young lady from next door got on the wall to have a look at him. He
saw she was very pretty, and as he approached her she began to laugh.
He then beckoned to her with his hand; but she did not move either to
come or to go away. At length, however, she accepted the invitation,
and descended the ladder that he had placed for her. In reply to
Hsiang-ju’s inquiries, the young lady said her name was Hung-yü, and
that she lived next door; so Hsiang-ju, who was much taken with her
beauty, begged her to come over frequently and have a chat. To this
she readily assented, and continued to do so for several months, until
one evening old Mr. Fêng, hearing sounds of talking and laughing in
his son’s room, got up and looked in. Seeing Miss Hung-yü, he was
exceedingly angry, and called his son out, saying, “You
good-for-nothing fellow! poor as we are, why aren’t you at your books,
instead of wasting your time like this? A pretty thing for the
neighbours to hear of!--and even if they don’t hear of it, somebody
else will, and shorten your life accordingly.”[194] Hsiang-ju fell on
his knees, and with tears implored forgiveness; whereupon his father
turned to the young lady, and said, “A girl who behaves like this
disgraces others as well as herself; and if people find this out, we
shan’t be the only ones to suffer.” The old man then went back to bed
in a rage, and Miss Hung-yü, weeping bitterly, said to Hsiang-ju,
“Your father’s reproaches have overwhelmed me with shame. Our
friendship is now at an end.” “I could say nothing,” replied he, “as
long as my father was here; but if you have any consideration for me,
I pray you think nothing of his remarks.” Miss Hung-yü protested,
however, that they could meet no more, and then Hsiang-ju also burst
into tears. “Do not weep,” cried she, “our friendship was an
impossible one, and time must sooner or later have put an end to these
visits. Meanwhile, I hear there is a very good match to be made in the
neighbourhood.” Hsiang-ju replied that he was poor; but Miss Hung-yü
told him to meet her again the following evening, when she would
endeavour to do something for him. At the appointed time she arrived,
and, producing forty ounces of silver, presented them to Hsiang-ju;
telling him that at a village some distance off there was a Miss Wei,
eighteen years of age, who was not yet married because of the
exorbitant demands of her parents, but that a little extra outlay
would secure for him the young lady’s hand. Miss Hung-yü then bade him
farewell, and Hsiang-ju went off to inform his father, expressing a
desire to go and make inquiries, but saying nothing about the forty
ounces. His father, thinking that they were not sufficiently well off,
urged him not to go; however, by dint of argument, he finally
persuaded the old man that, at any rate, there was no harm in trying.
So he borrowed horses and attendants, and set off to the house of Mr.
Wei, who was a man of considerable property; and when he got there he
asked Mr. Wei to come outside and accord him a few minutes’
conversation. Now the latter knew that Hsiang-ju belonged to a very
good family; and when he saw all the retinue that Hsiang-ju had
brought with him, he inwardly consented to the match, though he was
afraid that perhaps his would-be son-in-law might not be as liberal as
he would like. Hsiang-ju soon perceived what Mr. Wei’s feelings were,
and emptied his purse on the table, at which Mr. Wei was delighted,
and begged a neighbour to allow the marriage contract to be drawn up
in his house.[195] Hsiang-ju then went in to pay his respects to Mrs.
