The Island Where Time Stands Still (35 page)

After an hour's courteous interchange of platitudes. Madame Fan-ti proposed to take A-lu-te to the women's apartments and install her there. But Lin Wân smoothly interposed. He said that the lady A-lu-te having travelled so far in the company of men was obviously unused to being segregated and would find the chatter of a lot of provincial females irksome. He was sure she would prefer to have the freedom of the house, and while remaining in the vicinity of her uncle could be equally well attended in the court
of guests. A-lu-te thanked them both and, as tactfully as she could, intimated that she would prefer the latter arrangement. Tû-lai then took them back to the little pavilions, and they found that, having observed the lightness of the baggage with which they travelled, he had very thoughtfully ordered a variety of beautiful garments to be laid out for their use.

Splendidly clad and heavily scented they rejoined the Lins to eat what was modestly termed ‘evening rice', but actually consisted of spiced duck, sharks' fins, peaches in clove syrup, sucking pig served with lychees and a score of other delicacies. When the bowls had been removed Lin Wân suggested that Kâo might like to smoke a pipe with him while his son provided more suitable entertainments for their younger guests. Having received A-lu-te's assurance that she had everything she might need in her pavilion, Madame Fan-ti retired, and Tû-lai took his charges to his own apartments.

As the tennis flannels he had been wearing in the morning had hinted might prove the case, the rooms he occupied were strikingly different from his father's. Except for their latticed windows and outlook on a fountain court they might have been the flat of a rich bachleor in Paris, where, as it transpired, he had finished his education.

Like his father he was tall and had a well-formed nose in a thinnish aristocratic face. His mouth was firm and his teeth good, but he spoke with a pronounced lisp as the result of a malformed palate. Gregory put him down as about twenty-eight and wondered if having been sent to Europe had turned him into a rich playboy, but he soon had ample evidence that Tû-lai was neither lazy nor a fool.

He was obviously delighted to have visitors who could appreciate his personal possessions and, having installed them in comfortable arm-chairs with cigarettes and French liqueurs, he began eagerly to show them his collections of books, coloured prints, and records. As he talked it emerged that it was only by chance that he happened to be at home, as for several years past he had spent most of his time travelling in connection with his father's business. He
was the third of five brothers, all of whom controlled various aspects of it, and his speciality was purchasing modern equipment for their ships and offices, which frequently took him to the United States and sometimes to Europe.

Gregory was interested to learn that the wealth of the House of Lin had originally been built up by caravans trading deep into the heart of Asia, and in the Middle Ages to such distant places as India, Persia and Arabia. It was only during the past century that they had extended their operations to shipping, and they still maintained a large caravan trade with Russia as far west as the Caucasus.

Most of Tû-lai's books were in French; and when A-lu-te confessed that she did not understand that language, he said with a gay smile, ‘Then you must stay here long enough for me to teach you. Other than Chinese it is the only language really suited to make love in.' Then he asked her about her taste in music.

She replied at some length upon the Chinese masters, but again confessed that she had not yet learned to appreciate the Western classics, and preferred the light music of Vienna and American jazz.

With the back of his hand he contemptuously flicked a large radio and said, ‘I would turn that on for you, but for every tune we should have to put up with a quarter-of-an-hour's lying propaganda.' As an afterthought, he added, ‘Do you dance, perhaps? If so I will put some records on the gramophone.'

A-lu-te said there was nothing she would like better; so for the next hour or so the two men took it in turns to dance with her. Then Tû-lai found some English books for them to read and escorted them back to their pavilions.

Next morning Madame Fan-ti sent Tû-lai, who was not her son but the child of Lin Wân by another wife, to say that if they would like to make a tour of the house she would be honoured to act as their guide. Naturally they accepted, and half an hour later Tû-lai returned with her to collect them.

Since her marriage, at the age of fifteen, she had never
been further than into the city of Yen-an, so her acquaintance with the world was very limited; but on Chinese art she was most knowledgeable. One long suite of rooms was rarely used, but many a museum would have been envious of its contents. In some cases even the rich hangings were several centuries old and all the skill of long-dead craftsmen who lived only for beauty had gone into screens and cabinets, great china jars, graceful vases, and tiny scent bottles carved from a dozen different semi-precious stones.

