Neither man forgot this picture of Nancy in the doorway. The quick
look of surprise she gave them was not swift enough to banish traces
of the terror she had been suffering, so that they cherished a
continuing memory of the color in her startled eyes before she looked
down, confused by the gaze of two strangers. And her blush of
embarrassment was too slow to hide the glowing whiteness of her skin,
a whiteness accentuated by the sumptuous disorder of dark hair. The
girl kept a nervous grip upon the panels of the door; she stood
tiptoe, her body poised for flight; the narrow slope of her
shoulders, the fullness of her thighs, the slender ankles, to which
the simple costume of jacket and trousers did admirable justice,
suggested a figure graceful rather than dainty, a healthy coherence
of nerves and muscles ready to express with full pliability the
lightest promptings of her mind. She was a creature through whose
veins life ran bravely.
Not till Edward took his sister affectionately by the hand did she
relax. One of the men, at least, watching the haunted look slowly
subside from her face, realized that the boy's story, after all, had
not been so wildly unlikely: there had been more at issue than
payment for a cup of tea. His suspicion would have been amply
confirmed if he had seen the greediness in the face of the monk, a
stare of thwarted exasperation which a lifetime of copying the placid
Lord Buddha did nothing to erase. Nancy saw it and turned away.
"Well, tea has been your undoing, my children," said the more
whimsical of the two Englishmen, "now let tea make amends. Sit down
and let's drain the pot. I've got twenty cents for your ransom and
twenty cents more for ours, so have no fear. They can hardly lock up
the four of us."
Nancy would not think of drinking more tea beneath this hostile roof,
but Edward, quite at ease again, poured several cupfuls down his
thirsty throat. The two monks were bland and smiling and did their
amiable share in a disjointed, bilingual conversation with the two
strangers. The children they ignored, but Nancy stiffened each time
they passed her stool and waited anxiously for her rescuers to
finish. At last, after one of the Englishmen had done the rounds of
the temple, examined the eighteen Lo-han, photographed Kuan-yin on
her dolphin, and tried various expedients, all useless, to photograph
the mummy in his glass case, they got up to go. With effusive bowing
they passed out of the monastery from which, an hour ago, she had
nearly lost hope of escaping. Her happiness to be away from its
walls made her forget for a moment how low the sun had fallen.
"We haven't introduced ourselves," said the man who had been taking
the lead. "My name is Beresford and my silent friend here does honor
to the good old name of Nasmith. May we presume to ask what you are
called?"
"Edward," answered the boy; "Edward and Nancy."
"Good names, too, good old-country names; but have you not a surname,
a last name?"
It took Edward a minute to realize that the man meant what would be,
in the Chinese order, his first name.
"Yes, it is Hai."
"Hai?" repeated the man. "But that's Chinese. What is it in
English?"
Edward did not know. "Hai" always had sufficed.
"We can't call you Miss Hai and Master Hai," laughed Beresford; "that
would be absurd. If you will forgive the impertinence, we must
content ourselves with Nancy and Edward. What is your father? Why
does he dress you like this? Is he a missionary?"
"I don't know," said Edward. "He is an official of the Emperor, that
is, he was an official of the Emperor--"
"When there was an Emperor," helped out Nasmith, relieving the boy
from possible difficulties with his syntax.
"But your father is an Englishman," said Beresford, mindful of the
stony British stare.
"No, he is a Chinese official," protested Edward. "He used to be an
Englishman."
The men exchanged curious looks.
"And your mother?"
"Our mother was English. She's dead."
"Oh," said the man, fearful lest he had touched a sore spot, but
ready to proceed with his questions when he saw by the slight
boastfulness in Edward's bearing that the death of his mother was a
claim to distinction rather than a recent sorrow. "Then whom do you
live with?"
"Oh, we live with father and the amah and Kuei-lien--that's my
father's newest wife; she's very pretty. That's all there are here.
The rest are in Peking, the t'ai-t'ai and the other wives. Then I
have some brothers and sisters in Peking too, but not real sisters
like Nancy."
The two strangers heard this domestic record with astonishment, not
the smallest cause of which was Edward's matter-of-fact tone in the
telling. They had come leisurely through the silver pines to the end
of the temple path. Suddenly Nancy, who had taken no part in the
conversation but walked on Edward's far side, began speaking to her
brother in swift low Chinese. The reaction from her peril, the
novelty of walking with two foreign men, neither of them could blind
her to the lateness of the hour. Once out from the shadow of the
trees, she realized night would fall long before she and Edward could
get home. Another spell of panic unnerved her. Edward himself
looked round with an expression of blank dismay.
Nasmith perceived the trouble.
"Where do you live? Near where we saw you playing cricket?"
"Farther, much farther."
The man whistled.
"You couldn't get halfway there before dark, even if you know these
goat tracks, which I don't believe you do, do you?"
