She was glad, then, to hear of their encounter with two Englishmen. Kuei-lien knew by hearsay the free and easy intercourse by which Western men and maids fostered romance; what she had learned considerably overshot the mark, allowing it to seem all the more plausible that here was an easy way for disposing of Nancy. So she renewed her friendliness with the girl, doing her best to laugh away the morbid accident of the kiss. Their relations were never quite so comfortable as before; but the child was young and excited by her first glimpse of two strangers, and she was curious enough to hear eagerly all that Kuei-lien suggested.
With Kuei-lien's encouragement it became a habit for Nancy and Edward to go walking by themselves. No one had forbidden them. Several days of rain and Herrick's annoyance at meeting impudent intruders from his own country had interrupted the father's inclination to stroll with his children. The nurse was busy managing the house; because of her bound feet she could not have walked even had she wished. So the brother and sister assumed tacit consent for little excursions to the bottom of the ravine, whither Kuei-lien often went with them. Very happy they were to lie on the sun-baked rocks, where they could watch the dragon flies skim between the boulders and could toss leaves into the limpid pools of the stream.
These were mere short flights, a testing of the wings. Kuei-lien pretended much interest in the place where Nancy and Edward had met their Englishmen and when she suggested going there she noticed the flush of color which betrayed Nancy's own eagerness.
"Yes, there are beautiful flowers there," said the younger girl quickly.
"Aha, my child," thought Kuei-lien, "it's not the flowers you will be seeking."
There were flowers in great abundance, harebells, Michaelmas daisies, campanula, single larkspur velvety indigo in color. Of all these Nancy picked lavishly and then piled her blue spoils on the grass where she knelt looking at them, a little sorry because she had picked them and could never give back the radiant lives she had taken.
"What lots of flowers you have plucked," said Kuei-lien, smiling at Nancy's thoughtfulness. "Are you glad?"
"No," said Nancy, "I am sad for them. They die so quickly."
"What does it matter? There will be hundreds more to-morrow."
"Yes, but not these."
"They give us happiness; isn't that enough?"
"I have picked too many," said Nancy; "one would have given me happiness. Oh, my flowers, my flowers," she cried, "I am sorry because I killed you! One would have given me happiness, yet I have taken so many."
Impulsively she turned to Kuei-lien with a serious look in her dark eyes.
"Is that all they live for, just to give us happiness?"
"Just to give us happiness," Kuei-lien echoed.
"Then to whom do we give happiness? What do we live for?"
"We are flowers, too," laughed the older girl, amused by the soberness of Nancy's question. "We give happiness to men."
Her reply was not meant to be flippant, but from Kuei-lien's lips it came too truthfully. It stirred in Nancy's newly informed, her bitterly informed, heart a distaste for her womanly fortune.
She looked down the rugged valley, saw the mellow colors of the hills, a distant gleam of the plain, all suffused through a patina of golden sunshine, and a shadow troubled her youthful face at the thought that she could not belong to these forever, that she could not be like the yellow butterfly hovering above the flowers or like the hawk Edward blithely was chasing, but must be cooped up amid the tattle of women's quarters to give—the picture stuck in her brain—to give happiness to men.
The unhurried tones of a bell sounded from some far recess of the mountains. Instinctively Nancy bent her head to the ground. Three times before her little heap of blossoms she touched her forehead to the grass.
"Why are you doing that?" asked Kuei-lien in surprise.
"I am worshiping my flowers," said Nancy simply, "for I am going to be a nun."
Nancy's sincerity shocked her companion into silence for the moment. But it was not likely to be a long silence. When they had shaken off the glamour of that golden afternoon and walked moodily home, stilling even Edward's chatter by a dumbness for which he could divine no reason, Kuei-lien began to recover the spirits which Nancy's perverse temper had dampened. "A nun!" The joke was too good to keep. Supported by the comfortable materialism of the dinner table with its bowls of steaming white rice, she could wax merry at Nancy's expense; the ghosts of blue flowers could not enter here to throw their depressing spell. Kuei-lien was like a man who has been through great fear and now tries to preserve the illusion of courage by laughing at the meagre thing that had frightened him.
Edward readily became her ally and laughed louder than any at his sister's new whim.
"You mustn't eat any meat," he jested, pushing the bowl of pork balls out of Nancy's reach, "and you must shave your head. Bring a knife, amah, and some incense and we'll make her a nun now. It will be lots of fun burning the nine spots on her head. Ah, but you will be a pretty sight, Nancy, just like a bald-headed old woman. When you come begging, we'll give you rice crusts. O-mi-t'o-fu! O-mi-t'o-fu!"
Nancy took his teasing good-naturedly, avoiding his attempt to seize her hair and making a nimble raid on the pork balls with her chopsticks; she was not yet Buddhist enough to forgo the delights of meat. She did not even resent the aspersions uttered against her future calling and listened composedly enough to tales about the depravity of nuns. They were all bad or ignorant women, said Kuei-lien, and became nuns because their parents were simpletons. No respectable girl ought even to talk of nuns, and if she became one her family could never lift up their heads again, such would be the disgrace she had brought. The old nurse had her share to add to the bantering: they were such dirty creatures. How could they have time for prayers when they were being consumed by vermin? And you can't kill the vermin, hai! that was forbidden; you must let them eat till they were fat. What was the holiness of being eaten by bugs?
The old nurse had been contaminated by the Western veneration of the bath.
Nancy listened to it all with the amused smile of one who enjoys being the topic of conversation. She was not seriously touched by their dissuasion because her latest ambition was still far from taking deep root. Suddenly attracted by the purity of heaven and earth and growing things, she had put into words an unformed wish, but the wish had no kinship to the sordid details of the dining-room gossip. There was momentary longing to be caught up from the turmoil of humankind, but the longing did not persist. Nancy was glad enough to jest with Kuei-lien and the amah, she needed the sight of Edward's cheerful face and relished the savoriness of the evening meal. It was good to be well fed and comfortable, good to sleep soundly in a warm bed. So Nancy felt no urgency to resist those who teased her, even though the impulse remained more faithful than she guessed, a passion to become one with the clean beauty of the sunlight and the blue sky.
She went to bed happily tired, but a glimpse of the stars, after she had puffed out her candle, was like seeing a golden net overspreading the earth to make her dreams captive.
Herrick alone did not ridicule Nancy's wish.
"Why shouldn't she be a nun if she wants?" he asked Kuei-lien, when the girl jokingly mentioned his daughter's new ambition.
"You encourage a freakish ambition like that?" exclaimed Kuei-lien, unable to believe her ears.
