For a full week Herrick lived behind closed doors. It was a long
devastating bout, and it was a hatefully dull week for Nancy and
Edward. Recent liberty made their present confinement wear all the
more heavily. Romantic memories of Elizabeth and Helen and David
made the lonely children captious and cross with one another. They
had no zest for books; the sun kept eternally shining; it called them
away to the mountain tops. Edward fumed because he could get no
practice with his newly made bow; Nancy sat on the platform above the
ravine, musing as to who should rescue her from her boredom, and more
and more she wondered who could rescue her from fear. For fear was
beating at the gates of her courage.
In this narrow temple of the Western Hills Herrick's absence weighed
like sultry heat upon the atmosphere of the household, quieting the
tongue of the amah and the vociferous exchanges of the servants.
Kuei-lien came and went with the preoccupation of a nurse waiting
upon a sick man. But the fact Nancy saw and the fact she despised
was that the preoccupation was a happy one. At last, one day Nancy
could stand it no more.
"I want to see my father," she said.
Kuei-lien looked at her with surprise. The sneer on her lips almost
faded before the resolute dignity of the girl. For the first time
the all-conquering audacity of the concubine was checked; Kuei-lien
began to feel misgivings about this stubborn child, misgivings and a
little fear, because she could not meet Nancy's obstinacy with her
usual effective mockery.
"I want to see my father," the girl repeated.
"But you can't see him," Kuei-lien said. "He is busy. He would call
for you if he wished to see you."
"Ask him if I may see him."
"Oh, I can ask him, but I know what his answer will be."
Kuei-lien went away much disturbed.
"I have had the most absurd request from Nancy," she told her master,
who was lying heavily on his couch. "She wants to see you. She told
me she must see you."
"Very well, tell her to come," said Herrick.
Kuei-lien could not believe the report of her own ears.
"You want her to come?" she asked. "I told her you were too busy to
see her."
"What right have you to speak for your master?" the man shouted. "Go
and tell her to come."
Kuei-lien had no course but to go.
"You have made a pretty mess of things," she warned Nancy. "Your
father is furiously angry at your asking to see him. He said, Yes,
you should see him, and ordered me to make you come."
"I am going without being forced," said Nancy with irritating
self-possession. "You don't have to make me."
Kuei-lien, balked in her effort to frighten the girl, went ahead of
her and opened the door of Herrick's bedroom. The shutters had been
thrown wide to let in the late afternoon sun, but there had not been
time to clear the mustiness of the place, the lurking odor of the
drug, which clung to the bed curtains and to the implements laid
ready on a table by Herrick's side.
Nancy evinced not a sign of disgust as she entered the room and stood
waiting impassively for her father's first words. Yet she seemed out
of place amid the disorder of the chamber, which was littered with
signs of Kuei-lien's occupancy.
This was apparent to Herrick himself. Although the situation could
not foster any illusion as to how he had been spending his days, the
father nevertheless made the effort to greet his daughter with the
ceremony proper between them. His orgy had burned itself out, but
his face showed the strain of dissipation; his eyes were dull, there
were haggard lines round the mouth, pouches of puffy flesh beneath
his eyes. Nancy could not avoid glimpses of his unkempt fingers nor
of the loose robe bound round his body.
"And what is it so important that you must ask permission to see me?"
Herrick inquired, speaking in Chinese.
Nancy had her one sentence prepared. She uttered it in a low cool
voice.
"I was afraid to leave my father so long alone with his enemy."
A pause, fraught with deep feeling, ensued upon these daring words.
"Is that all?" Herrick asked finally.
"Yes," admitted the girl, "that is all."
"Very well, you may go."
Nancy turned obediently and went out of the room. Even Kuei-lien had
the decency to wait until the child was out of earshot before she
gave vent to her mirth.
"Ha, ha, ha!" she laughed. "What a speech! Afraid to leave her
father alone with his enemy. Whom does she mean? Does she mean me?"
Her amusement was not very convincing. It seemed forced, bolstered
up by weak bravado.
"Yes, she means you," retorted her master, "she means you and she
means all this mischievous rubbish."
With a sweep of his hand he brushed the glasses, the opium pipe, the
little lamp, from the surface of the table. They fell with a crash
to the floor.
"Don't be so wasteful," protested the concubine, more entertained by
this flare of temper on Herrick's part than by Nancy's grim sentence.
"What a shame to break all these things. You'll need them again."
"Yes, that is the beastly part of it," Herrick acknowledged, "I shall
need them again--but not now--not now. And I don't need you either.
You may go."
"Your eloquence is not so impressive as your daughter's," said
Kuei-lien, as she retreated. Her indomitable capacity for being
merry never deserted the girl, even at times of defeat.
Left to himself at last, Herrick began to repair the disorders of the
past few days. He shaved, dressed himself neatly, returned to his
books and his pens. But throughout the mechanical functions which
helped to bring back self-respect, his mind was filled with the
vision of Nancy's face, her impassive demeanor, in unreproaching
contact with the signs of his own collapse. Again and again he
mumbled the girl's words. It was a curiously saving trait in
Herrick's character that he did not resent them.
"'Alone with his enemy,'" he kept saying, "How right she was, how
just! Ah, but I must take care lest my enemy be her enemy too."
Then on a sudden came a frightening spasm of pain, the first in his
life. Always Herrick had been well and robust, seldom ill for two
days together; but now he gasped and choked, held his hand to his
chest, thinking with ungovernable terror that he was going to die
with all the loose strings of his life untied. After minutes that
were years, the spell passed. He lay back white-faced in a chair,
his forehead pouring sweat. He recognized the warning. His heart
was affected. What use would there be in disguising the truth?
