IN THE LOTUS GARDEN
Kowloon was drenched with sunlight, and the lotus garden was drenched
with music. A minstrel paused a moment to drink in the beauty of the
great lilies, white, yellow, pink, amber and mauve, one that had cost a
fortune, clear pale blue, one that had cost more, a delicate jade green.
The strolling singer retuned his lute and moved across the garden,
singing as he went.
It was the typical garden of a rich Chinese home--so repeatedly
caricatured on the “willow-tree-pattern” crockery of cheap European
commerce--caricatured but also somewhat accurately portrayed. But the
gardens on the plates for sale in half the pawnshops in outer London
(the aristocracy of the pawnbrokers will not look at them any more), in
every household furnisher’s in Marylebone and Camberwell, in Battersea
and Shoreditch, and on the business streets of every British town and
village, are of one uniform Chinese blue--the blue the sampsan women
wear when their clothes are new--and background of white, Chinese
white, appropriately enough. This living garden in Kowloon was of every
vivid hue on nature’s prodigal palette, and its background was of blue
hills and purple haze and blue, white and limpid golden sky.
A twisted camel’s back bridge of carved stonework, like coarse lace in
its pierced tracery, dragons squatting and guarding its corners, and
flowers hung from it everywhere in baskets of bamboo, of crystal, of
painted porcelain and of lacquer, spanned one corner of the lake, above
which a crooked flight of steps at each bridge-end lifted it high.
Dwarf trees in glazed pots, some on the ground, rarer specimens on
carved stands of teak wood and of ebony, stood here and there. And in
the artificial water, half river, half lake, which the miniature bridge
crossed, the priceless lotus grew and glowed. Most of the great lily
cups were pink, others were deeply red.
Some distance from the house there was a pagoda open to the garden, its
plaid floor strewn with cushions, a book or two, a woman’s scarf, and
from every outer point and eave hung a pot or a basket in which flowers
of every brilliant hue grew and bloomed.
A sinuous gravel path turned from the dwelling-house to the outer wall,
twisting and turning ingeniously all over the garden, passing close
to the cypress bush at the foot of the steps that led to the bridge,
skirting the baby grove of dwarf orange and lemon trees, and encircling
the gnarled old cherry tree.
Whatever we may think of China, the sun thinks well, and shines so
gloriously nowhere else. It made the flowers in Nang Ping’s garden
glow with a vivid brilliance that was part their own, part his; it
touched the summits of the hills seen in the distance with a light blue
haze which deepened to purple at their base. Against that dark purple
background the sumptuous little garden foreground glowed with a riot of
color, and quivered with pulsing, scent-breathing flowers.
A servant squatted on his yellow heels, picking up dead leaves and
broken flowers heads, gathering them into his tidy basket. Another
gardener was sweeping the gravel path as carefully as if it had been
the velvet carpet than which it was no less soft.
Four girls tripped down the bridge, chattering and laughing as they
came, and the gardeners took up basket and broom and moved away.
Hearing the singer (he had left the garden now), the girls rushed
with one accord, and climbed and clambered up until they could peer
at him over the wall. One poised like a fat balloon-shaped butterfly
on the high edge of a great flower-pot, two jostled together tip-toe
on a majolica bench, and one (the smallest footed of the lot) climbed
squirrel-nimble up a tulip tree. They pelted him with flowers, tearing
blossoms ruthlessly from shrub and vase and vine and tree, and each
commanded him shrilly to sing to her her favorite song.
“Chong-chong er-ti” (professional singer), “sing on,” one cried; “Yao
won chong” (let us play with him), another; and the girl in the tree
tore the jasmine from her hair and tossed it into his hands.
He leaned against the wall and sang:
“Over green fields and meadows Tiny Rill ran
(The little precocious coquette!);
She was pretty, she knew, and thus early began
Gayly flirting with all that she met.
Her favors on both sides she’d gracefully shower;
One moment she’d kiss the sweet lips of a flower,
The next lave the root of a tree;”
and as he sang, Nang Ping, with Low Soong, her cousin, in her wake,
came slowly from the house, and stood listening too, one finger on her
lips, her eyes far on the fading hills.
They did not see their mistress--they were her play-girls, in
attendance on rich Wu’s child--until the man had done and gone. But
when they did they rushed to her, laughing and pelting her with speech.
“Nang Ping! Nang Ping! Come, play with us! Come, play!” But she beat
them off, saying, “Go away. I do not want you now. Go away.”
