CHAPTER X
Edward and David were having their own good time together. They were not troubling much about distinctions in clothes, once Edward had solved the mystery of how to wear pyjamas, but they were trying to compress every incident of the twelve and thirteen years of their lives into the few hours given them to talk. David, like his older sisters, had come to China too late to pick up Chinese from a nurse and had been sent to a school where conversation in Chinese was discouraged, for fear of the undesirable things the pupils might learn, so China, except in a superficial way, was undiscovered territory. He could not keep out of his speech the arrogance which foreign children assumed toward native life.
"Do you mean to say you live all the time with nothing but Chinese?" he asked. "Don't you ever have anybody to play with?"
"Why, of course, I have lots of people to play with; our family is bigger than yours."
"But only Chinese. That can't be much fun. What do you do? How do you pass the time?"
"Oh, we're always busy. We make poems and draw pictures."
"For play?" David interrupted incredulously.
"Yes, it's lots of fun."
David could not hide his contempt.
"I don't see any fun there. The boys would laugh at me if I wrote poems. They'd call me a 'softy.' We leave things like that to the girls. Don't you play any games, any real games, I mean?"
"Yes, we play chess—"
"Chess, you play chess?"
"Nancy and I are always playing it."
"Pooh, that's an old man's game. It takes a year to make a move. Do you play cricket?"
"Oh, yes, I play cricket," said Edward, relying too confidently on the limited instruction from his father.
At last they had come to a subject David could appreciate. He pounced on Edward for details as to the positions he played, whether he bowled and how he bowled, what was his average as a batsman, who were his team, questions Edward answered so vaguely as to appear, in David's eyes, as anything but skillful fraud. Still he must make allowances for Edward's lamentable training.
"Your idea of cricket isn't what we call cricket," he said magnanimously, and he bewildered his guest to some lengths by his highly technical exposition of the game. "Where do you go to school?" he asked, after this tedious diversion.
"We have school at home."
"Oh—what form are you in?"
Edward did not know what he meant.
"Where have you got to in arithmetic?" explained David, trying to gauge Edward's progress by his own. "Can you do compound interest? I can, and we've finished South America in geography,—take up Africa next term,—and in Latin we're on the fifth declension. You've begun Latin, haven't you?"
Edward had to confess that these were beyond his range.
"All my work's in Chinese except the English lessons father gives us. We have read the Four Books—"
"The Four Books?" exclaimed David, seizing the first tangible clue to Edward's education. "What are the Four Books? Are they readers?"
Edward was speechless. He could not cope with a mind which had never heard of the Four Books. Yet he could not make capital of his own superior knowledge, as David had been doing, because there was a haughtiness in the latter's manner which made him feel that acquaintance with the Four Books was a thing to be ashamed of.
In the same overbearing way David explored every nook of Edward's life.
"Your father is English, isn't he?" he asked.
"He was English," admitted Edward, too subdued by now to resent the question.
"But why does he live like a Chinese? Why doesn't he live like an Englishman?"
"I don't know," answered Edward, never really conscious before to-night that his mode of living was abnormal. "I suppose he likes it better."
"I know," said David. "It's so that he can have all those wives. In England that wouldn't be allowed."
"Wouldn't it? Why not?"
"No, he would have to go to prison if he did that. We can only have one wife."
"But don't the rich people have several wives?"
"No, everybody's just the same. And one wife's enough anyway."
Edward mused on a society so curious that rich and poor should be just the same.
"Well, I'm going to have lots of wives," he said, with his first show of defiance, "and I'm going to have fifty children."
David's jaw dropped. He felt it useless to argue against an ambition so monstrous.
"Mother will give us the dickens if we don't go to sleep," he said, and blew out the lamp.
The family rose early. The slight estrangement between the two boys had been composed by Edward's tales of the Tatar hunting park; in the congenial topic of leopards the boys found mutual interest and Edward restored himself in David's eyes by describing his bow and his feats of archery.
From the first daylight the girls had resumed talking. They put their questions more discreetly, being of a better age to appreciate Nancy's history. But they were more curious than their brother about the domestic intricacies of Timothy Herrick's life and on the glamorous subject of concubines relished every detail they could extract from Nancy's willing lips. The guest was amused at the importance they attached to such commonplace matters.