"I don't say I encourage it; I haven't thought of it at all. But if Nancy with all her heart chooses to be a nun, I shouldn't stop her."
"Nuns are bad, dissolute women."
"Some may be, but not all."
"'Ten nuns: nine bad, and one mad,'" scoffed the concubine.
"Are you happy?" asked the man, giving the argument a disconcerting shift.
"Madly happy," Kuei-lien replied, hiding by a smile of curious irony not only all signs that the question had startled her but every hint as to what she meant by her answer.
"Well, I am not, and I'm sure I don't wish to deny Nancy her own way of seeking peace when mine has failed."
Kuei-lien shrugged her shoulders over the bad taste of such frankness.
"You take her child's notions too seriously," she said.
"Yes, but what am I to do with her?" inquired Herrick, openly acknowledging his perplexity over the problem he would not admit had been vexing him.
"Do you ask advice from the lowest of your servants? Surely her poor wisdom cannot solve matters of such difficulty."
Herrick knew that Kuei-lien was jeering at him behind her studied modesty.
"Don't talk this farcical nonsense to me," he cried, brusquely impatient of the Eastern ways it had been his habit to extol. "If your poor wisdom is able to criticize the girl's own plan, it is able to suggest something better."
"Why shouldn't she marry? No father who loves his daughter neglects to have her married. She isn't sick; why should she be a nun?"
"Marrying is not easy and you know it. Suppose I call the matchmaker; what will she find for me? Can she find a son-in-law good enough for my daughter, a son-in-law with the same learning, the same training?"
"That was your fault in wasting money to have her taught."
"The money wasn't wasted. That's not my meaning at all. What I mean is that families of her rank and education will be afraid to betroth their sons to her because she isn't Chinese. Yet in speech and ways, even in the color of her hair, she is as thoroughly Chinese as any girl they could get. Healthier too and better looking. But the good families would be too conservative to consider the match and even a swaggering squint-eyed upstart of a returned student would think he was doing Nancy a favor to be her husband."
"Why marry her to a Chinese? Haven't you men in the West?"
This was the obviously pertinent question Herrick himself had been facing. He made up for argument by an outburst of temper.
"Why do you think I have gone to all this trouble these many years to have my children reared as Chinese?"
"I don't know," confessed Kuei-lien.
"Because the West has nothing but a beastly machine-ridden civilization, nothing but thoughts of merchandise and profit, fattening the bodies and thinning the souls of its people. A Westerner couldn't live in these mountains, for example, without wanting to dam the stream and make an electric plant. He wouldn't see the color of the hills, the light of the dawning sun shining on stones and trees; he would suffer an unbearable itch to change them, to make them useful. Bah! Every one of them is a materialist; none of them know the finer relationships of life. I haven't brought up my daughter to be the wife of a bank clerk."
"Oh," said Kuei-lien blankly, implying by her colorless response to Herrick's enthusiasm that she considered him a palpable fool.
"No, I won't destroy all she has learned," the man went on, "I won't make her a Western barbarian by marrying the girl to a man who can talk of nothing but golf and horses and the fluctuations of rubber shares. She would much better be a nun. Some day I think I shall divide everything I own between you—that would be more seemly than having the five of you fight for it after I die—then I'll go into the mountains with Nancy and Edward and enjoy a hermitage of my own."
"I'll go with you," mocked Kuei-lien. "You won't be happy without women in your hermitage."
"You'll go where the money goes. I am too old to be deceived by sweet phrases. Any man can be let alone if he is poor enough. It is only the rich who are burdened with women."
Kuei-lien was intensely amused by this expression of contempt.
"What a funny man you are," she exclaimed, laughing merrily, as she threw her arms round his neck in the foreign way she had needed small prompting to learn. "You are not a hermit yet; ai ya, you pitiable fellow, to be so heavily burdened with women!"
Herrick, like Nancy, was content to postpone his dreams of the monastery.
Not to forget them, however. When a chance offered, he called for Nancy in order to question her. He had never discussed marriage with the girl; it was not the custom for a father to mention such subjects to his daughter. But to raise the question in English seemed excusable. So the man, seeking help from Nancy herself on the difficult problem of her future, found she listened decorously in the Western tongue to matters she would have blushed to hear, had they been proposed to her in Chinese.
"They tell me you wish to be a nun," said the father, smiling while he spoke.
"I made some undutiful remarks," acknowledged the girl, afraid her father would laugh at the enormity of her desire. "I cannot go against my father's wishes."
"Very properly said," exclaimed Herrick, not really at ease in his role of a Confucian father. He had not been born to it. He could never quite believe Nancy's filial attitude was genuine; the words, sounding so odd in English, were like speeches rehearsed for a play. He at least was consciously theatrical, when he answered them. "Very properly said," he approved, "but a father's wishes are those which will make his daughter happy."
This was the way he expressed himself, solemn words comporting the dignity of a parent, though what he really would have given worlds to say was, "Kiss me, child; sit on my knee, rub your hands through my hair, and let's stop pretending we're grown-ups. We've years before we need bother over a frivolous subject like marriage." Alas, the Confucian canons did not permit such playfulness.
"I have been thinking about your marriage," Herrick went on, stumbling pitifully for words after this regretful glimpse of all the demonstrative pleasantries of affection he had lost. "It is time we considered these things."
Nancy became visibly paler.
"These are new times, new manners," he said, momentarily homesick for the schooldays when he first learned the phrase in its noble classical context—how long, long ago that was! Who would have thought he would be quoting it to this strange dark-haired daughter! "New times, new manners. Formerly we arranged these things early"—he was the Chinese father now—"and we looked for peace only when our daughters were safely married. We are a better generation, Nancy, better in a few things at least, and we want peace for our daughters too, not merely selfish peace for ourselves."
Nancy stood entranced. She heard his slow words not because they seemed to have any meaning but because there was a grave rhythm to his speech which suggested peace of another kind from anything the painful stumblings of the human tongue could evoke; his speech went with the drowsy sound of the pines, the noise of falling water in the ravine. Why knit the brows in a feeble effort to conjure up peace when peace encompassed them, when it folded them in the hypnotic embrace of the sunshine, giving these transitory moments their eternal quality?
Herrick struggled to rouse himself.
"How shall we marry you, Nancy?" he asked abruptly. "What kind of husband do you want: 'Rich man, poor man, beggar man, thief'?"
What made that jingle come faintly back from the day when he first learned it? He really must stop this silly habit of letting outworn, long-forgotten phrases run through his mind. It was childish. "What kind of husband do you want, Nancy?"