"No," admitted the boy.
"Neither do we. We might wander all night. We certainly should not
think of your going alone. I'll tell you what you can do: you come
home with us for the night. We're quite respectable; don't be
alarmed. My married sister is there with her children, quite large
kiddies, your own age in fact. She can squeeze you in, I know, and
then to-morrow morning we shall make it our first duty to see you
home."
"But father will not know where we are," said Nancy doubtfully. "He
will be angry."
"He will be worse than angry if you are lost, Miss Nancy, and I see
no hope of our finding the way there at this time of day. At home,
perhaps, I can find a messenger who can take a letter to him. That
will keep him from worrying."
Edward seemed eager to accept the invitation, but Nancy still
hesitated.
"Don't fear, Nancy," said Beresford kindly, divining her fears; "in
any case we are not going to desert you. If you say the word, we'll
try to get you home to-night, though I don't think it can be done.
If you come home with us I can assure you of a merry time. Mr.
Nasmith's sister's children--excuse the mouthful--are really very
jolly and full of fun. You mustn't judge them by their uncle. You
will have the time of your life, and nothing will please them better
than to have two visitors. They'll want every last word of your
adventure. What do you say?"
Nancy saw the reasonableness of what he said and she liked the jovial
courtesy of the choice he allowed. She was shyer than Edward, but
already she felt as if she had known these men--she did not think of
them as young men; they represented no special age to her mind--she
felt as if she had known them for years. And she trusted them. So
to Edward's manifest joy she put aside qualms about her father's
wrath and chose an experience which promised entry into a new world,
a world she had long been curious to see. She was tired too and
hungry, and this walk, as it proved, was none too short for the hour
of daylight which remained.
Beresford had extracted a fair knowledge of Edward's history by the
time they reached the settlement. He had learned to suppress his
amazement and relished with appreciation every sidelight of Edward's
intimate recital. It was rare amusement to hear a youngster, who was
so assuredly English as to regret the loss of his bow more than all
the excitement of a crowded afternoon, treating of concubines, their
favor and loss of favor with his father, their expectations of
further offspring, as though these were the normal stuff of life.
Nasmith did not say much, but he listened with silent appreciation
while Nancy walked quietly, obsessed by thoughts no one could read.
They came at last down a wide road into the settlement. Dusk had
fallen. The children were dazzled by the many lights which shone
from the bungalows and from the occupied temples scattered round the
sides of the valley.
"Well, here we are," said Beresford, passing through a grove of
acacia at the end of which stood a low, rangy house, built in foreign
style. An oil lamp, hanging from the ceiling of the verandah, shone
upon a table where dinner, it seemed, was soon to be served.
Servants were spreading a white cloth. Nancy, with a sinking of the
heart, recognized that several people--they looked like a crowd to
her frightened eyes--were sitting in a group just beyond the outer
margin of the light.
"So you're back, are you?" came a woman's voice. "We were just going
to have dinner without you. Why, whom have you brought here?"
"Sorry to be late," laughed Beresford, as he stepped up to the
verandah, "we've found the Babes in the Wood and brought them home
with us. Nothing to be afraid of, Edward, Nancy," he said, pushing
the children into the light, "she won't bite. Miss Hai, Master Hai,
in other words, Nancy and Edward, I have the pleasure of presenting
you to Mrs. Ferris. Tell the rest of the family to sit down; I'm not
going to introduce them now. This isn't a reception. Take this pair
inside, Agnes, and let them wash. Ronald will explain."
Mrs. Ferris was not so puzzled as to miss the hint. She saw the
embarrassment of the two children; her motherly sympathies helped her
to take instant pity on their plight. She got them inside, called
for hot water, soap, and towels, and left the boy and girl vigorously
scrubbing themselves.
"They know how to wash," she said delightedly, coming back to the
large living-room. "Who are they? What are they?"
Nasmith detailed all that he had learned while Beresford was
supplying the curiosity of the group on the verandah and keeping them
from too quick a descent upon Edward and Nancy.
"The poor dears!" exclaimed Mrs. Ferris. "How utterly horrible to
think of two English children being brought up like that! And with
such a man for their father. I declare I don't think you ought to
take them back."
"They don't see the horror of it at all, you can count on that,
Agnes," said Nasmith, not wishing to smile too openly at his sister's
point of view. "They won't find it half so horrible as wrestling
with forks and knives at dinner to-night."
"I can borrow some chopsticks from the servants."
"Oh no, the experience will be a thrilling one for them to remember.
This will be their first introduction to foreign ways. The more
highly colored the impression the better they will like it."
Nancy and Edward were called into consultation for the dispatch of a
messenger to their father; then they were ushered into the room,
where they stood shyly, not daring to take note of their surroundings.
