Chapter 7

“I don’t know quite,” said Tu, “where we are to put your two men. But, by-the-bye,” he added, as the thought struck him, “did you really travel all the way in the company of these two men only?”

“O Tu,” said Jasmine, laughing, “I have something else to confess to you.”

“What! another lover?” said Tu, affecting horror and surprise.

“No; not another lover, but another woman. The short, stout one is a woman, and came as my maid. She is the wife of ‘The Dragon.’”

“Well, now have you told me all? For I am getting so confused about the people you have transformed from women to men, that I shall have doubts about my own sex next.”

“Yes, Tu, dear; now you know all,” said Jasmine, laughing. But not all the good news which was in store for him, for scarcely had Jasmine done speaking when a letter arrived from his friend in the Board of War, who wrote to say that he had succeeded in getting the military intendant of Mienchu transferred to a post in the province of Kwangsi, and that the departure of this noxious official would mean the release of the colonel, as he alone was the colonel’s accuser. This news added one more chord of joy which had been making harmony in Jasmine’s heart for some hours, and readily she agreed with Tu that they should set off homeward on the following morning.

With no such adventure as that which had attended Jasmine’s journey to the capital, they reached Mienchu, and, to their delight, were received by the colonel in his own yamun. After congratulating him on his release, which Jasmine took care he should understand was due entirely to Tu’s exertions, she gave him a full account of her various experiences on the road and at the capital.

“It is like a story out of a book of marvels,” said her father, “and even now you have not exhausted all the necessary explanations. For, since my release, your friend Wei has been here to ask for my daughter in marriage. From some questions I put to him, he is evidently unaware that you are my only daughter, and I therefore put him off and told him to wait until you returned. He is in a very impatient state, and, no doubt, will be over shortly.”

Nor was the colonel wrong, for almost immediately Wei was announced, who, after expressing the genuine pleasure he felt at seeing Jasmine again, began at once on the subject which filled his mind.

“I am so glad,” he said, “to have this opportunity of asking you to explain matters. At present I am completely nonplussed. On my return from Peking I inquired of one of your father’s servants about his daughter. ‘He has not got one,’ quoth the man. I went to another, and he said, ‘You mean the “young noble,” I suppose.’ ‘No, I don’t,’ I said; ‘I mean his sister.’ ‘Well, that is the only daughter I know of,’ said he. Then I went to your father, and all I could get out of him was, ‘Wait until the “young noble” comes home.’ Please tell me what all this means.”

“Your great desire is to marry a beautiful and accomplished girl, is it not?” said Jasmine.

“That certainly is my wish,” said Wei.

“Well then,” said Jasmine, “I can assure you that your betrothal present is in the hand of such a one, and a girl whom to look at is to love.”

“That may be,” said Wei, “But my wish is to marry your sister.”

“Will you go and talk to Tu about it?” said Jasmine, who felt that the subject was becoming too difficult for her, and whose confidence in Tu’s wisdom was unbounded, “and he will explain it all to you.”

Even Tu, however, found it somewhat difficult to explain Jasmine’s sphinx-like mysteries, and on certain points Wei showed a disposition to be anything but satisfied. Jasmine’s engagement to Tu implied his rejection, and he was disposed to be splenetic and disagreeable about it. His pride was touched, and in his irritation he was inclined to impute treachery to his friend and deceit to Jasmine. To the first charge Tu had a ready answer, but the second was all the more annoying because there was some truth in it. However, Tu was not in the humour to quarrel, and being determined to seek peace and ensue it, he overlooked Wei’s innuendos and made out the best case he could for his bride. On Miss King’s beauty, virtues, and ability he enlarged with a wealth of diction and power of imagination which astonished himself, and Jasmine also, to whom he afterward repeated the conversation. “Why, Tu, dear,” said that artless maiden, “how can you know all this about Miss King? You have never seen her, and I am sure I never told you half of all this.”