The question cut shabbily into the passionless quiet of Nancy's trance. The sunlight and the wind seemed to have gone on and left her behind them. All that lovable outdoor world was receding as life itself might recede from a dying man. Frantic anxiety rent the girl's heart, a wish to rush out and call on all these things to wait, not to hurry so fast, lest she never again hear the birds singing or play with Edward through the brilliant hours of the morning.
"What kind of husband do you want, Nancy?"
"I don't know," she answered.
"Do you really want to be a nun?"
"I don't know."
Not even that could she answer.
"It is very hard for me to decide," the father complained gently enough, "unless I know what you do really wish."
"I want to stay like this forever—forever!" suddenly blurted out the girl, done with mild evasion, and repeating the last phrase so that she surely must be understood.
Herrick felt old. The interview had sapped his blood of its buoyancy.
"Ah, if we could, if we only could," he muttered. He could hardly trust himself to look at Nancy. She brought to his mind the defiant beauty of her mother; it was no use to-day trying to hold his mind back from rambling through roadways of the past. "No, Nancy, neither you nor I nor anyone can stay like this forever. I thought I could once. We grow up in spite of ourselves, child. The happy times are just a day, a short day at that, and then—finish."
The tension was eased by this last bit of prosiness.
"Well, we're not getting forward with our difficulty," Herrick was able to say in a more matter-of-fact voice. "I won't ask you any more questions because I don't think you know yourself what you wish. I have just one more thing I want you to do; I want you to bring me the most precious thing you have, the thing you like better than anything else, no matter what it is. That will help me."
Herrick waited curiously for his commission to be performed and teased himself imagining what the girl would bring. He would know in what direction her fancy ran more clearly than she could tell him. "Butcher, baker, candle-maker—" How could he stop this accursed rhyme from ringing in his head?
Nancy was gone a long time but at last she returned.
"What did you bring?" her father asked.
The girl held in her hand a flat object wrapped in silk. She took off the covering and to his surprise Herrick saw a little wooden tablet, carved and gilded, and so exquisitely done he could hardly believe Nancy's confession that she and Edward had made it.
"It is the spirit of our mother," she said in Chinese.
Herrick took the fragile object from her hands. He looked at the golden characters so faithfully written. Their meaning he knew well enough, but his eyes seemed too blurred to read the letters distinctly. With great difficulty he restrained himself from falling low before this little thing of wood. The task of deciding Nancy's fate was too much for him. He was tired.
"You are your mother's daughter," he said. "Nancy, Nancy, Nancy—I cannot choose for you."
Kuei-lien tried in vain to learn what had been said between father and daughter. She could get no clue. Herrick smilingly told her that Nancy was too young to think of marriage. "We needn't bother about it till the time comes." She was afraid to ask open questions from the child, who was mistress of a baffling, innocent reserve at times, which outwitted the clever fencing of the concubine.
Kuei-lien was not idly curious. Her acute instinct told her plainly that momentous things had been said, things closely concerned with her own fortune. She read this much in the faces of the man and the girl. She read news of defeat and was vexed to find herself worsted by an enemy she could not circumvent.
Already it was August, the last sultriness of summer; the terrific rains, which would not come again for ten months, had poured down the mountain side and swamped the plains. Even the rockiest slopes were a lush green, while camels, ungainly brutes in charge of little naked boys who guided their movements with a well-aimed pebble, had excellent pasturage at the foot of the hills. The days would be clear now, but soon there would be frost; the leaves of the maples would change color. Herrick detested cold weather, would be restless for the warmer comforts of town. If there were to be any profit from this solitary retreat to the mountains Kuei-lien knew it was time to make haste.
She altered her tactics, recognizing now that the episode of the kiss, laughable though it had seemed, had snapped her hold upon Nancy. So she diverted her attention to Edward, who was a quick, lively youngster, ready to venture forth and slay monsters. The watchtower was always a goad to the boy's imagination, making him aware that he was treading the byways of an ancient hunting park where the Tatar princes used to send swift arrows to the heart of their quarry. Edward prepared his own bow and arrows while Kuei-lien stirred him to mimic the exploits of his dead heroes. He took advantage of Herrick's nodding eye and wandered far afield, achieving merciless execution upon the trees and stones which were all these degenerate days offered in place of the tigers and bears and antlered stags men once hunted. He did get one thrilling glimpse of a fox, which he magnified in his excitement to a leopard, and he often twanged his bow ineffectually in the wake of rabbits and pheasants. His most vigilant guard, however, was against foreigners. Against their approach he had built a little beacon tower of stone, and he secreted dry sticks from the all-seeing eye of the fuel-gatherer so that when the time came, when alien hordes approached threatening from the West, he could light a warning flame and save the golden roofs of Peking!
Inevitably Edward pressed Nancy into his play. What was the good of a sister unless she lent herself to something useful? Nancy was quick enough to justify her own usefulness and not content to take merely passive roles, to be nothing better than the Mongol foe or the harassed tiger, which Edward with traditions unconsciously derived from the boys of his English ancestral country thought a girl and a sister predestined to play. The two children climbed and played and quarreled and smiled again and explored devious sheep tracks with a freedom they had never known; they grew bolder and bolder in the distances they ventured, plunging down the gravelly paths before the sun was high and trying to outstretch the light of the evening twilight.
Kuei-lien knew just how lengthy was the chase Edward and Nancy were leading. Stealthily she filled the boy with the hearsay she picked up, the whereabouts of the foreigners, how they had been seen roaming near the White Horse Temple or the Clear Spring Pagoda, not only men, but women and children, always seeking some far-away place where they spread a white cloth on the ground and sat down promiscuously to eat food from tins and bottles.
One afternoon, when Kuei-lien held their father amused and little inclined to disturb them with projects of his own, Edward drew Nancy aside and whispered his plans for the most daring raid yet projected. He intended nothing less than to scale the heights which overlooked the summer village of the foreigners.
"I shall need all my arrows," he said.
"You can't shoot them," Nancy scoffed.
"I can shoot at them, anyway."
"Well, don't ask me to carry the bow if it gets heavy."
Edward grunted amiably and led his sister through the sleeping house. An air of mystery came naturally to the occasion, for he knew the expedition they were starting on was not one to win the blessing of his father. Walking was hot so early in the afternoon, but the boy and girl trudged forward valiantly, two slim figures in blue jackets and trousers who startled an occasional wood-cutter, when they stopped to ask the way, making him wonder what part of the realms of Han produced such unusual faces.
"We can see them from there," said Edward, pointing to a ridge of furrowed rock.
"Can we ever get to it?" asked Nancy. "It seems days away."
"Tired already?"
