“Eve’ything a’right, Missy?” he asked in pidgin. “You quite happy?”
“Yes, Ah Sam, thank you,” she replied, amused by his clumsy circumspection. “Everything is quite all right.”
“Good, ve’y good. New Year time, eve’yone must be happy.…”
“Aiyaa! Aiyaa! Dai-siu lay-la! Aiyaa!”
The cry of distress echoed in the outside corridor, and the doors opened to the hobbling progress of Ah Ying, the Number One Baby-amah. She hurled an unintelligibly rapid stream of colloquial Cantonese at Ah Sam.
“Missy! Missy!” he said. “Mastah come home. He not ve’y well. Maybe little bit hurt a bit.”
Charles Sekloong shuffled into the drawing-room supported by a wiry chair coolie. A deep cut in his cheek oozed blood; an angry laceration reddened his smooth forehead; and his gray-worsted suit-jacket was torn. He slumped into the yellow brocade sofa beside the fire. All her resentment forgotten, Mary knelt beside him.
“What is it, Charles?” she asked. “Are you hurt badly? What happened? Shall I send for Dr. Moncriefe?”
“It’s all right, Mary. I’ll be all right.” He smiled, and the passionate youth she had married peeped over the stolid facade of the preoccupied businessman. “It’s really nothing.”
“Hot water and cotton-wool,” she directed. “Bring Dettol—and a brandy for Master.”
“I could take a brandy,” he sighed. “But don’t make a fuss. And, for God’s sake, don’t tell the old man.”
“What happened, Charles?” Mary persisted.
“Thugs set on me. Came out of the fog at the Peak Tram. It was dicey till the chair coolies came up. Fog all over and no one around. Don’t worry, I’ll be fine.”
He tossed back the brandy, exhaling in satisfaction, and color began to return to his face.
“But why you?” she persisted.
“Could’ve been anyone who’d been carrying lots of the ready. This time of year, thieves come out. Even thieves have to pay their debts before New Year.”
“Dr. Moncriefe must see you. This cut looks nasty—I’ll send for him.”
“No,” he commanded. “No need—and, remember, tell the old man I fell. No need to worry him.”
Out of the corner of her eye Mary saw Ah Sam shake his head in melodramatic dismay. She ignored his pantomime, dabbing gently to wash the grit from Charles’s cheekbone to the corner of his eye.
“Aiyaa! Aiyaa!” The baby-amah declaimed again like the narrator of a Cantonese opera. “Old Master come.”
Sir Jonathan strode into the drawing-room. His hazel eyes were coldly angry, and red spots glowed under his cheekbones.
“What the devil?” he demanded in rough Cantonese. “What the devil is it this time?”
Suddenly aware of the audience, he pointed to the doors, and the goggling servants pelted out.
“What this time?” Sir Jonathan demanded, speaking English to frustrate the ears that might be pressed against the door. “What’s the new tale?”
“I tripped and fell in the fog.” Charles evaded. “Really, it’s nothing.”
“You act the fool, but don’t take me for a fool!” Sir Jonathan shouted. “Knives don’t slash your cheek falling in the fog. Who beat you?”
“Well, actually, thugs. Tried to rob me. I didn’t want to worry you on New Year’s Eve.”
“Very considerate. I’ve told you a thousand times—be careful. But you know better.”
“Know better, Father?”
Mary stood silent, forgotten by both father and son. Charles still smiled, but his temper was rising.
“You’ve been playing with that glorified flower girl again, haven’t you? Golden Lily.”
Charles’s face was a mask of outraged innocence.
“She belongs to Tai-Foo, Tiger Chung, and he set his Green League Braves on you, didn’t he?”
“Yes,” Charles acknowledged.
“You know damned well how tricky things are,” Sir Jonathan said angrily. “The Red League’s behind us, but we need neutrality—not hostility—from the Greens. Without the Triads I’ll never shake loose of the Wheatleys. You and your women!”
Mary Sekloong’s heart lurched at the double shock. She had suspected that Charles might seek elsewhere the pleasures she was forced to deny him. But confirmation of her fears wounded both her pride and her love for Charles. As a superior male, a Chinese male, he demanded that she be perfectly chaste, while custom granted him complete self-indulgence. He considered it in the natural order of life that he should satisfy his desires as he wished. Worse, Sir Jonathan’s reproaches told her that Charles had been unfaithful for some time, certainly long before she had denied him her body.
