Whatever might have been the outcome under other auspices, this speech finally decided Ching-kwei’s course. “Wang Tae is admittedly my superior with the sword,” ran the current of his inner thoughts, “and when she who has authority over me put forth that argument, I was unable to disclose its weakness. Herein Wang Tae has also proved his mastery, and it is not agreeable to a person of even remotely divine origin to be both physically and mentally inferior to the one whose rice he eats.” From this resolve, nothing occurred to move him, so that, now leading the recovered goat upon a cord, he presently set out again along a homeward course. The last words between them were those spoken by the aged Yew as the closing of the gate marked their diverging ways.

  “Ching-kwei,” he observed on parting, “it is well always to remember that men are not conquered by their enemies but by the decree of fate. This enables the wise to bear an unruffled front in all extremities. Sooner or later, ambition will lead your footsteps here again to seek Wang Tae’s assistance, but who shall compel the flower to fruit out of its season by plucking off the petals?” To this, Ching-kwei would have waved an appropriate farewell had not the goat leaped forward and thus foiled his purpose. When he looked back again, later, the patriarch had withdrawn.

  III

  His Visit to the Soothsayer Who Dwelt Beneath the Tower of Ya,

  and the Incoming of the Two Maidens Whereby the Destinies Become Involved

  It was not until Ching-kwei had reached an intermediate village on the following day that a chance allusion to a holy man recalled the second detail of his journey. The gifted hermit referred to lived beneath a ruined tower on the wildness of a certain hill, at a convenient distance from the village. He was spoken of as being reliable and not exacting in his demands. To keep his mind from dwelling on merely worldly details, he unceasingly counted from one up to four when not engaged upon matters of divination and the like, and in this scrupulous manner he had succeeded in regaining a state of natural purity. At one time a rival soothsayer, encouraged by the repute of Ng-tung*s sanctity and by the stream of pilgrims attracted to his shrine, sought to establish himself upon another hill, but presently it was discovered that this later one, in order to endure the monotony of his life, found it necessary to count up to ten, and the craving for variety in his mind thus being revealed, he became discredited in consequence.

  Bearing a gift of rice, Ching-kwei accordingly turned aside and sought out Ng-tung. The way led through an avenue of flowering trees where the sunlight came in shafts, it then being past the middle hour. As he proceeded, a distant sound of melody came down the aisle, and on its near approach Ching-kwei stood aside to watch. Soon two maidens came in sight, one dancing as she sang, the other more restrained but equally attractive. There being a sward about that place, they loitered there, the one displaying a variety of very graceful attitudes to the rhythm of her words while the other moved apart and sought for certain chosen flowers which she broke off between her shining teeth and held there. This one wore a cloak of plaited straw dyed an engaging shade, and having once seen her face, Ching-kwei watched her unceasingly, scarcely sparing a glance to regard the other.

  “She is certainly a high official’s daughter,” was his thought. “Were it otherwise, I might offer her a gift of rice, but it is extremely unlikely that she eats anything beyond the scent of flowers and possibly an occasional fruit of the more sumptuous kind.” While he was debating with himself how he should inoffensively attract her notice an incautious sound betrayed him, and seeing one of another kind so near at hand, the maidens fled, the cloak wearer dropping the flowers she had gathered in her becoming haste but the other still continuing to sing and to dance along her path.

  “Plainly my fitness for the society of goats and outlaws is self-evident,” thought Ching-kwei in an access of despair. Nevertheless, he recovered what the one had dropped and secured them in an inner sleeve, remarking:

  “To-day I have only occasioned her this loss; doubtless in future years I shall find an opportunity to restore them.”

  It was but a short li farther on to Ng-tung’s retreat, and the anchorite welcomed Ching-kwei affably when he understood what was required of him and had received the rice. The. nature of the task occasioned him no concern, as with unfailing accuracy he at once detected, by a few well-chosen diagrams, the personality of the malign influence at work.

