MR. WU
BY LOUISE JORDAN MILN
(MRS. GEORGE CRICHTON MILN)
Based on the Play "Mr. Wu" by H. M. VERNON and HAROLD OWEN

CHAPTER I
Wu CHING Yu AND "Wu Li CHANG

A LOOK of terror glinted across the eyes slit in the child 's moon-shaped yellow face, but he stood stock still and silent respectful and obedient.

The very old man in the chair of carved and inlaid teak wood saw the glint of fear, and he liked it fiercely, although he came of a clan renowned for fearlessness, even in a race that for personal courage has never been matched unless by the British, the race which of all others it most resembles. Old Wu adored little Wu, and was proud of him with a jealous pride, but he knew that there was nothing craven in the fear that had looked for one uncontrolled instant from his grandson's narrow eye nothing craven, but love for himself, love of home, and a reluctance to leave both ; a reluctance that he was the last man in China to resent or to misestimate.

Wu the grandfather was eighty. Wu the grandson was ten.

Rich almost beyond the dreams of even Chinese avarice, the mandarin was warmly wrapped in clothes almost coolie-plain; but the youngster, who was but his senior's chattel, would have pawned for a fortune as he stood, a ridiculous, gorgeous figure of warmth and of affluence, almost half as broad as long, by virtue of padding. His stiffly embroidered robe of yellow silk was worn ovei three quilted coats, silk too, and well wadded with down of the Manchurian eider duck, and above the yellow silk surcoat he wore a slightly shorter one of rich fur, fur- lined and also wadded. The fur top-coat was buttoned with jewels. The yellow coat was sewn with pearls and with emeralds. Jewels winked on the thick little padded shoes and blazed on his little skull cap.

For himself the mandarin took his ease in unencum bered old clothes, but it pleased his arrogant pride and his love of the gorgeous that his small grandson should be garbed, even in the semi-seclusion of their isolated country estate, as if paying a visit of state to the boy Emperor at Pekin. As little "Wu was of royal blood himself, he might indeed by some right of caste so have visited in no servile role, for on his mother's side the lad was of more than royal blood, descended from the two supreme Chinese, descent from whom confers the only hereditary nobility of China. Perhaps the yellows that he often wore hinted at this discreetly. The sartorial boast (if boast it was) was well controlled, for true yellow was the imperial color, sacred to the Emperor, and young Wu's yellows were always on the amber side, or on the lemon; and even so he might have worn them less in Pekin than he did here in the Sze-chuan stronghold of his house.

The room was very warm, and seemed no cooler for the scented prayer-sticks that were burning profusely in the carved recess where the ancestral tablet hung, and as he talked with and studied the boy, whom he had studied for every hour of the young life, the upright old man with the gaunt, withered, pockmarked face fanned himself incessantly. Little Wu had run in from his play in the bitterly cold garden, all fur-clad as he was.

The mandarin had sent for him, and he had not stayed to throw off even one of his thick garments. Old Wu was not accustomed to be kept waiting or the grandchild to delay.

"Well?" the old man demanded, "you have heard. What do you say?"

"Art thou glad to go?"
“Thy child is glad, Sir most renowned and venerable, to obey thy wish."
"Art glad to go?"

The boy swept again to the ground, and, bending up, spread out his pink palms in a gesture of pleased acceptance. "Most glad, ancient long-beard." The grandfather laughed. "Nay, thou liest. Thou art loth to go. And I am loth to have thee go. But it is best, and so I send thee." He held out his yellow, claw-like hand, and little Wu came and caught it to his forehead, then stood leaning against the other's knee, and began playing with the long string of scented beads that hung about the man's neck.

"Well," the mandarin said again, "say all that is in thy heart. Leave off the words of ceremony. Speak simply. Say what thou wilt. "

''When do I go?" It was characteristically Chinese that such was the question, and not "Must I go?" or even "Why must I go?" The grandfather had said that he was to go: that point was settled. From that will there was no appeal. The boy scarcely knew that there were children who did not obey their parents implicitly and always. That there were countries in the far off foreign-devils ' land where filial disobedience was almost the rule, he had never heard and could not have believed. Of course, in the classics, which even now he read easily, there were runaway marriages and undutiful offspring now and then. But the end of all such offenders was beyond horror horrible, and even so little Wu had always regarded them as literary make weight, artistic shades to throw up the high lights whiter, shadows grotesque and devilish as some of his grandsire 's most precious carvings were, and scarcely as flesh and
blood possibilities.

In all their ten years together there had been between these two nothing but love and kindness. No child in China (where children are adored) had ever been more indulged; no child in China (where children are guarded) more strictly disciplined. The older Wu had loved and ruled ; the younger Wu had loved and obeyed always. They live life so in China. ...

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