Читать книгу The Vintage of Yon Yee - Louise Jordan Miln - Страница 4

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“Or is she though?” Dudley murmured, “now I look closer. Tar-brush, isn’t it?”

“Mrs. Allingham was Chinese,” Monroe said gravely.

“His wife? Married her?”

“Quite.” Monroe said it sternly.

“I’m blowed!” Dudley was not abashed. “Went to school with your sister!”

“Yes. And Betty loves her.”

“She looks happy.”

“I believe she is particularly happy always. I never have seen Lois Allingham look or seem anything else.”

“Isn’t he ashamed of her?”

“Proud of her. Any father would be. But just to you—I often wonder if he is not ashamed now and then—for her, not for himself—of her mixed blood. There is something equivocal about it always.”

“Will she marry? Get a chance to?”

“Lois Allingham is pretty. She is amiable, always sunny. She is the only child of a very rich man.”

“White or yellow? The suitors?”

“Both.”

“She’ll choose a white one, of course!”

“I have no idea. I rather doubt if she has.”

“I’m damned!”

Monroe made no comment.

The other man asked presently, “Which race does she most take after?”

Monroe shrugged. He took the flower from his button-hole, and offered it to Dudley.

“That’s the most sensible question you’ve asked me to-day; the one sensible question I ever have heard you ask.”

“Answer it then.” Tom Dudley ignored the proffered carnation.

“I can’t. Wish I could,” he restored the flower to his coat, “for it is—at least to me—an intensely interesting question. I doubt if any one can answer it—even Allingham or Lois herself. A great deal depends upon the answer to that question. I think that Mr. Allingham must ask it to himself sometimes anxiously. I have seen Lois Allingham so English that I scarcely could credit the fact of her Chinese blood; I have seen her so Chinese that it was hard to realize that she had English blood. Sometimes she is English, sometimes she is Chinese. There is nothing half-and-half about Miss Allingham ever. She is unique in that—among those of mixed blood—I think.”

“He’s brought her up in England, given her an English education?”

“Half.”

“Half?”

“Exactly half. Ever since his wife died he has spent alternate years in England and in China. He and his daughter never have been separated. Even when Lois was at boarding school in Sussex—it wasn’t long—he lived a stone’s throw away. She speaks English perfectly, and Mandarin. She plays the piano and a table-lute. She knows and visits as many Chinese as she does English. I haven’t the blindest which she prefers—if she prefers.”

“Is he crazy?”

“Some people think so. Lady Saunders insists that he is.”

“He is fond of his daughter. Look at them now! The man is devoted to her.”

“Peculiarly.”

“Why the devil then hasn’t he kept her out of China, kept her away from everything Chinese? He must wish her to marry an Englishman.”

“He must, I think.”

“Why risk the other then? If there is any risk?”

“Can’t say. Don’t understand it in the least.”

“How did he come to marry a Chinese?”

“Never asked him. Don’t advise you to. It’s in his blood—that’s all I know.”

“How do you mean, ‘in his blood’?”

“He’s the third—third generation—to be attracted by Oriental women. His father and his grandfather were. Some of us are—we Europeans—some of us are not. The Allinghams all seem to have been.”

“Edward Allingham’s not got Chinese blood! Look at him.”

“Not a drop. He married the Chinese lady.”

“And the other Allinghams did not.”

“That’s it.”

“Where’s his wife now? His Chinese wife—this girl’s mother?”

“I told you. Dead.”

“Wonder if he is glad.”

“Never asked him that either. Perhaps you’d like to.”

“Introduce me!”

“You will not make ‘copy’ out of it—write it up?”

“No. I’ll remember that she is your sister’s friend.”

“Come along then.”

The story of Edward Allingham’s marriage with Shang Yon Yee, more than twenty years before, was less simple than Monroe’s somewhat sketchy, but in the main accurate, telling of it to Tom Dudley.

That it had been in his blood was true enough. But it no longer was; wedlock and its social consequences had purged it; the actual wedlock even more than its social consequences. His intense love for his daughter, even his great pride in her, too, had disintegrated and dispersed it. If Allingham ever were to marry again—nothing was farther from his thought—he knew that he could marry no woman not purely of his own race.

Mary Saunders—not nearly so black, or half as brainless, as Monroe had reported her to Dudley—not a little devoted to the Allinghams, man and girl, was sure that Edward never would marry again; and considered it a great pity. He was eminently marriageable in every way; so admirable and—but for the one canker which few divined—so joyous a father that he would make a delightful husband—as husbands went, she was sure. (Lady Saunders did not exaggerate the average excellence of husbands.) And few men would have been better satisfied in a successful marriage. And he had tied himself so tight, all these years, to Lois’ pretty apron strings, that he’d be sadly adrift when his daughter married. Only an appreciative and congenial wife could fill that gap—when it came. The right wife would fill it beautifully. Lady Saunders was under no delusion that perfect wives were more abundant than perfect husbands were. But for several reasons she believed that Edward Allingham might have had the luck and the shrewdness to find one: one approximately so. She had no doubt that he would not.

And Lois would marry—probably before long. The girl was twenty-four now.

That Lois Allingham might not marry was an absurd impossibility that never had wasted an instant of Lady Saunders’ thought.

Lois would marry a Western. It never had crossed Lady Saunders’ imagination that Lois might marry a Chinese. And the woman had abundant and vivid imagination.

