A Chicago Princess

CHAPTER XIII

Shortly before two o’clock the next day the Prime Minister came for us, and conducted us directly to the Presence Chamber, instead of taking us to the small wooden building, containing a table and some chairs, where visitors usually had to wait until the Emperor’s messenger arrived with orders permitting an advance to the throne-room. Our little procession consisted of four persons, – Mr. Hemster, Miss Hemster, the Prime Minister, and myself. Hun Woe was visibly uneasy, and I was well aware that, in spite of the money paid him, he would much rather have been absent from the ceremony. In Eastern lands it is extremely dangerous for a Vizier to witness a Sultan’s humiliation, and the Prime Minister well knew that although the Emperor had permitted the deference due to him to be temporarily annulled through payment of gold, he might nevertheless consider it desirable to eliminate the onlooker, so that no record of this innovation were left on the earth.

The room into which we were conducted was but indifferently lighted. It was oblong in shape, and a low divan ran across the farther end of it. Four very ordinary wooden chairs had been placed midway between the door and the divan.

Both the Emperor and the Empress were seated, Oriental fashion, on huge cushions, and were decked out in a fashion that might be termed tawdry gorgeousness. I do not know whether the strings of colored gems that hung around the Empress were real or imitation, but they were barbaric in size and glitter and number. The Empress, whom I had never seen before, sat impassive, with eyes half closed, as if she were a statue of the feminine Buddha. During the whole of the exciting interview she never moved or showed the slightest sign of animation.

The Emperor’s ferret-like eyes glanced shiftily over the advancing party, which came forward, as I might say, in two sections, the three white people upright, and the Premier bending almost double, working his way toward the divan by zigzag courses, giving one the odd notion that he was some sort of wild beast about to spring upon the Emperor when he arrived at a proper position for the pounce.

The twinkling eyes of the Emperor, however, speedily deserted the rest of our party, and fixed themselves on Miss Hemster, who moved toward him with graceful ease and an entire absence of either fear or deference. She instantly made good the determination she had previously expressed, and, gliding directly up to him, thrust forward her hand, which the Emperor seemed at a loss what to do with. His eyes were fastened on her lovely countenance, and there broke on his lips a smile so grim and ghastly that it might well have made any one shudder who witnessed it. The bending Prime Minister uttered a few words which informed the Emperor that the lady wished to shake hands with him, and then his Majesty took his own grimy paws from out of the great bell sleeves in which they were concealed, and with his two hands grasped hers. Never did so sweet a hand disappear in so revolting a clutch, and the young woman, evidently shocked at the contact, and doubtless repelled by the repulsiveness of the face that leered up at her, drew suddenly back, but the clutch was not relaxed.

“Let me go!” she cried breathlessly, and her father took an impulsive step forward; but before he reached her the Emperor suddenly put forth his strength and drew the young woman tumbling down to the divan beside him, grimacing like a fiend from the bottomless pit. Little he recked what he was doing. With a scream Miss Hemster sprang up, flung out her right arm, and caught him a slap on the side of his face that sounded through the hall like the report of a pistol. The Prime Minister, with a shuddering cry of horror, flung himself on his face, and grovelled there in piteous pretence of not having seen this death-earning insult which the Western woman had so energetically bestowed on the Eastern potentate. Hun Woe’s open palms beat helplessly against the wooden planks, as if he were in the tremors of dissolution. The active young woman sprang back a pace or two, and, if a glance could have killed, the look with which she transfixed his Imperial Majesty would have brought extinction with it.

As for the Emperor, he sat there, bending slightly forward, the revolting grimace frozen on his face, and yet his royal head must have been ringing with the blow he had received. The Empress sat stolid, as if nothing had happened, and never moved an eyelid. Then his Majesty, casting a look of contempt at the huddled heap of clothes which represented the Prime Minister, threw back his head and gave utterance to a cackling laugh which was exceedingly chilling and unpleasant to hear. Meanwhile the young lady seated herself emphatically in one of the chairs, with a sniff of indignant remonstrance.