Wei, whom he found in a small, miserable room, with Miss Wei hiding
behind her. Still he was pleased to see that, in spite of her homely
toilette, the young lady herself was very nice-looking; and, while he
was being entertained in the neighbour’s house, the old lady said, “It
will not be necessary for you, Sir, to come and fetch our daughter. As
soon as we have made up a small trousseau for her, we will send her
along to you.”[196] Hsiang-ju then agreed with them upon a day for the
wedding, and went home and informed his father, pretending that the
Wei family only asked for respectability, and did not care about
money. His father was overjoyed to hear this; and when the day came,
the young lady herself arrived. She proved to be a thrifty housekeeper
and an obedient wife, so that she and her husband got along capitally
together. In two years she had a son, who was called Fu-êrh. And once,
on the occasion of the great spring festival, she was on her way to
the family tombs, with her boy in her arms, when she chanced to meet a
man named Sung, who was one of the gentry of the neighbourhood. This
Mr. Sung had been a Censor,[197] but had purchased his retirement, and
was now leading a private life, characterised by many overbearing and
violent acts. He was returning from his visit to the graves of his
ancestors when he saw Hsiang-ju’s wife, and, attracted by her beauty,
found out who she was; and imagining that, as her husband was a poor
scholar, he might easily be induced for a consideration to part with
the lady, sent one of his servants to find out how the land lay. When
Hsiang-ju heard what was wanted, he was very angry; but, reflecting on
the power of his adversary, controlled his passion, and passed the
thing off with a laugh. His father, however, to whom he repeated what
had occurred, got into a violent rage, and, rushing out, flung his
arms about, and called Mr. Sung every name he could lay his tongue to.
Mr. Sung’s emissary slunk off and went home; and then a number of men
were sent by the enraged Sung, and these burst into the house and gave
old Fêng and his son a most tremendous beating. In the middle of the
hubbub Hsiang-ju’s wife ran in, and, throwing her child down on the
bed, tore her hair and shrieked for help. Sung’s attendants
immediately surrounded her and carried her off, while there lay her
husband and his father, wounded on the ground and the baby squalling
on the bed. The neighbours, pitying their wretched condition, helped
them up on to the couches, and by the next day Hsiang-ju could walk
with a stick; however, his father’s anger was not to be appeased, and,
after spitting a quantity of blood, he died. Hsiang-ju wept bitterly
at this, and, taking his child in his arms, used every means to bring
the offenders to justice, but without the slightest success. He then
heard that his wife had put an end to her own existence, and with this
his cup of misery was full. Unable to get his wrongs redressed, he
often meditated assassinating Sung in the open street,[198] but was
deterred from attempting this by the number of his retainers and the
fear of leaving his son with no one to protect him. Day and night he
mourned over his lot, and his eyelids were never closed in sleep, when
suddenly in walked a personage of striking appearance to condole with
him on his losses. The stranger’s face was covered with a huge curly
beard; and Hsiang-ju, not knowing who he was, begged him to take a
seat, and was about to ask whence he came, when all at once he began,
“Sir! have you forgotten your father’s death, your wife’s disgrace?”
Thereupon Hsiang-ju, suspecting him to be a spy from the Sung family,
made some evasive reply, which so irritated the stranger that he
roared out, “I thought you were a man; but now I know that you are a
worthless, contemptible wretch.” Hsiang-ju fell on his knees and
implored the stranger to forgive him, saying, “I was afraid it was a
trick of Sung’s: I will speak frankly to you. For days I have lain, as
it were, upon thorns, my mouth filled with gall, restrained only by
pity for this little one and fear of breaking our ancestral line.
Generous friend, will you take care of my child if I fall?” “That,”
replied the stranger, “is the business of women; I cannot undertake
it. But what you wish others to do for you, do yourself; and that
which you would do yourself, I will do for you.” When Hsiang-ju heard
these words he knocked his head upon the ground; but the stranger took
no more notice of him, and walked out. Following him to the door,
Hsiang-ju asked his name, to which he replied, “If I cannot help you I
shall not wish to have your reproaches; if I do help you, I shall not
wish to have your gratitude.” The stranger then disappeared, and
Hsiang-ju, having a presentiment that some misfortune was about to
happen, fled away with his child.
When night came, and the members of the Sung family were wrapped in
sleep, some one found his way into their house and slew the ex-Censor
and his two sons, besides a maid-servant and one of the ladies.
Information was at once given to the authorities; and as the Sung
family had no doubt that the murderer was Hsiang-ju, the magistrate,
who was greatly alarmed,[199] sent out lictors to arrest him.
Hsiang-ju, however, was nowhere to be found, a fact which tended to
confirm the suspicions of the Sung family; and they, too, despatched a
number of servants to aid the mandarin in effecting his capture.
