“Why, Mr. Metcalfe?”
“Because they’re completely foreign to you. It’s not merely a matter of children of mixed blood. Time’s hardly ripe for them to be easy in their hearts—won’t be for generations, I fear. Look at Charles. Look at Jonathan himself. It’s not just race, but entirely different customs. Did you know Jonathan had a brace of concubines—and a half-dozen mistresses?”
“But Charles doesn’t,” Mary objected.
“Not yet. Maybe never, maybe very soon.”
“You must think of that, my dear,” Elizabeth interjected.
“Also, the Sekloongs are Catholics.” His initial reluctance was overcome, and Hilary Metcalfe’s opinions tumbled out. “Don’t know how much it means to you, but the offspring’d have to be Romans. Lucinda promised, though she’s a devout Buddhist.”
“How did they become Catholics?”
“Because only the Jesuits gave the young Jonathan consistent, even-handed affection and discipline. His father, you know, was an Irish adventurer who abandoned Jonathan’s unwed mother. The boy was brought up between two worlds. Neither proper European nor proper Chinese. His wealthy Chinese grandfather sometimes cosseted him, but most of the time ignored him. Except for the Jesuits’ care, Jonathan had to make his own way. He missed the advantages of Chinese wealth—and the privileges of European blood. Do you wonder he’s a hard man, a driven man? Hardest on himself, but very hard on his family. Charles has borne the brunt. In some ways, he’s now almost as hard as Jonathan. But I can’t in conscience tell you the other things only I know, information I learned in confidence.”
“I want a strong man, not a namby-pamby.”
“Above all,” he ignored her interjection, “the time’s not ripe for mixed blood. Jonathan’s an example of the damage, even if, you may think, an extreme example. This kind of marriage, an amalgam of East and West, it’s my dream of the future. But not yet. When you ask me, Mary, I’m fearful. I don’t want you sacrificing yourself in the Eurasians’ agonies.”
Metcalfe cocked his head as if listening to an inner voice before adding: “And Charles … well, Charles is Charles. You must finally judge him for yourself. Don’t rush your fences. But, if you must marry, take young Williams and an easier life.”
“May I ask something?” Elizabeth said. “Do you love Charles Sekloong, truly love him?”
“I don’t know,” Mary mused. “I don’t actually know. I don’t really know about love. But I do think so.”
Harry Sekloong was as definite, though not as vehement as Hilary Metcalfe. He called at the Osgood bungalow when the autumnal sun was just receding from its zenith, and he and Mary strolled to the wooden-roofed Peak Tram terminus. Drawn clanking over steel rails by its great cable, the green carriage bore them to the top of The Peak. Sedan chairs waited to carry them through the green wooded heights on winding footpaths.
“The White Highlands,” Harry laughed, handing Mary into her chair. “Inviolate till my old man broke the taboo. When the Manor’s finished, we’ll be the first wogs on The Peak.”
Mary laughed in response as he swung into his chair. She knew that Sir Jonathan had refused to accept his knighthood until he could build on The Peak, previously reserved by inflexible custom for the Colony’s British overlords. The epithet “wog”—abbreviation of the derogatory term, “Worthy Oriental Gentleman,” would have grated if anyone else used it, however flippantly. But Harry Sekloong, just approaching his twenty-first birthday, possessed a talent for lighthearted laughter that purged his words of bitterness. Hilary Metcalfe had observed: “Harry Sekloong has no sense of the serious. Is that his affliction—or ours?”
Harry’s crisp hair fitted his broad head like a black cap. The hazel Sekloong eyes, the legacy of distant Celtic ancestors, twinkled disconcertingly above his high cheekbones, and his wide mouth smiled in gentle mockery. Mary felt a glow of affection for Harry. So nearly her own age, he was totally undemanding and intuitively sensitive to her feelings. She could relax and enjoy Harry’s gamin charm as she could not wholly relax with his passionate older brother.
“We’re coming to the sacred site,” Harry called from his swaying chair. “Just like building the Pyramids, only in Hong Kong. Every stone, every board hauled up Peak Road by bullocks—and carried the last five thousand yards on coolies’ backs.”
Mary nodded her interest.