Nancy was too proud to be outdone by a younger brother. She redoubled her efforts, hot and weary though she was, and felt rewarded when they reached the remains of an imperial hunting forest, a grove of stout pines shimmering with silver bark, which thrilled the girl by their stateliness.
"There is a temple," she said. "Let's rest a few minutes. Perhaps they will bring us tea."
"It's late," said Edward anxiously. The ridge was still a mile or two distant. "We have to go back, you know. We can't waste time."
But Nancy suddenly felt overcome by a thirstiness which would yield to nothing but many cups of boiling tea. She hurried toward the red-washed walls of the monastery, while Edward, whose conscience could not quell his own thirst, followed only half unwillingly.
The temple was neither large nor beautiful, but it was cool. They passed the four monstrous figures of the Heavenly Kings and threw barely a look at the fat little Maitreya with distended belly, who sat in a glass case, cheerfully oblivious of the scowling guardians of the portal. Beyond the first court with its iron incense-burner a monk greeted them, uttering the mystical name, to which they replied in his own words, "O-mi-t'o-fu." He led them to a table by the door and left them surveying the gilded company of the gods while he brought hot water to make an infusion of tea in the cracked cups.
"Oughtn't we to give him money?" suggested Edward. "I didn't bring any."
"We'll bring it next time," said Nancy, determined that nothing should stand between her and the tea she craved.
Edward, however, was too honest not to tell the monk and was easier in mind when the latter deprecated all talk of payment. Another monk, fingering his beads, came and sat down beside the children. Nancy did not like him so well; he showed brown discolored teeth when he laughed and his eyes protruded like the eyes in the fierce images behind him.
"You are foreigners?" he asked.
"No," said Edward, scornfully, "we are Chinese."
The monk treated this as an excellent jest and repeated it to his companion, as though Edward's fluent Chinese needed translation. He asked the other usual questions, how old they were, who were their family, where they were going, but to every word he gave an impertinent accent which Nancy could not keep from resenting.
"Let's go," she said to Edward in English, "I don't want any more tea."
"You are foreigners," exclaimed the monk in triumph, convinced by this utterance of an unfamiliar tongue.
"We are not foreigners," Edward stoutly objected; "my father is a Chinese official."
The man laughed again.
"I don't like him," said Nancy, again in English.
"Pooh," was Edward's response, "you can't expect manners from a priest."
"I don't care. I am not going to stay any longer. We shall never get home."
Edward stood up too, apologizing profusely because he had brought no money and promising faithfully that he would recompense their trouble on his next visit. The monks would not hear of excuses; they would never have considered taking money for so mean an act of simple hospitality. The boy, of course, knew their words were spoken merely from politeness, but he felt so encouraged by their affable courtesy as to inquire the shortest way to the ridge they were seeking.
"Oh, from our back door it is only a few steps," replied his yellow-toothed host. "I'll show you."
He preceded them round the three great Buddhas who sat in repose on lotus flowers, stopping first to point out to them the wizened embalmed figure of the holy man of the temple, an old abbot whose sanctified flesh had resisted the process of decay. The children looked with awe at the shriveled body over which a cloak of faded red satin had been thrown. Its clawlike finger nails, the sparse hairs protruding from the gilt which did not hide the wrinkles of the face, the puny withered legs on which the dead man sat, reminded them of a monkey profanely set up beneath a canopy of gold and scarlet. The sight filled them with horror. Nancy gladly hurried into the courtyard beyond and followed the direction the monk pointed while he waited for Edward, who wanted one more look at the hideous corpse.
She passed through a door, took a step or two, then paused in alarm. This was a room, not a passage. She must have taken the wrong turning. Before she had sufficient presence of mind to go back, she heard a grating noise and wheeled round just in time to see the grinning lips of the monk as he slammed the door in her face. There followed a creaking of wooden bolts. She dashed frantically to the door, but, as she anticipated all too correctly, it would not yield.
For the moment she was too much frightened over what might be happening to Edward to consider her own peril. She heard his voice crying shrilly, "What have you done with my sister?" then the voice of the monk grunting, "Catch the little rat." After this came noise of a scuffle and an exclamation of pain, then some cursing which seemed to show that Edward had outwitted the man who was trying to capture him. The noise went with a rush into the hall beyond so that Nancy, whose heart was beating tumultuously, could not follow the further fortunes of her brother. She was in an agony of fear for his safety and looked wildly round the room to see what she could do. There was the first and obvious precaution of drawing the inner bolts of the door so that she was secure for the present from any but a violent attempt to break into the chamber.
As a matter of fact, Edward had done well. The instant he realized the evil purpose of the monk he had drawn his bow tight, suddenly glad and proud of the weapon Nancy had derided. When the monk rushed forward to seize him, Edward had let his arrow fly, catching his adversary a blow in the pit of the stomach which effectually checked the attack. The man took some seconds to regain his breath. They were enough for Edward to run swiftly across the courtyards to the outer hall of the temple where the other monk was still fumbling with the gates. He was too slow. Edward eluded him and dashed down the path till after a flight of several hundred yards he realized no one was pursuing. Then he paused. The exhilaration of his doughty resistance forsook him. He wanted to boast to Nancy about his prowess as a marksman; he had vanquished a real enemy. But there came the stupefying memory that Nancy herself was in great danger and that he must save her.
Nancy was not only in great danger but sadly depressed by the quiet which ensued upon Edward's escape. She did not have even the comfort of knowing that the boy was free. The sound of excited voices came from a distant part of the monastery but no clue to what had happened.
The girl looked anxiously about her prison. It was a bare, whitewashed room, fortunately with only the one door, but also without a vestige of furniture which could help her in climbing to the high square windows. She tried jumping in hope of grasping the wooden frame, but the effort was too great. Her hands slipped uselessly down the rough tiles. After wearing herself out in frantic leaps, she sat down exhausted on the floor, sobbing convulsively as she realized that her only chance of escape depended upon Edward—the possibility that he had been more successful and got away to call help.
This passive ordeal was heart-rending, for Nancy had ample time to remember all the tales of monks and their evil doings, which the women of the household were wont to relate with much gloating zest. She was under no illusions about their lust, their greed, their cruelty, their perverted ways. She had heard too many stories about young girls kidnapped and held in lewd bondage while their families searched for years, unable to secure any hint of where they had been taken; she knew too that these lonely monasteries often were the haunt of bandits who recruited their wives from the guileless women who came to worship; they were places where rascals hid children while they extorted ransom from wealthy parents. Only the other day Nancy had been told of a boy whose ears had been cut off and sent by post to his parents to hurry payment of the money the robbers had demanded. Would they treat Edward this way?—or herself?
