Читать книгу Nightsong - V.J. Banis - Страница 6

CHAPTER ONE

“I’m telling you, you’ll be murdered in your beds,” Mrs. Blaise said, thumping her purple parasol on the hard-packed dirt of the floor for emphasis. “If you’ve got any sense, you’ll come along with us right now, and not risk another night in this godforsaken place.”

“If God had really forsaken this place, Cynthia,” Sarah Holt replied, managing a sweet smile despite the tautness of her own nerves, “I doubt he’d have sent us here to preach to the natives.”

“Well, he’s managing to drive us right back out of here, isn’t he? At least, we’re going, as soon as Mr. Blaise finds a cart for our things, and you’re blamed fools if you don’t do the same.”

“Lydia, dear,” Sarah turned to her daughter, who was following the conversation with scarcely concealed interest. “Your father should be coming soon. Why don’t you and Reginald walk out to meet him? He just might have something for you.”

“Yes, Mama,” Lydia said obediently, though she would far rather have stayed where she was. Mrs. Blaise’s son, Reginald, was thin and pimply, and had a way of looking at her that she found disconcerting, though she could not say just why; anyway, Mrs. Blaise’s conversation was far more fascinating, if frightening. The native Chinese were rioting against what they called “foreign devils,” mostly missionaries like her parents and the Blaises, who were scattered throughout the country. The rumors had begun a fortnight ago.

“Scapegoats,” her father, the Reverend Joshua Holt, had said. “The cholera’s gotten bad. You’ll see, as soon as that dies down, so will this other.”

But the cholera—and the rumors—had worsened. A trader had been shot in Shanghai; the culprit had been arrested, but mobs of Chinese had demanded, and obtained, his release. Then a missionary and his wife had been killed at Hangchow.

Outside, “...don’t want the girl frightened,” she heard her mother saying through the window’s shutters.

“...not safe anymore...,” was all she caught of Mrs. Blaise’s reply.

She turned toward the center of town, and the market, which was where her father had gone earlier.

“This way,” Reginald said, turning in the opposite direction.

“Mama said....”

“I saw your father on our way over here,” Reginald interrupted her. “And he won’t be back for ages. Come on.”

Somewhat reluctantly she went with him. The street was crowded and, remembering Mrs. Blaise’s dire warnings, she fancied that the Chinese were looking sideways at them as they went along, though her common sense told her there was nothing singular in that. White people, after all, were still rare this far inland, even if it was 1870. Except for themselves and the Blaises, and a Scotch-American trader living a few streets away, the only other whites for a hundred miles were a couple in Mei Fu, the next town.

“You ought to come with us, you know,” Reginald said, taking her arm to steer her around a pile of offal on the rough pavement. “We could have some fun in the back of the cart, couldn’t we?”

“I don’t know what you mean,” she said, freeing her arm. “Anyway, Papa says God’s love brought us here, and God’s love will protect us.”

“My pa says, the Lord helps them that helps themselves.”

“Not very noble sentiments for a missionary.”

“These people don’t want missionaries, they want a good army to get them in shape,” Reginald said. “And someone to clean things up. I’ll be glad to get out of this stench, won’t you?”

Lydia did not answer. It was true that the China she had seen while traveling with her parents was not very clean, though she supposed they were seeing only the poorer sections. And the food being prepared and eaten in the open stalls looked unspeakably horrible; she could not bear to think of what went into it.

Still, there was something—she hadn’t quite find the words to define it, though “romance” sprang to mind when she tried.

Above the streets, mats were stretched between the eaves of the buildings, so that the light was dim. The streets were thronged with noisy, jostling crowds. She had an idea that they must have looked like this for centuries, as if she were seeing right into some ancient fairy tale. Over there was a turbaned man with a one-eyed ass. Surely she had read of just such a sight. At any moment the crowd might part to make way for a sedan chair borne by jogging coolies, and in it might be—a prince? A singsong girl whose beauty was hidden from all but the honored and the wealthy?

A green and yellow parrot flew up from a window. The breeze set wind chimes tinkling, and loosened a shower of white blossoms from above, like perfumed snow falling upon their shoulders.