Herrick had no intention to consult a physician. Physicians had not
saved his wife; they had never been of use to him. He knew the
advice they would give: diet, self-control, no excitement. They had
no cure for this complaint. Some people lived on for years, others
were snuffed out in a night; what was bound to fall fell despite the
advice of all the doctors in the world. After the gripping pain had
relaxed--there was no room for any state except fear while it
lasted--the man even treated the subject jauntily and swore he was as
likely as any to round off his threescore and ten. But he could not
do it peacefully if he left any room for grief to befall Nancy and
Edward.
It was after this attack that Ronald Nasmith received a letter to
which with surprise he saw Herrick's signature attached. The note
was short, impersonal in its wording; the writer had business of
importance he could not discuss on paper; he asked Mr. Nasmith to
indulge the infirmities of an older man by paying him a visit; he
also must request that his letter and the subject of the visit be
treated as confidential.
Nasmith dispatched Beresford as acting-uncle on a picnic to some hot
springs while he slipped away to see Herrick. His mind during the
past few days had been much occupied with Herrick and the puzzle of
the scrolls. He had been studying a riddle which instinct told him
was full of personal import, a message that Herrick intended and
wished him to decipher. Yet the answer evaded his closest research.
It might seem easy to Herrick, schooled in these antithetical
couplets by which the Chinese conveyed the many thoughts they did not
care to lay bare on the surface; it was not clear to Nasmith, who
burrowed through all his dictionaries and went to the length of
asking help from his teacher. The dictionaries explained little and
the teacher, although he exclaimed at once that the characters were
the work of a master, offered explanations so involved that Nasmith,
even though he understood less than half of what his teacher said,
knew that this excess of commentary was merely the happy Chinese way
of concealing ignorance: the teacher was groping for a clue, as
Nasmith once before had caught him doing when the drowsy pedagogue
had elaborated the most profound moral sentiments from what proved to
be simply the Chinese transliteration of the name Australia. In the
end, exhaustive study had not told as much as Herrick himself chose
to reveal:--
The sun moving to the west kindles a splendid beacon
for the moon;
The moon following from the east tenderly displays the
reflection of the sun.
"I wonder if he will have expected me to master his riddle," thought
Nasmith, as he set out upon his long walk.
Herrick received his guest in the same room as before. He was
regaining the dominance of his nerves but there was, nevertheless, a
stiffness of bearing which caused Nasmith to eye his host keenly,
anxious for any hint of the business in hand, and to note marks of
the upheaval through which the man had been passing. Something was
wrong--business cares, worries about property, some trouble in which
the man could not turn to Chinese friends for assistance. Perhaps
Herrick wanted an executor or a witness to his will. No, that could
not be the difficulty; he would have called for Beresford as well.
"I suppose you are mystified as to the reasons for my letter,"
Herrick began. "Did you read the scroll I wrote for you?"
"I tried to read it," Nasmith admitted.
"And failed. I am not surprised. It was the truth, and the truth is
always far-fetched. I have, I am afraid, the Chinese faculty for
talking in riddles and as to the inner meaning of those two sentences
I prefer not to explain it, for the best part of your life will come
when you find out the meaning for yourself--if you do."
"That is putting rather too great a strain on my curiosity, don't you
think?"
"Perhaps. But I'm going to offer you the key to the puzzle and you
can make the best of it as you choose."
Herrick fingered the lip of his teacup for a minute or two while
Nasmith wondered if he had been summoned all this distance merely to
hear more of such cryptic nonsense.
"Do you think my wits are wandering?" Herrick asked with
disconcerting suddenness.
"I am not sure of it," replied his guest, willing to be as
provokingly frank. The older man laughed.
"I have been ill," he said, "but my wits are still here. I have wit
enough to recognize an honest man; that is why I have asked you to
come."
"Thank you; the compliment is enjoyed, even if it isn't deserved."
"How much patience would you have, to keep talking in this vein?"
"Not much more," Nasmith confessed.
"Ah, you will never become Chinese."
"I don't wish to."
"Good. You are thoroughly English, quite thoroughly English, aren't
you? You wouldn't care to follow my example and become Chinese?"
"If you wish me to say what I think, I should say a life like yours
was a waste, a shameful waste, not fair to yourself, Mr. Herrick, and
especially not fair to your two children."
"You are honest, that is the important point. For your opinions, Mr.
Nasmith, I don't care a snap of the finger. Opinions don't have half
the influence we imagine. But you have touched the subject I have in
mind. It is my children and what is fair to them that I am keeping
in mind. I have been ill: without mincing matters I might just as
well tell you I have very definite signs of heart trouble. You know
what that means. It means that I might drop even while I am talking
with you here. That is disquieting. I don't care to leave the
future of my children dependent on the whims of this worn-out heart
of mine."
"Why do you keep them in China? Why don't you take them home?"
"I have a home here and I am too old to change it, don't wish to
change it, in fact. No, I didn't call you for advice, Mr. Nasmith; I
am capable of giving myself all the advice you can suggest. If I
wished to, I could put Nancy and Edward to school, but I don't wish
to. Let's not argue about it, just say I am too selfish, too
pig-headed, not willing at my time of life to lose the company of two
delightful children. I want something more definite from you,
something which will be a real provision for the future and not the
making myself and my children miserable by shipping them off to
school among strangers and foreigners--"
"You want, then--" interrupted Nasmith, anxious to stem Herrick's
garrulous speech.
"I want to betroth my daughter Nancy to you."