“I’ll do anything I can, Mary,” Hilary Metcalfe promised. “But what can I do?”
“Get that woman out of the Colony. I want her out immediately.”
“I dare say that can be managed without too much trouble. I’ll have a word with Madame Rachelle. You just want her removed instanter, not punished in any way?”
“No!” Mary shook her head. “It’s not her fault. But I couldn’t bear her being in Hong Kong, the constant humiliation.”
“Good girl! Good girl!” Metcalfe muttered approvingly as if gentling a nervous filly. “You’ve got the stuff. Only point of revenge is to teach a lesson. Remove Miss Countess Vorobya and the lesson’ll be clear. Jonathan, I’m sure, will deal with the Golden Lily.”
“Hilary,” his sister protested, “you’re talking about a woman’s heart, Mary’s entire life, not a business deal.”
“You always had a taste for toffee melodrama, Liz,” Metcalfe smiled.
“Hilary, what nonsense!” Elizabeth Metcalfe protested.
“Mary,” Metcalfe continued, “I hate saying I told you so. But I did advise against this marriage. I’m reminding you because it may help if I—”
“Do you want to leave Charles?” Elizabeth asked impulsively.
“I don’t know. No, not really. I just don’t know if I can live with him.”
Mary tucked her handkerchief into her purse. She closed the jeweled clasp with a decisive snap before speaking.
“Please give me a brandy, Hilary, and I’ll try to explain. I know I’m imposing on you, but I’m very grateful and—”
Metcalfe growled in embarrassment as he unlocked the gold-mounted mahogany tantalus on the sideboard: “If you can’t impose on us, who can?”
“No, Elizabeth,” Mary resumed more calmly, “I don’t want to leave Charles—the children. What would I do? How could I support them?”
“Jonathan won’t let them go,” Hilary interjected. “He’d never part with them.”
“I suppose I know that, Hilary. Besides, there’s no place for me elsewhere. I chose and I must abide by it.” She paused, stricken, remembering her father’s dire warnings. “Elizabeth, you understand. It’s not just a matter of … not just what’s best for me. I still love Charles. I do love him. Perhaps it’s weakness. But I don’t want to leave Charles, for his sake and, I suppose, for my own.”
“Well, that’s clear enough.” Metcalfe handed her a dark amber glass of brandy-and-soda. “Now I can go on. I reminded you I’d opposed this marriage because I want to tell you a story. I think it’ll help you understand what you’re up against, understand why Charles is what Charles is. Jonathan’ll no doubt tell you more, when he chooses.”
“He must never know,” Mary exclaimed.
“Oh, he’ll know. No question about it. The old fox knows everything that touches him. And this affair touches him closely—most closely.”
“Yes,” Mary conceded, “I’m afraid you’re right. But the story you want to tell me?”
Hilary Metcalfe incinerated five wooden matches before his pipe drew to his satisfaction. He sipped his brandy-and-soda before speaking from the center of a blue smoke cloud.
“Imagine, Mary, Hong Kong in 1853. Fifty, let me see, just fifty-two years ago. A small group of foreigners, mostly British, say eight hundred civilians and the same number of troops. Those adventurers perched on a rocky, barren island utterly dependent on, say, forty thousand Chinese for everything. For the profitable trade that lured them here, of course, but also dependent for food, for labor, for all services, for life itself. Hong Kong no more than a carbuncle on the flank of China, twelve thousand miles from Britain, three months by sea. The Manchu Empire still powerful and arrogant, despite the pinprick defeat in the First Opium War thirteen years earlier that forced the Chinese to cede the Colony.
“Imagine an insidiously hostile climate, the Chinese inhabitants tacitly hostile, overwhelmingly prejudiced, though some recognize the advantages of working with the ‘devil-heads.’ And nature itself viciously hostile. Typhoons that crush flimsy buildings. Dysentery that kills strong men in a few weeks. Worst of all, the ‘fevers.’ Malaria rampaging for months, cutting down half the community like a volley of grapeshot. Cholera, a mysterious illness that strikes without warning and kills in a week. Plague, yes, the Black Death itself. You’ve seen the dates on the gravestones here and the old cemetery in Macao. They died young in those days.”