“Five hundred tons of stone, ten miles of timber, three acres of slates—my old man’s got it all worked out. When he’s finished, Buckingham Palace’ll look like a poorhouse.”
Mary chuckled at his curiously belittling hyperbole. Yet she gasped when their chairs swung through a cutting in an earthen bank and settled gently to the ground.
The scene truly recalled an imaginative engraving of the building of the Great Pyramids. Laboriously leveled by cutting away the steep hillside, the site occupied ten acres. Across the raw-red patch of earth, hundreds of coolies were deployed like teams of Hebrew slaves. The gray-stone walls of the main house, which jesting Harry called The Castle, enclosed half a London block. The second story was rising amid a tracery of bamboo scaffolding, on which workmen swarmed like monkeys, and massive cut-stones swayed upward on ropes pulled by fifty men. The din was overwhelming—grinding machinery, resounding hammer blows, squealing pulleys, and, above all, the coolies’ shouting in raucous Cantonese.
“Modest, isn’t it?” Harry smiled. “My old man builds big—and leaves room for bigger.”
She nodded, smiling, and Harry led her behind a grove of pines that filtered out the tumult.
“What’d you say when Charles asked you?” he inquired abruptly. “He thinks you said ‘Maybe yes.’ I guess you said ‘Possibly no.’ What’d you really say?”
“I suppose I said, ‘Well, perhaps we’ll see,’” she answered, surprised by his intrusiveness, but not resentful. “I certainly didn’t say ‘Maybe yes.’ More like ‘Possibly no.’”
“Tell him no, Mary! Tell him no!”
“Harry,” she bridled, “I’m fond of you. But isn’t that our business—his and mine?”
“No,” he said hotly, “it’s family business, big business. You know Charles fought and haggled with the old man before he even asked you? Afterward, the old man finally granted you might do. Healthy, intelligent, not too flighty. He’s still not really happy with a gwai-lo, a foreign devil person. You’ll do—just.”
“I’m flattered,” Mary snapped.
“You should be, I suppose. They all looked you over. Charles had fancies before, but never talked marriage.”
“I am not interested in Charles’s past fancies.” Mary turned her back in anger. “It’s time we left.”
“Now, Mary, don’t fret.” Harry was genuinely abashed. “After all, you’ve talked to no one but the Metcalfes. And they’re really too old. If there’s anyone else, perhaps a girl friend our age, you can really talk to, I’ll stop.”
“No, Harry.” His conscious charm placated her. “There isn’t.”
“Will you talk to me then? Or, at least, listen? I’ll never repeat a word.”
“But why do you feel so strongly?” She was genuinely puzzled by his opposition, his obvious concern for herself, rather than the Sekloong clan.
“Because, Mary, because—”
He was deliberately exerting all his charm. Though Mary knew he was playing to her weakness for him, she gave way and asked, “Because what, Harry?”
“Because I do care about you. Like a sister, of course. And I don’t want you swallowed by the Sekloongs or sacrificed to my old man’s ambitions. He’s afraid of tearing the clan apart by opposing Charles on this marriage, so he’s given in. But, next thing, he’ll start remolding you, trying to make you no more than a docile breeder of the next generation of the Sekloong dynasty.”
Harry silenced Mary’s incipient protest.
“Another minute, and I’ll be quiet. If you accept their terms, they’ll give you the world wrapped in silk. But I don’t want you humiliated—or b
roken.”
“Thank you, Harry.” She was so wholly mollified that she missed the implications of his final words and failed to pursue them. “I can see you do care about me. I’ll think about your advice. Honestly, I haven’t made up my mind.”
“I’m glad,” he said. “One last question?”
“You might as well. But you promised. Our conversation will remain … our own conversation.”
“What,” he asked baldly, “about the alternative?”
“The alternative? Oh, you mean—”
“Captain John Williams, the so-called Hero of Peking. All Hong Kong knows the tale of your magnificent necklace. The girl who captivated Prince William also captivates the glorious Hero of Peking.”
“What else does all Hong Kong know about me?”
“Well, of course, that the necklace was—ah—the spoils of war and that the brave Captain’s becoming rich by looting.”
“And what more?”
