A sudden forceful knocking at the door interrupted Lydia’s reverie.
“It’s that mandarin,” Sarah said, glancing from one of the windows.
“Lydia, go to your room,” Reverend Holt ordered.
Lydia hastened to obey, though once in her room she glued her eye to the crack of the door to watch the proceedings. She saw her mother usher Ke Loo, the mandarin prince, into the front room, where her father waited.
It was rare for missionaries to meet the mandarins, though they could occasionally be seen traveling through the cities in sedan chairs borne by servants, with attendants marching before them striking gongs to warn the people that a great man approached, and others bearing boards upon which the prince’s titles were inscribed.
The first time Ke Loo had appeared, unannounced, at their door, Lydia had been appropriately awed and dazzled by the elegance of his silk robe, elaborately embroidered with dragons front and back.
“Your daughter is old,” Ke Loo had informed Reverend Holt, though at that time she had been only fifteen. “She should marry. I have need of a wife. I will marry her.”
To Lydia, eavesdropping that time as well, it had been thrilling and certainly flattering, but she had been relieved when her father had haughtily rejected the proposal. For all of his obvious wealth and importance, Ke Loo had a cruel face, with hooded, leering eyes and a thin, austere mouth.
He had left in a pompous flurry, but Lydia had been right in thinking that the mandarin was not accustomed to having his demands refused, for he had come now to make them again.
“Daughter should be married,” Ke Loo was saying in the next room. “I will marry her.”
“My daughter will marry when and where we choose,” her father said, his tone angry, for he was no more accustomed than Ke Loo to having his opinions challenged.
The mandarin gave him a smile that had nothing of pleasure or friendship in it. “Is not a good time for foreign devils in China,” he said.
“Are you threatening me?” Papa said, jumping from his chair. “I’ll talk to Colonel Wu—”
“Colonel Wu most busy now,” Ke Loo said, unmoved by the show of anger. “The cholera, it strikes everywhere, soldiers must help bury the dead.”
“This is outrageous! I won’t be....” He stopped; to Lydia’s horror she saw her father suddenly sway to and fro. He steadied himself with a hand on the back of a chair. In an instant, Sarah was at his side.
“Papa,” Lydia cried, forgetting propriety and dashing from her hiding place. Ke Loo’s eyes widened in shock at the breach of etiquette; a maiden ought to remain chastely hidden from the eyes of her suitor. That did not prevent him, however, from greedily feasting his eyes on her, particularly upon the red gold of her hair, so unlike the hair of a Chinese maiden, and the pale smoothness of her skin, like the petal of a lotus flower.
It had been the merest chance that had brought her to his attention. He had been stopping only briefly in this city, on his way from Peking to his native city of Kalgan, in the shadow of the Great Wall, and he had happened to glance from the curtains of his sedan chair, to see what at first he had thought a mere vision.
He had made up his mind at once that he must have her, this strange pale girl whose hair burned like the first hot flames of a new-laid fire. And have her he would. He was unused to being refused what he wanted, and he could not understand these foreign parents, with a daughter already past the marriage age and unclaimed, who would not reach agreement with him. He was determined.
“I’m all right,” the reverend was assuring his wife and daughter, but Lydia had discovered that his skin was hot to the touch. “I’m afraid I must ask you to leave us now,” he said, addressing the Chinese prince.
“I will come another time,” Ke Loo said, bowing from the waist.
“You’ll only be wasting your time.”
Ke Loo made no reply, but smiled his mysterious smile, and with a final nod turned and went out. In a moment they heard him shouting to his bearers as they started off along the twisting street.
“Joshua, you should rest,” Sarah said.
“I’m fine, I say,” the reverend insisted, glowering at the door through which the mandarin had disappeared. After a moment he gave a sigh, and turned his attention to the two women.
“I suppose this is as good a time as any to tell you,” he said. “I’ve decided it’s time we traveled down to the coast, to Shanghai. We’ll get our things ready tonight, and start out in the morning.”
“The natives,” Sarah started to say.
“It’s got nothing to do with that nonsense,” he said, a trifle too emphatically. “There are things I need, some books I ordered, for one. And I rather thought you’d both welcome a change of scene. Of course, if you’d rather stay here....”
“No,” Sarah said quickly. “No, we’ll be ready in the morning.”
“We’ll leave at dawn, then,” he said. “Might as well get an early start.” He went out of the room. It seemed to Lydia that his gait was a trifle unsteady.
* * * * * * *
They did not leave at dawn, however. Hours before that, Lydia was awakened by her mother.
“Your father’s been taken ill,” she said, shaking Lydia from her sleep.
“Is it—is it the cholera?”
“I’m afraid so.”
What followed was like a nightmare that seemed to go on and on without end. For three days Reverend Holt’s condition worsened, while his wife and daughter ministered to him as best they could, and listened in dread to every sound from without. They could not know what turn outside events had taken.
Sarah dismissed the servants, fearful that one of them might let it be known that the master was dying, so the two women were left unprotected. Women did not count for much in China, and it was not unlikely that someone might try to take advantage, particularly in view of the anti-white uproar sweeping the country.
To add to their fears, Ke Loo returned once more to press his suit.
“My husband is away at the moment,” Sarah said. The reverend had the misfortune to utter a low moan just then. Ke Loo’s eyes slid in the direction of the bedroom.
“One of the servants,” Sarah said, alarmed.
Ke Loo left, but Sarah was certain he would return. It was horrible; she hadn’t an ounce of courage of her own. She had always journeyed without question or hesitation anywhere her husband had chosen to go, but in doing so she had only relied upon her utter confidence in him and upon his own lack of fear. To travel with him into the interior of China had seemed no more alarming than any of a dozen other trips they had taken, without any harm befalling them.
To be left in China on her own was terrifying beyond belief. If only they were in Shanghai, or Hong Kong, somewhere where there were other Americans or English; but she had no idea even how to arrange their transport to one of those places. Her husband had never allowed her to trouble herself with such matters. She spoke not a word of Chinese, though Lydia had learned a smattering of the language. At any rate, it was unthinkable that two women could travel across the Chinese mainland without a man’s escort. Yet they surely could not stay here, either.
Joshua Holt died on the third day of his illness. Lydia came into the room to find her mother weeping softly. Her father’s eyes, looking ghastly in his pale, sunken face, stared unseeingly upward. Though it filled her with horror, Lydia forced herself to close his eyes.
“What shall we do?” she asked her mother. Sarah shook her head helplessly.
I shall have to be strong, Lydia thought suddenly, for both of us.
It