"You must make yourselves at home," said Mrs. Ferris gently. "I am
awfully glad my brother brought you here. We'll take good care of
you and see that you get back to your father safely. I'll call the
children now; they are dying to meet you."
Nancy had only time enough to notice her pleasant face and the
oddness of her light wavy hair--it seemed rather untidy to the
Chinese taste in the way it was heaped on top of her head--before the
children trooped in. She did not wish to stare too curiously, but
her interest in seeing Western girls for the first time directed her
eyes with irresistible fascination toward the newcomers.
"These are the twins, Helen and Elizabeth," said Mrs. Ferris, as two
girls of Nancy's own height came forward. Each of them stretched out
her hand, momentarily puzzling Nancy, who had forgotten that this was
the foreign way of greeting. She tried to make up for her lapse by
hastily putting out her left hand, so that her new friends in their
turn were nonplused till frank laughter on all sides set matters
right and helped Nancy to feel more at ease.
The girls saved Edward from accident by merely bowing.
"This is David," continued the mother, introducing a boy of twelve,
who grasped Nancy's hand warmly before she had time to be perplexed.
"And this is Patricia."
A bare-legged girl of ten came forward.
"And last but not least--are you, my darling?--Reggie, the baby."
He was a chubby youngster of six.
"So you see we're not a small family, nor a quiet one, either. How
old are you, Nancy? You must be about the same age as the twins."
"I am seventeen," Nancy answered, finding it difficult to speak
English before so many strangers.
"Seventeen! I should not have thought it. I suppose it's your
costume which makes you seem younger. Why, you look almost like a
boy. Then you are older than my girls." Mrs. Ferris did not know
that Nancy was figuring her age by the Chinese reckoning, which makes
a child one when it is born and two on the succeeding New Year's Day,
so that a baby born on New Year's Eve can be two years old before he
has lived two days.
Older though she might be, Nancy felt very young beside these two
strapping lasses, who were so instantly friendly that she was no
longer afraid to look at them. For twins their features were not
much alike, but they had the same yellowish golden hair, which they
allowed to fall profusely down their shoulders. Nancy had never seen
this fashion before; it was strange, but she liked it. The color too
was unusual, but not too freakish in Nancy's eyes, for she was used
to her father's shock of light hair. The blue eyes did startle her,
but the girl was more entertained by the dresses they were wearing,
dainty white muslin which left throat and shoulders bare and spread
out into many embroidered flounces at the knees. This was the
foreign style, no doubt, but it did not appear quite modest.
Dinner offered formidable difficulties of its own. Nasmith secretly
had prompted the family to talk and laugh in their usual manner so
that their guests might not suffer too self-consciously from the
ordeal. The hint was well taken, but Nancy and Edward could not
wholly escape the interested surveillance of their neighbors. They
were proud children, furtively careful how they dealt with knives and
forks, not willing to disgrace the family name by even pardonable
mistakes. But Edward fared better than his sister. He had been put
at the right of Mrs. Ferris, with whom he was soon on easy terms in
his eager boyish way, and he benefited by the little mannerly
explanations of his hostess, words so delicately put that he did not
know he was being instructed and enabled to relish the unfamiliar
dishes.
The experiment of putting Nancy on Nasmith's right proved
unfortunate. The girl could not accustom herself to sitting next to
a man; it was too great a breach with the past. And even her hunger
could not override the peculiar flavor of the food. She tried
courageously to sip three spoonfuls of tomato soup; the taste balked
her. She was more conservative than Edward. She held her knife
stiffly and sawed ineffectually at the meat, just checking a potato
from leaping with a shower of gravy on to the spotless cloth. With
the Chinese aversion to uncooked greens, she rejected the salad,
after one nibble; it made her ill to see the yellow oil which the
others poured over their lettuce. But the crowning disaster came
with the ice cream which the girl, unsuspecting its coldness, put
into her mouth and then had no way to extract. The ice cream got
behind her teeth, giving her for a moment almost unendurable agony.
She lost the distinction between hot and cold, frightened by the
thought that her mouth was burning. Almost on the verge of fainting,
she could not hide her distress.
The impish Patricia giggled and an awkward titter of amusement went
round the table as Nancy, having at last succeeded in swallowing the
nauseous stuff, choked like a swimmer who has filled his mouth with
salt water.
"It isn't fair," said Nasmith in a comforting voice; "you ought to
have your revenge and see us eating Chinese food."
"Do you always eat Chinese food?" inquired Patricia incredulously.
"Don't you ever get tired of it?"
"What a question from Pat, of all people," said Elizabeth, "Pat,
who's never been known to get tired of eating any food."
