CHAPTER III
Herrick decreed a retreat to the Western Hills. Seldom though he emerged from his dwelling, the man could not escape the hubbub of a city which slept and prattled out of doors. The barking of mongrel dogs agitated him and made him restless at night. He wished a place where he could think his troublesome problem to an issue, so his fancy turned to the solitude of the hills. He would carry off Kuei-lien like a bride, take Nancy and Edward and the old nurse, and leave the rest of the family to babble away the summer in Peking.
The sister and brother heard the news with undisguised joy. They were more weary of Peking than their father, for they had no change from the enclosed monotony of the compound and were come to a restive age when their limbs craved movement. They wanted to walk and to run and to gaze upon far-away sights with no high walls preventing them.
They awaited with impatience the cool dawn when they could climb into the mule cart and sit in high glee with Kuei-lien squeezed tightly between them. The cart began jolting over the gritty surface of the streets, jarring their bones despite the padding of the floor and the cushions which were fastened to the framework. But this they were too excited to mind. They only regretted the gauze curtain which, by the strict orders of their father, had been flung across the front of their hooded compartment. Their father, however, could not hinder their pushing the curtain from side to side in their eagerness to observe to the fullest the fascinating life of the streets.
Even at this early hour the market and the shops were opening; trains of camels whose thick hair had fallen off in patches were coming down the long street from Hsichih-men; donkeys with bells jingling on their collars bore the weight of fat travelers; Manchu women, so noticeable because of their long gowns and enormous beetle headdress, were stirring abroad; a princeling from the court of the deposed Emperor rode past, followed by retainers; scarlet plumes of horsehair flashed from their conical hats. Nothing escaped the eyes of the children; even the humblest shopkeeper taking down the boards from his windows won their marked interest, and there was observant pleasure in seeing the pavilions on Coal Hill, the turquoise and orange roofs of which seemed to swim in the lucent mists of dawn.
The cart rumbled through a vaulted gate, skirted the precincts of a railway station where the screeching engine provoked an ecstasy of excitement in the hearts of brother and sister; then came slow progress along willow-bordered roads while the sun, growing hotter and hotter, beat down through the blue hood of the vehicle, making Kuei-lien sleepy, tired of her stiff, cramped position, anxious to stretch and to yawn. A stupa of many towers was left to the south; the sombre ruins of the old summer palace were passed and the splendid new palaces of the Empress Dowager, which meet the fragments of Ch'ien Lung's marvelous pleasure domes on the summit of Wan Shou Shan. The children appreciated them all and looked eagerly at the spire-like pagodas of the jade fountain and the dilapidated buildings which were used to house tigers and bears in the far-away time when Tatar princes followed the chase.
Afternoon had come before the cart came at last to the foothills. The children climbed stiffly to the ground. Nancy hoped she might mount a sturdy little donkey for the journey into the mountains, but her father would allow his family to ride only in covered chairs. Not without a pouting of lips did Nancy obey, but soon she lost her disappointment in the charm of scenes she had not laid eyes upon for two long years, not since before the disastrous days of the Revolution. For the first time she was enjoying the dignity of a chair to herself. Hitherto she had been huddled into the same narrow seat with Edward, but now she could look elegantly from side to side through the square windows, and see the plains recede behind the toiling feet of the chair coolies, and Peking, with its towering gates and golden roofs and graceful dagobas, filling the horizon far beyond the palaces of Wan Shou Shan. Suddenly the girl grew inordinately happy. She drank in the ozone of the pines and looked down the steep slopes of the gorge they were traversing till she felt as free as the water that tumbled blithely across the boulders.
At dusk much climbing brought the chairs to the secluded temple Herrick had converted into his summer home. Years ago it had been built on a small flat piece of ground almost overhanging the edge of a ravine. In the old days its red-washed walls might have been conspicuous, but trees had grown round it, a brake of hardy bamboo hidden its entrance till the very bricks themselves seemed to have taken root in their wild terrace. The square beacon tower which crowned the opposite ridge was so desolate and forsaken, so obviously part of a world long passed away, so remote from its time of flaming usefulness, that it served merely to accentuate the loneliness of the place. The men it told of were men who never again would buckle on armor and seize long spears at the news of attack. And the broken gods of the temple whom none worshiped told in their decay the same tragic story.
Nancy hurried with awe through their midst and came gladly to the courtyard she and Edward shared. Oil lamps gleaming through paper windows gave comforting assurance of a supper hot and ready. After all the changes of the day the girl had begun to feel qualms of homesickness for the noisy household in Peking; at sunset she had grown sad, and now she wanted to shut out the magical sound of the wind in the pines and the water pouring down the ravine, for she was a little afraid of the loneliness. She longed for play and laughter and the shrill disputes of concubines and servants. She was sorry Li-an had not come. She would have liked the agreeable relaxation of a quarrel.
The cheer of supper gave way all too soon to the able terrors of bedtime. Nancy lay awake for hours haunted by the absence of all vocal sound; she tried to write in imagination the most difficult chapters of the Four Books: "i p'o, i hun, san tien"—she counted off the strokes and shaded them gracefully in her mind or pulled them short with the neatest of hooklike twists, but all to no avail. The trees would not keep still; the maddening stream would not cease running.
At last, in the panic of one who is seldom sleepless, the girl got up. She was envious of Edward's sound slumbers and went cautiously to his room to awaken him. To her surprise the boy spoke before she had time to call him. He recognized her footsteps.
