China Edward Rutherfurd (essential reading .txt) 📖

“Yes. These are the lessons that missionaries learn.”

Nio was silent for a few moments. “You should not stay here,” he finally said.

“Why?”

“You argue too much. But I will arrange a safe conduct for you.”

“When must I leave?” Cecil asked.

“Today.”

“Can I go up the Purple Mountain? It looks beautiful.”

“No.” Nio walked a few paces in silence. “I have a message for you. From the Heavenly King.”

“I am listening.”

“Tell your rulers that we worship the One True God. The Manchu are idolaters and they will never give you what you want. You should help us destroy them. That is all.”

Cecil Whiteparish left that afternoon with a guard of six horsemen. His parting from Nio was polite. Perhaps each of them wanted to show more warmth. Cecil knew that he did; and he thought the same was true of Nio, but it was hard to tell.

◦

It was the second of December when John Trader reached Hong Kong. He didn’t plan to stay there long. He meant to see Cecil Whiteparish before he left, of course. Indeed, he had already prepared a short note to make the missionary aware of his presence.

But since he bumped into him on the dock, while the men were still unloading his traveling trunks, there was no need to send it.

“Cousin John!” cried Whiteparish. “Welcome back. I didn’t know you were coming.”

“I’ve written you a note to tell you. But here you are, which is better.”

“It’s been more than a year. Did you find your estate in Scotland?”

“We did. Just twenty miles from the Lomond estate, where the general and my mother-in-law rent the dower house now. My wife is overjoyed. And the children love the place.”

“And you?”

“It’s everything I always dreamed of.”

“You’ll reside in Scotland?”

“Yes.” Trader nodded. “As you may know, I bought out the Odstocks a while ago. Now I’ve sold two-thirds of the firm, which will continue here under new partners. I’m retaining a third for myself, and I shall manage the business in Britain.”

“You’ll still have to go to London, I suppose.”

“Every so often. But with the new railway, one can make the entire journey from Glasgow to London in only twelve and a half hours. That’s four hundred miles. Thirty-two miles an hour!”

“Astounding. Unimaginable when we were boys.” Whiteparish shook his head in wonderment. “So you’ve come to sell your house in Hong Kong.”

“I have.”

“Will you stay there meanwhile?”

“No. It’s too much trouble. I have lodgings in the lower town.” He glanced up towards the Peak above. “My wife never liked it up there.”

“She wasn’t alone,” Whiteparish agreed. “Almost all the big merchants that built places up on the Peak seem to have had problems—cracking walls, leaking roofs…something’s always going wrong.”

“She was quite right to take the children back to Macao. Young children and all that.”

“She always came here to keep you company, though.”

“A week every month, without fail. She was very good about that.”

“We were glad to see her, too. She took a great interest in the mission. As did you, of course,” Cecil added quickly.

Trader gave a wry smile. My wife’s enthusiasm, he thought, and my money. But he didn’t say so.

Cecil Whiteparish had his own views about Agnes Trader. In the early days of her marriage, when she and John had lived in their charming hillside villa on Macao, they’d certainly been busy. John was making a fortune. Agnes gave birth to four children. And he himself had been busy enough with his missionary work. A couple of times a year, however, they’d ask him up to the villa for dinner, and these were always pleasant occasions.

Gradually, however, the British community was moving across to Hong Kong. As yet, the place was more spartan and lacked the Mediterranean charm of Macao. He’d set up the mission there. Some time afterwards, the Trader family had followed.

And Agnes hadn’t liked Hong Kong. Cecil could understand, but he thought that for John’s sake she should have shown it less. And when she’d taken the children back to Macao, he’d felt disappointed in her. She might have been scrupulous about spending a week with her husband each month, but when one considered that John often had to be away at the factories in Canton, it had seemed to Cecil that his cousin was getting a raw deal.

Whenever she was in Hong Kong, Agnes made a point of visiting the mission, sometimes having quite long conversations with him, and ensuring that John made a handsome contribution to the mission’s work each year. This was all very well, and he was grateful for the money, of course. But he still thought privately that she could have behaved better.

She’d got what she wanted, anyway. The estate in Scotland.

“Agnes has become very religious recently,” Trader suddenly said.

“Indeed?” Whiteparish wasn’t sure how to respond. “By the way,” he remarked, “I am about to get married myself. Next week, in fact. Would you come to my wedding?”

“My dear fellow!” Trader shook him by the hand. “How splendid. I had no idea.”

“It happened rather suddenly.”

“You were kind enough to come to my wedding. I certainly wouldn’t miss yours.”

Whiteparish glanced towards the ship and saw two men bringing Trader’s bags.

“Will you dine with me tomorrow?” he asked. “Simple fare. But I can introduce you to my fiancée.”

“Delighted,” said John Trader. And indeed, he had to admit, he was quite curious to see the lady.

—

He liked her at once. How could he not? After all, he thought, if someone is so obviously good and at the same time matter-of-fact and friendly, one would have to be a strange kind of person to dislike them.

He also noticed, with amusement, that this neat little Scottish lady had already made some changes to Cecil’s spartan quarters near the mission chapel. A vase of flowers, a perfectly laid table: small signs of a woman’s hand that his bachelor cousin would probably never have thought of.

He wondered, though, how much Cecil had told her about him.

He didn’t imagine she approved of his business