The Remittance-Woman/Chapter 8
CHAPTER VIII
“THE NARROW-FOOTED ONE”
PAO Ch’ing Mien Yang!” cried the gaunt priest of the Temple of the Monkey and the Stork.
“Pao Ch’ing Mien Yang!” whispered an almond-eyed Cantonese servant in the Shameen, as he set his white master’s breakfast-table with minute care.
“Kindly eschew political discussions—at breakfast, Wong,” said his master, who happened to pass through the dining room, and also happened to be Moses d’Acosta. “What is the trouble?” he asked.
“No savvy,” came the reply in pidgin, with the stereotyped words of all Chinese when they do not wish to speak the truth, and, once more the gentle, patient servant, “Bleakfast leady.”
D’Acosta smiled.
“Eat it yourself,” he said. “I am going to take mine at the Grand Hotel.” And he left the house and turned down the street.
He passed numbers of blue-bloused coolies on their way to work. They seemed strangely tense, talking among themselves with low humming like that of a thousand angry bees.
Walking on, d’Acosta met Mademoiselle Droz, the exiled Parisian vaudeville actress, out on her morning constitutional.
“You seem out of sorts, mon p’tit,” she said. “Any special reason?”
“This is China—and we are white.”
“Nothing new in that. We have always been white—and this has always been China.”
“That’s just what I am kicking about.”
“Did your Cantonese boy try to kill you?”
“No. He is fond of me, and a decent lad.”
“Then”
“He is a Chinese. He may slit my throat to-morrow, in spite of all his liking for me.”
“Why don’t you leave China if you don’t like it? You have plenty of money.”
“Money? Bah!” He was quite sincere. “There are also my ideals.”
“Au revoir!”
He walked on to the hotel. There the atmosphere seemed surcharged with electricity. The Chinese waiters whispered uneasily among themselves, and even the most supercilious, race-conceited European clerk at breakfast grew a little pale as he remembered tales he had heard from old-timers about the Boxer outbreak.
When Moses d’Acosta entered the dining room, a dozen men rose and surrounded him.
“What’s all the trouble? What is happening?”
“Nothing is happening, gentlemen—except your own cowardice. Cowardice made the Boxer trouble possible.” And he walked away, sat down, swallowed a cup of black coffee and asked the Chinese head waiter to send for Pailloux.
“He has not been home all night.”
“Oh?” D’Acosta was surprised. “All right—I’ll talk to the assistant manager.” The latter confirmed the information, adding that Pailloux and De Smett, the house detective, had left the hotel shortly after dinner the night before, taking Miss Campbell with them.
“Are you sure?”
“Positive. I helped her into the carriage.”
“Where did they go? Any idea?”
“No—except that they drove into the native town.”
“Hm.” The Levantine shook his head. “I am going up to my apartment.” He kept a suite at the hotel. “Kindly send or telephone to Mandarin Sun Yu-Wen and ask him to join me immediately.”
“Very well, sir.”
Moses d’Acosta went to his rooms. He must have furnished them in a moment of homesickness for his native Constantinople, his native Levant. For there was nothing here to remind one that this was China. It seemed rather an epitome of the Moslem Near East.
There was peace here, and it enveloped him almost physically. With a little sigh of satisfaction he sat down cross-legged on a huge pillow and lit a water-pipe blazing with emeralds and hard Jeypore enamel. But when, not long afterward, a servant announced Mandarin Sun Yu-Wen, d’Acosta became immediately the perfect Mongol host. For he knew the other well; they were friends in spite of their differing ideals and philosophies, and he knew how the old Manchu appreciated being shown the slightly stilted etiquette of his own race by a foreigner.
The mandarin seemed nervous, uneasy; but he, too, adhered strictly to the rules of conduct as written in the “Book of Ceremonies and Exterior Demonstrations.”
Both men bowed deeply.
“Please deign to enter,” said d’Acosta.
“How should I, the very little and insignificant one, deign to enter, O brother very wise and very old?” came the correct self-deprecatory reply.
Three times the invitation was repeated, to be met three times by the same answer, and finally, profusely apologizing, the mandarin entered, closed the door, and bowed again, sucking in his breath.
“Walk very slowly,” said the Levantine.
“No, no;” countered the mandarin, to show his humbleness and unimportance. “I shall walk very quickly, O brother very wise and very old!”
The other extended an arm and indicated the pillows.
“Please deign to choose a place for your honorable body,” he said. “Take the west side—the side of august honor.”
“Every place is too flattering for me, the very small and insignificant one.”
“Won’t you deign to drink?” continued the Levantine, after both had sat down.
“Thank you. I shall drink, if at all, from a plain wooden cup with no ornaments.”
“No, no!” exclaimed the other. “You shall drink from a precious cup of transparent green jade with three orange tassels.” He clapped his hands; the servant entered, brought tea and sweets and cigarettes, and it was then that the two strangely mated friends spoke of what was on their minds.
