But as months went by and she heard of no one having offered to purchase
her, Tuen forgot her fears, and came to think that she would always live
in the yâmen. It was now winter, and throughout the length and breadth
of the vast Empire preparations were being made for the annual holiday.
Before the festal day arrived, however, the home of the Viceroy became a
house of mourning, for the little Tung-li lay dead. Despite prayers and
amulets, the propitious words of the soothsayers, and the conjurations
of the priests, "he had gone to wander among the genii," still wearing
locked around his neck the string of coins it had been fondly hoped
would lock him fast to life. Clad in shimmering satin and embroidered
crêpe, a fan in one hand and in the other a printed prayer, he lay all
cold and calm upon the floor, and in the roof above him was a gaping
hole made to allow the spirits inhabiting his body to escape, and
through it had crept a wandering moonbeam that fell upon his placid
face, and gave him the look of one who slept. Near him was a table
filled with every delicacy to tempt the palate, that they who watched
and mourned might also feast, and upon it burned incense and candles,
filling the room with pungent smoke. In an adjoining room twelve priests
bowed before an image made of brass, the god of the lower regions. This
mocking thing they supplicated squatted solemnly upon a golden cloth
strewn with rice, while the kneeling priests chanted prayers for the
dead, and beat upon drums and cymbals, while above it all could be heard
the shrill wailing of the women waiting in the corridors. The Viceroy,
clothed in spotless white (for that is the mourning color of the
country), sat beside the body of his son, his expression one of profound
grief. He had been so proud of this boy, his son and heir, and he had
fondly thought that when he went away to join his fathers, Tung-li would
be left to tend his grave and worship his tablet. Now he was left alone
in his old age.
So, amid the noise made by the priests, and the shrill cries of the
women, and the silent grief of the Viceroy, the night passed, and in the
time that intervened between this and the last funeral rites, geomancers
were kept busy finding a suitable resting place for the body, lest it be
buried in an unlucky spot.
Although it is not customary to have any elaborate ceremonies when
children die, the Viceroy had determined that Tung-li should be buried
with all the honors befitting his high rank, and for that reason the
funeral procession was a most imposing one.
The body was put in a coffin of thick wood, ornamented with many gilt
figures, and then placed in a richly decked gilt pavilion, covered with
a canopy of bright colored silk. Thus, as if going to a festival was
Tung-li borne through the city and to the hills beyond. Before him went
an attendant, scattering paper money along the way to buy the good will
of the wicked spirits who are doomed to wander over the earth and make
mischief wherever they go, and behind him came the bearers of gay
standards, fluttering banners and gilded figures, and the sacrifices to
be offered at the grave. These were in turn followed by a long line of
priests, while close behind the coffin were the mourners, clothed in
white, their cries of anguish rising above the clamorous discord of the
gongs and cymbals, while every now and then could be heard the
reverberating notes of the drum as three loud taps were sounded upon it.
Human nature is the same wherever you find it--in the East and in the
West--and love for those who are near to us is strong in the breast of
high and low, the ignorant and degraded and the wealthy aristocrat. No
matter what the nationality of the Viceroy he was a father, and as he
saw his only child given to the earth, amid the firing of crackers, the
sound of music and the smoke of incense, bitter was his sorrow. Then
libations were poured out, and clothes, houses, money, and horses, made
of paper, were burned, that Tung-li might not be lacking in worldly
goods in that strange land to which he had gone, for they believed that
by a kind of miracle these paper articles would in the spirit world
become in very truth the things they represented, and they wanted to
supply Tung-li with many possessions. Having thus started him on his
long journey with all the wealth and pomp befitting the son of a great
Viceroy, they left him.
That night Tuen carried tea to her master, and despite his sorrow he
noticed how fair she was, and with what swiftness and grace she moved
about. It did not escape him, either, that her eyes were red from
weeping, for she had dearly loved the sedate little Tung-li, and of his
dead son he now spoke to her. Her answers greatly surprised him, and
after he had talked to her for several minutes an idea suddenly came to
him, and he arose and went to find his wife.
"Dismiss your maids. I wish to speak to you," he said to that astonished
lady, who sat weeping in helpless sorrow. Wondering at his manner, and
at what she saw in his face, she complied, and as soon as they were
alone he commenced to talk of Tuen.
"She is a remarkable girl," he announced decisively, "and I have come
to tell you that I have resolved to adopt her."
She uttered a cry of amazement.
"Adopt Tuen?" she breathed.
"Yes, why not?" he answered. "She is beautiful and modest, and her apt
replies are marvellous. We are childless, and she will be an ornament to
any home. I will arrange a great marriage for her."
"Oh, very well," his wife said indifferently. "I never saw anything at
all unusual about her, but I suppose she is as desirable as any other
girl." Here she commenced to weep again, as she thought of the dead
Tung-li, and even the Viceroy said with a sigh:
"Of course she can never take the place of a son, for she will soon
marry and belong to her husband's parents, but still she is intelligent
and pretty. We can take her now, and later I will look around for the
son of a relative to adopt."
"I don't want any one but my own Tung-li," sobbed the poor lady of the
Viceroy; and because he disliked to see a woman cry, and always tried to
escape from any domestic unpleasantness, the Viceroy went back to his
audience hall in haste, and sent for Tuen.
When he told her that she was henceforth to be his daughter, the little
slave girl of Hunan could scarcely believe her ears, and stood staring
at him as one stricken dumb. All at once she understood this great good
fortune that had come to her, and with a cry of joy she threw herself at
his feet, and embraced him ecstatically.
"Oh, I will try to be so good--Oh, I will try to be so good," she said
over and over; and she sobbed for very gladness.
The Viceroy pulled himself away from her feeling distinctly aggrieved,
for it seemed that he could not escape weeping females--the one thing
he particularly detested.
But when Tuen stood up before him, her eyes shining all the brighter for
her tears, and her face radiant with joy, he forgave her for her sobs,
and said pompously:
"You must be worthy of me, Tuen. You have proved that even a female can
by her own industry exalt herself, and now I shall expect much of you."
And Tuen told herself that he should not be disappointed.