“Get on with it, Harry,” Charles chided. “We all know that. But even I don’t know just what happened next.”
“I obey, Elder Brother,” Harry mocked. “It’s really simple. Before Yüan Shih-kai turned over the Treasures, half the gold, a million taels, was to be delivered to Peking. Curiously, it never got there.”
Harry inserted a cigarette into a stubby ivory holder and sipped his champagne. Gauging the moment precisely, he resumed just an instant before Charles would have erupted in impatience.
“You may’ve read that the Hankow–Peking Limited was robbed by bandits on July nineteenth. Those were no bandits. They were soldiers of the revolution, Dr. Sun Yat-sen’s Nationalist revolution. We merely reclaimed part of the loot the Wheatleys’ve stolen from China over the years.”
“That simple, Harry?” Mary taunted.
“Well, not quite,” he grinned. “Our men could only take about half the bullion, say 18.5 tons worth about £2.8 million. Cohen and I had a thousand men in the hills. It came to about 80 pounds a man. The rest we buried.”
“And the ransom?” Mary asked. “The figures don’t tally.”
“Dr. Sun insisted the House of Sekloong should be rewarded for information that led to recovery of stolen property—and for preserving the National Treasures. He insisted on paying half the ransom, though I urged him to forget my personal interest.”
“You, of course,” Mary laughed, “had nothing to do with rescuing us.”
“Well, I did take leave to see you safe. Charles couldn’t get away from Shanghai. He worked with Judah Haleevie to pinpoint the bullion shipment and later in clearing our gold. Two-Gun Cohen insisted on coming along. But let Father finish. The rest is really his story.”
Sir Jonathan’s magisterial manner combined the absolute authority of the two most authoritarian beings on earth, a senior Mandarin and an Anglo-Irish earl.
“The final accounting was clear. Item: The Wheatleys retained 1 million taels, an unavoidable concession. Item: We paid 30,000 taels of the ransom and Dr. Sun’s Nationalists the other half. That was equitable. Item: I’ve debited Mary for one fifth the total, perhaps excessive, but she had to learn the lesson.”
“And the Wheatleys?” Mary asked.
“Losing some five and a half million sterling was a crippling blow, almost a fatal blow. And the word went round—with our help. Yüan Shih-kai lost all confidence in the Wheatleys when they didn’t deliver the gold. Other Chinese were infuriated by the plot after we told them, very discreetly. London was infuriated at the Wheatleys’ and Yüan Shih-kai’s clumsiness. That ended the Foreign Office’s flirtation with the former Viceroy who wanted to be Emperor. The practical British politicians washed their hands of the Wheatleys and gave their confidence to the loyal Sekloongs.”
“It gave us an in with the War Office,” Mary suggested, “helped our sales, didn’t it?”
“Quite,” Sir Jonathan answered crisply. “Besides, I couldn’t really explain to Derwent’s Chinese customers why the hong was interfering in Chinese politics—and, worse, intervening ineptly. Fortunately, the humble comprador had to talk only with Derwent’s Chinese associates. The Wheatleys had to explain to both His Majesty’s Government and their British associates—but couldn’t.”
“So everyone profited,” Mary mused.
“Except,” Harry amended maliciously, “so-called President Yüan, the bandits, who met with a mortal misfortune, and the Wheatleys.”
June 8, 1916–June 18, 1916
The Ballroom of Hong Kong’s Government House was a serene enclave of archaic ceremony in a world at war on the forenoon of Thursday, June 8, 1916. The glaring tropical sunlight filtered through wovengrass blinds shone on the oiled leaves of potted palms, each leaf polished separately by the servants. Crystal chandeliers tinkled in the faint breeze above rows of red-velvet chairs. The ritual pomp displayed the total self-confidence still felt by an era that was obliterating itself on the battlefields of Europe. The bejeweled ladies in pastel morning dresses and the bemedaled gentlemen in frock-coats or full-dress uniforms betrayed no awareness that thousands of young men were at that moment dying in the man-made purgatory around the fortresses of Verdun in northeastern France half a world away.