But they clustered the closer and girdled her with their arms, but
again she shook them off, repeating impatiently, “Pa choopa, pa
choopa;” and realizing that she meant it, they went, tumbling against
each other as they ran laughing and singing, and turning as they went,
and hurling flowers at her, and crying, “Pu yao choopa,” that they did
not wish to go away.
When they had gone the cousins went to the pagoda, looked in it, and
then about it, carefully. Then they beat the garden as some careful
watchman might some treasure-place of price.
It was growing dusk.
The girls went together to the lotus basin, and stood a long time
looking down into its darkling glass. But neither spoke. The brilliant
lilies were softer-colored now, turning to pink and blue-greys, and the
red few almost to ruddy black.
A long, low whistle pierced through the gloaming from beyond the wall.
Nang Ping’s tiny hand clutched excitedly at her sash. “Soetzo”--“go and
watch over the bridge,” she told her cousin quickly. But Low Soong had
already gone.
The blackbird whistle came again, nearer, but very soft.
Nang Ping answered it with a high falsetto crooning, and in a moment
more a man cautiously parted the bamboos that grew clumped beyond the
wall, vaulted it, and stood within the garden. Nang Ping ran to him
with a little gurgling cry, and he caught her in his arms.
No Chinese lover this, in Oriental gala dress, with glancing amber eyes
and coarse threads of strong red silk prolonging his long braid of
straight hair, but a Saxon, wide gray-eyed, a distinct wave in his fair
short hair, trim and British in his well-cut suit of white duck, with
the crimson cummerbund wound about his waist.
He looked down with laughing tenderness at the picturesque little
creature in his clasp, half-affectionate, half-amused, and she looked
up at him with all a woman’s soul--soul aflame--and all a nation’s
passion in her eyes, adoring and perfect trustfulness.
“Oh! my celestial little angel,” he murmured at her flushing cheek.
The girl nestled closely and sighed with content, and he held her, and
played with the dangling jewel in her fantastic hair.
“You have been so cruel long, Basil,” the girl told him gently, but
moving not at all.
Basil Gregory laughed lightly. “So? I could not come before. You’re an
impatient puss.”
Nang Ping shook her sheeny head, and the red flower in her wonderfully
dressed hair shook and quivered, and all the jade stick-pins and the
hanging emeralds and turquoise jangled against the tassel of small
pearls that she wore pendant from her comb. “No. I am never impatient.
But the sun-dial tells not lies. You came not soon, and I did miss you
hard.”
“Well, I’ve brought you news. Guess.”
“Thy honorable mother----”
“Good girl! You’ve guessed it first go. My mother and Hilda are coming
to-morrow to make the acquaintance of pretty Miss Wu and to see her
very honorable garden.”
“Your mother and your sister,” the girl said under her breath softly.
“Ah!”
“They were no end pleased to come, especially the mater. She’d come
quick enough anywhere I told her to. We’ve been the greatest chums
always, the mater and I. Hilda pals with the governor, but she’s no end
keen on China, the motherkin--goes into all sorts of smelly dives and
dens after blue plates and shaky ivory balls, and--and all that sort
of thing, you know; reads the rummiest books, knows all about spotted
dragons and crinkly gods. She bought one yesterday, a rum, fat fellow
made out of some sort of crockery stuff; he sits squatted on the floor
this minute in her own room, and if you pat him on his noddle the old
chap nods it, and goes on nodding it, too, for a blessed hour by the
clock”--Nang Ping understood less than half of this truly British
ramble, and listened to it with a puzzled smile--“and she is no end
keen to come, to see how things are done in real China. I wouldn’t
wonder if she wrote an article for one of the picture papers at
home--‘The Chinese at Home,’ or some such stuff. I say, you’ll be sure
to give her tea Chinese fashion. No borrowed European tricks, you know;
just pucka Chinaman way!”
Nang Ping understood the drift, if not quite all his words. “It shall
be as you wish: Chinese reception, Chinese delicacies, offered Chinese
way.”
“That will be ripping then.”
“How strange it will be to talk with thy honorable mother!” the girl
said wistfully. “And thy sister! Is she like me, or more beautiful?”
she asked most seriously. And that he might judge his answer the more
nicely and adjust his answer to exact truth, she went from him a few
paces, opened her fan wide, spread out her arms, and stood very still,
a pathetic figure of Chinese girlhood on view, waiting, anxious but
meek, an Englishman’s verdict. And then, remembering that the light
was somewhat dim, she came a little nearer, but not too close, and
repeated her grave question, “Is thy honorable sister like Nang Ping,
or even more beautiful?”
