coming through the honorable garden.”
“Show her in.” Ah Sing went out again, leaving open the wide sliding doors through which he had come. And Wu, too, went from the room, lifting his hands high in symbol to the altar as he passed it. He left the room through its fourth door and closed it close behind him. He had gone into his sleeping-room.
In a few moments Ah Sing returned, bowing at the threshold for Mrs. Gregory to enter. She came in eagerly, Ah Wong close at her heel. Absorbed as the mother was in her own exquisite anxiety and in the paramount errand that had brought her here, still she was struck with the distinction and the character of the room; and at any time less engrossed it would have delighted and absorbed her. She had seen many rich interiors in Europe, and not a little of colonial extravagance in home decoration, but she had not seen such luxury as this. And the quiet taste of the place, for some reason, surprised her, but not more than its spotless cleanliness did.
Ah Sing watched the English lady with inscrutable eyes as she moved a little curiously about the room; and to Ah Wong, watching him, it was significant that247 for this once his scrutiny was open, almost frank. And as he passed from the room, the two Chinese servants interchanged a long, grave look. Ah Sing closed the door behind him.
“How stifling it is here!” Mrs. Gregory said, unfastening her cloak and drawing off her gloves. “I wonder where my hostess has gone off to. How very droll of her! Ah Wong”—putting her hand a moment on the other’s arm—“I’m glad I have you with me!” The amah took the cloak and the gloves; put the gloves in the cloak, the cloak over her arm. And after a moment Mrs. Gregory moved wearily across the room.
Ah Wong looked hurriedly about the room—searchingly. She gave a little quick breath when she saw the one high window. Without a sound she went to Mrs. Gregory and touched her arm. Florence turned questioningly, and Ah Wong pointed eloquently up to the high orifice; then, watching first one door and then another, she moved a carved bench a little nearer the window—without a sound—while the mistress stood and watched her half curious, half amused. Again the amah pointed—this time from bench to window, and from the window to the bench. She thrust her hand into her dress, clutching at something hidden there, and bent her face close to her mistress’s ear. But her own ear caught an almost imperceptible sound, and when Wu came from his bedroom Ah Wong was standing some distance from her lady, stolid but bored, her empty hands folded in front of her, idly.
The mandarin stood just inside the door, gravely watching. He did not speak. His face was very calm, priestly even.
Florence Gregory felt his presence, and turned with eager, welcoming eyes. But when she saw him she recoiled248 a little, with a slight breath of surprise. This morning in Hong Kong Wu had only half seemed to her un-English. Here, in his own house, and clad as she had never seen any one—stiff, gorgeous robes, tiny fan of ivory and silk, a mandarin’s necklace of cornelian beads—he was intensely Chinese, barbarian, unknown, and she felt very far from home.
Wu made the motion of salutation with his fan—it is so the Chinese “bow”—before he said reverentially, “This is indeed an honor—none the less felt because it was expected.”
Mrs. Gregory laughed a little nervously, but somewhat reassured by his voice, as he had intended her to be. “You startled me, Mr. Wu,” she said. “I hardly expected——”
“This dress?” he said pleasantly. “It is put on in your honor. To have received you in my Chinese home in other than Chinese garb would have been a rudeness—and so, impossible. Hong Kong is your Queen’s now, even its city’s legal name—though custom-ridden tongues still stubbornly say ‘Hong Kong’—and there, where I am but a business man among business men, I dress as Europeans do. I find it more convenient. And a long residence in Europe makes it easy. But this is China. You are indeed in China now, madame—as truly in China as if you were within the vermilion walls of the great imperial palace or in evil Hwangchukki. The Kowloon territory ceded to England in 1860 ends a yard beyond my gates. My kinswoman seems remiss to you, I fear,” he continued. “But pray dismiss the thought. She has gone to give an order for your entertainment and to assume her best robes in your honor—robes she may not wear to the gate.”
“Oh! but she was very splendid, and I thought how249 beautifully dressed.” The mandarin fluttered his fan in grateful acknowledgment. “And your daughter? I hope Miss Wu is well?”
Wu Li Chang bowed—his head as well as his fan this time.
“And now, Mr. Wu”—she could wait no longer, and as she spoke she moved a few steps towards him—“what news?”
“Good,” Wu said assuringly. “So that it does not need to travel fast,” he added suavely, moving to the table, motioning her deferentially to a seat beyond it.
