Part 56 (1/2)
”Great guns!” said Peter. He wondered if he could catch the Nanking express; there was a Chinese steamer leaving Nanking for up-river to-morrow noon.
There was a humble voice at his elbow. A deck-boy was grinning dreamily at him; a queer flicker darted across his green eyes, vanished.
”Jen!” exclaimed Peter, glimpsing an abbreviated pigtail.
”Aie!” said the deck-boy.
”The man from the Jen Kee Road place!”
The deck-steward seemed puzzled. ”My no savvy,” he said. His look became dreamy again, reminiscent.
”But you can speak English as well as 'pidgin,'” declared Peter, frowning. ”You did last night!”
”My savvy 'pidgin,'” said Jen brightly. ”China allatime funny place!
China no can savvy allatime funny people! Funny!”
”What's that?” snapped Peter. He was baffled and angry. Had Jen played the leading part in the mysterious and grim comedy of last night, or was he only a work coolie, a deck-steward, harmless, innocuous, babbling happily in his limited knowledge of a strange language?
The deck-boy was pointing up-river with a long, yellow finger.
Peter stared. And he saw nothing, nothing but a great red sun with its lower half enveloped in a glowing pool of green and red smoke into which arose the black spars of s.h.i.+ps from all over the world.
CHAPTER IX
The sky was clearing. Rain had ceased dripping from the bulging black clouds, and a slender rod of golden sunlight pierced through and marked a path upon the red bricks of the inn courtyard. Hazy in the green-and-purple distance could be glimpsed the yellow withers of the western range. Cooking smells, the sour odor of fish-and-rice chow, were wafted from the braziers of village housewives.
Peter loafed against a spruce post, and moodily contemplated the stamping animals in the enclosure. His hat was in his hand, and the mountain breeze a.s.sailed his blond hair, which, rumpled and curly, gave him something of the appearance of a satyr at ease. He was worried.
He had, an hour before, come to Ching-Fu from the boat; and Eileen had left Ching-Fu for a trip to Kialang-Hien, a village of the third order some fifty _li_ distant, the morning before. Whether to follow or wait was the question.
Somewhere afield a valiant bronze gong called infidels to the feet of an insufferable clay G.o.d.
Peter's flow of thought was interrupted. Unnoticed a girl--at first glance the virtuous daughter of a mandarin--was approaching. Her abruptness and her appearance caught him so completely off guard that he held his breath and stared at her rather wildly. And she in turn, as if fascinated, stared back as wildly at him.
His first guess was inaccurate. She was no mandarin's daughter, this one. She was young and exquisitely slim, with wisdom and sadness written upon her colorless face, and he was informed by a single glance at her exploring bright eyes and the straightness of her fine black brows, that she was half-breed, Eurasian.
Those s.h.i.+ning eyes, not unlike twin jade beads, were sparkling. Her lips were thin and as red as betel. Her garb was satin, bright with gold filigree and flas.h.i.+ng gems; and her dainty feet were disfigured rather than adorned by bright-red sandals. Her feet, however, were not the ”feet of the lily,” for the lithe grace of her stride was ample proof that they had not been bound.
The dying sun outlined through the folds of her bizarre garment ankles straight, slender, and probably naked.
Rosy color moved swiftly into her satiny complexion while, with a pretty, inquisitive frown, she scrutinized him; and then, with a flick of her black eyelashes, she ran toward the arched doorway, leaving Peter to ponder, and scratch his blond head, and demand amazing explanations of himself.
It was a dominating trait in Peter never to lose time securing information that was interesting to him; but the old proprietor, with his wise and varnished smile, could vouchsafe very little of consequence.
The young woman, he admitted, was named Naradia. She was accompanied by her husband, a young Chinese of high birth, who manifested no more signs of activity to an outward world than a baffling secretness.
The two of them had arrived from down-river on a sailing junk the week before. The husband's name was Meng, he believed, and since he had come, the old man declared, many strange and warlike faces had mysteriously appeared in Ching-Fu.
Such visitors were not uncommon in the villages which bordered the merchants' trail, from the Yangtze to the Irriwaddi, but Peter's interest was kindled. As he made off in the direction of the most reliable village mule-seller, he decided that the secretive young bridegroom, Meng, might be worth cultivating.