CHAPTER XI
I was awakened next morning by the roar of the anchor-chain running out, and found the yacht at a standstill, with the vibration of the machinery temporarily at an end. On looking out through the porthole I recognized the town of Chemulpo, which had grown considerably since I last saw it. Beyond stood the hills of Corea, rising wave upon wave, as if the land had suffered a volcanic eruption.
Mr. Hemster and I had breakfast alone together, after which we went on deck.
“Now,” said he, “the captain has brought us safely here without running down an island, and the next move in the game is yours. What do you propose to do?”
“I shall go ashore at once, engage ponies and an escort, change a quantity of silver money into ropes of sek, then I shall make my way as quickly as possible to the capital.”
“What are ropes of sek?” asked Mr. Hemster.
“They are bronze, iron, or copper coins, which are strung on ropes of straw by means of a square hole in the middle. They are the most debased currency on earth, and are done up in strings of five hundred cash. Sek is useful in dealing with the natives, but when I come to the capital I shall need silver and gold. When I have made arrangements at Seoul I shall return to Chemulpo and let you know the result.”
“You told me I could not take the ‘Michigan’ up the river, – what do you call it, – the Han? – and you were doubtful about the advisability of using the naphtha launch.”
“No, the yacht would be sure to run aground before you had gone very far, and as for the naphtha launch, the Han is rather a treacherous and very crooked piece of navigation, and if you had to stop half-way we might be farther from the capital than we are now, with a worse road ahead of us, and no chance of getting ponies or escort. I strongly advise you to stay where you are till I return, and meanwhile I’ll find out more about the river than I know now.”
To this Mr. Hemster agreed, and, being well provided with the sinews of war, I went ashore. Chemulpo proved to be quite a commercial town, and there was no difficulty in my getting everything I wanted. I was shocked but not surprised to find that the Prime Minister, whom I formerly knew, and on whose help I had somewhat counted, had been deposed and beheaded, while all his relatives, male and female, had been eliminated from human knowledge by death, slavery, or exile. However, even if this man had remained in office, my best plea with him would have been money, and as I was well provided with this necessity I foresaw no obstacle to my purpose. Having had an early start, and pushing on with more energy than my escort relished, in spite of my promises of recompense, I reached the capital before the great bell rang and the gates were closed.
I had some thought of calling on the British representative, and if I had done so would doubtless have enjoyed better accommodation for the night than fell to my lot; but as, the last time I saw him, I was, like himself, a servant of our Government, I could not bring myself to acknowledge that I was now merely the hired man of an American millionaire, as his daughter had so tersely put it.
Next day I very soon bribed my way to the presence of the then Prime Minister, and was delighted to find in him a certain Hun Woe, whom I had previously known in a very much more subordinate capacity. After our greetings I went straight to the point, and told Hun Woe that I represented a gentleman and his daughter, now at Chemulpo, who wished the honour of a private conference with the Emperor. I also mentioned casually that there was a certain amount of money in this for the Prime Minister if he could bring about the interview. Hun Woe, with many genuflections, informed me that the delight of serving me would more than recompense him for any trouble he was likely to incur, ending his protestations of deep friendship and regard by inquiring how much of the needful the gentleman in Chemulpo would be prepared to place on the table. I replied by naming a sum about one quarter of the amount I was willing to pay. The Prime Minister’s eyes glittered, and he made various shrugs of the shoulders and motions with his hands, during the time that he politely intimated to me his rise in the world since last I met him. A cash dividend which would have been ample in those days, he gently hinted, was little less than an insult at the present time. So far as he was himself concerned, he added, his services were freely at my disposal, and none of the silver would stick to his fingers; but, as I must be aware, the Court at Seoul was a most grasping and avaricious body, and he should need to disburse freely before my object could be accomplished.
I sighed and shook my head, rising to leave, regretting it was not to be my good fortune to add to the wealth of an old friend, whereupon Hun Woe begged me to be seated again, and, after many declarations of affectionate esteem, was good enough to name a sum which he thought might be sufficient to cover all expenses; and as this came to less than half of what I was willing to dispose of, we speedily reached an agreement. This haggling at the outset was necessary, not only to save Hemster his hardly earned money, but also to satisfy the official that he was driving a shrewd bargain. I accordingly paid the sum in prompt cash to Hun Woe, and then informed him that if everything went off to the satisfaction of my employer a further bonus would be awarded him, depending in size on the celerity and satisfactory nature of the interview. This delighted the honest Premier, and I must admit that he conducted the business with an energy and despatch which was as gratifying as it was unexpected.