“There,” she said, “I flatter myself I have taught one nigger a lesson in good manners. He’ll bear the signature of my fingers on his cheeks for a few hours at least.”

“Madam,” I said solemnly, “I beg you to restrain yourself. Your signature is more likely to prove a death-warrant than a lesson in etiquette.”

“Be quiet,” she cried angrily to me, turning toward me a face red with resentment; “if there is no one here to protect me from insult I must stand up for myself, and you can bet your bottom dollar I’ll do it. Do you think I am afraid of an old hobo like that?”

The Emperor watched her with narrowing eyes as she was speaking, and it really seemed as if he understood what she said; for again he threw back his head and laughed, as if the whole thing was a joke.

“Madam,” said I, “it isn’t a question of fear or the lack of it, but merely a matter of common sense. We are entirely in this man’s power.”

“He daren’t hurt us,” she interrupted with a snap, “and he knows it, and you know it.”

“I beg your pardon, Miss Hemster, I know a great deal more of these people than you do. No Westerner can predict what may happen in an Eastern Court.”

“Westerners are just as good as New Yorkers, or Londoners either, for that matter,” cried the gentle Gertrude, holding her head high in the air.

“You mistake me, Miss Hemster; I am speaking of Europeans as well as of Americans. This Emperor, at a word, can have our heads chopped off before we leave the room.”

“Oh, you’re a finicky, babbling old woman,” she exclaimed, tossing her head, “and just trying to frighten my father. The Emperor knows very well that if he laid a hand on us the United States would smash his old kingdom in two weeks.”

“If you will pardon me, madam, the Emperor is quite ignorant. If he should determine to have us executed, not all the United States or Britain and Europe combined could save us. He has but to give an order, and it will be rigidly obeyed if the heavens fell the moment after. If you are anxious to give the Emperor your opinion of him, all I beg of you is that you wait until we’re out of this trap, and then send it to him on a picture post-card. Whatever action the Powers might subsequently take would be of no assistance to us – when we are executed.”

During this heated conversation the Prime Minister had partly risen to his hands and knees, although he kept his head hanging down until it nearly touched the floor. The Emperor had been watching Miss Hemster’s animated countenance, and he seemed greatly to enjoy my evident discomfiture. Even though he understood no word of our language, he saw plainly enough that I was getting the worst of the verbal encounter. Now the gradual uprising of the Prime Minister drew his attention temporarily to this grovelling individual, and he spoke a few words to him which at once raised my alarm for the safety of those in my care. His Majesty had evidently forgotten for the moment that I understood the Corean tongue. Hun Woe now rose to his feet, kept his back at an angle of forty-five degrees, and, without turning around, began to retreat from the Imperial presence. I at once stepped in his way, and said to the Emperor that this command must not go forth, whereupon the Majesty of Corea was good enough to laugh once more.

“What are you talking about?” demanded Miss Hemster. “You must translate everything that is said; and, furthermore, you must tell him that he has to apologize to me for his insult at the beginning.”

“All in good time, Miss Hemster.”

“Not all in good time,” she cried, rising from her chair. “If you don’t do that at once, I’ll go and slap his face again.”

“Please believe me, Miss Hemster, that you have already done that once too often. I assure you that the situation is serious, and you are increasing the danger by your untimely interference.”

Before she could reply, a roar of laughter from the Emperor, who wagged his head from side to side and rocked his body to and fro in his glee, drew my attention to the fact that I had been outwitted. The Prime Minister, taking advantage of my discussion with Miss Hemster, had scuttled silently away and had disappeared. I fear I made use of an exclamation to which I should not have given utterance in the presence of a lady; but that lady’s curiosity, overcoming whatever resentment she may have felt, clamoured to know what had happened.

“His Majesty,” said I, “gave orders to the Prime Minister doubly to guard the Palace gates, and see that no communication reached the outside from us. It means that we are prisoners!”

All this time I had not the least assistance from the old gentleman, who sat in a most dejected attitude on one of the wooden chairs. I had remained standing since we entered the room. Now he looked up with dismay on his countenance, and I was well enough acquainted with him to know that his fear was not for himself but for his daughter.