"But what will you do?" came at last the inevitable question. "Surely you won't marry a Chinese."
"I don't know," said Nancy; "my father hasn't decided. I'm not engaged yet."
"Your father!" the two girls shouted in concert; "are you going to let your father decide?"
"Yes, certainly," replied Nancy, looking at them in surprise, "who else should decide?"
"But suppose he wants you to marry a Chinese?"
Nancy saw nothing extraordinary in this.
"I have to marry the man my father chooses."
"Well, I think it's shameful," protested Elizabeth. "You are too pretty, Nancy, to be thrown away like that. You ought to choose your own husband. Suppose he should have some more wives; would you like that?"
"No," Nancy admitted.
"Could you stop him from having more wives?"
"No."
"Do you want to marry a Chinese?"
"No," said Nancy for the third time, "I don't want to marry anyone. I want to be a nun."
This was a greater blow than anything she had said.
"A nun?" echoed Elizabeth in dismay, "a Catholic nun?"
Nancy did not know what she meant by a Catholic nun. Surely there was only one kind of nun.
"I want to be a nun and live in a temple far away in the mountains," she said.
"You mean a Buddhist nun? You want to live in a temple and worship those ugly idols?"
David had not been more astounded by Edward's wish to have fifty children, while Nancy realized, seeing the amazed faces of her friends, that here lurked between West and East some quicksands of misunderstanding such as with the best will in the world they could not cross. Her desire to be a nun was too slightly defined to be defended in competent speech.
Helen and Elizabeth recognized her difficulty. They were fearful of trespassing on courtesy and did not push their indignation more outspokenly—it was safer to turn for diversion to the mechanical incidents of getting dressed, Nancy's tub-bath, her initiation into the use of a sponge, the manicuring of her nails—but the girl had become in their eyes a tragic heroine whom they were impulsively determined to save.
Mrs. Ferris shared the concern of her daughters and looked compassionately at the two children, whom she felt she had no right to send back to such a travesty of a home. She confided her indignation to Nasmith, thought something ought to be done: it was shameful condemning such a nice, well-behaved boy, such a pretty, really beautiful girl, to live with that immoral old man. He must have kidnapped them; they surely could not be his children—and their mother dead too! How she would have suffered if she had known! Wasn't there a law to prevent such a disgrace? Ronald ought to inquire of the British legation and get Edward and Nancy into safe hands before they were utterly ruined.
But the early breakfast had been finished. There was no excuse for delay. The sorrow of parting was eased by the decision of the twins that they must escort Nancy home and David's prompt statement that he would do the same duty by Edward. The impressionable Patricia was convinced only with difficulty that the road was too long; she wept as though she were parting from lifelong friends. To the inexpressible astonishment of Edward and Nancy, Mrs. Ferris gathered each of them into her motherly arms and kissed them. Would they all expect to do this, Nancy asked herself? Why did nice people have such barbarous customs? She might kiss Helen and Elizabeth, if she saw they were disappointed, but she never could kiss Mr. Beresford and Mr. Nasmith. The prospect called up bitter memories and turned her thoughts in fear to contemplating the anger which her father would visit upon their truancy.
The walk, begun with the care-free abandon of a picnic, grew more and more depressing, despite the merry companionship of the girls, Beresford's comic remarks, and Nasmith's quiet understanding reserve, in which Nancy put more trust than she knew. Nancy endeavored to give in a light-hearted vein the promises the twins were trying to exact, that she should come and see them again, that they might call upon her, that they should do long walks together and write many letters.
"Yes," agreed Nancy, "if my father will let me."
She put so much inflection upon this conditional clause that the girls knew by instinct she was withholding more than she offered.
"You mean he might not let you?" exclaimed Helen tragically.
"Perhaps," Nancy confessed. "I don't know. He does not like us to go out."
"We're going to see you anyway, no matter what he says," was Elizabeth's indignant rejoinder.
Nancy smiled. She hoped they might, but she dared not encourage them. She would not let them even climb the final path to her home.
"My father doesn't see many people," she explained. "He might not like it; and if he got angry he would take us back to Peking."