  “Should any of the indicated substances be difficult to procure, do not let that disturb the confidence of your venerable progenitor,” he remarked considerately, as he inscribed certain words and symbols on a shred of parchment. “If she will inconvenience herself to the extent of swallowing the written directions in the suitable form of a pill, the result will be equally beneficent.”

  “Your mere words carry conviction,” replied Ching-kwei. “No wonder your harmonious, name is sown broadcast through this land.”

  “Agreeably so,” admitted Ng-tung diffidently. “Yet there is necessarily a period between seed time and harvest. Thus to-day, until your noteworthy shadow obscured my prosaic meditations, I had only been called upon to forecast the destinies of two adventuring maidens at the recompense of an inadequately made pair of unfitting sandals,” and the versatile recluse displayed his brightly adorned feet disparagingly.

  “Did they whom you mention proceed from your hospitable door toward the west, and was the more symmetrical of the two covered by a plaited cloak of straw dyed an attractive shade? If so, I would willingly devote two or three brass cash to learn toward what end your divinations led.”

  “It is never my aim to frustrate a natural thirst for knowledge,” agreed Ng-tung, passing across his wooden bowl. “The one cloaked as you specifically describe, Shen Che by name, is fore-ordained to become a queen and in the end to jeopardize the throne. In the case of the other, her sister Mei, nothing particular is indicated.”

  “This is sufficiently surprising, although her mien admittedly suggests a royal destiny,” said Ching-kwei, endeavouring to subdue his strong emotion. “Perhaps, though, their distinguished father is some high noble of the court?”

  “By no means,” replied Ng-tung. “He is an indifferent maker of the least reliable variety of threadbare sandals, his name being Kang, and his dwelling place about the cattle pools, beyond the marsh expanse. So humble is his craft that in times of rigour he is glad to make straw coverings for the feet of swine.”

  “While you are in the mood, perhaps you would be so obliging as to become inspired as to this one’s ultimate future also,” suggested the other. “There must surely be occasions in after life when such knowledge could be of practical value even to an ordinary person.”

  “Undoubtedly,” replied Ng-tung. “Thus, if one’s prescribed end is to be drowned at sea, it is possible to ensure a favourable extent of life by never venturing away from land until the natural end approaches.”

  “Yet in such a case,” reflected Ching-kwei, “would it not be possible to remain here on earth forever by not venturing away from land at all?”

  “It is never well to carry such matters beyond a reasonable length,” explained the soothsayer with an experienced smile. “Without actually eating their words, the Destinies generally contrive some hidden outlet, by which, if unduly pressed, they are able to give an unexpected meaning to a stated fact. However, in your straightforward case, at an added expenditure of eight brass cash, I will prognosticate to the outside limit of my power.”

  To this Ching-kwei assented and Ng-tung at once engaged himself upon the task, skilfully contriving a fabric of deduction upon the stable foundation of the inquirer’s nativity and the outstanding features of his life. Yet from time to time he seemed to have occasion to begin anew, and even when he had sufficiently tested the precision of his chart, he had resource to the manipulation of the sacred sticks. Finally, he prepared a little tea and poured its leaves upon the ground.

  “There is no getting away from the fact,” he at length admitted. “Long-armed as the coincidence will doubtless seem to later and less romantic generations, all the tests confirm that the drama of your life also will reach its zenith within the shadow of a royal palace. The indicated outcome of your destiny, Ching-kwei, is this: that at the call of some great passion you will end a sovereign’s life and by the same act terminate a dynasty.”

  This intimation threw Ching-kwei into a profound abstraction. If the beautiful Shen Che, who in so short a time had grown inseparable from his thoughts, was destined to become a queen, while his own fate was to destroy the existence of a king, it was difficult not to attribute some link of connection between their lives, and in any case a not unnatural desire to trace the progress of the involvement to a slightly later period arose within his mind. To this inquiry Ng-tung turned a not wholly warm-hearted face.

