The Fortune of the Indies/Chapter 13
CHAPTER XIII
THE FORTUNES OF THE INGRAMS
"DO you like it as much as going on the Gloria?" Jane asked abruptly, coming back to Mr. Bolliver's steamer-chair from a ramble around the deck of the Kyoto Maru.
"Eh? The Gloria?" murmured Mr. Bolliver, who had been napping.
"All the shininess, and the band, and everything," Jane pursued, rather vaguely.
Mr. Bolliver rubbed his wits awake and perceived what she was driving at.
"We-e-ll," he said, "I must confess that I'm older by fifty-two years and three months than I was when I sailed on the Gloria. Some aspects of the Kyoto Maru do appeal to this ancient man."
Jane flung at him a swift look of reproach, on two scores.
"It's merely my body," he excused himself, "which shamefully approves of the shininess and the hot water and the electric-lights and the telephones and all. In spirit—yes, I would rather have the Gloria."
"It's the same sea, isn't it?" Jane mused.
"Yes, the same," Mr. Bolliver agreed. "The waves were bigger for the Gloria, but no bluer."
"But China'll be different."
"Yes, China will be different—yet it's always the same underneath, just below the Western skin that stretches in tight little patches here and there across the surface. But it will be changed again since I was out last, thirteen years ago. This republic—young China feeling her way."
He was talking more to himself than to Jane, watching the dipping funnels of the Kyoto Maru against the pale sky. He roused himself and sat up straight in his deck-chair.
"Well, we're making good time—good time, Jane," he said. "But who cares, nowadays, how soon or late we reach the other side of the world?" he added. "We're not record breaking." He seemed to be following his own thought, sometimes in silence; his words were spoken in little detached groups.
"Think of it! Why, I can remember, though I was in petticoats, the bets that were made—and the cheers, and the bunting—and the bulletins posted up at the custom-house."
Jane was not sure of the whole meaning of this somewhat vague outburst, but Mr. Bolliver did not leave her long in doubt. He swept all at once into clear, consecutive reminiscence.
"I can remember it myself—the Sea Bride and the Yankee Flyer dropping anchor in Boston Harbor not over an hour apart—in from Hong-Kong in ninety-two days! Egad! They'd raced every inch of the way, never seeing each other from the hour they left till the moment they reached home, every scrap of canvas cracked on and never furled. Ninety-two days! Round the Horn that meant, mind you! Why, it's not so much longer than our friend the Delphian takes, with her steam and her Canal. The whole continent rang with such stories then. Yes, Jane, I remember my uncle holding me up above the crowd to see those two young skippers come up from India Wharf. Why, women were pelting 'em with flowers! Bah! Look at our dirty smoke trailing up across the decent sky!"
So concluded Mr. Bolliver wrathily, settling himself again in his chair with an air of finality, Jane twinkled with sober delight.
"But I thought you liked the electric-fans and the hot water," she reminded him.
"Bah!" said Mr. Bolliver again, and opened his book ostentatiously.
So Jane went off to trudge around the deck once more. She declined various invitations to join in games of shuffle-board and quoits, and went over to the less popular windward side, where she could be blown to bits undisturbed and could fancy the Fortune of the Indies racing to Hong-Kong in ninety-two days. But the Kyoto Maru was doing her best for the imperious Jane, and every revolution of the screw brought her that much nearer to the summoning shores of China.
At about that time, while Jane stood gazing into the wind on board the swift and unfaltering liner, Mark and Alan were setting out from Shanghai to take the steamer for Nangpoo. Needless to say, they were wholly unaware that their sister was looking to windward in their direction, separated from them only by a matter of a few thousand miles of salt water.
"Now," Mark said, "comes the real adventure. Wish Jane was along. Wouldn't she be keen on it? Poor little kid, kicking her heels in Resthaven!"
So spoke Mark, on the deck of the Nangpoo boat. He had no idea how truly he spoke when he said that now came the real adventure.
The estate of the descendants of T'ang Min lay on the outskirts of Nangpoo, beyond the walled city, in the midst of an ancient and beautiful garden. From the climbing terraces mulberry-trees drooped and shimmered; pomegranates flashed globes of smoldering crimson; chrysanthemums swayed in drowsy masses. In water-worn marble pools blue lotus swung on dark water. Beyond the paved courtyard the mansion itself slept among tall, wide-spreading trees. It was all very ancient and very still. Small, worn steps led upward among dark, twisted cedars; carved sandstone bridges spanned tiny polished waterways that a stride might cross. The servant who had opened the tall gates led the way swiftly and without sound to the courtyard of the house. Mark and Alan held their breath as they crossed the shallow stone steps and entered the wide, bare hall.
