Shortly before two o’clock the next day the Prime Minister came for us,
and conducted us directly to the Presence Chamber, instead of taking us
to the small wooden building, containing a table and some chairs, where
visitors usually had to wait until the Emperor’s messenger arrived with
orders permitting an advance to the throne-room. Our little procession
consisted of four persons,--Mr. Hemster, Miss Hemster, the Prime
Minister, and myself. Hun Woe was visibly uneasy, and I was well aware
that, in spite of the money paid him, he would much rather have been
absent from the ceremony. In Eastern lands it is extremely dangerous
for a Vizier to witness a Sultan’s humiliation, and the Prime Minister
well knew that although the Emperor had permitted the deference due
to him to be temporarily annulled through payment of gold, he might
nevertheless consider it desirable to eliminate the onlooker, so that
no record of this innovation were left on the earth.
The room into which we were conducted was but indifferently lighted.
It was oblong in shape, and a low divan ran across the farther end of
it. Four very ordinary wooden chairs had been placed midway between the
door and the divan.
Both the Emperor and the Empress were seated, Oriental fashion, on huge
cushions, and were decked out in a fashion that might be termed tawdry
gorgeousness. I do not know whether the strings of colored gems that
hung around the Empress were real or imitation, but they were barbaric
in size and glitter and number. The Empress, whom I had never seen
before, sat impassive, with eyes half closed, as if she were a statue
of the feminine Buddha. During the whole of the exciting interview she
never moved or showed the slightest sign of animation.
The Emperor’s ferret-like eyes glanced shiftily over the advancing
party, which came forward, as I might say, in two sections, the three
white people upright, and the Premier bending almost double, working
his way toward the divan by zigzag courses, giving one the odd notion
that he was some sort of wild beast about to spring upon the Emperor
when he arrived at a proper position for the pounce.
The twinkling eyes of the Emperor, however, speedily deserted the
rest of our party, and fixed themselves on Miss Hemster, who moved
toward him with graceful ease and an entire absence of either fear or
deference. She instantly made good the determination she had previously
expressed, and, gliding directly up to him, thrust forward her hand,
which the Emperor seemed at a loss what to do with. His eyes were
fastened on her lovely countenance, and there broke on his lips a smile
so grim and ghastly that it might well have made any one shudder who
witnessed it. The bending Prime Minister uttered a few words which
informed the Emperor that the lady wished to shake hands with him, and
then his Majesty took his own grimy paws from out of the great bell
sleeves in which they were concealed, and with his two hands grasped
hers. Never did so sweet a hand disappear in so revolting a clutch,
and the young woman, evidently shocked at the contact, and doubtless
repelled by the repulsiveness of the face that leered up at her, drew
suddenly back, but the clutch was not relaxed.
“Let me go!” she cried breathlessly, and her father took an impulsive
step forward; but before he reached her the Emperor suddenly put forth
his strength and drew the young woman tumbling down to the divan beside
him, grimacing like a fiend from the bottomless pit. Little he recked
what he was doing. With a scream Miss Hemster sprang up, flung out her
right arm, and caught him a slap on the side of his face that sounded
through the hall like the report of a pistol. The Prime Minister, with
a shuddering cry of horror, flung himself on his face, and grovelled
there in piteous pretence of not having seen this death-earning insult
which the Western woman had so energetically bestowed on the Eastern
potentate. Hun Woe’s open palms beat helplessly against the wooden
planks, as if he were in the tremors of dissolution. The active young
woman sprang back a pace or two, and, if a glance could have killed,
the look with which she transfixed his Imperial Majesty would have
brought extinction with it.
As for the Emperor, he sat there, bending slightly forward, the
revolting grimace frozen on his face, and yet his royal head must have
been ringing with the blow he had received. The Empress sat stolid, as
if nothing had happened, and never moved an eyelid. Then his Majesty,
casting a look of contempt at the huddled heap of clothes which
represented the Prime Minister, threw back his head and gave utterance
to a cackling laugh which was exceedingly chilling and unpleasant to
hear. Meanwhile the young lady seated herself emphatically in one of
the chairs, with a sniff of indignant remonstrance.
“There,” she said, “I flatter myself I have taught one nigger a lesson
in good manners. He’ll bear the signature of my fingers on his cheeks
for a few hours at least.”
“Madam,” I said solemnly, “I beg you to restrain yourself. Your
signature is more likely to prove a death-warrant than a lesson in
etiquette.”
“Be quiet,” she cried angrily to me, turning toward me a face red with
resentment; “if there is no one here to protect me from insult I must
stand up for myself, and you can bet your bottom dollar I’ll do it. Do
you think I am afraid of an old hobo like that?”
