Norton, Andre - Novel 23 Read online

  The White Jade Fox

  Contents

  1

  MENG-YOUTHFUL EXPERIENCE

  2

  CHUN-INITIAL DIFFICULTIES

  3

  LU- TREADING CAREFULLY

  4

  HENG-PERSEVERANCE

  5

  KO CHANGE

  6

  CHIEN-DIFFICULTY

  7

  KOU-MEETING

  8

  T'UNG JEN-COMPANIONSHIP

  9

  WEI CHI-NOT YET ACCOMPLISHED

  10

  SHIH HO-CRIMINAL PROCEEDINGS

  11

  K'UEI-OPPOSITION

  12

  HSU-WAITING

  13

  SUNG-CONFLICT

  14

  KUAI-RESOLUTION

  15

  YI-MOVE WITH FORTUNE

  16

  CHEN-SHOCK

  17

  HUAN DISPERSION

  18

  CHI CHI-COMPLETION

  1

  MENG-YOUTHFUL EXPERIENCE

  Saranna faced, not toward the port of Baltimore, as the bark drew in, but rather out to the freedom of the sea. All during the voyage from New York she had hardly been able to stand imprisonment in the fusty, cramped cabin. And now that she had good reason to go on deck, she drew in deep breaths of the salt air, as refreshing to her now as the lilac bush her mother had so treasured. She was a sea captain's daughter, and yet she had never before been to sea.

  She wondered, not for the first time, why Mother had never sailed so. Many captains took their wives; children were even born at sea, or in strange comers of the world where American clippers lay at anchor.

  Mother had had such a hunger for far places. Most of the books she had squeezed out pennies to buy, after Father's whaler had been lost, had been battered, second-hand copies of travelers' accounts. Saranna could see her now, rubbing fingertips over the satin-smooth finish of a lacquer box, telling Saranna of the distant and mysterious China from which it had come. China was a land of pure enchantment for Keturah Stowell's small daughter. Of course, white women were forbidden to go there. The Chinese forced captains' wives to disembark at Macao to wait out the ships' visits to Canton. But Mother's stories had been Saranna's choice over any fairy tales.

  "Miss Stowell—"

  Sararma was startled out of her memories, memories that ended in sad times which made her both grieve and feel angry at the fate Keturah Stowell had faced so bravely when the news of the loss of the Spindrift had come, after many weary months of no news at all. She turned reluctantly away from the rail and the freedom of the sea to face Mr. Sanders, her present traveling guardian—a stiff lawyer with whom she had only an uneasy surface acquaintance. (She sometimes wondered with a small touch of that independent surface levity, unbecoming to a penniless orphan, whether, if Mr. Sanders were ever to smile, his whole countenance might not break brittlely in two.)

  But he was not alone this time. The man with him was one Saranna had seen twice at a distance when she had dared, during their voyage, to climb to deck for a breath of air. He was much younger than the lawyer, with harsher features, his skin weathered as dark as a seaman's, though he wore the fine broadcloth of a gentleman.

  "May I present Captain Gerrad Fowke?" Mr. Sanders asked abruptly. He might be doing something of which he personally disapproved, but for which he had no choice. "Captain Fowke is a partner of your brother in the new Brazilian venture. He wishes to offer his services in any way—*'

  Saranna guessed that Mr. Sanders believed such an offer entirely unnecessary. But she inclined her head and the lawyer continued:

  "Miss Stowell, Captain Fowke—"

  The Captain bowed with a careless grace more in keeping with his clothing than the face above his smoothly tied stock. He moved far more easily with the swing of the ship than did Mr. Sanders.

  "I fear I must drop the 'Captain’ nowadays. Miss Stowell. Now I am a landsman. May I say that I am deeply sorry your introduction to Baltimore must be for such a sad reason—"

  He spoke more awkwardly than he moved, as if he found the conventional words of condolence hard to voice. Saranna knew sympathy with that, nor did she wish to be continually reminded by well-meaning strangers of her own present troubles. She replied in a voice she schooled to the proper decorous note:

  "You are most kind. Captain—Mr. Fowke."