“Will you tell the Emperor,” he said, “that we are armed, and that we demand leave to quit this place as freely as we entered it?”

“I think, Mr. Hemster,” said I, “that we had better conceal the fact that we have arms, – at least until the Prime Minister returns. We can keep that as our trump card.”

“Will you please do exactly what my father tells you to,” snapped the young woman sharply.

“Hush, Gertrude!” said Mr. Hemster. Then, addressing himself to me: “Sir,” he added, “do whatever you think is best.”

I now turned to the Emperor, and made the speech of my life. I began by stating that Corea had been face to face with many a crisis during its history, but never had she been confronted with such a situation as now presented itself. Mr. Hemster, besides being King, in his own right, of the provision market in Chicago, was one of the most valued citizens of the United States, and that formidable country would spend its last sen and send its last man to avenge any injury done to Mr. Hemster, or the Princess, his daughter. I asserted that the United States was infinitely more powerful than Russia, China, and Japan added together, with each of whom he had hitherto chiefly dealt. This alone would be bad enough, but the danger of the situation was augmented by my own presence. His Majesty might perhaps be good enough to remember that the last time I had had the pleasure of meeting him I was an Envoy of a country which had probably fought more successful battles than any other nation in existence. Great Britain was also in the habit of avenging the injuries inflicted on her subjects; and so, if the Emperor was so ill-fated as to incur the displeasure of these mighty empires, whose united strength was sufficient to overawe all the rest of the earth, he would thus bring about the extinction of himself and of his nation.

I regret to say that this eloquence was largely thrown away. His Majesty paid but scanty attention to my international exposition. His fishy eyes were fixed continually on Miss Hemster, who now and then made grimaces at him as if she were a little schoolgirl, once going so far as to thrust out her tongue, which action seemed to strike the Emperor as exceedingly comic, for he laughed uproariously at it.

When I had ceased speaking the Emperor replied in a few words, but without ever taking his eyes from the girl. I answered him, – or, rather, was answering him, – when Miss Hemster interrupted impatiently:

“What are you saying? You must translate as you go on. I wish you would remember your position, Mr. Tremorne, which is that of translator. I refuse to be kept in the dark in this way.”

“Gertie, Gertie!” remonstrated her father. “Please do not interfere. Mr. Tremorne will tell us what is happening all in good time.”

And now the Emperor himself, as if he understood what was being said, commanded me to translate to them the terms he had laid down.

“I shall try to remember my position, Miss Hemster,” I replied; “and, as his Majesty’s ideas coincide with your own, I have pleasure in giving you a synopsis of what has passed.”

Then I related my opening speech to the Emperor, which appeared to commend itself to Mr. Hemster, who nodded several times in support of my dissertation on the national crisis.

“The Emperor,” I continued, “has made no comment upon what I have laid before him. He tells us we are free to go, – that is, your father and myself, – as long as we leave you here. Not to put too fine a point to it, he offers to buy you, and says he will make you the White Star of his harem, which he seems to think is rather a poetical expression.”

“Well, of all the gall!” exclaimed Miss Hemster, raising her hands and letting them fall helplessly into her lap again, as if this gesture should define the situation better than any words she had at her command. “You inform His Nibs that I am no White Star Line, and you tell this mahogany graven image that my father can buy him and his one-horse kingdom and give them away without ever feeling it. When he talks of buying, just inform him that in the States down South we used to sell better niggers than him every day in the week.”

I thought it better to tone down this message somewhat, and in doing so was the innocent cause, as I suspect, of a disaster which has always troubled my mind since that eventful time. I said to the Emperor that American customs differed from those of Corea. Miss Hemster, being a Princess in her own rank, of vast wealth, could not accept any position short of that of Empress, and, as there was already an Empress of Corea, the union he proposed was impossible. I reiterated my request that we be allowed to pass down to the coast without further molestation.