“You have heard about Miss Campbell?” asked d’Acosta.
“Yes,” replied the Manchu, with all the bland peacefulness of the Buddha who sees the world crumbling into dust but shows no trace of emotion.
“What do you think will happen, Sun Yu-Wen?”
“That is on the Buddha’s knees. Ahee!” The Manchu sighed.
The other made an impatient gesture.
“Suppose—if you will pardon me saying so—we hustle the Buddha a little and give him a push in the right direction.”
The mandarin, frankly Mongol, and therefore frankly irreligious, was nowise shocked.
“Can we?” he smiled.
“At least we can try.”
“How, my friend? You don’t know, eh? Nor do I.”
“But—to give up”
“What else is there to do? Listen!” He pointed at the window. “The trumpets are roaring. By this time the Chuen to yan's jackals are all over town. And then?” He folded his hands calmly across his obese body. “We be important men, you and I. These many years we have been almost sacrosanct. But even the fleetest horse cannot escape its own tail. My friend,” he added, “perhaps my spirit, released from his fleshly envelope, will soon jump the Dragon Gate and kowtow deeply before the spirits of my honorable ancestors.”
“You seem to relish the prospect,” came the heated rejoinder. “I don’t. And, as for Miss Campbell, and, also, the vase”
“She hid the vase,” interrupted the mandarin.
“How do you know?”
“Simple deduction. Last night she was a prisoner. If she had had the vase on her person, they would have found it.”
“How do you know they did not find it? That is just what I believe and what I am afraid of. It is the possession of this vase which is making the Chuen to yan’s brotherhood and all this riffraff of Southern radicals so dangerous, which is causing all the trouble.”
“No! If they had found the vase on Miss Campbell, they would not mind her having escaped.”
“Oh—escaped, has she?” D’Acosta was astonished as well as relieved.
“Yes.”
“Sure of it, Sun Yu-Wen?”
“Absolutely. My spies told me. Therefore, I repeat, since she did not have the vase, she has hid it, and that is why all these Southern jackals are nosing the ground. And they will find it. They will search everywhere. The little jackals will lick blood, will like the taste of it. It will mean death—for many—in Canton, death—for all—in the Shameen!”
“Logical enough. There remains one hope—one man—Prince Kokoshkine.”
“He left the barracks early this morning,” said the Manchu, “on the Chuen to yan’s orders—my spies brought me word.”
“He—he obeyed the orders?”
“What else could he have done? He cannot fight all Canton.”
“Did he take all his cavalry with him?”
“No. Only his Russians, Tartars and Manchus. I have not yet heard from all my spies. I left instructions at my house to bring me word here. They will doubtless report by and by. We will wait—there is nothing else for us to do.” He sipped his tea, then looked up, very grave. “D’Acosta,” he went on, “we have been friends—we three—you and I and Pavel Kokoshkine. We—all three—have worked for the same aim, the peace of Asia, which means, perhaps, the peace of the world. Our methods have differed. For we belong to three different races, Slav, Jew and Mongol. You have believed in building with the power of money, of finance, of big business, to make China so independent out of her own resources that she can resist the world economically—and thus command respect. I cling to the philosophy of my ancestors and also, being not altogether a fool, to certain more constructive maxims. I believe in the power of diplomacy, the wonderful diplomacy of the old monarchy, the Manchu régime, which found its pinnacle and its pride in the late dowager empress. Thus it has been my idea always to bring back the monarchy and, with it, peace. And Kokoshkine, the soldier, believes that peace can only come through war or the threat of war. That is why he has taken service under the Cantonese government, to lead them, to become all-powerful, to undermine with their own troops the influence of the Chuen to yan’s brotherhood, then to strike when the moment was ripe. We failed—you and I and the Russian. All our three methods”—he smiled very gently—“have proved useless, barren. Finance, diplomacy, force—useless—all three, all three!” He sighed. “We differed, when really even to differ was only a waste of time.”
“And yet,” rejoined the Levantine, “we three agreed on one thing—the power of superstitions and ancient traditions. The greatest power here in China!”
“Yes,” admitted the other; “the power contained in that vase. And there, too, we have failed. If the vase be lost, then lost is its power to us. And if it falls into the hands of the Chuen to yan’s brotherhood—My friend, I have already instructed my relatives in Peking to bury my body in a charming spot, on the side of a hill, with an exquisite view over the fields, so that my spirit after death may thoroughly enjoy itself. There is no hope, for you, for me, for Pavel Kokoshkine. If the latter turns against his Cantonese master, then the odds are too high—they will crush him. If he does not turn against them, then presently the Chuen to yan will kill him as one too powerful, too influential, as soon as he has sucked him dry of military knowledge and tactics. It is over. The book has been read. The grape has been pressed.” He drew an opium pipe from his loose sleeve, rose, and took the smoking paraphernalia from a small lacquered table in the corner of the room. “Have I your permission to take a few whiffs of the black smoke—to make the end more sweet?” he asked; and, when the other inclined his head, “Thank you, old friend!”
