Part 7

In this way peace having been restored and all internal affairs of State set running smoothly, the new magistrate, who was something of a Sybarite, began to turn his attention to improvements in his yamen, and to the surrounding of himself with every luxury. He spent money freely, employing hosts of builders, carpenters, painters, and other workmen in embellishing his house and grounds, and in this way soon earned a certain popularity as a beneficent magistrate. Yeh, however, had unwittingly earned the undying hatred of the hunchback, whose filial piety would allow him to leave no stone unturned in his endeavour to avenge the—to his mind—illegal execution of his aged mother. Having beautified the interior of his yamen, the magistrate turned his attention to the spacious grounds surrounding his residence, and who more able to provide fantastic rock-work, design ornamental ponds, bridges, hills, and valleys, and complete the whole scheme with cunning dwarf trees and shrubs, than the hunchback gardener, To Tao?

Accordingly, to his huge inward satisfaction, the hunchback was commanded to wait on the great man, and he failed in no way to please the magistrate with his original ideas and quaint suggestions. To Tao’s manner was all that could be desired: he grasped every idea of the magistrate almost before it was expressed, and his own politely suggested improvements so entirely corresponded with Yeh’s wishes that he completely won his employer’s confidence. No tree in To Tao’s collection was too valuable for Yeh, and soon the grounds of the yamen, under the magic of the hunchback’s witchery, became a veritable paradise. When all was completed Yeh insisted upon taking the hunchback into his permanent service as gardener-in-chief, and the cunning fellow, after a suitable demur, accepted the position in the magistrate’s household. Thus the first step in his scheme of revenge was accomplished.

The hunchback was the only servant in the yamen engaged locally, the remainder of Yeh’s retinue having followed their master from a distant province where this official had previously held sway. This fact proved of the greatest value to To Tao, for as he continued to ingratiate himself with his master he was employed on various other duties in addition to gardening, and his local knowledge enabled him to carry out every commission entrusted to him with complete satisfaction to his lord. The district having now lapsed into a condition of uneventful peace and a certain amount of commercial prosperity, Yeh sought relaxation in every luxury and some small amount of dissipation. To Tao here again proved most useful and trustworthy, and he took good care to unobtrusively encourage his master in what, at first, were mild extravagances, but which with the insidious help of To Tao soon developed into vices.

The hunchback gardener, having now completely won the confidence of his master, made frequent journeys on his behalf to the distant city of Canton, and these journeys resulted in many cases of sweet champagne finding their way to Yeh’s yamen, to say nothing of dancing and singing girls, troupes of entertainers and acrobats, and the charming frail beauties for which that city is so famous. Indulgence seemed to only whet Yeh’s appetite, and far from any feeling of satiety he more and more relied on To Tao’s resource and good taste in furnishing him with the continual novelty and change that now seemed necessary to the magistrate’s very existence.

After every absence the magistrate would insist on hearing all the gossip of the great city, and the hunchback, with a vivid imagination, never failed to interest and amuse his master. Consequently Yeh, in addition to receiving some new beauty into his establishment, had the pleasure of hearing of others from his faithful servant, and of many new delights, polite amusements, and gorgeous scenes that the clever fellow professed to have witnessed while away.

Yeh’s curiosity had for some time been greatly piqued by hearing the praises of one Su Sing, a beautiful girl residing in the Flower Boats of Canton, and at length, after a somewhat prolonged absence, the hunchback was able to return to the yamen with the much-desired charmer under his protection. Yeh was entirely delighted with her appearance, manners, and accomplishments, and the same evening, after a sumptuous meal, he was in the very best humour for hearing an account of his faithful messenger’s adventures.

To Tao being summoned found his master reclining with one arm round the new favourite, smoking a cigar and sipping the sweetest of sweet champagne, the only other person present being the female attendant of the new beauty. Yeh ordered the hunchback to speak freely, as the four of them were safe from any interruption or eaves-dropping, and so pleased was he with his new inamorata that he was willing to make her the confidante of all his affairs and intrigues, even of his amours.

For at least an hour To Tao, who was no mean raconteur, amused his audience with accounts of his doings in the great city, amusing anecdotes of important persons, the latest gossip and scandals, and even some account of the doings of the outer barbarians, who were separated from the Middle Kingdom by the seas.

“And there is one other strange thing I have seen in Canton,” continued the hunchback. “It is a method of detecting leprosy sometimes practised by the _jeunesse dorée_ when visiting the Flower Boats.”

To Tao was quick to notice the almost imperceptible start given by Yeh at the mention of this dreaded disease, and a wild exultation filled his breast. Here at last was a means to his hand whereby his master should pay his debt in full for the execution of the old woman.