“Hilary,” Elizabeth interrupted, “we’ve all seen the cemeteries. Mary needs helpful advice, she doesn’t need a history lesson.”
“Oh, but she does. A history lesson is precisely what she needs. I’ll go on after I’ve recharged our glasses. And, Liz, you have a small one.”
Hilary Metcalfe rose slowly. His blunt fingers busied themselves with the cut-crystal decanter and the silver-mounted syphon. In every other foreign household in Hong Kong, even the warrant officers’ bungalows, serving drinks was a ritual. A white-coated Number One Boy responded to a tinkling bell and made great play with clanking bottles and tumblers. He presented his creations on a salver—gold, sterling silver, or silver-plated brass, according to his master’s pocketbook. Mary appreciated the Metcalfes’ bland disregard of such ceremonials of Colonial Society.
“Small ones, Hilary,” Elizabeth Metcalfe instructed her brother’s burly shoulders. “Drinks for ladies, not for dragoons or navvies.”
“As you wish, Liz. The strong one stiffened Mary’s backbone—this one’ll put the roses back in her cheeks. I’ll make my story short, just the bare bones. Let Jonathan tell her the whole story, when he’s ready. After all, it’s his story.”
“Your bare bones, my dear, are anyone else’s epic. But do go on.”
“So there we are, a half century ago, in this insignificant Colony torn from China by ruthless merchant-adventurers—and forced on the government in Whitehall … a poor little waif … a bastard waif neither Peking nor London really wants. Sustained by a few Chinese canny enough to see the future—and the profits. The co-hong merchants of Canton, a baker’s dozen of them, were a monopoly chartered by the Emperor in 1757 to cope with the insistent foreigners, who buzzed like a swarm of mosquitos … irritating but, it appeared, no great danger. Peking reckons it a good idea to allow a few Chinese to go through the motions of trading with the foreigners and keep them at arm’s length that way.
“One of those co-hong merchants, the greatest if not the wealthiest, is a man named Kwok. Kwok Lee-chin, scion of an old trading family from the town of Sekloong on the West River. For their own inscrutable reasons, the British call him Ah Quah. After ’40, after the Opium War breaks the co-hong monopoly, he joins forces with Derwent, Hayes and Company—not yet the biggest, but the most aggressive hong—most aggressive in pushing its opium and finding new Chinese products for Europe to discover it needs.
“The Derwent hong—in Mandarin Teh Wan, which means ‘universal virtue.’ Well, this appropriately named firm employs a young Irish adventurer called Liam Francis O’Flaherty. Just nineteen, but already cashiered from the Bengal Artillery for seducing his major’s wife! Imagine a nineteen-year-old ensign with flowing blond locks and hazel-green eyes, shoe-horned into a commission to get him out of Ireland, and the languorous, bored major’s wife. A parson’s daughter who subsists on a diet of romantic novels—like my sister’s secret vice!”
“Hilary, you don’t know a thing about the major’s wife,” Elizabeth chided. “Stick to your story!”
“Well, it’s a good story, and I’m pretty sure it’s true.” Metcalfe grinned. “But, fair enough, I’ll stick to what I definitely know.… Because of his charm and quick wit, O’Flaherty becomes a sort of liaison officer. Day-to-day dealings with Ah Quah are his line, and he’s constantly in and out of the merchant’s house. Now, Ah Quah has a twenty-year-old daughter called Mei-lan, ‘Beautiful Orchid,’ and he’s a modernthinking man. He indulges his only daughter. After all, the family are only merchants, next to soldiers the lowest form of human life in a Con
fucian society. He doesn’t keep her locked up like the daughters of the country gentry or the Mandarins. It’s even whispered, scandal of scandals, that her feet aren’t bound.
“Need I draw the full picture, Mary? The inevitable happens—and the result is an infant you now know as Sir Jonathan Sekloong, Knight Bachelor. O’Flaherty flits away; young Jonathan’s brought up by his doting mother. Desperately in love with O’Flaherty, she wants the boy reared a Catholic like his father. And the good fathers of the Society of Jesus are delighted to oblige.”
“I wondered about that,” Mary interjected. “I’ve heard snippets of your story. But I never fully understood the fierce Catholicism.”
