AGAIN, as Wu Li Chang passed through the office yards, the coolies almost groveled at his feet, and this time he threw a curt but not unpleasant word to one or two of them.
He had been with the Gregorys some time, the afternoon seemed at its hottest, but he was as fresh and crisp as when the close duel began; and yet in a more resilient, a more stimulated way, he had felt the strain as they had not, for he had known the story of Basil and Nang Ping.
But “crisp” and “fresh” were the last words that could be applied to the shipper or his wife, or, for that matter, to any of their companions. Robert Gregory was having a stiff “peg,” and needed it; and Mrs. Gregory, less unnerved, was tired and anxious enough. And Holman and his fellow faithful few were on desperate tenterhooks both for their chief (he was roughly lovable and not a mean master) and for the threatened business to which they were sincerely and doggedly devoted.
Perhaps Tom Carruthers and Ah Wong were the two Gregoryites least unhinged by the day’s fusillade of miscarriage and by its recurrent stalemate. Ah Wong was anxious, but she had been racked by no surprise. Of the Steamship Company’s business she knew little—and cared less. But, even so, she probably had, next toWu Li Chang, a correcter estimate of the whole complicated situation than any one else. Bradley and Holman came next in prescience, but neither of them suspected, much less knew of, the particular slant the diabolism of Wu’s vengeance had taken, or of the appointment he had made with Basil’s mother.
Tom Carruthers was “no end” sorry, and sincerely so. But he could not quite help getting a certain enjoyment out of it all. He was built that way—and he was only twenty-four—and he had come to China to have an occasional nibble at the spice of things, almost as much as he had come to master the details of a business to which his father had assigned him not too sanguinely. The bankruptcy that positively seemed to threaten the great firm could not even embarrass him. His father was a very rich man (as mere British wealth went), and he himself an only child. Mr. Gregory’s wealth had not in the least added to Hilda’s charm in Tom Carruthers’ eyes.
But the depression at the office was growing tormenting, and so was the heat, and Robert Gregory’s nervous irritability was a bit trying, so when Hilda announced her determination to “go home” Tom resigned the affairs of the business cheerfully enough and picked up his hat.
Hilda saw that she could do nothing for her father by “hanging round.” And “hanging round” was an occupation she particularly disliked. And when she learned that her mother had slipped off with Ah Wong without a word, she said, “How shabby!” and prepared to follow suit.
Robert Gregory scarcely noticed his wife’s defalcation—and certainly did not resent it. The business turmoil did not lesson with the lessening day; it increased.His tired, unsteadied hands were overflowing full, and towards dinner-time (another whiskey and soda had taken the place of tea) he deputed Murray to ’phone Mrs. Gregory that he would not be home till very late that night, if at all. Hilda had answered the ’phone, and had said, “All right,” Murray reported. And Gregory grunted an acknowledgment, paying little attention, engrossed in other things.
Florence Gregory was a just and a good-humored mistress, not an indulgent one. And she was in no way of the class of women who court or accept the advice of their servants. Even in the days of her modest Oxford housekeeping, when her own youthfulness and the deficiencies of the vicarage purse would have made most girls so placed peculiarly vulnerable to the insidious encroachment of hireling “I wills,” and “I won’ts,” she had been truly mistress of that manse, adamant towards would-be familiarity. And that natural smooth caste hardness had not softened under the flux of travel or the sunshine of affluence. From their first quarter of an hour together she had commanded distinctly, and Ah Wong, without comment, had obeyed. During the last week Mrs. Gregory had leaned not a little on her amah, sensing in the Chinese woman, who too was a mother, a something of sympathy that even Hilda could not give her, but she had in no way abrogated any of her personal autocracy to Ah Wong or let the space of discipline between them lessen. When Ah Wong had exclaimed, “No, no, madame! Not go!” the first liberty Ah Wong had ever taken, the mistress had scarcely heard and had not heeded; but when, on their return to the Peak, the amah had again urged “Not go!” Mrs. Gregory had checked her sternly, and Ah Wong had known that it was worse than useless to repeat the entreaty.To appeal to any one else, against her mistress—to Missee Hilda, to the master, or even to John Bradley—never occurred to her. And she submitted silently, only venturing a piteous, “Me clome? Madame take Ah Wong?”
“Of course,” Mrs. Gregory said, not unkindly. “He expressly said I should bring you.”
That there could be no question between them as to who “He” was told clearly of how Wu Li Chang had gripped the thought of both these women, and (at least of one) had gripped also the imagination.
At five o’clock—the hotness of the terrific day was scarcely waning yet, and Hilda and Tom in the darkened sitting-room were eating ices with their tea—Mrs. Gregory and Ah Wong went quietly out and took the next car down the Peak. On the level (such level as terraced Victoria City can show) the amah hailed two rickshaws, and they bowled inconspicuously to the water’s edge.
They did not use the ferry. A little boat was waiting for them. Ah Wong had secured it by messenger; and she took care that the jinrickshaw men should hear her tell the boatmen where they were to pole—which they already knew perfectly.
And then she sat down at her mistress’s feet and waited. She had done all she could.
The boat slipped slowly through the gurgling water, the coolies sing-singing droningly as they poled her. Neither of the women spoke until the little vessel grated against the shore. Ah Wong was strangely calm, her very nerves hushed but alert in her lady’s service, and the Englishwoman felt calmer than she had been for days, soothed that she was doing something definite at last, and not a little confident in the promise of Wu Li Chang.
