THE people had long laboured and groaned under the oppressive misrule of
Hang Ti, the local magistrate. He was, without doubt, a bad ruler, a man
possessed of none of the tenderer feelings of humanity, and one who
ground the faces of the poor for his own advancement. Under his
mal-administration illegal taxes had been super-imposed on salt, likin
barriers established where none should exist, the gaols were crowded
with those unfortunates who would not submit to his further extortions,
and the whole land cried out for redress.
At last the long-suffering poor took into their own hands the only means
they possessed of calling the “Son of Heaven’s” attention to their
pitiable condition. An insurrection was fomented and quickly blazed into
serious rebellion. Villages were sacked, whole districts laid waste, and
soon accounts of these doings reached Peking. By swiftest messengers a
mandate signed with the “Vermilion Pencil” was conveyed to Hang Ti,
ordering him to raise troops forthwith and to crush the rebels, at the
same time enjoining all peacefully minded persons to abstain from
nervous excitability, but rather to pursue the cultivation of all the
virtues, more especially those of thrift, energy, and the study of the
classics.
Hang Ti’s troops, with their pay long in arrears, no stomach for the
fight, and most of them secretly in sympathy with the rebels, were
routed at the first engagement, and then the whole province was given up
to bloodshed, rapine, and excesses of every description.
A second Imperial Order soon followed the first summoning Hang Ti to the
capital, whither he hastily repaired, having first laid his hands on as
much of his ill-gotten wealth as he could conveniently carry, hoping
thereby to bribe the palace underlings, and so mitigate in some measure
the punishment he deserved.
On his arrival in Peking he was not permitted to enter his Imperial
master’s presence, but was presented by an official with a handsome silk
scarf, a polite hint that he might hang himself and so save his person
the greater indignity of decapitation. So Hang Ti passes out of the
story, and an energetic officer named Yeh Lok reigned in his stead.
Yeh subdued the rebels with a firm hand, and in three months the
district, although somewhat depopulated, was reported to the “Son of
Heaven” as being “Happy, contented, and at peace.” Yeh next turned his
attention to the administration of his district, and found that there
utter chaos reigned in every department. The prisons were overcrowded to
a disgraceful extent, and the majority of the unfortunate prisoners had
not even any crime registered against them. Yeh’s heart bled for them:
this shocking state of affairs had to be at once remedied. The idea of
keeping people in prison for indefinite periods without trial revolted
Yeh’s every sense of what was right and just. He ordered them,
therefore, to be taken out in batches of forty and to be beheaded. Forty
each day till the gaols were empty and cleared of all persons wrongfully
incarcerated.
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Lok Hing squatted in tattered blue cotton garments behind a tin of
pea-nuts at the roadside; an old umbrella afforded him a grateful shade
from the blazing sun, and his well-ventilated and roomy clothes allowed
of his scratching any portion of himself with the least possible effort.
He was a man of no ambition, content to earn a few cash by selling
pea-nuts and spend his life in a philosophical melancholy. As he sat
tapping the tin with an elongated finger-nail and droning out a mournful
eulogy of his wares, To Tao, the hunchback, passed.
To Tao by his infirmity was unfitted for heavy manual labour, but his
distorted body seemed to be endowed with some marvellous power of
rendering natural objects equally grotesque. No one for hundreds of li
around could produce small trees in such fantastic shapes and weird
eccentricities of growth as he. Hence to all outward appearances almost
as poverty stricken as Lok Hing, To Tao was a man of some means, seeing
that the wealthy gentry were only too glad to purchase the curious trees
and shrubs that resulted from his untiring care and peculiar skill.
As To Tao passed, Lok Hing softly sang: “Forty yesterday, forty the day
before, in all three hundred and sixty, and now all are finished.”
“What does my brother mean?” asked To Tao, whose close attention to the
cultivation of his plants had left him ignorant of public affairs.
“Forty each day for nine days have been beheaded, and now there remains
but one, whom my lord the magistrate will have strangled this day.”
