MacNair said. “Good day to you, sir. Miss Holt.” He tipped his hat to both of them again and, turning on his heel, strode off. The throngs of Chinese seemed to part before him as if before the prow of a ship.
“You are not to speak to Mr. MacNair in the future,” the reverend said.
“But Papa, he was so kind to me,” Lydia said. “You can’t mean it.”
Her father’s jaw tightened; it was the first time his daughter had ever challenged one of his commands. “I mean it most assuredly,” he said, his voice icy. “And we will not discuss it further. Mind what I say.”
Despite his admonition, she was about to protest further, but she was suddenly aware of something unusual that was occurring. At first she could not grasp what it was, then suddenly it came to her that an abrupt silence, more striking in a Chinese street than it would have been elsewhere, had fallen. Her father, whose great height made it possible for him to see further, suddenly took her arm and drew her into the slight shelter of a doorway.
In a moment she understood. Four peasants passed through the street, moving quickly and silently, and they bore a new coffin between them.
Another victim of the cholera. The silence lingered briefly after the coffin had passed. Then, from somewhere behind, came a sudden din, the beating of gongs and the snapping of firecrackers, the Chinese way of frightening off the evil spirits that had brought the cholera.
It was odd but that unexpected silence, and the passing of the coffin, followed by that uproar, frightened Lydia more than all the talk of illness or murder had before, and when her father, still holding tightly to her arm, drew her from the doorway and began to hurry her toward their house, she went with him meekly, glad once more to be in the shadow of his domination.
CHAPTER TWO
Lydia was surprised when her father handed her a brown wrapped package somewhat later; with everything else that had occurred, she had forgotten that it was her birthday.
“Oh, Papa, it’s beautiful,” she cried, unwrapping the package to reveal a golden locket. Inside was a likeness of her father, taken only a few years before, and so lifelike, with his stern expression and his eyes seeming to see right into her heart. Peter MacNair had looked at her like that in the bamboo grove.
Her heart sank as she remembered her father’s admonition not to speak to the trader in the future. It was unfair. Of course, she had known that the two weren’t on very good terms. Her parents had gone to see MacNair soon after he had arrived.
The meeting had not gone well; they had returned out of sorts, and her father had pronounced the Scotch-American “not a Godfearing sort.” And though she could not know all the circumstances, Lydia had an idea that this had something to do with the singsong girls she had observed going in and out of the trader’s house with awesome regularity.
A sudden forceful knocking at the door interrupted Lydia’s reverie.
“It’s that mandarin,” Sarah said, glancing from one of the windows.
“Lydia, go to your room,” Reverend Holt ordered.
Lydia hastened to obey, though once in her room she glued her eye to the crack of the door to watch the proceedings. She saw her mother usher Ke Loo, the mandarin prince, into the front room, where her father waited.
It was rare for missionaries to meet the mandarins, though they could occasionally be seen traveling through the cities in sedan chairs borne by servants, with attendants marching before them striking gongs to warn the people that a great man approached, and others bearing boards upon which the prince’s titles were inscribed.
The first time Ke Loo had appeared, unannounced, at their door, Lydia had been appropriately awed and dazzled by the elegance of his silk robe, elaborately embroidered with dragons front and back.
“Your daughter is old,” Ke Loo had informed Reverend Holt, though at that time she had been only fifteen. “She should marry. I have need of a wife. I will marry her.”
To Lydia, eavesdropping that time as well, it had been thrilling and certainly flattering, but she had been relieved when her father had haughtily rejected the proposal. For all of his obvious wealth and importance, Ke Loo had a cruel face, with hooded, leering eyes and a thin, austere mouth.
He had left in a pompous flurry, but Lydia had been right in thinking that the mandarin was not accustomed to having his demands refused, for he had come now to make them again.
“Daughter should be married,” Ke Loo was saying in the next room. “I will marry her.”
“My daughter will marry when and where we choose,” her father said, his tone angry, for he was no more accustomed than Ke Loo to having his opinions challenged.
The mandarin gave him a smile that had nothing of pleasure or friendship in it. “Is not a good time for foreign devils in China,” he said.
“Are you threatening me?” Papa said, jumping from his chair. “I’ll talk to Colonel Wu—”
“Colonel Wu most busy now,” Ke Loo said, unmoved by the show of anger. “The cholera, it strikes everywhere, soldiers must help bury the dead.”
“This is outrageous! I won’t be....” He stopped; to Lydia’s horror she saw her father suddenly sway to and fro. He steadied himself with a hand on the back of a chair. In an instant, Sarah was at his side.
“Papa,” Lydia cried, forgetting propriety and dashing from her hiding place. Ke Loo’s eyes widened in shock at the breach of etiquette; a maiden ought to remain chastely hidden from the eyes of her suitor. That did not prevent him, however, from greedily feasting his eyes on her, particularly upon the red gold of her hair, so unlike the hair of a Chinese maiden, and the pale smoothness of her skin, like the petal of a lotus flower.
It had been the merest chance that had brought her to his attention. He had been stopping only briefly in this city, on his way from Peking to his native city of Kalgan, in the shadow of the Great Wall, and he had happened to glance from the curtains of his sedan chair, to see what at first he had thought a mere vision.
He had made up his mind at once that he must have her, this strange pale girl whose hair burned like the first hot flames of a new-laid fire. And have her he would. He was unused to being refused what he wanted, and he could not understand these foreign parents, with a daughter already past the marriage age and unclaimed, who would not reach agreement with him. He was determined.
“I’m all right,” the reverend was assuring his wife and daughter, but Lydia had discovered that his skin was hot to the touch. “I’m afraid I must ask you to leave us now,” he said, addressing the Chinese prince.
“I will come another time,” Ke Loo said, bowing from the waist.
“You’ll only be wasting your time.”
Ke Loo made no reply, but smiled his mysterious smile, and with a final nod turned and went out. In a moment they heard him shouting to his bearers as they started off along the twisting street.
“Joshua, you should rest,” Sarah said.
“I’m fine, I say,” the reverend insisted, glowering at the door through which the mandarin had disappeared. After a moment he gave a sigh, and turned his attention to the two women.
