News of Herrick's death reached Ronald Nasmith almost as quickly as
it reached the family of the dead man. The t'ai-t'ai was anxious to
settle the business of his estate and lost no time in sending Edward,
who could speak English, as her ambassador.
Ronald was at home when the boy came. He brought him into his own
study, for he knew, after one glance at his face, the errand upon
which he had come.
"My father is dead," said Edward, sitting stiffly on the edge of his
chair. He could make no more than this simple statement.
"I thought he must be," Ronald answered, "but where is Nancy? Why
didn't she come with you?"
He was afraid to hear the answer, but hear it he must.
"She is married. She was married yesterday."
Ronald toyed nervously with an ivory paper-cutter on his desk.
"Only yesterday," he said at last; "and when did your father die?"
"He died yesterday too."
"And who sent you to me?"
"The t'ai-t'ai."
"I understand."
He did understand much for which it was hopeless to seek words.
"This will be your home now," he told Edward, "your home till we can
put you in a proper school. I promised your father that. You don't
wish to live there, do you, now that your father has gone and Nancy
has gone?"
"No," the boy answered bravely.
"Now I must see what I can do. Your father left me a lot of business
to finish. But you must come with me and help me. I might not make
myself clear and there will be a lot I shall need you to explain."
The boy accepted all that he said without question. Together they
returned to the mourning household, which mocked the clear sunshine
of the streets with its gloom. Ronald had unutterable thoughts as he
entered the gate from which Nancy had gone out one day too soon in
the loneliness of her scarlet chair. He could not bear to dwell upon
this picture, but asked to see the body of her father and went with a
sigh of weariness upon his lips into the room where with difficulty,
with much labored unbending of stiff limbs, they had laid out the
corpse. The boy was afraid to come in. Ronald stood by himself and
looked at a face which made death terrible.
The women had taken up their burden of wailing when he entered the
house; harshly the noise struck his ears, for in Herrick's quiet
features he could find no answer to the riddle of why the dead man
had lived only to come to this pitiless ending. His only
satisfaction was to see that Herrick did not sleep peacefully, that
he had not died content; the restless lines in Herrick's face told
their own story.
The ill-fated time of his death had upset his unstable family. The
women could not face this blow right on the heels of their excitement
at Nancy's wedding. In their panic over what their future might be,
they had neglected the first rites of the dead and were weeping
uselessly, undecided what respect they should pay to the dead man
whom, despite his years of pretension, they remembered only as a
foreigner.
But the t'ai-t'ai was recovering her wits when Ronald asked for her.
"She wants," Edward explained, after the formalities of the meeting
had been dealt with, "first of all to settle the business of Nancy's
marriage. My father promised to give ten thousand taels when she
went to her new family, but he died so quickly that he had no time to
do this."
"Yes, I know," said Ronald, "he told me about it and that he expected
to pay this himself. But I can't do anything yet."
The woman interrupted with a demand from Edward as to what he was
saying. She seemed suspicious and unwilling to let him proceed more
than two or three sentences without having his words explained.
Edward was visibly embarrassed.
"She wants that money now because that was promised and Nancy's new
parents will be angry if they don't get it. It is more important
than anything else."
"They will get it," said Ronald, "but I can't do anything just now.
I can't touch a cent till your father's will is proved."
Edward did not understand this last sentence, so Ronald expressed his
meaning at greater length.
"You see," he said, "your father was an Englishman, not a Chinese,
and subject to English law. Even though he lived in Chinese style
and kept Chinese customs, that makes no difference. His death must
be reported to the British minister and all his papers have to be
inspected, and his will, which tells how he wishes his money divided,
this must be read and allowed. Before this is done the bank will not
recognize me as his trustee and will refuse to pay me any money, no
matter how many checks I choose to write."
The boy, still puzzled, did his best to explain these details to the
t'ai-t'ai, but it was clear that she was not satisfied.
"She wants you to pay the ten thousand taels," Edward said, "then you
can take it later from my father's money. She wants you please to do
this--never mind about the other money; she can wait for that, but
this money she must have, because Nancy's family will be very angry."
