Adrift in Pacific and Other Great Adventures – 17 Titles in One Volume (Illustrated Edition). Jules Verne
Читать онлайн книгу.
him to me,” said Kin-Fo, addressing the intendant, who set all his people to find the unfindable.
Wang and Kin-Fo remained alone.
“Wisdom,” then spoke the philosopher, “commands the traveller who returns to his fireside to take rest.”
“Let us be wise,” simply answered Wang’s pupil; and, after having clasped the philosopher’s hand, he went to his apartments. Kin-Fo, when at length alone, stretched himself on one of those soft lounges of European manufacture which a Chinese upholsterer would never have been able to make so comfortable.
In this position he began to meditate. Was he meditating on his marriage with the amiable and pretty woman he was to make the companion of his life? Yes; but that is not surprising, because he was about to visit her. This charming person did not reside in Shang-hai, but in Pekin; and Kin-Fo thought that it would be proper to announce to her both his return to Shang-hai, and his intention of soon visiting the capital of the Celestial Empire. Even were he to show a certain desire and slight impatience to see her again, it would not be out of place; for he really had a true affection for her.
Wang had demonstrated this to him by the most unanswerable rules of logic; and this new element introduced into his life might, perhaps, call forth the unknown,—that is, happiness,—who,—which,—of which—
Kin-Fo was dreaming, with his eyes already closed; and he would have gently fallen asleep, if he had not felt a sort of tickling in his right hand.
Instinctively his fingers came together, and seized a slightly knotty, cylindrical body, of tolerable thickness, which they undoubtedly were accustomed to handle. He could not be mistaken: it was a rattan, which had slipped into his right hand, while at the same time were heard, in a resigned tone, the following words:—
“When master wishes.”
Kin-Fo started up, and instinctively brandished the correcting rattan.
Soun was before him, presenting his shoulders, and bending half double-in the position of a malefactor about to be beheaded. Supporting himself on the floor by one hand, he held a letter in the other.
“Well, here you are at last!” cried Kin-Fo.
“Ai, ai, ya!” answered Soun. “I did not expect master till the third period. If he wishes”—
Kin-Fo threw the rattan on the floor. Soun, although he was naturally so yellow, managed to turn pale.
“If you offer your back without any other explanation,” said his master, “it is because you deserve something more. What is the matter?”
“This letter.”
“Well, what of it? Speak!” cried Kin-Fo, seizing the letter which Soun presented to him.
“I very stupidly forgot to give it to you before your departure to Canton.”
“A week behind time, you rascal!”
“I did wrong, master.”
“Come here.”
“I am like a poor crab that has no claws, and cannot walk. Ai, ai, ya!”
This last cry was one of despair. Kin-Fo, having seized Soun by his braid, with one clip of the well-sharpened scissors cut off the extreme tip.
It is to be supposed that claws grow instantaneously on the unhappy crab; for this one, having first snatched from the carpet the severed part of his precious appendage, scampered hastily away.
From fifty-seven centimetres, Soun’s pigtail had become reduced to fifty-four.
Kin-Fo, who was again perfectly calm, had thrown himself once more on the lounge, and was examining, with the air of a man whom nothing hurries, the letter which had arrived a week ago. He was only displeased with Soun on account of his carelessness, not on account of the delay. How could any letter whatsoever interest him? It would only be welcome if it could cause him an emotion. An emotion for him! He looked at it, therefore, somewhat vacantly. The envelope, of heavy linen paper, revealed on the front and the reverse side various postmarks of a chocolate and a wine color, with the printed picture of a man underneath the figure 2, and “six cents,” which showed that it came from the United States of America.
“Good!” said Kin-Fo, shrugging his shoulders, “a letter from my correspondent in San Francisco.” And he threw it in a corner of the lounge.
Indeed, what could his correspondent have to tell him? That the securities which composed almost all his fortune remained quietly in the safes of the Central Bank in California, or that his stock had risen from fifteen to twenty per cent, or that the dividends to be distributed would exceed those of the preceding year, &c.
A few million dollars more or less really could not move him.
However, a few moments later, Kin-Fo took the letter again, and mechanically tore the envelope; but, instead of reading it, his eyes at first sought only the signature.
“It is truly from my correspondent,” he said. “He can only have business-matters to tell me of; and business I won’t think of till to-morrow.”
And a second time Kin-Fo was about to throw down the letter, when inside, on the right-hand page, a word underlined several times caught his eye. It was the word “indebtedness,” to which the San Francisco correspondent wished to draw the attention of his client at Shanghai.
Kin-Fo then began the letter from the beginning, and read every word from the first to the last line, not without a certain feeling of curiosity rather surprising on his part. For a moment his eyebrows contracted; but a rather disdainful smile played round his lips when he finished reading.
He then rose, took about twenty steps around his room, and approached the rubber tube which placed him in communication with Wang. He even carried the mouth-piece to his lips, and was about to whistle through it, when he changed his mind, let fall the rubber serpent, and, returning, threw himself on the lounge.
“Pooh!” said he.
This word just expressed Kin-Fo.
“And she!” he murmured. “She is really more interested in all this than I am.”
He then approached a little lacquered table, on which stood an oblong box of rare carving; but, as he was about to open it, he stayed his hand.
“What was it that her last letter said?” he murmured.
Instead of raising the box-cover, he pressed a spring at one end, and immediately a sweet voice was heard:—
“My little elder brother, am I no longer to you like the flower mei-houa in the first moon, like the flower of the apricot in the second, and the flower of the peach-tree in the third? My dear, precious jewel of a heart, a thousand, ten thousand greetings to you!”
It was the voice of a young woman, whose tender words were repeated by the phonograph.
“Poor little younger sister!” said Kin-Fo.
Then, opening the box, he took out from the apparatus the paper on which were the indented lines which had just reproduced the inflections of the absent voice, and replaced it with another.
The phonograph was then perfected to such a degree, that it was necessary only to speak aloud for the membrane to receive the impression, and the wheel, which was turned as by the machinery of a watch, would stamp the words on the paper inside.
Kin-Fo spoke in it for about a moment.
By his voice, which was always calm and even, one could not have learned whether joy or sorrow influenced his thoughts.
No more than three or four sentences were spoken. Having ended, he stopped the machinery of the phonograph, drew out the special paper on which the needle, acted upon by the membrane, had traced oblique ridges corresponding to the words spoken; then, placing this paper in