The Island Where Time Stands Still (49 page)

Down in the valley bottom the track led away from the river; or rather went straight on, by-passing a great mound of rock that rose nearly a hundred feet in height on its river side, causing the torrent to make an abrupt bend round it. Half way up the slope Josephine's pony stumbled and nearly threw her. Pulling up, her companion tumbled off his mount and lifted her from the saddle. Leaving the ponies on the track they ran towards the rugged pile of stone and began to climb it.

Too much of a realist to hope that the enemy would get away. Gregory had enough of the British sporting spirit to feel sorry that the fox had been panicked into entering a trap which could so easily have been avoided by taking the opposite direction. Tû-lai had now only to spread his men out along the track where it formed a string of the river's bow and there could now be no escape for the fox. It was simply a matter of dismounting and scaling the rocks in a converging semi-circle until they got him.

As Gregory rode up to the foot of the mount, the Communist was two-thirds of the way up it, and still half dragging, half carrying the Princess up with him; while Tû-lai and his men were rapidly closing in on them.

On its landward side the pile of rocks rose only about forty feet above the track, so Gregory decided that he might
as well scale them and be in at the finish. Dismounting, he began the climb and listened to the shouts above him. By the time he was half way up, the quarry had reached a flat ledge roughly fifteen feet square, which formed the summit. Beyond it lay a sheer drop of a hundred feet to the boulder-strewn river.

Suddenly an awful thought entered Gregory's mind. What if the man had been inspired to take this course deliberately, with the idea of demanding that either he should be allowed to proceed freely with his prisoner or he would throw her over? Now, in frantic haste, stubbing his toes and barking his knees, Gregory began to scramble all-out for the top.

Tû-lai was carrying an automatic rifle. Gregory heard him shout, ‘Now, you filthy Communist, we've got you! Put your hands up or I fire.'

With a final effort Gregory pushed past one of Tû-lai's men and thrust his head up over the ledge. The man they had hunted for three days and nights was standing only about ten feet away from him. He had lost his fur cap and was no longer wearing heavy horn-rimmed spectacles. He was, as Gregory had at times thought possible, young Foo.

At the same instant, Foo saw and recognised him. With surprise and elation dawning on his face, he cried:

‘Mr. Sallust! You are sent by God to help us! I saved you from being stoned to death by the caravan men. I beg you to save us from these bandits now.'

Hauling himself over the lip of the platform, Gregory replied, ‘They are not bandits, Foo, but the Lord Tû-lai and his retainers. Although you made a quixotic gesture in saving me from the caravan men, you have many other things to answer for. And you stole this lady from the Lord Lin's house, so he has every right to reclaim her.'

Flinging an arm round the lovely flower-faced little person beside him, Foo cried, ‘I will not have her taken from me! We would rather die together! For over two years we have loved one another desperately and we would rather
jump to death over the precipice behind us than be separated.'

It was at that instant that a great light dawned in Gregory's mind. There was no reason whatever to suppose that Foo was a Communist or a murderer. He was the young law student of San Francisco, whose love letters had been found in Josephine's room.

Ten days later Foo and Josephine were married with all the ancient rites and ceremonies in the great House of Lin.

At first Tû-lai had opposed an early marriage, because it might interfere with his own plans. He knew that the Council's original object in sending an invitation to Josephine to come to the island was that she should choose a husband from among seven candidates for her hand, each representing one of the Seven Families, and that her consort should be accepted as Emperor. For her to arrive there already married would invalidate this method of appointing a new ruler; so Tû-lai foresaw that, instead of being welcomed and rewarded by the Council for producing her, he might be met with reproaches for causing them pointless embarrassment.

From the Ma-tien River they had made their way back by slow stages; as Josephine, being unaccustomed to riding, had suffered severely from her five days on pony-back, so had to be carried in a hammock. During the journey Gregory and Tû-lai had on several occasions hotly debated the question of the marriage. It was Gregory who had finally made terms with Foo for his surrender; and they had been to the effect that, while he was prepared to regard Josephine as Tû-lai's ward, their engagement was to be sanctioned, he was to retain his freedom, be given accommodation in the House of Lin, and permitted reasonable access to his fianceé.

