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

return, and entreating him to compel a just restitution and liberty to pursue his inoffensive calling peaceably in the future.

“Listen well, O unassuming Ten-teh, for you are a person of discernment and one with a mature knowledge of the habits of all swimming creatures,” said the headman after attending patiently to Ten-teh’s words. “If two lean and insignificant carp encountered a voracious pike and one at length fell into his jaws, by what means would the other compel the assailant to release his prey?”

“So courageous an emotion would serve no useful purpose,” replied Ten-teh. “Being ill-equipped for such a conflict, it would inevitably result in the second fish also falling a prey to the voracious pike, and recognizing this, the more fortunate of the two would endeavour to escape by lying unperceived among the reeds about.”

“The answer is inspired and at the same time sufficiently concise to lie within the hollow bowl of an opium pipe,” replied the headman, and turning to his bench he continued in his occupation of beating flax with a wooden mallet.

“Yet,” protested Ten-teh, when at length the other paused, “surely the matter could be placed before those in authority in so convincing a light by one possessing your admitted eloquence that Justice would stumble over herself in her haste to liberate the oppressed and to degrade the guilty.”

“The phenomenon has occasionally been witnessed, but latterly it would appear that the conscientious deity in question must have lost all power of movement, or perhaps even fatally injured herself, as the result of some such act of rash impulsiveness in the past,” replied the headman sympathetically.

“Alas, then,” exclaimed Ten-teh, “is there, under the most enlightened form of government in the world, no prescribed method of obtaining redress?”

“Assuredly,” replied the headman; “the prescribed method is the part of the system that has received the most attention. As the one of whom you complain is a mandarin of the fifth degree, you may fittingly address yourself to his superiors of the fourth, third, second and first degrees. Then there are the city governors, the district prefects, the provincial rulers, the Imperial Assessors, the Board of Censors, the Guider of the Vermilion Pencil, and, finally, the supreme Emperor himself. To each of these, if you are wealthy enough to reach his actual presence, you may prostrate yourself in turn, and each one, with many courteous expressions of intolerable regret that the matter does not come within his office, will refer you to another. The more prudent course, therefore, would seem to be that of beginning with the Emperor rather than reaching him as the last resort, and as you are now without means of livelihood if you remain here there is no reason why you should not journey to the Capital and make the attempt.”

“The Highest!” exclaimed Ten-teh, with a pang of unfathomable emotion. “Is there, then, no middle way? Who is Ten-teh, the obscure and illiterate fisherman, that he should thrust himself into the presence of the Son of Heaven? If the mother of the dutiful Chou Yii could destroy herself and her family at one blow to the end that her son might serve his sovereign with a single heart, how degraded an outcast must he be who would obtrude his own trivial misfortunes at so critical a time.”

“‘A thorn in one’s own little finger is more difficult to endure than a sword piercing the sublime Emperor’s arm,’” replied the headman, resuming his occupation. “But if your angle of regarding the various obligations is as you have stated it, then there is obviously nothing more to be said. In any case it is more than doubtful whether the Fountain of Justice would raise an eyelash if you, by every combination of fortunate circumstance, succeeded in reaching his presence.”

“The headman has spoken, and his word is ten times more weighty than that of an ill-educated fisherman,” replied Ten-teh submissively, and he departed.

From that time Ten-teh sought to sustain life upon roots and wild herbs which he collected laboriously and not always in sufficient quantities from the woods and rank wastes around. Soon even this resource failed him in a great measure, for a famine of unprecedented harshness swept over that part of the province. All supplies of adequate food ceased, and those who survived were driven by the pangs of hunger to consume weeds and the bark of trees, fallen leaves, insects of the lowest orders and the bones of wild animals which had died in the forest. To carry a little rice openly was a rash challenge to those who still valued life, and a loaf of chaff and black mould was guarded as a precious jewel. No wife or daughter could weigh in the balance against a measure of corn, and men sold themselves into captivity to secure the coarse nourishment which the rich allotted to their slaves. Those who remained in the villages followed in Ten-teh’s footsteps, so that the meagre harvest that hitherto had failed to supply one household now constituted the whole provision for many. At length these persons, seeing a lingering but inevitable death before them all, came together and spoke of how this might perchance be avoided.

“Let us consider well,” said one of their number, “for it may be that succour would not be withheld did we but know the precise manner in which to invoke it.”

“Your words are light, O Tan-yung, and your eyes too bright in looking at things which present no encouragement whatever,” replied another. “We who remain are old, infirm, or in some way deficient, or we would ere this have sold ourselves into slavery or left this accursed desert in search of a more prolific land. Therefore our existence is of no value to the State, so that they will not take any pains to preserve it. Furthermore, now being beyond the grasp of the most covetous extortion, the district officials have no reason for maintaining an interest in our lives. Assuredly there is no escape except by the White Door of which each one himself holds the key.”

“Yet,” objected a third, “the aged Ning has often recounted how in the latter years of the reign of the charitable Emperor Kwong, when a similar infliction lay upon the land, a bullock-load of rice was sent daily into the villages of the valley and freely distributed by the headman. Now that same munificent Kwong was a direct ancestor to the third degree of our own Kwo Kam.”