"I can't sleep," he complained in loud whispers; "let's go outside or do something. It's too quiet here."
Nancy told him in low tones to follow. There was a moon outside. The two children looked like ghosts as they moved with slippered feet across the rough marble pavement of the courtyard. The back door was unbolted and slightly ajar so that its creaking was barely audible as they slipped through. They were in a weed-tangled grove of young trees, but the few yards of path were easy to follow. Under the brow of the cliff which set definite limits to the foothold of the temple they saw the tomb of some forgotten abbot, a domelike structure with a ringed pinnacle. It was in deep shadow. They gave an exclamation of dismay and hurried to the side where the path led up a short flight of steps to the top of the wall and ended abruptly in a little rickety platform of wood that gave high views of the ravine.
Nancy's heart was ripe for mystical adventure. The night was cool but she felt no bodily chill through her thin garments. She was inordinately sad, uneasy, desirous of some change, some intrusion to match the hopeless beauty of the night. A waning moon, halfway done with its short flight from mountain to mountain, illuminated the stream far below and gave luminous surface to the rocks with its tranquil light, but left the shadowy parts a pitchy blackness which hid them like a veil. Wistfully Nancy surveyed the scene and looked at the crumbling watchtower on the ridge opposite. Her reading had made her curiously unmodern. Her thoughts dwelt on phantom armies of the past, of princes masterly at falconry losing their way in the wilderness, of old cries and alarms which she could not reconcile herself to believing had long since ceased. She ached to help these poor lost mortals of the past, to be their heroine, their desire. How could she tell such dreams to Edward, dear, stupid, faithful boy that he was?
"What can you see?" asked the brother, surprised at her intent gaze.
"Lots of things," was Nancy's cryptic answer.
"Well, that's more than I can see."
"Ah, but you haven't my eyes."
Another fifteen minutes of this purposeless staring, this obstinate silence, was all that Edward could bear.
"Are you going to stand there looking at nothing all night?" he demanded. "I'm getting sleepy and, besides, it's cold."
"Go in and sleep then," said Nancy.
"I'm—I'm afraid," said the boy, after a moment's pause. "I don't like that tomb. I don't like to go past it."
"Pooh! If that's all, I'll take you past it."
Nancy took his hand and walked bravely down the steps.
"Look, I'm not afraid," she said when they reached the grave, and she suited action to words by kicking the unoffending sepulchre with her slipper.
"Stop!" cried Edward, pulling her back. "Aren't you coming with me?"
"No, of course not."
"You're not?" he echoed in amazement.
Nancy had a delicious feeling of terror in her own foolhardiness.
"I'm not ready to come yet."
Edward stopped for an instant, wondering if he ought not to stay; then he turned and fled while Nancy, who gladly would have followed him, tried to walk unconcernedly, as though her heart were not pounding with fear, back to the platform on the wall.
The moon had slipped out of view, letting the stars, now unrivaled, come down to the very edges of the ravine. The slopes opposite were white and the watchtower suffused by a weary brightness which showed every crack, the irregular lines of every stone, like the wrinkles in the face of an aging man. But the shelf where Nancy stood was steeped in blackness. The girl was cold and miserably afraid, wondering why she had not gone back with Edward, for the tomb avenged her impudence by filling her mind with ghostly fears. Dawn seemed years away. Nancy imagined hostile shapes, things without heads, without limbs, creeping down the cliff behind her.
And at the moment when the tension of her nerves was intolerable she heard a noise, the sound of running feet, a low laugh, a scuffle in the trees. A heavy figure came running up the path, up the steps. The girl was too frightened to jump; instinctively she shrank below the railing of the platform. But the moonlight had betrayed her; she had been all too clearly outlined against the whiteness of the hill beyond. Suddenly she realized that strong arms had seized her, and lifted her from her crouching position, half torn the singlet from her shoulders in forcing her round to meet the savage vehemence of a kiss.
To Nancy this swift shame was unutterable. She had the Chinese loathing of a kiss as a disgusting act suited only to the dalliance of a brothel. She fought like a maddened lioness, scratching, biting, trying to claw the face of her assailant, while the man, checked for a moment, since evidently he had looked for complaisance, replied with cruel fury, ripping her vest open to the waist, choking her till the girl knew she was sinking hopelessly into submission. Just when she had too little strength to know or care what might follow she felt the arms of the man relax. Someone, she did not know who, caught her as she fell limp across the tottering railing.
"Good God!" said a voice in English. "It's Nancy! And I thought it was Kuei-lien."
The voice woke the fainting girl more effectively than a dash of icy water. She stood up abruptly, still bewildered, but understanding that the creature who had attacked her so unreasonably was her father; that he had mistaken her for his mistress. A swift rippling laugh revealed the presence of Kuei-lien herself, very much amused to see the daughter involved in the amorous chase she had been leading the father.
"You will be so boisterous, you clumsy fellow," she said in tart Chinese. "Fancy hugging your own daughter. How absurd!"
But the father was not amused. He turned angrily to Nancy.
"What are you doing here?" he demanded of the girl, who was trying to hold the torn fragments of her singlet over her breast. "What right have you to be spying on us like this?"
Nancy had never been addressed in such harsh tones.
"I was not spying," she stammered.
"You were spying; don't contradict me. You deserve to be beaten for this. Go on—get to your room. You are utterly shameless. And you too—" he said sharply to Kuei-lien, "you damned women are all the same, every one of you."