Safety lay there, if anywhere, she thought. She said so to the sailor. He shook his head dubiously.
“We’ll see in ’arf a moment,” he replied, “as the josser remarked when ’e put ’is last ’arf-crown on a rank outsider.”
Higginson jumped into the sampan, which tilted and careened dangerously. He stretched out a hand and helped Marie in, then untied the rope with a sailor’s skill. They were off, the man rowing at a good clip, putting the full weight of his shoulders to the oars, while the girl sat in the stern, directing the course with the quaint, square Chinese rudder. A hard pull it was; for the river, bloated by the spring monsoons, was a turbulent yellow giant. Twice she changed seats with Higginson when his arms got numbed. Steadily the southern shore slipped away from them, while they bore down on their course, dead toward the promontory which, Higginson said, was their goal. Near shore their task became more difficult. For a wind had sprung up which moved heavily against them, trailing gray sheets of rain-laden clouds. It made the light sampan bob to windward, and they had their work cut out to keep on a steady course.
*****
Finally, they reached the far shore and walked up the hill that rose before them.
“ ’Ere you are!” said the sailor, pointing straight ahead. “Me old friend — the Nan-’Ai prison!”
“Looks more like a temple to me.”
“Used to be one — before them practical-minded Southern chinks turned it into a jail.”
She saw the fantastic, exaggerated contour of the pagoda roof, burnished, enameled in spots, mirroring the rays of the sun a thousand fold, like countless intersecting rainbows. From the window near the roof a shaft of light stretched out like a long, osseous yellow hand.
Higginson walked steadily on, with the girl following. So far they had not met a single human being, but, as they neared the top of the hill where the pagoda-prison opened to the road with a huge gate, they were halted by the snick of a breech-bolt and a raucous voice — evidently a challenge — in Chinese. But Marie let out a whoop of joy when the sentinel stepped forth from behind a tree, rifle in hand, for, in spite of his Chinese uniform, there was no doubt that he was a European.
“Hello!” she cried. “I am glad to see you,”
The man smiled. But he shook his head. “Nie! Nie!” he replied. “No Englees! Russky — Russian —”
“Wot d’yer mean ‘Russian?’ ” asked the sailor. “Can’t yer talk the king’s bloody English?”
“Nie.” The man laughed.
“Why, yer poor benighted Bolshevik —”
At once, as he heard the one word, the soldier’s smile disappeared and gave way to expression of wolfish ferocity. He picked up his rifle and broke into a flood of excited Russian.
Higginson jumped back.
“ ’Ave a ’eart!” he cried, “Ain’t yer got no sense of humor, yer silly josser? I didn’t mean to call yer a Bolshevik, Honest to Gawd I didn’t!”
Marie stepped between the two men, smiling brilliantly at the Russian.
“Me — want — see — prince,” she said, very loud, and in that broken English which people, for some mysterious psychological reason, will employ when speaking to small children and large foreigners. “Savvy?”
“That oughter fetch ’im,” commented the sailor admiringly.
“Nie,” replied the Russian.
“Look here!” The girl returned to the attack. “See — Prince — Kokoshkine!”
“Ah!” A light of understanding eddied up in the man’s eyes. “Pavel Alexandrovitch?”
“I — want — speak — to — him — savvy?” She gesticulated wildly to make the man understand. “Get me? Kokoshkine — Prince Kokoshkine —”
“Da, da, moya dorogoya!” The Russian smiled. “Yes, yes, my dear!”
It was evident that the man understood. He whistled shrilly. A few minutes later another soldier came from a little outbuilding, which seemed to be the guardhouse.
The first gave him rapid instructions in Chinese, and turned, motioning to the two fugitives to follow him.
“Rather early to be about,” said Higginson, as they passed through the gate; “ ’ardly four bells. I ’ave an, idea as ’ow ’is ’ighness will still be in the arms of Murphy.”