Then Lok Hing told the hunchback of the one remaining prisoner, an old
woman whose crime no one knew. She had been about forty years in prison,
and had herself forgotten why she had been placed there, and that Yeh
Lok had been so moved at the recital of her wrongs that he had vowed
neither to eat nor drink until justice had been done her by suitable
strangulation.
The hunchback heard the story without any outward emotion, but his heart
was heavy within him. He alone knew the old woman’s story. She was his
mother. His father had been a notable brigand, and his mother had been
seized by the then tao-tai and held as a hostage till the brigand should
be caught or slain. To Tao’s father, however, died a natural death at a
ripe old age, and now for some years the hunchback had ministered to the
material comforts of his remaining parent by sending her food and little
luxuries daily in the prison.
There was nothing more to be done now, however, as already the
procession was approaching along the dusty road with two stout coolies
carrying the old woman in a basket slung on a thick bamboo pole.
Hastily purchasing some pea-nuts from Lok Hing, the hunchback approached
the basket and handed them through its wide meshes to his mother. The
old dame received the nuts gratefully, and continued to munch them with
evident enjoyment until the final tightening of the string round her
neck rendered further deglutition not only unnecessary but impossible.
The magistrates, officials, soldiers, and rabble then returned to pursue
their several occupations or amusements, and To Tao, with rage in his
heart, also departed to his house, where he had long kept a handsome
coffin with which to do the last thing properly by his aged parent. This
action of To Tao in providing a coffin for the aged prisoner was
accounted to him for righteousness, no one being cognisant of the
relationship that had existed between the two.
In this way peace having been restored and all internal affairs of State
set running smoothly, the new magistrate, who was something of a
Sybarite, began to turn his attention to improvements in his yamen, and
to the surrounding of himself with every luxury. He spent money freely,
employing hosts of builders, carpenters, painters, and other workmen in
embellishing his house and grounds, and in this way soon earned a
certain popularity as a beneficent magistrate. Yeh, however, had
unwittingly earned the undying hatred of the hunchback, whose filial
piety would allow him to leave no stone unturned in his endeavour to
avenge the—to his mind—illegal execution of his aged mother. Having
beautified the interior of his yamen, the magistrate turned his
attention to the spacious grounds surrounding his residence, and who
more able to provide fantastic rock-work, design ornamental ponds,
bridges, hills, and valleys, and complete the whole scheme with cunning
dwarf trees and shrubs, than the hunchback gardener, To Tao?
Accordingly, to his huge inward satisfaction, the hunchback was
commanded to wait on the great man, and he failed in no way to please
the magistrate with his original ideas and quaint suggestions. To Tao’s
manner was all that could be desired: he grasped every idea of the
magistrate almost before it was expressed, and his own politely
suggested improvements so entirely corresponded with Yeh’s wishes that
he completely won his employer’s confidence. No tree in To Tao’s
collection was too valuable for Yeh, and soon the grounds of the yamen,
under the magic of the hunchback’s witchery, became a veritable
paradise. When all was completed Yeh insisted upon taking the hunchback
into his permanent service as gardener-in-chief, and the cunning fellow,
after a suitable demur, accepted the position in the magistrate’s
household. Thus the first step in his scheme of revenge was
accomplished.
The hunchback was the only servant in the yamen engaged locally, the
remainder of Yeh’s retinue having followed their master from a distant
province where this official had previously held sway. This fact proved
of the greatest value to To Tao, for as he continued to ingratiate
himself with his master he was employed on various other duties in
addition to gardening, and his local knowledge enabled him to carry out
every commission entrusted to him with complete satisfaction to his
lord. The district having now lapsed into a condition of uneventful
peace and a certain amount of commercial prosperity, Yeh sought
relaxation in every luxury and some small amount of dissipation. To Tao
here again proved most useful and trustworthy, and he took good care to
unobtrusively encourage his master in what, at first, were mild
extravagances, but which with the insidious help of To Tao soon
developed into vices.