Patricia gulped at the bait indignantly, but the situation was saved
for Nancy. In the good-tempered wrangling which ensued she could lay
down her spoon unobserved and wait calmly for the meal to end. She
soon found herself enjoying the retorts bandied back and forth by the
Ferris children. The wordy battle reminded her of the three-cornered
warfare between Li-an, Edward, and herself. She began to feel
immensely at home and rose from the table quite in a mood to learn
the games her new friends wished to teach her. She enjoyed draughts
and dominoes and smiled at Beresford's droll stories. Nothing,
however, quite surpassed the effect of the gramophone, which she
listened to as she swung with Elizabeth and Helen in a capacious
hammock under the trees. She had heard of these marvelous
instruments but Herrick, who hated them, would not permit one within
the walls of his home. Amid their host of new impressions the girl
and her brother equally could spare wonder for these black discs
which sang with such unbelievably human tones. They pictured
enviously the sensation they could make by introducing this
miraculous toy into the gossiping perfunctory life of the courtyards
at home.
So full was the evening, so engaged were Nancy and Edward by their
new friends, that Mrs. Ferris had not the heart to call "Bedtime"
till every record had been heard; she even let Elizabeth and Helen
perform their respective show-pieces on the piano and combine forces
for a militant duet, and at last suggested sleep only when Patricia
and David's rendering of "Turkey in the Straw" promised to continue
interminably and without variation through the night.
She had dug up pyjamas for Edward and a nightgown for Nancy, and now
put the boy in charge of David while the twins carried off Nancy like
a prize to their own room, offering one bed to their guest and
preparing to share the other.
Nancy looked with speechless amazement round the clean white room.
Its daintiness, its comfort, were beyond her experience. She gazed
at the spotless beds and at the long mirror of the dressing table,
and at the bottles, hairbrushes, combs, and hairpin trays arrayed
before it. Helen and Elizabeth were delighted by her surprise,
overjoyed to explain the uses of every toilet implement. In their
turn they wished to be satisfied about every detail of Nancy's
clothes, so the three were soon busy comparing the odd features of
Western and Chinese garments.
Dressing, Nancy decided, must be an elaborate process in the West.
She watched Helen and Elizabeth disrobe with the attention she would
have given to a play--with more attention, indeed, for she was
privileged to test the fabrics with her sensitive fingers, rubbing
her hands up and down their white silk stockings, examining the
embroidery which it seemed so strange to her they should conceal on
their underwear, looking minutely at the lace straps over their
shoulders, the pink ribbons which held up their chemises, the elastic
girdles from which their garters were hung.
Nancy was bewildered by such a complexity of garb. She was ashamed
to be dressed so simply, to have nothing startling to disclose, just
jacket and trousers, singlet and drawers, and then the diamond-shaped
piece of cloth fastened by strings across the front of her body as a
guard against cholera. There were no ribbons, no lace, no
embroidery, not even the gay sash she wore in the privacy of the
garden at home when she could rid herself of her outer garments,
nothing but severely cut, practical things of plain cotton cloth,
with just one touch of color in the orange garters, the dividing line
between her sober black stockings and the white skin above. Yet the
two girls envied her and sighed to exchange their frills for the
convenience of her Chinese clothing.
"We are not dressed up like this usually," explained Helen, "only for
dinner. We wear gingham in the day-time, but we still have the
skirts to pull down and the stockings eternally to pull up, and we
never could get ready in twice the time it takes you."
The upshot of these whispered comparisons was, of course, a desire to
exchange clothes and to pose before the mirror in the borrowed
delights of exotic garb. Nancy accepted the plan joyfully and
watched each stage of her masquerade, while Elizabeth and Helen
nimbly tied her in till she was a replica of themselves. She gazed
at herself in surprise when the process was done, when her hair had
been unbound and loosely gathered into the circle of a satin bow, for
she had stepped completely over from the East to the West and thrown
away every vestige of her Chinese upbringing. She had the
indefinable marks of beauty, her way of holding her head and
shoulders, the slim easiness of limbs and body, the youthful
melancholy expressed by the dark color of her eyes, marks which
promised great loveliness for the future. Helen and Elizabeth
candidly recognized the authority with which the filmy frock and long
white stockings became the black-haired girl on whom they had been
put.
"You are a beauty, Nancy!" exclaimed Elizabeth. "The dress seems to
belong to you more than it does to me."
She suggested quite truly the difference between her own prettiness
of feature, her own healthy robustness of figure, attractive because
they were the qualities so well suited to a romp of sixteen summers,
yet qualities on which the frock had been imposed with the obviously
self-conscious elegance of a party dress, and the charming
seriousness of Nancy's manner, to which all garments, mean and
splendid alike, paid their toll.
There was a symbolism in Nancy's appearance, a secret betrayed by her
sad smile, and spectators more imaginative than Helen or Elizabeth
might have pictured the spirit of her mother close at hand, longing
with sombre eyes to see her daughter restored to the country she had
lost.