Her chronic sense of insecurity was further heightened by Sir Jonathan’s mention of his relations with the Triads, the powerful Secret Societies. Founded to oppose the Manchu usurpers after the Chinese-ruled Ming Dynasty fell in 1644, the Secret Societies were divided into the Red and Green Leagues, which contended against each other, but united against outsiders. Hong Kong called them Triads, after their chief branch in the Colony, the Three Harmonies Society.
She knew something of the Secret Societies from Charles and from Hilary Metcalfe. Swearing their members to life-long loyalty by fearsome blood-oaths, they used their great extra-legal power to enrich and protect their adherents. Some, like the Association of Elder Brothers in distant Szechwan, virtually ruled parts of China. Elsewhere, the Societies were hardly more than interlocked, organized gangs of evil-doers. Their depredations recalled the Black Hand Society of Sicily, which had extended its activities into England during the past decade. Irresistibly drawn to political action and reassuming their original patriotic purposes, the Societies were allied with the numerous rebels against the decadent Manchu Dynasty. Though she knew little more of the Secret Societies, Mary instinctively recoiled from the Sekloongs’ involving themselves deeply with their devious and often violent Oriental intrigues.
Awareness of Mary standing pale beside the fireplace had penetrated Sir Jonathan’s rage.
“Won’t you leave us, Mary?” he demanded. “No need to mix in this mess.”
The angry father and son silently awaited her departure, and she longed to remove herself from their confrontation. But instinct warned her to remain. As much for Charles’s sake as her own, she must not leave the room like an obedient schoolgirl. Whatever he had done, Charles was the husband she had taken, even if unwisely. She could not leave him to be browbeaten or, more likely, to flail out at his father. Though it was she who was most deeply wounded, only her presence could restrain the bristling men until volatile Sekloong tempers cooled.
“For God’s sake, Mary!” Charles spoke testily. “This is between us. It’s men’s business.”
“My business, too, I think,” she parried.
“Charles and I must talk this out before the party.” Sir Jonathan’s persuasive lilt was pronounced. “We both ask you. Just leave us to sort it out, so we can say the right words to the right guests.”
“Let her stay.” Charles was grim. “If she must hear, better now than later.”
“It’s my future—and my children’s,” Mary insisted.
“God preserve me from clever, stubborn women!” Sir Jonathan’s outward equanimity was largely restored. “But then you’ll let us sort it out?”
“When my husband wishes.”
“Thanks be for small mercies and great signs of grace, as the good fathers would say.” Sir Jonathan’s lilt was cajoling; his self-assured pride was so great that he no more disdained flattery to gain his ends than he shrank from intimidation.
“It’s your scheme, Father,” Charles said. “You tell her.”
“You know,” Sir Jonathan explained, “I’m not overfond of my—let’s call them step-kindred—the Wheatleys, for good reason. My wonderful mother married Richard Wheatley after my own father, O’Flaherty, died. My grandfather, Kwok Lee-chin, then got Dick Wheatley into Derwent’s. Then, after Mother died, Wheatle
y married again, chiefly to consolidate his position in the hong. What he couldn’t steal, he took by marrying.”
Mary looked up in surprise. She had never heard Sir Jonathan speak frankly of his illegitimacy or his strained, yet intimate, relationship with the Wheatleys.
“Right now I’m Derwent’s comprador, the go-between, a glorified native-guide for the big white chief.” Sir Jonathan’s bitterness edged his voice. “But I want independence, want what properly belongs to me. To get it, I need the backing of the Green Band and the Red Band, the patriotic, anti-Manchu societies.”
“They’re other things, too.” Mary couldn’t resist the gibe. “Or so I’ve heard. Hatchetmen and gangsters, too.”
“Perhaps,” Sir Jonathan conceded. “Regardless, your husband has now tossed a spanner into the works. We can’t offend the Green Band, but he’s made a good start. Now, will you please leave us to make running repairs?”
“In a moment,” Mary temporized. “But what precisely has Charles done?”
“That you can ask him.” Sir Jonathan smiled thinly. “I’m sure you will … vigorously. Will you leave us to it? Time’s short.”
