Ipsie Wilson has always been a striking individual - though she would say for all the wrong reasons. She has never felt quite real - like a looker-on in life, capturing little pieces of people's attention, sometimes exasperating them, sometimes entrancing them, but never adding up to a whole human being - her existence seems very smoke and mirrors. If she sometimes feels lost and bewildered, she can also be quite cussed and determined - the strange contrasts and difficult mixtures in her personality go on and on.
She lost all three of her brothers in the war, which has caused further disorder in her messy life and mind. In the mid-1920s, having wandered for a while from England to San Francisco, she sets off for China to be married to Jacob Heming. He is a very stolid British customs official in Yunnan whom she met in the States; he scares and puzzles her in equal amounts, but at least the idea of him is something to hold onto.
On the boat to China she meets Rodd Innes, an American who just happens to be heading to Yunnan to take over Jacob's position. His easy, cool manner and worldliness forms a stark contrast to her memories of Jacob's rigid stuffiness, and he is clearly taken with her. A contest begins in her responsive yet untidy mind. Then, while Ipsie uncertainly meets Jacob's domineering sister Pauline and old flame Sophie Hinds in Hongkong, Rodd heads to Yueh Lai Chou to take over the reins from Jacob. He is horrified by the boorish man he meets, and determines in her absence that Ipsie cannot marry him.
But then Jacob is captured by brigands in the mountains close by. Ipsie, Pauline and Sophie come rushing to Yueh Lai Chou. What ransom will the brigands demand? What can any of them do to help? When Jacob is returned to them, will Ipsie's growing ambivalence let her care for him, or Rodd, or neither? In the end, fate intervenes with surprising finality.
Pipers and a Dancer, first published in 1924, was Stella Benson's first novel set almost entirely in China. Universally lauded, it was acclaimed by the reviewer for the Spectator as having "more wit, more unruly intelligence than any English novel since the nineties."
