The Wus were not Taoists, strictly. Like most Chinese of their class, they mingled a loyal observance of the rites of all three of the great Chinese sects and an anxious acceptance of their tripled superstitions, with an easy and respectful contempt for them all—certainly for all except the Confucianism that has made and welded China for twenty-five centuries, but that every Chinese of half Wu’s intelligence knows is, in fact, a magnificent irreligion, a philosophy, a patriotism, but no God-cult.
In her aunt’s absence, as well as her father’s, Nang Ping was absolutely mistress of herself and of all in her father’s house. When she left Basil Gregory she had closed the door panel of her own room, hanging a purple scarf in its outer carving, and no one, not even Low Soong, dared disregard the imperative silken signal that she would be alone and unmolested. Even when the gong brayed out the call of evening rice she made no sign. Wu Low Soong brought a tray of food and laid it gently on the floor, with a timid supplicatory clatter, beneath the purple scarf, and, after listening a moment as she knelt with her hands still on the tray, crept ruefully away. She had shared in the outer edges of all Nang Ping’s love raptures, shared the dangers of the forbidden sweetnesses, and it was very hard to be shut out from the newer excitement of what was evidently a jagged love-rift.
Nang Ping lay very still all night, uncushioned and uncovered on her polished floor. Her frightened eyes were closed, but she was wide awake—wider awake than she had ever been before.
She felt Basil linger. She heard him go. She heard each night-sound all the night long. She heard her household’s every stir, and heard it hush.
In the morning, before any but the night-watchman stirred, she stole out into the garden and wandered about it aimlessly. But she did not enter the pagoda.
While it was still very early she went back to her own room, beat on her own gong, a little burnished steel disk, summoning her women. And when they hurried to her, surprised and heavy with sleep, she bathed and put on fresh garments. It was her habit to chatter gayly with her women while they dressed her, but to-day she scarcely spoke and they scarcely dared speak. She sat quite motionless in her ivory chair while Tieng Po dressed her hair. Tieng Po was one of the cleverest tire maids in China, and wonderfully quick. It rarely took her more than three hours to do her lady’s hair, and to-day she did it in even a little less. But she had never done it more elaborately, and all the time her mistress watched her with cold, critical eyes. For Nang Ping had a glass, a very lovely one that Wu had bought in Venice. It had been her mother’s, and reflected more clearly and with less strain on the eyes than the mirrors that most Chinese women consult.
When Nang was dressed—she was very fine—she sent for Low Soong and ordered food.
The two girls breakfasted together in silence, and were silent afterwards as they paced the Peacock Terrace together until the sun was high and cruel. But Low Soong began to understand, and as each moment passed understood more and more. The women and the peasants of no other race chatter so much or so incessantly as the Chinese do; only the gentlemen and the children are often still. But no other race has so little need of words. The Chinese is the psychic of all the races. Even the women have wizard minds. They are all sensitives. And as the girls paced silently, but arm in arm, Low Soong learned it all.
In the early afternoon Basil contrived to send a note to Miss Wu, and it reached her safely. Indeed, it ill needed the subterfuge he spent upon its delivery, for its few formal lines, saying that he would, as promised, have the honor to wait upon her presently, and have the pleasure of begging her acquaintance for his mother and sister, might have been cried aloud from the Kowloon housetops, or published in the Pekin Gazette and the Shanghai Mercury or the Hong Kong Telegraph. Written words could not have been less compromising; such a love-letter could not have compromised a nun or a female fly. And it was the last that he would write her. (It was almost the first.) Nang’s little lip quivered as she read it, and she made to tear it into bits; then the little painted lip quivered more piteously, and she thrust the paper inside her robe. He had had no need to warn her. She should play her part. He might have trusted her in that, and in all.