“Wait, listen.” Lydia stopped short, cocking her head. Above the noise of the crowd she heard a baby crying, but this was not the sound of a hungry child, or one impatient for a nap; rather, this was a sound of ageless terror.

“Come on, we don’t want to get into any trouble,” Reginald said.

“This way,” Lydia said, ignoring him. She turned down one of the narrow, twisting streets. They had gone no more than a few feet when they rounded a corner and saw before them a small child, sitting naked in the street, screaming.

The reason for the infant’s terror was evident, for it was surrounded by a pack of wild-looking dogs. From the marks on the child’s arms and legs, the animals had already bitten her once or twice, and they were now circling the child as if making ready to rush upon her.

“Stop that,” Lydia cried. She picked up a stone and threw it, catching the biggest dog on the rump and making him yelp.

She threw another stone and ran forward. The dogs backed away, but only a short distance, yapping and snarling as she snatched the baby up in her arms.

“There, there,” Lydia said, cradling the infant. “It’s all right, you’re safe now. Where do you suppose the parents are, anyway? This child might have been killed.”

“I think that was the idea,” Reginald said.

Lydia’s mouth fell open. “But—surely, you don’t mean....”

“It’s a girl,” Reginald said, pointing.

Lydia glanced down, blushing to have such an anatomical detail pointed out to her by a boy. In the next instant she was filled with horror, as the full import of Reginald’s remark became clear to her.

Before she could speak, however, a group of Chinese burst from the house before which they were standing. The woman in the lead snatched the infant from Lydia’s arms. She was speaking too fast for Lydia, with her scant grasp of the language, to understand much, but there was no question that she was angry with the foreign devils for “interfering where they had no business.”

“Come on, we’d better go,” Reginald said, taking her arm again and urging her back the way they had come.

Lydia went with him, though she kept looking back in dismay at the group, now grown to nearly a dozen. The Chinese were still scolding them angrily, the baby still crying, though less shrilly than before.

“It’s horrible,” she said, when they had gone round the corner and were out of sight.

“They’re heathens,” Reginald said matter-of-factly. “If a baby turns out to be a girl, they just put it out in the street for the dogs or the pigs to eat. I’m surprised they don’t cook it themselves—”

“Stop it,” she said sharply. “Papa says it’s because they’re poor. They can’t afford to invest all the expense of raising a daughter, knowing that when she’s grown she’ll marry and go to work for someone else.”

Despite her defense of the Chinese, however, the incident had left her badly shaken. It was one thing to be told that girl children were sometimes left to die by their destitute parents; it was quite another to see it being done, and to be able to do nothing to prevent it.

All of a sudden, China had lost a great deal of its romance for her.

* * * * * * *

Like all but the meanest of Chinese towns, this one was surrounded by a crenellated wall, and they had come to the gate.

“Let’s go outside,” Reginald said, taking her arm again.

“Do you think we ought to?” she asked. “Aren’t you afraid of the Chinese?”

“There’s lots fewer of them out here.” When she still held back, he added in a pleading tone, “Come on, this may be the last I’ll see you in a long time, maybe forever.”

She shuddered, his words seeming to her a grim prophecy, but she relented. From outside, they could look down upon the rice paddies, crescent-shaped patches descending one below the other, so that they could be easily flooded, with firs and bamboos growing in the hollows.

Reginald led them to one of the little groves of bamboo, and when they had passed into its green shade they seemed quite removed from all the bustle and commotion of the city. This she had not resisted at all, for she found the bamboo groves enchanted places in which she could forget the horror that still lingered in her mind. Here she could imagine herself a princess, in the midst of fantastic adventures.

Reginald cleared his throat nervously, reminding her of his presence. If only, she thought, he were more of a prince.

“So today’s your birthday, is it?” he asked.

His voice was higher pitched than usual, and she gave him a puzzled glance, wondering what on earth was making him so nervous all of a sudden. Maybe he was more frightened of the Chinese than he’d let on.

“Yes,” she said. “Mama’s making me a cake and Papa went to the market to get me a present, though of course he didn’t say so.”

“Sweet sixteen, and never been kissed,” Reginald said, attempting a laugh that came out a gurgle.

“I don’t think that’s any concern of yours,” she replied archly, her face coloring.

