To the left of the vermillion door of Yeh Ling’s new house was a tablet
set into the brick buttress inscribed with those words, which to the
old Chinese represent the beginning and end of philosophical piety:
“_Kuang tsung yu tou_,” which in English may be roughly translated:
“Let your acts reflect glory upon your ancestors.”
Yeh Ling, for all his western civilization, would one day burn gold
paper before a shrine within those vermillion doors and would stand
with hidden hands before the family shrine and ask commendation and
approval for his important acts.
Now he was sitting on one of the very broad and shallow steps that led
from terrace to terrace, watching the primitive system by which his
engineer was getting ready the casting of the second concrete pillar.
About the site were a number of bottomless tubs hinged so that they
opened like leg-irons open to receive the ankle of a prisoner. Steel
brackets on each enabled them to be clamped together to make a long
tube. The first of these was in its place, and sticking up from the
centre was a rusty steel bar that drooped out of the true--the core of
the pillar to be. High above on a crazy scaffolding was a huge wooden
vat, connected with the tub by a wooden shoot. All day long an endless
chain of buckets responding to a hand-turned wheel had been rising to
the top of the platform, their contents being turned into the vat.
“Primitive,” murmured Yeh Ling, but in a way he liked primitive things
and primitive methods.
Down the shoot would run a stream of semi-liquid cement and rubble and
the two toiling labourers would pat and shovel the concrete into place
until the tub was filled. Then to the first would be fastened a second
mould, the process would be repeated and the pillar would rise. Then,
on a day when the cement had hardened, the connecting wedges would be
knocked away, the hinged tubs pried loose, the rough places of the
Pillar of Grateful Memories chiselled and polished smooth and, crowned
with a companion lion, the obelisk would stand in harmony with its
fellow.
Yeh Ling looked up at the frail scaffolding that supported the vat and
the narrow platform and wondered how many western building laws he was
breaking. The second tub was now brimming with the grey concrete and
a third and a fourth were being fixed. All this Yeh Ling saw from his
place on the steps, a cigar clenched between his small teeth. He saw
the workmen climb down the ladders from the interior of the new tubs,
and he glanced at the sun and rose.
A blue-bloused Chinaman ludicrously handling a fan came running toward
him.
“Yeh Ling, we must wait four days for the water-stone to grow hard.
Tomorrow I will strengthen the wall of the terrace.”
“You have done well,” said Yeh Ling.
“I thought you wrong,” said the builder nodding, “it seemed so much
money to waste. He that is not offended at being misunderstood is a
superior man.”
“He that fears to correct a fault is not a brave man,” said Yeh Ling,
giving one saying of Confucius for another.
The workmen lived on the spot; their fires were burning when he left
the ground. On the roadway was a small black car, a noisy testimony to
the efficiency of mass production and into this he stepped.
He did not drive away for a long time, but sat hunched up at the wheel,
his head sunk in thought.
Once he glanced at the pillar in making; speculatively as though his
meditations had to do with this. It was growing dark when at last he
put his foot upon the starting plug and rattled away into the gloom.
He left the car at the side door of the restaurant and passed in.
“The lady is in No. 6,” said his personal servant, “she wishes to see
you.”
There was no need for Yeh Ling to ask which lady. Only one had the
right of entry to No. 6. He went straight to her, dusty as he was, and
found Ursula Ardfern sitting before an untouched meal.
She was very pale and a shadow lay beneath her grey eyes.
She looked up quickly as he came in.
“Yeh Ling, did you read all the papers we found in the house?” she
asked.
“Some of them,” he said cautiously.
“The other night you said that you had read them all,” she said
reproachfully, “and you were not speaking the truth!”
He agreed with a gesture.
“There are so many,” he said, excusing himself, “and some are very
difficult. Lady, you do not realize how many there were--”
“Was there anything about me?” she asked.
“There were references to you,” he said. “Much of the writing was in
the nature of a diary. It is hard to disentangle item from item.”
She knew he was evading a direct answer.
“Was there any mention of my father or mother?” she challenged him
directly.
“No,” he said, and her grey eyes searched his face.
“You are not speaking the truth, Yeh Ling,” she said in a low voice.
“You think if you speak--if you think I know, that I shall be hurt.
Isn’t that true? And because you would not hurt me, you are lying?”
He showed no evidence of embarrassment at the accusation.
“Lady, how can I say what is in papers which I have not read, or
if I have read I cannot understand? Or suppose in his writings one
revelation is so mixed up with another that it is impossible to betray
one without the other? I will not deceive you. Shi Soh wrote about you.
He said that you were the only person in the world he trusted.”
She looked her amazement.
“I? But--”
“He said other things--I am puzzled. It is not a simple matter to make
a decision. Some day I must give you a translation of everything.
I know that; it troubles me--what is best to do. We Chinese have a
word for indecision. Literally it means a straw moving in cross
currents--first this way, then that way. My mind is like that. I owe
Shi Soh--Trasmere--much--how can I pay him? He was a hard man but our
words, one to the other, have been more binding than sealed papers and
once I said that I would serve his blood. That is my difficulty, a
promise which is now....”
Here, such was his emotion, that his English failed him. She saw the
dull red of his face, the veins of his temples standing out like
knotted cords and was sorry for him.
“I will be patient, Yeh Ling,” she said soothingly. “I know you are my
friend.”
She held out her hand, remembered and drawing it back quickly took her
own and shook it with a delighted gurgle of laughter.
Yeh Ling smiled too, as he followed her example.
“A barbarous custom,” he said drily, “but from a hygienic point of view
a very wise one. You are forgiving me, Miss Ardfern?”
“Of course,” she nodded, “and now I really am feeling hungry--will you
send me some food?”
He was out of the room before her request was completed.
It was like Yeh Ling that he did not come to the door when she went
out. She hoped he would, but Yeh Ling could not have been there, for he
was waiting outside and when she turned the corner, he was very near to
her though she could not guess this.