“CUR!”
“Nothing so pleasant”--and the perfect placidity of his voice was more
cruel than any outburst could have been.
“Well,” the other said desperately, “but there’ll be a reckoning for
all this--my father----”
“Not necessarily, my young seducer,” the Chinese said softly. “Your
father I do not regard as a man at all formidable. I had a most
interesting interview with him--to-day. And I formed a low opinion
of his abilities. There is a positive hue and cry after you, of
course--almost a paper-chase. The walls of Hong Kong city are plastered
with your portrait, and even here, on the mainland, it is to be
seen. It is a very nice portrait, too--the nice likeness of a nice
English--gentleman--the portrait of a very handsome young--seducer.”
Wu Li Chang was not quite his own master now. The storm was rising,
threatening his own insolent calm. He rose and moved a little up and
down the carpet--quietly but stealthily, as hungry-for-flesh and
thirstily-dry-for-blood cats move through the jungle in the night.
His last word cut Basil Gregory. Wu was behaving like the yellow dog he
was; but he--Basil--was not entirely blameless: he had said as much to
himself, alone in the pagoda--that cursed pagoda. Oh, well!
“Your daughter loved me,” he began. And at a something manlier in his
tone than Wu Li Chang had expected to hear, Wu paused still and met
the English eyes squarely. “We are both young.” And after a pause,
so throbbing that even the three automaton servants must have felt
it beat, he added slowly, “Except that the two races don’t mingle, I
would----”
“Marry her?” Wu interrupted haughtily.
“Yes,” Gregory replied, as if proclaiming a determination and a
promise. “Yes--if she still wishes it.”
“A very interesting suggestion,” Wu sneered. “In your country, when a
woman has been dishonored, marriage is called ‘making an honest woman
of her.’ It is a quaint notion. To me it seems a nasty one--plastering
some putrid sore with gold-leaf! _Here_ we have other methods. To
us a woman’s honor, once stained, no more can be clean again than the
petals of a rose, torn and scattered by the storm, can be gathered back
into their opening bud to perfume the dawn and glisten with its dew.
If marriage, and with such as you, would redeem the honor of a ruined
girl, what would redeem the honor of a father and a house so desecrated
as mine? Nothing! And nothing is left me but to avenge. And I avenge it
now.” He turned and confronted the trembling wretch with a look before
which a braver and a less guilt-stained man might well have quailed,
and each word curled and hissed from his mouth like a snake.
Basil moistened his lips, tried to speak, but failed.
“However,” Wu continued, “I was going to say that although your
disappearance has become a matter of public advertisement, yet the
last place where you are looked for happens to be your present, if
temporary, abode. I say ‘temporary’ because in this life everything
is temporary--even life itself. You might be buried here--though I
don’t say you will be--without any one being the wiser outside my
own household. At one word from me you would be taken and crucified
beside the pagoda, and left there until the carrion birds came and
plucked your vitals out, and your eyes, and no one would suspect, or,
if they suspected, dare make a move. Your people at your Government
House! They could do nothing. My Government would dare do nothing,
_even if they wished to_, for in an hour I could pull half China
tumbling down about their ears. By the way, your father is a ruined
man to-day. His ships are sinking, his credit gone. In China we punish
parents for their children’s sin--and our gods have punished Robert
Gregory for yours and for his own: his own sin in having begotten
such a _thing_ as you, and his daily sin of impertinence to my
countrymen. Well, my virtuous young English gentleman, our interview
is drawing to its close. What is it that you wish to say--if your
quivering nerves will let you speak?”
“If”--Basil Gregory spoke humbly enough now--“if you would grant me one
favor.”
Wu Li Chang laughed aloud. “Optimist!” he sneered. “Well?”
“That--that before anything”--his voice shook, and the words were not
very clear--“anything happens to me, you will let me write a letter to
my mother.”
“To your mother?” Wu said softly. But his triumph leapt in his veins.
“To my mother! I--I _beg_ you that one thing. It would not mention
this place or your name, of course”--Wu laughed--“but,” the tortured
man went on, “but if you would see that it reached her----” There was a
sob in his voice.
“And--so you would like to write to your mother?”
“Oh!” Basil Gregory cried, “double the torture you have planned, but
let me write to my mother.”
“This is very interesting,” the mandarin said, sitting down again.
“Very interesting--very. As for the torture I am preparing for you, I
shall not increase it, because it cannot be increased. Largest cannot
be enlarged. To the utmost one cannot add. So,” he laughed softly, “you
wish very much to write to your mother--a virtuous lady who bore a son
in wedlock!”
Basil Gregory dropped his head. He could no longer meet the eyes of the
father of Nang Ping.
“I suppose you would scarcely credit,” the Chinese voice went on
softly, “that my consideration for you had gone even beyond that? Would
you like--not to write to your mother--but to _see_ her?”
“See her!”
“Because you shall.”
“See her!” Basil cried, trembling as he had not trembled before. “Oh!
Mr. Wu!”
“Yes,” Wu said slowly (and it says something of him and of his race
that it did not occur to the other to doubt him--nor would have
occurred to any one), “you shall. And you shall see her soon. You may
even go home with her this very evening and sail for Europe next week.
It is quite possible.” He spoke with quiet emphasis.
“Mr. Wu!” the blanched face was twitching hideously, “oh! I would do
anything!” The frightened eyes leapt and burned. Gregory’s revulsion
was terrible--the great revulsion of reprieve, or nightmare torture
past and gone, the revulsion of a starving man at sudden meat and
plenty, of one dying of thirst who finds a brimming mountain-pool cool
to his reach, of the mother who from hours of agony slips towards sleep
with the warm velvet of her baby snuggled to her breast. He took one
eager step forward, and so far the men beside him let him go, and Ah
Sing made no sign. “If you would give me your daughter----” he said
earnestly, but at a look from Wu he paused.
“Give you my daughter?” Wu Li Chang said terribly. He rose and crossed
to Gregory and stood before him--very near. “I have no daughter,” he
said gravely, and his meaning was unmistakable, “to give you or any
man!”
The pinioned man recoiled with a sob. “Oh! my God!” he cried under his
breath. And he knew himself for the murderer of a girl who had given
him--all--and a child. And his own soul rose against him, and cursed
him, and called him “Cur!”