“I’m glad you turned up, Gabe. The family needs support, and your stock’s high right now.” The sentiments were Chinese, or perhaps universal; their expression was wholly Western. “Your uniform is a big asset now. All the taipans are scared to death, so they love the uniform. Even a junior Mandarin is very welcome. Shows we all stand shoulder to shoulder against the Taipings.”
“I’ll pretend to be a tower of strength, Davy, though I don’t feel it.”
“It’ll work out. You’ll see.” The ever optimistic David was suddenly grave. “You know, I’m worried about Fronah. She’s tough, and she acts tough. But she was shattered by Lionel’s leaving her … and she’s not over it yet, not by a long shot. Have a talk with her, Gabe. But go easy with her.”
“A runaway husband isn’t something she’d get over in a few months, Davy,” the American replied. “I’d expect her to be down. If anything, she seems surprisingly chipper to me.”
“Not really. It isn’t just that scoundrel’s deserting her, Gabe, though that’s bad enough, God knows. Something else is bothering her deeply. I have an idea, but I can’t tell you. Maybe she will.”
“I doubt it, though I’ll have a talk with her. But I see the crown prince has arrived.”
Maylu teetered through the company carrying Fronah’s son. The ladies cooed over Judah, and even the preoccupied gentlemen smiled. The fine hair on his long head was fair, and his large blue eyes were curious. Although his features were delicate, the infant was enormous for his age.
Fronah took Judah in her arms for a minute, then surrendered him to his beaming grandmother. While Sarah clucked over her most treasured possession, the boy’s mother returned—with relief, Gabriel sensed—to her conversation with Whitney Griswold, the taipan of Russell and Company.
“A fine boy, Fronah,” the American interrupted, and Whitney Griswold turned to Malcolm Wheatley. “He’ll be a big man.”
“So everyone says.” She was curiously detached. “Everyone says he’s a fine boy. I know he is … and I’m proud of him. I do love Judah.”
“Of course you do. Who’d doubt it?”
“Yet I don’t quite feel he belongs to me. His father … but not just that. What with Mama and Maylu and the amah constantly fussing, he doesn’t really need me.”
“He will, Fronah, certainly later. David and I—if Lionel doesn’t—we’ll do everything we can to help. But he’ll need you most of all.”
“I know you will, but who knows what will happen in the meantime?” She paused, then made up her mind. “Can we talk now? I’ve hung a new scroll in the morning room I think you’ll like. A boatman by Ma Yüan.”
Cast again in the reluctant role of Fronah’s confidant, Gabriel remembered his promise to David. He listened attentively to her light chatter as she led him to the unoccupied morning room.
“Dinner’ll be served in half an hour,” she added inconsequentially. “I’m afraid it’s kosher for my parents and the others. You don’t mind, do you?”
“Not at all. I’ve always liked kosher food. Certainly not if that means Mrs. Weinstein’s kreplach and your mother’s lamb with prunes and almonds.”
“You really do like those things, don’t you, Gabriel?” She laughed, but her figure was somber against the yellow-velvet curtains of the French windows to the terrace. “Too greasy for me, I’m afraid. Anyway, I don’t seem to have much of an appetite nowadays. I just don’t know what’s wrong with me.”
“You are thinner. But it’s becoming.”
“What does that matter?” Fronah gesticulated so broadly that champagne slopped over the rim of her goblet, and he wondered how much she had already drunk. “I don’t care how I look. It isn’t important.”
“It’s not the end of the world, Fronah. We’ve all had bitter disappointments. But the earth doesn’t stand still. Things change—sometimes with astonishing speed. You’ll see.”
“Don’t humor me, Gabriel, please!” she said fiercely. “I don’t want or need humoring. Anyway, it’s not only Lionel—not mainly Lionel. Somehow everything seems pointless, and I feel so depressed. My life’s dragging on with nothing accomplished. Sometimes I don’t really care. You know, I’ve often felt …”
“Yes, Fronah? How have you felt?”
“Papa wants me to change Judah’s name. Call him Haleevie-Henriques.” Her abrupt non sequitur puzzled Gabriel. “I suppose I’ll give in after a while. Why not?”
