Long before he reached his camp Ruben knew that some one was following
him.
At first he thought that some other was taking by chance this same path
as he; but he thought it odd that even one of all that countryside had
kept apart from the jubilant anxious throng that went forth to meet the
Spring and to bring Ox and Ox-driver back to the cremation that would
send down their ashes to till and to urge under the ground, sending
up the fructified grains to bulge the bins of the Sêns. Some woman or
child, perhaps weary of waiting for the procession’s return, or sent on
some imperative errand, it might be; for the tread that followed his
was light.
Then he knew that whoever it was was following him; told it by the
inexplicable, voiceless oracle that we never see, but that always we
feel--and usually heed.
Ruben swung round and waited.
A woman--in mourning! Excluded for that from the day’s jollification?
He never had heard though that they that mourned might not worship; and
_Li Ch’un_ was a worship of Spring.
The woman came more quickly on, and when she had gained to where he
stood waiting, ko’towed and threw herself at his feet.
In trouble? Wanted his help? he wondered.
She should have it! The first of his race who had claimed his succor
here in the Province of his fathers!
“What would you?” Sên Ruben asked--and his voice was a promise.
The woman lifted up her head, reached up towards him her close-clasped
hands, in gestures of salutation and of fealty--and she still knelt at
his feet.
“Hail, lord-one! Nine times three times welcome home, noble son of thy
celestial father!” the woman cried, half sobbing. Ruben saw the wet on
her face.
“Who are you?” he questioned her gently.
“Thy slave!” the kneeling woman told him passionately. “I am your
slave-one, noble lord of our noble clan--your slave and the widowed
concubine of the pure and elevated, honorable Sên Po-Fang who keeps his
fragrant state on-High now with his holy hand on great Ya Tin’s girdle.”
“How comes it that you know me?”
“That, great lord, La-yuên the concubine-one cannot say. She thinks the
trembling leaves of the soap-tree whispered it to her as you passed
her, she sitting there in the cool of its fragrant shadow waiting to
see _Mang-Shên_ come back. I know that the lotus-like lord-one is Sên
Ruben, the son of Sên King-lo whom Ya Tin so loved that she builded
for him a temple lovelier, costlier than all other temples here in
our Queendom. Ya Tin, the green jade of all women, rules us now from
on-High, as she ruled us here in her house and courtyards, because her
soul is great and her heart a day-star and of infinite wisdom. Hail and
welcome! Sên Ruben, son of Sên King-lo, son of Sên Ruby, the White Rose
of China--Sên Ruby whom La-yuên the concubine loved with a great love
that was humble.”
Ruben flushed. He had thought that his own name for his mother, though
never, for some deep hidden reason, to her had he called her so. And
now this widowed “secondary” of a dead Sên, crouching down in the
dust at his feet, clad in the coarse unbleached sackcloth-like stuff
of Chinese widowhood, spoke of his mother so. Perhaps his father had
called her so!
Sên Ruben bent and lifted La-yuên up to her almond-nut-shaped feet. And
she giggled a little as he did so, because since she had come to Sên
Po-Fang’s harem, little more than a pretty painted child, no hands of
a man, save only the hands of Sên Po-Fang, had touched her before.
“You have not her deep beautiful color,” the woman said
commiseratingly, “but something you have of her face-features, this
concubine-person thinks, and I hear in you her voice, though deeper
since a man’s. However, I know, I know, my lord-one, that you are hers,
as surely as I know that you are lord Sên King-lo’s. She spoke not
our tongue of Ho-nan, but my ears hear her voice in yours. Comes not
my lord now to his home? Your feet go from it as you went, before you
turned at the sound of mine. There”--she pointed--“behind that glade of
oak and sycamore lies the great gate of your people’s wall. This way
you went leads to nowhere, honorable lord Sên Ruben.”
“It leads to my camp,” Ruben told her. “There I will lie to-night, and
to-morrow, when their busied time of _Li Ch’un_ is past, will I beg the
welcome at the gate of our house.”
La-yuên screamed in dismay. “Lord-one, lord-one,” she protested, “it
is not for you to lie out in the open wild like a coolie who toils for
his rice. Come in through your own walls, La-yuên implores, and this
your slave will do all for your honorable comfort until those more fit
to welcome you come home with _Li Ch’un_ and _Mang-Shên_. True, there
are few there to serve the lord Ruben, but at the Hour of the Hen those
noble ones will come, and until their fragrant return the larders of
the kitchens are bursting with succulent salt-things, or if my lord
eats sweet, as do the white tribe of his honorable mother, there are
cases and cases of sweetmeats. Your slave, the widowed concubine-one,
has the keys of the wine-room; she will draw for you flasks of the
golden wine of Shantung, and when she has washed from your beautiful
feet the dust of the way that has presumed to approach their elegant
loveliness, she will coax her lute to sing to you. La-yuên is skilled
in the touch of the music lutes. I entreat you, come home!”
