Nightsong. V.J. Banis
the same time, he couldn’t very well go and leave her here, on her own. Sooner or later the Chinese would get around to this house, if they were killing whites. He’d been literally buying time, paying outrageous bribes to those Chinese with whom he’d been in contact, but that couldn’t last forever, and his supply of cash was running low.
He was startled by a feeble tugging at his sleeve, and he looked down to find Sarah trying to get his attention.
“You should sleep, Mrs. Holt,” he started to say, but she shook her head impatiently and gestured for him to bend closer.
“You must—help my daughter, please,” she whispered when he knelt by the couch.
“I’ll do my best for both of you,” he said.
She shook her head again. “No, don’t mind about me, I shall be glad to join my husband—soon, I think—but I want my daughter to live—I beg you....” Her eyes closed, and her hand dropped from his sleeve.
* * * * * * *
It was a relief to be out of her wet clothes. Dressed in the silk robe, Lydia paused to look at the wall of his bedroom.
Some artist, perhaps centuries before, had done a painting on the wall. There was the branch of a plum tree, in full blossom, and a bird on the branch, singing, and there in the background the slightest curved rim of the moon, as if it had just wafted above the horizon. It was little more than a few deft strokes of the brush, in the manner of the Chinese artists, and yet it seemed to capture the scene in all its eloquence. She felt she had only to listen to hear the nightingale’s song to the moon, and she almost fancied she could catch the fragrant scent of the pale blossoms.
It was all the more impressive because in every other respect the house, like most of those she had seen in China, was little more than a hovel, with its floor of hard-packed earth and its whitewashed walls.
She was so absorbed in contemplating the scene that she was not aware that Peter MacNair had walked into the room, until he spoke.
“It’s lovely, isn’t it,” he said, coming to stand behind her. “I call it ‘night song’.”
“Who painted it, do you know?” she asked.
“And why did he paint it here, in this filthy shack, you mean? I’m afraid I don’t have the answer to either question, but to me it seems to symbolize China, the beauty and the filth, the elegance and the shabbiness, all inseparable. They see no contradiction. A Scotchman, or an American, living in this hovel, would have put the same time to use building a fence, or an outbuilding, or clearing a field. A Chinaman would paint that, and consider the time well spent.”
“You sound as if you love China,” she said, surprised.
“I do,” he said. “And despise her too. But I can never know her. No man can, least of all an outsider. She’s a moonbeam clothed in veils, like one of those crystals that is clear one moment and clouded the next, you know not how.”
His voice had gone husky, as if he spoke of a woman with whom he was passionately involved, and for the moment he seemed to have forgotten that she was there.
Of a sudden, Lydia was aware of his closeness, of the vibrant throb of his voice. His scent was in the room, the scent of pipe tobacco and whisky, and something else, too, that she knew instinctively was carnal, though she had never smelled it before. She felt a strange warmth coursing through her veins, at once thrilling and frightening. It was like being sucked into a vortex, dreading it and yet being drawn irresistibly forward.
Her nerves atingle, she sought distraction, glancing quickly about the room. “And these,” she said, picking up one of several jars atop the wooden dresser; she opened it and found it filled with rice powder. “Are these part of the mystery of China too, or is there some more prosaic reason for them?”
He laughed, breaking the spell that had fallen briefly upon them.
“Here, what do you think of this,” he said, unscrewing another container and offering it to her. It was perfume. At first she could not quite place it, though it was familiar; then she knew. She had smelled it in the streets when the sedan chairs went by, carrying the singsong girls.
“They’re cosmetics,” she said, surprised.
“They’re worth a fortune back in the States,” he said. “American women are just getting interested in this sort of thing, though they’re well behind their European cousins.”
“Is this what you came to China for?”
“Partly. Though I had hopes of learning some of the Empress’s secrets.”
“The Dowager Empress? Are these her perfumes and lotions?”
“I’m afraid not,” he sighed. “No one’s allowed to use her personal blends except herself, nor even know the formulas. I spent weeks in Peking trying to bribe someone into bringing me samples, at least, with no success. These are only the ones used by the prost—professional women throughout the country, but at that they’re very good. I’m taking them back as samples. I’ll have chemists analyze them, imitate them, and the American women will snatch them up as fast as they’re bottled. There’s nothing even close to them available now.”
She sniffed the perfume again. It was heady, smelling of lotus and the dark green shade of the bamboo forest. She could well believe that women would buy such a scent, if it could be duplicated.
“And the Empress’s perfume, it’s different from this?”
“There’s a secret scent,” he said. “I encountered it just once—a serving girl brought a scarf that had been dabbed lightly with it—it’s intoxicating. No man could resist it, or the woman wearing it. It’s one of the great perfumes, perhaps the greatest. And only one woman in the world wears it.”
“But how did you come to be involved in this sort of thing?”
“My father was a chemist in Edinburgh. Among other things, he bottled a scent much favored by the local ladies. When I came to America, I worked for a time at a place where they made cosmetics. I saw how much money they were making for third-rate items. Then one night I had an encounter with a Chinese girl, and the scent she was wearing intrigued me. I asked her about it, and she told me it had come from China. She was unhappy because it was almost gone, and she said there was nothing in America to equal the lotions and powders and scents that were commonplace here. The more I thought about it, the more convinced I became that if I could obtain a variety of these creams and lotions, I could start my own company and make a fortune. I begged and borrowed what money I could and, well, here I am. Now all I’ve got to do is get back to San Francisco alive.”
His last words brought home once again to Lydia the seriousness of her plight. Wearily she pushed her still damp hair back from her face.
“Sorry,” he said, seeing the gesture. “Here I am rattling on about creams and scents and powders, and you must be exhausted.”
“I’d better go see about Mama,” she said, moving as if to go past him.
“She’s all right,” he said. “She was sleeping when I left her.”
He hadn’t meant to take her in his arms, but she looked so young and frail and helpless that he instinctively put out a hand. The next moment, without his knowing quite how it had happened, he was holding her to him, her head against his chest. He felt the warmth of her tears as she began to cry again, noiselessly.
“It’s all right,” he comforted her, holding her close.
“I’m so frightened,” she said, her words muffled. “I don’t want to die.”
“I’ll see that you don’t, no matter what else,” he said.
After a moment her tears stopped, but neither of them moved to end their embrace. For the first time, it dawned on him that perhaps she wasn’t quite such a child as he had thought. Neither of them wore anything more than the thin silk robes,