Basil laughed with kindly patronage. “Hilda?” Strolling to the wide
stone bench he threw his hat on to it and sat down. “All nice girls are
like each other, Nang Ping. Hilda’s so-so. But Tom Carruthers thinks
she’s ‘top-side’ nice. Carruthers, the governor’s secretary, and I
rather think he’s going to be my honorable brother-in-law. The governor
won’t object. Tom’s right enough, and old Carruthers got any amount of
tin. The Right Reverend John B. thinks Sis nice too, or I’m greatly
mistaken. It’s a queer freak for a parson, for Hilda isn’t exactly
churchified, but Bradley finds her nice all right.”
“And my lord finds me nice?”
The gray eyes narrowed. “Very nice,” the man answered, and held out his
arms.
She went at once and sat down on the other end of the bench. Gregory
bent and kissed her, and presently she kissed him in return. And the
sudden darkness thickened, creeping closer, for there is no true
gloaming, no lingering dusk, in the Orient. It is day there, or else it
is night.
The glow-worms came out then and speckled the garden with tiny points
of fire. Nang Ping called them by a prettier name: kwang yin têng,
lamps of mercy, as her father had called them when, as a boy of ten, he
crossed Sze-chuan to wed her baby mother in Pekin.
They kissed again, the man and the girl. Kissing is not a Chinese art.
Basil Gregory had taught Wu Nang Ping to kiss.
“Oh! if only I could!” the girl said impulsively, and then broke off as
suddenly as she had begun.
“Could what, Nang Ping?” He asked it a little uneasily--uneasy at a
something in her voice.
“Tell them all about us,” she replied simply, but her voice aglow with
ecstasy at the thought.
Gregory was aghast. “Tell them all about us!” he cried hoarsely.
“Oh! not all things,” she whispered, creeping a little closer in his
arms. “There are some things one would not tell, even to the birds.”
Basil Gregory’s conscience, to its credit, shuddered sickly then, and
his arm trembled, not in tenderness, but in shame.
But self-preservation is indeed the first law of much man-nature, and
he said quickly, “I don’t mind what you tell to the birds, but you must
be extremely careful not to let my mother or sister know. _Extremely
careful_,” he repeated with dictatorial emphasis.
“Why?”
“They would not understand.”
“Why?”
He made no answer, and after a little she questioned on, “They would
not like to know that _you_ are happy?”
“Of course they would, but----”
“And that it is I that make you happy?” the light young voice pestered
on wistfully.
The Englishman shifted uneasily on his seat. “Oh, no! nothing of
that sort, to them, Nang Ping,” he said petulantly. “Don’t try to
understand. Just leave it all to me.”
“But,” the girl persisted, “do they not understand love?” She put her
arms about him.
“Oh! well,” he parried, “you see, they are English--very English.”
“But they are women.” The Chinese girl shook her head, smiling
unconvinced, and all its jeweled filigree twinkled and winked in the
opalescent half light. “They are women. All women understand love, even
before the man comes to teach them. We are born so. Your honorable
mother and the honorable Hilda, they understand; Nang Ping is sure they
do, the wise and virtuous ladies.”
“Not--not altogether. You see, things are different with us. Secret
love is not looked upon like--like married love.”
The girl laughed softly. “Then let it be no longer secret!” she purred
contentedly, warmly willing to make his people hers, their ways her
ways. “You shall tell them!” she said brightly, laying her little hands
palm down on his.
“Oh! but, Nang Ping,” Basil began miserably. But Nang would have none
of that. She nestled to him closer still. “Basil,” she interrupted,
“if our love were not secret, but married love, and I flew away with
you before my honorable father came back, then would thy honorable
mother like me in her house?--if I did that--for love make brave for
everything?”
Gregory was almost choking. But he controlled himself: that was the
least he could do for her now. “Dear child!” he said huskily, and then
he kissed her. There was tenderness in his kiss, and passion and bitter
remorse. She felt the passion and the tenderness. He broke from her
gently and moved away, standing looking down moodily at the darkening
lotus flowers, distressed, all his light-hearted happiness of idle,
selfish weeks gone, gone forever. “Oh, Nang Ping!” presently he said
ruefully, “it would be better if you had never met me,” and he moved
restlessly still a little farther away.
