CHAPTER XXIX
News of Herrick's death reached Ronald Nasmith almost as quickly as it reached the family of the dead man. The t'ai-t'ai was anxious to settle the business of his estate and lost no time in sending Edward, who could speak English, as her ambassador.
Ronald was at home when the boy came. He brought him into his own study, for he knew, after one glance at his face, the errand upon which he had come.
"My father is dead," said Edward, sitting stiffly on the edge of his chair. He could make no more than this simple statement.
"I thought he must be," Ronald answered, "but where is Nancy? Why didn't she come with you?"
He was afraid to hear the answer, but hear it he must.
"She is married. She was married yesterday."
Ronald toyed nervously with an ivory paper-cutter on his desk.
"Only yesterday," he said at last; "and when did your father die?"
"He died yesterday too."
"And who sent you to me?"
"The t'ai-t'ai."
"I understand."
He did understand much for which it was hopeless to seek words.
"This will be your home now," he told Edward, "your home till we can put you in a proper school. I promised your father that. You don't wish to live there, do you, now that your father has gone and Nancy has gone?"
"No," the boy answered bravely.
"Now I must see what I can do. Your father left me a lot of business to finish. But you must come with me and help me. I might not make myself clear and there will be a lot I shall need you to explain."
The boy accepted all that he said without question. Together they returned to the mourning household, which mocked the clear sunshine of the streets with its gloom. Ronald had unutterable thoughts as he entered the gate from which Nancy had gone out one day too soon in the loneliness of her scarlet chair. He could not bear to dwell upon this picture, but asked to see the body of her father and went with a sigh of weariness upon his lips into the room where with difficulty, with much labored unbending of stiff limbs, they had laid out the corpse. The boy was afraid to come in. Ronald stood by himself and looked at a face which made death terrible.
The women had taken up their burden of wailing when he entered the house; harshly the noise struck his ears, for in Herrick's quiet features he could find no answer to the riddle of why the dead man had lived only to come to this pitiless ending. His only satisfaction was to see that Herrick did not sleep peacefully, that he had not died content; the restless lines in Herrick's face told their own story.
The ill-fated time of his death had upset his unstable family. The women could not face this blow right on the heels of their excitement at Nancy's wedding. In their panic over what their future might be, they had neglected the first rites of the dead and were weeping uselessly, undecided what respect they should pay to the dead man whom, despite his years of pretension, they remembered only as a foreigner.
But the t'ai-t'ai was recovering her wits when Ronald asked for her.
"She wants," Edward explained, after the formalities of the meeting had been dealt with, "first of all to settle the business of Nancy's marriage. My father promised to give ten thousand taels when she went to her new family, but he died so quickly that he had no time to do this."
"Yes, I know," said Ronald, "he told me about it and that he expected to pay this himself. But I can't do anything yet."
The woman interrupted with a demand from Edward as to what he was saying. She seemed suspicious and unwilling to let him proceed more than two or three sentences without having his words explained. Edward was visibly embarrassed.
"She wants that money now because that was promised and Nancy's new parents will be angry if they don't get it. It is more important than anything else."
"They will get it," said Ronald, "but I can't do anything just now. I can't touch a cent till your father's will is proved."
Edward did not understand this last sentence, so Ronald expressed his meaning at greater length.
"You see," he said, "your father was an Englishman, not a Chinese, and subject to English law. Even though he lived in Chinese style and kept Chinese customs, that makes no difference. His death must be reported to the British minister and all his papers have to be inspected, and his will, which tells how he wishes his money divided, this must be read and allowed. Before this is done the bank will not recognize me as his trustee and will refuse to pay me any money, no matter how many checks I choose to write."
The boy, still puzzled, did his best to explain these details to the t'ai-t'ai, but it was clear that she was not satisfied.
"She wants you to pay the ten thousand taels," Edward said, "then you can take it later from my father's money. She wants you please to do this—never mind about the other money; she can wait for that, but this money she must have, because Nancy's family will be very angry."
Ronald laughed.
"I haven't ten thousand taels," he declared, "or even half the sum—and am never likely to have. There is nothing else to be done. She will have to wait."
The t'ai-t'ai did not believe these statements. He was being polite. Of course he had ten thousand taels. What foreigner didn't have ten thousand taels? She returned again and again, in most tiresome pertinacity, to her request that Ronald pay this money at once, waving aside his most patient explanations as though she had never heard them. It was a strange thing, she remarked at last, that the wife of the dead man could not be trusted to dispose of his money: that a stranger had to be called in.
"But that's just the point," Ronald replied with much exasperation; "the t'ai-t'ai, whatever she may be in Chinese law, is no wife at all by English law. Mr. Herrick remained a British subject; he could not become Chinese legally, despite his wish to do so, and therefore, unless he married the t'ai-t'ai at the legation, which I very much doubt, she is no wife in English eyes. Just for that very reason he called me in to help, so that I could safeguard the interests of his family and see that they did not suffer through his death."
He succeeded at last, by Edward's faltering assistance, in driving these facts home. The t'ai-t'ai resigned herself to the existence of troublesome laws and to the more immediate point that her hopes of securing her money hung entirely on Mr. Nasmith's good offices. There would be no profit in making him angry.
