The Island Where Time Stands Still (38 page)

Evidently delighted by his reaction, A-lu-te laughed, but
said demurely, ‘That would be both unkind and unfair. You cannot blame him for trying to poach on your preserves since he does not know that I am engaged to you.'

Gregory gave an angry snort. ‘That's the infuriating part of this whole situation. If only we could tell everybody that you are my fiancée, I'd have a decent excuse for neglecting Josephine to spend more time with you, and he would have to keep to himself the pretty speeches he makes you.'

She shrugged. ‘To disclose our secret before we get back to the island might lead to Kâo's refusing to allow you to travel further with us; and that would be terrible. So it seems we must put up with things as they are. At all events, even if Josephine's mind is as dumb as her mouth she is a most luscious creature, and I'm sure you must derive a lot of consolation from constantly looking at her.'

‘Not as much as you seem to from being looked at by Tû-lai.'

‘I think you very ungenerous,' she replied with a little sigh of self-pity. ‘It is natural that a woman should enjoy admiration, and especially so when it comes from such an attractive young man. It makes me quite sad to think that he will be leaving us so soon.'

‘I had forgotten that,' Gregory lied, feeling that having shown his concern he might now make a generous gesture. ‘If we continue at the rate we have been going we shall reach Tung-kwan in another three days. He really is a very nice fellow, and has been most kind to us; so I will try not to mind your amusing yourself with him for the little time remaining to you.'

As it turned out, Tû-lai had to leave them earlier than they expected and in most unhappy circumstances. They were moving well, and covering about twenty-five miles a day as against twenty on their outward journey; so by noon on the sixth day, they were emerging from the barren uplands into a sparsely-cultivated area, and had only about thirty more miles to go. It was while they were packing up after their midday halt that a fast pony rider, trailing a spare mount on a long lead, came galloping up to them.
Throwing himself off his sweating pony he flung himself at Tû-lai's feet and lay there wailing. When they raised him up he gasped out that his Lord, the mighty Lin Wân, was dead.

The news threw the camp into consternation, and everyone crowded round the exhausted messenger pressing him for particulars; but he could tell them little. He knew only that on the third morning after their departure his master had been found dead in a room where he often worked late at night, and it was said that he had died of a stroke. He had been dispatched post-haste to overtake the young Lord, so that he might return as swiftly as possible to perform the ceremonies.

Tû-lai burst into tears. Kâo and the three women wept with him, while the camel-men, porters and guards joined in the lamentations with a prodigious wailing. But the bereaved young man soon pulled himself together sufficiently to take a tearful farewell of them, and set off home. With him he took spare ponies, but only one of the guards, leaving the others under the orders of a man named Chou to continue to the caravan's destination, protecting by their presence, the lady he was obviously so loath to leave.

Still much subdued by the tragedy that had overtaken their friend, they reached Tung-kwan late the following afternoon. Kâo paid off the men he had hired for the journey, and gave a handsome present to Chou for distribution among the guards who meant to camp in the big courtyard of the inn for the night, then set off back to Yen-an at dawn the following morning.

At the inn they again succeeded in getting rooms on the garden side of the building, and shortly after their baggage had been taken up they were told, as before, that a Communist official demanded to see them. This time they went downstairs without any feeling of anxiety. Lin Wân's commercial activities being recognised by the government, his accredited agents were allowed to travel freely in any part of China, and he had furnished them with authentic papers, corresponding where it had seemed advisable with the false ones they had held before.

The young man slowly thumbed these over, peered at them through his glasses, and listened to further flattering remarks from Kâo on the smartness of his appearance. Then he said he was satisfied, received another tip, stamped the papers and took his departure.

Kâo decided that it was now too late to go out and try to find a reliable sampan captain to take them down the river; so they had their evening meal early, and after it the four of them played mahjong until bed time. As they were leaving the table to go upstairs, and Gregory stood aside to let Josephine pass, she swiftly palmed a piece of paper into his hand. When he got to his room he opened and read it. On it in her colloquial French she had written, ‘I must see you alone. Please come to my room when all are asleep.'

