Kai Lung’s Golden Hours - Ernest Bramah (the reading strategies book .TXT) 📗

speak.” Even as he spoke there was a great cry from the upper part of the house, the sound of many feet and much turmoil, but he went on his way without another word.

Thus it was that Weng Cho came to be cut off from the past. From his father’s house he stepped out into the streets of Kien-fi a being without a name, destitute, and suffering the pangs of many keen emotions. Friends whom he encountered he saluted distantly, not desirous of sharing their affection until they should have learned his state; but there was one who stood in his mind as removed above the possibility of change, and to the summerhouse of Tiao’s home he therefore turned his steps.

Tiao was the daughter of a minor official, an unsuccessful man of no particular descent. He had many daughters, and had encouraged Weng’s affection, with frequent professions that he regarded only the youth’s virtuous life and discernment, and would otherwise have desired one not so highly placed. Tiao also had spoken of rice and contentment in a ruined pagoda. Yet as she listened to Weng’s relation a new expression gradually revealed itself about her face, and when he had finished many paces lay between them.

“A breaker of sacred customs, a disobeyer of parents and an outcast! How do you disclose yourself!” she exclaimed wildly. “What vile thing has possessed you?”

“One hitherto which now rejects me,” replied Weng slowly. “I had thought that here alone I might find a familiar greeting, but that also fails.”

“What other seemly course presents itself?” demanded the maiden unsympathetically. “How degrading a position might easily become that of the one who linked her lot with yours if all fit and proper sequences are to be reversed! What menial one might supplant her not only in your affections but also in your Rites! He had defied the Principles!” she exclaimed, as her father entered from behind a screen.

“He has lost his inheritance,” muttered the little old man, eyeing him contemptuously. “Weng Cho,” he continued aloud, “you have played a double part and crossed our step with only half your heart. Now the past is past and the future an unwritten sheet.”

“It shall be written in vermilion ink,” replied Weng, regaining an impassive dignity; “and upon that darker half of my heart can now be traced two added names.”

He had no aim now, but instinct drove him towards the mountains, the retreat of the lost and despairing. A three days’ journey lay between. He went forward vacantly, without food and without rest. A falling leaf, as it is said, would have turned the balance of his destiny, and at the wayside village of Li-yong so it chanced. The noisome smell of burning thatch stung his face as he approached, and presently the object came into view. It was the bare cabin of a needy widow who had become involved in a lawsuit through the rapacity of a tax-gatherer. As she had the means neither to satisfy the tax nor to discharge the dues, the powerful Mandarin before whom she had been called ordered all her possessions to be seized, and that she should then be burned within her hut as a warning to others. This was the act of justice being carried out, and even as Weng heard the tale the Mandarin in question drew near, carried in his state chair to satisfy his eyes that his authority was scrupulously maintained. All those villagers who had not drawn off unseen at once fell upon their faces, so that Weng alone remained standing, doubtful what course to take.

“Ill-nurtured dog!” exclaimed the Mandarin, stepping up to him, “prostrate yourself! Do you not know that I am of the Sapphire Button, and have fivescore bowmen at my yamen, ready to do my word?” And he struck the youth across the face with a jewelled rod.

“I have only one sword, but it is in my hand,” cried Weng, reckless beneath the blow, and drawing it he at one stroke cut down the Mandarin before any could raise a hand. Then breaking in the door of the hovel he would have saved the woman, but it was too late, so he took the head and body and threw them into the fire, saying: “There, Mandarin, follow to secure justice. They shall not bear witness against you Up There in your absence.”

The chair-carriers had fled in terror, but the villagers murmured against Weng as he passed through them. “It was a small thing that one house and one person should be burned; now, through this, the whole village will assuredly be consumed. He was a high official and visited justice impartially on us all. It was our affair, and you, who are a stranger, have done ill.”

“I did you wrong, Mandarin,” said Weng, resuming his journey; “you took me for one of them. I pass you the parting of the woman Che, burrowers in the cow-heap called Li-yong.”

“Oi-ye!” exclaimed a voice behind, “but yonder earth-beetles haply have not been struck off the Tablets and found that a maiden with well-matched eyes can watch two ways at once, all of a morning: and thereby death through red spectacles is not that same death through blue spectacles. Things in their appointed places, noble companion.”

“Greetings, wayfarer,” said Weng, stopping. “The path narrows somewhat inconveniently hereabout. Take honourable precedence.”

“The narrower the better to defend then,” replied the stranger good-humouredly. “Whereto, also, two swords cut a larger slice than one. Without doubt fivescore valiant bowmen will soon be a-ranging when they hear that the enemy goes upon two feet, and then ill befall who knows not the passes.” As he spoke an arrow, shot from a distance, flew above their heads.

“Why should you bear a part with me, and who are you who know these recent things?” demanded Weng doubtfully.

“I am one of many, we being a branch of that great spreading lotus the Triad, though called by the tillers here around the League of Tomb-Haunters, because we must