  Captain suited him much better than the "Mr.” he asked for, she thought. But there was something in the very intent gaze with which he regarded her which made Saranna vaguely uneasy.

  Back home she had had little contact with men since her father's last sailing. Her time had been much occupied either with helping her mother in the work of a village seamstress, or in those studies her mother had been determined she was not to drop at their sudden change of fortune.

  To her there seemed a boldness in the way Mr. Fowke studied her, and she wondered if she should resent that inspection. If so, what was the proper look or gesture for her to make? Hastily she pulled her veil into place. And from the slight change in Mr. Sanders' expression she gathered that she was doing the right thing. But Saranna also regretted inwardly that it was so necessary to always do the right thing.

  Mr. Fowke was certainly not handsome, but there was a strength in his features which she recognized. Any man who had commanded a ship carried that air of authority and decision, as much a part of him as his well-tanned skin and those fine lines at the comers of his eyes which came from squinting into the wind.

  She also decided, taking advantage of the barrier of her veil to study him, that he might not be as old as she first had reckoned. There had been, and were, many captains in their early twenties walking their own quarterdecks. Boys of seafaring families went to sea as young as ten and battled an early path to command.

  Reluctantly, she looked now to the land where she had no wish to set foot. Even to see the port loom out of the distance stirred her resentment. Jethro—the half brother old enough to be her father, the brother she had never set eyes upon in her whole life—what right had he to arrange her future for her without so much as a "by-your-leave"?

  She had never learned the reason for the quarrel which had separated Captain Stowell and his only son. But Jethro had broken from the family mold of ship's officer to enter first one of the merchant companies in Canton, and then, eventually, settle in Baltimore, where he was now pioneering in the coffee trade with Brazil. He was an important man in Baltimore, Mr. Sanders had made that plain.

  Too important to come all the way to Sussex to collect his orphaned half sister; instead he had sent Mr. Sanders. She wondered now what they would have done if she had not been so bemused with grief and had flatly refused Jethro's order to come to him. Would they have extracted her from Pastor Willis' house bound and gagged like the unlucky heroine of one of those wild romances Mother had always laughed at? Saranna wished now she had spoken her own mind.

  Who wanted to go to Baltimore? She had no training in the airs and graces of society. In her secondhand black dress, cut down so hurriedly from her mother's best one, she must make a queer figure. She had already learned that from a careful, if surreptitious, inspection of what she had seen worn by the ladies of fashion in New York.

  And Jethro's home, Mr. Sanders had told her, had a lady of that ilk for mistress—her brother's widowed daughter Honora, returned after only two years of married life and the loss of her husband, to again assume rulership in her father's establishment.

  The closer the bark approached the wharf the more uneasy Saranna was. And when they were tied up and the gangplank run out that uneasiness increased. There was no one waiting to meet her. She knew Mr. Sanders was e
ager to be released from his charge of her, to be about pressing affairs of his own. Yet he could not leave her standing here, the shabby sea chest which served as her trunk at her feet.

  It was Mr. Fowke who came to their rescue. Behind him drew up a closed carriage of equal elegance to anything Saranna had glimpsed in New York.

  "The Triton," he nodded to the bark, "is ahead of time. But that is no reason to put a lady to any inconvenience. Ma'am, if you and Mr. Sanders will allow—"

  The lawyer welcomed this solution. At his nod Mr. Fowke himself set hand in the rope shng about the sea chest and almost tossed that, bulky as it was, to the coachman to be stowed aloft.

  Feeling that she was putting everyone to a great deal of trouble, Saranna perched tensely on the edge of the seat, refusing to take any pleasure in the comfort of a vehicle whose like she had never seen before as they drove through streets she hardly regarded, so eager was she to reach her destination and release her companions from their unwanted responsibility.