When they had admired the collections, Madame Fan-ti took them to see the fine views from each side of the house; and the last of these, which was by far the finest, she showed them through the long lattice grilles that shut off her own domain from the rest of the house. In the foreground lay an open space planted with flowering shrubs, and having in its centre an artificial pond round which a dozen or more women were sewing, idling or playing with children. At the far end of the court, which was built up into the steep hillside, two long undulating stone serpents with jaws locked where they met formed a balustrade. Beyond it one could see for many miles to blue hills in the distance.

But Gregory gave only a cursory glance at the view as his eye had fallen on a quite exceptionally lovely young girl who was sitting some distance from the other women and only about twelve feet on the far side of the lattice. She was smiling happily as she fed some pouter pigeons, and when she glanced up he saw that her nose was flattened, but her eyes were enormous, her face heart-shaped, her mouth a rich cupid's bow, and her golden skin flawless. He judged her to be about eighteen, but she might have been older if her childish appearance could be attributed to natural smallness and fine bones. A-lu-te had also noticed her, and asked Madame Fan-ti:

‘Is that lovely little creature your daughter, or a wife of one of Mr. Lin Wân's sons?'

Their hostess smiled. ‘She is neither, but I hope that I may soon be able to call her daughter. Poor child, she is wellborn but her parents were no longer in a position to provide
for her; so we have taken her under our protection. As our dear Tû-lai had the misfortune to lose his wife last year from an intermittent fever, we are still hoping that he may come to regard this charming child as a suitable consolation.'

Tû-lai frowned, looked at his feet, and muttered awkwardly, ‘Dear aunt, I am deeply touched by your good intentions, and I am far too sensible of my duty ever to disregard a command from my honoured father; but I would greatly prefer to make my own choice of a new wife.'

Kâo had already half turned away towards the big court, which was next on their list for a visit, but he nodded sagely. ‘In these days, Madame, one must get used to young people following their own inclinations.'

‘You are right,' Madame Fan-ti agreed, as he stood aside for her to precede him. ‘And we would never force the girl upon him. But it is of no great consequence. When one of his brothers sees this melting dew-drop he will laugh for joy to think that Tû-lai had been foolish enough to leave her for him.'

By the time they had watched the blacksmiths, the potters, the saddlers, the weavers, the joiners, the laundrymen, and others at their work, the booming of a great gong called them to the midday rice.

After it, Lin Wân courteously dismissed his wife and son, then took his guests to a smaller room, furnished in a mixture of the oriental and occidental, that he used for business. When they were all seated he glanced at A-lu-te and Gregory, and said:

‘My honoured friend, Mr. Kâo Hsüan, has already spoken to me upon the matter which has brought you to me half across the world. Since he has told me of your deep interest in it, I felt that you would also like to hear the detailed account I promised him of the events which took place last May in San Francisco, as far as I am aware of them.'

As they bowed their thanks, he went on: ‘The Prince who took the name of Joseph Août was a strange man. For a whim—and what else is a woman but a whim—he threw away his birthright; and after a great struggle succeeded
in establishing himself as a common artisan in the United States. In that, and his readiness to embrace those revolutionary ideas which have since brought such calamity upon the world, we can regard him only as a madman. Nevertheless, he had great personal charm and in the days of our youth, before politics divided us, we were good friends.

For many years I lost sight of him altogether. In fact, I never saw him again after he went to America. But it so happened that I was in San Francisco at the time of his death. A friend of mine, a Mr. Tung-ho Ting, had been to his funeral and, after it, chanced to ask me if I had ever known him. As I had, I felt impelled to call on his widow and offer her my condolences. That was how I came to know Madame Août and her daughter.