East or West, money is a great lubricator, and, as I have said, I was well provided. That very afternoon Hun Woe secured me an audience with His Imperial Majesty, and for the third or fourth time in my life I stood before the ruler of Corea. I do not know whether he recognized me or not, but it was quite evident that the scent of gold was in the air, and the Emperor did not leave it long in doubt that he intended to acquire as much as might be available of it. By way of introduction, and to show that I was prepared to do the proper thing, I placed a heavy bag of the seductive metal on the shabby deal table before him, begging His Majesty to accept it as an earnest of more to follow. He poured it out on the table, and gloated over it with a miser’s eagerness. He had not improved in appearance since last we met. The seams of dissipation had cut deeply into the royal countenance, and his little crinkling pig eyes were even more rapacious and cruel than I remembered them to be.
The proposal to come aboard the yacht was at once dismissed as impracticable. His Majesty would not venture away from his capital, and, above all, he would not risk his precious person on board of anybody’s steamship, so, on the whole, it was just as well that Mr. Hemster had not essayed the navigation of the river Han. However, His Majesty was good enough to inform me that although he would not trust his royal person to the care of the infidels, yet he would make up for that by giving so generous a suitor a suite of rooms in the Palace itself, and my principal would therefore have the honour of being the guest of Corea, as one might say. I imagined that this would look as well in the columns of the “New York Herald” as if the Emperor had gone on board the yacht. I fancied that a few lines, something to the following effect, would read very acceptably in the Sunday papers of Chicago, under the head of Society Notes:
“Mr. Silas K. Hemster, of this city, and Miss Hemster, occupy a suite of rooms in the royal Palace of Seoul, as guests of the Emperor of Corea.”
So, all in all, I was more than satisfied with the speedy and gratifying outcome of my mission to the Corean capital. After retiring from the royal presence I congratulated the Prime Minister upon his method of conducting negotiations and gave him a further payment on account, so that he would not be tempted to falter in well-doing; and as for Hun Woe himself he looked upon me as the most valuable visitor that had set foot in Corea for many years. I distributed backsheesh somewhat indiscriminately among the underlings of the Palace, and early next morning left the royal precincts on my return to Chemulpo, which port I reached without any mishap. Possibly never before in the history of Seoul had business been so rapidly transacted.
I found Mr. Hemster, as usual, sitting on deck in his accustomed chair, as if he had no interest in the negotiations I had been conducting. He listened quietly to my account of the various interviews, and received without comment the bribery bill I presented to him. He did not appear to be so tremendously impressed as I had expected with the royal invitation to visit the Palace, and said he would have preferred to take up his quarters at the chief hotel in the place, but when I told him there was not a hotel in the city fit for a white man to sleep in, he made no demur to the Imperial proposal. It seemed he had visited Chemulpo during my absence, and in consequence of what he heard there he now made some inquiry regarding the safety of a stay in the capital. I told him that as a rule the Coreans were a peaceable people unless incited to violence by the authorities, and as long as we were willing to bribe the authorities sufficiently they would take care that the influx of the newly acquired affluence would not be interfered with. So he asked me to go to Chemulpo and make arrangements for the transport of the party next morning.
I had not seen Miss Hemster on the day I left for Seoul, but she welcomed my return with her former girlish enthusiasm, just as if nothing particular had happened. She seemed to have entirely recovered from her disappointment in not getting to see the Emperor of Japan, and was now effusively enthusiastic over our coming journey. The young woman more than made up for her father’s lack of interest in the royal invitation, and I was asked question after question regarding the Palace at Seoul, which I feared would disappoint her when she saw it, because of its dilapidations and general lack of impressiveness. However, a palace was a palace, she averred, and she further pronounced the opinion that the news of their residence there would make Chicago “sit up” when it was cabled over. Miss Stretton sat silent with downcast eyes during this cross-examination, her intelligent face as inscrutable as that of the old millionaire himself. I did not get a word with her that evening, and, as it was drawing late, I had to return to Chemulpo to make arrangements for the trip the following day, and so stayed ashore that night.
