The Fortune of the Indies/Chapter 7
CHAPTER VII
T'ANG MIN BECKONS
MR. BOLLIVER was written to without more delay, and the paper was sent to him special delivery, registered mail, with some trepidation on the part of Jane. Mr. Bolliver did not answer; he came to Resthaven himself, preceded by a terse telegram. There was a sort of curious guarded elation about him when he did arrive, and a wonderment, too. He came up the flagged path from Chesley Street with the swift, still foot-fall of a dream. So thought Jane, watching for him from the drawing-room window, clothing him instantly with the aspect of a magical messenger. She was not disappointed. She flew to meet him, down the steps, and found his whole manner one of secrecy and surprise.
"You have not waited and watched for nothing, little Jane," he said, and left her wondering whether he meant her looking for him just now down Chesley Street or her long vigil over the Fortune of the Indies.
The boys were close behind Jane; the aunts got as far as the doorway, trying not to show any signs of curiosity or impatience. So that the whole existent Ingram family surrounded Mr. Bolliver upon his entrance, and contained themselves with difficulty while he turned over his hat, stick, and overcoat to Mark.
When they were all assembled in the drawing-room, he looked upon them soberly.
"I feel," he said, "as though I were taking part in the sort of story one always thinks not quite probable."
He glanced up at the model of the Fortune, sailing on her endless voyage above the mantel. Jane's eyes followed his. Her heart beat violently. In the waiting silence of the room the grandfather-clock in the hall could be heard ticking ponderously. It whirred, rumbled, and struck eleven with resonant deliberation. Mr. Bolliver waited until its vibrance died. Then he put on his eye-glasses, looped the ribbon of them out of his way, and produced two or three papers from his pocket.
"I have been at great pains," he said, "to make sure of a true translation of this thing. It's in a sort of Mandarine, very complex and beautiful. Here is, what it says, as nearly as English can give it."
He looked quickly around at his transfixed audience over the rim of his glasses, and cleared his throat.
"'The cherry petal falls each spring upon the stone of the court-yard, but next year it blooms again in fresh beauty. So is renewed gratitude in the heart of T'ang Min, who will not forget.
"'How auspicious the day, how gentle the winds, when the golden dragon-ships of T'ang Min set forth! They are laden with the treasures of human desire. The jade and pearls weigh down the dragon-ships; they are bright with silk and gold and fragrant with spices. How vile is the nature of man! The dragon-ships are beset by sea-robbers; these orange sails are the sails of pirates. The greatest of the dragon-ships sinks under the green jade water. With it goes the wealth of T'ang Min. On the lesser ship many robbers fight with curved swords.
"'Then comes the Western ship, like a moving cloud of white blossoms, the ship of many thunders. Upon it is the friend of T'ang Min, the honorable and gracious Ingram, long known as a merchant respected in all these waters. Swiftly the white ship cleaves the jade water; ruddy thunders break from her tall bows. The great Ingram comes upon the dragon-boat and with his own hand fights the robbers with sword and the lesser thunder. It is the infinite happiness of T'ang Min to deliver the esteemed Ingram from the vile blow behind of the robber captain, who is about to send the Captain Ingram to meet his ancestors. This is a small thing and a great happiness. The gratitude should not be the loved Ingram's, but T'ang Min's. But the fortune of T'ang Min is lost. How is he, then, to pay his honor debt to the Prince Hsai within the allotted time? The ever blessed Ingram therefore has lent to T'ang Min the sum of two hundred thousand taels. And T'ang Min begs that it be repaid to the gracious Ingram, or to his descendants, as soon as the fortunes of T'ang Min blossom again. May he live always in the light of eternal rest and happiness. Huen Su T'ang Min.'"
Some one there in the still Ingram parlor started to speak, but Mr. BoUiver raised his hand and went on:
"'Dictated by Mark Ingram to the lesser scribe:
"'T'ang Min is too generous. He fails to state that though it is true M. Ingram came to his aid with his ship the Fortune of the Indies, that T'ang Min, in saving Ingram's life, received, himself, a wound which may yet prove to be fatal. I cause this to be written. Mark Ingram. September 13, 1850.'"
