“Her father,” I continued earnestly, and in a measure truthfully, “maintains a much larger fleet than China possesses, and his private war-ship, now in the waters of Corea, is grander than anything that empire ever beheld, much less owned. His territories are vast. Thousands of people,—yes, millions,—pay tribute to him. He has waged commercial war against those who dared to dispute his authority, and has invariably defeated them. His revenue exceeds that of the kingdom of Corea twice over, so is it likely,—I put it to you as man to man,—that such a potentate will consent to the dozen steps this way, and the dozen steps that? His only daughter is the Crown Princess, and will be heiress to all his powers and emoluments. I pray you, therefore, put this matter in its right light before His Majesty of Corea, and I can assure you, if you succeed, your own income will be largely augmented.”
This speech undoubtedly impressed the Premier, who bowed low to Mr. Hemster and his daughter time and again as I went on. The girl’s anger had subsided as quickly as it had risen, and she watched us both intently, seeming at first to doubt that I translated accurately what I had been so curtly ordered to say; but as our conversation went on the increasing deference of the Prime Minister showed that I was at least doing my best. The old gentleman, too, regarded us shrewdly from under his bushy eyebrows, but seemed rather tired of the game, as if it were not worth such a pow-wow. He evidently wished to get the whole thing over as quickly as possible, and return to the comforts of his yacht, and in this I entirely sympathized with him.
The Prime Minister replied that he would present the new facts before His Majesty, and averred that if they had the same effect upon the Emperor of Corea as they had produced upon the Prime Minister the impediment would be speedily removed. He assured me I could count on his utmost endeavours to find a solution for the unexpected exigency, and I was well aware that my tale would not decrease in the retelling. With many and most profound obeisances to the two Western grandees, the Prime Minister took his departure, and I accompanied him outside, where I made him a payment on a gold basis.
The Royal audience had been appointed for two o’clock of the afternoon on the day succeeding our arrival at Seoul, but this new question that had arisen caused the ceremony to be postponed, much to my annoyance, for I knew the habitual delay of these people, especially where money was in question, and I feared that the inconvenient assumption of dignity on the part of the young woman might land us in trouble of which neither she nor her father had the least appreciation. I communicated my fears of delay and complications to the old gentleman when I got him alone, hoping he might use his influence with his daughter to modify what seemed to me her ill-timed assertion of high rank; but Mr. Hemster, though a resourceful man in every other direction, always proved a broken reed so far as his daughter was concerned, and he pathetically admitted his inability to curb either her actions or her words.
“All we can do, Mr. Tremorne,” he said, “is to fork over the cash. Don’t you spare it. I can see very well you are handling this situation as expertly as a ward politician. You’re all right. If you can talk to this here King as you talked to his Prime Minister, I think you’ll fix up the thing in five minutes, and remember this is a game of bluff in which there is no limit. I don’t restrict you in the cash you spend, so go ahead.”
And this indeed proved to be the way out of the muddle, although I explained to him that too lavish distribution of cash was not without its own danger. But at this juncture a message arrived to the effect that the Prime Minister wished to see me, and I at once departed to learn what had been the outcome of his mediation. I found that he had made little progress, but by a curious coincidence he put forth the same suggestion previously offered by Mr. Hemster. He had arranged a conference for me with the King, and advised me, as Mr. Hemster had done, to lay it on thick. Hun Woe was somewhat encouraged by the orders he had received from his royal master in regard to my audience. The King would receive me entirely alone; not even his Prime Minister was to be present. From this condition Hun Woe surmised I was to be successful in my quest, and I was well aware that this unwitnessed reception of me was as much contrary to Corean customs as was the proposal Miss Hemster had made.
I saw his Majesty in one of the private apartments of the Palace, and speedily realized that he did not care a rap what honours belonged to Mr. Hemster. The sinister, shifty eyes of his Majesty were filled with greed. Never was there such a picture of avarice presented to me as the countenance of the King showed. His claw-like hands had been withdrawn from the voluminous bell sleeves of his robe of red silk and yellow gold, and were twitching nervously on the table before him. His tremulous attitude of uneasy eagerness reminded me of the Miser in the “Chimes of Normandy.” Impatiently he waved aside the recital touching the claims of my employer to the most-favoured-monarch treatment, and gasped out the Corean equivalent for “How much, how much?”
A tangible object-lesson is better than talk even in the Orient; so, bringing my eloquence to an abrupt conclusion, I drew from my pocket another bag of gold, similar in weight to the one I had previously presented to him, and, seeing he was impatient for touch as well as for sight, undid the string and poured the stream of shining metal discs before him on the table. He thrust his vibrant hands among the coins, and gave utterance to a low guttural sound of satisfaction which resembled the noise made by a pig thrusting its snout into a trough of slops, rather than any exclamation I had ever before heard from human lips. I assured him that no word of all this would be spoken by me, and promised that as soon as the conference was safely over on the terms that Miss Hemster and her father had laid down, a similar amount would be privately paid to his Royal self in an equally secret manner; and so my mission terminated in a glorious success, and it was arranged that the reception should take place the next day at two o’clock. The process was costly, but effective; and effectiveness, after all, was the main thing.
I reported my victory to Mr. Hemster and his daughter, and almost immediately after this the Prime Minister came in to offer his congratulations. The good man had seen his royal master for a few moments, and was evidently delighted that everything was going on so smoothly. It meant money in his pocket, and he was becoming rich with a celerity which left stock-exchange speculations far in the rear. He had received his commands regarding next day’s reception, and the Emperor had been pleased to order that the audience should take place in the same room where I had seen him, with none of the nobles of the Court present except the Prime Minister. This was a good example of his Majesty’s craftiness. The Premier already knew that the etiquette of the Court was to be put aside for the occasion; but the monarch had no desire for further witnesses, and was evidently not going to set a precedent in the realm of Corea that might produce inconvenient consequences thereafter.
I had had little opportunity of talking with Miss Stretton since the night of our walk on deck,—the night of the proposal, as I called it to myself, as amidst all these negotiations I kept continually thinking of it. Without exactly avoiding me, Miss Stretton never seemed to be alone, and although very rarely I caught a glance of her eye I had no opportunity of private speech with her. She kept very much in the background and was more than usually quiet and thoughtful.