“Well, come on then, give us a kiss,” he said, seizing her all of a sudden in a clumsy embrace.

“I won’t,” she cried, struggling to free herself. “Let go of me, how dare you, you silly boy!”

“I’m not a boy anymore, Pa said I could carry a gun on the trip back to Shanghai—and I’ll show you, too, if you’ll just hold still a minute.”

She flung her head to and fro, avoiding his attempts to plant his mouth on hers. She had almost broken free of his arms when her foot slipped and, to her dismay, she fell to the ground. In an instant he was upon her, his weight threatening to crush her. It was harder in this position to elude him, and she felt his mouth at her throat, moving down toward her little breasts as he tore at the bodice of her dress with his hand.

“Let me go,” she cried, almost in tears; how dare this pockmarked lout manhandle her like this! Papa would have him horsewhipped.

“Not till I’ve got what I want to remember you by,” he said, his breath hoarse and rasping in her ear.

His knees were between hers and he forced them apart, rubbing his body roughly against hers. It was frightening and crude and at the same time she felt a mysterious tingling in her loins that she had never felt before, that both puzzled her and added to her fear.

“Stop it, I say!” she cried, pounding his shoulders. “I’ll tell your pa.”

“We’ll be gone from here by nightfall,” he said, laughing again as one hand found the tender flesh beneath her skirt, “so there’ll be no one to tell.”

“Reginald, you wouldn’t....” Even had she known the correct words, she could not have brought herself to use them, but there was little doubt by now in either of their minds just what he intended.

“What do you think?” he said, mocking her; his fingernails raked one silken thigh.

“I think,” a masculine voice said from above them, “that you’d better do as the young lady says, and let her go.”

Reginald shot to his feet, his already pale face going whiter. Over his shoulder, Lydia saw the face of Peter MacNair, the Scotch-American trader who had arrived in the city a few days ago.

“Wh-wh-wh—” Reginald stammered helplessly, unable to form a complete word.

“This isn’t a very safe place for you youngsters to be just now,” MacNair said. “Hasn’t anyone told you there’s been some trouble with the Chinese?”

“Yes, sir.” Reginald’s Adam’s apple bobbed furiously.

“Well, then, you’d better scoot on home, your parents must be worried about you.”

“Yes, sir,” Reginald said again, gesturing to Lydia, who was still lying on the ground.

“I’ll escort the young lady home,” Peter MacNair said in a voice that brooked no argument.

“Yes, sir.” Reginald was gone in a flash. Lydia had a glimpse of him racing pell-mell for the gate, without so much as a backward glance.

“Here.” Peter MacNair gave her his hand and helped her to her feet. The bodice of her dress was torn, and she was grateful that he looked away while she adjusted it as best she could. It gave her, too, a chance to glance at him undetected.

How handsome he was, with his sandy brown hair that spilled carelessly over his forehead, and eyes so dark a brown that they looked black when he was scowling, as he was now. But why was he angry? Did he think she had encouraged Reginald?

“I thank you for coming to my assistance,” she said aloud, hoping to put his mind at ease on that account.

“It was nothing,” he said curtly. “Shall we go now?”

Intimidated by his cool manner, Lydia went wordlessly with him, out of the grove, and back to the city’s gate, wondering as she did so what she had done to offend him.

In fact, Peter MacNair was annoyed not with her, but with himself for having intervened in something that was none of his business. The two had looked little more than children on a lark when he had seen them disappear into that bamboo grove. He had gone there only intending to warn them of the danger abroad, and when he’d seen what was afoot, he had very nearly turned around and gone on his way; what did it matter to him if the daughter of a pompous missionary entertained some lout among the bamboo?

But then the girl had started protesting, and she had looked so damnably young. He had spoken on an impulse, and having once taken such a stand, he could hardly have backed down from it without looking like an ass.

So now here he was, escorting the silly child home, and no doubt the righteous Reverend Holt would think he was the one who’d torn her dress in an attempt to have his way with her.