She tried to avoid pondering the details of her own fate, but she could not blot them out of mind. She would not yield, she vowed, but she guessed the ruthless torturing ways of these men when they wished to bend a handsome girl to their will. In a spurt of energy she jumped up to examine the fastenings of the door. They were strong. She took off the garters of brilliant orange elastic which she used, like modern Chinese girls, now that the fad of silk stockings had ousted the old foot wrappings. If the worst came to the worst she might be able to hang herself from the bolts on the door; alas, her experiments in the performance of suicide were not very convincing: the garters were too short and if she used the string which held her trousers in place she might practise too successfully and give finality to a rehearsal which was meant to be tentative. Yet the interest of examining the articles of her clothing for their possible use in suicide had the paradoxical result of cheering the girl and diverting her from the extreme depths of morbid terror. It was like planning a game to think how self-destruction could be effected by the limited means at her command. Nancy became more light-hearted over the problem of this danger which had swooped down so unexpectedly from the gayety of a summer stroll. The temple, at all events, had relapsed into quiet. The girl's courage was not put too quickly to the crisis of defending her door.
Edward's elation vanished when he thought of his sister shut helplessly in the temple from which he had got free. He stood irresolute, unable to think. Then he realized that Nancy's safety depended upon him. But there was no vigorous response of energy because he knew, if he ran the whole distance home, Nancy might be ravished and murdered or carried far into the mountains before he could bring help. To go or to stay, the question daunted his powers of decision. But he felt, after a mental debate which seemed to protract minutes to hours, that he must know something more of what was threatening Nancy.
Warily he grasped his bow and tiptoed through the trees toward the monastery. He listened like a scout for every sound. The crackle of twigs beneath his own feet set his heart beating. He came at last to a place where he could survey the front of the temple. The gates were shut. Birds screeched in the trees above him but not a murmur issued from the building.
Edward was perplexed. The silence frightened him. He went cautiously round to the side. In this direction must lie the room into which he had seen Nancy disappear. But the temple was like a fortress; its tall vacant walls mocked scrutiny. There were a few windows at the back, but too high to be reached without a ladder. He dared not come close enough to stand beneath them and call for Nancy. There were the trees, however, and they suggested the expedient of climbing, a feat for which the boy was thoroughly adept. He scaled a smaller pine and swung himself, despite the entangling encumbrance of his bow and quiver, into one of the lower branches of a gigantic silver-barked tree which he realized, with a thrill of joy, must overlook the courtyards of the temple. Higher and higher he climbed, happy to be active; the strong boughs were like steps. But when he got far above the ground and could look down upon the walled buildings he saw nothing that could tell him what had become of Nancy. The courtyards were empty. They had the vacant look of a deserted place.
Perhaps the monks had run away, he thought; perhaps they had carried Nancy with them. They had not intended him to escape, that was certain. Their plans had been so sure that Edward hoped the accident of his slipping free from the trap, the knowledge that he would expose their knavery and was summoning help, might have driven the frustrated monks into flight. Edward decided on greater risks. He climbed back to the earth and walked softly across the open space till he stood beneath the first window.
"Nancy," he called carefully.
There was no answer.
He called again. Still no answer. The white paper which filled the tiny square panes gave blank response to his whispered cries.
He moved on to the second window and repeated his call. Just as he was on the point of trying the next, he heard a faint "Yes." He could hardly control himself for joy.
"Is that you, Nancy?" he whispered in English.
"Yes."
"This is Edward. I got away. Are you all right?"
"Yes."
"Can you get out?"
"No, the windows are too high. I haven't anything to stand on."
"Where are they?"
"I don't know."
"Have they tried to get in?"
"No, they haven't made a sound for a long time. And, besides, I've locked myself in."
"I think they've run away. Don't be afraid, Nancy. I'll get you out. Shout if you hear them."
Edward scarcely could contain his feelings of relief.
Returning to the cover of the trees, he stepped slowly round to the back. There he stopped. The little back gate of the temple was open. He must have guessed correctly: the monks had fled. The boy would have thrown caution to the winds and rushed to the door if some whispering sense of discretion had not restrained his movements, causing him to turn in bare time to see a gray cloak withdrawn behind a neighboring tree. Edward stopped still in alarm, then he gave a shriek of fright and took swiftly to his heels as the monk abandoned his futile ambush and came thundering in pursuit. The other monk emerged from the door within which he had been hiding and joined in the chase.
Edward ran as he had never run before, throwing away his bow in his haste and tearing madly past the front gate of the monastery. The men behind him were fast. He dared not turn his head to see if they were gaining, but he knew this time they were staking all on his capture. They must catch him and close this one mouth which could babble their secret. They were desperate men; if Edward's powers of endurance were trebled by fear, their own fleetness of foot was enhanced not only by the sense that Nancy was the prize of their victory, but also that the loss of the monastery where they had lived might be the price of defeat.
But the race was never run to its finish. Before he was aware of approaching them, Edward, scampering madly, head-down, had crashed between the burly figures of two men. Cold with dismay, certain that he had been intercepted, he was trying to shake himself free from the hand which detained him when he heard a voice exclaim in English:—
"Slowly, slowly, my lad! What's all this about?"
For the first time he looked up to see with amazement that he was not in the hands of ill-met friends of the two monks, but held by the very two foreigners who once had applauded his cricket; he was a captive of the Western barbarians whom, in his mock wars, he had been defying—and very happy to be their captive after the real warfare of this unlucky afternoon.
"My sister!" he cried. "They have got her up there."
He pointed to the monks, who had stopped, evidently chagrined by this new turn of affairs.
"Where?" said one of the men, who had a vivid memory of Nancy's beauty.
"In the temple," said Edward breathlessly; "they want to make her their slave."
The men chuckled, despite themselves, at Edward's earnestness.
"They look like a harmless old pair," said the second. "I shouldn't accuse them of being so naughty."
He approached the two monks and tried to address them in none too fluent Chinese. But the yellow-toothed priest, who had picked up pidgin English in a temple at Peking where the increase of tourists made it both profitable and necessary for him to express his importunity in terms his visitors understood, now interrupted the foreigner.
"Him b'long plenty bad boy," he said, pointing an accusing finger at Edward; "his sister plenty bad girl. Drink much tea, no pay money. So lock up, wanchee make pay money."
The foreigner smiled to see Edward's blank look at hearing this unfamiliar idiom.
"You availed yourself of this gentleman's hospitality, my young sir, without making due recompense, and he has gone to the extreme length, rather too extreme I admit, of locking up your sister. Am I stating the case correctly?"