“Don’t ask questions,” said the enraptured Tu. “Let it be enough for you to know that Wei is as eager for the possession of Miss King as he was for your sister, and that he has promised to be my best man at our wedding to-morrow.”

And Wei was as good as his word. With every regard to ceremony and ancient usage, the marriage of Tu and Jasmine was celebrated in the presence of relatives and friends, who, attracted by the novelty of the antecedent circumstances, came from all parts of the country to witness the nuptials. By Tu’s especial instructions also a prominence was allowed to Wei, which gratified his vanity and smoothed down the ruffled feathers of his conceit.

Jasmine thought that no time should be lost in reducing Miss King to the same spirit of acquiescence to which Wei had been brought, and on the evening of her wedding-day she broached the subject to Tu.

“I shall not feel, Tu, dear,” she said, “that I have gained absolution for my many deceptions until that very forward Miss King has been talked over into marrying Wei; and I insist, therefore,” she added, with an amount of hesitancy which reduced the demand to the level of a plaintive appeal, “that we start to-morrow for Ch’engtu to see the young woman.”

“Ho! ho!” replied Tu, intensely amused at her attempted bravado. “These are brave words, and I suppose that I must humbly register your decrees.”

“O Tu, you know what I mean. You know that, like a child who takes a delight in conquering toy armies, I love to fancy that I can command so strong a man as you are. But, Tu, if you knew how absolutely I rely on your judgment, you would humour my folly and say yes.”

There was a subtle incense of love and flattery about this appeal which, backed as it was by a look of tenderness and beauty, made it irresistible; and the arrangements for the journey were made in strict accordance with Jasmine’s wishes.

On arriving at the inn which was so full of chastening memories to Jasmine, Tu sent his card to Mr. King, who, flattered by the attention paid him by so eminent a scholar, cordially invited Tu to his house.

“To what,” he said, as Tu, responding to his invitation, entered his reception-hall, “am I to attribute the honour of receiving your illustrious steps in my mean apartments?”

“I have heard,” said Tu, “that the beautiful Miss King is your Excellency’s cousin, and having a friend who is desirous of gaining her hand, I have come to plead on his behalf.”

“I regret to say,” replied King, “that your Excellency has come too late, as she has already received an engagement token from a Mr. Wen, who passed here lately on his way to Peking.”

“Mr. Wen is a friend of mine also,” said Tu, “and it was because I knew that his troth was already plighted that I ventured to come on behalf of him of whom I have spoken.”

“Mr. Wen,” said King, “is a gentleman and a scholar, and having given a betrothal present, he is certain to communicate with us direct in case of any difficulty.”

“Will you, old gentleman,” [a term of respect] said Tu, producing the lines which Miss King had sent Jasmine, “just cast your eyes over these verses, written to Wen by your cousin? Feeling most regretfully that he was unable to fulfil his engagement, Wen gave these to me as a testimony of the truth of what I now tell you.”

King took the paper handed him by Tu, and recognised at a glance his cousin’s handwriting.

“Alas!” he said, “Mr Wen told us he was engaged, but, not believing him, I urged him to consent to marry my cousin. If you will excuse me, sir,” he added, “I will consult with the lady as to what should be done.”

After a short absence he returned.

“My cousin is of the opinion,” he said, “that she cannot enter into any new engagement until Mr. Wen has come here himself and received back the betrothal present which he gave her on parting.”

“I dare not deceive you, old gentleman, and will tell you at once that that betrothal present was not Wen’s but was my unworthy friend Wei’s, and came into Wen’s possession in a way that I need not now explain.”

“Still,” said King, “my cousin thinks Mr. Wen should present himself here in person and tell his own story; and I must say that I am of her opinion.”

“It is quite impossible that Mr. Wen should return here,” replied Tu; “but my ‘stupid thorn’ [wife] is in the adjoining hostelry, and would be most happy to explain fully to Miss King Wen’s entire inability to play the part of a husband to her.”

“If your honourable consort would meet my cousin, she, I am sure, will be glad to talk the matter over with her.”