But still she would not understand. She rose and went to him, and put
her little arms about him again. “No,” she said with tender, caressing
emphasis, “because I am happy.” And then she added--for it was growing
dark, something that lay warm on her heart to say--that must be said
soon now, “Basil’s honorable mother would like me then, if--if I gave a
son to worship at the grave of thy ancestors!”
Gregory recoiled a little from the girl’s gentle, clinging
arms--recoiled with a startled cry: the world-old cry of man confronted
for the first time with very self; the cry of man hoist at last with
his own petard. But pity, too, for her, as yet so free from pity
for herself, welled up in him (he was not all bad--who is?), and he
controlled himself again for her sake. It was difficult, but even so
it was not much to do in return for what she had done for him. And it
was the only return that he could make, or would, the giving her some
gentleness of treatment even in the crash of his own dismay. He came
back, and caught her elbows in his hands, and held her from him so--at
arm’s length. “Nang Ping,” he tried to say it lightly, “what amazing
ideas you get into your head!”
“No,” she said stoutly, “not so! Listen! All the women in China make
one big prayer in the temples to the goddess Kwan-Yin”--he released her
arms, letting his fall at his sides helplessly, his fingers clenched in
his palms--“a prayer to her to bring them a son!”
Her lover turned away, distressed, tormented.
“Oh!” he said brokenly, “what a fool I’ve been!” It is almost the
oldest of the man-cries, almost as old as “I love you” and “I take you
for my own.”
Nang Ping ran to him, crying, “Oh! how I love you, Basil! I want to
fill my hands with happiness to pour it at _your_ feet. Do you
know how my mother died? She died when she bore me to her lord my
father. And I would gladly die so, only the child must be a son, to
worship at your grave and to teach his sons and his sons’ sons to
worship so.” The pretty, delicate creature clung to him in an ecstasy
of devotion, all her fresh womanhood dedicated to him, and then she
laughed softly, pressed her hands together in a lightened mood. “Oh! I
would gather the dew from the cherry blossoms to bathe me in its scent,
to make me more beautiful to thee!” And this, too, was an old, old cry,
as old as woman-sex.
“You see me, Lord Bassanio, where I stand,
Such as I am: though for myself alone
I would not be ambitious in my wish,
To wish myself much better; yet, for you
I would be trebled twenty times myself.”
A girl in Belmont put it so, in a dream a man dreamed beneath an
English mulberry tree. And girls have said it countless times, each
girl after her own sweet fashion, and men have accepted it, some in
manhood splendidly, some in dastardy cravenly. Basil accepted it in
shame, drinking the bitter cup of his selfish brewing.
“But,” he said, bending over her tenderly as she clung to him, “you are
as beautiful as the cherry blossom itself, Nang Ping.”
She bent back and looked up searchingly into his face, and then she
broke away and danced a little from him, as if too quick with her own
joy to stand longer still. “And as happy as heaven!” she cried. “Ah!
and when they see me, will they not guess?”
“Oh! but you mustn’t let them; you must not,” his answer came quickly.
She shook her head slowly. “But I am all happiness that I cannot
hide.” Then a new thought caught and frightened her, and she turned
back to him anxiously. “If they guessed, would they take you from me?”
“Why, yes,” he told her quickly, snatching at her idea; “they
might--yes--yes--certainly they would.”
“Oh, no, no! That would kill me.” She shuddered as she spoke.
He went to her now, and standing behind her put his arms about her
again. “Oh!” he said contritely, “you mustn’t think so much of me, Nang
Ping. You were happy before--before you met me----”
“But I was only waiting for you to come,” she said.
At that he kissed her. How could he help doing it?
“I was really only two moons old. I was only sleeping and waiting, like
those lotus flowers, waiting for you to come and wake me. You are my
summer and my sun.”
“That’s all very poetical, Nang Ping,” he said, fondling at her
elaborate and stiffened hair, “but you must not take all this too
seriously, you know.”
She broke away from him at that, speaking wistfully as she moved. “I do
not understand you. You are the poem of my life and the song that sings
in my heart!”
The man’s face darkened with trouble. He was indeed troubled. But
still he spoke kindly, and he went to her and caressed her lightly,
soothingly, as he said, “Listen, Celeste.”
“Ah!” the girl cried, “you gave me that name. That makes me yours. I am
Nang Ping no more.”
