Page:Dumas - Tales of Strange adventure (Methuen, 1907).djvu/131

Rh doctor was dead of a disease, the nature of which he could not clearly diagnose himself. However, he was happy in his last moments, for never was man better nursed in sickness than he was by his good young wife; so he left her all he died possessed of, amounting to some two or three thousand rupees. It was a poor recompense for the devotion the widow had lavished upon him during his illness and the extreme grief she had displayed after his death.

"With the three thousand rupees she had inherited, the young widow set up, in one of the quietest corners of the town, a little business in fans, which thanks to her thrift and clever management began to prosper amazingly.

"But the most remarkable circumstance about this premature widowhood of the pretty child was that, instead of listening to all the many offers made her by the fine gentlemen of Bedondo, instead of losing the good reputation she had won by some foolish act, she would accept no protection but that of an old mandarin, a friend of her husband's, who used to come every day to bewail with her the bereavement they had suffered. Thus the widow and the mandarin got into the habit of lamenting together—the former her husband, the latter his friend; the result was that one fine morning it was announced that, in order to bewail their loss more at their ease, the two inconsolables were going to be married.

"Accordingly, a year after the death of her first husband the fascinating Vanly-Ching wedded the Mandarin. But once united and enjoying each other's company all day long, the pair it seems wept so much, and wept so sore, that the Mandarin, who was fifty, could not bear the strain of such a deluge of tears, and in two months time departed this life.

"The fascinating Vanly-Ching, who was only fifteen, naturally bore her sorrow better, so that though she had now to bewail at once her first and her second husbands, her beauty soon shone out more resplendent than ever through her tears.

"She had inherited from the late Mandarin a sum of five or six hundred pagodas; this little addition to her fortune enabled her to launch out into a more extensive business in a more fashionable district. Instead of fans, she took up porcelain, and the fame of her establishment and its pretty proprietress began to spread far and wide in Bedondo. So much so indeed, that the Judge of the High Court of Bedondo, who had been on intimate terms with both the first and second husbands of the fair Vanly-Ching, and who had therefore been able to appreciate how happy the Doctor had been during the three months and the Mandarin during the two months they had lived with her, set about the task of consohng her. Vanly-Ching declared her grief was so deep that she thought this would be impossible; but as the Judge pressed the point, she ended by telling him she was willing to try.

"The wedding took place after a year's interval. So long a delay is not obligatory, but Vanly-Ching was so careful an observer of the proprieties that nothing in the world would have induced her to seek consolation before the fitting time. Nevertheless, the Judge had no leisure to administer complete consolation for more than a month after his marriage. On the morrow of the day on which he had inherited a considerable sum of money from a distant relative at Macao, and on which he had given a dinner to a few friends to celebrate the happy event, he unfortunately died of a surfeit of swallows' nests.

"But before expiring, he declared that the month he had just spent was the happiest of his life. As he had realised his legacy the moment it was his, the fair widow could, thanks to this money, still further extend her business, and established in the principal street of Bedondo the imposing tea-shop in which I had seen her wag her pretty head and eat rice.

"All this information, as you may suppose, completed my infatuation. The charming Vanly-Ching had had considerable experience of widowhood, but so little of marriage that she must evidently be the delicious houri I had dreamt of. So I opened my mind to my correspondent and told him how eagerly I desired to be ner fourth husband and take her as my fifth wife.

"It is never news to a woman when you tell her you love her; they always know it before we do so. The fair Vanly-Ching manifested no surprise at my proposal, but said she had been expecting it. Such being her state of mind, she was able to give me an immediate answer, and this was favourable. She liked me well enough; but as she always made a point