  “It is one. thing to forecast destinies,” he said, “that being an integral part of this person’s occupation. But it is quite another branch of the art to explain how these things arise and what occurs thereafter. Furthermore, Ching-kwei, in the matter of the eight brass cash agreed upon, it has not escaped my inauspicious eye that an unworthy deficiency still lurks within this unpretentious bowl.”

  “The oversight might have been more tactfully referred to in the circumstances,” declared Ching-kwei with dignity as he made up the full amount. “Between one who is the mouthpiece of the Destinies and another who is foreordained to overthrow a dynasty should two brass cash this way or that lead to discord?”

  ’The amount may not in itself be formidable, but an essence is involved,” maintained the seer. “Even the gods must live.”

  “It is equally true that no dust rises from an unstirred soil,” replied Ching-kwei. “Clear your mind of acrimonious currents, O Ng-tung, and integrity will no longer be obscured.”

  Upon this slight derangement of the harmonies, the visit ended, and although they exchanged appropriate quotations from the poets at their parting, Ching-kwei did not ever again contrive to pass that way, nor did Ng-tung allude to a hope that he would do so.

  In the days that followed, Ching-kwei found a new distaste toward his former occupations, and he who in the past had been content to lead a company of goats from one place to another, to open watercourses, and to secure the harvest as the seasons came, now took little pleasure save in listening to the recital of tales of bygone valour from the lips of passing minstrels or in strengthening himself by contests with the most expert whom he could meet. Under the plea of an advantageous bargain to be pursued, he made an early journey to seek the house of Kang, near the cattle pools beyond the marsh expanse, but he found it deserted. The sandal-maker, replied an argol-gatherer about the pools, had fled to avoid being seized to satisfy a debt, and his household was now scattered. Shen Che and Mei were spoken of as going north to crave a refuge at the hands of one who professed a kinship with their Line, but the seasons were lean and bitter and who should say? Fine argols, in particular, were hard to come by…Ching-kwei returned in a headlong mood, and for a while he would contend with any but hold intercourse with none. Later, he sought out his grandmother and reproached her.

  “Where is the sword of finely tempered make that our devastating ancestors were wont to bear? In former times it had its place above the Tablets of our race, but now that honourable space is empty.”

  “It now has its place above the board on which the goats’ food is chopped, out in the farther shed,” replied the one addressed. “Thus for the first time in the history of our race it serves a useful purpose. Should you need it elsewhere, see to its safe return.”

  “Its only becoming use is to add further lustre to our diminished name,” declared Ching-kwei with feeling. Then, remembering Wang Tae’s retort and being desirous that his grandmother should recognize the falsity of her argument, he added, “Those who cover themselves with martial glory do not stand in need of any other garments.”

  “It is well that you should have reminded me of the gemlike truth in time,” replied the other. “I was on the point of contriving for your use another pair of lower garments to hide the open deficiencies of those you wear. Henceforth, cover the outstanding portions of your lower limbs with martial glory and I will save my cloth.”

  “Probably Wang Tae could have matched this saying with another still more pungent,” thought Ching-kwei, “but I have yet something to learn from him in most respects,” and having no seemly retort in view he silently withdrew.

  Nevertheless, he took down his father’s sword, and, as the days went by, he began to bend his powers to its use. At first, among the peace-loving dwellers of that untroubled part, he could find none able to instruct him or even willing to stand up against assault, but eventually he discovered an aged gatherer of water weed, Hoo by name, who in more prosperous times had been a pirate. Inspired by the promise of an occasional horn of rice spirit, this accommodating person strove to recall the knowledge of his youth, and in the end he did indeed impart to Ching-kwei the outline of most of the positions both of defence and of attack. Let it, however, be confessed that, owing to his instructor’s style having been formed at the capricious angle of a junk’s unstable deck, where he was either being cast bodily upon his adversary or receiving that one’s full weight upon himself, Ching-kwei’s swordsmanship to the last conformed to the rigid canons of no existing school but disclosed surprises and benumbing subterfuges against which a classical perfection could accomplish little. To this day the saying lives, “Like Ching-kwei’s swordplay—up, down, and sideways all in one,” to testify to the baffling versatility of his thrust.