“Alas!” remarked a person who had lost many of his features during a raid of brigands, “since the days of the commendable Kwong, while the feet of our lesser ones have been growing smaller the hands of our greater ones have been growing larger. Yet even nowadays, by the protection of the deities, the bullock might reach us.”

“The wheel-grease of the cart would alone make the day memorable,” murmured another.

“O brothers,” interposed one who had not yet spoken, “do not cause our throats to twitch convulsively; nor is it in any way useful to leave the date of solid reflection in pursuit of the stone of light and versatile fancy. Is it thought to be expedient that we should send an emissary to those in authority, pleading our straits?”

“Have not two already journeyed to Kuing-yi in our cause, and to what end?” replied the second one who had raised his voice.

“They did but seek the city mandarin and failed to reach his ear, being empty-handed,” urged Tan-yung. “The distance to the Capital is admittedly great, yet it is no more than a persevering and resolute-minded man could certainly achieve. There prostrating himself before the Sublime One and invoking the memory of the imperishable Kwong he could so outline our necessity and despair that the one wagon-load referred to would be increased by nine and the unwieldy oxen give place to relays of swift horses.”

“The Emperor!” exclaimed the one who had last spoken, in tones of undisguised contempt towards Tan-yung. “Is the eye of the Unapproachable Sovereign less than that of a city mandarin, that having failed to come near the one we should now strive to reach the other; or are we, peradventure, to fill the sleeves of our messenger with gold and his inner scrip with sapphires!” Nevertheless the greater part of those who stood around zealously supported Tan-yung, crying aloud: “The Emperor! The suggestion is inspired! Undoubtedly the beneficent Kwo Kam will uphold our cause and our troubles may now be considered as almost at an end.”

“Yet,” interposed a faltering voice, “who among us is to go?”

At the mention of this necessary detail of the plan the cries which were the loudest raised in exultation suddenly leapt back upon themselves as each person looked in turn at all the others and then at himself. The one who had urged the opportune but disconcerting point was lacking in the power of movement in his lower limbs and progressed at a pace little advanced to that of a shell-cow upon two slabs of wood. Tan-yung was subject to a disorder which without any warning cast him to the ground almost daily in a condition of writhing frenzy; the one who had opposed him was paralysed in all but his head and feet, while those who stood about were either blind, lame, camel-backed, leprous, armless, misshapen, or in some way mentally or bodily deficient in an insuperable degree. “Alas!” exclaimed one, as the true understanding of their deformities possessed him, “not only would they of the Court receive it as a most detestable insult if we sent such as ourselves, but the probability of anyone so harassed overcoming the difficulties of river, desert and mountain barrier is so remote that this person is more than willing to stake his entire share of the anticipated bounty against a span-length of succulent lotus root or an embossed coffin handle.”

“Let unworthy despair fade!” suddenly exclaimed Tan-yung, who nevertheless had been more downcast than any other a moment before; “for among us has been retained one who has probably been especially destined for this very service. There is yet Ten-teh. Let us seek him out.”

With this design they sought for Ten-teh and finding him in his hut they confidently invoked his assistance, pointing out how he would save all their lives and receive great honour. To their dismay Ten-teh received them with solemn curses and drove them from his door with blows, calling them traitors, ungrateful ones, and rebellious subjects whose minds were so far removed from submissive loyalty that rather than perish harmlessly they would inopportunely thrust themselves in upon the attention of the divine Emperor when his mind was full of great matters and his thoughts tenaciously fixed upon the scheme for reclaiming the abandoned outer lands of his forefathers. “Behold,” he cried, “when a hand is raised to sweep into oblivion a thousand earthworms they lift no voice in protest, and in this matter ye are less than earthworms. The dogs are content to starve dumbly while their masters feast, and ye are less than dogs. The dutiful son cheerfully submits himself to torture on the chance that his father’s sufferings may be lessened, and the Emperor, as the supreme head, is more to be venerated than any father; but your hearts are sheathed in avarice and greed.” Thus he drove them away, and their last hope being gone they wandered back to the forest, wailing and filling the air with their despairing moans; for the brief light that had inspired them was extinguished and the thought that by a patient endurance they might spare the Emperor an unnecessary pang was not a sufficient recompense in their eyes.

The time of warmth and green life passed. With winter came floods and snow-storms, great tempests from the north and bitter winds that cut men down as though they had been smitten by the sword. The rivers and lagoons were frozen over; the meagre sustenance of the earth lay hidden beneath an impenetrable crust of snow and ice, until those who had hitherto found it a desperate chance to live from day to day now abandoned the unequal struggle for the more attractive certainty of a swift and painless death. One by one the fires went out in the houses of the dead; the ever-increasing snow broke down the walls. Wild beasts from the mountains walked openly about the deserted streets, thrust themselves through such doors as were closed against them and lurked by night in the most sacred recesses of the ruined temples. The strong and the wealthy had long since fled, and presently out of all the eleven villages of the valley but one man remained alive and Ten-teh lay upon the floor of his inner chamber, dying.

“There was a sign—there was a sign in the past that more was yet to be accomplished,” ran the one thought of his mind as he lay there helpless, his last grain consumed and the ashes on