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

the wood stood before him. “What crime have you now committed?”

“An ancient one. I presumed to raise my unworthy eyes⁠—”

“Alas, storyteller,” interposed the maiden hastily, “it would seem that the star to which you chained your wrist has not carried you into the assembly of the gods.”

“Yet already it has borne me halfway⁠—into a company of malefactors. Doubtless on the morrow the obliging Mandarin Shan Tien will arrange for the journey to be complete.”

“Yet have you then no further wish to continue in an ordinary existence?” asked the maiden.

“To this person,” replied Kai Lung, with a deep-seated look, “existence can never again be ordinary. Admittedly it may be short.”

As they conversed together in this inoffensive manner she whom Li-loe had called the Golden Mouse held in her delicately-formed hands a priceless bowl filled with ripe fruit of the rarer kinds which she had gathered. These from time to time she threw up to the opening, rightly deciding that one in Kai Lung’s position would stand in need of sustenance, and he no less dexterously held and retained them. When the bowl was empty she continued for a space to regard it silently, as though exploring the many-sided recesses of her mind.

“You have claimed to be a storyteller and have indeed made a boast that there is no arising emergency for which you are unprepared,” she said at length. “It now befalls that you may be put to a speedy test. Is the nature of this imagined scene”⁠—thus she indicated the embellishment of the bowl⁠—“familiar to your eyes?”

“It is that known as ‘The Willow,’ ” replied Kai Lung. “There is a story⁠—”

“There is a story!” exclaimed the maiden, loosening from her brow the overhanging look of care. “Thus and thus. Frequently have I importuned him before whom you will appear to explain to me the meaning of the scene. When you are called upon to plead your cause, see to it well that your knowledge of such a tale is clearly shown. He before whom you kneel, craftily plied meanwhile by my unceasing petulance, will then desire to hear it from your lips⁠ ⁠… At the striking of the fourth gong the day is done. What lies between rests with your discriminating wit.”

“You are deep in the subtler kinds of wisdom, such as the weak possess,” confessed Kai Lung. “Yet how will this avail to any length?”

“That which is put off from today is put off from tomorrow,” was the confident reply. “For the rest⁠—at a corresponding gong-stroke of each day it is this person’s custom to gather fruit. Farewell, minstrel.”

When Li-loe returned a little later Kai Lung threw his two remaining strings of cash about that rapacious person’s neck and embraced him as he exclaimed:

“Chieftain among doorkeepers, when I go to the Capital to receive the all-coveted title ‘Leaf-crowned’ and to chant ceremonial odes before the Court, thou shalt accompany me as forerunner, and an agile tribe of selected goats shall sport about thy path.”

“Alas, manlet,” replied the other, weeping readily, “greatly do I fear that the next journey thou wilt take will be in an upward or a downward rather than a sideway direction. This much have I learned, and to this end, at some cost admittedly, I enticed into loquacity one who knows another whose brother holds the key of Ming-shu’s confidence: that tomorrow the Mandarin will begin to distribute justice here, and out of the depths of Ming-shu’s malignity the name of Kai Lung is the first set down.”

“With the title,” continued Kai Lung cheerfully, “there goes a sufficiency of taels; also a vat of a potent wine of a certain kind.”

“If,” suggested Li-loe, looking anxiously around, “you have really discovered hidden about this place a secret store of wine, consider well whether it would not be prudent to entrust it to a faithful friend before it is too late.”

It was indeed as Li-loe had foretold. On the following day, at the second gong-stroke after noon, the order came and, closely guarded, Kai Lung was led forth. The middle court had been duly arranged, with a formidable display of chains, weights, presses, saws, branding irons and other implements for securing justice. At the head of a table draped with red sat the Mandarin Shan Tien, on his right the secretary of his hand, the contemptible Ming-shu. Round about were positioned others who in one necessity or another might be relied upon to play an ordered part. After a lavish explosion of firecrackers had been discharged, sonorous bells rung and gongs beaten, a venerable geomancer disclosed by means of certain tests that all doubtful influences had been driven off and that truth and impartiality alone remained.

“Except on the part of the prisoners, doubtless,” remarked the Mandarin, thereby imperilling the gravity of all who stood around.

“The first of those to prostrate themselves before your enlightened clemency, Excellence, is a notorious assassin who, under another name, has committed many crimes,” began the execrable Ming-shu. “He confesses that, now calling himself Kai Lung, he has recently journeyed from Loo-chow, where treason ever wears a smiling face.”

“Perchance he is saddened by our city’s loyalty,” interposed the benign Shan Tien, “for if he is smiling now it is on the side of his face removed from this one’s gaze.”

“The other side of his face is assuredly where he will be made to smile ere long,” acquiesced Ming-shu, not altogether to his chief’s approval, as the analogy was already his. “Furthermore, he has been detected lurking in secret meeting-places by the wayside, and on reaching Yu-ping he raised his rebellious voice inviting all to gather round and join his unlawful band. The usual remedy in such cases during periods of stress, Excellence, is strangulation.”

“The times are indeed pressing,” remarked the agile-minded Mandarin, “and the penalty would appear to be adequate.” As no one suffered inconvenience at his attitude, however, Shan Tien’s expression assumed a more unbending cast.

“Let the witnesses appear,” he commanded sharply.

“In so clear a case it has not been thought necessary to incur the