A GUEST ON HIGH
And in the K’o-tang--the smaller audience hall--where he had died, Wu
Li Chang lay as he had fallen. For none had dared to disturb him for
a long time, unless he summoned them. And now, discovered by an early
sweeper whose duty it was to open the casements to the summer dawn,
he still lay undisturbed, and would lay so until the soothsayer had
determined to where the body should be lifted and just how.
He lay upon his back, his face lifted to the paneled and painted
ceiling.
Almost as Florence Gregory’s footsteps died from his house, a great
change swept his face. The contortions of poisoned death had left it
set and agonized. That passed away. He was smiling when they found
him, as even Nang Ping had never seen him smile. Only one had ever
seen that look upon his face. And she had only seen it once--in quite
the fullness of its beauty, the majesty of its declaration, all its
exquisite tenderness. A living man smiles so but once. Some men never
smile so--they have frittered its possibility away--some of them, and
some are small men, and it is not for them. It is a hall-mark.
It is a hall-mark, and now and again death stamps it caressingly and
regally upon some dead man’s face; and always he is a man who has put
up a fine good fight, and always it tells that there _is_ marriage
in Heaven.
Wu Lu had seen that smile--once--in Sze-chuan; and now, in that near
garden-place where she had waited for him all these years, he took her
in his arms and held her close; and she gave all herself to him again.
And he looked down and smiled at her, his bride.
Wu Li Chang lay dead on the K’o-tang floor, and his face was very
beautiful.