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

to reward the efforts of the successful,” replied the Wearer of the Yellow in an accent of refined bitterness. “On other occasions it is possible to assist the overworked treasurer with a large and glutinous hand, but from time immemorial the claims of the competitors have been inviolable.”

“Yet if by a heaven-sent chance none, or very few, reached the necessary standard of excellence⁠—?”

“Such a chance, whether proceeding from the Upper Air or the Other Parts would be equally welcome to a very hard-lined Ruler,” replied the one who thus described himself.

“Then listen, O Kong-hi, of the imperishable dynasty of Sung,” said the stranger. “Thus was it laid upon me in the form of a spontaneous dream. For seven centuries the Book of the Observances has been the unvarying Classic of the examinations because during that period it has never been surpassed. Yet as the Empire has admittedly existed from all time, and as it would be impious not to agree that the immortal System is equally antique, it is reasonable to suppose that the Book of the Observances displaced an earlier and inferior work, and is destined in the cycle of time to be itself laid aside for a still greater.”

“The inference is self-evident,” acknowledged the Emperor uneasily, “but the logical development is one which this diffident Monarch hesitates to commit to spoken words.”

“It is not a matter for words but for a stroke of the Vermilion Pencil,” replied the other in a tone of inspired authority. “Across the faint and puny effusions of the past this person sees written in very large and obliterating strokes the words ‘Concerning Spring.’ Where else can be found so novel a conception combined with so unique a way of carrying it out? What other poem contains so many thoughts that one instinctively remembers as having heard before, so many involved allusions that baffle the imagination of the keenest, and so much sound in so many words? With the possible exception of Ming-hu’s masterpiece, ‘The Empty Coffin,’ what other work so skilfully conveys the impression of being taken down farther than one can ever again come up and then suddenly upraised beyond the possible descent? Where else can be found so complete a defiance of all that has hitherto been deemed essential, and, to insert a final wedge, what other poem is half so long?”

“Your criticism is severe but just,” replied the Sovereign, “except that part having reference to Ming-hu. Nevertheless, the atmosphere of the proposal, though reasonable, looms a degree stormily into a troubled future. Can it be permissible even for⁠—”

“Omnipotence!” exclaimed the seer.

“The title is well recalled,” confessed the Emperor. “Yet although unquestionably omnipotent there must surely be some limits to our powers in dealing with so old established a system as that of the examinations.”

“Who can doubt a universal admission that the composer of ‘Concerning Spring’ is capable of doing anything?” was the profound reply. “Let the mandate be sent out⁠—but, to an obvious end, let it be withheld until the eve of the competitions.”

“The moment of hesitancy has faded; go forth in the certainty, esteemed,” said the Emperor reassuringly. “You have carried your message with a discreet hand. Yet before you go, if there is any particular mark of Imperial favour that we can show⁠—something of a special but necessarily honorary nature⁠—do not set an iron screen between your ambition and the light of our favourable countenance.”

“There is indeed such a signal reward,” assented the aged person, with an air of prepossessing diffidence. “A priceless copy of the immortal work⁠—”

“By all means,” exclaimed the liberal-minded Sovereign, with an expression of great relief. “Take three or four in case any of your fascinating relations have large literary appetites. Or, still more conveniently arranged, here is an unopened package from the stall of those who send forth the printed leaves⁠—‘thirteen in the semblance of twelve,’ as the quaint and harmonious phrase of their craft has it. Walk slowly, revered, and a thousand rainbows guide your retiring footsteps.”

Concerning the episode of this discreetly-veiled personage the historians who have handed down the story of the imperishable affection of Hien and Fa Fei have maintained an illogical silence. Yet it is related that about the same time, as Hien was walking by the side of a bamboo forest of stunted growth, he was astonished by the maiden suddenly appearing before him from the direction of the royal camp. She was incomparably radiant and had the appearance of being exceptionally well satisfied with herself. Commanding him that he should stand motionless with closed eyes, in order to ascertain what the presiding deities would allot him, she bound a somewhat weighty object to the end of his pigtail, at the same time asking him in how short a period he could commit about nineteen thousand lines of atrociously ill-arranged verse to the tablets of his mind.

“Then do not suffer the rice to grow above your ankles,” she continued, when Hien had modestly replied that six days with good omens should be sufficient, “but retiring to your innermost chamber bar the door and digest this scroll as though it contained the last expression of an eccentric and vastly rich relation,” and with a laugh more musical than the vibrating of a lute of the purest Yun-nan jade in the Grotto of Ten Thousand Echoes she vanished.

It has been sympathetically remarked that no matter how painstakingly a person may strive to lead Destiny along a carefully-prepared path and towards a fit and thoroughly virtuous end there is never lacking some inopportune creature to thrust his superfluous influence into an opposing balance. This naturally suggests the intolerable Tsin Lung, whose ghoulish tastes led him to seek the depths of that same glade on the following day. Walking with downcast eyes, after his degraded custom, he presently became aware of an object lying some distance from his way. To those who have already fathomed the real character of this repulsive person it will occasion no surprise to know that, urged on