“Charles,” she asked, “will you be all right?”
“I’ll explain later, Mary,” he replied firmly. “But do as Father asks.”
“I’ll do as my husband wishes.”
She gathered her skirts. As the teak doors closed behind her, she heard Sir Jonathan’s voice.
“The best thing that ever happened to you, boy, is that young woman. But you’re too foolish to …”
Mary trod the fixed measures of her evening routine like an automaton. Determined not to brood, she gave herself instead to the sensual pleasure of nursing the infant Thomas. But his greedy gums pulled at her nipple, and she abruptly decided to stop feeding him just as soon as she could find a wet-nurse. Or he could go on the bottle, though Lady Lucinda would frown. The Dairy Farm was soliciting her custom, promising to provide “absolutely disease-free and sterile milk” from their new herds at Pokfulam. Though Dr. Moncriefe’s hearty conservatism might advise otherwise, she’d still do as she thought best.
She kissed the girls good-night and tucked in their teddy bears. Her heart stirred beneath the ice that sheathed it when she closed the door on the two red-gold heads beside the toys’ furry yellow ears on the white pillows. Young Jonathan demanded a story and bellowed in four-year-old anger when she preferred to read from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. That evening, she just couldn’t invent new adventures for the miraculous winged dragon, the continuing tale he loved. Jonnie was already petulant because she’d rejected his grandmother’s suggestion that he attend the New Year’s banquet. But her familiar voice soothed him with the White Rabbit’s giddy disappearance down the burrow. Mary’s thoughts wandered in spite of her resolve.
To her surprise, her first emotion was wry satisfaction at having faced down Sir Jonathan. Her father-in-law’s proprietory assumption that she, too, would honor his every command had been increasingly galling. Sir Jonathan finally knew where they stood and, she suspected, welcomed her defiance for his own reasons. She had learned, above all, that she could not permit the Sekloongs to dominate her. But, it would be criminally foolish to provoke a decisive confrontation.
Mary had no intention of altering her circumstances radically, since she could only alter them to her detriment. The children were hers—and must remain hers. That imperative meant she must remain with Charles and his overwhelming family. Besides, she was not prepared to exchange her life with Charles for the uncertain, déclassé existence of a divorcée. Despite his follies, she realized anew that she still loved Charles. She stoically acknowledged again that he was inclined to rove, though that acknowledgment was a spear in her heart. Not her own self-esteem was most deeply wounded, but her regard for Charles—and the wound was, therefore, more painful. She was stricken by that pain and by the contempt for the man she loved implicit in her readiness to acknowledge his wanton unfaithfulness. She had not thought herself so deeply committed. Was she a modern woman who would not countenance infidelity? Or was she submissively old-fashioned, totally committed to her man, despite his weakness?
She automatically dressed herself in royal-blue velvet with a deep round décolleté, and she hung herself with her most ostentatious jewels. Charles and Sir Jonathan were equally barbaric in their desire that she display their wealth on her person.
Where, she wondered, would the Old Gentleman’s new schemes lead? A cavern of insecurity yawned beneath all the Sekloong splendor. Mary’s sturdy North Country skepticism distrusted the princely pretension the family considered the normal framework of its life. If Sir Jonathan miscalculated; if his intricately woven web came adrift; if his Chinese allies fell away or the British Establishment turned on him, The Castle could come crashing down into the cavern—burying them all.
When Charles limped into their dressing room an hour later, she was inspecting the jade-and-ruby butterfly hairpin in her hair. Abstractly, she discarded the ornament as superfluous.
“Hurry, Charles,” she said evenly, “or we’ll be late.”
“I’ll bathe in a hurry, Mary, but—”
“Do, please,” she interrupted. “I’m looking forward to the party.”
Surprised, he assessed the cool smile on her full lips and the calm candor of her violet eyes. He wisely said no more, assuming that her light manner was a rebuke. His jaws tightened at the prospect of the next day’s scene, no way to start the New Year.
Charles Sekloong misjudged his wife. Rather than brooding bitterly on his infidelity, Mary was feeling that he had already suffered too much in a few hours, first the physical assault and then his father’s recriminations. She would not now wound him by exacting a stumbling apology. She would not unsex herself—and, perhaps, destroy all remaining chances for their happiness—by humiliating her husband.
