Hers the Kingdom (48 page)

     Owen. She had promised to be at his side at midnight. She made her way back to the barn; the grandfather clock they had mounted on the stage said it was twenty before the hour. The old century was in its closing minutes; champagne was being passed; Owen had no intention of letting this high point slide by without ceremony.

     Couples began to drift off the dance floor and to assemble in small groups. Willa waved to the boys; Sara and I were already at the appointed place. Arcadia and Joseph would join us, we would see the New Year in together.

     As the minute hand drew closer to the hour, the crowd became still. Hundreds were crowded into the old pink barn, and they were silent . . . as if waiting for an event of enormity. You could smell the straw, the night air that wafted in . . . the old clock began to strike.

     One, two, three . . .

     Owen raised his glass.

     . . . ten, eleven, twelve.

     "To the twentieth century," he intoned.

     "To the twentieth century," we responded in unison, an incantation.

     The band struck up a march, confetti and balloons were loosed from the ceiling, a great roar broke through the crowd. We put arms around each other and swayed, our faces wet with tears. It was like no other New Year that ever was, or ever would be. We were together on the Malibu, it was 1900 and the world looked fine, very fine indeed, said Owen in the first of several speeches made that night.

     After a time no one listened to the speeches, but danced and laughed and were generally jolly. Somewhere in the early hours, Sara and I found ourselves sitting at the edge of the stage, sipping our eighth or ninth champagne, when she said in a very loud whisper, "They've both changed. They don't know it but they have. They've changed enough so they can, finally, belong to each other."

     I nodded gravely, as if I understood perfectly what she was saying. In fact, I wasn't even sure who she was talking about— Charles and Helen, probably. But perhaps Willa and Owen. I intended to ask her, but somehow it slipped my mind.

     When Wing Soong, in his usual shadowy manner, guided me to the house where I was staying and pointed out the entrance, he had said with a certain amount of annoyance that he did not even observe this calendar, so he could see little reason for my having needed to make quite so many toasts.

Willa had long ago taught herself to forget the events of that summer, and she set about forgetting her illusion of Amos Proctor. Perhaps it was the effort that made her gasp as she was reading the
morning newspapers with Sara and me, only a few days after the guests' departure.

     "What is it, Willa?" I quickly asked, "what have you found?"

     She passed the paper to me, her eyes cloudy with confusion.

     "On Tuesday last," I read, "a man identified as Amos Proctor was found dead in the Clamber Boarding House on West Fourth Street in Long Beach. Officers suspect foul play, pointing out that the manager of the boarding establishment had recounted several suspicious circumstances. The victim is remembered in this city as an employee of the government. Identification found in his room indicates that he has been employed of late by the Armstrong Meat Packing Company of Chicago, Illinois."

     "Amos Proctor was—" I began.

     "Yes," Willa answered, leaving the room abruptly.

     Sara read through the small notice, frowning. "The Armstrong Meat Packing Company," she finally said. "It's one of Charles'."

     "Yes?" I answered, waiting.

     "Nothing," Sara said, "I just thought it was an interesting coincidence."

     I could tell by the way she said it that she would say no more. No amount of coaxing would get whatever she had in her mind out of her. I sighed, and gave up.

I first set eyes on Homer Lea on the morning of April 1, 1900. April Fool's Day and he was, I thought, a perfectly dandy little fool. A funny little Chinaman, he dressed like a sport, except that his pants were an inch short of his high-top shoes. He was a study in perpetual motion, he didn't so much talk as sputter in a combination of Yankee slang, delivered in Chinese singsong.

     Homer lived in the Lankershim Hotel, which he considered his "headquarters." He called himself Lieutenant General Lea, explaining to all who asked, and many who didn't, that he had been
commissioned a lieutenant general in the Chinese Imperial Reform Army. The humor of this was evident, when it became known that Lea had graduated from Los Angeles High School. He was now, he explained, about to create a Western Military Academy to train officers for the revolution.

     
The revolution.
I could not understand how Wing Soong could take the man seriously, and I didn't understand how the two of them planned to be part of a revolution halfway around the world. It was the first time that I had questioned Wing Soong's judgment. In fact, he disappointed me.

     When I asked Owen what he thought of Homer Lea—knowing that Owen had a weakness for those people we call "characters"— he said, "He's a laughable scoundrel, a poseur certainly. But harmless, I think. A comic Asiatic Napoleon."

     When I made the mistake of repeating this to Wing Soong, he glowered at me. "Appearances deceive," he said, "and often there is a reason for deception."

     Homer brought us the first account of a rebellion in China led by a secret society called the "Harmonious Fists." The American press promptly labeled them "Boxers." They were murdering gangs who swept through the countryside, killing foreigners. Missionaries and their families were slain, and the Western legations at Peking were under siege. The Chinese, it was said, were determined to throw out the blue-eyed devils forever.