“Ah! thank God!” She was tremulous with the intensity of her relief, for she had feared the worst. It’s a sorry trick that mother-hearts have. “And thank you, Mr. Wu,” she added earnestly, with a pretty, friendly gesture that was very womanly and very English. But she was too restless, and too anxious still for details, to take at once the seat Wu again indicated. And she moved about the room a little, hoping Wu would volunteer more, and a little at a loss what to say next if he did not of his own accord immediately slake in full the burning torment of her anxiety. “Ah Wong, take my scarf,” she said, unwinding it. It was light and lacy, but even it seemed to stifle her. Ah Wong came for the gauze, and backed away again, standing immovable, uninterested, by the door.
Mrs. Gregory waited, a little pantingly, but Wu said nothing. She looked round the room, not at its treasures, but looking for her own next words, piteously afraid of blundering, unable to be patient.
Wu Li Chang did not misunderstand, but he pretended to, and said in a pleased voice, “You find my modest treasures interesting?”
“Very,” she forced herself to lie. She had heard a250 great deal of Oriental deliberateness, and she was heroically determined to commit no social solecism, give this man no smallest affront. “Oh! very.” If he wished his possessions admired by her, admired by her they should be, and to his vanity’s content, cost her heart the delay what it might. “I had no idea——” she nerved herself to begin, but stopped abruptly, embarrassed and at a loss.
“That a Chinese house could be so civilized a place?” Wu quizzed good-naturedly.
Really, she must do better than this. She would not give offense. “Not only civilized,” she said, contriving a slight laugh—it was an awkward one—“but refined to the last degree.”
There was very fine sarcasm and some contempt in the little bow he gave her—not a Chinese bow—but his voice was sincere and almost pleading. “My dear Mrs. Gregory,” he began, “there is not so very much difference between the East and West, after all. Perhaps we in the East have a finer sense of art; certainly we care more for nature. But we all have the same desires—ambitions—the same passions, hate, revenge—and love!” There was honey in the slow, well-bred voice now—honey and something else. It jarred on the Englishwoman, and she turned with a slightly uncomfortable look. Instantly his tone changed to one entirely courteous still, but ordinary and commonplace. “Will you not be seated?” he said simply. “Or shall I describe some of my ornaments? You look about you as if you were good enough to be interested in my Chinese bric-à-brac.”
“Yes—do—do,” she stammered desperately; “that—that wonderful thing there? That gorgeous-looking duck!”
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 object,” he said.
“Oh?” she asked.
“It is a mandarin duck,” Wu told her significantly. “And the mandarin duck with us, you know, is the emblem of conjugal fidelity!” He ended with a strange, low, sinister laugh. It was slight and very low, but it affected Florence Gregory weirdly. To cover up her own disconcerted inquietude she moved—at random—to one of the magnificent carved cedar columns beside the altar (Wu watching her with a grinning face) and pointed to the weapon hanging there. “And that sword up there?”
“That?” Wu laughed, and at the sound Ah Wong’s blood curdled in her breast; “yes, that’s an interesting thing. It has rather a curious history.”
Her procrastinated anxiety for her son, her thwarted hunger to see him, were unnerving her, and she was growing anxious on her own account, though that she scarcely realized and in no way could have explained.
“Oh?” she forced herself to say. But she said it lamely, and she could say no more.
Apparently Wu noticed nothing amiss. “Perhaps rather a gruesome one,” he said with a note of apology.
“Oh!” his guest said with a shudder; “well, then, don’t tell me! At the moment I don’t quite feel——”
“Then,” Wu interrupted her quickly, solicitously,252 even, “I will spare you its story,” but added more crisply, “for the present, at any rate.”
He moved easily about the room and proceeded in the most leisurely way to point out his treasures. “This,” he said, lifting a bowl from its place in one of the cabinets and bringing it to her, “will interest you very much. This is one of the famous dragon bowls—one of the first three ever made.”
“Indeed,” she said, “how very interesting!” But she could not hide her torture or her indifference.
Wu smiled cruelly into the priceless dragon bowl, and carried it back to its shelf even more slowly than he had brought it. “Up here”—he pointed to over one door—“I have what your English collectors call a three-border plate. I have a set of six. Up there”—he pointed to the top of another cabinet—“is another with five borders. It is almost unique. Li Hung Chang has one, Her Imperial Majesty the Dowager Empress has one, but they are very, very rare. And this”—indicating another bowl conspicuously placed on a carved ebony stand of its own on a malachite pedestal—malachite carved into coarse but exquisite lace—“is a Shangsi bowl. There are several in the house. Each one is worth something like two thousand pounds.” He took it in his hands and turned it about very, very slowly, now this way, now that, gloating over it as if he’d never be done. The woman could have screamed; and, in spite of her, a heavy sigh escaped. But Wu seemed not to hear it. He returned the Shangsi to its stand at last and crossed the room to a larger stand, and, laying down his fan, which he had held till now, took up a sea-green vase, beautifully molded, enormously glazed. “You must look at this, dear Mrs. Gregory,” he told her cordially, “you must253 look at this well. This is a particularly fine piece—this sea green glaze, Mrs. Gregory—one of the earliest productions of the ceramic art.”