The boy looked even more amazed. This was a tongue far beyond the bounds of his comprehension. The man laughed again.
"Well, never mind, I don't think there's anything worse than a twenty-cent piece at stake. Follow me and we'll soon have your sister out of the dragon's clutches."
Edward divined that his intentions were helpful. He himself was too fully charged with emotion to take up the task of explaining their adventures in English. He was content to walk quietly between his two new friends, glad of their protection, even ready for the moment to overlook the impudent defense of the priest. The other monk had slipped away during their colloquy and had made good use of the few minutes thus gained, for the little party, when they arrived, found the front gate opened and their host prepared with a kettle to pour out more tea for his visitors.
"No, we must release the beleaguered damsel first," said the Englishman. "Where is she?"
The older monk, understanding his gestures, led the way to the door behind which Nancy was confined. It had been unbolted too and plausibly confirmed the monk's tale.
"He much frightened. No come out."
The man felt the door which Nancy was still keeping securely fastened.
"Ah, she doesn't trust you ecclesiastical gentry," he said. "Call her, my lad; tell her she's safe."
"Nancy," shouted Edward in Chinese, "it's all right now! You can open the door. There are two big foreigners here. The old turnip doesn't dare hurt us."
The monk gave Edward a wicked look. The boy rejoiced to see that his thrust had gone home and referred to the priest in several other terms of choice abuse, a partial revenge which his enemy had no means of countering. The Englishmen stood innocently by, unconscious of how Edward was settling scores with the monk, till at last the grating of bars told them that the prisoner was reassured. The door opened and Nancy stood before them, white and startled.
Neither man forgot this picture of Nancy in the doorway. The quick look of surprise she gave them was not swift enough to banish traces of the terror she had been suffering, so that they cherished a continuing memory of the color in her startled eyes before she looked down, confused by the gaze of two strangers. And her blush of embarrassment was too slow to hide the glowing whiteness of her skin, a whiteness accentuated by the sumptuous disorder of dark hair. The girl kept a nervous grip upon the panels of the door; she stood tiptoe, her body poised for flight; the narrow slope of her shoulders, the fullness of her thighs, the slender ankles, to which the simple costume of jacket and trousers did admirable justice, suggested a figure graceful rather than dainty, a healthy coherence of nerves and muscles ready to express with full pliability the lightest promptings of her mind. She was a creature through whose veins life ran bravely.
Not till Edward took his sister affectionately by the hand did she relax. One of the men, at least, watching the haunted look slowly subside from her face, realized that the boy's story, after all, had not been so wildly unlikely: there had been more at issue than payment for a cup of tea. His suspicion would have been amply confirmed if he had seen the greediness in the face of the monk, a stare of thwarted exasperation which a lifetime of copying the placid Lord Buddha did nothing to erase. Nancy saw it and turned away.
"Well, tea has been your undoing, my children," said the more whimsical of the two Englishmen, "now let tea make amends. Sit down and let's drain the pot. I've got twenty cents for your ransom and twenty cents more for ours, so have no fear. They can hardly lock up the four of us."
Nancy would not think of drinking more tea beneath this hostile roof, but Edward, quite at ease again, poured several cupfuls down his thirsty throat. The two monks were bland and smiling and did their amiable share in a disjointed, bilingual conversation with the two strangers. The children they ignored, but Nancy stiffened each time they passed her stool and waited anxiously for her rescuers to finish. At last, after one of the Englishmen had done the rounds of the temple, examined the eighteen Lo-han, photographed Kuan-yin on her dolphin, and tried various expedients, all useless, to photograph the mummy in his glass case, they got up to go. With effusive bowing they passed out of the monastery from which, an hour ago, she had nearly lost hope of escaping. Her happiness to be away from its walls made her forget for a moment how low the sun had fallen.
"We haven't introduced ourselves," said the man who had been taking the lead. "My name is Beresford and my silent friend here does honor to the good old name of Nasmith. May we presume to ask what you are called?"
"Edward," answered the boy; "Edward and Nancy."
"Good names, too, good old-country names; but have you not a surname, a last name?"
It took Edward a minute to realize that the man meant what would be, in the Chinese order, his first name.
"Yes, it is Hai."
"Hai?" repeated the man. "But that's Chinese. What is it in English?"
Edward did not know. "Hai" always had sufficed.
"We can't call you Miss Hai and Master Hai," laughed Beresford; "that would be absurd. If you will forgive the impertinence, we must content ourselves with Nancy and Edward. What is your father? Why does he dress you like this? Is he a missionary?"
"I don't know," said Edward. "He is an official of the Emperor, that is, he was an official of the Emperor—"
"When there was an Emperor," helped out Nasmith, relieving the boy from possible difficulties with his syntax.
"But your father is an Englishman," said Beresford, mindful of the stony British stare.
"No, he is a Chinese official," protested Edward. "He used to be an Englishman."
The men exchanged curious looks.
"And your mother?"
"Our mother was English. She's dead."
"Oh," said the man, fearful lest he had touched a sore spot, but ready to proceed with his questions when he saw by the slight boastfulness in Edward's bearing that the death of his mother was a claim to distinction rather than a recent sorrow. "Then whom do you live with?"
"Oh, we live with father and the amah and Kuei-lien—that's my father's newest wife; she's very pretty. That's all there are here. The rest are in Peking, the t'ai-t'ai and the other wives. Then I have some brothers and sisters in Peking too, but not real sisters like Nancy."
The two strangers heard this domestic record with astonishment, not the smallest cause of which was Edward's matter-of-fact tone in the telling. They had come leisurely through the silver pines to the end of the temple path. Suddenly Nancy, who had taken no part in the conversation but walked on Edward's far side, began speaking to her brother in swift low Chinese. The reaction from her peril, the novelty of walking with two foreign men, neither of them could blind her to the lateness of the hour. Once out from the shadow of the trees, she realized night would fall long before she and Edward could get home. Another spell of panic unnerved her. Edward himself looked round with an expression of blank dismay.
Nasmith perceived the trouble.
"Where do you live? Near where we saw you playing cricket?"
"Farther, much farther."
The man whistled.
"You couldn't get halfway there before dark, even if you know these goat tracks, which I don't believe you do, do you?"
"No," admitted the boy.
"Neither do we. We might wander all night. We certainly should not think of your going alone. I'll tell you what you can do: you come home with us for the night. We're quite respectable; don't be alarmed. My married sister is there with her children, quite large kiddies, your own age in fact. She can squeeze you in, I know, and then to-morrow morning we shall make it our first duty to see you home."
"But father will not know where we are," said Nancy doubtfully. "He will be angry."