"There is another thing," Ronald continued, when he saw that she was in a more amenable mood; "as a trustee, I feel especially responsible for Mr. Herrick's two English-born children. Of course I recognize that one of them, by her marriage, is now outside my control. But over Edward here I have been placed as guardian by the authority of his father. Naturally I expect him to come to my home, and I think when he does that you will understand that your responsibility for his future ceases."
The t'ai-t'ai had no objection to offer to this arrangement, which her husband some months before his death had explained to her. She certainly did not wish to be burdened with the problem of Edward.
"But to Nancy too," said Ronald, "I feel a sense of duty. I did not approve of her marriage and did my best to persuade her father against it. Personally I would have been willing, if he had died earlier, to offer the ten thousand taels just to set her free from what has always seemed to me an unjust engagement for a girl of her age. If my powers as trustee allowed of this,—I can't be certain, of course, that they did,—I would have taken this risk of disobeying her father's wishes. Well, it's too late to discuss that. Our ways, you see, and yours are different. A few years of Chinese education couldn't make Nancy a Chinese; I am sure of it. But she is married; that can't be mended; we have to make the best of it and I want to see that the best is made of it."
The t'ai-t'ai pricked up her ears at Edward's tactful translation of this speech. She wondered just what Ronald had in mind when he wished to see that the best was being made of Nancy's wedding. Ronald, however, explained himself further.
"I want to speak to Nancy herself," he said, "and have her own assurance that she is being well treated. I presume that she will be coming back to her father's house soon, won't she?"
"She has to stay three days with her husband," Edward took it upon himself to answer; "then the wedding will be finished and she can come here for a day. That is our custom. Even though our father is dead, they will not permit her to come before three days."
"And a nice home-coming it will be!" Ronald groaned. "A cheerful place to return to. Please tell the t'ai-t'ai that when Nancy returns I must be here to see her and speak to her. I don't know what the Chinese custom is in such a case, but this is absolutely necessary if I am to perform my duties as a trustee in a satisfactory manner."
Edward communicated this demand, to which the t'ai-t'ai gave a shrug of consent. There was nothing these foreigners appeared incapable of asking, but she was too wholly in the man's power. It was no time to quibble.
With this promise safely gained, Ronald told Edward to gather up his things. It was not healthy for the boy to stay a minute longer than necessary in a household where everyone's thoughts dwelt round the corpse of the dead master. Edward went to his work listlessly and came back sniffing and weeping after the woebegone task of dismantling the room he had occupied so long. Neither the sympathetic help of his amah cheered him nor the welcome of his new home, where David, awed by the distinction of one who had lost his father, tried cautiously to say the appropriate word. Edward wanted Nancy; his heart was hungering for her even when he thought he mourned for his father.
On the third day he went with his Uncle Ronald, as already he had been taught to call his guardian, to see the sister who had become a bride.
His own eagerness, if he had known it, did not exceed Ronald's. The intervening day had been a busy one. Ronald had been to the legation to have Herrick's will admitted to probate. He found friends who had known Herrick long ago and who were avid for every last detail of Herrick's story, but they could suggest no scheme for saving Nancy. It was a rotten business, they agreed with some emphasis, but a matter which could not be helped, for Nancy, by wedding a Chinese husband, had forfeited British protection. Ronald might use pressure, and they hoped he would, to get the girl away from her husband,—there was not one of them who expected the marriage to end in any way except drastic misery,—but he had no lawful right to divert any of Herrick's estate for the purpose. The estate, through remarkably clever investments, had once been close to a fortune, but recently Herrick's intemperate withdrawals had reduced it till it was barely enough to cover the terms of his will.
So Ronald went impatiently to meet Nancy, determined that if she gave him the slightest encouragement he would break all the laws of the land to rescue her. Early though he went, the bride had arrived before him and had given way to a frenzy of sorrow beside her father's coffin. She had not yet put on mourning, for the mother-in-law had deemed it an unlucky thing to interrupt the first festal days with any mark of sadness. So she had come, oddly enough, wearing a red skirt; but any suggestion of happiness had been erased by the stains of grief which made her eyes dull in their sunken pits and her skin a bloodless white.
It was the first chance Nancy had had to yield to her passionate misery: for three days she had struggled against tears, trying to preserve some semblance of joy in a family which paid no heed to the death of her father. The rites of the wedding were dragged out till she was on the point of fainting under the cruel burden. She felt no love for the husband who had been goaded into claiming her, and suffered bridal intimacies from one who became worse than a stranger in her eyes. Beneath his treatment she felt the hostility of a youth who had not desired this foreigner for his wife, and beneath the treatment she met from her new mother she felt the exasperation over delay in the payment of her dowry, disappointment taking unkind shapes because the woman had never forgiven herself for selling her son into what was likely to prove a bad bargain. For three days the family had been most deliberately merry, trying to face out their regrets in the sight of the world; they had been reckless of how they spent money, but thrifty of a single friendly word to the girl whose heart was breaking while she pretended to smile. At last they had let her go home to weep.