Nasmith saw her point and insisted that his nieces and nephew wait while he and Beresford accompanied their guests to the house. Nancy wanted to leave all of them there, but the two men evinced a complete determination not to forsake the children one step short of their home door so she did not waste time in futile dissuasion. She did not escape from the twins, however, without embraces and kisses, a strange affectionate demonstration she schooled herself to endure, but she was glad to notice that Elizabeth and Helen made no such advances toward Edward. Plainly there were limits to the custom.
Long before the returning prodigals had reached the door, they were seen. The nurse came hobbling out to meet them and overwhelmed her foster children with tears and affectionate exclamations, making them appreciate guiltily the panic their absence had produced.
"Your father," cried the amah, "ai ya, he was like a madman! Every one of us he had out searching, even me with my poor feet; and he would not rest; he sent us out again and again and he himself walked tens of li before your messenger came and eased our hearts. Eh, we were glad! But that was late at night. I cannot tell you how we suffered before that man came. Your father wanted to give him five dollars. But that was not wise; it was too much. I paid him a thousand cash and he was very happy."
The amah scarcely noticed Nasmith and Beresford at first, so torrential was the greeting poured upon her two children. But when the party had reached the door and were under the smiling eyes of the servants, she grew calmer. A flutter of old remembered occasions restored her dignity at the welcome sight of these foreigners. Perhaps here was a husband for Nancy. The foreign gentlemen must come in and have tea and cakes; those were the Great Man's orders.
They were not the Great Man's orders, but the amah knew what was necessary to the moment and she was determined the Western gentlemen who had brought back her treasures should not depart with poor memories of the Herrick hospitality. So she seated them formally in the guestroom, hurried Nancy and Edward to their rooms where Kuei-lien was waiting excitedly to question them; and then informed the father of his guests. To her intense relief the Great Man sent a message inviting the two visitors to his own room.
Nasmith and Beresford scarcely could veil their curiosity at sight of the elderly gentleman, wearing Chinese clothes with dignity, who received them in his sunny room above the ravine. Herrick's gravity of bearing showed him at his best in this first interview after so many years with men of his own race. One forgot the sensual chapters of his story and remembered only the scholar, the background of shelves and books seemed so fitting, and the writing materials on his desk, the ink-stone, the brushes, the open volume, the sheaf of bamboo papers, even accessories like the pot of tea and the water pipe belonged to a man who was actively concentrated upon study.
"You will excuse any defects of hospitality," Herrick began, not choosing to remember that he had met these men before. "I have been a long time a stranger to your ways. I understand that you have saved my children from a great danger. It was very good of you. I should not have liked harm to come to these two children of mine—they are nice children," he added, as though speaking to himself. "And I must thank you a great deal for walking so far this morning to bring them safely home and your sister for giving them a place to stay. It was very good, very good."
Despite his composure, Herrick was showing signs of embarrassment. He seemed to be commenting rather sadly upon his own words, repeating his thoughts in a stumbling manner which grew pathetic and stirred the sympathy of the two men who were listening.
Nasmith hurried to relieve the old man—he was looking much older than his years—by disclaiming credit for anything but a fortunate and timely arrival. He extolled the presence of mind Nancy and Edward had shown. As to their staying overnight with his sister, that was too great a pleasure to be thanked for.
"Were they a trouble?" asked the father. "Did they behave well?"
"They were what they clearly have been taught to be—a lady and a gentleman. I should be proud if my nieces and nephew could conduct themselves in a Chinese home as your children conducted themselves in ours."
The father smiled with pleasure.
"They are nice children," he insisted.
Then another thought occurred to him.
"You have nieces and nephews?" he asked. "Did Nancy and Edward meet them?"
Nasmith related at length his observations upon the friendship struck up between his family and their two guests; he saw how wistfully the father relished even the lesser details, nodding here and there at incidents which pleased him, repeatedly jerking out the word, "Good." He wanted to know the names of these nephews and nieces, their ages, their schooling. When he heard that they were waiting in the path below, he would not hear of their going home unwelcomed.
"No," he said, "they must not. It is near noon. They will be hungry. I will send for them—I will send Nancy herself."
The daughter came in some surprise at being summoned before the two men had gone. She remained standing at the door, not presuming of course to scan the face of her father, though she wondered if she were to be scolded before strangers.