We had a beautiful day for our expedition, and rather a jolly trip of it, – almost, as Miss Hemster said, as if it were a picnic. At Miss Hemster’s request I rode by her side, with Miss Stretton sometimes with us, but more often in front, with the old gentleman, who jogged moodily on, absorbed in his own meditations, saying nothing to anybody. Miss Hemster chatted very gaily most of the day, but as evening drew on she became tired of talk and began to look anxiously for the gate of Seoul. When at last we passed through it she expressed great contempt for the city of shanties, as she called it, giving somewhat petulant expression to her disgust at the disillusionment for which I had unsuccessfully endeavoured to prepare her. Of course by the time we reached the Palace the ladies were tired out, and, if we had had the slightest notion of what was before us, anxiety would have been added to fatigue.
CHAPTER XII
We were more comfortable in the royal apartments than might have been expected. Mr. Hemster had brought his own cook with him, together with the Japanese boy to wait on us, and he had also taken the precaution to bring a week’s provisions, so that in spite of the primitive arrangements of the kitchen placed at our disposal we fared very much as usual so far as the cuisine was concerned. The officials made no complaint at this reflection on their hospitality; in fact, they rather relished our foresight, because, as Hun Woe admitted with great simplicity, it enabled them to charge our keep to the royal exchequer and yet incur no expense in providing for us. A system which admits of collection and no disbursements is heavenly to a Corean official. We were probably at the outset the most popular party that had ever lodged in the royal Palace.
Our first dilemma arose, not through any interference from the officers of the Court, but because of certain objections which Miss Gertrude Hemster herself promulgated. The Prime Minister did us great honour in offering to coach us personally regarding the etiquette that surrounds the approach to the throne. It seemed that both Emperor and Empress were to receive us in state, and the moment we came in sight of their Majesties we were to turn our faces aside, as if dazzled by the magnificence before us and the glory conferred upon us march a dozen steps to the left, turn again, march a dozen steps to the right, bowing extremely low at each evolution, advancing, with great caution and humility, never more than two steps forward at a time, approaching the throne by a series of crab-like movements and coming very gradually forward, zigzag fashion, until we stood with heads humbly inclined before the two potentates. My translation of all this caused great hilarity on the part of Miss Hemster, and she quite shocked the genial Prime Minister by giving way to peal after peal of laughter. After all, he was a dignified man and did not regard the ceremony as a joke, which appeared to be the way it presented itself to the young lady.
“I’m not going through any of that nonsense,” she exclaimed. “Does he think I intend to make a Wild West show of myself? If he does, he’s mistaken. I’ll proceed right up to the Emperor and shake hands with him, and if he doesn’t like it he can lump it. You translate that to him, Mr. Tremorne.”
I intimated respectfully to the young woman that Court etiquette was Court etiquette, and that everything would be much more simple if we fell in with the ways of the country. This marching and counter-marching was no more absurd than our own way of shaking hands, or the Pacific Island method of salutation by rubbing noses.
“‘When in Rome do as the Romans do,’” I suggested; but this expostulation had no effect whatever upon the determined young person, who became more and more set in her own way from the fact that her father quietly agreed with me. Furthermore, when she learned that there were no chairs in the Royal reception-room, she proclaimed that her Japanese attendant must carry a chair for her; because, if the Royal pair were seated, she insisted on being seated also. I was to tell “His Nibs,” – by which expression she referred to the smiling Prime Minister, – that she belonged to sovereign America, and therefore was as much an Empress in her own right as the feminine Majesty of Corea.
“Miss Hemster,” said I, “I don’t know whether what you wish can be accomplished or not; but in any case it is sure to cause considerable delay, and, furthermore, it will probably cost your father a very large sum of money.”
I speedily saw that I would better have preserved silence. The young lady drew herself up with great dignity and flashed upon me a glance of withering indignation.
“Will you oblige me by minding your own business?” she asked harshly. “Your duty is to obey orders, and not to question them.”
To this, of course, no reply was possible, so I contented myself by bowing to her, and, turning to Hun Woe, who stood smiling first at one and then at the other of us, not understanding even the drift of our conversation, but evidently growing somewhat uneasy at the tone it was taking, I translated to him as well as I could what Miss Hemster had said, softening the terms as much as possible, and laying great stress on her exalted position in her own country, of which land the Prime Minister was enormously ignorant.
Hun Woe became extremely grave; and his smile, unlike that in the advertisement, at once “came off.”
“If the strenuous Empress of China,” said I, “arrived at Seoul on a visit, she would certainly be received by His Majesty as an equal, and would not need to go through the ceremony of advance which you have so graphically described. Now this Princess,” I continued, “holds herself to be of a rank superior to the Empress of China, and is considered of higher status by her own countrymen.”