The aunts were trying hard to understand it all. Jane was crouched beside Mr. Bolliver, a thousand questions racing through her mind. Mark and Alan stood staring at one another. Outside, beyond the half-drawn curtains, a commonplace cart rattled by on Chesley Street. It was, after all, Aunt Lucia who spoke first.
"But—but I don't understand how this can be," she said.
"Why didn't he tell anybody?"
"Why did he hide the paper away like that, where nobody ever could find it?" Thus spoke the boys. Then Aunt Ellen:
"A sea-captain like my father—knowing his life was in peril every time he sailed—to conceal an important document. It seems unbelievable, Mr. Bolliver."
Mr. Bolliver had been gazing out the window, past the cool vines that swung down from the cornice of the portico. He turned back now and folded the papers slowly.
"But he didn't want any one to find it," he said quietly.
"No," said Jane, whose eyes had not once left his face.
Mr. Bolliver looked down at her suddenly.
"You understand it, do you?" he asked. "You would; you've been living back there, in the spirit, haven't you?" He glanced at the aunts, erect and uncomprehending. "It was a sort of debt of honor, you see," he went on. "I don't know very well how to make you feel it all. I've lived there. I've seen things. None of it was a thing he could come back to gray Resthaven and tell his wife about. She wouldn't have understood, either. It was a reckless thing—the sort of thing you do in the China trade—or rather, you did," he corrected himself. "Putting the paper in the model was almost the same as destroying it, which he didn't quite want to do. He didn't want to remember it or have it found. He thought he would make the money easily on his next voyage."
"And on his next voyage he was lost," said Jane softly.
"You know all those dates," Mr. Bolliver smiled. "Was it, then, his very next?"
"And he could not have guessed, I suppose," said Miss Lucia, "that his other investments would fail."
"Of course not," Mr. Bolliver replied. "That would have made it very different. He never dreamed for an instant that his children and his children's children would suffer. I can see it all—oh, I know it all." And Mr. Bolliver sighed, with his eyes on phantom jade pagodas and the spell of orange junk-sails in the sunset.
"But what's it all mean now?" asked the practical Mark. "Is it worth anything now, that paper?"
Mr. Bolliver roused himself.
"Eh? "Worth anything? Of course it is. 'Or his descendants.' You're Mark Ingram. Certainly. It's a lawful agreement on the part of T'ang Min. If his descendants can be found, there is owing to you two hundred thousand taels, or somewhere around one hundred thousand dollars."
The Ingrams gasped.
"We couldn't take it unless they were very very rich again," Jane murmured, "after that."
"Hark to great-grandfather!" laughed Mr. Bolliver. "What would you have done if you'd stood on the dragon-ship that day, eh, Miss Jane?" He tweaked her hair, and went on without waiting for an answer. "No, Miss Lucy and Miss Nelly, it sounds like a wild tale, but I've been through wilder, myself. I understand it all. But all you need to understand now is that some Ingram must go to China and claim what belongs to you."
"Such a sum!" Miss Lucia was murmuring. "Father would never have done it, never! There is some mistake. He would not have hidden the paper."
"The New England father you knew," said Mr. Bolliver patiently, "was, no doubt, very different from the 'Captain Ingram' of Chinese waters. That's neither here nor there. The point is that I've written to my firm in Shanghai, and they will be all ready to help Mark and Alan in every way."
"Mark and Alan!" The voices which repeated the names were rather blank.
"Yes, when they go out to attend to the matter."
"Mark and Alan go to China?" Miss Ellen had risen. "O Mr. Bolliver, that's impossible. They're only children—and besides, traveling—the expense—"
"That's the least part," Mr. Bolliver said, casting an eye at the boys, who were wordlessly punching one another in a corner. "Your brother, Mark, went to sea when he was fourteen; he was commanding his own ship before he was twenty-one. This Mark is seventeen—going toward eighteen, isn't he? No school in summer, anyway. I can get berths—almost have 'em, in fact—wireless-man and oiler. Isn't that what I understood you wanted, boys? Casual merchant ship—New York to Shanghai—through the Canal—all over the place—lots of experience. An Ingram has to go. Would you, Miss Lucy? Jane can't, unfortunately."