“Tell us of it,” commanded Yeh, with a forced gaiety; “it will perhaps amuse us. These superstitions, however, bear seldom any foundation of truth in them.”

“It is in this way, Excellency. The suspected person and one or two others known to be untainted are taken into a dark room. Some spirit mixed with salt is poured in a dish, a small piece of tow is dropped in to act as a wick, and then a light is applied. As your Excellency knows, the light produced is of a bluish green, and by this illumination the faces of all healthy persons look deadly white, but the face of the leper appears red as fire, although he have no other sign of leprosy visible to the most careful observer.”

“Come, come, we will test the efficacy of this foolish old superstition,” cried the magistrate.

The materials having been brought, the four retired to a small unlighted apartment, and To Tao ignited the spirit. Eagerly Yeh scanned the faces round him, now rendered ghastly by the green light, when suddenly he noticed a look of horror spread over the faces of the two women. Su Sing burst into tears, and her attendant threw herself on her face on the floor. To Tao alone remained unmoved.

“Speak! speak!” screamed the magistrate. “What means this foolishness?”

With bowed head To Tao meekly responded: “It is nothing, Excellency, the girls are silly and frightened. Believe me, it is nothing. The girls must most certainly be low-born, or they would know better how to behave in your august presence.”

Yeh, however, was far from satisfied. He summoned the attendants, ordered lights to be brought, dismissed the girls, and ordered To Tao to remain. The two being left alone, with nervous haste Yeh poured out a tumbler of champagne and demanded an instant explanation of the hunchback.

“Speak!” he said, “and the truth, moreover, or it may be my unpleasant duty to interrogate you under torture.”

To Tao begged his master to excuse him, repeating that the whole affair was due to the stupidity of the girls. Yeh flew into a violent temper, and said that if the hunchback did not instantly explain the servants would be called in and To Tao delivered to the inquisitor. Whereupon, with downcast eyes, the trembling servant said—

“Excellency, your face by the green light was——”

“Was what?” thundered Yeh.

“Red,” faltered the shivering cripple.

Yeh staggered and looked like to fall had not To Tao supported him. After gulping down more champagne the magistrate became somewhat more composed, when he ordered the hunchback to leave him till the morning. The exulting servant retired well satisfied with the first effects of his revenge.

Early next morning To Tao was summoned to Yeh’s couch. The magistrate’s appearance was ghastly, and he seemed to have aged a decade since the previous night.

“I will not live with this loathsome disease in my blood,” he said. “All my life the fear of contracting it has haunted me, and now it has come. The foreign devils, however, possess a wonderful poison, and by that means I will die. The poison is contained in a glass tube fitted with a piston, and is taken by pushing a needle under the skin. Death by this means is most pleasant, I have heard. You will go at once to Hong Kong and procure these things, and during your absence I will set my affairs in order. Go!”

To Tao would have preferred to stop and gloat over his enemy’s mental anguish, but this pleasure was denied him. It took him four days to journey to Hong Kong; there he easily procured a hypodermic syringe, but the obtaining of morphia was a more difficult matter. It took To Tao a further two days to make the acquaintance of a hospital orderly and bribe him to steal the required drug. Then To Tao returned. The ten days of his absence had been passed by Yeh in a fever. He had ordered all his affairs, given out that he was seriously ill (as indeed he was), and had paid and dismissed all his dancing-girls, courtesans, and mountebanks.

The change in Yeh would have struck To Tao as dreadful were it not as a soothing balm to his revengeful spirit to see how terribly his enemy had suffered. Yeh was at once all eagerness for the drug which To Tao, much as he would have wished it, was unable to withhold. And now Yeh had composed himself on his couch, and To Tao alone silently watched him with impassive face. Soon the drug’s influence was felt, and a delicious drowsiness came over the magistrate.

“Excellency, can you hear me? I have much to say.”

“I can hear well, brother. All is peace,” replied the magistrate.

“That is well,” continued the hunchback. “Your life was pleasant before this disease held you, was it not, my lord?”

“Yes, very, very pleasant, but now I would rather die than live a leper. Before, life was sweet, but now, death seems far preferable.”

“But you do not suffer from leprosy.”

Yeh started up and leant on his elbow.

“What do you mean?” he demanded, almost thoroughly aroused.

“I mean,” responded To Tao, “that Su Sing and her attendant were my creatures and with me in a plot to kill you. Many times I could have killed you by poison, but I wished to make you suffer first, and I think I have indeed succeeded by persuading you that you had contracted that loathsome disease.”