"He will be worse than angry if you are lost, Miss Nancy, and I see no hope of our finding the way there at this time of day. At home, perhaps, I can find a messenger who can take a letter to him. That will keep him from worrying."
Edward seemed eager to accept the invitation, but Nancy still hesitated.
"Don't fear, Nancy," said Beresford kindly, divining her fears; "in any case we are not going to desert you. If you say the word, we'll try to get you home to-night, though I don't think it can be done. If you come home with us I can assure you of a merry time. Mr. Nasmith's sister's children—excuse the mouthful—are really very jolly and full of fun. You mustn't judge them by their uncle. You will have the time of your life, and nothing will please them better than to have two visitors. They'll want every last word of your adventure. What do you say?"
Nancy saw the reasonableness of what he said and she liked the jovial courtesy of the choice he allowed. She was shyer than Edward, but already she felt as if she had known these men—she did not think of them as young men; they represented no special age to her mind—she felt as if she had known them for years. And she trusted them. So to Edward's manifest joy she put aside qualms about her father's wrath and chose an experience which promised entry into a new world, a world she had long been curious to see. She was tired too and hungry, and this walk, as it proved, was none too short for the hour of daylight which remained.
Beresford had extracted a fair knowledge of Edward's history by the time they reached the settlement. He had learned to suppress his amazement and relished with appreciation every sidelight of Edward's intimate recital. It was rare amusement to hear a youngster, who was so assuredly English as to regret the loss of his bow more than all the excitement of a crowded afternoon, treating of concubines, their favor and loss of favor with his father, their expectations of further offspring, as though these were the normal stuff of life. Nasmith did not say much, but he listened with silent appreciation while Nancy walked quietly, obsessed by thoughts no one could read.
They came at last down a wide road into the settlement. Dusk had fallen. The children were dazzled by the many lights which shone from the bungalows and from the occupied temples scattered round the sides of the valley.
"Well, here we are," said Beresford, passing through a grove of acacia at the end of which stood a low, rangy house, built in foreign style. An oil lamp, hanging from the ceiling of the verandah, shone upon a table where dinner, it seemed, was soon to be served. Servants were spreading a white cloth. Nancy, with a sinking of the heart, recognized that several people—they looked like a crowd to her frightened eyes—were sitting in a group just beyond the outer margin of the light.
"So you're back, are you?" came a woman's voice. "We were just going to have dinner without you. Why, whom have you brought here?"
"Sorry to be late," laughed Beresford, as he stepped up to the verandah, "we've found the Babes in the Wood and brought them home with us. Nothing to be afraid of, Edward, Nancy," he said, pushing the children into the light, "she won't bite. Miss Hai, Master Hai, in other words, Nancy and Edward, I have the pleasure of presenting you to Mrs. Ferris. Tell the rest of the family to sit down; I'm not going to introduce them now. This isn't a reception. Take this pair inside, Agnes, and let them wash. Ronald will explain."
Mrs. Ferris was not so puzzled as to miss the hint. She saw the embarrassment of the two children; her motherly sympathies helped her to take instant pity on their plight. She got them inside, called for hot water, soap, and towels, and left the boy and girl vigorously scrubbing themselves.
"They know how to wash," she said delightedly, coming back to the large living-room. "Who are they? What are they?"
Nasmith detailed all that he had learned while Beresford was supplying the curiosity of the group on the verandah and keeping them from too quick a descent upon Edward and Nancy.
"The poor dears!" exclaimed Mrs. Ferris. "How utterly horrible to think of two English children being brought up like that! And with such a man for their father. I declare I don't think you ought to take them back."
"They don't see the horror of it at all, you can count on that, Agnes," said Nasmith, not wishing to smile too openly at his sister's point of view. "They won't find it half so horrible as wrestling with forks and knives at dinner to-night."
"I can borrow some chopsticks from the servants."
"Oh no, the experience will be a thrilling one for them to remember. This will be their first introduction to foreign ways. The more highly colored the impression the better they will like it."
Nancy and Edward were called into consultation for the dispatch of a messenger to their father; then they were ushered into the room, where they stood shyly, not daring to take note of their surroundings.
"You must make yourselves at home," said Mrs. Ferris gently. "I am awfully glad my brother brought you here. We'll take good care of you and see that you get back to your father safely. I'll call the children now; they are dying to meet you."
Nancy had only time enough to notice her pleasant face and the oddness of her light wavy hair—it seemed rather untidy to the Chinese taste in the way it was heaped on top of her head—before the children trooped in. She did not wish to stare too curiously, but her interest in seeing Western girls for the first time directed her eyes with irresistible fascination toward the newcomers.
"These are the twins, Helen and Elizabeth," said Mrs. Ferris, as two girls of Nancy's own height came forward. Each of them stretched out her hand, momentarily puzzling Nancy, who had forgotten that this was the foreign way of greeting. She tried to make up for her lapse by hastily putting out her left hand, so that her new friends in their turn were nonplused till frank laughter on all sides set matters right and helped Nancy to feel more at ease.
The girls saved Edward from accident by merely bowing.
"This is David," continued the mother, introducing a boy of twelve, who grasped Nancy's hand warmly before she had time to be perplexed.
"And this is Patricia."
A bare-legged girl of ten came forward.
"And last but not least—are you, my darling?—Reggie, the baby."
He was a chubby youngster of six.
"So you see we're not a small family, nor a quiet one, either. How old are you, Nancy? You must be about the same age as the twins."
"I am seventeen," Nancy answered, finding it difficult to speak English before so many strangers.
"Seventeen! I should not have thought it. I suppose it's your costume which makes you seem younger. Why, you look almost like a boy. Then you are older than my girls." Mrs. Ferris did not know that Nancy was figuring her age by the Chinese reckoning, which makes a child one when it is born and two on the succeeding New Year's Day, so that a baby born on New Year's Eve can be two years old before he has lived two days.
Older though she might be, Nancy felt very young beside these two strapping lasses, who were so instantly friendly that she was no longer afraid to look at them. For twins their features were not much alike, but they had the same yellowish golden hair, which they allowed to fall profusely down their shoulders. Nancy had never seen this fashion before; it was strange, but she liked it. The color too was unusual, but not too freakish in Nancy's eyes, for she was used to her father's shock of light hair. The blue eyes did startle her, but the girl was more entertained by the dresses they were wearing, dainty white muslin which left throat and shoulders bare and spread out into many embroidered flounces at the knees. This was the foreign style, no doubt, but it did not appear quite modest.