With Tu’s permission, Miss King’s maid was sent to the inn to invite Jasmine to call on her mistress. The maid, who was the same who had acted as Miss King’s messenger on the former occasion, glanced long and earnestly at Jasmine. Her features were familiar to her, but she could not associate them with any lady of her acquaintance. As she conducted her to Miss King’s apartments, she watched her stealthily, and became more and more puzzled by her appearance. Miss King received her with civility, and after exchanging wishes that each might be granted ten thousand blessings, Jasmine said, smiling:

“Do you recognise Mr. Wen?”

Miss King looked at her, and seeing in her a likeness to her beloved, said:

“What relation are you to him, lady?”

“I am his very self!” said Jasmine.

Miss King opened her eyes wide at this startling announcement, and gazed earnestly at her.

“_Haiyah!_” cried her maid, clapping her hands, “I thought there was a wonderful likeness between the lady and Mr. Wen. But who would have thought that she was he?”

“But what made you disguise yourself in that fashion?” asked Miss King, in an abashed and somewhat vexed tone.

“My father was in difficulties,” said Jasmine, “and as it was necessary that I should go to Peking to plead for him, I dressed as a man for the convenience of travel. You will remember that in the first instance I declined your flattering overtures, but when I found that you persisted in your proposal, not being able to explain the truth, I thought the best thing to do was to hand you my friend’s betrothal present which I had with me, intending to return and explain matters. And you will admit that in one thing I was truthful.”

“What was that?” asked the maid.

“Why,” answered Jasmine, “I said that if I did not marry your lady I would never marry any woman.”

“Well, yes,” said the maid, laughing, “you have kept your faith royally there.”

“The friend I speak of,” continued Jasmine, “has now taken his doctor’s degree, and this stupid husband and wife have come from Mienchu to make you a proposal on his behalf.”

Miss King was not one who could readily take in an entirely new and startling idea, and she sat with a half-dazed look, staring at Jasmine without uttering a word. If it had not been for the maid, the conversation would have ceased; but that young woman was determined to probe the matter to the bottom.

“You have not told us,” she said, “the gentleman’s name. And will you explain why you call him your friend? How could you be on terms of friendship with him?”

“From my childhood,” said Jasmine, “I have always dressed as a boy. I went to a boy’s school--”

“_Haiyah!_” interjected the maid.

“And afterward I joined my husband and this gentleman, Mr. Wei, in a reading-party.”

“Didn’t they discover your secret?”

“No.”

“Never?”

“Never.”

“That’s odd,” said the maid. “But will you tell us something about this Mr. Wei?”

Upon this, Jasmine launched out in a glowing eulogy upon her friend. She expatiated with fervour on his youth, good looks, learning, and prospects, and with such effect did she speak that Miss King, who began to take in the situation, ended by accepting cordially Jasmine’s proposal.

“And now, lady, you must stay and dine with me,” said Miss King, when the bargain was struck, “while my cousin entertains your husband in the hall.”

At this meal the beginning of a friendship was formed between the two ladies which lasted ever afterward, though it was somewhat unevenly balanced. Jasmine’s stronger nature felt compassion mingled with liking for the pretty doll-like Miss King, while the young lady entertained the profoundest admiration for her guest.

There was nothing to delay the fulfilment of the engagement thus happily arranged, and at the next full moon Miss King had an opportunity of comparing her bridegroom with the picture which Jasmine had drawn of him.

Scholars are plentiful in China, but it was plainly impossible that men of such distinguished learning as Tu and Wei should be left among the unemployed, and almost immediately after their marriage they were appointed to important posts in the empire. Tu rose rapidly to the highest rank, and died, at a good old age, viceroy of the metropolitan province and senior guardian to the heir apparent. Wei was not so supremely fortunate, but then, as Tu used to say, “he had not a Jasmine to help him.”