Before the pitched battle that had begun in February finally ended in October, almost a million soldiers in khaki and field-gray would have perished on blood-sodden fields pounded into a morass of mud by high explosives. General Philippe Pétain would have made his name a synonym for stubborn integrity by ordering, “They shall not pass!”—the same Philippe Pétain who was to besmirch his name by collaborating with France’s conquerors a quarter of a century later. General Erich von Falkenhayn would have dissipated his reputation as a master strategist, and the Imperial German Armies would have receded from their high-water mark of conquest. The generals’ pawns, the instruments of their grisly craft, were an entire generation of Europeans that marched with flags flying and bands playing to its destruction.
Far from the calm security of His Britannic Majesty’s Crown Colony, men impaled on barbed-wire cried out in vain appeal; other men were torn apart by shells in an uncomprehending instant; and horses screaming in agony were entangled in the slimy snares of their own intestines. The heavens’ fitful thunder occasionally overwhelmed the ceaseless thunder of the guns, and the rains of summer fell on the louse-infested troops. Explosions cast up geysers of mud seeded with the shattered bones and battered steel helmets of those who had died earlier. The Allied Forces were advancing gloriously, crawling on their lacerated bellies across the fouled earth. The Central Powers would attack time and time again before both sides finally halted in utter exhaustion of spirit and body six months later.
The Armageddon that was demolishing a civilization did not stir the Ballroom where portraits of King George V and Queen Mary gazed benevolently upon the overdressed audience. The Colony’s elite were gathered for the presentation of honors bestowed by the Crown. Several unescorted ladies, who would have walked barefoot across broken glass rather than fail to appear, demontrated that a number of the Colony’s young men were serving their Sovereign in uniform abroad. Otherwise Hong Kong was utterly untouched. The conflict was so remote it might have been fought on another planet.
The distant holocaust did, however, preoccupy some members of the complacent assembly. Demure in a tiered skirt of gray silk and a matching jacket with wide military lapels, Mary Philippa Osgood Sekloong strove to restrain her wandering thoughts while keeping an anxious eye on her scrubbed and polished brood. Guinevere and Charlotte preened in light-pink dresses, while James and Thomas squirmed in starched collars and flannel jackets. Fourteen-year-old Jonnie was lying in his narrow bed at Stonyhurst dreaming of cricket in the brief Lancashire summer and the College’s Combined Cadet Force, while Charles, not quite four, was too young to attend. Their mother remembered that it had all begun for her sixteen years earlier in the same Ballroom, but her thoughts were irresistibly drawn to the carnage in France.
Her father, John Philip Osgood, had died of a heart attack at Passchendaele in 1915. His lifelong quest for a commission having finally succeeded, he was, at sixty-one, a captain (temporary/acting) in the Royal Wessex Fusiliers. The steadfast admirer who was briefly her lover, Lord Peter Comyn French, had been among the first to go. A shell splinter had pierced the brain of the newly promoted Brigadier General in Flanders in 1914. Even her brother Thomas was serving in France. Though an insignificant lieutenant of the Territorial Forces, he had characteristically contrived assignment as an intelligence officer on the staff of Field Marshal Sir John French.
Seated beside his wife, Charles Sekloong was also thinking of France. He twisted his heavy torso against the unaccustomed constriction of his bandbox-new khaki uniform, crossed by a gleaming Sam Browne belt, and a major’s gold crowns glittered on his epaulets. His younger brother Harry was austere in a gray, high-necked tunic, the Sun Yat-sen suit that was the hallmark of the Kuomintang, the Nationalist Party. He rega
rded his elder brother quizzically. Harry rendered allegiance not to the British Crown, but to his idol, Generalissimo Sun Yat-sen of the new Revolutionary Alliance, who was soon to become President Sun Yat-sen of the Provisional (and precarious) Republic of China with its capital at Canton.
The war in distant Europe did not concern Harry Sekloong. He was dedicated to reclaiming power in North and Central China from the warlords who had cast the country into anarchic civil war by usurping the authority of the legitimately elected Dr. Sun Yat-sen. He could not know that it would take more than a decade to achieve that purpose; he could not imagine that the Nationalists’ triumph would initiate two decades of even more vicious strife.
All the men still living who had touched Mary’s life deeply were assembled in Government House that June morning. The Victoria Cross on John Williams’s breast, simply inscribed FOR VALOUR, drew greater attention than the crossed swords and pip of a major general on his epaulets. He had arrived earlier that week as head of a military purchasing mission, and she had not yet spoken with him. But the Major General was to attend the Sekloong banquet that night, as was Dr. George Chapman Parker, who sat behind her, casual and neutral in a cream-linen American suit.
