Sometimes Charles was at home, and Harry tried to bridge the abyss between husband and wife. Though mutual communication was tenuous, they could, at least, laugh together when Harry was with them, and Charles would even discuss business matters. He would literally speak over her head to his brother, but he would tolerate her presence—just as she tolerated his presence in her house. Although progress was glacially slow, Harry felt that Charles and Mary were moving toward a reconciliation of sorts.
Sometimes Harry and Mary talked at length of the Sekloongs’ campaign to win their own independent commercial empire. She wondered if he would speak so openly without Sir Jonathan’s express permission and asked Harry directly late one afternoon, when they languidly sipped gimlets on the shaded terrace.
“I wondered when you’d ask,” Harry acknowledged. “Of course he knows. I couldn’t talk so frankly if the old man objected. Matter of fact, he wants you to know much more about the business. I can’t guess why, and he doesn’t tell me. But it suits us both, so why worry?”
Theirs was a curious kind of courtship. They rarely touched and then only in boisterous horseplay. Inclination and caution both counseled against expressions of affection that could lead only to guilty frustration. Theirs was a courtship of the mind and the spirit that offered Mary her first experience of an equal relationship with an adult male that was neither intense nor painful. She simply enjoyed Harry’s wide-ranging conversation and even-handed comradeship. His penchant for light banter enlivened even their discussion of grave matters. She reflected complacently that, for once, her bravura motto was beside the point. She was doing nothing in any way foolish, and she was certainly not committing herself wholeheartedly.
And Charles, to whom she had committed herself wholeheartedly and foolishly? She could, at least, talk with Charles again, though their words were guarded. Occasionally they slept together, though without passion. Charles insisted that husbands and wives should share the same bed. Besides, he wanted more children. Though they both avoided the prickly subject, Mary knew that any offspring of his concubine, the “Swatow girl,” would not be suitable heirs to the respectable solid tradition Sir Jonathan was creating. She followed Dr. Moncriefe’s timetable for avoiding conception, and Charles expressed no curiosity regarding her monthly cycle. If he pursued other fancies, he was discreet, as Sir Jonathan had promised. She was spared public humiliation, and, having tacitly accepted the concubine’s existence, she was less bitterly jealous of that poor sequestered creature whose children could never challenge her own. Scar tissue was slowly suturing the wounds Charles’s blatant philandering had inflicted. If she was still in love with her husband, she no longer suffered constant anguish at his betrayal.
Mary lavished her pent-up love on the children, hovering between relief and resentment at the servants’ sparing her the task of attending to their physical needs. She ventured into Hong Kong’s stratified society, which received the Sekloongs formally but rejected intimacy. Still, she found women of her own age to talk with, however uninspired their conversation, as well as young men to flirt with, however innocently and tepidly. She fashioned a new, functional framework for her life. By no means perfect, at least it existed, and she was, she told herself, reasonably content.
But such mild diversions did not satisfy her aspirations. Her extraordinary energy and her latent ardor compelled her to explore the strange world in which she lived. She resumed her Cantonese lessons, even started learning the complex brushstrokes of Chinese ideographs, and she seriously studied Chinese history. Her painting, which she had never abandoned, complemented her interest in Chinese calligraphy and the civilization it epitomized. She sometimes lay awake at night, chilled by her empty vision of the future, but her long, cheerful talks with Harry sustained her basically optimistic spirit and kept her fears at bay.
“The old man’s so pleased with you,” he remarked one afternoon in September, “you’d think he invented you.”
“I’m glad,” she replied thoughtfully. “Perhaps he did invent the new me. I’m tougher.”
“He likes that too.”
“Even though he won’t get yet another precious grandchild from me?”
“Maybe, but he’s as patient as a stalking tiger. Probably thinks time will provide.”
“He may be right, though it’ll be a long, long time,” she conceded. “But he’s pleased that I’m tougher? I’d expect the opposite. A daughter-in-law who stands up to him, a puny female who defies his will—the last thing I should think he’d want.”
“You do it so gracefully, love,” Harry laughed. “Charles either knuckles under or rears up in rage, and I slither away. He needs some toughness in the family.”
“Why ever?”
“We’ll need to be tough. Rough times are coming. This war between the Japs and the Russkis doesn’t look like much, but the Japs have beaten the Russkis hollow. Whatever the little tin-gods of Hong Kong think, things’ll never be the same. The Manchus didn’t learn a thing when the Japs defeated them in ’95, but some people did.”
“The Japanese did, you mean?”
“Of course. London backed Tokyo to keep Moscow in line. Whitehall wanted to stop the Russkis nibbling into China like termites. Now it’s the Japs’ turn. But they won’t nibble. They’ll bite off big chunks.”
“Worse than the Europeans?”
“Much worse. Besides, the Americans’re now in the game. That president with the funny spectacles and the big teeth, Teddy Roosevelt—he’s shrewd. He’s playing the peacemaker, bringing Tokyo and Moscow to a settlement. Remember how the Yanks proclaimed their Open Door Policy a few years ago? Everyone to share in trade. No one to gobble any more pieces of China. The Yanks’ve outdone the British at good old Anglo-Saxon hypocrisy. They play the peacemakers, but make damned sure they get their share—or more.”
“Harry,” she interrupted, “I take your point, but don’t get swept away by anti-Americanism. We were talking about what it means for China—and for us. I can see the general drift: the Manchus getting weaker under greater pressure, the Western powers and Japan getting greedier and more aggressive. And you were saying—”
“You’ve got the script right. I’d give the Manchus another decade, no more. Then Dr. Sun Yat-sen, or someone like him, takes over and faces problems ten times worse than now bedevil the Manchus. Instead of cutting China up like a melon, the powers’ll try dismembering her with surgeons’ scalpels. China has to get modern armaments and industry practically overnight—or perish. That’s where we come in.”
“I knew the Sekloongs would get their share,” she commented tartly. “How, though?”
“The old man’s determined to play a major part in that modernization. The House of Sekloong will either amass an immense fortune or go bust. We’re big now, but we’ve got no depth. One major mistake and we’re wiped out. That’s why the old man’s so testy lately. He’s got too many strings in his hands. He could bring the whole thing down around our ears if he pulled the wrong string.”
“I’ve felt that,” Mary pondered. “How does he think he can run with the Chinese hare and hunt with the European hounds? The principle’s sound, mind you, but—”
“As for me,” he interjected, “I don’t see why all the fuss. I’m happy as we are.”
“No, Harry,” she replied earnestly, “that won’t do. We must either grow bigger or perish.”
“So the old man says,” he answered. “You two think the same way. And you’re both mad about power.”
“Don’t be mad yourself, Harry,” she laughed. “I’m just thinking aloud. Anyway, we’ve been sitting too long. Let’s have a walk. You haven’t seen the pavilion since I refurnished it.”
She took his hands and pulled him to his feet. He rose lithely, and, for an immeasurable moment, they stood facing each other, two separate, dark figures against the sunlight bridged by their joined hands. The next instant she was in his arms, her fingertips caressing his crisp black hair, her lips brushing his bronzed chee
ks.
“Mary, my love,” he whispered, “Mary, I’ve wanted so long to—”
“And I—”
They pressed against each other for an infinity of seconds. He tried to pull away, but her arms around his neck drew his mouth down upon hers. She strained upward, fitting her body to his. Finally, he broke away.
“Mary, for God’s sake—”
“We’ve waited too long already, Harry.”
Their lips met again, and she was swept by the raptures of the senses she had thought renounced forever.
“No, Mary,” he protested. “We can’t. Charles—the family.”
“We almost have, my darling,” she laughed in delight. “And we certainly shall. I don’t care about them. Only about you—about us.”
They did not become lovers that afternoon, though she ached to feel her hands on his body. If Harry’s will had been stronger, their bodies might never have melted into one in joy. But he could not withstand her ardor or his own longing. She led and he followed, though he evaded her need for total possession. They talked, laughed, and loved with abandon, but she could not quite touch the core of him.