At the time it had been clear that unless Foo had been granted the terms he demanded the young couple were quite prepared to commit suicide, and Gregory was determined to see that the bargain he had made with Foo should be
kept. Tû-lai had not actually suggested going back on the agreement, but he had argued that no stipulation had been made about the length of the engagement, and that it would be time enough for the marriage to take place when they arrived in the Island.

Gregory had quickly guessed the way Tû-lai's mind was working. He was hoping that once Josephine was in the Island the glamorous prospect of becoming the Empress of it would tempt her into breaking off her engagement to Foo; so that he, Tû-lai, could after all reap the kudos of being responsible for the foundation of the new dynasty. To Gregory it seemed most unlikely that Josephine would give Foo up; but, in any case, now that he once more regarded Foo as his own protégé, he did not mean to allow any risk of the young man's prospects being sabotaged.

In consequence, he had played on Tû-lai's sentiments, pointing out what desperate ordeals Foo had been through during four long months to win his love, and pleading that it would be most ungenerous to make him wait even a day longer than was necessary to enjoy the fruits of his stupendous effort.

Tû-lai was by nature of a kindly and romantic disposition; so by the fourth day, when they reached the House of Lin, he had almost been won over, and Madame Fan-ti overcame his last flickers of resistance. Their arrival, and the extraordinary story they had to tell, roused that poor lady from her lethargic grief to a new animation. With brimming eyes she listened to Foo's account of Josephine's adventures and his own, then she took the young lovers to her heart and ordered immediate preparations for a wedding on a grand scale.

Foo's story was that he had not learned of Madame Août's death until two days after it had occurred. He had at once hurried to her apartment only to learn that Josephine had disappeared without leaving any address. Distraught with anxiety, he had made fruitless inquiries of everyone who might give him a clue as to where she had gone, and called day after day at the flat hoping that she
would return or send for her things. When the yacht arrived in San Francisco on the first of July he was still calling there two or three times a week, so he soon learned that other people had started to make inquiries about her. It had been easy for him to trace back to the yacht those who were hunting for her, and as Tsai-Ping's persistent investigation among Madame Août's acquaintances had gone on for a month, it seemed to him that anyone so wealthy and determined must succeed in tracing Josephine in the long run. In consequence, when he saw the yacht being provisioned for a voyage, he determined to stow away aboard her, in the hope that her owners would eventually lead him to his beloved.

During the voyage he had not deceived Gregory about a thing, except in giving a false name and saying that his reason for being on board was to get to China so that he might give his parents proper burial. After swimming ashore he had gone up to Antung-Ku, knowing that whoever landed from the yacht would have to pass through the town on their way into the interior. When the sampan had arrived he had gone aboard that night not only because he was penniless and hoped to borrow money from Gregory, but also to try to find out the sampan's destination. In both matters he had succeeded, as Gregory had told him that the party was going up to Tung-kwan.

He had got there by going overland, and on the way had had a stroke of luck. While in the city of Kai-feng, some minutes after a passenger beside whom he had been sitting in a bus had got out, he noticed that the man had dropped his wallet. By then Foo was getting very short of money, and was at his wits' end how to raise enough to complete his journey; so instead of handing the wallet to the conductor, he had stuffed it into his pocket. On examining this windfall he had found that the notes in it amounted only to a small sum, but it also contained the papers of a Communist agent. It was that which gave him the idea of posing as its owner.

To do so, had he been remaining in Kai-feng, would have
been exceedingly dangerous; but since he was moving on he thought the risk of being caught worth running; for by presenting himself as an official he would be able to get free travel on the railways, and, by throwing his weight about in small inns, bluff frightened people into giving him free meals. With some of the money that he had left he had taken a third-class ticket on to Cheng-chaw, and there began his imposture.