THE REVENGE OF HER RACE, By Mary Beaumont

The low hedge, where the creepers climbed, divided the lawn and its magnificent Wellingtonias from the meadow. There was little grass to be seen, for it was at this time one vast profusion of delicate ixias of every bright and tender shade.

The evening was still, and the air heavy with scent. In a room opening upon the veranda wreathed with white-and-scarlet passion-flowers, where she could see the garden and the meadow, and, beyond all, the Mountain Beautiful, lay a sick woman. Her dark face was lovely as an autumn leaf is lovely--hectic with the passing life. Her eyes wandered to the upper snows of the mountain, from time to time resting upon the brown-haired English girl who sat on a low stool by her side, holding the frail hand in her cool, firm clasp.

The invalid was speaking; her voice was curiously sweet, and there was a peculiarity about the “s,” and an occasional turn of the sentence, which told the listener that her English was an acquired language.

“I am glad he is not here,” she said slowly. “I do not want him to have pain.”

“But perhaps, Mrs. Denison, you will be much better in a day or two, and able to welcome him when he comes back.”

“No, I shall not be here when he comes back, and it is just as it should be. I asked him to turn round as he left the garden, and I could see him, oh, so well! He looked kind and so beautiful, and he waved to me his hand. Now he will come back, and he will be sad. He did not want to leave me, but the governor sent for him. He will be sad, and he will remember that I loved him, and some day he will be glad again.” She smiled into the troubled face near her.

The girl stroked the thick dark hair lovingly.

“Don’t,” she implored; “it hurts me. You are better to-night, and the children are coming in.” Mrs. Denison closed her eyes, and with her left hand she covered her face.

“No, not the children,” she whispered, “not my darlings. I cannot bear it. I must see them no more.” She pressed her companion’s hand with a sudden close pressure. “But you will help them, Alice; you will make them English like you--like him. We will not pretend to-night; it is not long that I shall speak to you. I ask you to promise me to help them to be English.”

“Dear,” the girl urged, “they are such a delicious mixture of England and New Zealand--prettier, sweeter than any mere English child could ever be. They are enchanting.”

But into the dying woman’s eyes leaped an eager flame.

“They must all be English, no Maori!” she cried. A violent fit of coughing interrupted her, and when the paroxysm was over she was too exhausted to speak. The English nurse, Mrs. Bentley, an elderly Yorkshire woman, who had been with Mrs. Denison since her first baby came six years ago, and who had, in fact, been Horace Denison’s own nurse-maid, came in and sent the agitated girl into the garden. “For you haven’t had a breath of fresh air to-day,” she said.

At the door Alice turned. The large eyes were resting upon her with an intent and solemn regard, in which lay a message. “What was it?” she thought, as she passed through the wide hall sweet with flowers. “She wanted to say something; I am sure she did. To-morrow I will ask her.” But before the morrow came she knew. Mrs. Dennison had said _good-bye_.

The funeral was over. Mr. Denison, who had looked unaccountably ill and weary for months, had been sent home by Mr. Danby for at least a year’s change and rest, and the doctor’s young sister had yielded to various pressure, and promised to stay with the children until he returned. There was every reason for it. She had loved and been loved by the gentle Maori mother; she delighted in the dark beauty and sweetness of the children. And they, on their side, clung to her as to an adorable fairy relative, dowered with love and the fruits of love--tales and new games and tender ways. Best reason of all, in a sense, Mrs. Bentley, that kind autocrat, entreated her to stay, “as the happiest thing for the children, and to please that poor lamb we laid yonder, who fair longed that you should! She was mightily taken up with you, Miss Danby, and you’ve your brother and his wife near, so that you won’t be lonesome, and if there’s aught I can do to make you comfortable, you’ve only to speak, miss.” As for Mr. Denison, he was pathetically grateful and relieved when Alice promised to remain.