But, in spite of the early hour, they found the inner courtyard, a huge, stone-paved affair, crammed with human life, soldiers as well as civilians. The soldiers were hard at work, drilling, mostly in sober brown uniforms — Chinese with a sprinkling of Tatars. But some of the officers were Europeans, evidently Russians, and still in the uniforms of the czar’s army.
“Heavens! I thought the war was over,” said Marie.
“It ain’t over — ever!” replied Higginson, with sudden seriousness.
They passed some batteries practicing drum-fire with blank shells, and a troop of Tatar cavalry, who came on, straight, lances at the carry, thundering across the hard-baked drill ground, their horses mostly new, shaggy mounts, not yet broken to the roll and sob of the guns.
Finally, they crossed the great parade ground, and, through another metal-studded gate, passed into an outer hall, where a liveried Chinese servant received them.
The soldier spoke to him, and the other bowed and departed, to return shortly afterward, accompanied by a tall Russian, dressed in a general’s uniform — a very handsome man, dark, clean-shaven, with a short, softly curved nose and straight black eye-brows which divided his gray eyes from the high forehead. He wore on his tunic the Cross of Saint Vladimir.
“I am Kokoshkine,” he said, clicking his spurred heels. “And you — mademoiselle
“I am Miss Campbell — whom you invited to dinner tonight. But — would you mind offering me breakfast instead? I am positively starved!”
Kokoshkine smiled. He bent over her hand and kissed it.
“You are just in time,” he replied. “I was about to sit down to my morning meal.” His English was perfect, with hardly a suspicion of Slav purr; and Marie, quick at reading character, as quick at making up her mind in human relations, liked him at once. He turned to the soldier, speaking in Russian, and then asked Higginson to accompany the other. “Hungry, eh? Could you do with a steak?”
“My word!” came the enthusiastic reply. “Could I do with fifty bloomin’ steaks!”
“And a whisky and soda?”
“Dook,” — the title was conferred honestly — “them is the first kind words I ’eard since I landed in this ’ere ’eathen town!”
Higginson pulled at his forelock and followed the soldier out of the room, while Kokoshkine held open the door to the next apartment, where the table was already set — very exquisitely, with delicate Chinese eggshell porcelain, Russian silver samovar and tea-glass, and a profusion of flowers, in strange contrast to the martial simplicity of the room, the military maps on the walls, the soldier’s kit here and there on table and chairs.
“Another cover!” he ordered the soft-slippered Mongol servant.
A few minutes later, sitting across from Prince Pavel Alexandrovitch Kokoshkine, Marie did justice to a hearty Russian breakfast with a hearty American appetite. Occasionally, out of sheer, unthinking human liking and sympathy, she smiled at her host, who smiled back and who, when thrice she put down fork and cup, saying, “I want to tell you — ask you —”stopped her with a gesture.
“There is no hurry, Miss Campbell,” he said. “Eat — rest yourself. Are you in trouble?”
“Yes.”
“I thought so. We’ll straighten it out for you — never fear!”
She believed that he would.
*****
Several times the breakfast was interrupted by officers, Chinese and Russians, who came in, made reports, and were sent off with short, crisp words of command, and also by the sound — from a large maneuver field at the other end of the promontory, the prince explained to her — as the batteries there did target practice with blank sh
ells.
“Peaceful sort of life you are living here!” she remarked in one brief interval of silence.
He smiled.
“I don’t care for it myself. Being a soldier, I naturally hate war. But I must be prepared to — to —” He hesitated.
Marie forgot her own quandary as she remembered what she had heard about this man, the imperialist, the former officer in the czar’s army, now drilling Cantonese troops, in the service of these Southern Chinese radicals, whose ideals must have been the very opposite of his own. With American directness she cut in on his hesitation.
“You are an aristocrat, a czarist, aren’t you?”
“The czar is dead, mademoiselle.”
“All right. But you are still an aristocrat.”
“Decidedly.”