Dinner offered formidable difficulties of its own. Nasmith secretly had prompted the family to talk and laugh in their usual manner so that their guests might not suffer too self-consciously from the ordeal. The hint was well taken, but Nancy and Edward could not wholly escape the interested surveillance of their neighbors. They were proud children, furtively careful how they dealt with knives and forks, not willing to disgrace the family name by even pardonable mistakes. But Edward fared better than his sister. He had been put at the right of Mrs. Ferris, with whom he was soon on easy terms in his eager boyish way, and he benefited by the little mannerly explanations of his hostess, words so delicately put that he did not know he was being instructed and enabled to relish the unfamiliar dishes.
The experiment of putting Nancy on Nasmith's right proved unfortunate. The girl could not accustom herself to sitting next to a man; it was too great a breach with the past. And even her hunger could not override the peculiar flavor of the food. She tried courageously to sip three spoonfuls of tomato soup; the taste balked her. She was more conservative than Edward. She held her knife stiffly and sawed ineffectually at the meat, just checking a potato from leaping with a shower of gravy on to the spotless cloth. With the Chinese aversion to uncooked greens, she rejected the salad, after one nibble; it made her ill to see the yellow oil which the others poured over their lettuce. But the crowning disaster came with the ice cream which the girl, unsuspecting its coldness, put into her mouth and then had no way to extract. The ice cream got behind her teeth, giving her for a moment almost unendurable agony. She lost the distinction between hot and cold, frightened by the thought that her mouth was burning. Almost on the verge of fainting, she could not hide her distress.
The impish Patricia giggled and an awkward titter of amusement went round the table as Nancy, having at last succeeded in swallowing the nauseous stuff, choked like a swimmer who has filled his mouth with salt water.
"It isn't fair," said Nasmith in a comforting voice; "you ought to have your revenge and see us eating Chinese food."
"Do you always eat Chinese food?" inquired Patricia incredulously. "Don't you ever get tired of it?"
"What a question from Pat, of all people," said Elizabeth, "Pat, who's never been known to get tired of eating any food."
Patricia gulped at the bait indignantly, but the situation was saved for Nancy. In the good-tempered wrangling which ensued she could lay down her spoon unobserved and wait calmly for the meal to end. She soon found herself enjoying the retorts bandied back and forth by the Ferris children. The wordy battle reminded her of the three-cornered warfare between Li-an, Edward, and herself. She began to feel immensely at home and rose from the table quite in a mood to learn the games her new friends wished to teach her. She enjoyed draughts and dominoes and smiled at Beresford's droll stories. Nothing, however, quite surpassed the effect of the gramophone, which she listened to as she swung with Elizabeth and Helen in a capacious hammock under the trees. She had heard of these marvelous instruments but Herrick, who hated them, would not permit one within the walls of his home. Amid their host of new impressions the girl and her brother equally could spare wonder for these black discs which sang with such unbelievably human tones. They pictured enviously the sensation they could make by introducing this miraculous toy into the gossiping perfunctory life of the courtyards at home.
So full was the evening, so engaged were Nancy and Edward by their new friends, that Mrs. Ferris had not the heart to call "Bedtime" till every record had been heard; she even let Elizabeth and Helen perform their respective show-pieces on the piano and combine forces for a militant duet, and at last suggested sleep only when Patricia and David's rendering of "Turkey in the Straw" promised to continue interminably and without variation through the night.
She had dug up pyjamas for Edward and a nightgown for Nancy, and now put the boy in charge of David while the twins carried off Nancy like a prize to their own room, offering one bed to their guest and preparing to share the other.
Nancy looked with speechless amazement round the clean white room. Its daintiness, its comfort, were beyond her experience. She gazed at the spotless beds and at the long mirror of the dressing table, and at the bottles, hairbrushes, combs, and hairpin trays arrayed before it. Helen and Elizabeth were delighted by her surprise, overjoyed to explain the uses of every toilet implement. In their turn they wished to be satisfied about every detail of Nancy's clothes, so the three were soon busy comparing the odd features of Western and Chinese garments.
Dressing, Nancy decided, must be an elaborate process in the West. She watched Helen and Elizabeth disrobe with the attention she would have given to a play—with more attention, indeed, for she was privileged to test the fabrics with her sensitive fingers, rubbing her hands up and down their white silk stockings, examining the embroidery which it seemed so strange to her they should conceal on their underwear, looking minutely at the lace straps over their shoulders, the pink ribbons which held up their chemises, the elastic girdles from which their garters were hung.
Nancy was bewildered by such a complexity of garb. She was ashamed to be dressed so simply, to have nothing startling to disclose, just jacket and trousers, singlet and drawers, and then the diamond-shaped piece of cloth fastened by strings across the front of her body as a guard against cholera. There were no ribbons, no lace, no embroidery, not even the gay sash she wore in the privacy of the garden at home when she could rid herself of her outer garments, nothing but severely cut, practical things of plain cotton cloth, with just one touch of color in the orange garters, the dividing line between her sober black stockings and the white skin above. Yet the two girls envied her and sighed to exchange their frills for the convenience of her Chinese clothing.
"We are not dressed up like this usually," explained Helen, "only for dinner. We wear gingham in the day-time, but we still have the skirts to pull down and the stockings eternally to pull up, and we never could get ready in twice the time it takes you."
The upshot of these whispered comparisons was, of course, a desire to exchange clothes and to pose before the mirror in the borrowed delights of exotic garb. Nancy accepted the plan joyfully and watched each stage of her masquerade, while Elizabeth and Helen nimbly tied her in till she was a replica of themselves. She gazed at herself in surprise when the process was done, when her hair had been unbound and loosely gathered into the circle of a satin bow, for she had stepped completely over from the East to the West and thrown away every vestige of her Chinese upbringing. She had the indefinable marks of beauty, her way of holding her head and shoulders, the slim easiness of limbs and body, the youthful melancholy expressed by the dark color of her eyes, marks which promised great loveliness for the future. Helen and Elizabeth candidly recognized the authority with which the filmy frock and long white stockings became the black-haired girl on whom they had been put.
"You are a beauty, Nancy!" exclaimed Elizabeth. "The dress seems to belong to you more than it does to me."
She suggested quite truly the difference between her own prettiness of feature, her own healthy robustness of figure, attractive because they were the qualities so well suited to a romp of sixteen summers, yet qualities on which the frock had been imposed with the obviously self-conscious elegance of a party dress, and the charming seriousness of Nancy's manner, to which all garments, mean and splendid alike, paid their toll.
There was a symbolism in Nancy's appearance, a secret betrayed by her sad smile, and spectators more imaginative than Helen or Elizabeth might have pictured the spirit of her mother close at hand, longing with sombre eyes to see her daughter restored to the country she had lost.