Ronald laughed.
"I haven't ten thousand taels," he declared, "or even half the
sum--and am never likely to have. There is nothing else to be done.
She will have to wait."
The t'ai-t'ai did not believe these statements. He was being polite.
Of course he had ten thousand taels. What foreigner didn't have ten
thousand taels? She returned again and again, in most tiresome
pertinacity, to her request that Ronald pay this money at once,
waving aside his most patient explanations as though she had never
heard them. It was a strange thing, she remarked at last, that the
wife of the dead man could not be trusted to dispose of his money:
that a stranger had to be called in.
"But that's just the point," Ronald replied with much exasperation;
"the t'ai-t'ai, whatever she may be in Chinese law, is no wife at all
by English law. Mr. Herrick remained a British subject; he could not
become Chinese legally, despite his wish to do so, and therefore,
unless he married the t'ai-t'ai at the legation, which I very much
doubt, she is no wife in English eyes. Just for that very reason he
called me in to help, so that I could safeguard the interests of his
family and see that they did not suffer through his death."
He succeeded at last, by Edward's faltering assistance, in driving
these facts home. The t'ai-t'ai resigned herself to the existence of
troublesome laws and to the more immediate point that her hopes of
securing her money hung entirely on Mr. Nasmith's good offices.
There would be no profit in making him angry.
"There is another thing," Ronald continued, when he saw that she was
in a more amenable mood; "as a trustee, I feel especially responsible
for Mr. Herrick's two English-born children. Of course I recognize
that one of them, by her marriage, is now outside my control. But
over Edward here I have been placed as guardian by the authority of
his father. Naturally I expect him to come to my home, and I think
when he does that you will understand that your responsibility for
his future ceases."
The t'ai-t'ai had no objection to offer to this arrangement, which
her husband some months before his death had explained to her. She
certainly did not wish to be burdened with the problem of Edward.
"But to Nancy too," said Ronald, "I feel a sense of duty. I did not
approve of her marriage and did my best to persuade her father
against it. Personally I would have been willing, if he had died
earlier, to offer the ten thousand taels just to set her free from
what has always seemed to me an unjust engagement for a girl of her
age. If my powers as trustee allowed of this,--I can't be certain,
of course, that they did,--I would have taken this risk of disobeying
her father's wishes. Well, it's too late to discuss that. Our ways,
you see, and yours are different. A few years of Chinese education
couldn't make Nancy a Chinese; I am sure of it. But she is married;
that can't be mended; we have to make the best of it and I want to
see that the best is made of it."
The t'ai-t'ai pricked up her ears at Edward's tactful translation of
this speech. She wondered just what Ronald had in mind when he
wished to see that the best was being made of Nancy's wedding.
Ronald, however, explained himself further.
"I want to speak to Nancy herself," he said, "and have her own
assurance that she is being well treated. I presume that she will be
coming back to her father's house soon, won't she?"
"She has to stay three days with her husband," Edward took it upon
himself to answer; "then the wedding will be finished and she can
come here for a day. That is our custom. Even though our father is
dead, they will not permit her to come before three days."
"And a nice home-coming it will be!" Ronald groaned. "A cheerful
place to return to. Please tell the t'ai-t'ai that when Nancy
returns I must be here to see her and speak to her. I don't know
what the Chinese custom is in such a case, but this is absolutely
necessary if I am to perform my duties as a trustee in a satisfactory
manner."
Edward communicated this demand, to which the t'ai-t'ai gave a shrug
of consent. There was nothing these foreigners appeared incapable of
asking, but she was too wholly in the man's power. It was no time to
quibble.
With this promise safely gained, Ronald told Edward to gather up his
things. It was not healthy for the boy to stay a minute longer than
necessary in a household where everyone's thoughts dwelt round the
corpse of the dead master. Edward went to his work listlessly and
came back sniffing and weeping after the woebegone task of
dismantling the room he had occupied so long. Neither the
sympathetic help of his amah cheered him nor the welcome of his new
home, where David, awed by the distinction of one who had lost his
father, tried cautiously to say the appropriate word. Edward wanted
Nancy; his heart was hungering for her even when he thought he
mourned for his father.