Towards evening the lictors and others reached a hill, and, hearing a
child cry, made for the sound, and thus secured the object of their
search, whom they bound and led away. As the child went on crying
louder than ever, they took it from him and threw it down by the
wayside, thereby nearly causing Hsiang-ju to die of grief and rage. On
being brought before the magistrate he was asked why he had killed
these people; to which he replied that he was falsely accused, “For,”
said he, “they died in the night, whereas I had gone away in the
daytime. Besides,” added he, “how, with a crying baby in my arms,
could I scale walls and kill people?” “If you didn’t kill people,”
cried the magistrate, “why did you run away?” Hsiang had no answer to
make to this, and he was accordingly ordered to prison; whereupon he
wept and said, “I can die without regret; but what has my child done
that he, too, should be punished?” “You,” replied the magistrate,
“have slain the children of others; how can you complain if your child
meets the same fate?” Hsiang-ju was then stripped of his degree[200]
and subjected to all kinds of indignities, but they were unable to
wring a confession from his lips;[201] and that very night, as the
magistrate lay down, he heard a sharp noise of something striking the
bed, and, jumping up in a fright, found, by the light of a candle, a
small, keen blade sticking in the wood at the head of his couch so
tightly that it could not be drawn out. Terribly alarmed at this, the
magistrate walked round the room with a spear over his shoulder, but
without finding anything; and then, reflecting that nothing more was
to be feared from Sung, who was dead, as well as his two sons, he
laid Hsiang-ju’s case before the higher authorities, and obtained for
him an acquittal. Hsiang-ju was released and went home. His cupboard,
however, was empty, and there was nothing except his own shadow within
the four walls of his house. Happily, his neighbours took pity on him
and supplied him with food; and whenever he thought upon the vengeance
that had been wreaked, his countenance assumed an expression of joy;
but as often as his misfortunes and the extinction of his family came
into his mind, his tears would begin to flow. And when he remembered
the poverty of his life and the end of his ancestral line, he would
seek out some solitary spot, and there burst into an ungovernable fit
of grief. Thus things went on for about six months, when the search
after the murderer began to be relaxed; and then Hsiang-ju petitioned
for the recovery of his wife’s bones, which he took home with him and
buried. His sorrows made him wish to die, and he lay tossing about on
the bed without any object in life, when suddenly he heard somebody
knock at the door. Keeping quiet to listen, he distinguished the sound
of a voice outside talking with a child; and, getting up to look, he
perceived a young lady, who said to him, “Your great wrongs are all
redressed, and now, luckily, you have nothing to ail you.” The voice
seemed familiar to him, but he could not at the moment recall where he
had heard it; so he lighted a candle, and Miss Hung-yü stood before
him. She was leading a small, happy-looking child by the hand; and
after she and Hsiang-ju had expressed their mutual satisfaction at
meeting once more, Miss Hung-yü pushed the boy forward, saying, “Have
you forgotten your father?” The boy clung to her dress, and looked
shyly at Hsiang-ju, who, on examining him closely, found that he was
Fu-êrh. “Where did he come from?” asked his father, in astonishment,
not unmingled with tears. “I will tell you all,” replied Miss Hung-yü.
“I was only deceiving you when I said I belonged to a neighbouring
family. I am really a fox, and, happening to go out one evening, I
heard a child crying in a ditch. I took him home and brought him up;
and, now that your troubles are over, I return him to you, that father
and son may be together.” Hsiang-ju wiped away his tears and thanked
her heartily; but Fu-êrh kept close to Miss Hung-yü, whom he had come
to regard as a mother, and did not seem to recognise his father again.
