She said that she was very tired—her lady was a hard taskmistress. She didn’t like the English. She was very tired, but she’d like to see something of so beautiful a place, now that she was here, and she tottered about a little wearily from treasure to treasure, but never far from the house, from tiny forest trees a few inches high, in pots the size of thimbles, to an evergreen that was a century old and that had its widest branches cut into birds in full flight. She cried out in ecstasy at a great dragon sprawling on the grass, a dragon of geraniums and foliage plants. And presently she yawned and said that she was very tired, and sat down heavily on a carved stone bench. After a little she fell asleep, and the women giggled at her good-naturedly and left her. The bench was not far from the window that high up looked into the mandarin’s sitting-room.
CHAPTER XXXVII
The Fan
“IT is growing dark,” Wu said, as he put the sword down beside the gong.
Three other servants followed Ah Sing through the sliding door that he had opened from the other side. Two were tea-bearers and the other a servant of the lamps.
The tray of tea was laid on the table. The lamp-man moved about the room, and a dozen dim lights broke out, like disks of radiant alabaster, so dim, so beautiful, and so unexpectedly placed that their shrouded brilliance made the wonderful room seem even eerier than before.
The woman watched it all, inert and motionless. She felt, without thinking about it—she was almost worn past thinking now—how more than useless it would be to appeal to these wooden-faced Chinese, the creatures and automatons of Wu Li Chang. And an instinct of dignity that was very English held her from making to foreign servants a prayer that would, she knew, be denied. She would make no exhibition of a plight they would not pity or of an emotion that would not move them—unless it moved them to mirth.
But when, their service done, the servants went out, soft-footed as they had come, and after the door closed, bolts clanged, she realized that she and Wu were again alone—the room locked—and she sprang up and dashed to the door.
Wu watched her, smiling. “Come,” he said—almost as he might have spoken to a restless child—“tea is served.”
And she turned, in obedience to his voice, and looked at him. “I couldn’t, Mr. Wu,” she said with plaintive petulance, “I couldn’t possibly.” The distress in her voice was more than the annoyance.