On the third day he went with his Uncle Ronald, as already he had
been taught to call his guardian, to see the sister who had become a
bride.
His own eagerness, if he had known it, did not exceed Ronald's. The
intervening day had been a busy one. Ronald had been to the legation
to have Herrick's will admitted to probate. He found friends who had
known Herrick long ago and who were avid for every last detail of
Herrick's story, but they could suggest no scheme for saving Nancy.
It was a rotten business, they agreed with some emphasis, but a
matter which could not be helped, for Nancy, by wedding a Chinese
husband, had forfeited British protection. Ronald might use
pressure, and they hoped he would, to get the girl away from her
husband,--there was not one of them who expected the marriage to end
in any way except drastic misery,--but he had no lawful right to
divert any of Herrick's estate for the purpose. The estate, through
remarkably clever investments, had once been close to a fortune, but
recently Herrick's intemperate withdrawals had reduced it till it was
barely enough to cover the terms of his will.
So Ronald went impatiently to meet Nancy, determined that if she gave
him the slightest encouragement he would break all the laws of the
land to rescue her. Early though he went, the bride had arrived
before him and had given way to a frenzy of sorrow beside her
father's coffin. She had not yet put on mourning, for the
mother-in-law had deemed it an unlucky thing to interrupt the first
festal days with any mark of sadness. So she had come, oddly enough,
wearing a red skirt; but any suggestion of happiness had been erased
by the stains of grief which made her eyes dull in their sunken pits
and her skin a bloodless white.
It was the first chance Nancy had had to yield to her passionate
misery: for three days she had struggled against tears, trying to
preserve some semblance of joy in a family which paid no heed to the
death of her father. The rites of the wedding were dragged out till
she was on the point of fainting under the cruel burden. She felt no
love for the husband who had been goaded into claiming her, and
suffered bridal intimacies from one who became worse than a stranger
in her eyes. Beneath his treatment she felt the hostility of a youth
who had not desired this foreigner for his wife, and beneath the
treatment she met from her new mother she felt the exasperation over
delay in the payment of her dowry, disappointment taking unkind
shapes because the woman had never forgiven herself for selling her
son into what was likely to prove a bad bargain. For three days the
family had been most deliberately merry, trying to face out their
regrets in the sight of the world; they had been reckless of how they
spent money, but thrifty of a single friendly word to the girl whose
heart was breaking while she pretended to smile. At last they had
let her go home to weep.
When Nancy, who had comforted herself before marriage with the hope
of coming back to see her father, realized that he too had deserted
her and that she had not won him a single day's peace by her
sacrifice, she threw herself down beside his coffin and wept till her
body seemed torn apart by her grief. Edward, who in his turn was
ready to break down, understood the sudden need to control himself,
so that when the time came he could comfort his sister in his
affectionate boyish manner and bring her away to the room where
Ronald was waiting.
Nancy was dazed at seeing Ronald. She did not seem to know why he
was there. Her mind still lingered with her father. She had only
perfunctory words to spare for the living, while Ronald could hardly
check the temptation to carry her away by force, to carry her out of
sight and sound of this baneful household. Everything he wanted to
say froze on his lips. He had no heart to reproach the girl for
persisting in the wedding she might have stopped. With her face
marred by grief, he could not ask her if she were happy, if she were
contented with her new home. The words would have mocked their own
meaning.
"Nancy," he did at last summon courage to say, "it is no use weeping
over the dead any more. It doesn't help them at all. If your father
doesn't know, then your tears are wasted; if he does know, then he
will be the more unhappy to see you so sad. The living are what we
have to think of--you and Edward. If you want your father to have
peace, wherever he has gone, you must help him not to worry over you.