It had crossed Edward Allingham’s mind more than once.

He often wondered if it ever had crossed Lois’ own mind.

He longed not to leave Europe again, and not to leave England for long at a time or over often.

More and more England called him.

But he kept honorably a pact he had made at his Chinese wife’s death-bed; and spent equal months in Europe and in China.

He, too, had no doubt that Lois would marry. When she married, his promise to her mother would have been fulfilled—done with. He should be free then to go where he would, live where he chose.

He knew how lonely he should be. A man who had lived in such uninterrupted close and radiant intimacy with a congenial woman as he had with Lois would be personally and incurably desolate without a woman’s companionship: maimed. Women still attracted him; he was virile, keenly alive and normal. He knew that many women liked him, found him companionable—women of charm and character. He knew that if he had been a poor man, even more ill-looking than he was, still he might have married enviably. And such marriage was not always altogether absent from his longing. But, too, the thought revolted him—and always would. To his taste it always would be impossible—even in the long uncompanioned years of loneliness that he foresaw. His gorge rose even while he desired—for he held himself tainted; tainted by the lasting consequence of a young mistake to which he had been splendidly loyal, and for which he was paying a life-long price like the brave and honest man he was.

Also he felt that to marry again and marry a wife of his own race would be a betrayal of Yon Yee, a disloyalty to her, a reflection upon her. While she lived he had been true to his Chinese wife; he would be true to her while he lived.

And Lois came into it, too; she came into everything. Edward Allingham lived and thought in terms of his daughter. Though her marriage might separate them widely, even after it he should hold himself at her disposal. He would not give her a Chinese stepmother; still less would he give her one who was English—not Chinese.

If Lois were to marry a Chinese, he foresaw cleavage between them, do what he would—and he should do his utmost—to bridge it.

Cleavage between them—bereavement for him!

If she married a Western, his own loss of her, and of her children, might be less. But in any marriage of hers he must lose her largely. He came of long-lived families; he counted on many solitary, sore years.

Not that Allingham was unhappy. Far from it! No one as healthy as he, as constitutionally reasonable, who persistently does his duty is easily unhappy. Edward Allingham was doing exactly what he believed he owed it to Lois, to her mother—and to himself—to do. His own conscience approved him. That approval is sweet. Not that this man was a prig—no man ever was less one. But he thought and weighed unflinchingly. He wished that he had weighed and thought more clearly years ago. He did not upbraid himself that he had not—he gave youth its due; reasonable in this as he was in most—now.

And ginger still was hot—and sweet—in his mouth. He enjoyed greatly. Great defense—perhaps the greatest—against unhappiness. He’d be lonely, God knew, when the time came. He’d miss Lois most damnably. But his sore would have many plasters—good sensible bachelor plasters.

At home in London—no other place on Earth half so good to be in as London!—he’d put in more time at his clubs. He liked one of his clubs very much, and several of his club friends. He’d hunt up Freddie Carter. Lois disliked Carter; so Allingham had avoided him. But he had rather an affection for Carter. He would do some bits of rougher travel than he had been willing to let Lois share. Probably he would find the stiffer Alps difficult now. But he’d hear again “the mule bells on the hills of Spain,” and he would hunt again. It was years since he had really ridden to hounds. Lois never had begged to, and he had been glad not to have her risk it. He knew that he rode better than many other men could. He had no doubt that he was good for some years of first-class hunting, if he got the chance.

He had ample money and a gift for using it well. He had health; he could climb a modest mountain modestly, beat many a younger man at tennis, pull a steady oar, fill an emergency gap in a moderate cricket eleven almost decently—with luck, quite decently—he was an excellent shot—one of the best.

He had breeding, and because he had, the ease and enjoyment in living that only breeding can give.

He’d miss Lois damnably, when the time came; but time would not hang heavy on his hands.

His life had been upright, he was glad to remember; his hands were clean, and he knew that he should keep them so.

He had made one great mistake, but he had made it uprightly, he had carried it with regret and disillusion, but to the end not without love. And he never had soiled it. Put bluntly—Edward Allingham had been faithful to his Chinese wife.

For himself—though until almost her death he had hoped not for her—their marriage had been a mistake—his one great mistake. But it had flowered very beautifully, the mistake that had given him his greatest and lasting joy: Lois.

Certainly Allingham was not unhappy; probably he never would be.

Dudley had judged her accurately, in thinking Lois Allingham happy. Monroe had said quite accurately that she was particularly happy.

Lois Allingham, the rich man’s half-caste daughter, never had known a moment’s unhappiness. Her mother’s death had not grieved her; Lois had been but a month old. Even parting with her father, when he left her at boarding school, and turned away with a ridiculous lump in his throat, had not grieved her in the least, for she had known that their separation would be of the briefest. She knew that her father would come back to her soon. She knew that he always would come back. And she expected to enjoy the novel experience of school-life.

The girl had inherited the father’s great aptitude for enjoyment—perhaps had inherited something of it from her Chinese mother who had loved the sugar-plums of life. And naturally enough she had her secure share of the imperturbability that above all others the Chinese race has, and in a less degree, but beautifully, many English.

In her four and twenty years Lois had never been ill, and never once been bored.

She greatly loved and admired her father; she enjoyed every hour they spent together.

If she had been unhappy ever, she would have been meanly ungrateful. Lois Allingham could not be ungrateful; she was half Chinese.