The young Chinese student whom Mr. Tyler had sent with them as guide and interpreter gave them rapid and nervous instructions while they waited, stiffly, on the low, black, carved chairs. Mark scarcely heard these elaborate rules of etiquette. He was wondering if it had been here, in this dim, gilded mansion, that his great-grandfather had sat beside the couch of T'ang Min to sign the document; wondering if perhaps they all were dreaming, and if, after all, he could be sitting in his own old Windsor chair in his room at Resthaven. Resthaven! No, a dream could not be so real that Resthaven could seem so infinitely far away.
From an inner court came a gleam of sunshine, a sheen of leaves, the drone of falling fountain-water, the croon and whisper of pigeons. This must have been the same always, nor would it ever change. This civilization moved in the slow cycles of a thousand years. Great-grandfather Mark, stepping here seventy years before, could have found it in nowise different—yet how remote, in America, seemed 1847! The vast machinery of China is geared to a slower plan.
But now came the master of this house, Huen, grandson of T'ang Min—tall, courteous, inscrutable, clad all in cumquat-colored silk. He bowed very politely and shook hands cordially, Chinese fashion, with himself, while Mark and Alan—feeling quite silly and rather embarrassed—did the same. The interpreter, in the background, began droning a long speech. Mark felt all at once that it was a wildly impossible thing—this demanding two hundred thousand taels from an unknown and unsuspecting gentleman, and that the whole expedition was very like to be a wild goose chase. But Mr. Huen had now produced a large pair of spectacles and was busily reading the paper which Mark had mechanically given him. When he finished he smiled, and looked very keenly and kindly at the boys over the spectacles.
"He says," interpreted the student hastily, "that you are very honorably invite to partake of his humble meal, and the hospitality of his miserable abode is yours. He bows to you. He wishes you joy and long life."
"That's kind of him," murmured Alan.
There was no clue to whether or not this gentleman had the faintest notion of the transaction between his grandfather and Captain Ingram. He was admirably self-contained, and his guests strove to model their own behavior on his Oriental dignity and calm.
The humble meal came somewhat later, after a walk through the hushed reaches of the musk-scented garden, and was such as to leave the boys tranfixed with astonishment. They had never imagined it was possible, in times less remote than those of Babylonian feasts, to eat—or try to eat—so many kinds of things at once.
There was sliced chicken and duck, tiny meat-pies in molds, rolled-up slices of ham, whole roast pigeons crouched on their own cooked eggs, persimmon tarts, shark-fin soup, small saucers of fish, and strange unknown vegetables; and then there was veal, and cucumbers, and duck-skin, browned, and some more rather queer soup—quite out of place after all the other things—and unappetizing looking pickled eggs, very delicious when courageously eaten, and shrimps, and bean-cakes filled with almonds, and pear-shaped muskmelons, and bamboo sprouts, and last of all a wonderful and symbolic pudding filled with mysterious things and tasting most delectably. All this was accompanied by countless tiny cups of hot weak wine and delicate jasmine tea, and enlivened by the stately converse of Mr. Huen. Though his remarks were delivered to them in a halting, second-hand fashion by the student, the boys soon perceived that Mr. Huen was a well-informed and very delightful gentleman.
It was not until after the last shelled almond had been eaten and the guests had dipped their hands in silver bowls of petal-filled water and wiped their faces on hot perfumed towels that he spoke of the business in hand. While they listened, half incredulous, wholly spellbound, he told them that his father and his father's father had laid a sacred trust upon the sons of the house. There waited behind a sealed lacquer door a box, sealed, too, by the hand of T'ang Min. It would have waited, apparently, for another century, if a Mark Ingram had not come to claim it.
Mr. Huen rose and led the way from the feast-room, with a hushed murmur of silken garments across the polished floor. He indicated that Mark and Alan were to follow him to a small room rich with dim, tarnished, golden filigree. He set aside a tall screen on which a broidered dragon writhed, and revealed, set into the wall, a little red lacquer door.
"It is a place for precious things," he explained.
Then he beckoned Mark to his side and pointed to the old unbroken seal.
"You are Mark Ingram," he said. "Open it."
The sound of his own name in the middle of the Chinese phrase made Mark start violently. He was almost in a dream. Alan, close behind him, was breathing hard.
So Mark bent and took his knife and broke the seals, and the door drifted open. Inside, in the darkness, stood a small lacquer chest, and a paper lay upon it. It was an exact copy of the one in Huen's hand. He laid them side by side, and smiled between his slender black mustachios, and nodded gravely once. He motioned to Mark again, and Mark broke the seal of the box and lifted its polished lid. Oh no, it was not believable this time! For within lay jade and gems and gold and precious things—such a treasure as might exist in Arabian Nights tales, but not in any twentieth century place. Mark knelt, gazing, with Alan silent at his shoulder. "It is yours, Honorable Friend," Huen told them. "My grandfather smiles among our ancestors to-day."
"What can I say to him?" Mark asked of the wide-eyed student. "How can you tell him what I want to say, possibly?"
The student began a gabbled speech, but Huen stopped him with a quiet gesture of one long hand. He knew what Mark wanted to say, and he smiled kindly and calmly.