“I see,” he said neutrally.
“There’s something about Lionel I can’t tell anyone, not even you, Gabriel. Maylu knows and, I suspect, David does too. But I can’t tell you—and certainly not Mama and Papa. A lady can’t talk about that sort of thing. It’s funny. Papa thinks I was too independent. He thinks Lionel ran away not only because of his debts but because I kept fighting his wishes. Really, I could never get Lionel to do anything I wanted, though God knows I tried. A woman has to have a mind of her own. She’s entitled to a will of her own, isn’t she?”
Gabriel did not reply. Though uncomfortable in his unsought role of confessor, he sympathized with her distress and admired her spirit. But there was nothing he could say.
“Anyway, no one will ever know,” she continued. “David’s shut the harridan’s mouth. Old Mother Wang is terrified of talking. As long as that doesn’t come out, let Papa think I’m willful, that Lionel ran away mainly because of me, not his debts and that other thing. I don’t care.”
“You don’t care about much, do you, Fronah?” In his fatigue Gabriel could not conceal his exasperation at her frenetic variations of mood. “You keep saying you don’t care.”
“I always thought Papa was so wise,” she continued as if he had not spoken. “But he pushed me into marriage. And now he and Mama blame me. I should have followed my own instinct. I will from now on.”
“Do that, Fronah.”
“It’s always the woman’s fault. People say I couldn’t keep an English gentleman. I was too self-willed.”
“Shouldn’t you be telling Willie MacGregor, rather than me?” he ventured carefully, though he was so exhausted he sank into a yellow velvet easy chair. “You’ve got a long life ahead of you.”
“I’ve tried so hard, Gabriel. I wanted to learn everything so I could understand the Europeans and Chinese. You have no idea how hard I had to try. Not being Jewish, you couldn’t know.”
“No, Fronah,” he replied gently. “I couldn’t possibly.”
“I may be back where I started. I’m afraid so. But I won’t give up even if … if I do hate eating nowadays. The devil take Lionel. Love is only an illusion men invent to bear down women. I will do great things for China, somehow. All around me I see people who need help, but I don’t quite know how … and I’m so tired, always tired. I wish I had more energy. And everyone’s beginning to think I’m strange, particularly the men.”
“That’s not true, Fronah, not at all.”
“You too. I don’t want your pity.”
“I’m not pitying you. I don’t understand why …” His patience was fraying under her irrational accusations and his own fatigue. “Do try to be reasonable, Fronah. You’re not making much sense.”
“Oh, just leave me alone!” she snapped. “Why I ever thought you could understand, I don’t know. Just leave me alone!”
“I’ll do that, Fronah,” he said shortly. “I’ll leave you alone.”
Gabriel Hyde left the morning room, driven by her anger at himself and the world. Nonetheless, he reproached himself for losing his patience. David would be furious if he learned of that conversation. But what more could anyone say or do? Fronah was incorrigible. She would never grow up.
There was also something splendid about her dedication to her unknown goal. Though distraught and, he feared, ill, she remained determined to pursue the great deeds she had years earlier confided she dreamed of accomplishing. It was, Gabriel mused, hard for a woman possessed by such ambition in a world that relegated poor females to household tasks and prosperous females to
ornamental roles.
She was undoubtedly self-willed, rather than docile as the world demanded. She was also almost pathetic. But that word did not really apply to Fronah. Her spirit was too strong, despite her apparent malady—and she was neither fatalistic nor resigned. He was stirred by her determination, and he was worried by her momentary irrationality. Yet he was, somehow, confident that she would discover a new purpose. Perhaps the duty she felt to China could take the place of her vanished love.
CHAPTER 47
April 2, 1862
THE YANGTZE AT MA-AN SHAN
Unearthly serenity cloaked the Long River, and an imperial radiance gilded the shoals, extending from the wooded hills above the steep eastern bank to the low foreshore faintly seen in the west. The setting sun appeared inextricably entangled in the foliage screening the shallow cleft of Ma-an Shan, Saddle Mountain. Filtered by wispy clouds, the sun’s rays painted the flotilla with a golden patina. An intense yellow film, so thick it seemed to cling to men’s skin, covered the firs clustered around the miniature temple perched on the eastern cliff. All the visible world gleamed as if sheathed with gold-leaf by industrious Titans.
