“I wish to see no one, O honorable sir.”
“I thought you would answer so. Be at rest for her. She shall fare well.” He did not add that he would keep his word. There was no need: Nang Ping knew it.
He called for lights, and when the red candles were lit and the sweet torches in their sconces until all the room flamed with light, and the noiseless servants had withdrawn to await his next command, whether it came in a moment or in a year, he began to speak again. And because he was Chinese, and because he still loved her well, his words were long.
“Sit. Listen. I am not blameless. I shall be blameless from this hour. My venerable, honorable grandfather, the sainted Wu Ching Yu, dedicated me to a great task. I have obeyed him for the most, fulfilled it in the main, but not with the single purpose such high duty claims. I loved your mother. That was most right. Less would have wronged her; and she was fragrant as the yellow musk, holy as the queen-star. But for one celestial year, at her plum-blossom side, I forgot my task; at least I let it wait, and sometimes I have let it wait for you. Not again shall I do so. Scarcely time for suitable penance will I allow myself. I am Wu, and the house of Wu shall be avenged. I shall live for that and for China. My venerable grandfather, three thousand times wise, did well to send me to England. And he bade me study Englishmen closely. But I did ill to take to myself too much of their custom. We have learned too much of Europe. It is well to learn of every nation, but to accept too much from inferior peoples is a hideous crime; and in that crime I have shared to China’s hurt—and yours. You are undone. China is threatened with the loss of all that has made her for thousands of years paramount and exquisite. Sometimes, alone at night, I have thought that I have heard the wind cry, and Heaven sob, and the parting knell of China toll. And I have thrown myself prostrate before our gods, and entreated that China—our China—may prove stronger than her enemies, stronger than her fools. But my soul aches. For I realize that change is in our air, from Canton to Pekin, from Ningpo to Tibet, and that any hour revolution may strike our mighty empire to the heart. The rebel, the missionary, the fanatic and the adventurer, the foe without and the dolt within, press her hard. Her plight is sore to-day. But China has held together longer than any other empire in history. We Chinese never forget, and we do not meekly forgive. Again and again we have seemed to accept innovations, have tried them, have found them unacceptable, and then we have discarded them once and forever. We are in peril now; but the end is not yet. Already the word passes over China, as a breath of summer over the head-heavy poppy fields, ‘Back to Confucius’! And I—I descended from that great sage—I, too, who love China as I did not love your mother—I, too, have betrayed China—and you! I have given you a freedom that was in itself a soil to a maiden. I ask your pardon. All night long I have asked your honorable mother’s, and the forgiveness of my most noble ancestors. You have been to me both son and daughter; the women of the Wus have often been so, and endowed in it with great merit. But in me it was a sin. But from this I shall be wholly China’s. This moon I perform a duty to our house—my last selfish rite. It done, I am my country’s, my people’s. I shall wed now, and give my honorable ancestors other sons, China men-Wus to be her rulers and her servants. That I have not done so before is my crime. I thought to adopt your husband, or if that might not be, he too highly ranked in his own great clan, one of your younger sons, that all I had might go to you and to one you had borne. I sinned to think it. Adoption is honorable, decreed of our sages, countenanced of our gods, but only for those to whom sons of their bodies are denied. A man should beget men, father his own heir.”
He said much more. It was his last indulgence of self, for even his stern resolve yearned over her, and his tortured heart delayed the parting with the girl. He spoke of her childhood and of his own. But of the high traditions of the women of its blood, upon which their great house was built as on an impregnable rock, he did not speak again. He spared her that—his only child, the first woman of her name to err in the degree that is not forgiven Chinese gentlewomen.
Presently he commanded again—and no question now—that she should tell him all, and commanding turned his screw.
“He is not dead,” he said. “He lives. He is unharmed.” Nang Ping swayed a little on her stool and caught at her knees with her hands. “Tell me all.”
“O honorable sir,” she sobbed, huddling at his feet, “I cannot.”
Wu smiled. “All! Omit nothing. You can save him so!”
Nang Ping started up, sitting bolt on her heels, and searched her father’s face with narrow eyes widened and piteous.