Читать книгу The Vermilion Pencil - Homer Lea - Страница 6

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Just south of where the Yangtse River empties into the ocean lies the Province of the Winding Stream—venerable and beautiful, with a history written back almost to that long hour when the world was yet supposed to be unmade by the hand of God—a nebulous vapour adrift in the night.

This province is one vast park of alternating hills and valleys, where peaks, cascades, and woodlands intervene in a fascinating confusion; where walled cities and temples rise majestically on all sides; where canals and watercourses, alive with boats, form a silvery network among fragrant hills and tree-hid hamlets, making it altogether just such a land as the imagination conceives belonging alone to the sunlit East.

This province is like an endless garden; whereever the eye reaches is seen not only a luxuriant vegetation but one that has been tended and reared by man for his uses. Patches of pink orchard blossoms alternate with grey thickets of mulberry; clumps of feathery bamboo flutter as plumes by the edges of rice fields; plane trees with their snowy blossoms alternate with orchards of pumelo, while along the lower hills, forming wide and densely shaded tracts, spread groves of silvery olive and lichee with delicate pink leaves and strawberry-like fruit.

Throughout all of these hills and orchards wind rivers, brooks, and canals, over-spanned at short intervals by high curved bridges of stone. Under their arches innumerable boats glide from dawn until night. In some places the country is covered with tea plantations, and from each willow-whipped cottage rises the fragrant breath of burning tea. Here and there on hills thick with cypress and pine are seen the carved gleaming roofs of temples, while on the paths leading to them every crag and turn has its miniature pagodas and grottoes. Again, the hills in many places are covered with groves of oil-bearing camelias, whose graceful shape and dark green foliage add an indescribable charm to the landscape.

But Che Kiang is not more famous for the charm of its countryside than it is for the beauty of the women, who dwell among its hills and valleys, working in the midst of their tea shrubs, rearing cocoons, spinning silk; and are no more thought of than the azaleas that brighten the hillsides or the purple lanwhui that scatters its perfume on the bosom of the careless passing winds. In the Tien Mu Mountains, toward the southwestern part of the province, these women have a peculiar hauteur and independence of their own, a vivacity and laughter, which is found nowhere else in China.

It was among these mountains and forests of the Tien Mu Shan that that tireless spider, Fate, set to weaving one of its innumerable webs of invisible strands: a net fragile yet terrible. Unseen or half seen, a spirit-glint in the azure heavens, it is a barrier through which and from which the little man-fly never breaks.

So the spider webbed in the Valley of the Fountain, and before this net is finally torn and shattered by the bluster of Time there shall be found in it those that did not know of its weaving.

One spring morning, probably about the same hour when a melancholy Breton and an unknown priest were setting out from the Mission of Yingching upon their errands of mercy, a mandarin’s retinue moved slowly along the Tien Mu Mountains and before the night mists had entirely cleared away the path brought them to the upper heights of a small glade, known as the Valley of the Fountain. Around this vale the rugged, broken mountains were clothed in trees of various sorts. The bright golden leaves of the camphor and amber mingled with the purple foliage of the tallow, while over these rose the deep soft green of pine and arbor vitae.

As the sun rose and sent its broadening beams down into the purple Valley of the Fountain the lower mountain sides became a gorgeous mass of red and yellow azaleas; on every hill-bank whereever the eye could reach spread a flower mantle of dazzling brightness. From the valley came the fragrance of tea; from the ravines, the breath of lilies and lanwhui.

As the retinue moved slowly down the tortuous path there rose from a thicket of tea shrubs on a round slope to the right an outburst of song not unlike that of the mocking bird in its sweet intensity and freedom but vibrant with the melody of human passion. And, as this wild song rose with supreme impulse and passion above the tea thicket, the mandarin’s retinue stopped.

Never was an auditorium more suitable to song than this amphitheatre of flower-packed hills that surrounded the Valley of the Fountain. The sun’s rays were just stealing through a purple haze and turning the dew, which lay heavy upon the flowers into myriads of opals; the murmur of ravine-hidden cascades, the chorus of bird-song in the still-aired morning, all seemed but part of the song that rose from the tea thicket. This tempestuous outburst made the hills ring with its echoes, calling, scorning, pleading, threatening; now bubbling like the wood-warbler with cadences of silvery notes; now rising, exultant as the night-lark, to the ear of heaven; triumphant, declamatory, beseeching, full of defiance, of mockery and laughter until at last it ceased, dying away among the neighbouring gorges, as soft as a kiss.

“What was that?” demanded the mandarin excitedly, putting his head out of the sedan.

“That is Ma Shue’s daughter,” said several voices at once, “the girl with a tongue of a hundred spirits.”