“They say he’s also asked you to marry him.”
“We do correspond, Harry.…”
She gratefully took the opportunity to speak with total candor, neither cloaking her feelings with maidenly reserve nor fencing with another young woman who was implicitly a rival. She could always talk more easily to a man, and Harry was a most satisfactory confidant.
“And,” he pressed, “has he—”
“I haven’t said yes. I haven’t even said ‘Maybe, yes.’”
“Nor ‘Possibly no’?”
“No, not even ‘Possibly no.’ Just pleasant little letters. I must think further about Charles and John. I’m alone in the whole world, not just in your world.”
“That’s why I’m taking such liberties—confidently expecting you to forgive me.”
“I’ll tell you truly. I feel much affection for John, though he doesn’t stir me, not like Charles. But, now, I’ve shocked you. Such fleshly feelings.”
“Nothing you said or did could ever shock me.”
“Let’s walk up the road.” She took his arm. “I’ll answer you, but then we must end this kind of talk.”
“Agreed.”
“My mother spent half her life waiting for my father to return from abroad,” Mary recalled. “To my brother and me he was a vague, bulky figure, occasionally popping up like Punch. Mother spent all her life waiting for his promotion. But it never came—he’ll die a warrant officer.”
“Captain John Williams,” Harry interrupted, “is marked for great things. London needs a story-book hero to glorify that squalid adventure.”
“Perhaps he is. But John is still penniless—and lower-middle-class. I will not spend my life like my mother—scrimping, pretending, and toadying to senior ladies. In England, I’m nothing—and I’d remain nothing.”
“Charles isn’t an escape-hatch.”
“You don’t understand,” she flared. “I’d never marry Charles—or any man—just to find a new life if I didn’t love him. But I won’t condemn myself to follow an endless, dreary road to nowhere, no matter how much I loved a man.”
“The choice, then,” Harry probed, “is hard. An alien world, exciting and glamorous, but strewn with pitfalls. Or your own world, which chills you. Am I right?”
“You put it well,” she smiled. “But you’ve left out love. I can choose not to choose between them. I’ll take no man rather than choose between two I may or may not love—but may not want.”
Mary’s frank discussion with Harry was grueling, despite her impulsive need to confide. She was accustomed neither to examining her emotions minutely nor to revealing them to others. But she was later to recall their talk as a light interlude during a period when she was the objective of an implacable campaign.
Harry was proved correct. The Sekloong clan was a powerful, disciplined force that maneuvered to break down her resistance as if she were a city under siege. Once he had given in to Charles, Sir Jonathan directed the campaign as if Mary’s marriage to his son were his own cherished desire. Only he himself knew whether he truly wanted the match or whether he hoped her ultimate refusal would disillusion his headstrong son and make Charles more amenable in the future. In either event, he had to show enthusiasm in order to repair the breach he had opened with Charles and to regain his sway over his first-born.
The Sekloongs’ pressure constantly intensified. Their unrelenting assaults on Mary’s emotions sapped her will. Their entertainment and presents sought to overcome her resistance while simultaneously displaying the clan’s wealth and power. Later, she could not recall every intimate dinner, lavish dance, and luxury-cushioned excursion. At the time, she could not refuse the tasteful presents without appearing churlish—even to herself.
A carved-jade bracelet or an amethyst ring set with chip diamonds from the avuncular Sir Jonathan. A cloisonne powder-box from Lady Lucinda or a roll of gorgeous “tribute silk,” the stiff, embossed fabric shimmering gold as befitted an offering to the Emperor. And from Charles himself—Charles, who normally refrained from any gesture more pressing than an eyebrow lifted interrogatively or a murmured intimacy—expensive trifles: a silver-embroidered scarf from Laos; a minuscule pot of caviar from Persia; a spray of orchids clasped by an enameled seventeenth-century brooch from Peking.
Only once did Charles breach his promise not to press her. Neither did he pine like the wan romantic lovers of Victorian convention; that was no more his way than was the ancient Chinese convention of the worthy young scholar-official who hopelessly adores his superior’s daughter. Never denied by a woman, Charles saw himself as the bold warrior on a “thousand-league horse” who seizes what he wants. Seeing Mary home from dinner at the Sekloong mansion off Bonham Road, he dismissed the rickshaw coolies and accompanied her to the door of the bungalow.