Miss Ellen had sat down again, possibly because she was incapable of standing. Jane flung herself upon the old ladies.
"But it's all arranged!" she cried. "You must let them!"
The aunts were weeping, with all sorts of mixed feelings, and Mark and Alan stepped forth from their corner and stood very straight before Mr. Bolliver.
"We're all ready to go, sir," said Mark, "whenever you say."
Mr. Bolliver laughed.
"Not so fast," he said. "Finish school—not long, now—and take good care of your aunts (I'll talk to them a little later)—and don't let Jane stow away, because it would complicate things afterward."
Jane had vanished. She had fled to the office to search and search a certain log-book for some mention of this fairy-tale. And she found just enough to verify that extraordinary document.
From the front of the house came the murmur of Mr. Bolliver's voice, persuasively, to the aunts. Upstairs in the boys' room there was a frantic clatter of boots. Jane closed the log-book and sat looking out into the waking garden—just where Great-grandfather Mark had sat and looked and smiled a straight blunt smile as he thought of dragon-junks with peacocks' eyes at the prow and cargoes of mandarin silk and jade and jewels.
Mr. Bolliver, Jane thought, must possess some sort of Oriental magic. For who but he could have won the aunts to even a half-hearted consent that the boys should set out? The spring days passed like an extraordinary dream—all the everyday commonplace life was laced with a mystic network of preparation and excitement. Alan spent his evenings polishing his knowledge of wireless and poring over scientific books. He already possessed a good deal of speed and skill as a Marconi operator, and before the war had come to put a stop to all amateur wireless he had boasted an aërial of his own. As for Mark, he passed all his spare time in the engine-rooms of the loading freighters across the bay, and came home late, talking eagerly of crossheads and guides, eccentric sheaves and thrust-blocks.
And so presently it came to seem as though it were the most natural thing in the world for the boys to go to China, and as if they had always been going, China came much nearer than it had ever seemed to be when thought of in terms of slow-sailing ships, and even the aunts began talking, in Resthaven, of how the boys were going to "run over to Shanghai to attend to some business."
"A very good thing, I should say," said Mrs. Titcomb, over the tea-cups. "A Mark Ingram who didn't go to China in his teens would be an odd chick in that family."
So that when the day really did arrive, late in June, it seemed like something that was only the outcome of long expectation. Mark and Alan left late in the afternoon, for they were going by train to Fall River, there to take the boat for New York. Mr. Bolliver went with them; he said he had business in New York. Mr. Bolliver's affairs always agreed most miraculously with the needs of the Ingrams. The boys, each with their modest hand-luggage, stood on the stone step of Ingram Mansion, rather solemn in the sunset. The aunts were too much wrapped up in the present to think of the other Marks, sailing to the Orient from the wharf at the end of Chesley Street, but Mr. Bolliver thought of it, and perhaps Jane did, too. She kissed the boys very hard, and they let her, and Mark said gruffly, "Wish you were coming along, too, old girl," and Alan said, "We'll write from everywhere," and the aunts cried, "You're sure you have all your socks, Mark?"
But then the taxicab that had come across the bridge stood chugging below, and the boys turned and ran suddenly down the steps. The aunts stood and waved their little lace handkerchiefs. The wisteria had long ceased blooming, and the sun was setting now, but Mr. Bolliver waved his hand and the taxicab bumped off over the cobbles. Mark's face showed for a moment at the little window in the back. Then the taxicab was gone and Chesley Street was very still. The elms sighed a little and a ship's bell sounded somewhere down-harbor. The sun was very nearly gone, and only the last penetrating gold lay across the pillars of Ingram Mansion. The aunts went slowly into the house, lifting their gray skirts as they climbed the curved stone steps. Jane lingered a moment, looking at Ingram Wharf and seeing nothing at all. Then she too went in, and Ingram Mansion was very quiet. It was a matter of no surprise to it that a Mark Ingram should be leaving it for the East.