Yeh remained silent for a while, and To Tao feared that he would sink into the sleep of death. At last he dreamily asked—

“Why did you wish me this ill?”

“Because you slew my mother, the old prisoner in the gaol. She is now avenged.”

Again a silence. The drug was rapidly gaining entire possession of Yeh’s brain. Very slowly he spoke his last words.

“Brother, you did well. You acted as a filial child should. I have a wife and two sons in Szechuen. If my sons heard of the manner of my death they would do the same to you and more also. But they will never know. I think, perhaps, it is better they should not, for, indeed, you are a marvellous gardener. Send my body to Szechuen and now—now—I would—sleep——”

So Yeh the magistrate slept, To Tao religiously carried out his dead master’s last wishes, and then returned to his gardens.

His fame as a producer of dwarf trees spreads daily further and further afield, which, coupled with his increasing prosperity, point to rewards received for a virtuous life.

HOO, THE DAUGHTER OF TAK WO

HOO, THE DAUGHTER OF TAK WO

ON YICK’S residence was quite charmingly situated in a narrow gorge down which a small torrent ran, winter and summer alike. This small stream was turned to every use that the ingenious and painstaking Chinaman so admirably accomplishes invariably where running water is present. This particular hill stream, although not more than two miles in extent, from its source where it bubbled as a spring from the rocks some fifteen hundred feet above sea-level to where it joined the sea across the sandy beach of the small village of Tai Kok, had been trained and coaxed to turn three mill-wheels, flood acres of paddy in irregular curved mud-walled fields, varying in size and shape from a table-cloth to a barrack square, from a crescent to a hexagon, after which it afforded nutriment and recreation for numerous ducks, water for the pine-apple fields on the hillsides and also for cooking purposes, and possibly for washing, to the peaceable inhabitants of Tai Kok. This little nameless stream through countless ages unostentatiously has continued to benefit hundreds of our oblique-eyed fellow-men in Southern China.

All the above was so familiar to On Yick that possibly he had never given it a thought. To-day, as he sat making bamboo baskets outside his mill, his mind was more occupied with thoughts of the daughter of Tak Wo than with the economical conservancy of streams. The stranger approaching the hills up the rock-strewn gorge was first aware of a continual stamping noise; on a closer approach the air became, in addition to the noise, filled with an all-pervading sweet odour of sandal-wood. Smells are ubiquitous in China, but pleasant smells are often painfully few and far between. This smell, however, emanates directly from On Yick’s abode. The mill-wheel turned by the stream has its axle prolonged on one side, and on this are projecting pieces of wood, which, as the wheel revolves, press down heavy wooden levers which pass through the house wall. At the further end of these levers are heavy balks of timber, which rise and fall into a stone trough in the mud floor. The trough is filled with chips and odd pieces of sandal-wood, the revolving wheel and consequent stamping of the levers breaking it to a fine powder, the smaller particles of which float about in the air, and soon make their presence felt in the nostrils of anyone ascending from the village.

The powder when stamped to a sufficient fineness is packed tight in palm leaves, placed in bamboo baskets, and shipped in junks from Tai Kok to the nearest city or fu, where it is employed in the manufacture of “joss-sticks,” so that the fragrant smell may gladden the noses of innumerable greasy idols and further blacken the roofs of countless temples and houses.

To-day the middleman of the village had been despatched by On Yick to the house of Tak Wo to make preliminary talk with a view to a marriage being arranged between On Yick, mill-owner, and the daughter of Tak Wo, grass merchant.

The meeting of On Yick and the daughter of Tak Wo had been unconventional but not unpremeditated as far as the lady was concerned. It happened in this way. One bright winter morning Hoo, the daughter of Tak, had gone to the hillside to cut grass, and it so happened that On Yick sat outside his door in the sun mending a grass sandal. He sat clad in a pair of blue cotton pantaloons only, his broad, sunburned back exposed to the cheerful warmth of the sun, when Hoo, passing behind him, could not resist the temptation of picking up a frog and throwing it at the handsome young miller. Her aim was true, and the soft, bloated creature struck On Yick just below the shoulder-blades. Quickly turning round he was greeted with a merry laugh and the sight of the bare-footed Hoo scampering away down the hillside.

From that moment the flame of love was kindled in the bosom of On Yick. The possession of Hoo, the daughter of Tak Wo, became the one object of his dreams. Cupid has many ways of assailing men’s hearts, sometimes by the pressure of a hand, the dropping of a handkerchief, the tearing of a ball dress. So why not by the hurling of a live frog on a susceptible young man’s back? Love must exist as long as human beings tread this earth. So what matters it by what incident it was first engendered in each particular case!

