CHAPTER XXVII
La-yuên had taken no part in Wash-the-Cats, nor had watched it. Such things were nothing to her now. Only the Feast of Lanterns lured her now, of all China’s fairyland, jeweled functions, and it only because she knew that Sên Po-Fang came back to Ho-nan then, and that his spirit was near her when the scintillating great dragon, eagerly chasing the Pearl-of-Perfection, snorted out its fire-stars and ruyie. But for it, functions were husks to La-yuên the widowed concubine.
Her children were dead—her babe whom Sên Ruby had played with, and her babe she had borne her dead lord.
When Sên Po-Fang had died, La-yuên his concubine had died too!
But a woman can die—lose all appetite for life and for life-things—and yet hold her friendships. There are such women and La-yuên was one. One may perish in self and yet one’s loyalty live on, for true loyalty cannot die. There are many such Chinese.
Loyalty to her lord’s house bade her serve Sên Ruben. Loyalty to the will of Sên Ya Tin commanded it. For Lord King-lo’s wife, the white Lady Ruby, La-yuên the young and happy concubine, radiant in her lord’s favor and in his number-one’s, radiant in her girl-motherhood, had felt a peculiar friendship, tender, respectful, protective, as Chinese servitors so often do for those over them. There are no class hatreds in China—unless we have brought and taught them. Moreover, La-yuên in those bygone days had pitied what she had clearly seen was Sên Ruby’s loneliness, aloofness, discontent in the house of her husband; and the lady Sên Ruby had sent gracious words and rich gifts to La-yuên from Hong Kong when King-lo and his wife were sailing back to the West—gifts of garments and baubles that had seemed ten times gracious and rich to the concubine because the giver had worn and used them. And La-yuên’s gratitude held.
The woman had taken some risk in admitting strange Sên Ruben surreptitiously into the homestead. But personal risk of her own was nothing to the seared woman; had it been much, La-yuên would have taken far more bitter risk than that for the son-one of Sên Ruby, the White Rose of China.
She busied herself in the house and courtyards. There was enough for willing spare hands to do when almost all were gathered to do, or to serve or to watch, Wash-the-Cats; and always La-yuên was willing to work—for the Sêns. She had parted with joy, but she clung to service, and found it an almost pleasant bridge from Now to Hereafter.
Wash-the-Cats did not interest her. The welfare and order of larder and k’o-tang did. And when she had done all she could find for her care—all of the myriad this-and-thats of housewifery and supervision, as perpetual and imperative for human home comfort in China as in Christendom—she fetched her spinning-wheel into the dove’s courtyard, scattered their corn, lit two notched candles, shielded from any stray puff of air that might come, and sat her to spin.
It was not dark, or even dim, in the courtyard; the sun was up; La-yuên needed no light beyond what the glowing day-star gave her. The candles were her timepiece—the common timepiece of old conventional China. Each notch, when the candle was lit, told that an hour’s quarter had been burnt up—thirty minutes as time is told at Greenwich. Frugal as the Chinese are, they usually light twin candles on shop counter or home casement, when they light candles for clocks, that their track of time shall not be lost, should by any accident one candle be extinguished. And La-yuên lit her brace of clocks because such accidents, take what precaution you may, inexplicably do happen now and then.
When the Hour of the Snake had come, she laid down her spindle, and rose to keep her tryst with Sên Ruben; to show him a way from the temple and out of a tree-shrouded gate, helping him to go as he had come, secretly and unsuspected, that he might return in more circumstance to greet his kindred, and to ask greeting and welcome of them.
All others that were not ill or imperatively held to work in the house, or far off in the estate, would be at Wash-the-Cats. By the route she would lead Sên Ruben, none would see him.
La-yuên had counted without Sun Flower the meek-faced, tiger-like tortoise-shell.
In the temple doorway she paused, and looked toward the tablet-altar. It was there that Lord Sên Ruben would be waiting for her, keeping his vigil in its filial sacredness to its last instant.