Harry was awed at the irresistible force that drew them together, but he was also deeply troubled. Though he mockingly derided the Sekloongs’ dynastic pretentions and affected to take his Catholicism lightly, the clan and the Church were the twin pillars of his life. The enormity of their transgression therefore burdened him far more heavily than it did Mary. She knew moments when she loathed herself for breaking her marriage vows, but she did not suffer the agonies Harry endured. He had been instilled with the belief that the welfare of the Sekloongs was the foremost purpose of his own existence—and he knew that public revelation of their love could gravely imperil the clan itself.
Unlike Harry, Mary was not in thrall to the stringent Chinese code of behavior, as sternly demanding as the unforgiving laws of the Old Testament. She simply did not consider their love-making incest, but Harry knew he violated that fundamental taboo by lying with his brother’s wife.
Mary consciously assuaged her guilt by recalling the West’s conviction that men and women were entitled to seek individual happiness. Her husband Charles’s own behavior had, however, denied her both fulfillment in marriage and human dignity. In her abandoned joy, she consciously cast aside the fear of pregnancy that had precipitated her conflict with Charles. The measure of her love for Harry was the yearning she felt to conceive a child by him. His own fears were borne down by the lure of her bright spirit and voluptuous body. Yet she still felt that the essence of him evaded her passionate possessiveness.
The unacknowledged struggle of wills upon occasion shadowed her joy, but as often made her joy sharper. The pavilion at the far end of the garden became a secret citadel of pleasure, wholly secure because Ah Sam pottered outside, alert against intruders. When the interminable summer came early upon them, bamboo blinds transformed the pavilion into a shadowed cave, and he caressed her breasts and thighs, which were dewed with sweet perspiration. During the brief winter, they lay on raw-silk-filled quilts before the open fire, and her fingertips traced the reflections of the dancing flames on his skin.
The passionate encounters were made radiant by tenderness. During the four or five hours they stole each week, Mary knew the most profound sensual pleasures of her life. But she yearned almost as much for Harry’s gentle presence as for those piercing ecstasies. For the first time in her life, Mary longed to be with another human being—not only coupled in passion, but in the sweet communion of repose. She felt herself complete only when Harry was beside her, and then she was gloriously complete, a wholly new, unconstrainedly exultant woman.
“This, I suppose, is love, true love,” she mused one summer afternoon in utter satisfaction of the senses and the spirit that shattered all restraints. “True love, I thought, was only in the story-books.”
“Of course it’s true love,” Harry looked at her in unfeigned surprise. “How else could we—”
“It is!” Her fierce affirmation was abruptly pierced by fear. “It is. But how long can it last?”
“Another minute, another week, or forever. Who knows?”
She was temporarily content with that answer. Love discovered transcended past and future, and time was real only when they were together. Summer passed into autumn; petulant winter came; and late January brought the Lunar New Year of 1906, almost seven weeks since they had acknowledged their love. Amid rain and fog, the pavilion was a fire-lit, enchanted cavern beyond time and space. Mary learned that she was pregnant, and the discovery completed her joy. She rejoiced as if the minuscule life in her womb were the first child ever conceived.
The entire family rejoiced with her. Charles assumed that all was well between them. She had yielded to his infrequent advances, feeling neither pleasure nor revulsion, but only a sense of duty fulfilled. Sir Jonathan and Lady Lucinda glowed with satisfaction at the imminent arrival of still another Sekloong. Her past waywardness, Mary reflected wryly, was apparently forgotten, while her new transgression was unremarked. She had redeemed herself by resuming her proper function—strengthening the House of Sekloong by increasing its numbers.
The infant was born on November 13, 1906, three weeks short of full term. The vigorous boy-child was eager to enter the world, and only three hours elapsed from her first pains to his triumphant arrival.