“To-morrow, kind widow-one, I will come, and then you shall make me
sweet music, and give me the flowers-and-jades of the larder--I too
‘eat salt’ more often than I ‘eat sweet,’ and we will drink together,
you and I, to the souls of our ancestors.”
“My lord! my lord”--La-yuên did not giggle now; La-yuên was painfully
shocked--“speak not such uncouth thing in the ears of Sên C’hian Fan
and Sên Jo Hiêsen! They would misjudge it. The concubine may not
moisten her lips in the presence of a lord-one!”
Ruben laughed. “I will maintain the greatest circumspection in the
presence of my august kinsmen, doubt not you that. And for that same
estimable reason--our Sage would command it--Sên Ruben will not break
in among his kinsmen like some wolf of the forest that prowls at the
night hours--see, already the day-star turns and bends lower up in the
heaven clouds--but will come as a Sên should come to the Sêns when
the star rises up trailing its jeweled robes behind it, throwing them
before it--rises up from the East side of our Earth ball.”
“Must so it be, great lotus bud of a lotus clan?” La-yuên asked
sorrowfully.
“It must, kind widow-one; for I know that so it should be. Turn you
back now; retrace your way to the others who watch at the wayside for
the return of _Mang-Shên_; I go on to where my camp waits my return. I
bade that it waited until I came or sent. To-morrow you shall greet me
again within the gates of our people.”
“Show me first,” the woman pleaded, “where your place of halt lies,
that I may find it. Then will this slave-one obey you and leave
you--not to go again to the throng of women-ones and babe-ones
that wait chattering at the waysides and on the hill-slopes for the
procession’s come-back, but to hasten her to the home-place, that
she may bring to her lord-one Sên Ruben comforts for his night-time,
basins of fit eat-things, flasks of rich drink-things, soft mats for
his lie-on, warm rugs that he be covered, for the night dew is chill,
lord-one. All that she can carry she will bring, making the journey
again and again.”
“That you shall not,” Ruben said gently, “none of it! I forbid it.”
La-yuên held out her hands in entreaty.
“I forbid it! Truly, kind-one, my camp-place is well furnished with all
that I need.”
La-yuên wrung her hands.
She no longer disputed his decision, but she murmured despairingly,
reproachfully too--for all her voice’s humility, “If our great Old-one
were here with us, she would beat me that I lay on my soft mat while
the son-one of the lord Sên King-lo lay without his own walls. Nor will
I! All this night-time I will lie out in the cotton garden with the
scarecrows, where the night-bats make the sleep-hours a flap-noise with
the clamor of their leathern wings. And I will fast until you come, for
so Sên Ya Tin would command, the jade-like Old-one who so loved Sên
King-lo that she builded to him a temple the fairest in Ho-nan, and so
loved his wife Sên Ruby, the White Rose of our clan, that always, by
Sên Ya Tin’s command, in the temple of Sên King-lo burns a ruby candle
to the honor of the lady Sên Ruby.”
“I would see it,” Sên Ruben said eagerly. “Can I see it from yonder
hill-slope?”
“No, lord-one; but if you will suffer this secondary to lead you but a
short space beyond those walnut trees there by the water, you shall see
its roofs shining like golden water rippled in the sunshine.”
Sên Ruben caught his breath, turned and followed La-yuên without a word.
Even when they had reached the summit of the hillock carpeted with
Spring’s wild flowers, beyond the walnut grove, and the woman paused,
neither spoke.
Nor did La-yuên look at Sên Ruben. It was not for her to watch his
face as he looked on the temple that old Sên Ya Tin’s love had
builded in bribery to the gods for the purging of Sên King-lo’s soul,
that it might be received on-High at last, all its soil of Western
sojourn, Western marriage forgiven; all his stain washed away by the
purification of her prayers, the vigils she had kept, the incense she
had burned, the costliness and beauty of the dedicated temple. Yellow
roses sprang across from a trellis of lacquer to a trellis of jasper
and roofed with a mat of leaves and buds and blooms incense burners of
silver and of jade; it was a temple of indescribable loveliness.