The Prime Minister very solemnly shook his head and seemed much disquieted.
“Her father,” I continued earnestly, and in a measure truthfully, “maintains a much larger fleet than China possesses, and his private war-ship, now in the waters of Corea, is grander than anything that empire ever beheld, much less owned. His territories are vast. Thousands of people, – yes, millions, – pay tribute to him. He has waged commercial war against those who dared to dispute his authority, and has invariably defeated them. His revenue exceeds that of the kingdom of Corea twice over, so is it likely, – I put it to you as man to man, – that such a potentate will consent to the dozen steps this way, and the dozen steps that? His only daughter is the Crown Princess, and will be heiress to all his powers and emoluments. I pray you, therefore, put this matter in its right light before His Majesty of Corea, and I can assure you, if you succeed, your own income will be largely augmented.”
This speech undoubtedly impressed the Premier, who bowed low to Mr. Hemster and his daughter time and again as I went on. The girl’s anger had subsided as quickly as it had risen, and she watched us both intently, seeming at first to doubt that I translated accurately what I had been so curtly ordered to say; but as our conversation went on the increasing deference of the Prime Minister showed that I was at least doing my best. The old gentleman, too, regarded us shrewdly from under his bushy eyebrows, but seemed rather tired of the game, as if it were not worth such a pow-wow. He evidently wished to get the whole thing over as quickly as possible, and return to the comforts of his yacht, and in this I entirely sympathized with him.
The Prime Minister replied that he would present the new facts before His Majesty, and averred that if they had the same effect upon the Emperor of Corea as they had produced upon the Prime Minister the impediment would be speedily removed. He assured me I could count on his utmost endeavours to find a solution for the unexpected exigency, and I was well aware that my tale would not decrease in the retelling. With many and most profound obeisances to the two Western grandees, the Prime Minister took his departure, and I accompanied him outside, where I made him a payment on a gold basis.
The Royal audience had been appointed for two o’clock of the afternoon on the day succeeding our arrival at Seoul, but this new question that had arisen caused the ceremony to be postponed, much to my annoyance, for I knew the habitual delay of these people, especially where money was in question, and I feared that the inconvenient assumption of dignity on the part of the young woman might land us in trouble of which neither she nor her father had the least appreciation. I communicated my fears of delay and complications to the old gentleman when I got him alone, hoping he might use his influence with his daughter to modify what seemed to me her ill-timed assertion of high rank; but Mr. Hemster, though a resourceful man in every other direction, always proved a broken reed so far as his daughter was concerned, and he pathetically admitted his inability to curb either her actions or her words.
“All we can do, Mr. Tremorne,” he said, “is to fork over the cash. Don’t you spare it. I can see very well you are handling this situation as expertly as a ward politician. You’re all right. If you can talk to this here King as you talked to his Prime Minister, I think you’ll fix up the thing in five minutes, and remember this is a game of bluff in which there is no limit. I don’t restrict you in the cash you spend, so go ahead.”
And this indeed proved to be the way out of the muddle, although I explained to him that too lavish distribution of cash was not without its own danger. But at this juncture a message arrived to the effect that the Prime Minister wished to see me, and I at once departed to learn what had been the outcome of his mediation. I found that he had made little progress, but by a curious coincidence he put forth the same suggestion previously offered by Mr. Hemster. He had arranged a conference for me with the King, and advised me, as Mr. Hemster had done, to lay it on thick. Hun Woe was somewhat encouraged by the orders he had received from his royal master in regard to my audience. The King would receive me entirely alone; not even his Prime Minister was to be present. From this condition Hun Woe surmised I was to be successful in my quest, and I was well aware that this unwitnessed reception of me was as much contrary to Corean customs as was the proposal Miss Hemster had made.
I saw his Majesty in one of the private apartments of the Palace, and speedily realized that he did not care a rap what honours belonged to Mr. Hemster. The sinister, shifty eyes of his Majesty were filled with greed. Never was there such a picture of avarice presented to me as the countenance of the King showed. His claw-like hands had been withdrawn from the voluminous bell sleeves of his robe of red silk and yellow gold, and were twitching nervously on the table before him. His tremulous attitude of uneasy eagerness reminded me of the Miser in the “Chimes of Normandy.” Impatiently he waved aside the recital touching the claims of my employer to the most-favoured-monarch treatment, and gasped out the Corean equivalent for “How much, how much?”