She had made a special and somewhat magnificent toilet for this visit, pathetically anxious to seem to pay every honor to the Chinese lady for whose social peace of mind the mandarin had seemed so anxious. Mrs. Gregory was wearing more jewelry than she had ever worn before in the daytime, so thinking to do honor to a hostess who was of the inordinately jewelry-loving Chinese race. Even the wonderful bracelet—kept until now for functions of real importance—was hidden beneath the laces of her sleeve.
The boat grated in the gritty earth, and Mrs. Gregory looked up, glad to have arrived, confident of her reception and of the wisdom of her visit.
Wu Li Chang need not have been at such pains to tempt his prey and to bait his trap. Convention did not exist for Florence Gregory now, or fear. Basil and Basil’s plight left her no thought, no consciousness of lesser things. And she had as little thought of the safety or danger of her act as she had of its propriety or impropriety. But if she had known her coming at Wu’s bidding to Kowloon to be as imperilled as it was, and as Ah Wong sensed it, still she would have come, as unflinchingly, for Basil. Wu Li Chang had squandered inducement needlessly. And he need not have played poor Sing Kung Yah for trumps.
That widowed gentlewoman was greatly bewildered and scarcely less perturbed. Never before had she returned home ungreeted by Nang Ping. And of Nang Ping she could hear nothing. To all her questions the servants were deaf. The honorable master would tell his honorable kinslady all to interest her in his own honorable time. To them he had commanded silence.
She could not see Low Soong; it was forbidden—for a time. Wu Li Chang she scarcely saw; and, whenshe did, him she dared not question. He sent her to call on an English lady in the Barbarians’ Hotel on the Peak, and she went, half dead with embarrassment, and carrying a splendid offering of flowers. The lady was out—the mandarin had almost counted on that—and Sing Kung Yah scudded back home, as fast as she could induce the servants to carry her, and burned a score of “thank-you” joss-sticks.
That she was to receive that same lady to-day, and at the very gates, was a care, but one that sat on her more lightly. She was at home here, surrounded by her customary servants, and she might know more or less what to do, how to conduct herself in the unprecedented presence of a foreign guest. And she was thinking of Nang Ping far more than of her own approaching social ordeal, as she sat in her own apartment eating perfumed ginger and quails dressed with sour clotted cream, and waiting for the summons to the gate.
Both were very good: the ginger embedded in jelly-of-rose leaves, and the hot, hot quail smothered in thick ice-cold sauce. She was very nervous, but somewhat phlegmatically resigned, plying her delicate chop-sticks industriously, now in the deep blue and white Nankin-ware jar of fragrant confiture, now in the silver dish where the sizzling, savory quail was too hot to be cooled by the icy cream, the sour cream too cold to be lukewarmed by the quail.
Just at six her summons came. She sighed a little, gulped down a tiny bowlful of bright green tea, and toddled off almost confidently to play hostess to the lady of the mandarin’s latest whim, a little at a loss for herself, but happily and proudly confident that Wu Li Chang could do no wrong, much less blunder, and toddling fantastically because her feet were very small—SingKung Yah had no claim to Manchu blood, had had no traveled eccentric for a father and lord, and so, unlike Nang Ping, her feet had been well bound. Because she was a widow she used no cosmetics. But her clothes could not have been gayer: she was gorgeous.
She was standing smiling at the gate, servants on either side, when the Englishwoman reached it. And when Mrs. Gregory held out her hand she took it warmly, giggled and held it to her cheek, said a gurgling something that sounded Italian but wasn’t, and drew her guest along the path to Wu Li Chang’s threshold.
The two women went hand in hand, and Ah Wong walked close behind, carrying a tortoise-shell card-case in her hand. If anxiety and torture had made Basil’s mother oblivious of conventions as they affected herself, they made her acutely careful to avoid every possible giving of offense and appearance of slight. And she would not forget to leave three cards, of her own and Hilda’s, one for each of the ladies of Wu’s household.
Her reception encouraged her. This little creature was very friendly, and it was nice of Mr. Wu to have stationed her at the gate, for he was master of the smallest details here, she made no doubt of that. She wondered at what point Miss Wu would appear, and the funny, pigeon-plump cousin.
They went along the tortuous paths, through the lovely, elaborate gardens (not Nang Ping’s garden), hand in hand up to the very door, and Sing Kung Yah chatted incessantly in her pretty, musical mandarin Chinese, and the guest said an amiable word now and then. Neither understood a word the other said, or ever could, and Sing Kung Yah thought that screamingly funny—and screamed with high-pitched, tinkly laughter.
The sun was brilliant still. Flowers leaned with friendly welcome from every ledge and corner. How perfectly absurd Ah Wong had been!
And Ah Wong kept closer and closer, growing more terrified every moment.
At the door Sing Kung Yah slid her hand gently away, and, toddling back a step, gestured laughing that Mrs. Gregory was to go in first.
When the door had closed again, the guest was surprised to find that the hostess had stayed outside. On what “Martha” errand had the little housewife thought it necessary to go herself, in this household overflowing with servants? But she was not altogether sorry. It was the mandarin she wished to see—to hear what his success had been. Perhaps it was his kindness that had arranged it so. But she must not forget to ask the Wu ladies to lunch, and, above all, she must remember to leave cards. The Chinese set such store on such things.
She caught her breath. The servant who was conducting her paused at a door. Probably she would see the mandarin now.