Читать книгу The Vintage of Yon Yee - Louise Jordan Miln - Страница 12

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“There is nothing in England quite so aggressively English as England out of England is. At its best it is homesickness, I believe. I like to believe that it is homesickness sometimes, and loyalty rather than arrogance. Often, I’m sure, it is unconscious. Look at our clubs, here and everywhere else in the East. They shriek ‘England’! Out here we string up a few Chinese lanterns in our gardens, to be sure. But so we do in Streatham and Hampstead. The boys who wait on us so excellently out here are Chinese—the only servants we can get; and, incidentally, the best servants in the world. We none of us appreciate them. Here we are, not a stone’s throw from Shao-hing and Ching-tien-wu. How many of us ever have been there? How many of those of us who have, have cared one brass farthing, or taken any but patronizing interest? And our rooms come to a chair from the Tottenham Court Road—the wrong end of it, most of them.”

“But, Uncle Paul,” Lois reminded him, “you laugh at Lady Saunders’ Chinese rooms, and when she wears Chinese robes—”

“Chinese nothing—those freak rooms of hers, a crowded jumble of good and bad! And her Chinese clothes do not suit her, do not belong to her. She does not wear them; she can’t. I don’t wish her, or any of us, to ape the Chinese, to be ‘Chinesey’ and ridiculous. That is odious. I do not advocate our ‘when in China doing as the Chinese do,’ any more than I’d like to see buses from the Strand running on the Western Hills. But there is a mean, an international reasonableness, and a race courtesy we never approximate, either.”

“Do you remember, two years ago in London, how vexed you were because Chen Joyu had only English furniture in his flat? English books, English servants?”

Paul Trench smiled. “Yes; I don’t pretend to be consistent, Monkey. I happen to like Chinese things—and I did grudge Chen Joyu his expensive English ugliness and his polyglot servants—only one of them was English, and pretty poor English at that. I did not grudge Chen Joyu his English tailor—though I like him much better in the Chinese clothes his fathers wore—he’d have been too conspicuous on Oxford Street in fur-lined, embroidered petticoats, a fan in his hand, a jewel on his cap. But I did, and do, dislike his servile acceptance of English tables and vases and servants. With his wealth, he easily could have had his London house appropriate.”

“By ‘appropriate’ you mean Chinese.” The girl laughed at him across the chessboard. They had finished their game before they began to talk.

“I do. Appropriate for a Chinese gentleman.”

“But you object to English furniture and meal hours, table manners in Han-chow.”

“I do not. I object to English people here not knowing that they are in China; not knowing anything about China, and caring less, scarcely knowing a pai-fang from a pagoda, just as I should have condemned Chen Joyu if he had not seen that the Houses of Parliament and the New Forest were beautiful, had not known which was St. Paul’s and which Windsor Castle. I disliked his wholesale swallowing of everything British; good, indifferent and bad. I thought it ungrateful. An ungrateful Chinese! I condemn our insolence to China here, downright impudence, because it puts us so in the wrong, shows us up to such disadvantage.”

“How you love China, Nunky!” the girl said softly.

“Yes!”

“I wonder you never married—a Chinese girl, like Father.”

“Thank my stars, and my own good sense, I never married any one.” Trench had flushed a little at her careless words—embarrassed and anxious for the girl he loved. He knew that she never had realized her own mixed blood as a detriment, something of a scar. When would she? he wondered unhappily. He had no doubt that it was inevitable. How much would it hurt her? How would she deal with it! The little laughing girl whom he suspected of enormous steel under her peachy, dimpled skin.

“I believe that Chen Joyu may stay on in England always,” the girl said carelessly, as she put the chessmen away carefully.

“Looks like it.” Trench did not make the admission cordially.

“I think that he probably will marry an English girl,” Lois stated.

“Good God, I hope not!” The words flashed out. Trench bit his lip and flushed painfully. He cursed himself that he might have hurt her.

Lois saw his penitence, but did not understand it.

“Oh, that’s all right,” she said gaily, over her shoulder, as she took the chessboard and box to a cupboard. “I didn’t want to marry him ever.”

“No, thank goodness.” Trench spoke quickly; said it emphatically.

The girl eyed him searchingly. Why had he gone so red then? She got up, went to him, and perched herself on the arm of his chair.

“You have got a secret, Nunky. You are keeping it from me. I believe it’s a sinful secret.”

“Probably,” Trench admitted gaily.