After the evening romp and the last good-night, when the two elder children, Ben and Marie, called after her mother, Maritana, had given her their last injunctions to be sure and come for them “her very own self” on her way down to breakfast in the morning, she usually rode down between the cabbage-trees, down by the old rata, fired last autumn, away through the grasslands to the doctor’s house, a few miles nearer Rochester; or he and his wife would ride out to chat with her. But there were many evenings when she preferred the quiet of the airy house and the garden. The colonial life was new to her, everything had its charm, and in the colonies there is always a letter to write to those at home--the mail-bag is never satisfied. On such evenings it was her custom to cross the meadow to the copse of feathery trees beyond, where, sung to by the brook and the Tui, the children’s mother slept. And from the high presence of the Mountain Beautiful there fell a dew of peace.

She would often ask Mrs. Bentley to sit with her until bedtime, and revel in the shrewd north-country woman’s experiences, and her impressions of the new land to which love had brought her. Both women grew to have a sincere and trustful affection for each other, and one night, seven or eight months after Mrs. Denison’s death, Mrs. Bentley told a story which explained what had frequently puzzled Alice--the patient sorrow in Mrs. Denison’s eyes, and Mr. Denison’s harassed and dejected manner. “But for your goodness to the children,” said the old woman, “and the way that precious baby takes to you, I don’t think I should be willing to say what I am going to do, miss. Though my dear mistress wished it, and said, the very last night, ‘You must tell her all about it, some day, Nana,’--and I promised, to quiet her,--I don’t think I could bring myself to it if I hadn’t lived with you and known you.” And then the good nurse told her strange and moving tale.

She described how her master had come out young and careless-hearted to New Zealand in the service of the government, and how scandalised and angry his father and mother, the old Tory squire and his wife, had been to receive from him, after a year or two, letters brimming with a boyish love for his “beautiful Maori princess,” whom he described as having “the sweetest heart and the loveliest eyes in the world.” It gave them little comfort to hear that her father was one of the wealthiest Maoris in the island, and that, though but half civilised himself, he had had his daughter well educated in the “bishop’s” and other English schools. To them she was a savage. There was no threat of disinheritance, for there was nothing for him to inherit. There was little money, and the estate was entailed on the elder brother. But all that could be done to intimidate him was done, and in vain. Then silence fell between the parents and the son.

But one spring day came the news of a grandson, called Benjamin after his grandfather, and an urgent letter from their boy himself, enclosing a prettily and humbly worded note from the new strange daughter, begging for an English nurse. She told them that she had now no father and no mother, for they had died before the baby came, and if she might love her husband’s parents a little she would be glad.

“My lady read the letters to me herself,” Mrs. Bentley said; “I’d taken the housekeeper’s place a bit before, and she asked me to find her a sensible young woman. Well, I tried, but there wasn’t a girl in the place that was fit to nurse Master Horace’s child. And the end of it was, I came myself, for Master Horace had been like my own when he was a little lad. My lady pretended to be vexed with me, but the day I sailed she thanked me in words I never thought to hear from her, for she was a bit proud always.” The faithful servant’s voice trembled. She leaned back in her chair, and forgot for the moment the new house and the new duties. She was back again in the old nursery with the fair-haired child playing about her knees. But Alice’s face recalled her, and she continued the story. She had, she said, dreaded the meeting with her new mistress, and was prepared to find her “a sort of a heathen woman, who’d pull down Master Horace till he couldn’t call himself a gentleman.”

But when she saw the graceful creature who received her with gentle words and gestures of kindliness, and when she found her young master not only content, but happy, and when she took in her arms the laughing healthy baby, she felt--though she regretted its dark eyes and hair--more at home than she could have believed possible. The nurseries were so large and comfortable, and so much consideration was shown to her, that she confessed, “I should have been more ungrateful than a cat if I hadn’t settled comfortable.”

Then came nearly five happy years, during which time her young mistress had found a warm and secure place in the good Yorkshire heart. “She was that loving and that kind that Dick Burdas, the groom, used to say that he believed she was an angel as had took up with them dark folks, to show ‘em what an angel was like.” Mrs. Bentley went on: