Читать книгу The Daughters of Nightsong - V. J. Banis - Страница 10

CHAPTER FIVE

April moved cautiously through the fog, clutching her shawl tight under her chin. She hated San Francisco with its damp, murky gloom that constantly crept over it from the ocean—the ocean that separated her from her beloved China, the homeland she wanted so desperately to see again.

Not too long ago, at the beginning of this now ending summer, China had been beyond her reach, far on the other side of the horizon; but David would take her there after they were married, and there they would live happily forever after.

The long rows of wooden buildings lining Market Street faded into the mist as she made her way toward the Embarcadero and the bay. Up ahead a light gleamed dully through the fog bank. It had to be the place where David said he’d be waiting. She quickened her steps.

“April!” David called at the sound of her footsteps. He rushed forward as she appeared out of the fog and gathered her lovingly into his arms. “My dearest,” he whispered, touching his mouth to her hair, her eyes, her lips. He felt bold and safe in the swirl of mist that hid them from the disapproving eyes of outsiders who couldn’t understand the depth of their love.

“David. Oh, David,” April cried as she clung to him.

“It’s all right now, darling. We will never be apart again. No one will separate us now.” He smiled down into her lovely face and kissed her again to make sure she was real and not some exotic apparition that had drifted out of the mist. When he released her he noticed that she’d come empty-handed. “Your carry-all?” he asked anxiously. “You haven’t...?”

She saw the fear in his eyes and said quickly, “I left it at the railway depot earlier. I was afraid Mother would catch me leaving the house with it tonight.”

He took her in his arms again. “You gave me a fright. There for a moment I thought you’d come to tell me you’d changed your mind about eloping.”

“I could never live without you, David, surely you must know that.” She let him kiss her again, then gently eased him away and glanced around. “Someone will surely see us and think me one of those ladies from the Barbary Coast.”

He laughed softly and kissed her again. “And how would you know about such places?”

A hurt expression clouded her loveliness. “I’ve been accused of being such a woman by passersby, people who taunted me, told me to go back there where I belong.”

He held her close. “Let them say and think what they like. They shan’t ever hurt you again, April. I’ll see to that.” He tightened his arms around her. “You’re shivering,” he said.

“Just excited, and a little chilled.”

“Come inside. We can have some soup and then take the cable trolley to the depot to collect your reticule.” As he led her toward the lighted tavern he said, “And before this night is done we will be husband and wife and on our way away from this terrible city. The sailing ship leaves at eleven o’clock. I have already arranged for the Captain to marry us when we board. He’s expecting us within the hour.” He dug into his coat pocket and produced travel permits and tickets. “Passage for Mr. and Mrs. David MacNair all confirmed for one-way portage to Shanghai.”

“You’re sure I’m not talking you into something you may one day regret?”

“As long as you are with me, April, I will never be sorry about anything.”

“You won’t miss your family?”

David shrugged as they moved toward the tavern. “I’ll miss them least of all. There’s nothing here for me. My whole life is with you, April.”

Several of the men sitting at the wooden tables that were strewn about the smoke-filled room looked up as David and April entered the tavern. April saw their looks of disapproval as she threw back the hood of her cloak. David ushered her to a table away from the bright lamps hanging from the central rafters.

He squeezed her hand. “This will all be behind us very, very soon.”

The hot soup and beef pie filled the emptiness that had gnawed at her all day, but the greater part of that emptiness was filled by David’s presence beside her.

She knew her mother would be furious when she found the note April had left, but why should she care about her mother’s anger or disappointment? She was doing no more than Lydia herself would do. Her mother had always done whatever suited her. She had forced April to abandon her homeland and the people who’d nursed her and reared her and cared for her. Had she even once considered April’s wants or needs or desires?

Her mother had dragged her from the Forbidden City to that awful opium den, then to the Embassy with all its strange people who had forced her to dress as they dressed in their constricting, uncomfortable clothing, and eat their bland, tasteless food, who laughed at her shyness, her timidity, all the things her own people prized so dearly.

Her memories were faint, but in her girlish innocence all she could concentrate on were the happy times in Kalgan where her amah had fussed and doted upon her. She remembered too her aloof, regal father, an imposing man who had little to do with her but who was responsible for providing all the oriental luxuries April so dearly longed to have again.

The hushed whisperings of Chinese unrest didn’t frighten her; her people had always been unhappy with the white foreigners who ravaged the land and exploited the innocent. She was the eldest daughter of Ke Loo, a royal prince, and she was a princess. Her royal relatives would see to her protection, as well as any needed protection for her husband. The people of China would not dare harm them.

April ate the last of the beef pie and leaned back, looking about the ugly room. “I’ll be glad to be away from all this,” she said. “And you will adore China, David. Oh, I suspect you’ll be a little homesick at first, but I will make you forget. You will grow to love China as much as I do.”

He took her hand, indifferent to the hostile looks of the other diners. “Of course I will. And you needn’t worry about my missing San Francisco and my family. Father never approved of me anyway and Mother has always tried to run my life for me.”

He glanced at his pocket watch. “If you’re finished, we should be going. It’s getting close to the time.”

April pulled her hood over her long, black, silky hair, casting her face into shadows. They ignored again the muttered insults as David threw several silver coins on the table and led April to the door.

“And don’t bring her back in here,” the surly proprietor called after them.

There was a strange, ominous feel to the night as they walked along. The clang of the trolley bell hurried them to the corner just as the trolley itself loomed out of the fog. David and April hopped aboard, glad to be away from the tavern and all its unpleasantness. They sat huddled close together, oblivious to the city stirring faintly about them, lost as they were in their own private world. They were young and so deeply in love that nothing mattered in all the world except themselves and their dreams.