Before day-break Miss Hung-yü said she must go away; but Hsiang-ju
fell upon his knees and entreated her to stop, until at last she said
she was only joking, adding that, in a new establishment like theirs,
it would be a case of early to rise and late to bed. She then set to
work cutting fuel and sweeping it up, toiling hard as if she had been
a man, which made Hsiang-ju regret that he was too poor to have all
this done for her. However, she bade him mind his books, and not
trouble himself about the state of their affairs, as they were not
likely to die of hunger. She also produced some money, and bought
implements for spinning, besides renting a few acres of land and
hiring labourers to till them. Day by day she would shoulder her hoe
and work in the fields, or employ herself in mending the roof, so
that her fame as a good wife spread abroad, and the neighbours were
more than ever pleased to help them. In half-a-year’s time their home
was like that of a well-to-do family, with plenty of servants about;
but one day Hsiang-ju said to Miss Hung-yü, “With all that you have
accomplished on my behalf, there is still one thing left undone.” On
her asking him what it was, he continued: “The examination for
master’s degree is at hand, and I have not yet recovered the
bachelor’s degree of which I was stripped.” “Ah,” replied she, “some
time back I had your name replaced upon the list; had I waited for you
to tell me, it would have been too late.” Hsiang-ju marvelled very
much at this, and accordingly took his master’s degree. He was then
thirty-six years of age, the master of broad lands and fine houses;
and Miss Hung-yü, who looked delicate enough to be blown away by the
wind, and yet worked harder than an ordinary labourer’s wife, keeping
her hands smooth and nice in spite of winter weather, gave herself out
to be thirty-eight, though no one took her to be much more than
twenty.
FOOTNOTES:
[194] Meaning that it would become known to the Arbiter of life and
death in the world below, who would punish him by shortening his
appointed term of years. See _The Wei-ch‘i Devil_, No. CXXXI.
[195] One important preliminary consists in the exchange of the four
pairs of characters which denote the year, month, day, and hour of the
births of the contracting parties. It remains for a geomancer to
determine whether these are in harmony or not; and a very simple
expedient for backing out of a proposed alliance is to bribe him to
declare that the nativities of the young couple could not be happily
brought together.
[196] The bridegroom invariably fetches the bride from her father’s
house, conveying her to his home in a handsomely-gilt red sedan-chair,
closed in on all sides, and accompanied by a band of music.
[197] The Censorate is a body of fifty-six officials, whose duty it is
to bring matters to the notice of the Emperor which might otherwise
have escaped attention; to take exception to any acts, including those
of His Majesty himself, calculated to interfere with the welfare of
the people; and to impeach, as occasion may require, the high
provincial authorities, whose position, but for this wholesome check,
would be almost unassailable. Censors are popularly termed the “ears
and eyes” of the monarch.
[198] In the _Book of Rites_ (I. Pt. i. v. 10), which dates, in its
present form, only from the first century B.C., occurs this passage,
“With the slayer of his father, a man may not live under the same
heaven;” and in the _Family Sayings_ (Bk. X. _ab init._), a work which
professes, though on quite insufficient authority, to record a number
of the conversations and apophthegms of Confucius not given in the
_Lun-yü_, or Confucian Gospels, we find the following course laid down
for a man whose father has been murdered:--“He must sleep upon a grass
mat, with his shield for his pillow; he must decline to take office;
he must not live under the same heaven (with the murderer). When he
meets him in the court or in the market-place, he must not return for
a weapon, but engage him there and then;” being always careful, as the
commentator observes, to carry a weapon about with him. Sir John Davis
and Dr. Legge agree in stigmatizing this as “one of the objectionable
principles of Confucius.” It must, however, be admitted that (1) a
patched-up work which appeared as we have it now from two to three
centuries after Confucius’s death, and (2) a confessedly apocryphal
work such as the _Family Sayings_, are hardly sufficient grounds for
affixing to the fair fame of China’s great Sage the positive
inculcation of a dangerous principle of blood-vengeance like that I
have just quoted.
[199] The Chinese theory being that every official is responsible for
the peace and well-being of the district committed to his charge, and
even liable to punishment for occurrences over which he could not
possibly have had any control.
[200] See No. X., note 75.
[201] See No. X., note 78.
XXXIII.
CHANG’S TRANSFORMATION.