They were very great friends, the old English diplomat and the careless girl. “I inherited him,” she told people. It was not altogether untrue. Edward Allingham had fagged for Paul Trench, some years his senior, at Eton. It had grown to friendship between them; one of the rare true friendships. And it had held; as such few friendships do—perhaps must. Time and again they had not met for years, but they always had written to each other not very infrequently and freely. And they often had been together.

Paul Trench owned a home in England, and he loved it. But he had not been there for years. All he had loved in his boyhood slept in the churchyard. The old homestead hurt him now. Western modernity rather bored him. Now and then London called him. When London called, he went, and stayed a few months or a year. But he always came back to China. People rasped him less, and loneliness nipped him less, in China than anywhere else.

The “story” of Paul Trench and his aloneness is no part of this. He was alone—that is enough to tell—and he had taken Lois Allingham into his heart and arms almost at her birth. She never had relinquished either of those pleasant positions. He knew her almost as well as her father did; in one or two ways he knew her better. The frail old man—worn out in his country’s relentless service—Teheran, Madrid, Rio, Petersburg, Rome, Vienna—and the quicksilver girl were genuinely dear to each other.

This was his bungalow they were in now.

It was not a show place, not half the size of his little place in England. Several of the missionaries had larger bungalows here in Mo-kan-shan. But this simple home suited him. It was appropriate to the man.

This was his “den” they were in—a larger room than “den” seems to describe. But Trench preferred the word to “library.” There were books in the long, cool room, but they did not dominate it.

Except for its beautiful leaf-shaped windows, it was an English room; and its quiet furniture had not come from the “wrong end of Tottenham Court Road.”

Beside the splendid, quiet Chinese carpet, there was only one Chinese thing in Paul Trench’s den—and the room was large. In the corner farthest from the door a beautiful figure of Fu Shên, the god-of-Happiness, wearing his official robes of blue, stood on a throne of costly red-wood, of severely beautiful angular open-work.

From the window where they were sitting now, the garden stretched a wide-spread fan of green—dark glowing green, pale tender green, the shining fresh green of the dragon’s-eye fruit trees and the darker green of the banyans—painted with warm flowers; the brilliant, riotous, heavily scented flowers of mid-China. Behind the green of the trees rose the hills. For the Englishman had dared to have his house face the hills, instead of keeping them, a protection from evil, behind it. The hillsides were blue and purple; the hill-tops were rose and gold in the sinking sun.

Birds sang on the flaming azaleas, and in the baubled persimmon trees.

The man and the girl sat silent for a time, “tasting the flowers,” watching the far hill-tops, listening to the birds.

It was a habit of theirs: a Chinese habit.

They both knew that Lois would speak first.

She had danced in to him as he sat at a late breakfast, it was nearly tea-time now. Lois ran in and out of his rooms almost as of-course as she did her father’s; retied his ties, criticized his clothes, gave him her confidence, expected him to give her his.

Perched on his chair she drew a lingering finger across his face—and sighed to see how white it was against her rosy finger, and to feel how thin. But she said nothing of that.

She laughed instead teasingly.

“I believe you are a better Chinaman than I am, Nunky. Do tell me—you must—why you never have married a Chinese girl?”

“Never could find one to have me.”

“Liar!”

Then divining that the subject irked him, she instantly spoke of something else. But she had no idea why her words had troubled him, no idea of how much.

“Lady Saunders,” she began, “the funny old dear—”

Trench interrupted. “She is a dear, Lois. A very much under-estimated woman. There are few for whom I have the regard and respect that I have for Mary Saunders. She is sterling. And she has more brains in her little finger than most women—men either, for that matter—have in their heads.”

“Dear me!” Lois cried mockingly.

“She is very fond of you, Lois,” Trench said sternly.

But no sternness could quell Lois Allingham.

“Every one is,” she retorted.

“A good many,” he admitted, “but by no means every one.”

Lois laughed again.

“Monkey, be kind to Lady Saunders.”

“Really? You want me to?”

“I do. Very much. Believe me, she is worth it. Perhaps she needs it,” he added gravely. “We old ones need very sorely what only you youngsters can give us. And Mary has nothing—nothing but money.”

“And an invaluable flair for China.”

Trench smiled deprecatingly.

“Of which I’ll not make fun again,” he said. “I do not admire her cheap Chinese junk. I should regret to see her photographed in Chinese clothes. But I like and respect her. I value her friendship. See that you do.”

