“Your Excellency knows of the plan to seize your property?”
Kang inclined his head.
“If you go on to your home, it may be that everything will be taken, even the money on your person.”
Kang bowed again.
“Then, Your Excellency, why not now—while you yet have the means to do so—escape down the river with your daughter and myself? Can you not trust yourself and her in my hands? I will find means to convey you safely to Shanghai—perhaps to Japan or Hong Kong—where you will be secure until further plans may be laid.”
“Griggsby Doane,” replied the viceroy with simple candor, “you speak indeed as a friend. And I would be false to the blood that flows in my veins did I not prize the friendship of man for man, second only to the love of a son for a parent, above every other quality in life. Friendship is most properly the theme of many of the noblest poems in our language. It is to us more than your people, who place so strong an emphasis on love between the sexes, can perhaps bring themselves to understand. And therefore, Griggsby Doane, your feeling toward myself and my daughter moves my heart more deeply than I can express to you.
“It is not surprising that news of my sorrow—of this sad ending that is set upon my long life—should have reached you. But since you know so much, I will tell you, as friend to friend, more. Do you know why this sentence has been passed upon me? It is because I could not bring myself to obey the order of the throne that the republican agitator, Sun Shi-pi who had sought sanctuary at my yamen in Nanking should be at once beheaded. Instead I sent for Sun Shi-pi to counsel him. I permitted him to go to Japan on condition that he engage in no conspiracies and that he remain away. Instead of complying with my condition he hastened to organize revolutionary propaganda. He returned to China, appeared in disguise on the steamer that is burning out yonder, and is now dead, there, in his republican uniform.”
So his information was complete! A picture rose in Doane's mind of the headless trunk of Sun Shi-pi amid the horrors of the lower deck.
His excellency continued: “I was denounced at the Forbidden City as a traitor. The sentence of death followed, in the form of an edict from the empress dowager in the name of the young emperor. Were I now to follow Sun Shi-pi into exile in a foreign land I would mark myself for all time as a traitor indeed; as one who, while sharing as an honored viceroy the prosperity and dignity of the reigning dynasty, conspired toward its downfall.”
“But, Your Excellency, the empress dowager and the young emperor no longer speak with the voice of the Chinese people.”