There was no sound except the panting of her heart. From Wu’s inner room nothing came but silence. The house and the garden were midnight-still.
Ah!
Through the window came a sound so soft it scarcely grazed the silence.
Something fell, almost noiselessly, at her feet. She swooped upon it with a smothered sob of thankfulness. It was her own scarf. Her hands shook so she could scarcely unroll it for the message or the help it hid. She knew it hid one or the other, or Ah Wong would not have thrown it. Or was it only a signal that the other woman heard her? With her eyes riveted in agony on Wu’s door, her heart beating almost to her suffocation, her cold fingers worked distractedly at the matted gauze. Yes—there was something there. Oh! Ah Wong! Ah Wong! It was something hard and small.
She looked at the tiny phial wonderingly. But only for a moment. Then she knew. And her white face grew whiter. The last drop of coward blood dripped back from her quivering lips. Poison, of course! Must she? Dared she? Could she? And Basil? The boy that she had borne—her son and chum. Should she desert him so? Save her honor and leave him to death and to long fiendish torture ten thousand times worse than death? Was any price too great, too hideous to pay for his rescue from such burning hell? To so save herself at such cost to him, was not that an even greater dishonor than the other? The woman began to whimper, like some terrified child. And could she die? Could she face such death? Here—all alone—in China? God hear her prayer!—she could not think to word it. God have mercy! Life was sweet—the sun warm on the grass. And there were cowslips in the meadows at home, and the lilacs were wine-sweet, and the roses wine-red against the sun-drenched old stone wall in the vicarage garden—in England.
She tottered, sobbing silently, across the room, clutching the phial in her ice-cold hand.
England! At the thought of England she stiffened—proudly. She was English—and a woman. English and a woman: the two proudest things under Heaven. Basil must suffer. The body that had borne him must not, even for him, be dishonored. The unalterable chastity of centuries of gentle womanhood reasserted itself and claimed her—pure of soul, pure of body—claimed her and made her proud and strong as it had the English women of an earlier day who threw themselves rejoicing upon the horns of the Roman cattle rather than yield themselves—English women—to the lust of the Roman legionaries. As Abraham had prepared to sacrifice Isaac—Abraham! Abraham was only a man, only a father. She was a woman—she was a mother—and English!
With a smile as cold as any smile of Wu’s, and more superb than smile ever ermined on the lip of man—she looked about for means: determined now—yet hoping still against hope for escape. She would die. Oh yes! she would die—here—now. But she hoped the stuff was not too bitter. She drew out the cork and smelt the liquid. It had no smell. Or had fright paralyzed her gift of smell? And all her senses? Her fingers could scarcely feel the glass they clutched. And need she drink it yet? Help might come. Surely Ah Wong had gone! But dared she wait? Wu would be back. Hark! Was he coming? Did his door move? He must not see her drink it. He would prevent her. But need she die quite yet?
She saw the cup of tea she had put down, and gave a little gasp of hope: at such poor straws do we clutch!
Yes—yes—she’d pour the poison into her tea—and drink it, if she must!