  The noise and confusion of those streets resembled the roar which had half-frightened her in New York. However, here she caught sight of black faces, new to one from the

  North. Now they were out of the dock area, coming into streets lined with trees, those trees already well into spring leaf.

  Their brougham pulled into a half-circle drive before one of the larger houses and Mr. Sanders went to knock at the door. Saranna, handed out by Mr. Fowke, managed a few words of thanks as he placed the sea chest on the stoop.

  When the door opened a black house servant faced Mr. Sanders. Saranna clutched her shawl, lifted her chin a fraction. She was, after all, at her brother's house. Shabby as she was, unwanted though she might really be, no one must guess her inner shrinking from the ordeal awaiting her in this imposing residence—she could not think of it as a "home."

  The servant bowed them in. Saranna had only a quick chance to say good-bye to Mr. Fowke, who did not seem disposed to accompany them, to her relief. The fewer eyes she had to face now the better. Reluctantly, she marched into the wide central hall.

  This interior, in spite of all which she had gleaned from Mr. Sanders concerning her brother's wealth and position, was so superior in elegance to the cottage where she and her mother had lived in the village of Sussex, the neat house they had had in happier days in Boston, that she was momentarily bewildered.

  There was such a wide spread of polished wood and burnished metal, rich color of rug and curtain, that she could not really distinguish any one object clearly in her first survey. She was not allowed time for a second.

  A woman was descending the graceful curve of the staircase, such a woman as instantly centered all attention upon herself.

  She had not the slightest hint of any warmth of welcome in her expression. In fact, her delicate features were a little set, as if she were about to engage in some disagreeable duty. Her above-average height, the meticulous arrangement of fair curls beneath a cap which was a confection of black lace and mauve ribbons, the wide, almost majestic swell of her mauve skirt, gave her a daunting air of presence.

  As this newcomer reached the polished floor of the hall, Saranna was thoroughly chilled by the level gaze which made mocking measurement of all her own shortcomings and defects of dress and person. Across the frilled collar framing the other's pointed chin the younger girl caught a glimpse of herself in a long wall mirror.

  She was as rusty black as a storm-bedraggled crow. Her features were a little too sharp, her cheekbones too clearly marked under the taut puU of her skin on which there was a dusting of freckles, faded only a little under the weaker suns of winter. She still had those shadows under her eyes, painted by weary nights of nursing, the drain of sorrow for a death no courage nor will of hers could hold at bay for long. Saranna had thrown back her veil when she entered. Still only a little of her smooth hair showed beneath the brim of her old bonnet, but against the pallor of her skin, the dead black of her shabby, dowdy shawl and dress, her hair showed its unfashionable red far too strongly. She had always accepted that she was far from a beauty, but until this moment she had never truly realized just how plain and drab a woman could appear in contrast to one who could claim otherwise.

  "Saranna?" The other favored her with another up-and-down stare which catalogued every frayed and rubbed spot, every too-often tied bonnet string, all which was obviously wrong with Saranna. "It should be Aunt Saranna, should it not?"

  So this was Honora, Jethro's daughter. Yes, by an odd quirk of fate she was aunt to this dazzling mistress of the house, though Honora was her senior by several years.

  Honora laughed, a tinkling laugh like two ice crystals, one broken upon the other. "But, of course, that is folly I You are so yoimg, a mere child. We shall call you Saranna. I am Honora—"

  She inclined her head regally. It was plain that she was doing her duty, as she believed, graciously, to one far beneath serious consideration.

  Within Saranna, resentment warmed into a small coal of hidden anger. But she must never, never let Honora know {that she determined fiercely)—never let her know that either tongue or manner could wound.

  "You are early, we did not expect you to land before evening," Honora swept on. "Mr. Sanders," for the first time she addressed the lawyer, "how ill you must consider this house is run that a carriage did not meet you. I beg you to forgive me—"

  Her small white hand touched his stiff arm, her features melted into a gentle smile. And Saranna (privately irritated at the blindness of men) watched the stiff Mr. Sanders melt in turn, to wear an almost approachable cast of countenance.