“It’s simple, my dear,” Metcalfe resumed. “The Jesuits gave young Jonathan the only sustained affection he knew. In 1862, Mei-lan, ‘Beautiful Orchid,’ marries Richard Wheatley—the old stick you sat with last night was a young man on the make. He marries a Chinese because of her father’s influence with Derwent, breaking the taboo against intermarriage to secure the indispensable Ah Quah’s support for his ambitions. Mei-lan becomes preoccupied with her new husband and neglects the boy. Ah Quah, before he dies in 1866, is of two minds about his bastard mixed-blood grandson—sometimes mildly indulgent, most of the time a hectoring martinet, presumably to make up for his laxity toward his daughter. The only real security for young Jonathan is the Jesuits, who educate him with even-handed affection. He’s the scion of an important commercial house, but on the wrong side of the blanket. That galls deeply, particularly since the cash and the business’ll go to his legitimate cousins. Besides, he’s a Eurasian, not proper Chinese, not proper European, but floating between two worlds like Mohammed’s coffin between Heaven and Earth.
“Jonathan grows up with one overwhelming determination. After old Ah Quah leaves him a pittance, he’ll turn his hand to anything to make his fortune. He’ll ruthlessly use his grandfather’s connections and his mother’s special relationship with Derwent. But Jonathan’ll call no man master. He will make his own way, create his own world, establish his own impregnable position. And he will wield enormous power.
“His own family will be ruled justly, but very strictly. There’ll be none of his grandfather’s laxity and none of his father’s scapegrace evasion of responsibility. His own sexual peccadilloes, you’d ask? That’s another matter. Chinese men aren’t strict about that sort of thing, not for themselves or their sons. Daughters, of course, are different.
“Thus we have the man you know today. Undeniably brilliant, charming, reasonable, but an absolute Tartar with his sons. And this brings us to Charles, brought up by a father who’s devoutly Catholic, incredibly ambitious, indulgent in some ways, but terribly demanding. There’s Charles, educated in the best English schools of Hong Kong, for what that’s worth, but still very Chinese underneath. A Chinese gentleman with a British gloss. And there’s your problem.”
Mary sipped her brandy-and-soda in silent consternation, having listened to the tale with mounting unease. She had heard other versions, usually in brief snatches. They differed sharply from Hilary Metcalfe’s account, for Sir Jonathan was already the focus of extravagant legends. She felt a rush of compassion for Sir Jonathan and for her husband, whose character had been ordained even before his birth. She grieved for a society that could so distort its children.
She would, she knew, some day forgive Charles for his violent tantrum. Understanding the origins of his behavior, she could forgive him. But she would always remember the terrifying scene.
Mary was, above all, perplexed. Coping with the complex man she had married might prove beyond her ability. The Chinese were so hard on others and the men so indulgent of their own desires. The daughters and wives of the rich were also remarkably self-centered and self-indulgent in other ways. For the first time, she wondered if she truly liked the Chinese.
Mary knew she would recall Hilary Metcalfe’s story every time she heard firecrackers, since the New Year’s fusillades had rattled in constant counterpoint to his deep voice. She would often remember that day, since fireworks marked every festive occasion. Their feu de joie frightened away evil spirits. Chinese gods, even the beneficent gods, required ceaseless cajoling—and threatening.
She was immersed in her thoughts when Sir Jonathan came into the drawing-room. His light voice drew her eyes to the spare, commanding figure with the hazel eyes.
“Good afternoon, Elizabeth, Hilary. Goong-hay fat-choy! Mary, my dear, how are you?”
“Goong-hay fat-choy, Jonathan,” Metcalfe answered. “Why I waste spiritual credit on you I don’t understand. It’s really painting the lily to wish you prosperity.”
“You mustn’t say that, Hilary,” Elizabeth counseled. “It’s bad joss. Goong-hay fat-choy, Jonathan. You’ll take a glass?”
“No, Elizabeth, time’s too tight. But I couldn’t let New Year’s Day pass without offering old friends a trifling keepsake. You were good to take my daughter in. Now I must take her home.”
Sir Jonathan handed Elizabeth a small parcel wrapped in yellow brocade. After his first warm smile, he had not looked at Mary again. Her obedience was assumed.
The streets and alleys, crowded with holiday-makers, reverberated with the thunder of firecrackers. Sir Jonathan leaned down to speak into her ear.