Delicately he kneaded the brown poppy cube against the tiny bowl of his pipe, then dropped it into the open furnace of the lamp and watched the flame change it gradually into amber and gold. The opium boiled, sizzled, evaporated. The fragment smoke rolled in sluggish clouds over the floor, and Sun Yu-Wen, having emptied the pipe at one long-drawn inhalation, leaned back, both shoulders pressed well down on the pillow, so as better to inflate his chest and keep his lungs filled all the longer with the fumes of the drug.
A slow smile overspread his placid butter-yellow features. He stared at the rolling opium clouds. The noises of the outer world, the tumult and the riot, the crackling of steel and hate, the roaring of the Chinese war-trumpets seemed very far away; and he was already floating on the fantastic, grotesque wings of poppy-dreams when the Levantine shook him by the shoulder. He sat up, rubbed his eyes.
“Yes?” he asked dreamily.
“Tugluk Khan is here.”
Immediately the mandarin became fully conscious, pushed his opium-pipe away with a regretful gesture, and smiled at Tugluk Khan, his chief spy, a Moslem Tartar from Chinese Turkestan, dressed in the orthodox blue of a Cantonese coolie, who stood before him with clasped hands.
“What news?” he demanded.
“I passed Prince Kokoshkine’s troop of riders below the corner of the Loo Man-Tze Street,” replied the other. “Feofar Khan was with him.”
“They saw you?”
“I was in a crowd of coolies. I did not dare speak. But I touched the bridle of his horse, asking for alms as if I were a beggar, and as he bent down to curse me, I whistled two shrill notes, as do the long-limbed rice-birds of our own west country. Allah grant he heard and understood!”
“He did not speak?”
“Wait, master! For there is one strange thing of which I must tell you. Feofar Khan has his youngest wife with him.”
“Youngest wife?” cut in the mandarin. “Ridiculous! I know that Tartar reprobate. He loves soft hands and melting eyes. But he has three wives already, each as old and shriveled as the devil himself, and each hen-pecking our brave general with the strength of her tongue. They are jealous of each other. But against a fourth wife they would make common cause. He would not dare marry again. Besides, I saw him only two days ago. He was not married to a young wife then. And a Tartar wedding takes seven days to celebrate.”
“But I heard, master!”
“What?”
“What he said to her. She was in a palanquin slung to the flank of a dromedary, with Feofar Khan riding on one side, Prince Kokoshkine on the other. And, after I whistled the call of the rice-bird, Feofar Khan rose in his stirrups and spoke to his young wife, through the curtains.”
“What did he say?”
“He called her ‘Blood of my Liver’ and ‘Pink-breasted Pearl,’ and”
“What else did he say?”
“He begged her—the narrow-footed one”
“Wait!” interrupted the mandarin. “Tell me—aren’t you Tartars proud of your women’s short, broad feet?”
“Yes. But Feofar Khan did call her narrow-footed! He begged her pardon for exposing her to the rough tumult of the streets, and added that soon she would be at rest in more fitting surroundings, in the house of his second cousin, Hunyagu Khan.”
Sun Yu-Wen looked up, startled.
“At rest—in the house of Hunyagu Khan—did he say that?” he demanded.
“Yes, master.”
“‘Trust the snake before the devil, and the devil before the Tartar.’” He quoted the ancient proverb. “Good, good, my Tugluk Khan!” He tossed the latter a purse filled with gold coins. “You have done well. Rest yourself.”
He dismissed his spy and turned to Moses d’Acosta, every bit of lethargy gone from his placid face.
“My friend,” he said, “it appears that I was wrong, after all, about my spirit jumping the Dragon Gate. For the end is not yet!” He started toward the door. “Come!”
“Where to?” asked the Levantine.
“To the house of Hunyagu Khan!”
“But,” came the objection, “I am not worse than the average coward. Still, for the two of us, marked men both, to go beyond the Shameen—with the Chuen to yan’s jackals roving everywhere”
Again the mandarin laughed.
“You own this hotel. Ever consider its location?”
“I have. And right now I don’t care for it. It is too near the outer wall which divides the Shameen from the native town, in the direct danger-zone.”
“For which praises be to the Lord Buddha!” said the Manchu. “You see—Hunyagu Khan’s house is at the very edge of the native town, just on the other side of the outer wall which surrounds the Shameen. His back courtyard runs parallel with yours. You understand?”
“I do—now!” exclaimed d’Acosta. “Seems to me that Feofar Khan sent a message after all.”
“He did, indeed. He asked us to meet him, or if not him, then his youngest wife—the narrow-footed one—in Hunyagu Khan’s house. Narrow-footed—a white woman, don’t you think?”
“Miss Campbell?”
“Right you are!”