The evening had nevertheless been spoiled. They had fallen into the old argument, and had parted early with formal bows and with mutual impatience, and after she was gone he had sent for a palace lady of pleasure.
Now, the morning after, he heard the announcement that the son of his old friend and recently dead adviser waited for audience, and was ready to step into his father’s place. He knew Kim Il-han to be an adviser to the Queen, and he did not hurry himself. Let the man wait! It was fully two hours before he sent his chief chamberlain to the Hall of Waiting to say audience was granted. The delay would calm his subject’s possible arrogance, he told himself, and then, to mitigate or merely to confuse, he would himself be informal and friendly upon meeting.
At high noon he strode into the audience hall and seated himself upon the throne, which here was scarcely more than an ornate chair, set low to the floor so that he could draw up his feet in the Japanese fashion. Instead, he sat down and crossed his knees in the western fashion. He had never seen a white man, but he was told that they sat on seats and let their legs hang or crossed their knees and he knew that subjects observed every detail of a monarch’s behavior, anxious to catch any straw in any wind.
Il-han entered now and knelt before the King. He placed his hands together flat on the polished floor, thumb to thumb. Then he bent his head until his forehead touched his hands and waited.
“You may stand,” the King said pleasantly.
Il-han stood, his eyes on the floor, and again he waited.
“You may speak,” the King said in the same kind voice.
Without raising his eyes, Il-han then spoke. “Majesty, I come as the son of my father, now deceased. I come, as he did, only as a private citizen, but as one responsible, with others, for the people, and therefore ready for service.”
The King listened and then directed by a gesture of the hand that Il-han was to seat himself on the floor cushion before the throne.
“Let us forget ceremony,” the King said when the ceremonies were finished. “I trust you because you are your father’s son. He was a wise man. He told me once that the three nations who surround us are like the balls a juggler must keep in the air and in motion, and we must be the juggler. Do you agree?”
“Majesty, I would even add more such balls,” Il-han replied. “The western nations are eying us across the four seas. How many balls there will be for us to juggle, I cannot tell. But there will be more than three, and some may have to be cast aside.”
The King uncrossed his legs impatiently and crossed them again. He did not wear his garments of state today, but about his neck was a heavy chain of jade pieces strung on gold. At the end was a jade circle, carved with the emblem of cranes under a pine tree, and with this emblem his right hand was now busy. He had a full underlip, a sign of his passionate nature, and he pinched it now between thumb and finger, in deep thought.
“Will you accept office?” he asked at last. “Will you be, let us say, prime minister? Chancellor? What you will—”
Il-han raised his eyes to meet the royal gaze and was startled by the boldness he saw. The King’s eyes were narrow, the corners sharp and the pupils very black under wide short black brows. They were not the eyes of a poet or a thinker but of a man accustomed to act. His hand, fingering the full lower lip, was dark and strong.
“Majesty,” Il-han said, while he let his eyes fall again to the embroidered cranes and the pine tree on the King’s breast, “forgive me if I decline office. I wait for your command, day and night. I am your subject. But if I am more, I shall not be free to speak, to move, to report, to observe, to ask for audience, to be of use to you, I hope, as your own hand is useful, obedient to your brain and heart.”
The King laughed. “What you mean is that you prefer not to owe me anything! Well, that is rare enough.”
He clapped his hands and servants entered.
“Bring us food and drink,” he commanded.
While the servants obeyed, he went on, “Now, let us discuss the position of this jewel you call our country. I do not deceive myself as to why Li Hung-chang wishes us to receive an envoy from the United States. It is his weapon against Japan, who threatens war. In such a war we would be their point of departure for China. Tell me, what is the United States?”
He put the question suddenly to Il-han, who was embarrassed because he did not know the answer.
“Majesty, I shall have to inquire. I recollect that the sailors shipwrecked on our shores some fifteen years ago were Americans and I have heard that they were very savage. They molested our women, and our people, outraged, put them to death.”
“Not immediately,” the King reminded him. “The sailors were at first only arrested. Then others came out from ships to rescue them, and these men seized their shipmates from us, and with them certain of our men, as hostages. It was only then that our outraged people attacked the ship, killed eight of the Americans, and captured the others and burned the ship — all of this deserved, I was told.”
Here the King paused and thought awhile and Il-han was amazed to hear such detail.
“Perhaps the truth does not matter now,” the King said at last, “but I may as well tell it to you. It was my father who commanded that the ship be attacked. He feared that it brought more Catholic priests to avenge the death of those whom he had ordered beheaded in earlier years. My father believes, has always believed, that western religions disturb the peace wherever they go. This he has observed from such foreign persons in China and in Japan and while he ruled he forbade all foreign priests to set foot on our shores, and if they did so secretly he had them killed. Alas, some of our own people have been beguiled by them, and have themselves become Christian. I will not speak of this.”
Here he paused, and Il-han knew the King was reminded of that Kim ancestor of Il-han’s who had been killed because he was Catholic.
“I have followed my father,” the King continued. “While I was very young I refused to see the American, surnamed Low, who arrived in our port with a fleet of ships. But today I do not know …”
The servants brought the food now and set it on the table and stood by to serve. But the King sent them away again.
“They stand there like images,” he complained to Il-han when they were gone, “but they are not images. Their eyes see, their ears hear, and their tongues carry tales. Proceed!”