The hunchback gardener, having now completely won the confidence of his
master, made frequent journeys on his behalf to the distant city of
Canton, and these journeys resulted in many cases of sweet champagne
finding their way to Yeh’s yamen, to say nothing of dancing and singing
girls, troupes of entertainers and acrobats, and the charming frail
beauties for which that city is so famous. Indulgence seemed to only
whet Yeh’s appetite, and far from any feeling of satiety he more and
more relied on To Tao’s resource and good taste in furnishing him with
the continual novelty and change that now seemed necessary to the
magistrate’s very existence.
After every absence the magistrate would insist on hearing all the
gossip of the great city, and the hunchback, with a vivid imagination,
never failed to interest and amuse his master. Consequently Yeh, in
addition to receiving some new beauty into his establishment, had the
pleasure of hearing of others from his faithful servant, and of many new
delights, polite amusements, and gorgeous scenes that the clever fellow
professed to have witnessed while away.
Yeh’s curiosity had for some time been greatly piqued by hearing the
praises of one Su Sing, a beautiful girl residing in the Flower Boats of
Canton, and at length, after a somewhat prolonged absence, the hunchback
was able to return to the yamen with the much-desired charmer under his
protection. Yeh was entirely delighted with her appearance, manners, and
accomplishments, and the same evening, after a sumptuous meal, he was in
the very best humour for hearing an account of his faithful messenger’s
adventures.
To Tao being summoned found his master reclining with one arm round the
new favourite, smoking a cigar and sipping the sweetest of sweet
champagne, the only other person present being the female attendant of
the new beauty. Yeh ordered the hunchback to speak freely, as the four
of them were safe from any interruption or eaves-dropping, and so
pleased was he with his new inamorata that he was willing to make her
the confidante of all his affairs and intrigues, even of his amours.
For at least an hour To Tao, who was no mean raconteur, amused his
audience with accounts of his doings in the great city, amusing
anecdotes of important persons, the latest gossip and scandals, and even
some account of the doings of the outer barbarians, who were separated
from the Middle Kingdom by the seas.
“And there is one other strange thing I have seen in Canton,” continued
the hunchback. “It is a method of detecting leprosy sometimes practised
by the _jeunesse dorée_ when visiting the Flower Boats.”
To Tao was quick to notice the almost imperceptible start given by Yeh
at the mention of this dreaded disease, and a wild exultation filled his
breast. Here at last was a means to his hand whereby his master should
pay his debt in full for the execution of the old woman.
“Tell us of it,” commanded Yeh, with a forced gaiety; “it will perhaps
amuse us. These superstitions, however, bear seldom any foundation of
truth in them.”
“It is in this way, Excellency. The suspected person and one or two
others known to be untainted are taken into a dark room. Some spirit
mixed with salt is poured in a dish, a small piece of tow is dropped in
to act as a wick, and then a light is applied. As your Excellency knows,
the light produced is of a bluish green, and by this illumination the
faces of all healthy persons look deadly white, but the face of the
leper appears red as fire, although he have no other sign of leprosy
visible to the most careful observer.”
“Come, come, we will test the efficacy of this foolish old
superstition,” cried the magistrate.
The materials having been brought, the four retired to a small unlighted
apartment, and To Tao ignited the spirit. Eagerly Yeh scanned the faces
round him, now rendered ghastly by the green light, when suddenly he
noticed a look of horror spread over the faces of the two women. Su Sing
burst into tears, and her attendant threw herself on her face on the
floor. To Tao alone remained unmoved.
“Speak! speak!” screamed the magistrate. “What means this foolishness?”
With bowed head To Tao meekly responded: “It is nothing, Excellency, the
girls are silly and frightened. Believe me, it is nothing. The girls
must most certainly be low-born, or they would know better how to behave
in your august presence.”
Yeh, however, was far from satisfied. He summoned the attendants,
ordered lights to be brought, dismissed the girls, and ordered To Tao to
remain. The two being left alone, with nervous haste Yeh poured out a
tumbler of champagne and demanded an instant explanation of the
hunchback.