  "It is of no consequence, Mrs. Whaley. I believe we had what seamen term a favoring wind to bring us to port. And Captain Fowke was most kind in sharing his carriage—“

  "Captain Fowke?"

  Saranna was sure she had witnessed a momentary tightening of Honora's hps as she repeated that name. She could believe that her hostess was not too pleased at hearing that "But—no, I can guess why he did not wait—he must have pressing business with my father—the New York orders. You see, Mr. Sanders—" once more her tinkling laugh sounded, not quite so brittlely this time, "I have quite become a female of business. My father likes to use me as a sounding board for his ideas. La, I can talk like any parrot about coffees, and costs, and the like—not that my poor head gets any meaning from it. Now our thanks to you, dear Mr. Sanders, for your journey to rescue this poor child—"

  Inside Saranna bristled like a threatened cat at the tone of that "poor child." She only wished she dared hiss as emphatically as that same animal,

  "Father," Honora was continuing, "asked me to say he would wait upon you tomorrow morning. And, of course, you and dear Mrs. Sanders must dine with me on Saturday. Mrs. Sanders must have already received my note of invitation—"

  Some time later Saranna eyed her reflection in the mirror of a tall wardrobe. Behind her lay a bedroom which would better have housed a princess. But it was given this time, she thought with wry humor, to the real goosegirl, not to one of royal blood in masquerade. Her own black figure blotted out some of the splendor about and behind her.

  She had laid aside her shawl and bonnet, refused at once the attentions of the black maid who had been on her knees by the sea chest struggling with its rope when Saranna entered. Now she was alone and able to face facts.

  Face facts I An expression she had heard so often on her mother's lips during these past years. Mother might have had golden dreams of far travel, but she had never confused those dreams with reality. Always she had insisted that one must think over any situation carefully and calmly, not rush into things as Saranna was temperamentally inclined to do.

  Notwithstanding, Saranna had been rushed into this change in her life from the hour Mr. Sanders had appeared without warning two days after her mother's funeral, bearing the totally unexpected letter of command from Jethro—that Jethro they had never heard of or from. She had been overpowered then by the advice of Pastor Willis and his wife, grateful t
o the Lord they served so firmly and humbly, that Saranna had found a protector and not been left alone at seventeen to make her own way in the world. And, because she had been so dazed with grief as to accept all their arguments then, now she had to adjust to what lay before her.

  This room was like Honora looking over her shoulder, saying this is the way we live, and you have no proper place in this house. Above the black of her dress, unrelieved because her chemisette-vestee showing in the vee of her bodice was of the same doleful color (Mother would hate to see her now, she had disliked her own mourning so much—saying one ought to mourn in the heart and not be a living reminder to all of a private sorrow), her skin had lost all natural coloring. Which made her hair, smoothly braided and coiled at the back of her head, appear too fiery bright.

  She had never worn a house cap, but she knew from the study of the few fashion books Mother used in her dressmaking that all ladies, old and young, married or single, were now supposed to do so. Now, regarding the blaze of her hair, she decided there was only one improvement in her appearance she could make in the short time before she had to face the imposing household below.

  Quickly Saranna unpacked her sewing box, found a length of rather limp black lace. With energy (to have something to do with her hands soothed her nerves) she began to sew. She was trying on the improvised cap when there came a light tap at the door.

  At Saranna's invitation Honora appeared. In the girl's estimate the dress her "niece" had worn at their first meeting had been elaborate enough for a ball. But that paled into insignificance beside the one which clothed her now. Delicate lavender of half-mourning still, but the wide black lace of the skirt flounce filled the doorway, billowed in graceful folds as Honora moved.

  Her shoulders were bare under a shawl scarf of the same black lace. And her fair hair, crimped, curled, carefully coaxed into an affectation of loose locks, was only partly covered with a token widow's cap of such fashion as to make

  Saranna's improvisation equal in dowdiness to the bonnet she had worn earlier.