Sên Ruben was not there.
The woman paled.
She searched the temple anxiously, searched it repeatedly, though where she could expect to find him, when she did not instantly see him, were hard to say. The lovely prayer-room was not vast and its exquisite, priceless furnishings were few. There was not a coign there where a human body much smaller than Sên Ruben’s could hide or be hidden. The largest object the temple held—a great incense burner of Satsuma, crystal and gold—would not have screened or coffined a man half his size.
Sên Ruben was not there!
Had he gone? Or had he been found and dragged away?
Where was Sên Jo Hiêsen; where was An Pin? But she knew that they both were at Wash-the-Cats, were at it hard.
Who had done this thing?
What had befallen Sên Ruben the son of Sên King-lo?
Trembling and shivering she left the temple, searched frantically about its garden, its courtyard, its marble steps and carven terraces, searched among the lemon-trees, searched everywhere, no place within many rods too improbable for her now frenzied fear to investigate.
Alack! Not here, not there!
She would to P’wing Nog; only P’wing Nog could help her now, the hsien-jen who lived in the cave in the sulphur-hill, and who knew all things—and could tell them, if he would.
P’wing Nog should tell her where and how was Sên Ruben. She would make P’wing Nog tell her—only the gods knew how. But nothing should hide Sên Ruben from her, or keep him from her succor and service.
Fast as her binded feet and her beating heart would let her, she sped down the birch-lined path, through ferns, over violet beds just pimpled shyly with hooded baby buds. For all that is said of such feet (deformities not to be defended—though probably less injurious than Western footgear sometimes is) La-yuên had been lapwing gaited once, and still had fleet pace when she chose.
Almost breathless, but toddling on valiantly and rapidly, she reached the avenue of crab-apple trees, turned the twisted path’s corner sharply, checked herself and her running with a little quickly smothered cry of surprise and relief just in time to escape colliding with a friendly party of three walking slowly toward the gold-fishes’ alabaster tank.
Sên C’hian Fan and Lord Sên Ruben were speaking together gravely, but unmistakably their speech was amiable, and Sên Ruben was walking in the place of honor on C’hian Fan’s left hand, and Sên Ruben’s left hand rested companionably on Lung Tin’s shaggy coat. Lung Tin waddling with much dignity and pressed as close as he could against his new friend-and-patron’s silk-clad flank. Sên Ruben accepting and caressing the spoilt tame bear who had been the chief minor torment of Sên Ruby’s Ho-nan ordeal!
La-yuên bowed, almost knelt, as she drew aside for C’hian Fan and his companion.
Ruben half-checked his pace, but the woman’s eyes before they fell meekly to the ground warned and implored him to give her no hint of recognition, and she gave him none.
“Whither goest thou so hastening?” C’hian demanded.
“To the eel pond, eminent Sên C’hian Fan.”
“Thou liest,” C’hian laughed. “Coming from it mayhap, but thou art not going to it, not as thy lilies ran.”
“First I go to the flax-shed—but for a no-length moment. Then go I to the pool of the eel-ones,” the concubine retorted, minding her points of the compass more astutely this time.
Lung Tin turned his head and growled at her insolently. La-yuên cuffed him soundly on his pointed ear.
Sên C’hian Fan threw her a kindly gesture. Lung Tin growled more discreetly; and they went their ways, La-yuên towards the flax-shed until she was from their view, the men and the bear on to the gold-fish tank, Ruben a little flushed with guilt and remorse that, in his joy at his kinsman’s gracious welcome, and in spite of such unceremonious arrival, he had quite forgotten the woman and that she was to seek him in the temple when the Hour of the Snake was ripe.
And what, he wondered, should he say in explanation, if Sên C’hian Fan questioned him about how he had found his way to the temple, how gained over the homestead’s walls, or through one of its close-kept gates?
He would not lie to the Sên who had received and welcomed him—fed him but now. He would not betray the concubine who had befriended and indulged him.
It was a poser!