The Emperor watched her with narrowing eyes as she was speaking, and
it really seemed as if he understood what she said; for again he threw
back his head and laughed, as if the whole thing was a joke.
“Madam,” said I, “it isn’t a question of fear or the lack of it, but
merely a matter of common sense. We are entirely in this man’s power.”
“He daren’t hurt us,” she interrupted with a snap, “and he knows it,
and you know it.”
“I beg your pardon, Miss Hemster, I know a great deal more of these
people than you do. No Westerner can predict what may happen in an
Eastern Court.”
“Westerners are just as good as New Yorkers, or Londoners either, for
that matter,” cried the gentle Gertrude, holding her head high in the
air.
“You mistake me, Miss Hemster; I am speaking of Europeans as well as
of Americans. This Emperor, at a word, can have our heads chopped off
before we leave the room.”
“Oh, you’re a finicky, babbling old woman,” she exclaimed, tossing her
head, “and just trying to frighten my father. The Emperor knows very
well that if he laid a hand on us the United States would smash his old
kingdom in two weeks.”
“If you will pardon me, madam, the Emperor is quite ignorant. If he
should determine to have us executed, not all the United States or
Britain and Europe combined could save us. He has but to give an
order, and it will be rigidly obeyed if the heavens fell the moment
after. If you are anxious to give the Emperor your opinion of him,
all I beg of you is that you wait until we’re out of this trap, and
then send it to him on a picture post-card. Whatever action the Powers
might subsequently take would be of no assistance to us--when we are
executed.”
During this heated conversation the Prime Minister had partly risen to
his hands and knees, although he kept his head hanging down until it
nearly touched the floor. The Emperor had been watching Miss Hemster’s
animated countenance, and he seemed greatly to enjoy my evident
discomfiture. Even though he understood no word of our language, he saw
plainly enough that I was getting the worst of the verbal encounter.
Now the gradual uprising of the Prime Minister drew his attention
temporarily to this grovelling individual, and he spoke a few words to
him which at once raised my alarm for the safety of those in my care.
His Majesty had evidently forgotten for the moment that I understood
the Corean tongue. Hun Woe now rose to his feet, kept his back at an
angle of forty-five degrees, and, without turning around, began to
retreat from the Imperial presence. I at once stepped in his way, and
said to the Emperor that this command must not go forth, whereupon the
Majesty of Corea was good enough to laugh once more.
“What are you talking about?” demanded Miss Hemster. “You must
translate everything that is said; and, furthermore, you must tell him
that he has to apologize to me for his insult at the beginning.”
“All in good time, Miss Hemster.”
“Not all in good time,” she cried, rising from her chair. “If you don’t
do that at once, I’ll go and slap his face again.”
“Please believe me, Miss Hemster, that you have already done that once
too often. I assure you that the situation is serious, and you are
increasing the danger by your untimely interference.”
Before she could reply, a roar of laughter from the Emperor, who wagged
his head from side to side and rocked his body to and fro in his glee,
drew my attention to the fact that I had been outwitted. The Prime
Minister, taking advantage of my discussion with Miss Hemster, had
scuttled silently away and had disappeared. I fear I made use of an
exclamation to which I should not have given utterance in the presence
of a lady; but that lady’s curiosity, overcoming whatever resentment
she may have felt, clamoured to know what had happened.
“His Majesty,” said I, “gave orders to the Prime Minister doubly to
guard the Palace gates, and see that no communication reached the
outside from us. It means that we are prisoners!”
All this time I had not the least assistance from the old gentleman,
who sat in a most dejected attitude on one of the wooden chairs. I had
remained standing since we entered the room. Now he looked up with
dismay on his countenance, and I was well enough acquainted with him to
know that his fear was not for himself but for his daughter.
“Will you tell the Emperor,” he said, “that we are armed, and that we
demand leave to quit this place as freely as we entered it?”
“I think, Mr. Hemster,” said I, “that we had better conceal the fact
that we have arms,--at least until the Prime Minister returns. We can
keep that as our trump card.”
“Will you please do exactly what my father tells you to,” snapped the
young woman sharply.
“Hush, Gertrude!” said Mr. Hemster. Then, addressing himself to me:
“Sir,” he added, “do whatever you think is best.”
I now turned to the Emperor, and made the speech of my life. I began
by stating that Corea had been face to face with many a crisis during
its history, but never had she been confronted with such a situation
as now presented itself. Mr. Hemster, besides being King, in his own
right, of the provision market in Chicago, was one of the most valued
citizens of the United States, and that formidable country would spend
its last sen and send its last man to avenge any injury done to Mr.
