Kai Lung’s Golden Hours by Ernest Bramah (an ebook reader .TXT) 📕

glowing lustre in its tail. When he had read to the end, Lao Ting endeavoured to indicate by a sign that he wished to turn the page. To his delight he found that the winged creature intelligently grasped the requirement and at once transferred its presence to the required spot. All through the night the youth eagerly read on, nor did this miraculously endowed visitor ever fail him. By dawn he had more than made up the time in which the admiration of Hoa-mi had involved him. If such a state of things could be assured for the future, the vista would stretch like a sunlit glade before his feet.

Early in the day he set out to visit an elderly monk, who lived in a cave on the mountain above. Before he went, however, he did not fail to procure a variety of leaves and herbs, and to display them about the room in order to indicate to his unassuming companion that he had a continued interest in his welfare. The venerable hermit received him hospitably, and after inviting him to sit upon the floor and to partake of such food as he had brought with him, listened attentively to his story.

“Your fear that in this manifestation you may be the sport of a malicious Force, conspiring to some secret ill, is merely superstition,” remarked Tzu-lu when Lao Ting had reached an end. “Although creatures such as you describe are unknown in this province, they undoubtedly exist in outer barbarian lands, as do apes with the tails of peacocks, ducks with their bones outside their skins, beings whose pale green eyes can discover the precious hidden things of the earth, and men with a hole through their chests so that they require no chair to carry them, but are transposed from spot to spot by means of poles.”

“Your mind is widely opened, esteemed,” replied Lao Ting respectfully. “Yet the omen must surely tend towards a definite course?”

“Be guided by the mature philosophy of the resolute Heng-ki, who, after an unfortunate augury, exclaimed to his desponding warriors: ‘Do your best and let the Omens do their worst!’ What has happened is as clear as the iridescence of a dragon’s eye. In the past you have lent a sum of money to a friend who has thereupon passed into the Upper Air, leaving you unrequited.”

“A friend receiving a sum of money from this person would have every excuse for passing away suddenly.”

“Or,” continued the accommodating recluse, “you have in some other way placed so formidable an obligation upon one now in the Beyond that his disturbed spirit can no longer endure the burden. For this reason it has taken the form of a luminous insect, and has thus returned to earth in order that it may assist you and thereby discharge the debt.”

“The explanation is a convincing one,” replied Lao Ting. “Might it not have been more satisfactory in the end, however, if the gracious person in question had clothed himself with the attributes of the examining chancellor or some high mandarin, so that he could have upheld my cause in any extremity?”

Without actually smiling, a form of entertainment that was contrary to his strict vow, the patriarchal anchorite moved his features somewhat at the youth’s innocence.

“Do not forget that it is written: ‘Though you set a monkey on horseback yet will his hands and feet remain hairy,’ ” he remarked. “The one whose conduct we are discussing may well be aware of his own deficiencies, and know that if he adopted such a course a humiliating exposure would await him. Do not have any fear for the future, however: thus protected, this person is inspired to prophesy that you will certainly take a high place in the examinations.⁠ ⁠… Indeed,” he added thoughtfully, “it might be prudent to venture a string of cash upon your lucky number.”

With this auspicious leave-taking Tzu-lu dismissed him, and Lao Ting returned to the city greatly refreshed in spirit by the encounter. Instead of retiring to his home he continued into the more reputable ways beyond, it then being about the hour at which the affixers of official notices were wont to display their energies.

So it chanced indeed, but walking with his feet off the ground, owing to the obliging solitary’s encouragement, Lao Ting forgot his usual caution, and came suddenly into the midst of a band of these men at an angle of the paths.

“Honourable greetings,” he exclaimed, feeling that if he passed them by unregarded his purpose might be suspected. “Have you eaten your rice?”

“How is your warmth and cold?” they replied courteously. “Yet why do you arrest your dignified footsteps to converse with outcasts so illiterate as ourselves?”

“The reason,” admitted Lao Ting frankly, “need not be buried in a well. Had I avoided the encounter you might have said among yourselves: ‘Here is one who shuns our gaze. This, perchance, is he who of late has lurked within the shadow of our backs to bear away our labour.’ Not to create this unworthy suspicion I freely came among you, for, as the Ancient Wisdom says: ‘Do not adjust your sandals while passing through a melon-field, nor yet arrange your hat beneath an orange-tree.’ ”

“Yet,” said the leader of the band, “we were waiting thus in expectation of the one whom you describe. The incredible leper who rules our goings has, even at this hour and notwithstanding that now is the appointed day and time for the gathering together of the Harmonious Constellation of Paste Appliers and Long Brush Wielders, thrust within our hands a double task.”

“May bats defile his Ancestral Tablets and goats propagate within his neglected tomb!” chanted the band in unison. “May the sinews of his hams snap suddenly in moments of achievement! May the principles of his warmth and cold never be properly adjusted but⁠—”

“Thus positioned,” continued the leader, indicating by a gesture that while he agreed with these sentiments the moment was not opportune for their full recital, “we await. If he