The first day’s talking passed off satisfactorily, and the go-between came to On Yick’s mill the same evening and reported that Tak Wo was inclined to look with some favour on the proposition of an alliance between On Yick and his daughter. On was delighted, and having liberally rewarded the go-between, retired to his kang and soon fell into the happiest of dreams, in all of which Hoo, a frog, and a sandal-wood mill played important parts.

The idea of getting Hoo comfortably married was very pleasing to Tak Wo. He was a widower, and his daughter, although only sixteen, had repeatedly given him much anxiety. We can judge from the frog incident that Hoo sadly lacked that becoming reserve expected of a Chinese girl. Another instance of her want of conventionality is shown by the fact that she managed to conceal herself and overhear the conversation between her father and the go-between with regard to her proposed marriage.

Unlike On, Hoo had given no further thought to the frog and bare-back incident, but on overhearing the long conversation between her father and the go-between, she conceived a most violently passionate affection for On Yick.

Hoo was a girl of slightly unstable mental equilibrium, and of this her father was well aware from various unpleasant and hard-to-be-tolerated jokes that had been perpetrated at his expense by his daughter. Hence the anxiety of Tak Wo to rid himself of this daughter by a suitable marriage.

The idea of love and marriage supplied the just sufficient tilt to Hoo’s mental balance to upset the proverbial apple-cart; the result was that between romantic fancies, love for On Yick, and a nearly complete idleness, she became more or less a monomaniac. Her every idea centred on On Yick, but the small kink in her brain prevented her from doing the right thing at the right time.

The go-between and On Yick were now much occupied in deciding a suitable present to be sent to Tak Wo. Of course it was understood that Tak Wo would only retain a small portion of the gifts sent; still it was necessary to make as imposing a show as possible.

Eventually the coolies were hired and entrusted with the presents for the prospective father-in-law. These consisted of half a young pig, split from his nose to his tail, and varnished, two live geese, two white fowls, many cakes, a jar of preserved fruits, a thick bundle of incense sticks, and two bottles of samshu.

Tak Wo was delighted. He selected as many of the presents as were seemly and returned the balance to the miller, after rewarding the carriers with a few cash. The versatile Hoo was away from home when the presents arrived. Her brain was so engrossed with thoughts of her lover, and her desire to speak with him had so carried her away, that she had resolved on the unheard-of boldness of despatching him a letter. Being unable to write herself she had recourse to the village scribe, and in order to pay him for inditing the letter, she stole her father’s long tobacco-pipe with the brass bowl and jade mouthpiece. The letter was sent, and Hoo returned home, where she found her father good-tempered and smiling but uncommunicative. Two empty bottles near him may possibly have accounted for his beaming but reticent condition. So Hoo retired to sleep with her silly head filled with the pleasantest and most romantic dreams.

On Yick, on receipt of the letter, was at once seized with a great impatience for the advent of the go-between, as, being unable to read, he desired that highly educated person to convey the meaning of the epistle to his illiterate self. The go-between arrived, and already, from his friend the scribe, was acquainted with the contents of the letter which On Yick thrust into his hands. Having adjusted his brass-rimmed spectacles and cleared his throat, the go-between read as follows:—

“O most honourable and dearly loved one! This insignificant person fades away for a sight of her lover’s form, for the sound of his voice, for the clasp of his arms. Come, come, my lord, your slave awaits you at sundown between the third house and the paved way. Come! Come! Your handmaid faints and desires you as the sailor desires the land, as the beggar desires clothing, as the famished desires rice.”

Although not particularly elegant in its phrases, still this letter filled On Yick’s breast with the liveliest sensations of love and joy, and he watched the westering of the sun with the greatest impatience.

Meanwhile affairs had proceeded in the house of Tak Wo somewhat unsmoothly. Tak Wo, in consequence of his previous night’s libations, awoke somewhat late and withal surly. For a considerable time he searched about the house, and at last addressed his daughter, demanding of her the whereabouts of his pipe. Hoo was thereupon obliged, at some length, to explain that during the previous night she had been awakened by a small but benevolent dragon who, it appeared, lived in the kang, or oven, on which Tak Wo slept; that the dragon had requested her to give him Tak Wo’s pipe; that she had done so, thrusting the pipe into the glowing embers of millet stalks in the flue; and that the dragon appeared highly pleased.

Tak was highly annoyed at this recital, and left the house to seek some of his cronies to obtain a much-desired smoke. Finding congenial companions, and having told them the news of his daughter’s approaching marriage, he was suitably entertained with tobacco and fiery spirits, and so remained absent the whole day.