The otherworldly tranquillity was not only illusory, Gabriel Hyde reflected, but transitory. A powerful army, modern by Chinese standards, was sailing in European steamships from the Imperial-held upper Yangtze Valley toward Shanghai to stage a new offensive against the Taipings. The Tung Chih Emperor’s most effective military unit must, however, first run the gantlet of the rebel-controlled middle Yangtze Valley. Tonight would be the last moments of peace the soldiers would know for a long time.
“We three Lis are at peace this evening, Commander,” the tall Mandarin who commanded that army remarked in the Officials’ Language. “Myself, my clansman, young David—and the spirit of the poet Li Po.”
Watching the golden foam spray from the paddle-wheels, Gabriel Hyde remained respectfully silent. Obviously, no answer to David Lee’s rapid translation was required. The most impressive Chinese official the American had ever met was virtually communing with himself in the cane long chair on the steamer’s fantail. He was truly at peace—and wholly at ease. He had laid aside his circular official hat with the upturned brim, though Mandarins rarely appeared bareheaded in public. But the ruby button of the First Grade gleamed imperiously in the golden aura that surrounded him.
Although the naval officer had met the commander of the Army of Huai only the day before, when they sailed from Anking, he already felt that the man called Li Hung-chang was the epitome of the Confucian scholar-official, Plato’s ideal philosopher-king miraculously come to life in distant China. He was supple yet principled, intelligent yet humble, proud yet compassionate. His retinue addressed him as Governor, anticipating his appointment to rule Kiangsu Province—from Shanghai until the Taipings were defeated and from Soochow thereafter. But the American thought of him simply as the Mandarin. Governor Li Hung-chang was throughout their acquaintance to remain the Mandarin to Gabriel Hyde.
“You may know, Captain, that the poet Li Po was an inspired fool, an incompetent genius,” the Mandarin continued leisurely. “Most officials write verse. I still do myself, though my efforts are poor. Perhaps I wrote better in my youth. But poor old Li Po could never hold on to an appointment. He was too often drunk. At the end …”
Gabriel only nodded, fearful of breaking the enchanted mood with a jarring word. Only in China, he reflected, could this extraordinary conversation take place. Only in China would the commander of an army sailing through a hostile countryside pause to recollect with the same warm affection with which he might speak of an intimate friend the lyric poet who had died eleven centuries earlier. He could not imagine an American general discoursing on Chaucer on the eve of a battle.
His mood darkened. When his own country was fighting a bitter civil war, why was he enmeshed in the quarrels of an alien people twelve thousand miles away? But the Mandarin was speaking again.
“So they built that little temple on that small cliff overhanging the Long River. So many dynasties later, the common people still honor the memory of my great kinsman. However, I was telling you how Li Po died.
“He was drunk again, drunk with poetry and drunk with the wine he used to dull the anguish of exile. He was drinking wine and composing verse while floating in a small boat, and the full moon was reflected in the still water.
“Li Po had never seen anything more lovely. He leaned from his sampan. Not to embrace the moon as the common people say, not to grasp the moon. He wanted to immerse himself in the water-moon’s splendor. Being drunk, he overbalanced and toppled into the water. Being drunk, he drowned. But, I believe, he died happy—immersed in beauty.”
“A poignant tale, Your Excellency,” Gabriel said. “In the West we’ve had our drunken poets. Many have died young, and some have drowned. But none, I think, so happily. And we do not build temples to the spirits of our poets.”
“You do not?” the Mandarin asked. “How extraordinary!”
“Not at all, Your Excellency, though it almost seems extraordinary to me after living a while in China.”
“I’ve never had a chance to discuss poets with a barbar—a foreigner,” the Mandarin broke in. “But I must not indulge myself this evening. I summoned you from your gunboat because my young clansman David tells me your insight and your knowledge can be of value to me.”
“Kuo chiang.… I am unworthy.” Gabriel responded with the rote self-deprecation of Confucian courtesy, and David Lee smiled in approval. “Your Excellency’s expectations are beyond my merits.”