A tangible object-lesson is better than talk even in the Orient; so, bringing my eloquence to an abrupt conclusion, I drew from my pocket another bag of gold, similar in weight to the one I had previously presented to him, and, seeing he was impatient for touch as well as for sight, undid the string and poured the stream of shining metal discs before him on the table. He thrust his vibrant hands among the coins, and gave utterance to a low guttural sound of satisfaction which resembled the noise made by a pig thrusting its snout into a trough of slops, rather than any exclamation I had ever before heard from human lips. I assured him that no word of all this would be spoken by me, and promised that as soon as the conference was safely over on the terms that Miss Hemster and her father had laid down, a similar amount would be privately paid to his Royal self in an equally secret manner; and so my mission terminated in a glorious success, and it was arranged that the reception should take place the next day at two o’clock. The process was costly, but effective; and effectiveness, after all, was the main thing.
I reported my victory to Mr. Hemster and his daughter, and almost immediately after this the Prime Minister came in to offer his congratulations. The good man had seen his royal master for a few moments, and was evidently delighted that everything was going on so smoothly. It meant money in his pocket, and he was becoming rich with a celerity which left stock-exchange speculations far in the rear. He had received his commands regarding next day’s reception, and the Emperor had been pleased to order that the audience should take place in the same room where I had seen him, with none of the nobles of the Court present except the Prime Minister. This was a good example of his Majesty’s craftiness. The Premier already knew that the etiquette of the Court was to be put aside for the occasion; but the monarch had no desire for further witnesses, and was evidently not going to set a precedent in the realm of Corea that might produce inconvenient consequences thereafter.
I had had little opportunity of talking with Miss Stretton since the night of our walk on deck, – the night of the proposal, as I called it to myself, as amidst all these negotiations I kept continually thinking of it. Without exactly avoiding me, Miss Stretton never seemed to be alone, and although very rarely I caught a glance of her eye I had no opportunity of private speech with her. She kept very much in the background and was more than usually quiet and thoughtful.
We had dinner early that night, somewhere about six o’clock, for there were neither candles nor lamps in the Palace, and if we waited until nightfall we had to “grope,” as Mr. Hemster termed it. In spite of the success of her plans, Miss Hemster was distinctly snappy at dinner, if I may use such a term regarding a person so beautiful. She shut me up most effectually when I ventured a little harmless general conversation, and I think she made Miss Stretton feel more than usual the bitterness of a dependent’s bread. Mr. Hemster said nothing. I could see the poor old gentleman was hankering for a daily paper, and from my soul I felt sorry for him as he listened with the utmost patience to the querulous fault-findings of his lovely daughter.
Toward the end of dinner something that was said did not please the young lady, and she rose abruptly and left the table, with a gesture of queenly disapproval of us all. Anger appeared to fill her as electricity fills an accumulator, and until the battery was discharged we never knew who would suffer the next shock. When the young woman’s ill-temper had been aroused by my opposition earlier in the day, perhaps we would have spent a pleasanter evening if it had been allowed to run its course. But as it was checked by her interest in the negotiations it now filtered out in very palpable discontent. When Miss Stretton arose to leave I took the liberty of begging her to remain.
“I should like very much,” I said, “to show you the light on Nam-san.”
“And what is the light on Nam-san?” she asked, pausing with her hand on the back of the chair.
“Beacons are lighted all along the coast of Corea, on the mountain tops,” I replied, “so that peak calls to peak, as it were; and the last one to be lit is that on Nam-san, which is the name of the highest mountain near Seoul. They kindle it at eight o’clock, and its blazing up shows that the kingdom of Corea is safe and at peace with the world.”
“Very well,” said Miss Stretton after a pause; “I will return here about ten minutes to eight.”
She was as good as her word, and we took a stroll together in the great courtyard of the Palace, which is a city within a city. The gates of the Palace grounds were now closed and guarded, and we could not have got out into Seoul if we had wished to do so. But it was all very still and pleasant in the broad square surrounded by the low, strangely roofed buildings that constituted the Palace. We saw the beacon light flash out and then die away. I cannot remember that we talked much, but there was a calm and soothing sense of comradeship between us that was very comforting. She told me, when I had tried to warn her against expecting too much on seeing the Emperor next day, that she did not intend to accompany our party, and I suspected that she had been ordered to remain away. Moreover I could see that she was very tired of it all, and, like Mr. Hemster, wished herself back in her own country.