The boys could not really believe it, even when they had left the house of Huen, with the box—cloaked by a neat canvas cover—carried beside them by a coolie. Everything had been moving with the swift certainty of a dream; the actual recovery of the fortune had passed in so brief a moment after the weeks of waiting and wondering at sea.
"Such things don't happen," Alan protested; "not outside of books. It can't have happened, you know."
At that moment there was a rush of feet behind them, and there appeared—also with the sudden inconsequence of a dream—a neat Chinese very much out of breath. He pointed to the wall of Huen's garden and to himself, and gasped out a message to the interpreter.
"He says," said the student, looking as usual, a little perplexed, "that Mr. Huen sent him quick to say he thinks it will be very safer to go by private river-boat with the honorable box. He has ordered rickshaws for you, and the boat will be waiting. It is his hospitality and his wish."
Mark and Alan looked at each other and then at the tidy and self-respecting servant in his black satin coat.
"We can't refuse," Mark said; "it would be awfully impolite, after all this. They're such sticklers for manners."
"We'd be just as safe on the steamer," Alan said dubiously; "safer, in fact. We could hang on to the box, and there'd be lots of people around."
"We can't tell him we won't, though. Here come the rickshaws now. All right, tell the boy to let Mr. Huen know that we accept with gratitude."
There were only two rickshaws, and the coolies seemed doubtful about getting another. The student, looking timid behind his shell goggles, said that he would wait and they could send one back for him. The servant gave directions to the men, and then, bowing deeply, ran off toward the walls of Huen's house.
Mark sat with the canvas-covered box between his feet, scowling alertly at the twisting streets through which the rickshaws trundled. They bumped and rattled through interminable dirty thoroughfares before a yellow glimpse of the creek opened at the end of an alleyway. The boat, when they reached it, looked a sumptuous enough craft to the boys. It was a bamboo-roofed affair with a gaudily painted prow adorned by two large eyes with which to see its way, and it was hung all about with bright ornaments. It was the last one of a string of varying boats which a launch was prepared to tow up to Changhow. The launch was already puffing, and the three boatmen seemed impatient.
"No can wait," they explained, pointing distractedly ahead, in reply to Mark's protest about the student. They seized upon the box and bundled it into the boat, so there was nothing for it but to follow. And a moment after the boys were aboard the whole flotilla got under way with a huge amount of yelling from the native boats, banging of gongs, and general hubbub. The boys stood under the low mat-roof of their part of the little craft, looking at the stern of the next boat.
"This is crazy," Mark said. "Why did we ever do it? I suppose we should have risked offending the old chap."
"Well, you said we couldn't," Alan returned, shrugging his shoulders. "It's too late to stop this outfit now. We'll have to stick it."
"Think of poor little Goggles back there waiting for his rickshaw," Mark murmured regretfully.
The boat-coolies lived under the floor of the boys apartment, in the hull of the boat and apparently without light or air. Through cracks in the floor could be seen the faint, pulsing glow of their lamp, and there rose far from appetizing whiffs of their cookery.
"Don't they give us anything to eat, I wonder?" Mark asked. "Perhaps Mr. Huen thought his dinner would last us for a while. I'm sure I could live for a week on it. Well, we might as well sit down and look at what's going on."
Shadowy shores slipped by. The boats were threading one of the innumerable mazy waterways that furnish the main routes of travel in this part of China. It was crowded with the dim shapes of sampans and small, squat junks. Twisting creeks joined it at intervals, and the vague land on either side seemed to bear a moving growth of masts and square sails. Little by little darkness drew down over the water, so that nothing could be seen but the near masses of boats that slid suddenly out of the dusk almost upon the craft where Mark and Alan sat silently. In the boat ahead people were burning their evening incense; the smoke of it drifted sharply in upon the boys. They saw strange little colored lamps lighted upon the high sterns of the other boats. Against the open end of the deck-house the small, square bulk of the treasure-box was outlined less and less distinctly.
It was all a dream. Even Shanghai was far away now—the bright bund, the Western faces. Was this really the safest way to go? Surely Mr. Huen must know, for he knew China. It was the Western point of view that made the Nangpoo steamer seem so very safe in retrospect. Far off sounded the mysterious booming of a temple-gong. All a dream!
"I'm dog-tired," said Mark, rousing. "Let's try to get some sleep, if they'll let us with their eternal jabbering. I'll take first watch, and wake you presently."
So Alan lay down, with his arm over the little box, and Mark sat upon the other side of it. He found it difficult to keep awake. The air seemed thick and suffocating; his head dropped forward and he recovered himself with a start. The low chatter of the coolies became less distinct, the rapping of the pipes below blurred into one sound. The boat-noises dwindled; night pressed in heavily, unrelieved by stars. Mark tried to push it away—the solid blackness; it choked him. Or was it the sickish fumes of the opium-lamp below? His head fell forward again. This time he did not raise it.