“They tell me that your friend has got his house finished and furnished,” he said, almost jovially. “I suppose we shall be putting up the banns for you, Joan? Where would you like to be married?”
She looked at him aghast.
She had not associated the repairs to the Slaters’ Cottage with her own matrimonial adventure. In truth, she had not seen Clifford Lynne since that afternoon he brought her back from London. Joan had the uncomfortable feeling that she had been rather left in the air; she was suffering a little from the reaction of Clifford Lynne’s violent proposal. The period of calm which had followed his eruption into her life was in the nature of an anti-climax; she remembered once a great politician who had come to the town where she had spent her childhood, and who had been welcomed with bands and banners; just as he was about to commence his speech expressing his thanks for the welcome, a fire had broken out in an adjacent street, and his audience had melted away, leaving him forlorn and wholly unimportant compared with the conflagration which had suddenly gripped the fickle interest of his admirers. She could sympathize with him.
“I haven’t seen Mr Lynne,” she said. “And as to marriage. I’m not so sure that he was serious.”
Mr Narth’s manner changed.
“Not serious? Rubbish!” he exploded. “Of course he’s serious! The whole thing is arranged. I must talk to him and fix a date. You shall be married at Sunningdale Church, and Letty and Mabel shall be your bridesmaids. In fact, I think you girls had better go up to town and see about your clothes. It had better be a quiet wedding, with as few guests as possible. You never know what this fellow will do; he’s such a wild harum-scarum that is likely as not he will come with an escort of niggers! You had a chat with him, didn’t you, when you came back from the—er—office?”
This was the first allusion he had made for some days to the lunch.
“Didn’t he tell you what was his salary?”
“No,” said Joan.
“Really, father,” said Mabel, spreading butter on her toast, “isn’t his salary a matter rather dependent on you? Of course we shall have to keep him on: it would be a dirty trick to let Joan marry him and then throw him out; but I really think he should be spoken to—his manner is most disrespectful.”
“And his language is appalling,” said Letty. “Do you remember, father, what he said?”
“‘Hell’s bells,’” mused Mr Narth. “It is a new expression to me. I should imagine that he had a contract with poor Joe Bray, so the question of his salary may not arise for some time. Joe was a very generous man and he is certain to have given this fellow enough to live on, so you need have no qualms on the subject, my dear.”
“I haven’t,” said Joan.
“Why he has repaired the Slaters’ Cottage so extravagantly, I don’t know,” Stephen continued. “He surely doesn’t expect that I shall allow him to stay here! A manager’s place is—er—near the business he manages. Of course, I don’t mind giving him a few months’ leave—that is usual, I believe—but he will find it difficult to sell the cottage for anything like the cost of the repairs.”
He glanced at his watch, rubbed his mouth vigorously with his serviette and got up from the table, and with his departure to town events at Sunni Lodge looked as though they would settle down to normal. But he had not been gone more than two hours when his car came up the drive and the chauffeur brought in a note to Joan, who was deep in her household accounts. Wonderingly she opened the letter.
Dear Joan,—Can you come up straight away? I want to see you. I shall be at Peking House.
“Where is Peking House, Jones?” asked the girl.
The man looked at her oddly.
“It’s near the Tower, miss,” he said, “not a quarter of a mile from Mr Narth’s office.”
Letty and her sister were in the village, and, putting on her hat, the girl entered the waiting car. At the far end of Eastcheap, and within sight of that grim old pile that William the Conqueror had built upon Saxon foundations, was a new and handsome stone-fronted building that differed from its neighbours in that it towered six stories above the tallest. A broad flight of marble steps led up to the handsome portico and the marble-lined hall. But its real difference, to the girl, was the character and nationality of its occupants. A stalwart Chinese janitor in a perfectly-fitting uniform ushered her into a lift that was worked by another Chinaman, and as the lift ascended she saw that the marble corridors were alive with little yellow men hurrying from room to room. When she got out of the lift she saw, through a door, a large room where, behind serried lines of desks, sat row upon row of spectacled young Chinamen busy with ink, brush and paper.
“Queer, isn’t it?” The Cockney clerk who had been her companion in the lift grinned as they stepped out. “It’s the only place in the City of London run entirely by Chinks! Peking Enterprise Corporation—heard of it?”
“I’m afraid I haven’t,” confessed the girl with a smile.
“There isn’t a white clerk in the building,” said the young man disgustedly; “and the girl typists—my God! you ought to see some of their faces!”
The lift man was waiting impatiently.
“Come along, miss,” he said, almost peremptorily, she thought, and followed him down the corridor to the end, where he opened a door marked ‘Private.’ A yellow-faced girl rose from her typist’s chair.
“You Mrs Bray?” she asked, with the awkwardness of one who was not versed in the language she was speaking, and, when Joan nodded, the girl opened a second door. “You go in,” she said, in the same tone of command that Joan had noticed in the liftman.
The first impression the girl had as she entered the room was that she had strayed by mistake into a musical comedy palace. The luxury of marble and satin, of cut glass and mossy carpet, the evidence of vulgar wealth in gilded furniture and silken tapestry, struck her dumb. The high ceiling was crossed with scarlet rafters on which golden Chinese characters had been superimposed in relief. The variety of colours almost blinded her; the only tasteful thing in the room was a great stained-glass window facing her. Beneath this, at a table which seemed to have been carved from solid ebony, sat Fing-Su, who rose as she appeared and came mincingly across the room to greet her.
“Your uncle will be here in a few moments, my dear Miss Bray,” he said. “Pray be seated.”
He pushed forward something that was not quite as big as a settee, yet was more imposing than the average throne.
“I feel rather like the Queen of Sheba on a visit to Solomon,” she said, amusement for the moment quietening her unease.
He bowed low. Evidently he took this as a compliment.
“You are indeed more beautiful than the Queen of Sheba, and more worthy of Sehlomon, the son of David. Had I the wealth of Sennacherib, the King of Ashkelon, I would give you the spoils of Azur and Bethdacon.”
She was taken aback by the extravagance of his speech.
“Mr Narth is coming?” she asked.
He looked at her, biting his thin lower lip thoughtfully.
“No, he is not coming,” he said. “The truth is, Miss Bray, that he thought it advisable that I should see you in reference to our friend Lynne. The last time we met, if you will remember, there was rather an awkward scene, not of my seeking. Mr Lynne has conceived an unkindly sentiment for me which is largely due to my race. I will not say ‘unfortunate race,’” he went on, “because I do not regard ours as in any way inferior to yours. We are human; we have been for thousands of years on a higher intellectual level. And Mr Lynne has no reason to dislike us. My revered father”—he made an almost imperceptible genuflexion—“did much to found the fortune of the Yun Nan Syndicate—indeed, but for his help the concessions would never have been secured and certainly never worked.”