Her face was twitching now with nervousness. He seemed to notice her perturbation for the first time, and said contritely, “But I fear I weary you with my treasures,” and carried the glaze back, very, very slowly, and put it down.
“No—no,” she said hastily, “no, Mr. Wu, not that—not that at all. But I have come here with only one object——”
“With two, dear lady,” he interrupted her gently; “you forget Madame Sing.”
“Indeed, oh, no—I—I did not mean that, forgive me—but my boy—his safety—to see him—my mind is full of that——” The mandarin smiled indulgently and took up his fan again. “I should like to come again, if I may, some other time—when we are older friends”—she was pleading now—“I should like to come again and spend hours examining all your wonderful treasures—if you will let me. I hope you will. But now—now—I have only one thought in my mind. I can have but the one.” Her voice trembled pitifully.
Wu Li Chang smiled indulgently. “I have been waiting, Mrs. Gregory,” he said explanatorily, “for you to dismiss your servant.”
Ah Wong fixed her eyes on her mistress, entreaty and misery in their narrow depths.
Mrs. Gregory looked at Wu in startled astonishment. “Dismiss her—Ah Wong? Do you mean send her away?”
“Only out of the room,” the mandarin said carelessly. “She can wait in the courtyard.”
254 “But—but I couldn’t possibly do that,” the visitor stammered. She was frightened now, and knew that she was.
“Nevertheless,” Wu returned, in a tone he had not used before, “I fear I must insist.”
Their eyes met. The Chinese eyes of the man, inscrutable, the English eyes of the woman, appealing, terrorized. And Ah Wong half thrust a hand in her bosom, then dropped it back quickly to her side.
“But, Mr. Wu,” Mrs. Gregory faltered, “it is such an extraordinary request to make—under the circumstances.”
“Not in the least,” Wu said smoothly—and he seemed somewhat amused. “Do you in England usually bring your servants into the drawing-rooms of your friends?”
“No-o. No,” she admitted lamely, “but—that seems different, somehow. I think, under the circumstances—and Madame Sing——”
Sing Kung Yah’s remissness as a hostess received no further comment from her kinsman. But he said emphatically, “I could not possibly offend the spirits of my ancestors by sitting down in the room with your servant.”
“Your ancestors, Mr. Wu! What on earth have they to do with a matter of modern propriety?”
“I said I should offend them,” the mandarin replied with ominous quietude.
“Well then,” the Englishwoman retorted, just a shade contemptuously, “they must be very thin-skinned.”
“Mrs. Gregory!” Wu Li Chang said so sternly that she turned and looked at him alarmed, “this afternoon your husband grievously offended me by certain disrespectful allusions to my ancestors. He knew better—or he should have done. You do not, for you are unacquainted with255 China. So you must pardon me if I point out to you that in China we pay the memory of our ancestors the deepest respect.”
“Oh!” she said unhappily, “I’m sorry—I’m so sorry. I wouldn’t offend you for the world.”
“Then will you kindly send your servant away?” Wu put his words in the sequence of a question, but there was neither interrogation nor request in his voice: it was cold, imperative and final.
The Englishwoman hesitated miserably. She was thoroughly alarmed now. “But,” she begged (for it was supplication—open, not implied), “Mr. Wu, I—I hope that I shall myself be going soon.”
Wu took no notice of what she said, and, for the time no further notice of Florence Gregory. He clapped his hands sharply, and at their sound Ah Sing stood in the doorway.
“Analiaotang,” the mandarin said quietly. The frightened Englishwoman understood no Chinese. But Wu’s tone—quiet as it was—said unmistakably, “Take her away.”
Ah Sing moved quietly on Ah Wong, and she, looking pathetically at her mistress, backed as slowly as she dared through the open door, from the room. But at the threshold she paused, glanced for an instant up at the high window, looked her mistress squarely in the eyes, bowed her head and was gone.
And Mrs. Gregory had returned her amah’s signal, look for look.
It was two women against one man; and one of those women was Chinese.
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