Hemster, or the Princess, his daughter. I asserted that the United
States was infinitely more powerful than Russia, China, and Japan added
together, with each of whom he had hitherto chiefly dealt. This alone
would be bad enough, but the danger of the situation was augmented by
my own presence. His Majesty might perhaps be good enough to remember
that the last time I had had the pleasure of meeting him I was an Envoy
of a country which had probably fought more successful battles than
any other nation in existence. Great Britain was also in the habit of
avenging the injuries inflicted on her subjects; and so, if the Emperor
was so ill-fated as to incur the displeasure of these mighty empires,
whose united strength was sufficient to overawe all the rest of the
earth, he would thus bring about the extinction of himself and of his
nation.
I regret to say that this eloquence was largely thrown away. His
Majesty paid but scanty attention to my international exposition. His
fishy eyes were fixed continually on Miss Hemster, who now and then
made grimaces at him as if she were a little schoolgirl, once going so
far as to thrust out her tongue, which action seemed to strike the
Emperor as exceedingly comic, for he laughed uproariously at it.
When I had ceased speaking the Emperor replied in a few words, but
without ever taking his eyes from the girl. I answered him,--or,
rather, was answering him,--when Miss Hemster interrupted impatiently:
“What are you saying? You must translate as you go on. I wish you would
remember your position, Mr. Tremorne, which is that of translator. I
refuse to be kept in the dark in this way.”
“Gertie, Gertie!” remonstrated her father. “Please do not interfere.
Mr. Tremorne will tell us what is happening all in good time.”
And now the Emperor himself, as if he understood what was being said,
commanded me to translate to them the terms he had laid down.
“I shall try to remember my position, Miss Hemster,” I replied; “and,
as his Majesty’s ideas coincide with your own, I have pleasure in
giving you a synopsis of what has passed.”
Then I related my opening speech to the Emperor, which appeared to
commend itself to Mr. Hemster, who nodded several times in support of
my dissertation on the national crisis.
“The Emperor,” I continued, “has made no comment upon what I have laid
before him. He tells us we are free to go,--that is, your father and
myself,--as long as we leave you here. Not to put too fine a point to
it, he offers to buy you, and says he will make you the White Star of
his harem, which he seems to think is rather a poetical expression.”
“Well, of all the gall!” exclaimed Miss Hemster, raising her hands and
letting them fall helplessly into her lap again, as if this gesture
should define the situation better than any words she had at her
command. “You inform His Nibs that I am no White Star Line, and you
tell this mahogany graven image that my father can buy him and his
one-horse kingdom and give them away without ever feeling it. When he
talks of buying, just inform him that in the States down South we used
to sell better niggers than him every day in the week.”
I thought it better to tone down this message somewhat, and in doing so
was the innocent cause, as I suspect, of a disaster which has always
troubled my mind since that eventful time. I said to the Emperor
that American customs differed from those of Corea. Miss Hemster,
being a Princess in her own rank, of vast wealth, could not accept
any position short of that of Empress, and, as there was already an
Empress of Corea, the union he proposed was impossible. I reiterated my
request that we be allowed to pass down to the coast without further
molestation.
This statement was received by the Emperor with much hilarity. He
looked upon it merely as an effort on my part to enhance the price
of the girl, and expressed his willingness to turn over to her half
the revenues of the kingdom. He seemed to imagine he was acting in
the most lavishly generous manner, and I realized the hopelessness of
the discussion, because I was face to face with a man who had never
been refused anything he wished for since he came to the throne. His
conceited ignorance regarding the power of other countries to enforce
their demands made the situation all the more desperate.
At this juncture the crouching Prime Minister returned, made his way
slowly, by means of acute angles, to the foot of the throne, and
informed the Emperor that the guards of the Palace had been doubled,
and had received instructions to allow no living thing to enter or
leave the precincts of the Court. I now repeated to Hun Woe the warning
I had so fruitlessly proffered to the Emperor, but I doubt if the
satellite paid much more attention than his master had done. While in
the presence he seemed incapable of either thought or action that did
not relate to his Imperial chief. He intimated that the audience was
now finished and done with, and added that he would have the pleasure
of accompanying us to our rooms. It seemed strange, when we returned,
to find Miss Stretton sitting in a chair, placidly reading a book which
she had brought with her from the yacht, and the Japanese boy setting
out cups for tea on a small table near her. Miss Stretton looked up
pleasantly as we entered, closing her book, and putting her finger in
it to mark the place.
“What a long time you have been,” she said; “the conference must have
proved very successful.”
Miss Gertrude Hemster paced up and down the room as if energetic action
were necessary to calm the perturbation of her spirit. As the other
finished her remark she clenched her little fist and cried:
“I’ll make that Emperor sit up before I’ve done with him!”
I thought it more advisable to refrain from threats until we were out
of the tiger’s den; but the reticent example of Mr. Hemster was upon
me, and I said nothing. Nevertheless the young woman was as good as her
word.