Mary gathered her wandering thoughts and took her mother-in-law’s hand. Lady Lucinda was immense in a most unsuitable mauve-and-pink confection, and her massive diamond bracelet was more brilliant than the crystal chandeliers.
The Governor stood stiff on the red-carpeted dais in the splendid discomfort of his white dress uniform. His sweat-slippery fingers eased his gold-scrolled choker collar. Sir Francis May’s ruddy-cheeked aide-decamp stood behind him, holding a velvet-lined box in which lay a six-barred bronze cross on a saxon-blue, scarlet-striped silk ribbon.
“Sir Jonathan Sekloong, Knight Bachelor,” the aide entoned. “Please present yourself.”
Jonathan Sekloong ascended the red-carpeted steps and bowed fractionally. Despite his simple long-gown of blue silk, his silver-gray hair and pointed beard endowed him with authority.
“Sir Jonathan Sekloong,” the Governor read, “it has pleased His Imperial and Royal Majesty, George V, of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, King, Emperor of India, Defender of the Faith, and Sovereign of the British Orders of Knighthood to admit you in the grade of Knight Commander to membership in the Most Distinguished Order of St. Michael and St. George.
“This honor is conferred in recognition of your extraordinary services in advancing the prosperity of His Majesty’s Crown Colony of Hong Kong by your indefatigable endeavors in the realms of commerce and philanthropy, and, further, by your great services in promoting amicable relations between the Colony and the Republic of China, and particularly in recognition of your unceasing endeavors in providing for the supply of the implements and necessities of war to His Majesty’s forces now engaged in mortal conflict with the enemies of the Crown.”
Sir Jonathan inclined his head, and Sir Francis May slipped the silken collar of a Knight Commander of St. Michael and St. George around his neck. The heavy cross entangled itelf for a moment in Sir Jonathan’s beard.
“The devil!” the Governor murmured.
Applause welled from the senior officials and taipans in the front rows. Richard Wheatley, bent with age, slapped his palms together perfunctorily once. Mary concealed her amusement behind her fan before resuming her vigorous clapping.
“That damned Sekloong!” Dick Wheatley’s stage whisper was clearly audible. “First Knight Bachelor, now K.C.M.G.—‘Kindly Call Me God.’ First Chinese to get that gong. Don’t know what we’re coming to.”
The Sekloongs exchanged glances. The disastrous loan to Yüan Shih-kai had deprived Richard Wheatley of the knighthood he would otherwise have received as taipan of the Colony’s chief hong.
Hong Kong tradition, that unstable amalgam of Chinese and British folkways, required the House of Sekloong to give an ostentatious banquet to celebrate the honor. Sir Jonathan had pretended reluctance, though Mary knew he would have dared bankruptcy to observe the convention—if the sacrifice had been even remotely necessary. In the same spirit, he flicked the heavy cross with his forefinger and contemptuously recited the engraved motto: “AUSPICIUM MELLIORUM AEVI. ‘Portent of a Better Age,’ indeed! We’ll be lucky if it’s worth another £1,000 a year.”
Nevertheless, the young Sekloongs knew that he was possessively proud of the honor. The first Chinese to build on the sacrosanct Peak had become the first Chinese to receive the K.C.M.G. Yet they were not able to completely understand his motivation. Was it simply his fierce competitiveness? Was it satisfaction at forcing the Hong Kong Establishment to bestow the unprecedented honor with a pretence of good grace? Both those feelings were undoubtedly strong. But did he not also feel pride in recognition by the British Crown he had, in his own way, served well?
The new insignia shone beneath his wing-collar above the Order of the Phoenix conferred by Dr. Sun Yat-sen when the family gathered in the library of The Castle. A hundred or so honored guests had been asked to join them for drinks before going by sedan chair to the Peak Hotel, which the House of Sekloong had preempted for the formal Chinese banquet. Even The Castle could not accommodate the 2,000 who would sit down to dinner.
“I see, Father,” Harry remarked irreverently, “that you’re still perverse. White tie, boiled shirt, all the foreign trimmings for the Chinese banquet, but a long-gown for the British ceremony this morning.”
Inured to his younger son’s raillery, Sir Jonathan raised his crystal champagne glass in a toast.
