China by Edward Rutherfurd (latest novels to read TXT) 📗

ago. I came here to see you, but your mother-in-law told me not to come again. Then she came to your parents’ house and told them not to let me near you.”

“Why did she do that?”

Although Nio, at fifteen, was only a year younger than Mei-Ling, she noticed that he still looked rather childish. He stared at the ground for a moment before confessing: “It may have been something that I said.”

“Why are you here, Little Brother?”

“I ran away.” He smiled, as if this were a thing to be proud of.

“Oh, Nio…” And she was about to ask for details when he indicated that there was someone watching from the gate behind her.

“Wait at the entrance to the village tomorrow morning,” she told him hurriedly. “I’ll try to come at first light. If I don’t, then come again the next day. Run now. Quick, quick.”

As Nio vanished behind the bamboo, she turned.

—

The oval-faced young woman stood by the gate. Willow was her sister-in-law. They called each other Sister, but all resemblance between them ended there.

Her name signified the graceful willow tree. Without her superior clothes, however, and the makeup she carefully applied to her face, she might have been thought rather plain. Willow came from a rich peasant family in the next county named Wan, and although she had married Mr. Lung’s elder son, the hamlet people politely referred to her, in the customary manner, as the Woman Wan. In keeping with the Wan family’s more leisured status, Willow’s feet had been bound when she was a girl, so that she now walked with the fashionable totter that marked her out from the poor peasants like Mei-Ling, whose family labored in the fields.

Willow was a little taller and affected a slight, elegant droop, as though bowing in a ladylike manner. Mei-Ling was small and stood straight on her natural feet, like the working peasant girl she was. She’d also been known, ever since she was a tiny child, as the prettiest girl in the hamlet. If her parents hadn’t been so poor, they might have bound her feet and dressed her in fine clothes and sold her to a merchant in one of the local towns as a junior wife or concubine. But pretty though she was, no one could ever have imagined she would marry a son of Mr. Lung.

In fact, most people thought the marriage was a scandal. Her mother-in-law had been furious.

There was one other difference between them. Willow had given her husband one child already—although, to his parents’ displeasure, it was only a girl. Fortunately, however, she was now five months pregnant again.

As they went back into the front courtyard of the Lung house, Willow looked at Mei-Ling languidly.

“I know who that was.”

“Oh?”

“That was your cousin, Nio. I know all about him. You call him Little Brother.” She nodded slowly. “Everyone in the house knows he’s here, but we weren’t allowed to tell you.”

“Not even my husband?”

“He wanted to. But he was afraid you might try to see Nio and get into trouble. He was trying to protect you. That’s all.”

“Are you going to tell Mother?”

“You can trust me, Sister.”

There was a small orange tree in the courtyard. As Willow reached it, she paused.

“Don’t try to see him, Sister. If Mother finds out, she’ll whip you. Or something worse.”

◦

It was early afternoon in Calcutta that day when a one-horse hackney cab, carrying two young Englishmen, made its way into the pleasant suburb of Chowringhee. The blinds were drawn fully down to keep out the harsh light—for although this was India’s cool season, it was still brighter and hotter than most summer days in Britain.

Charlie Farley was a cheerful fellow. At cricket, which he played well, he had enough height to command respect. His face was somewhat round and seemed to be getting rounder as his fair hair receded from his brow. “I’m not bald yet,” he’d cheerfully remark, “but I’ll be bald in time for tea.” His pale blue, bespectacled eyes were amiable, but by no means stupid. Not only at cricket, but in life generally, he played with a straight bat.

His friend John Trader was slightly taller, his hair the color of black olives, slim, rather handsome. But his intense cobalt-blue eyes didn’t look happy.

“This is all a terrible mistake,” he said in a gloomy voice.

“Nonsense, John,” said Charlie Farley. “I told the colonel you’d saved my life. He’ll be very civil to you.” A few moments later, the wheels of the cab crunched onto the gravel of a short driveway. “Now, we’ll just drop those letters with my aunt Harriet and be on our way. So try and look happy.”

His aunt’s house was a typical colonial bungalow of the better sort, with a veranda front and back, whose wide eaves were supported by stout ionic columns painted white. Its airy central hall gave onto a plain but gracious drawing room and a dining room, both furnished in English style. As the two men reached the door, Indian servants, spotlessly dressed in white, seemed to appear from every corner.

Aunt Harriet had obviously heard the cab because she was already in the hall. Charlie loved his aunt. Like his own mother, her sister, she had still kept the wavy golden hair of her youth. She had frank blue eyes, and she and her husband offered any newcomer to British Calcutta the easygoing hospitality that was the hallmark of colonial merchant life.

“What are you doing here, Charlie?” she demanded. “Shouldn’t you boys be working?”

“We have been working, Aunt Harriet,” said Charlie. “But a packet of letters arrived from England this morning, including one from Mother for you. Thought I’d bring it to you straightaway.”

Aunt Harriet smiled.

“And I suppose now you want to be fed?”

“Not at all. In fact, we can’t stop. We’re on our way to luncheon with Colonel Lomond.”

“Colonel Lomond? How very grand.”

“Father went to school with him, actually,” Charlie explained. “So I wangled an invitation for us to lunch at his club. Thought