Fortune Is a Woman - Elizabeth Adler [227]
“Of course I wish you luck, darling, and happiness too.”
Francie smiled as she walked out onto the porch where Buck was waiting. She sat beside him on the sofa and took his hand.
“She said she only wants what we have,” she told him. “Do you think she’s doing the right thing?”
He looked at her with love in his eyes, seeing the same beautiful woman he had met all those years ago. “You betcha,” he said, smiling.
And early the next morning Lysandra Lai Tsin was on a plane to Australia, and Matt.
EPILOGUE
Many years later, when a beleaguered China opened her doors to the world again, Lysandra and her husband Matt took a shabby black-sailed junk upriver from Shanghai, past Nanking and Wuhu, sailing up the broad yellow Yangtze through the high gorges and past low-lying reedy banks, retracing her beloved Mandarin’s fateful journey. On the way, she told Matt the story of Mayling and her brother Lai Tsin, of Little Brother Chen and the beautiful mui-tsai Lilin, who was their mother. But she did not divulge the Mandarin’s secret, not even to the man she loved and the man who was the father of her three children, who had brought her more happiness than she ever believed possible.
They stood together at the rail as the junk edged its way to the bank, where an old wooden jetty dipped drunkenly into the river and coolies in high-necked blue Mao jackets leapt to fasten the thick mooring ropes. The flat land cowered like a beaten yellow beast under a lowering gray sky and the road that led to the Mandarin’s old village was now little more than a track.
Holding tightly to Matt’s hand, she ventured down the narrow clay path, gazing around her, searching for the places she felt she already knew; but the flat steely pond was dry and choked with reeds and no longer home to a thousand pretty, doomed white ducks; the rice fields had reverted to marshland and the fung-shui grove where Little Chen had been left to the birds and the dogs was but a few barren, leafless trees. The walls that once encircled the village had long since crumbled, there were no more hungry dogs roaming in search of food, and all that was left of the houses were a few piles of yellowish stones.
Lysandra shivered as she looked at the scene of desolation; there was nothing here to remind her of the Mandarin and she turned sadly away, wishing she had never come.
They took the overgrown path through the rice fields and suddenly saw on the hill in front of them, like a flame against the gray-gold landscape, the vermillion ancestral hall of Lilin. They scrambled breathlessly up the rocky path until they stood before it and even though its lacquer was faded and its gilt long since gone, they saw it was very beautiful.
They went inside and there, sitting cross-legged on the floor, was an ancient holyman. He was so old, his fragile bones could barely support their meager covering of flesh. His face was skull-like with a wisp of pointed, gray beard and his eyes seemed even older than the rest of him, steeped in knowledge and alive with goodness. Instinctively, Lysandra bowed to him.
He was sitting on his grass bedmat wrapped in his worn saffron robe and she sat beside him and addressed him in Chinese.
“Honorable Elder, I am sorry to disturb your peace with my humble presence, but I am here to pay my respects to my honorable ancestors.”
The old man’s eyes searched her features, but he did not question what she said. “Their spirits will be glad you have come,” he replied in a thin, reedy voice.
“Tell me, holy man,” she said. “All life has gone from this place. Why are you here?”
“Honorable Daughter,” he replied gently, “I came across this small temple many years ago on my travels, and each time I pass this way I am drawn again to its peace and its beauty. Each time I stop and pass a few hours or a few days here, I do not know how long for I am so old I can no longer remember the passing of time.”
“Then you remember this