“We have much to celebrate tonight. This small honor to myself and the greater prosperity recent circumstances have brought us. We also have much to regret. As you know, Charles sails in three days’ time for England and, I imagine, later France. God grant him a safe return!”
The Sekloongs raised their glasses, and Sir Jonathan continued: “Harry will return to serving Dr. Sun Yat-sen and the Republic. God grant their arms victory!”
Again the toast passed, and Sir Jonathan raised his glass for the third time.
“My sons are not deserting me. Each follows his conscience. I rejoice that they do, despite my fears for their safety. However, they are not leaving me wholly unhelped in using my small abilities to provide for the family.”
Anticipating his words, Mary composed her features in appropriate modesty. But she fingered the massive gold-and-jade necklace she had capriciously worn to recall the past to John Williams.
“The ladies!” Sir Jonathan said. “God bless them. Lucinda, my constant companion! Without her, I would face the world alone. Matilda, my precious daughter, always a great comfort. And Mary, also a comfort, and my strong right arm in the business of the House.”
The Sekloongs again raised their crystal goblets. Drinking to herself in the Chinese manner, Mary looked over the rim at the wily Old Gentleman. Alone, indeed! The Pearl Concubine, who was pregnant again, the Jade Concubine, though retired, and other complaisant ladies were delighted to comfort Sir Jonathan most thoroughly whenever he chose. But they were his concern, not hers, and he was still speaking with unwonted formality.
“Just one last toast: the Republic of China. As you know, President Yüan Shih-kai died two days ago in Peking, after his plots to make himself Emperor collapsed. The road to power’s now clear for Dr. Sun. He’ll need good fortune.”
“I drink to that cheerfully,” Harry responded. “Not to Viceroy Yüan’s death, but to the collapse of all efforts to restore the Empire. To the Republic of China.”
“The guests, Jonathan,” Lady Lucinda prompted after they had sipped the champagne. “They’ll be arriving in a minute. Shouldn’t we …”
“By all means, my dear. Let us greet our guests.”
At 7:35 P.M. on June 8, 1916, the descending sun was just touching the jagged hills behind Kowloon. The guests were punctual, their deviation from Hong Kong’s habitual tardiness acknowledging the occasion’s unique importance. Before moving to the Peak Hotel for the larges
t banquet the Colony had ever known, the chosen hundred came to toast the newly created Knight Commander. Sedan chairs painted in their owners’ livery swayed through the golden-tiled arch under the winged dragon that guarded the House of Sekloong. The sweating coolies “trotted with the inborn arrogance of thoroughbred horses,” as a Chinese essayist had described their proper gait four centuries earlier.
The Governor’s chair, marked by a gold crown, was first. Since protocol prescribed that the King’s personal representative should arrive after the other guests had gathered, the unique compliment was unmistakable. Sir Francis May, tall and fiercely mustached, extended a scarred hand. Beaming with blatant hypocrisy, Richard Wheatley followed the Honorable Rachel Wheatley. He was tissue-paper thin at seventy-nine, silver-frail as an ascetic bishop. His wife was painfully emaciated, and her skin was so taut she appeared all prehensile nose.
Since Derwent, Hayes was unquestionably the Number One hong, the Wheatleys’ precedence was unchallengeable. The chair coolies of the taipans of Jardine, Matheson contended for second place with the coolies of Butterfield, Swire. They were followed by their compradors, Robert Hotung of Jardine’s, who was to receive his own knighthood a few years later, and Y. K. Mok of Butterfield. Mosing Way of the East Asiatic Bank came next. Like the Colony itself, all those men had been tainted—and enriched—by the opium trade. Like Sir Jonathan himself, Robert Hotung and Mosing Way had gained much credit among enlightened Chinese and Europeans by disengaging early and by fighting to stop the traffic. None could have known that opium, outlawed in China in the mid-nineteenth century, would not be banned by Hong Kong law until 1946.
Successive sedan chairs discharged their eminent passengers without regard to formal precedence: the Colonial Secretary and the Chief Justice; Sir Shouson and Lady Chow; and the Parsees, Mr. and Mrs. H. N. Mody, alighted before The Castle. The Commander, British Forces swung through the winged-dragon gate in a gold-and-vermillion chair, followed by Major General John Williams, V.C. Bemused by British pomp, Dr. George Chapman Parker, wearing a white dinner jacket, stepped from a red public sedan chair.
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