  When Ching-kwei had learned all that the well-intentioned Hoo was competent to teach him, and could parry each of that hard-striving person’s fiercest blows and beat down his defence, he cast about again for a means whereby to extend his knowledge further. In this extremity he was visited one night by the shadow of a remote and warlike ancestor and a means disclosed to him under the figment of a dream. Profiting by this timely intervention, on the following day Ching-kwei made a shield of toughened hide and took it to the forest. There he bound it in an appropriate position on the sweeping branch of a giant cypress tree. To the relentless force and gyrating onslaught of this indomitable foe, Ching-kwei now fearlessly opposed himself. Whenever a storm of exceptional violence shook the earth, he hastened to take up the challenge, nor was the blackness of the wildest night any bar to his insatiable zeal. Often he was hurled reeling a full score of paces back, frequently struck, stunned and bleeding, to the ground. More than once, being missed, the one who sought him found him lying there insensible; but he carried at his heart the flowers dropped from the lips of the maiden in the glade, and after every overthrow he returned again with an unconquered look of cheerful acquiescence. It is even claimed by poets and history makers of a later time that in these dark encounters Beings, and those concerned with the outcome of the age, gathered about the spot and strove to various ends—some entering into the fibre of the tree and endowing it with special qualities while others protected its antagonist through all and sustained his arm. In this painstaking way, Ching-kwei rose to a great mastery with the sword.

  IV

  The Offensive Behaviour of Shang, Usurpatory King of Tsun, and

  the Various Influences under Which Ching-kwei Resolved to Menace Him

  In the seventh year of his reign the usurper Shang exceeded all restraint, and by offering sacrifice in a forbidden place he alienated the good-will of his own protecting gods. What was even more important at that moment, by this act of defiance he roused the just suspicion of the neighbouring power of Chung, and the potent ruler of that State withdrew the shelter of his indulgent face. From that inauspicious day, Shang’s strength might be likened to a river on the summit of a hill.

  Nearly twelve moons had come and gone since the recovery of the wandering goat. Ching-kwei was drawing water from a pool when he looked up and saw a solitary wayfarer who leaned upon his staff as though the burden of the heat and dust were too great for him to carry. Remembering the many occasions when he himself had experienced a similar distress, the sympathetic one hastened forward with his jar and offered it, remarking:

  “It is too trivial an act to merit even thanks, to pass on to one that which heaven freely sends for the use of all. Drink to repletion, therefore, and what you do not need pour out upon your weary feet so as to strengthen you in each extremity.”

  “May the All-providing reward you with a hundred sons and a thousand grandsons, to sustain your age,” exclaimed the grateful stranger as he thirstily complied. Then he returned the vessel to Ching-kwei’s hands, but as he moved away his rod touched it, seemingly by chance, so that it gave out a ringing note. This incident, and the exchange of looks accompanying it, at once recalled to Ching-kwei his encounter with the broad-minded Yew, and suspecting something deeper he would have questioned the wayfarer, but before he could frame the substance of his speech it was too late.

  “Had there been a spoken sign, I would willingly have met that upright man again,” thought Ching-kwei, and he was stooping to refill the jar when a gleam within its depths arrested him. He turned it over, and there fell out a golden fruit growing on a silver stem. He could no longer doubt the message of the sage’s beckoning hand.

  As Ching-kwei returned, he met his grandmother at some little distance from the door, for the passage with the stranger had delayed him beyond what he was wont, and she had grown to misgive his absence. Seeing him, she would have turned back, but he called to her to stay, and when they were come together he delivered the jar of water into her hands.

  “My sword is by my side,” he said; “the only wear that I possess upon my back. In the first wood I can cut a staff; in the last village, earn a bowl of rice. Henceforth, I must follow the pursuit of my destiny.”

  “If you will but tread this path far enough, it will bring you to what you seek at last,” was her reply.

 

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