This statement was received by the Emperor with much hilarity. He looked upon it merely as an effort on my part to enhance the price of the girl, and expressed his willingness to turn over to her half the revenues of the kingdom. He seemed to imagine he was acting in the most lavishly generous manner, and I realized the hopelessness of the discussion, because I was face to face with a man who had never been refused anything he wished for since he came to the throne. His conceited ignorance regarding the power of other countries to enforce their demands made the situation all the more desperate.

At this juncture the crouching Prime Minister returned, made his way slowly, by means of acute angles, to the foot of the throne, and informed the Emperor that the guards of the Palace had been doubled, and had received instructions to allow no living thing to enter or leave the precincts of the Court. I now repeated to Hun Woe the warning I had so fruitlessly proffered to the Emperor, but I doubt if the satellite paid much more attention than his master had done. While in the presence he seemed incapable of either thought or action that did not relate to his Imperial chief. He intimated that the audience was now finished and done with, and added that he would have the pleasure of accompanying us to our rooms. It seemed strange, when we returned, to find Miss Stretton sitting in a chair, placidly reading a book which she had brought with her from the yacht, and the Japanese boy setting out cups for tea on a small table near her. Miss Stretton looked up pleasantly as we entered, closing her book, and putting her finger in it to mark the place.

“What a long time you have been,” she said; “the conference must have proved very successful.”

Miss Gertrude Hemster paced up and down the room as if energetic action were necessary to calm the perturbation of her spirit. As the other finished her remark she clenched her little fist and cried:

“I’ll make that Emperor sit up before I’ve done with him!”

I thought it more advisable to refrain from threats until we were out of the tiger’s den; but the reticent example of Mr. Hemster was upon me, and I said nothing. Nevertheless the young woman was as good as her word.

CHAPTER XIV

The Hemsters had fallen into the English habit of afternoon tea, and, having finished the refreshing cup, I excused myself and went outside to learn how strict the cordon around us was kept. I found that the Prime Minister had done his work well. The gates were very thoroughly guarded, and short of force there seemed to be no method of penetrating into the city. I tried bribery, desiring to get a short note through to the British Consul-General, and, although my bribe was willingly accepted, I found later that the missive was never sent.

Rambling around the vast precincts of the Palace, trying to discover any loophole of escape, I came upon our escort and the ponies which had brought us from the port to the capital. These had been gathered up in the city and taken inside. I could not decide at the moment whether this move on the part of our gaolers strengthened or weakened our position. The escort was composed of a very poor set of creatures who would prove utterly valueless if the crisis developed into a contest. They were all huddled together under a shed, and were very evidently in a state of hopeless panic. They knew intuitively that things were going badly with us, and it needed no prophet to foretell that they would instantly betray us if they got the chance, or cut our throats if they were ordered to do so. I deeply regretted now that we had not stayed longer at Chemulpo until we had gathered together an escort composed entirely of Japanese. Two Japanese followers were among our crowd, and they now stood apart with the imperturbable nonchalance of their race. I was aware that I could depend upon them to the death; but the rest were the very scum of the East, cowardly, unstable as water, and as treacherous as quicksand. I spoke a few words of encouragement to the Japanese, patted the ponies, and then returned to Mr. Hemster. I told him I had endeavoured to send a note to the British representative in Seoul, and to my amazement found that he did not approve of this move.

“The fact is, Mr. Tremorne, we have acted like a parcel of fools, and if this thing ever gets out we shall be the laughing-stock of the world. I don’t want either the American or the British Consul to know anything of our position. God helps those who help themselves. I don’t want to boast at all, but I may tell you I’m a dead shot with a revolver, and I have one of the best here with me, together with plenty of cartridges. This expertness with a gun is a relic of my old cowboy days on the plains, and if these here Coreans attempt to interfere with me, somebody is going to get hurt. You have another revolver, and if you are any good with it I guess we’ll have no difficulty in forcing our way through this flock of sheep. Have you learned whether your two Japanese can shoot or not? If they can, I’ve got revolvers here for them, and it seems to me that four of us can put up a bluff that will carry us through this tight place. If it wasn’t that we have women with us, I wouldn’t mind the encounter in the least. As it is, we’ll have to do the best we can, and I propose that we start to-morrow as soon as the gates are opened.”