“When do I get your answer?” he demanded. “When do you say yes?”
“I still need time, Charles,” she countered. “I’m sorry.”
“Time’s almost up. So’s my patience. I love you, Mary, I want you, and I will have you. I swear that to you. I’ll break with my family if you insist. We’ll make our own way. Penniless, if that’s what you really want. But I won’t wait much longer. And you will marry me!”
“But, Charles, I can’t be …”
“You will be sure—and very soon. You will say yes—very soon.”
He grasped her shoulders, and she gave herself gladly to his demanding kiss. Abruptly, he released her.
“I can tell,” he said curtly, “even if you can’t. It won’t be long before you agree. So go and think again. But not too long!”
On Christmas morning, a coolie brought her a packet with a brief note: “From all the Sekloongs, with much affection.” The 1,200-year-old ceramic duck, just four inches high, glowed in its silken nest with the unique three-color glaze of the Tang Dynasty. It was obviously valuable, but not quite so valuable that she could return it without gauche discourtesy.
“Not a bribe,” Hilary Metcalfe observed, admiring the small masterpiece of the potter’s art, “but very strong persuasion.”
Mary still pleaded for time, time to reflect and find her own way. But she was subjected to another pressure almost as intense. John Williams wrote stiltedly passionate letters from Peking, pressing his suit, and he sent his own tokens: a Manchu bridal gown of brilliant red-and-green silk, embroidered with yellow chrysanthemums; a miniature tree, its leaves, flowers, and fruit carved from varicolored jade; a cobalt-blue-and-cream-white vase of the Kang Hsi period, two centuries earlier. Mary acknowledged those gifts and replied to those letters as graciously as she could without committing herself.
“They’re beautiful, John, and I’ll keep them safe for you. [Such was the burden of her letters.] I look forward keenly to your return. It’s always good to see old friends. And I rejoice at your good fortune.”
Not a single word could he construe as accepting—or unduly encouraging—his suit. But, his ardor undiminished, John Williams replied as if she were already his acknowledged fiancée.
; On the day after Christmas, Mary sat alone at her painting in the cramped parlor of the bungalow, glad of a respite from the hectic holiday season. She had attended four dinner-parties and three elaborate luncheons in one week, culminating with a Christmas feast at the Sekloong mansion. Not only the Sekloongs besieged her with invitations. As Hilary Metcalfe had predicted, she was a minor celebrity because of the attentions Prince William had paid her at the Grand Ball. Aside from the Honorable Rachel Wheatley, every hostess in Hong Kong was eager to lure “His Royal Highness’s dancing partner.” As was apparently inevitable in the Colony, her popularity made her the center of intrigue. Resentful of Sir Henry Blake’s attempts to placate the Chinese community, conservative taipans and officers tried to transform Mary into a symbol, “the young lady who defied Lady Blake.” Her own sympathies lay with the Chinese and the Eurasians, but she had learned to hold her tongue while treading the convoluted maze of Colonial Society. After the first rush of pleasure at her popularity, she was, she realized, slightly bored.
It was therefore a joy to lunch alone on broth and cold chicken before resuming her long-neglected painting of misty gray-green mountains sundered by an azure waterfall. That tranquil occupation allayed the depression induced by fevered festivities in a climate where giant poinsettias flaunted their crimson petals in the sunlight on every veranda in the 75° heat of Christmas Day.
Heralded by the chiming of glass beads in the doorway, Captain John Williams strode into the quiet room. He was overwhelming in red-and-gold dress uniform with the crimson ribbon of the Victoria Cross on his left breast and the three silver pips of his new rank on his epaulettes. But he had lost much weight, and new lines creased his bluff cheeks. He had also lost the diffidence she had found endearing before the Regiment sailed for Peking almost six months earlier.
“Mary, my dear,” he declared. “I’ve longed to see you. Finally wangled convalescent leave after all these months.”
“John!” she gasped: “John, it’s so good to see you. We were all so happy when we learned you weren’t badly wounded. And we drank champagne to your medal and your promotion.”
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