Charles wondered at his wife’s casual manner as they walked through the torch-lit fog to The Castle. The Great Hall was, for the first time, lit by hundreds of glowing incandescent bulbs. It was, he reminded her needlessly, the first home on The Peak and only the third private residence in the Colony to lay on electricity, at great expense. His words flowed as persistently and as erratically as the current in the thick cables sheathed in gutta-percha. They seemed more like sputtering sparks from a broken cable in the rain.
Sir Jonathan wore his finest long-gown and his silkiest manner to welcome his guests to the Great Hall of The Castle. He exuded the relaxed satisfaction of a man who knew that all his acounts for the Old Year were settled; he glowed with total confidence that the New Year would bring new triumphs. Only four persons in the splendor of rubbed-teak paneling and glowing-crystal chandeliers guessed at the deep anxiety Sir Jonathan’s expansive air concealed.
Lady Lucinda sensed her husband’s distress because of a sympathetic unease within herself. But her role in his life was so circumscribed that she did not know why she knew. Hilary Metcalfe saw that Jonathan was the too perfect host. He had observed the same manic mood and excessive urbanity during other crises in Jonathan’s life. But only Charles and Mary knew precisely why the master of the household was so disturbed, and Charles was himself unnerved by the failure of Sir Jonathan’s self-assurance.
Unaware of their host’s true mood, the guests trooped into the Great Hall to gape at the Ming and Ching Dynasty porcelains and to exclaim at the miracle of electric light. Gilt and enamel candelabra nonetheless stood on the dinner tables. Lady Lucinda had prepared for the inevitable failure of the electricity she profoundly distrusted. The tang of fresh-sawn wood blended with the fragrance of incense and tantalizing odors from the kitchens, where twenty cooks were preparing the feast. The Great Hall was still incomplete, as it was to remain for another decade, while Sir Jonathan piled superfluity upon perfection. Red-silk banners inscribed with New Year’s invocations concealed the bamboo-scaffolding the workmen had left unoccupied during their own holidays.
The guests repre
sented not merely two great realms, the British and the Chinese Empires, but the dozens of smaller realms and semi-autonomous fiefs imperfectly conjoined in those enormous organisms. Just three years after The Castle’s erection, Lunar New Year’s Eve at Sekloong Manor was already a full-blown tradition. The youthful Crown Colony was adept at creating instantaneous traditions. All its divergent peoples met in amicable equality—one night a year.
The Colonial Secretary, still stiffly Victorian five years after the death of the great British Queen Empress, amiably greeted the Delegate of the Viceroy of Canton, whose own Dowager Empress still lived in bitter senescence in the Forbidden City of Peking. Chieftains of the Green Band and the Red Band, their power maintained by ten thousand “Braves” in the labyrinthine slums of Wanchai and Kowloon, toasted the taipans of the great European trading hongs. The taipans’ wealth was garnered by dozens of “young gentlemen” European clerks; by thousands of farmers in the opium fields of Laos, Burma, Thailand, and India; by wiry, broad-faced hunters tending their traplines on the frozen plains of Manchuria; and by hosts of sailors, coolies, and agents throughout Asia.
Sallow British ladies bowed to shy Chinese matrons, to whom they paid no more deference than to maidservants the other 364 days of each year. American ship captains laughed with Teocheo smugglers, whom they normally met in backrooms, if indeed they did not send their Chinese supercargoes to haggle over shipments of contraband. French and German diplomats fawned on French and German bankers and merchants, accepting in return exaggerated expressions of respect—“J’ai l’honneur, Monsieur le Consul-Général!” “Meine tiefste Ehre, Herr General-Konsul!”—just as they did every week of the year.
Generals and colonels in trousers so tight they could bend no more than three inches without risking social catastrophe exchanged amiable grunts of mutual incomprehension with village headmen from the New Territories. Ageless, wispy-bearded Chinese scholars in worn long-gowns chatted with a few eager young Europeans in Mandarin. Mastery of the northern Court language was almost as unusual among educated Cantonese as it was among the “barbarian devil persons.” Eurasian and Jewish entrepreneurs drifted easily through the throng, greeting most men in their own languages.
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