They called him James. Ironically, he looked more like Charles than did any of the other children. In his cradle, James displayed the family’s glowing hazel eyes and broad forehead, as well as the grasping Sekloong determination—as if the world were a toy made for his pleasure. The clan noted neither that his Uncle Harry’s joy was greater than his father’s, nor that his full-lipped mouth was Harry’s, not Charles’s. Harry was, after all, far less inhibited in expressing his emotions than Charles, and they all knew he doted on his sister-in-law.
When she cradled the fragile, black-furred head in her arms, Mary felt as if James were truly her first-born. She was devoted to her entire brood: Jonathan, the eldest; the two spritely, auburn-haired girls, Guinevere and Charlotte; even the enigmatic, vulnerable Thomas. But, they did not evoke the possessive love, almost adoration, she felt for the spirited mite who was in every sense her love-child, the fruit of the sin she would not renounce.
From her spacious room in Matilda Hospital built on an outjutting spur of The Peak, Mary could see the sweep of the harbor, roiled by the wakes of lighters darting among anchored ships, and, further away, the low buildings of the Kowloon Peninsula, where a new community was growing. Beyond Kowloon lay the broad expanse of the pastoral New Territories, leased to Britain only nine years earlier, its ranges of billowing hills, which still sheltered brigands, covered with light-green foliage. Beyond the New Territories reared the craggy ranges of Imperial China’s Kwangtung Province, where corrupt officials, portly gentry, and earth-stained farmers lived just as had their ancestors a thousand years earlier.
The late-afternoon fog was beginning to swirl around her eyrie on the third day after James’s birth. Mary lay back in her nest of pillows, indolently content after nursing the infant. She was idly watching the lights flashing into brilliance in Kowloon when Sir Jonathan knocked on the door. He was followed by a young amah carrying a number of cloth-wrapped parcels.
The servant set her burdens down on the white-painted table and scurried from the room after shyly offering felicitations. “Goong-hay, Tai-tai! Goong-hay sang-la Siu-yeh! Congratulations, Madame, congratulations on the birth of the Little Lord!”
“Little Lord, indeed!” Sir Jonathan snorted as he unwrapped the parcels. “You’d think it was the first baby ever born.”
“It’s strange,” Mary answered languorously. “I almost feel that way myself. But every baby is the first baby ever born.”
“Beware of compradors bearing gifts.” A smile warmed Sir Jonathan’s austere features. “There’re more red eggs, a few of the hundreds presented upon the birth of the Little Lord. And, Lu
cinda insists, more chicken-soup with dong-guai, that magic herb to cure all female complaints.”
“I’m already awash with chicken-soup,” she protested.
“No matter. Lucinda insists. And a small trinket from me.”
Her pink-nailed fingers fumbled with the bone-and-silk hasps of the silver-brocade box. On a bed of white silk glowed a four-inch-square piece of sepia-striated jade carved in bas-relief with the winged Sekloong dragon.
“It’s beautiful, Father—absolutely lovely. The most beautiful thing you’ve given me. But why now? James isn’t the first-born son.”
“Because you’ve returned to the family with the gift of James.” His manner was elaborately casual. “Pity we can’t call him Harry.”
Her head bowed in shame, and her heart pounded under the shock. She rallied to smile defensively at the Old Gentleman’s grave face. Since her secret was no secret, she would not dissemble.
“Perhaps it is a pity.” Her voice was steady. “But I’m content with James.”
“Only Lucinda and I guessed. I really should’ve sent Harry away a year ago, but I didn’t.”
“I’m grateful.” Tears clouded her violet eyes. “But I’m not ashamed. I’m proud of James and—and what Harry and I have found. Perhaps I’ve been very foolish. But I’ll be foolish as long as I can, with all my heart!”
“Don’t be so damned defiant,” he said irascibly. “No need to, though I can’t say, ‘Bless you my children.’”
“But why?” she asked in apprehension. “Why so forbearing?”
“The reason’s there.” His fingernails tapped the jade plaque. “The reason’s that dragon, my dragon.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I’d be lying if I said I didn’t object. I do. Much better to’ve found with Charles what you think you’ve found with Harry. But divorce is impossible. ’Twould be impossible if we were heathen. Since we’re not, it’s doubly impossible.”
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