THE GONG
Distracted, not knowing what she did, or why, like some wild thing
trapped and helpless, Florence Gregory looked about the room, searching
it with eyes almost too fright-blinded for sight. Again she tried
the doors--all but one. She made a desperate, useless effort to push
the window apart. “Basil!” she cried, “Basil!” Then she checked
herself. “No! I mustn’t do that! O God!” she moaned, turning to driven
humanity’s last great resort, “help me!”
She groped her way unsteadily across the room, and climbed with
trembling legs upon the bench and reached her hands up toward the
little window.
“No,” she sobbed in a whisper, “I can’t,” for she could not reach to
half the opening’s height. She looked about her stealthily, rose on her
very tiptoes, and called towards the window, “Ah Wong! Ah Wong! can
you hear me? Go quickly, for the love of Heaven! Fetch them! Help me,
Ah Wong! Help me! I am alone, Ah Wong--but he will be back--very soon.
Quick, amah, quick! Ah Wong, are you there?”
And then she waited.
Oh! that waiting.
There was no sound except the panting of her heart. From Wu’s
inner room nothing came but silence. The house and the garden were
midnight-still.
Ah!
Through the window came a sound so soft it scarcely grazed the silence.
Something fell, almost noiselessly, at her feet. She swooped upon it
with a smothered sob of thankfulness. It was her own scarf. Her hands
shook so she could scarcely unroll it for the message or the help it
hid. She knew it hid one or the other, or Ah Wong would not have thrown
it. Or was it only a signal that the other woman heard her? With her
eyes riveted in agony on Wu’s door, her heart beating almost to her
suffocation, her cold fingers worked distractedly at the matted gauze.
Yes--there was something there. Oh! Ah Wong! Ah Wong! It was something
hard and small.
She looked at the tiny phial wonderingly. But only for a moment. Then
she knew. And her white face grew whiter. The last drop of coward blood
dripped back from her quivering lips. Poison, of course! Must she?
Dared she? Could she? And Basil? The boy that she had borne--her son
and chum. Should she desert him so? Save her honor and leave him to
death and to long fiendish torture ten thousand times worse than death?
Was _any_ price too great, too hideous to pay for his rescue from
such burning hell? To so save herself at such cost to him, was not that
an even greater dishonor than the other? The woman began to whimper,
like some terrified child. And could she die? Could she face such
death? Here--all alone--in China? God hear her prayer!--she could not
think to word it. God have mercy! Life was sweet--the sun warm on the
grass. And there were cowslips in the meadows at home, and the lilacs
were wine-sweet, and the roses wine-red against the sun-drenched old
stone wall in the vicarage garden--in England.
She tottered, sobbing silently, across the room, clutching the phial in
her ice-cold hand.
England! At the thought of England she stiffened--proudly. She was
English--and a woman. English and a woman: the two proudest things
under Heaven. Basil must suffer. The body that had borne him must not,
even for him, be dishonored. The unalterable chastity of centuries
of gentle womanhood reasserted itself and claimed her--pure of soul,
pure of body--claimed her and made her proud and strong as it had the
English women of an earlier day who threw themselves rejoicing upon
the horns of the Roman cattle rather than yield themselves--English
women--to the lust of the Roman legionaries. As Abraham had prepared to
sacrifice Isaac--Abraham! Abraham was only a man, only a father. She
was a woman--she was a mother--and English!
With a smile as cold as any smile of Wu’s, and more superb than smile
ever ermined on the lip of man--she looked about for means: determined
now--yet hoping still against hope for escape. She would die. Oh yes!
she would die--here--now. But she hoped the stuff was not too bitter.
She drew out the cork and smelt the liquid. It had no smell. Or had
fright paralyzed her gift of smell? And all her senses? Her fingers
could scarcely feel the glass they clutched. And need she drink it yet?
Help might come. Surely Ah Wong had gone! But dared she wait? Wu would
be back. Hark! Was he coming? Did his door move? He must not see her
drink it. He would prevent her. But need she die quite yet?
She saw the cup of tea she had put down, and gave a little gasp of
hope: at such poor straws do we clutch!
Yes--yes--she’d pour the poison into her tea--and drink it, if she must!
The cup was full. She drank a little chokingly. That was enough. Room
now! She looked in terror at Wu’s door, then emptied the tiny phial
into her cup.
Wu’s cup did not occur to her--she was too distraught.
Shaking pitifully, she wound the scarf again about the little bottle
and dropped both into a satsuma vase.