"Nancy," said Herrick in English, "you have left three of our guests waiting outside. That is not right. We do not pay our debts in this fashion. You will go down and welcome your friends and bring them to your rooms. And tell amah, as you go, that the cook must prepare nine bowls."
The man meditated with amusement upon the shock his command had given.
"Yes," he said, "she is glad. Her eyes showed it. Ah, my friends, it had to come, it had to come. I could not keep them from making friends with their own people. I am not sorry it happened this way."
Nancy, after she had left the room, could scarcely believe that she had heard aright. To have her escapade condoned in this manner exceeded her wildest hopes. She was still dazed as she repeated her father's instructions to the amah.
"Hai, I knew it, I knew it," cried the old woman joyfully. "He is changing at last. The sight of men of his own race has made him homesick. Soon we shall all go to England, and every afternoon you will wear new dresses and go to garden parties."
Prophecy, on the amah's part, could be as endless as reminiscence. Nancy escaped on the second part of her errand and brought her friends, who were waiting restively, up the steep path to the house. It was her turn to play hostess, and she played the part with unmeasured happiness, not even regretting the lack of gramophone and piano, when she saw how instantly Helen and Elizabeth were absorbed in every curious detail of the house. Particularly were they entranced by Kuei-lien, who welcomed them at her radiant best.
"Is she really a concubine?" asked Elizabeth in awe. "She is such a dear, and prettier than a picture," a compliment well earned by Kuei-lien's unerring skill in the colors she chose to combine, jacket and trousers of a slatish tan piped with magenta brocade.
Back and forth between them Nancy translated flattering remarks. The servants stood gaping. The old nurse ran hither and thither, like a bemuddled hen, cackling interminable yet disjointed recollections to any and all who even seemed to listen. The nine bowls were got at last on to the table, despite the confusion which prevailed, and Nancy was made amends for her awkwardness with knife and fork by the merrily clumsy way her guests wielded chopsticks.
"I believe you arranged this deliberately to have your revenge," said Helen, surveying the havoc they had wreaked on pork balls and bean curd.
Herrick himself came to view this unprecedented party. Nancy, Edward, Kuei-lien, all rose at his entry. The others followed, while the elderly man insisted upon shaking hands with his three visitors.
"Eat, my children," he said; "don't stand any more. It does an old man good to see so many young faces."
"Why do they have to grow up?" he kept repeating, when he had gone back to Nasmith and Beresford. "Why do they have to grow up? Children are the only good thing in this world. Excuse my curiosity. I have learned Chinese ways, you know—you are not married, are you?"
They were not.
"Of course; I forgot. You Englishmen don't marry so young. I suppose you are not thirty? Only twenty-four? Each of you. Ah, that's a promising age—and a difficult age, too. Well, we'd all of us risk the difficulties, would we not?"
His inquiries went further. He extracted their names, told them his own, apologized for having none but Chinese cards to offer in return for their own. So they were teaching in a Government technical school; did they like it? With insinuating persistence he found out their opinions of China. He read them a little homily on the classics, translated lyrics from the glorious T'ang poetry, grew genial and discursive, giving rein to his love of the mountains and trees and falling streams and unfading children, always children,—ah, why could they not take the immortality of the sun they played in?—and he ended before their wondering eyes by writing them each a pair of scrolls in large symmetrical characters, the characters to which he had given thirty years of his life. He translated them:—
"The sun moving to the west kindles a splendid beacon for the moon;
The moon following from the east tenderly displays the reflection
of the sun."
"That has an interpretation," he said, smiling, as he. handed a pair to Nasmith, "but I won't read the legend for you. You must learn to read it for yourself. And this too has its interpretation," he said, before translating Beresford's scroll:—
"Mirth becomes the time of danger;
Sadness suits the time of love."
"Now," he said, "I have puzzled you like the old Delphic oracle,—wasn't it?—but I have written only what I see with my own eyes. If my interpretations do not come true, it will be for one reason: it will be because I am unable to control what shall be written on my own scrolls."
"An extraordinary man," Beresford commented, after good-byes had been said.
"And a most unhappy one," added his friend. "I don't think he will invite us again."