‘No one had ever questioned Madame Août's original suitability as a wife to a Prince of the Imperial House. It was the way in which she had left her parents and publicly degraded herself, after their arrival in Saigon as refugees, which later placed her outside the pale as far as any respectable marriage was concerned. Yet when I made her acquaintance years afterwards in San Francisco, I was able to understand, if not condone, the young Prince's having abandoned all standards of right conduct on her account. Not only must she have been very beautiful as a girl, but she had great natural dignity, and a charm that few people would have found it possible to resist. I was so struck by her modesty and intelligence that before my formal call was over I decided to offer to take her and her small daughter back to China, and receive them into my house.

‘She refused my offer because it had been her husband's wish that the child should be brought up as a citizen of the United States. But the good impression she had made upon me remained; and afterwards, whenever my affairs took me to San Francisco, I called upon her to enquire after her welfare.

‘The last time I did so was on May the 17th. I found her in a great state of agitation and after a while succeeded in persuading her to unburden herself to me. A few days earlier
an emissary of General Chang Kai-shek had come to see her, and after showing his credentials had placed before her a proposition. It seems that the Generalissimo had conceived the idea of strengthening his Nationalist government by securing the public allegiance to it of the legitimate heir to the Imperial Throne. He offered Madame Août a handsome pension if she and her daughter would accompany his emissary back to Formosa, and make their home there.'

‘It is strange that Madame Août told me nothing of this,' Kâo put in with a puzzled frown. ‘When I saw her she did not appear to be worried about anything, or even give the impression that she contemplated a change in her placid life.'

Lin Wân turned towards him and asked, ‘Did you not tell me last night that it was on the 13th that you called on her?'

Kâo nodded. ‘I think that was the date; but I could not say for certain now if it was the fourth or fifth day before her death.'

‘In either case she could not have told you about it, for the good reason that she had not been approached by the Generalissimo's emissary. I should have made it clear that her murder took place only three days after he came to see her.'

‘Murder!' exclaimed A-lu-te.

‘Yes,' Lin Wân-replied quietly. ‘I have good grounds for believing her to have been murdered. And, alas, that I am to some extent responsible for that. But let us go back to my talk with her.

‘She told me that she was greatly tempted to accept the Generalissimo's invitation, as it offered a better future for her daughter than she could provide herself. But the previous day—that is the day after the emissary called—she had had a most unnerving shock. While out shopping she was stopped in the street by a man. He told her that he represented the Communist government of China, and that they knew of the offer that had been made to her. He added that if she refused it no harm would come to her, but if she accepted it, it would mean death for herself and her daughter.

‘As she had already made up her mind to accept, she was naturally extremely perturbed by this threat, and sought my advice. The Generalissimo, as you will be aware, started his career as a Communist; so persons like myself have little faith in him and have always been averse to giving him our support. Therefore, in this instance, I was not influenced by any wish to further his plans. But it seemed to me that Madame Août was justified in her belief that a removal to Formosa would give the young Princess the rightful status that she had too long been denied; and that since we were in the United States the Communists were most unlikely to run the risks inseparable from committing murder there. It was on these grounds that I advised Madame Août to ignore their threats, and wished her happiness in the new prospects which were opening for her.

‘What happened after I left her we can only conjecture. It is more than probable that she rang up the Generalissimo's emissary and informed him of her decision to accept his proposals; and that there was then a leak. In the agencies of a country divided against itself such leakages are only too common. It may have been only coincidence that Madame Août was knocked down the following morning by a car which did not stop, and which the police have been unable to trace; but I have the unhappy conviction that my judgment was at fault and the Communists carried out the first part of their threat.

‘Immediately I heard what had happened I became greatly concerned for the safety of the Princess, and felt myself personally responsible for her. To secure police protection for her would have entailed a full inquiry in which, frankly, I did not wish to become implicated. It would also have meant a delay that, in view of the swiftness with which I believed the Communists already to have struck, I was not prepared to accept. Moreover, in affairs in which Chinese are involved, there are better ways of ensuring that satisfactory action is taken, if one is powerful enough to set them in motion. I went at once to Mr. Quong-Yü and instructed him to have the Princess brought on board my ship.