She tottered gropingly back to her seat beside the table, the poisoned
cup close to her hand. “My God!” she whispered, not to herself, “if it
must come to that, give me strength.”
Until the door opened and Wu came in, she sat cowering, her eyes
riveted on her cup, her fingers knotting and unknotting in her lap, and
under the lace of her sleeve the costly jewel she had worn to pay honor
to Sing Kung Yah winked and danced.
She did not look up at the mandarin’s step, and for a space he stood
and studied her, hatred and contempt for Basil Gregory’s mother ugly
on his face, pity for his vicarious victim--and she a woman--in
his Chinese eyes. And in his heart there was self-pity too: his
sacrificial office was in no way to the liking of Wu Li Chang. He was
sacrificing to his ancestors and to his gods. But the flesh reeking
from his priestly knife, hissing in the fire, smoking on the altar of
his tremendous rage, was repugnant to his appetite, a stench in the
nostrils of this Chinese.
He wore now loosened garments of crimson crêpe--color and stuff an
Empress might don for her bridal. He carried no fan. It was laid away.
But on the hem of his gorgeous negligée a border of peacocks’ feathers
was embroidered, each plume the fine work of an artist.
“Well, chère madame!” he said softly, and then she looked up and saw
him and his relentless purpose, and shrank back with a little moan.
Wu smiled and drew nearer. “Do I now find favor in your eyes?” he
murmured wickedly--insinuation and masterly in his honeyed tone. “No?
Oh! unhappy Wu Li Chang! My heart bleeds, stabbed by your coldness,
you lovely and oh! so desired English creature, you fair, fair rose
of English womanhood. Ah! well--I have no vanity, luckily for me,
and so that is not hurt also, since it does not exist. One important
matter,” he said, almost at his side, drawing slowly nearer still, “I
did not mention. It is only fair that you should understand fully my
terms--only fair to say that your son knows that your sacrifice will
set him free----”
Florence Gregory rose to her feet. She searched his face. “You--you
_will_ set him free?”
Wu Li Chang bowed his head in promise. And she did not for one
instant doubt his word. It was her unconscious tribute paid to his
individuality--and, too, it was tribute of Christian Europe to heathen
China. Undeserved? That’s as you read history and the sorry story of
the treaty ports. Verdicts differ.
“That, of course, is understood--and pledged,” the mandarin said
quietly, “when--you--have paid--his debt.”
She shuddered sickly. Wu smiled, and then his choler broke a little
through its smooth veneer. “It is just payment I exact--no jot of
usury: virtue for virtue. I might have seized your daughter--for
myself, or to toss to one of my servants--but that could not have
been payment in full. You, you in your country, you of your race,
prize virginity above all else; we hold maternity to be the highest
expression of human being, and the most sacred. So, because he
took what should have been most sacred in the eyes of an English
gentleman--and he a guest, both in my daughter’s country and in
her home--I take what is, in my eyes, a higher, purer thing--and I
your host. And, too”--his voice hissed and quivered with hate--“the
degradation of his sister would not have afflicted him enough--he does
not love his sister with any great love. His love of you, his mother,
is the one quality of manhood in his abominable being. He would have
suffered at her shame and outlived the pain; yours he will remember
while he lives--and writhe. It will spoil his life, make every hour
of his life more bitter than any death, every inch of earth a burning
hell.” He paused and waited, and then--he slid behind the table, put
his arms about the palsied woman, and whispered, pointing to the other
room, his face brushing hers, “And now, dear lady, will you not come to
me?”
For an instant they two stood so--she paralyzed, unable to move.
Music high and sublimely sweet pierced through the shuttered window:
a nightingale was singing in Nang Ping’s garden, near the pagoda by
the lotus lake. Wu Li Chang had heard many nightingales, and from his
babyhood. Florence Gregory had heard but one before--once, long ago, in
England.
She wrenched away from Wu with a cry--of despair; and he let her go.
She sank on to her stool and took up her cup--she tried to do it
meaninglessly--and slowly raised it to her lips.
“Oh!” Wu told her tenderly, “my lips also are dry and parched with the
heat of my desire----”
But he had no desire of her. And even in her torment she knew it, and
that in the coldness of his intention lay the inflexibility of her
peril.
“I too would drink.” He lifted up his own cup. “Ah!” he exclaimed,
putting it quickly down again, “I see that you have sipped from your
cup--your lips have blessed its rim.” Standing behind her, he slipped
his hands slowly about her neck, took her cup in them, and lifted it
over her head, and faced her. “Let me also drink from the cup that has
touched your lovely lips.”