What did they care about the whispered uprisings far in the north of China? What did all that political nonsense matter to her and David? Besides, hadn’t her old tutor, Kim Lee, said there were always those who were discontented?

Kim Lee had spoken to her of the small band who called themselves I-ho-chuan, the Righteous and Harmonious Fists Society—the Boxers, as they had come to be known—who were gradually gaining converts, and the White Lotus sect, whose only purpose was to overthrow the Manchus, her father’s family; but they had to be foolish, insolent peasants to think they could uproot her father’s dynasty, the Empress herself, all of the great Manchus who’d ruled China for almost three hundred years.

As they sat holding tight to one another, neither April nor David could imagine anything blighting their future together. Nothing would ever blemish their happiness, certainly not some insignificant political malcontents.

* * * *

Lydia heard the commotion in the foyer. She started out of her chair just as the doors to the sitting room were flung apart and Lorna MacNair stood framed in the doorway. They had never met but Lydia knew the woman.

“Where are they?” Lorna demanded, shaking a crumpled piece of paper in Lydia’s face as she stormed forward.

“Who do you mean?” Lydia asked.

“You know perfectly well. My son and that half-Chinese daughter of yours.”

Lydia stiffened and clenched her fists. She felt the first twinges of fear and put her hand on the back of a chair to steady herself.

“My daughter is in her bed,” she answered, but she could see the truth in Lorna’s face.

“Not according to this,” Lorna said, throwing David’s note at Lydia’s feet.

Lydia hesitated but the urge to read the note was stronger than her refusal to stoop before this woman. She lowered herself gracefully and unraveled the paper, turning her back to Lorna.

“You may rest assured that April and I will never humiliate you, Mother,” she read aloud. “Don’t try to find us. David.”

The words blurred as Lydia’s hand began to tremble. She turned suddenly, throwing aside the note. Gathering up her skirts, she ran to the staircase and to April’s room. Her heart stopped for an instant when she saw the empty bed and the note folded neatly on the pillowcase.

“I love him,” it said simply. “I am sorry if I disappoint you but, like you, I must do what I must do, go where I belong,”

“Go where I belong,” she read aloud. She stared at the words for a moment until their full impact struck her. “Good God!”

Lorna MacNair was standing at the bottom of the staircase. “Well?” she asked.

“She’s gone...with David,” Lydia said, hurrying past her to ring for the housekeeper.

“This is all your fault,” Lorna hissed. “If you’d stayed out of my family’s life my son would never have been corrupted.”

Lydia turned on her, eyes flashing. “I no more welcome your son into my family than you welcome my daughter into yours,” she replied.

The housekeeper appeared in the hall. “Nellie, go out and hail a hack, please,” Lydia ordered. “I’m going out.”

“Out?” Lorna asked, as the housekeeper pulled a shawl around her shoulders and went out the door. “Where are you going? What do you know?”

Lydia was tempted to repeat Lorna’s bad manners by throwing April’s note at her, but she handed it to her instead.

“What does it mean, go where she belongs?” Suddenly Lorna gasped. “Dear God, not to Chinatown?” She put her hands over her mouth as if to hold back a scream.

Lydia paid her no mind as she went toward her downstairs bedroom to fetch her cape.

“You know where they are,” Lorna accused as she hurried after Lydia. “I demand that you tell me.”

“I do not know where they are, but I have my suspicions. I only hope they prove to be right.”

As Lydia started toward the foyer, the front door again crashed open and Peter barged in with Nellie, the housekeeper, in his wake. He glowered at his wife. “What in hell is going on?” he demanded. “When I got home a few minutes ago Susan said you were screaming something about David and that you were coming here. What’s this all about?”

“Oh, Peter,” his wife said, throwing herself against him.

He held her away, turning to Lydia instead. “What is it?” he asked, more gently than before.

Lydia kept her eyes averted as she pulled on her gloves. To the housekeeper she asked, “Did you manage to find a carriage?”

“My carriage is outside,” Peter told her. “Tell me what the devil’s the matter.”

“David and April,” Lydia said as calmly as she could. “It appears they’ve eloped.”

“Good God!”

His exclamation angered her without her really knowing why. She hesitated, wondering if she should tell him where she suspected the young people were bound, wondering if she should seek his help. Peter knew of the dangers that lay in wait for them if indeed April was foolish enough to take David to her father’s house in China.

Lorna decided for her. “She knows where they are, Peter, but she refuses to tell me.” Lorna clung to her husband’s lapels.

He loosened her grip. “Do you, Lydia?”

She nodded quickly. “April wrote in her note that she must go where she belongs.”

“China,” Peter gasped. “Good Lord, no!”

“China?” Lorna said, not understanding. “How will they get to China? It’s across the ocean. It’s thousands of miles away. And what will they live on? Where will they go when they get there?” A thought struck her. She looked up at Peter and said, “The company’s Chinese representative. David must have written him....”

“Oh, be quiet,” Peter snapped as he reached for Lydia’s arm. “Come on, we can take my carriage. I only hope we can find the ship before it sails...if it hasn’t already.”

“But what about me?” Lorna wailed as the two of them hurried out the door.

“Go home,” Peter called back over his shoulder. “With any kind of luck I’ll have David home with me soon.”

Lorna stood gaping at them as they got into Peter’s carriage and started off toward the docks. Even when the fog had swallowed them up she still stood in the light of the doorway, shoulders sagging, heart aching.