Kai Lung's Golden Hours, Ernest Bramah [romantic novels to read TXT] 📗

Chi had intended when he sent for his son, but resentment had distorted his eyesight. It was a greater test than Weng had anticipated, but his mind was clear, and his heart charged with fragrant memories of his loss. Deliberately but with silent dignity he poured the untasted wine upon the ground, drew his sword and touched the vessels lightly so that they broke, took from off his thumb the jade ring inscribed with the sign of the House of Wu, and putting on the sandals grasped the staff and prepared to leave the hall.

“Weng Cho, for the last time spoken of as of the House of Wu, now alienated from that noble line, and henceforth and for ever an outcast, you have made a choice and chosen as befits your rebellious life. Between us stretches a barrier wider and deeper than the Yellow Sea, and throughout all future time no sign shall pass from that distant shore to this. From every record of our race your name shall be cut out; no mention of it shall profane the Tablets, and both in this world and the next it shall be to us as though you have never been. As I break this bowl so are all ties broken, as I quench this candle so are all memories extinguished, and as, when you go, the space is filled with empty air, so shall it be.”

“Ho, nameless stranger,” laughed the woman from above, “here is food and drink to bear you on your way”; and from the grille she threw a withered fig and spat.

“The fruit is the cankered effort of a barren tree,” cast back Weng over his shoulder. “Look to your own offspring, basilisk. It is given me to 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 summer-house 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 be sought in secret places. The things I have spoken I know because we have many ears, and in our care a whisper passes from east to west and from north to south without a word being spilled.”

“And the price of your sword is that I should join the confederacy?” asked Weng thoughtfully.

“I had set out to greet you before the estimable Mandarin who is now saluting his ancestors was so inopportune as to do so,” replied the emissary. “Yet it is not to be denied that we offer an adequate protection among each other, while at the same time punishing guilt and administering a rigorous justice secretly.”

“Lead me to your meeting-place, then,” said Weng determinedly. “I have done with the outer things.”

The guide pointed to a rock, shaped like a locust’s head, which marked the highest point of the steep mountain before them. Soon the fertile lowlands ended and they passed beyond the limit of the inhabitable region. Still ascending they reached the Tiger’s High Retreat, which defines the spot where even the animal kind turn back and where watercourses cease to flow. Beyond this the most meagre indication of vegetable sustenance came to an end, and thenceforward their passage was rendered more slow and laborious by frequent snow-storms, barriers of ice, and sudden tempests which strove to hurl them to destruction. Nevertheless, by about the hour of midnight they reached the rock shaped like a locust’s head, which stood in the wildest and most inaccessible part of the mountain, and masked the entrance to a strongly-guarded cave. Here Weng suffered himself to be blindfolded, and being led forward he was taken into the innermost council. Closely questioned, he professed a spontaneous desire to be admitted into their band, to join in their dangers and share their honours; whereupon the oath was administered to him, the passwords and secret signs revealed, and he was bound from that time forth, under the bonds of a most painful death and torments in the afterworld, to submerge all passions save those for the benefit of their community, and to cherish no interests, wrongs or possessions that did not affect them all alike.

For the space of seven years Weng remained about the shadow of the mountain, carrying out, together with the other members of the band, the instructions which from time to time they received from the higher circles of the Society, as well as such acts of retributive justice as they themselves determined upon, and in this quiet and unostentatious manner maintaining peace and greatly purifying the entire province. In this passionless subservience to the principles of the Order none exceeded him; yet at no time have men been forbidden to burn joss-sticks to the spirit of the destinies, and who shall say?

At the end of seven years the first breath from out of the past reached Weng (or Thang, as he had announced himself to be when cast out nameless). One day he was summoned before the chief of their company and a mission laid upon him.

“You have proved yourself to be capable and sincere in the past, and this matter is one of delicacy,” said the leader. “Furthermore, it is reported that you know something of the paths about Kien-fi?”

“There is not a forgotten turn within those paths by which I might stumble in the dark,” replied Weng, striving to subdue his mind.

“See that out of so poignant a memory no more formidable barrier than a forgotten path arises,” said the leader, observing him closely. “Know you, then a house bearing as a sign the figure of a golden ibis?”

“Truly; I have noted it,” replied Weng, changing his position, so that he now leaned against a rock. “There dwelt an old man of some lower official rank, who had no son but many daughters.”

“He has Passed, and one of those—Tiao by name,” said the other, referring to a parchment—“has schemingly driven out the rest and held the patrimony. Crafty and ambitious, she has of late married a high official who has ever been hostile to ourselves. Out of a private enmity the woman seeks the lives of two who are under our most solemn protection, and now uses her husband’s wealth and influence to that end. It is on him that the blow must fall, for men kill only men, and she, having no son, will then be discredited and impotent.”

“And concerning this official?” asked Weng.

“It has not been thought prudent to speak of him by name,” replied the chief. “Stricken with a painful but not dangerous malady he has retired for a time to the healthier seclusion of his wife’s house, and there he may be found. The woman you will know with certainty by a crescent scar—above the right eye.”

“Beneath the eye,” corrected Weng instantly.

“Assuredly, beneath: I misread the sign,” said the head, appearing to consult the scroll. “Yet, out of a keen regard for your virtues, Thang, let me point a warning that it is antagonistic to our strict rule to remember these ancient scars too well. Further, in accordance with that same esteem, do not stoop too closely nor too long to identify the