With a cruel look of mock love--to torment her even this little more,
and in no way because he suspected the contents of either cup--with a
slow look into her terror-dilating eyes, he slowly drained the cup. And
Florence Gregory watched him, motionless, horror-stricken--scarcely
realizing that he had given her her release--by a way it had not
occurred to her even to attempt.
“So,” Wu said, putting down the cup, “I have paid you the highest
compliment. For I do not like your sugar or your cream. Indeed, I
cannot imagine how any one can spoil the delicious beverage----” His
voice broke on the word. Something gurgled in his throat. “It was even
nastier than I thought,” he whispered hoarsely.
Suddenly he reeled. He staggered and caught at the table’s edge. Had
he gone drunk, he wondered, with the intoxication of his smothered,
inexorable rage? The room was spinning like a top plaything. His
head ached. He thought a vein must burst. The room was turning more
maddeningly now--like a dervish at the climax of his dance. And he was
spinning too--not with the room but in a counter-circle. He tottered to
a stool and sank on to it, his face horribly contorted with pain.
Mrs. Gregory moaned, half in fear for herself, half in horror at the
ugly agony from which she could not take her eyes. She moaned, and then
Wu knew.
He gripped the table with hands as contorted as his face, and leaned
towards her muttering in his own Chinese words of terrible imprecation
of her and hers. Curses and hatred beyond words even the most terrible
blazed from his dying eyes.
He was dying like a dog--outwitted by an Englishwoman. And then he
laughed, a laugh more terrible than the death-rattle already crackling
in his throat like spun glass burning or dry salt aflame: the damnéd
burning may laugh so. Dying like a pariah dog! He laughed with
glee--hell’s own mirth; for now the signal would never be given, the
Englishman would never go free. He would starve and rot in Nang Ping’s
pagoda. Did she realize that? Oh! for the strength to make her know it!
But only Chinese words would come to his thickening tongue or to his
reeling brain. Of all that he had learned or known of English, or of
the England where he had lived so long, nothing was left him--nothing
but his hate.
Was it for this--this death degraded and worse than alone, no son to
worship at his tomb--that Wu Ching Yu had banished him to exile and to
excruciating homesickness?
Where was the old sword? He would slay this foreign devil where she
stood. Who was she? Why was she here--here in the room with the tablets
of his ancestors? Who was she? Ah! he remembered now: she was the
mother-pig--the foul thing that had borne the seducer of Nang Ping!
With a hideous yell, with a supreme effort, he tottered to his feet and
lunged at her with his writhing hands outstretched like claws, his
feet fumbling beneath him.
She shrank back in terror, and raised her arm as if to ward off a blow.
And the jewel on her arm slipped down and flashed and blazed and
jangled on her wrist.
And Wu Li Chang knew it. His eyes were glazing now and setting in
death, but he knew her too. He remembered now--Oxford, the purgatory of
Portland Place, the country vicarage, an organ he’d given a church, an
English girl he had liked and befriended in a gentle, reverent way. And
this--_this_--was the reaping of the kindness and the tolerance he
had sown--in England!
Rage heroic and terrible convulsed and nerved him. With an effort
that almost tore the sinews of his passing soul asunder he turned and
looked--yes--there it was--he wanted it--he reached it--and with a
scream of fury he caught it up--the sword--and lunged again at the
woman cringing and panting there--he gained upon her--she screamed and
ran from him feebly--he followed--he lifted the great weapon and clove
the air--he struck out wildly with it again, and again cut only the air.
Twice they circled the room--she sobbing in terror, he blubbering with
rage and with the agony of death.
Ah! he had almost reached her. One more effort!--he knew it was his
last.
He raised the sword with both his hands, raised it above his head, and
struck.
It only missed her, and in missing her it struck the gong--once, then
twice.
At the tragedy of that miscarriage, life throbbed again through all
his tortured pores. Meaning to kill, he had saved. And he had released
the Englishman. That knowledge broke his heart--a mighty Chinese
heart--the great heart of the mandarin Wu Li Chang.
For a moment he stood very still, motionless but not quelled, silent,
superb in his defeat. And then he fell, and moved no more.
* * * * *
When Florence Gregory looked about her--when she was able to--the doors
were open, and the wide window opened noiselessly from without. No one
had entered the room. They were quite alone, she and what had been Wu
Li Chang. And there was not a sound except the love-sick ecstasy of
a nightingale singing his devoted desire through the jasmine-scented
garden.
Very slowly, horror-stricken, watching him till the last, she crept
from the room, leaving it, by chance, through the door at which she had
entered it.
She had aged in that room.