Unhappily he stared at it, wondering what her summons to a secret rendezvous in her bedroom portended. She was, as A-lu-te had not failed to remark, a luscious creature, and she had an appearance of ripe womanhood beyond her twenty years. On the journey south she had taken no pains to conceal the fact that she liked him, and experience had taught him that the less women had in their heads the more thought they gave to the sensual desires of their bodies. The fact of being dumb could make no difference whatever to her being subject to such natural urges, and it might well be that having been rigorously secluded from men for so long she had become obsessed with the idea of taking a lover at the first opportunity. If that was the idea, he had no desire at all to play such a role, and to have to tell her so could only result in an awkward and humiliating scene.

On the other hand, since Tû-lai had left them she had suddenly become depressed and nervy. Before making his formal farewell to her, the young Chinaman had taken her aside and said something to her in a low voice. Gregory had thought nothing of it at the time, but now the recollection of them regarding one another with intense seriousness for a moment came back to him, and he wondered if what
ever had passed between them was the cause of the drop in her spirits for the past day and a half. Women's quarters in the east were, he knew, far from impregnable; so it was possible that in secret Tû-lai had been her lover, and she had been upset by his sudden departure. But that did not seem plausible for several reasons. From the beginning he had shown little interest in her future. On the journey she had hardly given him a glance. And anyhow she had known that she would see the last of him in another two days. Yet there could be no doubt that for the past thirty-six hours her past cheerfulness had deserted her.

After much thought, Gregory decided to risk the possibility of having to reject unwelcome advances from her on the chance that she was a prey to some real worry about which she wished to consult him privately.

The lives of most people in Tung-kwan were still governed by the rising and setting of the sun; so their midnight really was the middle of the night, and even late revellers sought their beds well before that hour. By then the inn was completely silent, so Gregory had no reason to fear that anyone was still about. Opening his door he moved quietly out on to the balcony. There was no moon, but enough starlight for him to see that the whole length of it was empty. Next to his own room, on the right, lay Kâo's, beyond it was Josephine's, and beyond that on the corner of the house the one occupied by A-lu-te.

On such midnight forays Gregory never tensed his body and went on tiptoe, but allowed himself to go slack, and as he advanced each foot in turn just let it descend gently by its own weight. Without making a sound he passed Kâo's room and reached Josephine's door. The small squares in the lattice of the windows were covered with an opaque material, and through it came a faint light. Regarding the terms of her invitation as a permission to enter without knocking, he took the handle of the door in a firm grasp and turned it. At a slight pressure the door opened. Josephine was opposite it, sitting up in bed with a solitary thick yellow candle burning in a saucer on the floor beside her.

As Gregory stepped into the room she jumped out of bed. He had hardly closed the door behind him before she flung herself on her knees, clutched him round the legs and gasped:

‘Monsieur! Help me, I beg! Only you can save me!'

For a second he stared down into her distraught face. Then it flashed upon him that she had spoken. She was not dumb! Therefore she was not the Princess.

Like an aircraft that has been boosted by a rocket take-off, Gregory's brain leapt from ticking over to hurtling speed. Lin Wân had cheated Kâo. But why? Had Tû-lai known? Probably he had. If so, as he was a decent fellow that would account for his reluctance to talk about or have anything to do with the fake Josephine: Who was she? Anyhow he ought to have realised days ago that she
was
a fake.

That she had habitually used French with her mother was plausible, but not that she did not understand English. In spite of the retired life she led, having been brought up in the United States the real Josphine must at least have known enough to give orders to the daily woman. This girl had pulled the wool over his eyes by making him assume that she used French only because she found it easier.