The idea having entered his mind, however fleetingly, he instinctively gave the girl an appraising glance, and as quickly chided himself for being foolish. She was every bit as young as he had thought at first sight, and on top of it, not even his type. That red-gold hair of hers, falling in a luxuriant cascade about her face and shoulders, was smashing, particularly with her green eyes, but he favored dark-haired women, and in due time those wide-set eyes would lose that look of enraptured innocence that made them so appealing just now. As for the rest, well, she had hardly any breasts, and she tended toward plumpness, though that might have been some lingering baby fat.

All and all, he’d much rather have one of the Chinese singsong girls, though truth to tell he had been hankering for a white woman lately. He had been in China nearly a year, and he was not a man noted for continence.

They had entered the city by now, but its teeming streets had lost their charm for Lydia. She walked at the trader’s side with her eyes dejectedly downward. It was apparent that she had somehow offended her rescuer, though she couldn’t for the life of her imagine how. She stole a quick glance up at his profile—he was taller even than Papa—but at the sight of his stern visage, she glanced away again at once.

She had been traveling with her parents since she was a mere baby, in one remote corner of the world after another. Cut off as she was from the usual social mingling, she had experienced none of the innocent flirtation, the tentative exploration of romance that was usual for girls of her age. Reginald was the only boy she knew near her own age, and she knew him only slightly. Her parents had even sheltered her from the romantic novels that might at least have given her some clue to why her pulse quickened whenever she glanced at the handsome man beside her.

All that she did know was that to be near him like this gave her pleasure, but one so intense that it was akin to pain. He moved with a certain cocksure manner that reminded her of a prize-winning stallion her father had once taken her to see. It gave her a peculiar thrill of excitement to see how he towered over the Chinese about them. If only he would take her hand again, as he had when he had helped her up from the ground; her palm still tingled from the memory of his touch.

“Oh, there’s Papa,” she cried suddenly, spying her father in the street ahead of them.

Reverend Holt had already seen them, and was waiting for them to come up, scowling at them. MacNair saw the father’s eyes go to his daughter’s torn bodice and return to him, glinting angrily.

“Reverend.” MacNair lifted his topee, the pith helmet that whites wore for protection from the burning sun, in greeting; Reverend Holt made no gesture in reply. “I found your daughter outside the gates, and thought it best if I escorted her home.”

Holt’s eyes went again to Lydia’s torn dress. “I tore my dress on some bamboo,” she said hastily, her face reddening. Now that she was no longer in any danger from Reginald, she saw no point in causing trouble, though she hoped Peter MacNair would not refute her explanation and make her out a liar.

He did not, nor did her father question her explanation. “We thank you for your trouble, Mr. MacNair,” he said stiffly. “It was foolish of my daughter to go wandering off alone. There are many unscrupulous persons who might be tempted to take advantage of her youth and innocence.”

“Lucky she met me instead,” MacNair said. “Good day to you, sir. Miss Holt.” He tipped his hat to both of them again and, turning on his heel, strode off. The throngs of Chinese seemed to part before him as if before the prow of a ship.

“You are not to speak to Mr. MacNair in the future,” the reverend said.

“But Papa, he was so kind to me,” Lydia said. “You can’t mean it.”

Her father’s jaw tightened; it was the first time his daughter had ever challenged one of his commands. “I mean it most assuredly,” he said, his voice icy. “And we will not discuss it further. Mind what I say.”

Despite his admonition, she was about to protest further, but she was suddenly aware of something unusual that was occurring. At first she could not grasp what it was, then suddenly it came to her that an abrupt silence, more striking in a Chinese street than it would have been elsewhere, had fallen. Her father, whose great height made it possible for him to see further, suddenly took her arm and drew her into the slight shelter of a doorway.

In a moment she understood. Four peasants passed through the street, moving quickly and silently, and they bore a new coffin between them.

Another victim of the cholera. The silence lingered briefly after the coffin had passed. Then, from somewhere behind, came a sudden din, the beating of gongs and the snapping of firecrackers, the Chinese way of frightening off the evil spirits that had brought the cholera.

It was odd but that unexpected silence, and the passing of the coffin, followed by that uproar, frightened Lydia more than all the talk of illness or murder had before, and when her father, still holding tightly to her arm, drew her from the doorway and began to hurry her toward their house, she went with him meekly, glad once more to be in the shadow of his domination.