By these means he had reached Tung-kwan a week ahead of the sampan, and had only to wait for it to turn up. To prevent himself being recognised he had adopted the thick-lensed spectacles and the voluminous garments of a traveller in those parts, then loitered about in the courtyard of the inn until he had overheard Kâo make his bargain with the caravan master. As there was no other way up to Yen-an, he had then shown his papers and joined the caravan himself.

On his third day in the House of Lin, he said, his heart had almost stopped beating; for after a hundred and thirty-seven days of separation, misery, and often near-despair, he had at last once more seen Josephine. Two days later he had again seen her cross the courtyard, and managed to give her a bunch of flowers he had ready with a note hidden in its centre. Next day, while receiving from him another bunch, she had passed him a reply. On paper bedewed with tears of happiness at knowing that her faithful lover had come seven thousand miles to find her, she gave him directions how to set about carrying her off. From that point they had managed to correspond daily, and she had smuggled him out a jewel to sell in Yen-an, so that he could buy ponies and have money with which to bribe one of the duennas to let him get in to her on the night that they had escaped.

When giving an account of their escape to Madame Fan-ti, Foo learned that three women were being punished either for negligence or on suspicion of having admitted him to the women's quarters; so he and Josephine begged clemency for them all, and this was granted.

Josephine's story was known to all of them, except for
the first part of it which had occurred in San Francisco. Foo had already had it from her; so he retailed it, aided now and then by her in the deaf and dumb finger language that they used between them.

Her mother had told her nothing at all of the offer made by General Chiang Kai-shek to provide for them on a handsome scale if they would both go to Formosa, or of the threat from the Communists which had followed it. In consequence, her mother's death had come as a complete shock to her, and she had at first supposed it to have been caused by a genuine accident.

On leaving the hospital after her mother died, she had intended to go straight to Foo, both to seek comfort in his tender regard for her and his counsel on what she had better do now she was left alone in the world; but a woman had waylaid her as she came out of the hospital. The woman had said that she represented a Chinese Insurance Company with whom Madame Août had had a policy and that Josephine must come with her at once to the office to fill up certain forms, otherwise she might later have difficulty in claiming the money.

Madame Août had never told Josephine that she held a life insurance, but as her mother was inclined to be secretive about money matters, Josephine had assumed the woman's story to be true and accompanied her in a taxi down to Chinatown. On the way, the woman had explained that the company was run in connection with the biggest Tong fraternity in San Francisco, and that its president was a very busy man, but it was essential that Josephine should be interviewed by him personally; so she must not mind if she had to wait for some time before he could see her.

In Grant Avenue she had been taken up to the sixth-floor of a big block and left in a waiting room at the back of the building. It was already late in the afternoon so she did not become really worried until about seven o'clock. For another hour she was put off with excuses, then told that the president's car had had a breakdown, but as a great favour would see her at his private house when he got home.
By then she was a prey to grave misgivings, but the office appeared highly respectable and the people there seemed anxious only to help her. Eventually, soon after nine, she was taken by the woman and a polite young Chinaman down to a car, but instead of running them out to one of the residential districts it drew up a quarter of an hour later at a deserted wharf. As the door of the car was opened she tried to run away, but she could not cry out for help, and taking her firmly by the arms they practically carried her to a waiting motor launch. For the next twenty minutes she was almost overcome with terror, as her imagination conjured up all sorts of terrible things that might be about to happen to her: but her fears were groundless. After being carried up a ship's ladder and taken down to a big day cabin richly furnished with Chinese antiques, to her immense relief she had found herself in the presence of Mr. Lin Wân, whom she knew as an old friend of her mother's.

Mr. Lin Wân had apologised profusely for the steps that had been taken to bring her there, and excused them on the grounds that in a time of such distress he had thought it unlikely that she would accept a simple invitation from one whom she could only regard as an acquaintance. He had gone on to break it to her that her mother had been murdered by Communists, and that knowing her to be threatened with the same fate, he had taken the liberty of having her kept safely out of the way until darkness had fallen and she could be brought to his ship without any risk of her enemies knowing where she had gone into hiding. He had then had her taken to a luxurious cabin by a stewardess, who gave her a sleeping draught.