“Nunky,” her mood had changed—in a breath, as it often did—she spoke gravely, “do you ever wonder which of my two countries I care for most?”

“No; never.”

“I should think you would. I do. Why don’t you?”

“Because I know.”

“You know! But how can you? When I don’t know myself!”

He smiled at her.

“You know?” Lois persisted.

“I know.”

“Which?”

“China.”

“I wonder?” the girl said musingly—a little sadly.

“I hope not,” she added presently, “because of Father.”

Trench kept back a sigh. She had touched on a thing that hurt him.

“If you were right,” she went on, “—mind you, I don’t believe you are—it might hurt Father, just a little, don’t you think?”

“Quite possible. Not unnaturally.” It was all that Trench would admit.

“He has been so splendid about it always! My Chinese relatives, my half belonging to China, and all that. But he must love England, his own country, best, I think. Mustn’t he?”

“Naturally,” Trench agreed.

“He has been splendid about it. Exquisite.”

“Yes,” their friend said earnestly. “Your father is vintage, Lois.”

“That funny expression of yours! And it isn’t like you to coin words, invent expressions or labels. You are so conventional always.”

“One has to now and then, or leave one’s thought unspoken. Have you ever realized how hard it is to express a thought? Very often it is almost impossible. Sometimes it is quite impossible. Words are poor things. They oftener are stumbling blocks than the clear windows that they ought to be.”

He made no comment on her statement that he was conventional. He knew how true and how untrue it was.

“‘Vintage,’” he went on, “is a pet word of mine, I believe. For all that, you do not hear me use it often. A dozen times perhaps in my life I have met some one whom I could describe in no other way; not absolutely perfect, but very fine indeed, a masterly achievement of splendid generations. A dozen or rather more such individuals, and two races.”

“Which two?”

“Yours.”

“English and Chinese?”

“English and Chinese.”

“The French and Japanese don’t think so.”

“I am not responsible for what the French and Japanese think—thank God!”

“I don’t believe you’d get many to agree with you—about the two races. Chinese would about the Chinese race—which isn’t exactly a race—of course; most English would agree with you about themselves; but you’d find very few to agree with you about the two.”

“Probably not. It is merely my own opinion. But I believe that I am right. Vintage! I know no other word that will express what I mean. Ripe, tested, finely blent, crushed and mellowed by experiences and circumstances that have been clarifying, strengthening and testing—a score of other prime qualities. Mary Saunders is good sound red wine—”

“You don’t call her vintage!”

“And I was not going to say so. She would be, if she had smoothness and two or three of the vintage essentials. No true vintage is rough; it must be smooth. Even the strongest brandy is velvet. Your father is vintage in every way. He always has been—was as a boy when I first knew him.”

“Father is splendid! And he is very sweet.”

“Yes; in the right sense of that usually misused word. All true vintage is sweet. The strongest characters are sweet at core and smooth of surface. The great champagnes—the great dry ones—and the great cognacs have a sweetness through their delicious tang.”

“You don’t call the English sweet, do you!”

“Essentially, the typical English. Very stupid very often, but sweet.”

“And the Chinese?”

“Indeed, yes.”

“I’ll tell you what you are, my Nunky. You are a funny old fellow; the funniest man I know.”

Trench bowed his thanks—bowed as nearly as he could without rising, and with a girl cumbering the arm of his chair.

“I wish I knew whether I am more English or more Chinese. Don’t you wish you knew that?” the girl said wistfully.

“I do know,” he repeated.

“You just think you do. You can’t know—not yet. It isn’t decided. Truly I don’t know myself. I’ll be glad when I do; get it over. It bothers me sometimes. And truly, I do not know whether I like England or China better than the other.”

Paul Trench caressed her hand, but he said nothing.

They both knew, though neither thought of it, that if she had been wearing Chinese garments, he would not have touched the edge of her sleeve.

Lois went on. “Why do you believe that, whether I know it or not, I care more for China than I do for England?”

“Because you are vintage,” Trench told her gravely.

“Me!”

“Yes, you yourself, Monkey and mischief-maker.”

The girl giggled merrily. Then, suddenly grave, “That means that you think the Chinese the finer race of the two?”

“I do. The finer and the bigger. The race that will wear best and longest of all the races.”

“I don’t like you to say that, or to think it. It isn’t English of you!”