“Perhaps, Captain, perhaps they are,” the Mandarin replied with sharp-edged humor. “But you must let me be the judge of that. I’ll need to cooperate with the barbar—the foreigners … when I arrive in Shanghai. I’ll also need to use steam gunboats against the rebels. You can enlarge my limited understanding of both. Also, David tells me you are well acquainted with the foreigner Ward. His Ever Victorious Army will come under my command.”
“Wo-men shih tung-hsiang …” Gabriel again ventured his imperfect Chinese, though David had warned that every subordinate who spoke with the Mandarin was being tested. “We are fellow townsmen, Excellency. That bond is strong in America, though not as strong as in China. Ward is a brilliant adventurer.”
“An adventurer? What, then, are you, Captain?”
“A professional, Your Excellency, a professional naval officer, who presently serves China.”
“Tell me about Ward now.”
His Chinese commodores had asked Gabriel similar questions, not only regarding Frederick Townsend Ward but regarding foreign ways and naval tactics. The Mandarin’s inquiries were more subtle, more searching, and more pointed, but they were essentially familiar. Traversing well-trodden ground, Gabriel responded automatically. His own interest was engaged by the questioner rather than the questions.
In a nation where most men were short and many were disfigured, Li Hung-chang commanded respect by his physical presence. He overtopped Gabriel Hyde’s five feet eleven inches by three inches; his shoulders were broad, and his forehead was wide above his strong features. The ferocity of his thick black mustache did not conceal the humorous quirk of his mouth, while the minute indentations under his cheekbones gave him an air of benevolence. He was wholly relaxed in utilitarian blue campaign tunic and trousers. Nonetheless, his innate authority commanded obedience, and his inherent vigor was apparent in the powerful fingers that grasped his hat.
Just past his thirty-seventh birthday, the Mandarin Li Hung-chang would have been young for his responsibilities in Europe or America. In the Manchu Empire he was a prodigy. Empress Dowagers and Prince Counselors might come young to power, but they preferred senior officials seasoned by age. Of course, he was the protégé of the Empress Dowager Yehenala. He would, however, not have advanced so rapidly after she sponsored his first major promotion unless his ability and his performance had been absolutely outstanding. Quick-tempered and self-willed, he had broke
n with the Viceroy Tseng Kuo-fan over strategy against the Taipings. After the Viceroy’s troops successfully besieged Anking in September 1861, broke the rebel grip on the upper Yangtze Valley, and virtually ensured Yehenala’s triumph, he had again summoned his former subordinate. The Mandarin Li Hung-chang was truly that rare being, the indispensable man.
In his native Anhwei Province, the Mandarin had created a modern militia, which was far superior to both the degenerate Manchu Bannermen and the decrepit Chinese regulars. His army was loyal, above all, to himself, secondarily to the Viceroy, and distantly to the Imperial Court. Though the victories of Yehenala’s Chinese protégés had sustained her, Manchu instinct warned her that they were creating provincial armies and provincial power bases that could some day rival the Northern Capital.
That threat was still remote, and Yehenala was, above all, determined to crush the Taipings. Like her collaborator Prince Kung, she considered the God-intoxicated rebels a mortal threat to the Ching Dynasty, far more dangerous than even the arrogant barbarians. She was also fascinated by modern weapons, in part because the Baronet Jung Lu rhapsodized over their potential. Unlike the former Emperor, Yehenala was quite ready to alter age-old Dynastic practices to ensure the Dynasty’s triumphant survival.
Though her nature made it impossible for her to refrain from interfering, she not only tolerated but encouraged the mobilization of effective regional armies. Sluggish communications gave the Viceroy and the Mandarin great freedom of action, as did the self-confident Court’s reversion to the traditional practice of allowing officials in the field much autonomy. Both regularly availed themselves of the traditional privilege of demurring from Peking’s less realistic instructions by respectfully submitting alternative suggestions. Meanwhile, albeit less respectfully and less conventionally, they pursued their own policies. By the time Edicts responded to their Memorials, the situation on the ground was often so altered that Peking’s commands were irrelevant.
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