“On with you and stop your chattering,” cried the mandarin.

Ma Shue, the old farmer of the Valley, stood watching from the door of his rice-thatched cottage the procession winding down the mountain path.

“Where is she?” demanded the mandarin, stepping hastily from his chair.

“How greatly honoured is my poor and miserable abode,” murmured the old farmer, bowing repeatedly.

“Where is she?” demanded the mandarin again, as he peeped about the corners of the cottage and through the open door.

“I am ashamed to set before your honourable self the wretched food we live upon,” apologised the old man as he followed at the heels of the mandarin.

“Go get her,” commanded the mandarin impatiently as he peered into the cottage.

“Yes, yes,” murmured the farmer hastily, “but for the poor our food is not sufficient; how can it be tasted by——”

“What are you talking about, old coxcomb? Have you not a daughter?”

“Alas, Great Sir, it is true, I have been unfortunate——”

“Go get her at once, at once,” interrupted the mandarin excitedly.

“How can I, how can I?” asked the old man, bowing with trepidation.

“How can you?” mocked the mandarin scornfully. “How can you? Because I ordered it. I, Ho Ling, Mandarin of the Fifth Rank.” And Ho Ling, Mandarin of the Fifth Rank, scowling with dignity, stepped back and folded his hands majestically on his stomach.

When the farmer returned he bowed mutely before the mandarin.

“Well?” he demanded.

“I told her; yes, yes,” cried Ma Shue, “she is coming.”

“When?”

“She said,” and the old farmer looked uneasily at the feet of the mandarin, “she said——”

“Well?”

“When she got ready——”

It was a long time before a soft patter was heard in an adjoining room whence came low, amused laughter; then a light flutter of garments, and the tea-farmer’s daughter entered. Casting a hasty glance at the mandarin she turned her back on him with a haughty but almost imperceptible toss of her head.

For some moments the mandarin looked at her in astonishment, yet with intense satisfaction.

“Maid.”

“Man.”

The mandarin started, his eyes opened to the utmost of their narrow width and he glared at the old man shivering in his chair.

“Did I not hear you singing this morning?” he demanded severely.

“Your knowledge should be greater than mine,” she replied coldly.

“Were you singing?”

“I am always singing.”

“Were you not in a tea-thicket?”

“I should be at my work now.”

“Then it is settled. I heard you singing. You see I am quick in my judgment as well as sagacious. Will you sing for me?”

“Sing for you?” she repeated in soft, amazed tones. “Sing for you? Why?”

“I am Ho Ling, Mandarin of the Fifth Rank——”

“I never sing for mandarins,” she interrupted decisively.

“What?”

“My song,” she replied in cold, careless tones, “is for the birds and tea-pickers of the Valley, but not for wolves or tigers of the Yamen.”

The mandarin became rigid; the old father’s pipe fell from his hand and the daughter, casting a fleeting glance at him continued, her voice becoming suddenly gentle and humble:

“But your coming down into our valley is as the turning of raindrops into pearls.”

The mandarin’s countenance beamed with pleasure.

“By my Fifth Button,” he exclaimed, “I believe you could be taught something.”

“I am afraid it is impossible,” she murmured contritely.

“Never! You allow these rustics——” and Ho Ling glared his challenge around the room.

“Yes,” she continued meditatively as she turned her head slightly toward him, “a shrub may appear lofty in the desert and a tea-plant among the tea-plants is not small but,” she looked at him out of the corner of her eye, “I am only a fragile weed in the shadow of the luxuriant pine.”

“Yes, it is true,” he replied, settling back in his chair with supreme satisfaction. “It is true. I am Ho Ling, Mandarin of the Fifth Rank.”

The farmer’s daughter with unconscious coquettishness turned her head slightly toward him so the rose brown of her cheek and her full lustrous eye were visible.

Suddenly, in the midst of the mandarin’s self-contemplation, a chime of laughter pealed through the room. Tossing her head, the child of the Tien Mu Mountains glanced roguishly at the astounded mandarin and darted laughing through the doorway. Again and again came the birdlike notes, until in the distance they ceased in a silvery echo.

“Call her!” shouted the mandarin, rushing to the door.

The old man bowed excitedly.

“Call her! Get her!” cried the mandarin, turning fiercely on the old farmer.

“What can I do?” he mumbled pathetically. “She is gone. You do not understand, she moves as the kin deer, she is as wild as the pheasant.”

The mandarin returned to the doorway and remained for a long time in moody silence. Presently he turned to the farmer.

“Let it be known that Ho Ling, Mandarin of the Fifth Rank, will depart.”

And the old man skipped gleefully from the room.