“Listen, Celeste”--at a change, a chilliness in his tone, she stiffened
a little; it is so most women face a blow--“my people are going
home--father, mother, my sister Hilda----”
“So soon!” But her face brightened, in spite of herself, as she said
it; it was not such very bad news after all. “How can they bear to
leave you?” she added wonderingly.
“They can’t,” Gregory said desperately. She did indeed stiffen then.
And there was piteous accusation in her eyes. But she said nothing; and
presently he went on lamely enough, “and that is what I had to tell
you.”
“You--you are leaving me?” the girl said very quietly.
“I must.”
“But,” she said intensely, “you will not go. You will tell them that
you cannot go--_now_!”
He must have understood her then, if he had failed, as he had tried to
fail, to do so before. “I couldn’t tell them about you, dear.” Poor
wretch! it was the best that he could find to say. “With us, things
like that are not so easy,” he added weakly.
“But you could tell them that you cannot leave me,” Nang Ping pleaded.
“You _must_ tell them that,” she whispered desperately.
“But I am not leaving you forever, little one,” the man faltered.
“England is not many weeks from here.”
“Yes, but I cannot follow you!”
Follow him! The heavens forbid! “No, of course not,” he said quickly,
“of course not, you silly little Celeste. But I shall come back. Some
day, when you least expect me, I shall be here in the lotus garden or
in the pagoda.”
“The pagoda!” she moaned.
“The pagoda,” he hurried on, “where we learned to love.” He tried to
draw her to him, but she recoiled. “No, no!” she cried hotly. “If the
bird of love once leaves its nest, the nest grows cold.” And then she
broke quite down and threw herself sobbing on the steps of the bridge.
“Oh, Celeste!” Basil Gregory said wretchedly, humbly--he was humbled,
for the hour at least, and wretchedly uncomfortable--“I--I didn’t know
your love could mean so much, but--but--oh! well, don’t you see?--won’t
you see?--even if I didn’t go it could not last forever, this.” That
was bad and crude enough; but he went on and made it worse (such men
usually do). “I--I am not a mandarin in my own country, not even the
son of one; and you know _you_ are to marry a mandarin here in
your--your own country.” (He had heard that more than once in Hong
Kong; and really he had supposed she knew he knew. It was commonly
known. And many wondered why Wu Li Chang had let it wait so long.)
Nang Ping looked up at him, her narrow eyes wide with horror. “Not
now!” she said tensely. “And when I tell my august father why, he will
kill me,” she added as quietly.
“You--tell him why?” the man cried in consternation.
“Yes, because now I do not wish to live.”
“You must not tell him!” he said roughly.
“Only when you are gone, or he would kill you too!” Nang said, simply
and without bitterness. The Englishman winced. “He will ask me why I
disobey him, and I shall tell him.”
“Don’t do that--not that! I couldn’t have it on my conscience!” And
indeed he tried to believe that he said it for her sake. “Keep our
secret, Celeste,” he begged. “Think of the perils we have run whilst
he was here”--the Chinese girl smiled a little at that wanly--“of the
happiness we have had when he has been away, as he is now. Tell him
nothing, for fear, for fear, dear, that when I came back we should
never again be able to meet.”
“You will never come back.”
“I will, Celeste--I swear it! I swear it now! I see things differently.”
“You will never come back.” She turned slowly, and without looking back
went on into the house.
“Celeste, come back! Nang Ping! Nang Ping!” he called, and she knew
that he was calling her to say at least good night, as was their
custom, in the pagoda. But she neither slowed her quiet step nor turned
her head. The pagoda had sheltered her happiness; it should not be
soiled by her despair. She went on and left him standing alone by the
lotus lake.
He waited there a while, confident that she would come back to him; but
presently, convinced that she would not come that night, or perhaps
could not, he went stealthily away, very sorry for himself and not a
little vexed with Nang Ping: the offender is easily vexed.
Low Soong came from the coign of watch, looking after him curiously,
and wondering what had happened. She had seen little and heard nothing,
but she sensed trouble in the air. Basil did not turn or speak to her,
and when he had gone she passed slowly into the house.
There was not a sound in the garden. The darkness had come. Nothing was
visible except the gay lanterns and many lamps lit on the walls and
at the house-door, and in the deserted garden itself the vivid pulse
of the glow-worms poised on shrubs and trees or winging brilliantly
through the purple night.