You must let him know that you have peace yourself. Edward he won't
worry about because he asked me to take charge of him and so Edward
has come to my sister's to live, but you every one of us will worry
about till we are sure that you are well and happy. That's what you
must tell me: you can speak as frankly as you choose; there is no one
here who dares to interrupt, but I must know how I can help you."
"You can't help me," answered Nancy.
She was quieter now, but the hysterical stillness of her manner
frightened Ronald.
"That is no answer," exclaimed Ronald.
He was annoyed by the girl's obstinacy, which she had inherited in
too full measure from her father.
"You surely can be frank with me," he added, "because I may never
again be in such a position to help you. You know that I have your
father's estate to divide. As long as the money, which includes ten
thousand taels which were to be paid at your wedding, as long as this
remains in my hands I can make almost any terms you may wish with the
t'ai-t'ai. But when it has been divided, then my power will be gone.
Now do you regret your bargain? Are you sorry you kept to this
marriage? Do tell me now, when I can help you."
He had realized Nancy's stubbornness; he had not measured her pride.
"My marriage is what I expected," she answered.
How could she tell him the shame of the last three days? How could
she relate the scornful treatment of her new family? She might have
told Kuei-lien; she had no words to speak of it to Ronald. She could
not run to him like a weakling tired of her promise. To endure the
mischances of her marriage was no more than keeping faith with her
father's good name. She was a wife; that was the end of it. But
Ronald seemed to read her thoughts.
"I don't know what your new home is like," he argued, "but I do know
what you are like, and I can hardly imagine you happy under the
conditions you will find there. Just now your sorrow for your father
makes everything else seem of small account, but the time will come
when the sharpness will wear off and you will have to think of the
man you have married and the life you have adopted. For it is an
adopted life; it is not natural to you. Now your father is dead,
don't make a mistake of your loyalty to him and think you have to
embrace years of misery merely to gratify his memory. That's not
good enough. They don't want you--I can see that; they only want the
money that was promised with you. Nothing would please them better
than to get this money without the necessity of taking you. You are
a foreigner and always will be a foreigner to them. Can't you come
home with Edward and me, and I will promise, if I have to move heaven
and earth, to get your marriage annulled."
"If they want my money, they have to take me," said Nancy stubbornly.
She was not doing justice to Ronald's proposal, while the man, in his
turn, was far from seeing her marriage as she saw it. She could not
appreciate how in his foreign eyes her marriage was no marriage, nor
could he see how to her Chinese eyes it was a bond from which there
was but one honorable escape for the wife, the extreme measure of
suicide. Ronald had been reading deeply in the customs of the
Chinese the better to understand Nancy's case, but he missed the
essential fact of her attitude, the value she set by her good name.
To have run away because she was displeased with her first three days
of wedded life seemed an act of intolerable cowardice. Nancy's every
thought was Chinese, more Chinese than Kuei-lien's: she had an inbred
fear of disgrace, not only for her own sake but for her father's
whose reputation rested helplessly in her care. So she met Ronald's
most persuasive entreaties with the same blank answer. If she had
grounds for quarreling with her husband or with his parents it was no
business of an outsider to know of them.
At last Ronald despaired of moving her. He gave up the attempt. He
was as sure as he was sure of his own love for the girl that she was
unhappy in her new home and would grow week by week unhappier, but
she was less responsive to his words now than before her marriage.
He threw down his hands with a hopeless gesture, inwardly cursing the
folly of Timothy Herrick, which was able to survive him in such
fatuously obdurate wrong-headedness. Nancy's white, troubled face
reminded him of his first glimpse of her in the temple. How much
greater was her danger to-day than in that first perilous meeting.
How much less he could help her. Unable to leave the girl without
one sign of his deep overmastering passion, he crossed the room and
kissed her gently on the forehead.
"I shall always love you, Nancy," he said.
Nancy trembled a little beneath the touch of his lips, but the kiss
came so naturally that she had no time to be surprised and could only
wonder long afterward at the trance which had held her silent under
so strange a greeting, so strange a token of farewell.