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

the unrolling of events until he sees what must inevitably take place. It is thus that his reputation for wisdom is built up.”

“Furthermore,” said Fa Fei hopefully, “the ultimate pronouncement rests with the guarding deities?”

“Unquestionably,” agreed Thang-li. “Yet, by a venerable custom, the esteem of the maiden’s parents is the detail to which the suitors usually apply themselves with the greatest diligence.”

Of the two persons thus referred to by Thang-li, one, Tsin Lung, lived beneath the sign of the Righteous Ink Brush. By hereditary right Tsin Lung followed the profession of copying out the more difficult Classics in minute characters upon parchments so small that an entire library could be concealed among the folds of a garment, in this painstaking way enabling many persons who might otherwise have failed at the public examination, and been driven to spend an idle and perhaps even dissolute life, to pass with honourable distinction to themselves and widespread credit to his resourceful system. One gratified candidate, indeed, had compared his triumphal passage through the many grades of the competition to the luxurious ease of being carried in a sedan-chair, and from that time Tsin Lung was jestingly referred to as a “sedan-chair.”

It might reasonably be thought that a person enjoying this enviable position would maintain a loyal pride in the venerable traditions of his house and suffer the requirements of his craft to become the four walls of his ambition. Alas! Tsin Lung must certainly have been born under the influence of a very evil planet, for the literary quality of his profession did not entice his imagination at all, and his sole and frequently-expressed desire was to become a pirate. Nothing but the necessity of obtaining a large sum of money with which to purchase a formidable junk and to procure the services of a band of capable and bloodthirsty outlaws bound him to Ho Chow, unless, perchance, it might be the presence there of Fa Fei after he had once cast his piratical eye upon her overwhelming beauty.

The other of the two persons was Hien, a youth of studious desires and unassuming manner. His father had been the chief tax-collector of the Chun-ling mountains, beyond the town, and although the exact nature of the tax and the reason for its extortion had become forgotten in the process of interminable ages, he himself never admitted any doubt of his duty to collect it from all who passed over the mountains, even though the disturbed state of the country made it impossible for him to transmit the proceeds to the capital. To those who uncharitably extended the envenomed tongue of suspicion towards the very existence of any Imperial tax, the father of Hien replied with unshaken loyalty that in such a case the sublime Emperor had been very treacherously served by his advisers, as the difficulty of the paths and the intricate nature of the passes rendered the spot peculiarly suitable for the purpose, and as he was accompanied by a well-armed and somewhat impetuous band of followers, his arguments were inevitably successful. When he Passed Beyond, Hien accepted the leadership, but solely out of a conscientious respect for his father’s memory, for his heart was never really in the occupation. His time was almost wholly taken up in reading the higher Classics, and even before he had seen Fa Fei his determination had been taken that when once he had succeeded in passing the examination for the second degree and thereby become entitled to an inferior mandarinship he would abandon his former life forever. From this resolution the entreaties of his devoted followers could not shake him, and presently they ceased to argue, being reassured by the fact that although Hien presented himself unfailingly for every examination his name appeared at the foot of each successive list with unvarying frequency. It was at this period that he first came under the ennobling spell of Fa Fei’s influence and from that time forth he redoubled his virtuous efforts.

After conversing with her father, as already related, Fa Fei spent the day in an unusually thoughtful spirit. As soon as it was dark she stepped out from the house and veiling her purpose under the pretext of gathering some herbs to complete a charm she presently entered a grove of overhanging cedars where Hien had long been awaiting her footsteps.

“Rainbow of my prosaic existence!” he exclaimed, shaking hands with himself courteously, “have you yet carried out your bold suggestion?” and so acute was his anxiety for her reply that he continued to hold his hand unconsciously until Fa Fei turned away her face in very becoming confusion.

“Alas, O my dragon-hearted one,” she replied at length, “I have indeed dared to read the scroll, but how shall this person’s inelegant lips utter so detestable a truth?”

“It is already revealed,” said Hien, striving to conceal from her his bitterness. “When the list of competitors at the late examination is publicly proclaimed tomorrow at the four gates of the city, the last name to be announced will again, and for the eleventh time, be that of the degraded Hien.”

“Beloved,” exclaimed Fa Fei, resolved that as she could not honourably deny that her Hien’s name was again indeed the last one to appear she would endeavour to lead his mind subtly away to the contemplation of more pleasurable thoughts, “it is as you have said, but although your name is the last, it is by far the most dignified and romantic-sounding of all, nor is there another throughout the list which can be compared to it for the ornamental grace of its flowing curves.”

“Nevertheless,” replied Hien, in a violent excess of self-contempt, “it is a name of abandoned omen and is destined only to reach the ears of posterity to embellish the proverb of scorn, ‘The lame duck should avoid the ploughed field.’ Can there⁠—can there by no chance have been some hope-inspiring error?”

“Thus were the names inscribed on the parchment which after the public announcement will be affixed to