“All right, Mr. Hemster, I believe your diagnosis of the case is correct. I can trust the Japanese, and I think I may say you can trust me.”

A little later in the day, the Prime Minister, accompanied by an imposing following, came to me, and with much circumlocution made formal proposal of marriage to Miss Hemster on behalf of the Emperor of Corea. The misguided man appeared to think that this smoothed away all difficulty, and that the only question now to be settled was the amount of money the honoured lady’s father would pay down as dowry. Hun Woe fatuously ventured to hope that it would be large in proportion to the elevation in station which awaited the young lady. I replied that Mr. Hemster considered himself equal in rank, and greatly superior in wealth and power, to the Emperor of Corea; that he was now practically held prisoner in the Palace; therefore, if negotiations were to continue, he must be set free, and allowed to return to his own battleship, in which I should be happy to carry on the discussion in a manner which I hoped would prove satisfactory to all parties concerned.

The Prime Minister replied that what I proposed was impossible. The Emperor was completely infatuated with Miss Hemster, and only as a great concession, – due, Hun Woe said, to his own pleadings, which he hoped would be remembered when settlements were made, – did his Majesty consent to a marriage. The Prime Minister continued with many professions of friendship for myself, urging me therefore, as he pretended to have urged the Emperor, to put myself in a reasonable frame of mind. He had never known the Emperor so determined in any course of action before, and lack of compliance on the part of our company would do no good, and might lead to irretrievable disaster. The Emperor had resolved, if his offer were refused, to seize the young lady, and to behead her father, myself, and the whole party who accompanied her. He therefore trusted humbly that I would not thwart his efforts toward an amicable understanding.

I said he must surely have mistaken his instructions; the barbarous programme he had proposed would shock the civilized world. He answered, with a shrug of his shoulders, that the civilized world would never hear of it. I averred he was mistaken in this, telling him I had already communicated with my Consul, and his reply to this was to pull from his sleeve the hasty note I had written and bribed the man at the gate to deliver. This man, he said, had at once brought the communication to him, and he hoped I would acknowledge the fruitlessness of further opposition.

I quickly saw that we were in a predicament, and that it would need all my diplomacy to find a means of egress. However, I determined first to impress upon Hun Woe the dangers of the plan he had outlined. If the Emperor did what he proposed to do, that would bring upon Corea the irretrievable disaster of invasion by both the United States and England. It was not possible to keep assassinations secret. Mr. Hemster’s great steamship was at this moment awaiting him at Chemulpo. If no one returned, the captain of that boat had orders to communicate at once with both the British and the American authorities. I endeavored to flatter Hun Woe by telling him that an official of his great learning and intelligence must realize what the result would be. The good man sighed, but in the presence of his entourage apparently had not the courage to admit that Corea would come badly out of the encounter. In fact, he said that the Emperor could defend his country against the combined forces of the world; but whether he believed this or not, I should hesitate to say.

I now changed my tactics, and told the Prime Minister that I was merely Ambassador for Mr. Hemster, and that I would inform him of the offer the Emperor had made. It was more than likely, I asserted, that the proposal would be extremely gratifying to him; so we would postpone further consideration until he had time to think over the matter. I further suggested that we should have another interview with the Emperor at the same hour next day, and with this the Prime Minister joyously concurred. To assist the negotiations he told me that the Emperor had referred to my objection of an existing Empress, but means would be found to divorce that august lady, and this he wished me to place before Mr. Hemster and his daughter. He seemed to imagine that thus had been removed the last obstacle to the proposed union, and I said I would put all this in the most favourable light before Mr. Hemster. The conference which had begun so tempestuously therefore ended in a calm that was extremely gratifying to the Prime Minister, who quite evidently hoped that everybody would be reasonable, that the flow of gold should not cease, and that the contest might end happily. So, with many gestures and expressions of deep regard for myself and my companions, the distinguished party withdrew.