The Daughters of Nightsong. V. J. Banis

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СКАЧАТЬ Oh, I suspect you’ll be a little homesick at first, but I will make you forget. You will grow to love China as much as I do.”

      He took her hand, indifferent to the hostile looks of the other diners. “Of course I will. And you needn’t worry about my missing San Francisco and my family. Father never approved of me anyway and Mother has always tried to run my life for me.”

      He glanced at his pocket watch. “If you’re finished, we should be going. It’s getting close to the time.”

      April pulled her hood over her long, black, silky hair, casting her face into shadows. They ignored again the muttered insults as David threw several silver coins on the table and led April to the door.

      “And don’t bring her back in here,” the surly proprietor called after them.

      There was a strange, ominous feel to the night as they walked along. The clang of the trolley bell hurried them to the corner just as the trolley itself loomed out of the fog. David and April hopped aboard, glad to be away from the tavern and all its unpleasantness. They sat huddled close together, oblivious to the city stirring faintly about them, lost as they were in their own private world. They were young and so deeply in love that nothing mattered in all the world except themselves and their dreams.

      What did they care about the whispered uprisings far in the north of China? What did all that political nonsense matter to her and David? Besides, hadn’t her old tutor, Kim Lee, said there were always those who were discontented?

      Kim Lee had spoken to her of the small band who called themselves I-ho-chuan, the Righteous and Harmonious Fists Society—the Boxers, as they had come to be known—who were gradually gaining converts, and the White Lotus sect, whose only purpose was to overthrow the Manchus, her father’s family; but they had to be foolish, insolent peasants to think they could uproot her father’s dynasty, the Empress herself, all of the great Manchus who’d ruled China for almost three hundred years.

      As they sat holding tight to one another, neither April nor David could imagine anything blighting their future together. Nothing would ever blemish their happiness, certainly not some insignificant political malcontents.

      * * * *

      Lydia heard the commotion in the foyer. She started out of her chair just as the doors to the sitting room were flung apart and Lorna MacNair stood framed in the doorway. They had never met but Lydia knew the woman.

      “Where are they?” Lorna demanded, shaking a crumpled piece of paper in Lydia’s face as she stormed forward.

      “Who do you mean?” Lydia asked.

      “You know perfectly well. My son and that half-Chinese daughter of yours.”

      Lydia stiffened and clenched her fists. She felt the first twinges of fear and put her hand on the back of a chair to steady herself.

      “My daughter is in her bed,” she answered, but she could see the truth in Lorna’s face.

      “Not according to this,” Lorna said, throwing David’s note at Lydia’s feet.

      Lydia hesitated but the urge to read the note was stronger than her refusal to stoop before this woman. She lowered herself gracefully and unraveled the paper, turning her back to Lorna.

      “You may rest assured that April and I will never humiliate you, Mother,” she read aloud. “Don’t try to find us. David.”

      The words blurred as Lydia’s hand began to tremble. She turned suddenly, throwing aside the note. Gathering up her skirts, she ran to the staircase and to April’s room. Her heart stopped for an instant when she saw the empty bed and the note folded neatly on the pillowcase.

      “I love him,” it said simply. “I am sorry if I disappoint you but, like you, I must do what I must do, go where I belong,”

      “Go where I belong,” she read aloud. She stared at the words for a moment until their full impact struck her. “Good God!”

      Lorna MacNair was standing at the bottom of the staircase. “Well?” she asked.

      “She’s gone...with David,” Lydia said, hurrying past her to ring for the housekeeper.

      “This is all your fault,” Lorna hissed. “If you’d stayed out of my family’s life my son would never have been corrupted.”

      Lydia turned on her, eyes flashing. “I no more welcome your son into my family than you welcome my daughter into yours,” she replied.

      The housekeeper appeared in the hall. “Nellie, go out and hail a hack, please,” Lydia ordered. “I’m going out.”

      “Out?” Lorna asked, as the housekeeper pulled a shawl around her shoulders and went out the door. “Where are you going? What do you know?”

      Lydia was tempted to repeat Lorna’s bad manners by throwing April’s note at her, but she handed it to her instead.

      “What does it mean, go where she belongs?” Suddenly Lorna gasped. “Dear God, not to Chinatown?” She put her hands over her mouth as if to hold back a scream.

      Lydia paid her no mind as she went toward her downstairs bedroom to fetch her cape.

      “You know where they are,” Lorna accused as she hurried after Lydia. “I demand that you tell me.”

      “I do not know where they are, but I have my suspicions. I only hope they prove to be right.”

      As Lydia started toward the foyer, the front door again crashed open and Peter barged in with Nellie, the housekeeper, in his wake. He glowered at his wife. “What in hell is going on?” he demanded. “When I got home a few minutes ago Susan said you were screaming something about David and that you were coming here. What’s this all about?”

      “Oh, Peter,” his wife said, throwing herself against him.

      He held her away, turning to Lydia instead. “What is it?” he asked, more gently than before.

      Lydia kept her eyes averted as she pulled on her gloves. To the housekeeper she asked, “Did you manage to find a carriage?”

      “My carriage is outside,” Peter told her. “Tell me what the devil’s the matter.”

      “David and April,” Lydia said as calmly as she could. “It appears they’ve eloped.”

      “Good God!”

      His exclamation angered her without her really knowing why. She hesitated, wondering if she should tell him where she suspected the young people were bound, wondering if she should seek his help. Peter knew of the dangers that lay in wait for them if indeed April was foolish enough to take David to her father’s house in China.

      Lorna decided for her. “She knows where they are, Peter, but she refuses to tell me.” Lorna clung to her husband’s lapels.

      He loosened her grip. “Do you, Lydia?”

      She nodded quickly. “April wrote in her note that she must go where she belongs.”

      “China,” Peter gasped. “Good Lord, no!”

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