“Not too dis-English, I hope. Not disloyalty, I believe, Lois. Truth is truth. I don’t go about crying what I think of the Chinese. There are not many for whom I care enough to care to tell them what I think about anything of which I think seriously. When you torment me with questions—when we are alone together you ask me three a minute—when you condescend to question me, I do myself the honor to answer you truthfully.”

“You think the Chinese the superior race? China the most beautiful country?”

“You go too fast, child. To me China is the most interesting of all countries—but not, as a whole, the most beautiful. To my eyes—the little that I have seen of China; it’s vast you know—there are more beautiful natural scenes here than there are anywhere else. But the great spaces of flat, dull miles, and of grim, not unhideous stone, are so much of China, so predominantly China, that China cannot, I believe, be called the most beautiful of countries. The most beautiful, in patches. And incomparably the best-used by her people; architecture the handmaiden of nature.”

“And you do think that Chinese are superior to every other race?”

“Yes.”

“Do you wish that you were Chinese?” Lois demanded severely.

“My God, no!” the frail old Englishman flashed out. Lois Allingham liked the anger in his voice. She loved the quick fire in his eyes. “I would choose to be English, even a dead one in a pauper’s unnamed grave, rather than of any other race. I not English! No”—more gently—“that’s the last thing I’d like. A man can see the good things in other peoples and places without being a traitor to the red blood in his veins.”

“Not many men, I fancy,” the girl said, putting her hand on his. “Perhaps you are vintage too, Uncle Paul.”

“Perhaps I’m a goose—to let you waste so many hours of my valuable time.”

The girl laughed.

“I have work to do,” he protested.

“What sort of work?”

“Letters.”

“Call them work?”

“Letters can be the stiffest of all work.”

“Then why write them? I don’t.”

“Just so. But I have a conscience and a smattering of manners.”

“That to me!” Lois mocked. “Me—I mean I ... who you said was vintage.”

“In the making. Still in the vat.”

“Ugh!”

“To-morrow is mail day—mail day out,” Trench reminded her.

“So it is! All right then; I’ll be good. I’ll amuse myself after we’ve had our tea.”

It did not prove a silent function. They waited on each other affectionately. Lois poured. Costlier rings than most girls flaunt flashed as her little hands that Trench loved to watch lifted the precious porcelain teapot. But she chattered while she poured.

“I wonder who I’ll marry, Nunky.”

“Whom,” he corrected. “A good grammarian and disciplinarian, I hope.”

“Who—whom do you think I will?”

“Shall! I am opinionless on that subject, my child.”

“You don’t speak of it very cheerfully. Are you anxious about it? I am.”

“Good Lord!” Trench was embarrassed.

Lois Allingham was not.

“It is a very interesting subject,” she said.

“Have you seen him, Lois?”

“Seen who?”

Paul Trench let her English go. “Mr. Right,” he answered.

“Oh—him. No. At least, I don’t think so. I suppose I’d know if I had. Don’t you suppose I should?”

“Ultimately,” Trench ventured.

“Let’s talk about him. Perhaps it will work a charm, show him to us. Twelfth Night charms do in Scotland, and magic pools in China. Shut your eyes, Uncle Paul, shut them hard, and try to see him for me. Do! Can you see him? Is he very handsome? Is he fair or dark?”

But Paul Trench would not help her out. He was not playing.

“Blue eyes or black?” the girl giggled impishly. “Chinaman or Britisher?”

Trench swallowed an oath. She must not suspect how much he should prefer her to marry no one.

“That is the second time to-day that you have said ‘Chinaman,’” Trench said disgustedly. “Britisher is vile. Chinaman is unpardonable. You only say it to rouse me. But, for God’s sake, don’t get into the habit.”

Lois sobered suddenly. “I won’t say it again,” she promised. “I can find plenty of other ways to tease you,” she added softly.

“I have no doubt of that, dear.”

“I am ashamed that I did say it. It is a vile, rude word. I boil when I hear it. I am not disloyal really to either of my bloods, Uncle Paul. And I think almost as highly of my mother’s people—the splendid Chinese people—as you do! Uncle Paul, do you think I’ll marry an Englishman or a Chinese?”

“God knows!” Trench said distractedly.

“Or perhaps Kwan does,” Lois added gently.

“There are others,” Trench said lightly. “What about a Scot or an Italian, an American or Austrian?”

“Not for me! My husband must be English or Chinese, or I won’t have him—not if I have to wait ever so long.”

Fan San drew back the door-screen. “Genilman Cot-tel-ill,” he announced.

Paul Trench missed the next day’s boat with more than half of his English letters.