“Then why do you —”
“Mademoiselle — please — we will not discuss my personal affairs. You came here, I take it, to talk about your own affairs.”
She was a little nettled.
“Oh, very well,” she replied. Then, quite suddenly, her slight ill humor disappeared. After all, the man was right. She had been rash, tactless. “I beg your pardon,” she said, smiling at him frankly,
“Oh — I did not mean to —”
“But I do beg your pardon. Really — truly! I should not have asked you. And now,” — finishing her last glass of tea — “I want to tell you —”
“Do, Miss Campbell!”
“I am in a frightful mess, and Liu Po-Yat told me to come to you — at least, I guessed it was you she meant.”
“Oh — then she spoke before she died?”
“You know that she —”
“Was murdered? Yes, Miss Campbell. I know —” he smiled “— a great deal — pardon — of what affects you.”
“Seeing that my father is not here to correct my language, I suppose I may say what is on my mind — and express it exactly the way I feel?”
“Of course,”
“Very well. You’ve said a mouthful, Prince!” And while he laughed, she went on: “I would have been tremendously disappointed if you had not known all about me. Why should you have been the one exception in Canton? Why should you have been slighted. Everybody else here knows all about me — except my little self. Moses d’Acosta, Sun Yu-Wen, Monsieur Pailloux, Judge Winchester, the Chuen to yan in the Temple of Horrors —”
“Oh,” he exclaimed, utterly surprised, “you know those last two?”
“I just came from there.”
“What?”
“I had such a pleasant interview with them.”
“And — they let you go, Miss Campbell?”
“No, I just went. That’s why I am here — breakfasting with you.”
“Tell me —”
“I hardly know where to begin.” But she told him all that had happened to her, as well as most of her suspicions and deductions, finally taking the North China Gazette clipping from her purse. “Here is the thing I told you about,” she ended. “Can you make head or tail of it?”
He took it, read it, then looked up.
“You said something about d’Acosta’s saying it referred to your uncle’s death and came out in the North China Gazette. Is it quite clear?”
“You call that clear?” said Marie. “What’s it all about?”
“Well,” he rejoined, “I really know a great deal about Chinese lore. Let’s dissect this sentence by sentence. Now, the first two exclamations of the article: ‘Omniscient Gautama! Far-seeing, all-seeing Tathagata!’ Taken with what it says afterward, as well with what actually happened, the man who caused this to be printed in the Gazette —”
“My uncle?”
“Yes. By this double exclamation he tried to express two overlapping thoughts — one of death and the other of life, one spiritual and the other materialistic. First, he appealed to the Buddha, the eternal deity. But by using the word ‘Gautama,’ he demonstrated that he was addressing the Buddha in his reincarnation of Lord of the Dead, thus showing that he himself did not expect to live much longer. On the other hand, by using the decidedly more worldly ‘Tathagata’ appellation of the same Lord Buddha, he endeavored to show that, although in the shadow of death, he was still sufficiently interested in materialistic affairs to appeal to the living, not to all living beings, but only to those who were ‘far-seeing, all-seeing,’ and by this he meant those who would see far enough to understand the thing which was all-important to him. Clear so far, is it?”
“Oh, yes — after you play dragoman.”
“ ‘How multiform the consolation of Thy Word!’ ” continued the Russian, “This, too, is couched in mystic, esoteric language of Chinese theology, so that it may only be deciphered by the initiated. It means that the writer is not afraid of death or of what the future may bring — ‘consolation,’ don’t you see? While, ‘How marvelous Thy Understanding’ refers again to the Buddha as well as being another reference to the living, those among the living to whom he is making this appeal, in the shadow of death — of murder, as he knew it would be, as it did turn out to be. And the last sentence contains the final appeal —”
“To the Buddha?”
“No, Miss Campbell; to one among the living — to you!”
“How do you know?” cried the girl.
“By one word in that last sentence: ‘Mara.’ It is the name of one of the feminine deities of the Buddhist heaven, comparable to Fate. But it is also —” He smiled. “Miss Campbell,” he went on, “doesn’t ‘Mara’ remind you of something?”