When Nancy, who had comforted herself before marriage with the hope of coming back to see her father, realized that he too had deserted her and that she had not won him a single day's peace by her sacrifice, she threw herself down beside his coffin and wept till her body seemed torn apart by her grief. Edward, who in his turn was ready to break down, understood the sudden need to control himself, so that when the time came he could comfort his sister in his affectionate boyish manner and bring her away to the room where Ronald was waiting.
Nancy was dazed at seeing Ronald. She did not seem to know why he was there. Her mind still lingered with her father. She had only perfunctory words to spare for the living, while Ronald could hardly check the temptation to carry her away by force, to carry her out of sight and sound of this baneful household. Everything he wanted to say froze on his lips. He had no heart to reproach the girl for persisting in the wedding she might have stopped. With her face marred by grief, he could not ask her if she were happy, if she were contented with her new home. The words would have mocked their own meaning.
"Nancy," he did at last summon courage to say, "it is no use weeping over the dead any more. It doesn't help them at all. If your father doesn't know, then your tears are wasted; if he does know, then he will be the more unhappy to see you so sad. The living are what we have to think of—you and Edward. If you want your father to have peace, wherever he has gone, you must help him not to worry over you. You must let him know that you have peace yourself. Edward he won't worry about because he asked me to take charge of him and so Edward has come to my sister's to live, but you every one of us will worry about till we are sure that you are well and happy. That's what you must tell me: you can speak as frankly as you choose; there is no one here who dares to interrupt, but I must know how I can help you."
"You can't help me," answered Nancy.
She was quieter now, but the hysterical stillness of her manner frightened Ronald.
"That is no answer," exclaimed Ronald.
He was annoyed by the girl's obstinacy, which she had inherited in too full measure from her father.
"You surely can be frank with me," he added, "because I may never again be in such a position to help you. You know that I have your father's estate to divide. As long as the money, which includes ten thousand taels which were to be paid at your wedding, as long as this remains in my hands I can make almost any terms you may wish with the t'ai-t'ai. But when it has been divided, then my power will be gone. Now do you regret your bargain? Are you sorry you kept to this marriage? Do tell me now, when I can help you."
He had realized Nancy's stubbornness; he had not measured her pride.
"My marriage is what I expected," she answered.
How could she tell him the shame of the last three days? How could she relate the scornful treatment of her new family? She might have told Kuei-lien; she had no words to speak of it to Ronald. She could not run to him like a weakling tired of her promise. To endure the mischances of her marriage was no more than keeping faith with her father's good name. She was a wife; that was the end of it. But Ronald seemed to read her thoughts.
"I don't know what your new home is like," he argued, "but I do know what you are like, and I can hardly imagine you happy under the conditions you will find there. Just now your sorrow for your father makes everything else seem of small account, but the time will come when the sharpness will wear off and you will have to think of the man you have married and the life you have adopted. For it is an adopted life; it is not natural to you. Now your father is dead, don't make a mistake of your loyalty to him and think you have to embrace years of misery merely to gratify his memory. That's not good enough. They don't want you—I can see that; they only want the money that was promised with you. Nothing would please them better than to get this money without the necessity of taking you. You are a foreigner and always will be a foreigner to them. Can't you come home with Edward and me, and I will promise, if I have to move heaven and earth, to get your marriage annulled."
"If they want my money, they have to take me," said Nancy stubbornly.
She was not doing justice to Ronald's proposal, while the man, in his turn, was far from seeing her marriage as she saw it. She could not appreciate how in his foreign eyes her marriage was no marriage, nor could he see how to her Chinese eyes it was a bond from which there was but one honorable escape for the wife, the extreme measure of suicide. Ronald had been reading deeply in the customs of the Chinese the better to understand Nancy's case, but he missed the essential fact of her attitude, the value she set by her good name. To have run away because she was displeased with her first three days of wedded life seemed an act of intolerable cowardice. Nancy's every thought was Chinese, more Chinese than Kuei-lien's: she had an inbred fear of disgrace, not only for her own sake but for her father's whose reputation rested helplessly in her care. So she met Ronald's most persuasive entreaties with the same blank answer. If she had grounds for quarreling with her husband or with his parents it was no business of an outsider to know of them.
At last Ronald despaired of moving her. He gave up the attempt. He was as sure as he was sure of his own love for the girl that she was unhappy in her new home and would grow week by week unhappier, but she was less responsive to his words now than before her marriage. He threw down his hands with a hopeless gesture, inwardly cursing the folly of Timothy Herrick, which was able to survive him in such fatuously obdurate wrong-headedness. Nancy's white, troubled face reminded him of his first glimpse of her in the temple. How much greater was her danger to-day than in that first perilous meeting. How much less he could help her. Unable to leave the girl without one sign of his deep overmastering passion, he crossed the room and kissed her gently on the forehead.
"I shall always love you, Nancy," he said.
Nancy trembled a little beneath the touch of his lips, but the kiss came so naturally that she had no time to be surprised and could only wonder long afterward at the trance which had held her silent under so strange a greeting, so strange a token of farewell.