And her lack of education! He must have softening of the brain not to have smelt a rat about her. The Chinese set great store by learning, and those who had settled in America no longer considered it to be necessary only in men. Even in straitened circumstances a girl of good class, like Josephine, would certainly have been taught history and geography, given good books to read and listened intelligently to talks on the radio. No wonder this girl was reluctant to give her ideas of life in San Francisco; the odds were that she had never been there. Her appearance, too, should have been a give-away. Believing her to be twenty they had accepted her as that, but any unprejudiced observer would have put her down as twenty-four or twenty-five.

Angry at the way they had allowed themselves to be tricked, and himself—as he had had better opportunities
of finding her out—to an even more humiliating extent than the others, he snapped:

‘What's the meaning of this?'

Ignoring his question, she continued to cling to his knees and implore him to save her.

‘Save you from what?' he asked impatiently.

‘From them! Oh, take me away from here! Take me away!'

Her last words rose to a high-pitched note.

‘For God's sake keep your voice down!' he whispered, fearing that it might arouse A-lu-te or Kâo and that one of them would come in to see what was the matter. Then, pushing the girl away from him; he told her to get back into bed.

Instead of obeying she remained squatting on her heels staring up at him, her big eyes limpid with unshed tears and her bare arms held out appealingly. ‘Please!' she whimpered. ‘Have mercy! Only you can save me!'

‘Speak lower!' he urged her. ‘Save you from what?'

‘They mean to kill me.'

‘Who?'

‘Chou, and the rest of the old Lord's retainers.'

‘Why should you think that?'

‘The young Lord, Tû-lai, told me so.'

‘What have Chou and the others against you?'

‘Nothing. It must be that they have been ordered to get the money back.'

‘What money?'

‘The money I was paid to impersonate the Princess.'

‘Tû-lai knew about this, then?'

‘Yes. But he must have thought it wrong that the old Lord should go back on his bargain. Before he left us he warned me, and urged me to escape at the first opportunity. But alone, how can I? I should——'

Gregory cut her short with a gesture. ‘Before we go into that, let's try to get things straight. First of all, who are you?'

‘I am Shih-niang, a singing girl of Canton,' she gabbled
out. ‘The old Lord bought me two years ago. My mother was half French. Girls like myself are given only one form of education. That is why I can barely write the simplest Chinese characters. It was my being able to speak French that gave the old Lord the idea that I could carry out this imposture. At first I refused. The thought of having to act as though I was dumb for the rest of my life seemed terrible. He dangled the temptation of becoming an Empress before me. He said that no one would suspect me if I made increasing noises until I could pretend that my voice was coming back. But I was frightened—frightened that I should be found out by the people of the island, and that they would kill me. As I still refused, he offered me ten thousand American dollars to play the part for three weeks. He said that would be long enough for his purpose. Then when we got near the coast I could run away. With my freedom and ten thousand dollars I could have made a fine marriage. So … so then I agreed.'

Breaking off, she jumped up, ran to her bed and drew from beneath the pillow a small silk satchel. Hastily pulling back its flap she showed it to Gregory. It was crammed with fifty and hundred dollar bills. Holding it out to him she cried:

‘See! Here is the money! Take it, but get me away. All my life I have been protected. Nearer the coast I could have managed somehow. I'd have slipped away at dawn and got on a train. But here, and at night, I dare not go alone. I should be robbed and sold into a brothel long before I reached Canton.'

He shook his head. ‘No. I don't want your money.'

‘Please!' she implored him. ‘To whom can I turn? The Lord Kâo and Lady A-lu-te would be furious if I confessed my imposture to them. For a girl like me they would care nothing. They would have me thrown out naked into the street. But you are just a man of their household, and so quite different. This money is a fortune. On it we could run away and live together happily for years. You
must
take me! You
must
! How can you be so heartless as to refuse?'

Again she had raised her voice and Gregory endeavoured to cut her short with a swift, ‘Hush! Stop talking, and let me think a minute.'