“Can’t talk now. Too noisy. But we all want you to come home.”
On the crowded Peak Tram, he reminisced inconsequentially about the great changes he’d seen in the vista of hill-girt water that lay below them. But he instructed the chair bearers to set them down before they came to the great double-beamed gate with the winged dragon rampant.
“You won’t mind walking from here,” he said. “I’d like a little talk.”
Mary smiled at him tremulously, responding to the sheer force he exuded. It was the same commanding male strength that, in Charles, had drawn her into marriage.
“I’d want you to stay with us,” Sir Jonathan said abruptly. “We need you. The family needs you—I need you. Please give it thought.”
He paused for her reply, but she remained silent.
“I won’t bribe you to stay or threaten you,” he resumed. “If you want to go away for a while to think things over, the children must remain. Otherwise, you can have anything you want. I won’t keep you here against your will; you’d be no use to me. Besides, I’ve grown rather fond of you.”
Mary gazed at the stones in the path. The acrid odor of firecrackers filled her nostrils.
“And I of you, Father,” she said softly.
“I’m glad to hear that, very glad. I apologize deeply for Charles. But Charles is … what Charles is.”
“I married him in your Church,” she declared, “and I’ll stay for now.”
“Charles will be discreet. Up to now, you’ve turned a blind eye, as I have. But that’s no good now. I can’t guarantee his behavior. He’s a young man, and we Sekloongs have our faults. But I promise you one thing. He’ll be discreet, very discreet. I’ll see to that.”
“Father, you don’t seem to understand …” Mary began, then paused in helpless confusion. “Perhaps you really do. But I’ll stay for the moment. I’ll talk with my husband. We’ll settle our difficulties.”
“Good,” he said. “The old man has to interfere sometimes, but you’ve got courage and brains enough for two sons. I’ll keep my long nose out of your affairs—as much as Charles permits. Pax?”
“Pax!”
Mary smiled and extended her hand, but frost lay on her heart. She was grateful for her father-in-law’s affectionate concern. But what had he actually promised? Only that her husband would be discreet.
Her anger spent, Mary was quietly appalled. She was equally disturbed by Sir Jonathan’s conviction that he could manipulate Charles and by his assumption that her husband was quite entitled to philander—as long as he was discreet. Her father-in-law had promised her no more than freedom from embarrassment, guaranteed by his own determination that Charles’s behavior would never again e
xpose them to public humiliation.
That determination was rooted more deeply in his own interests than her own. Even his Chinese associates would be repelled if the heir of the Sekloong dynasty should earn the name of a libertine. Those associates would not, of course, be disturbed by Charles’s pursuing high-priced flower girls, but such diversions must on no account interfere with business or family obligations. The European community, for its part, would not countenance a public scandal like Charles’s liaison with the Vorobya woman; such light-minded indiscretion evoked suspicion that he was “not solid”—the ultimate condemnation in Edwardian Hong Kong.
Her marriage, her happiness, her life itself, all had been reduced to a tidy commercial proposition. Entering the spacious front hall of the Small House, Mary Philippa Osgood Sekloong reflected bitterly that she was hardly more than a parcel of property that must be managed properly. It would no more do to undervalue her than it would a shipment of cotton goods. But neither must she be overvalued.
February 5, 1905–March 16, 1905
The dwindling volleys of fireworks on the narrow shores below were no more than a distant rumble on The Peak. The first chill evening of the thirty-second year of the reign of the Son of Heaven Kuang Hsü, Emperor of the Great Pure Dynasty, spread its dark robes over the Crown Colony of Edward VII of England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland and of the Realms and Territories Over the Seas, King; Emperor of India; and (titularly, at least) Defender of the Faith. Behind blue-velvet drapes drawn against the darkness, the drawing-room of the Small House was a snug refuge within the larger fastness of Sekloong Manor.
His husky torso encased in a blue-satin smoking-jacket, the master of the house was sipping his third after-dinner brandy-and-soda. Charles Sekloong was totally at ease, apparently affected by neither the brandy nor the emotional storms of the day. His powerful hands were relaxed, and his wide-set hazel eyes were untroubled beneath his smooth, bronzed forehead.
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