“Speak!” he said, “and the truth, moreover, or it may be my unpleasant
duty to interrogate you under torture.”
To Tao begged his master to excuse him, repeating that the whole affair
was due to the stupidity of the girls. Yeh flew into a violent temper,
and said that if the hunchback did not instantly explain the servants
would be called in and To Tao delivered to the inquisitor. Whereupon,
with downcast eyes, the trembling servant said—
“Excellency, your face by the green light was——”
“Was what?” thundered Yeh.
“Red,” faltered the shivering cripple.
Yeh staggered and looked like to fall had not To Tao supported him.
After gulping down more champagne the magistrate became somewhat more
composed, when he ordered the hunchback to leave him till the morning.
The exulting servant retired well satisfied with the first effects of
his revenge.
Early next morning To Tao was summoned to Yeh’s couch. The magistrate’s
appearance was ghastly, and he seemed to have aged a decade since the
previous night.
“I will not live with this loathsome disease in my blood,” he said. “All
my life the fear of contracting it has haunted me, and now it has come.
The foreign devils, however, possess a wonderful poison, and by that
means I will die. The poison is contained in a glass tube fitted with a
piston, and is taken by pushing a needle under the skin. Death by this
means is most pleasant, I have heard. You will go at once to Hong Kong
and procure these things, and during your absence I will set my affairs
in order. Go!”
To Tao would have preferred to stop and gloat over his enemy’s mental
anguish, but this pleasure was denied him. It took him four days to
journey to Hong Kong; there he easily procured a hypodermic syringe, but
the obtaining of morphia was a more difficult matter. It took To Tao a
further two days to make the acquaintance of a hospital orderly and
bribe him to steal the required drug. Then To Tao returned. The ten days
of his absence had been passed by Yeh in a fever. He had ordered all his
affairs, given out that he was seriously ill (as indeed he was), and had
paid and dismissed all his dancing-girls, courtesans, and mountebanks.
The change in Yeh would have struck To Tao as dreadful were it not as a
soothing balm to his revengeful spirit to see how terribly his enemy had
suffered. Yeh was at once all eagerness for the drug which To Tao, much
as he would have wished it, was unable to withhold. And now Yeh had
composed himself on his couch, and To Tao alone silently watched him
with impassive face. Soon the drug’s influence was felt, and a delicious
drowsiness came over the magistrate.
“Excellency, can you hear me? I have much to say.”
“I can hear well, brother. All is peace,” replied the magistrate.
“That is well,” continued the hunchback. “Your life was pleasant before
this disease held you, was it not, my lord?”
“Yes, very, very pleasant, but now I would rather die than live a leper.
Before, life was sweet, but now, death seems far preferable.”
“But you do not suffer from leprosy.”
Yeh started up and leant on his elbow.
“What do you mean?” he demanded, almost thoroughly aroused.
“I mean,” responded To Tao, “that Su Sing and her attendant were my
creatures and with me in a plot to kill you. Many times I could have
killed you by poison, but I wished to make you suffer first, and I think
I have indeed succeeded by persuading you that you had contracted that
loathsome disease.”
Yeh remained silent for a while, and To Tao feared that he would sink
into the sleep of death. At last he dreamily asked—
“Why did you wish me this ill?”
“Because you slew my mother, the old prisoner in the gaol. She is now
avenged.”
Again a silence. The drug was rapidly gaining entire possession of Yeh’s
brain. Very slowly he spoke his last words.
“Brother, you did well. You acted as a filial child should. I have a
wife and two sons in Szechuen. If my sons heard of the manner of my
death they would do the same to you and more also. But they will never
know. I think, perhaps, it is better they should not, for, indeed, you
are a marvellous gardener. Send my body to Szechuen and now—now—I
would—sleep——”
So Yeh the magistrate slept, To Tao religiously carried out his dead
master’s last wishes, and then returned to his gardens.
His fame as a producer of dwarf trees spreads daily further and further
afield, which, coupled with his increasing prosperity, point to rewards
received for a virtuous life.
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