     "Can you possibly condone this?" I asked angrily.

     "No," Soong said, "no, I cannot, but perhaps for reasons other than yours."

     "What reasons?" I demanded.

     "It is an angry outburst that has no chance of succeeding, even in its most elementary goal: to throw out the foreigner. The Western nations will make it harder now. It has put back our cause." His words were bitter. I could not imagine how a rebellion half a world away could have such an effect. I was to be sorry for my lack of imagination.

     "Listen to this," Owen said, reading from his paper. "Every town, every village, every peasant's hut in the path of the troops was looted and burned by the combined forces of the Western nations." Willa and I paused in our needlework to listen to the journalist's account of how our soldiers—along with the British and the French and the rest—had pressed inland to rescue the legations in Peking, and to put down the Boxer Rebellion.

     "It's no more than they did to us," Willa said casually.

     "To
us?"
I repeated, astonished. "What did those peasants do to us? More important, what did they do to anybody, including the dead missionaries?" I demanded, warming to the argument.

     Willa shrugged. She did not want to argue. Clearly, it was not something she felt important enough to argue over. That was when I realized how much I was beginning to view the struggle from Soong's position. Later, when the Western powers signed a protocol which denounced China as guilty of crimes against civilization, and levied huge reparations and special privileges, I was as angry as Soong.

     "China must modernize," Homer Lea would say, "the Manchu dynasty must be overthrown." Those same words were being said in China, but not nearly so publicly.

     One afternoon, Soong told me, "I've become a member of a party called the Hsing Chung Hui. It translates, roughly, to "Revive China Society." The leader of the movement is a doctor, a man educated in the West. An intellectual. Homer believes he is the man who will lead China into the twentieth century."

     I smiled, and knew immediately that it was a mistake.

     "Listen to me," Soong said, "Homer Lea is no fool, I promise you. The work he is doing is important, and I am part of it. Homer plans, and soon, to have Dr. Sun come here, to tell us what we can do to help."

     "They'll never let a revolutionist in," I said, mildly.

     "They won't know," Soong replied, "he will be brought in on a boat, hidden. And when he does come, I want to spend time with
him. I will need to be absent, but my absence must go unnoticed."

     Ah, I thought, feeling a sudden rush of pleasure. So that is it. At last he wants something of me. At last I can do something for him.

     "When it is time, tell me and I will see to it," I said.

     When he returned, he said nothing at all to me about where he had been, or what he had done. I did not ask, but only waited.

One afternoon late in July, Willa returned from a hawking day with mischief in her eyes. "Come with me," she whispered, as if she had a great secret to tell me. She ducked into a side parlor, closed the door conspiratorially. Her cheeks were pink and she smelled of the woods.

     "Have you ever noticed that your friend, Mr. Wing, vanishes in the afternoons?" she asked. My heart skipped.

     "No," I said, worried that she might have discovered something of Soong's secret work with the Hsing Chung Hui.

     But her face was too full of fun, I realized with relief.

     "I know where he goes," she raced on, "I was sitting in Soston Canyon, in a little place tucked next to a waterfall. A tiercel has been hunting there, in an open space, and I've been observing him for several days, now. The falcon knows I'm there, but he seems not to mind. He abides me. Anyway, I camouflage myself in a nice little nest near a series of pools . . . lovely bathing places, actually, carved out of the rock. Oh, it's very private. I can see why Mr. Wing favors it!" She was dissolving in giggles. "I must have fallen asleep for a time," she went on, "in my little nest of leaves and boughs, because when I opened my eyes who should be standing before me but Mr. Wing. Standing quite straight on a rock . . ." she covered her mouth to stifle the laughter, "moving his arms in strange ways as if to make shadows on a wall."

     "Didn't you let him know you were there?" I asked, annoyed and a bit amazed.

     "Lena!" she hissed, "I couldn't! He wasn't wearing anything, not a stitch, nothing. And, any . . ." her eyes grew wide and slightly wicked. "His maleness . . . was . . . erect!"

     I felt myself flush, and I knew my neck would be glowing red as if with hives.

     "Willa!" I whispered.

     "Don't scold me," she answered. "Besides, he is glorious to look at, Lena. I couldn't help!"

     I was angry with her, but for some peculiar reason I could not find myself ashamed for Soong.

     Suddenly Willa's voice changed. Her tone became almost businesslike, but it was with effort. "The thing is, Lena," she began, "I have been tracking this particular tiercel for several weeks now, making quite thorough observations for a paper I had planned to do for the Ornithological Society. With this trip to San Francisco with Owen tomorrow, I'm afraid my whole effort is going to be for naught. Unless you might be willing to make the observations for me?"

     I looked at her, shocked at what she was proposing.