“Why —” She considered; then suddenly. “You don’t mean, by any chance, my own name — Marie?”
“Exactly! Marie — that’s what your father called you. But your mother’s name was Mara, and ‘Mara’ she called you. She died a few days after you were born, and your father left, a broken, sorrowful, embittered man. He had loved your mother much. Oh — it had been such a romantic meeting, such a sweeping love and passion! And all the obstacles he had to overcome! Your mother’s family and clan objecting — but, finally, your father won out. They were married. Then she died, and he took you back to America.” Perhaps, with that superstitious Scottish mind of his, he was afraid of the name ‘Mara’ — and changed it to ‘Marie.’ ”
“How do you happen to know all this?”
“Part of my duty,” he replied.
“Duty?” — wonderingly.
“Yes. Political duty. And your father never told you a word?”
“He hardly ever mentioned my mother — the memory seemed to hurt him.”
“Nor of China?”
“Only when I left home, when I told him I was coming here. He asked me to take along the little Chinese vase. It seemed to him like a sort of talisman.”
“It is,” said the prince gravely. “A talisman of dominion — of ancient power and prophecy. Power — dominion — bitterly contested!” he added grimly, as again, from the outside, came the roar of the batteries at target practice, a huge salvo belching up, stopping abruptly, then followed by another burst of sound waves like a giant beating a huge metal drum.
A moment later a giant, ruddy-complexioned Tatar came in. He was booted and spurred, dressed in a loose white tunic, the insignia of high military rank embroidered over his heart in purple and silver. The Russian introduced him to Marie.
“Feofar Khan, the Tatar general.” He continued in a whisper, “One of your uncle’s best friends and, by the way, a relative of yours.”
“Oh!” Marie looked up, interested.
“Very distantly. Both your mother’s family and his own claimed descent from Genghis Khan, the Central-Asian freebooter who once conquered China in a moment of enthusiasm. Not very popular with the Chinese — these Tatar gentlemen.”
“So the Chuen to yan told me.”
*****
The prince turned to Feofar Khan, who talked to him in rapid Mongol monosyllables, again bowed to Marie, saluted and withdr
ew.
“Am I interfering with your work?” asked the girl.
The prince appeared to be a little nervous. But he shook his head.
“No, no!” he said. “I’ve plenty of time — nearly half an hour. In the meantime — what we were talking about — why, it may, in fact, help me to —” He interrupted himself. “We were speaking about the Tchou-fou-yao vase, weren’t we?”
“Yes. And my uncle’s last message.” She pointed to the clipping. “Tell me one thing: Surely my uncle must have realized that I would not be able to interpret this cryptic message of his — even if I did chance to run across it?”
“As to your happening to run across it, tell me — when did you leave America?”
“The middle of August.”
“Your uncle died — was killed a few days after you left. After you left,” the prince repeated significantly. “He knew that you were coming here.”
“How did he know?”
“All these years he never lost track of you. You were his only blood kin, remember, the last descendant of his ancient clan. He knew you were coming to China, and assumed that you would see the papers as soon as you arrived. People pounce upon the papers after an ocean voyage. And the North China Gazelle prints a special monthly edition to meet travelers on landing. That’s where this clipping is from.”
“I remember how the people grabbed those papers up in Hong Kong.”
“You see, Miss Campbell? And as to your being able to decipher the message, well, a dying man will clutch at a straw. Your uncle, the last few months of his life, was surrounded by enemies. He did not dare write. He did not dare express his final message in words which his enemies might understand. But everybody in China knew that he was one of the world’s leading authorities on Buddhistic legends and frequently made translations of them for English papers. And so, surrounded by enemies, nearly alone, helpless, desperate, knowing that death was near, knowing, furthermore, that you were on your way to China, he clutched at a straw.”
ADVENTURE TALES #5 Page 18