Part 48 (2/2)
”Now my lord speaks truly, as do the foreign devils to the shameless, open-faced women. I like the ways of the outside kingdom well. Tell me more of them, my Master.”
Foh-Kyung moved his hands as if he would have withdrawn them from his apricot-coloured sleeves. Dong-Yung saw the withheld motion, and swayed nearer. For a moment Dong-Yung saw the look in his eyes that engulfed her in happiness; then it was gone, and he looked away past her, across the opening lily-buds and the black rampart of the wall, at something distant, yet precious. Foh-Kyung moved closer. His face changed. His eyes held that hidden rapture that only Dong-Yung and the foreign-born priest had seen.
”Little Jewel, wilt thou go with me to the priest of the foreign-born faith? Come!” He withdrew his hand from his sleeve and touched Dong-Yung on the shoulder. ”Come, we will go hand in hand, thou and I, even as the men and women of the Jesus thinking; not as Chinese, I before, and thou six paces behind. Their G.o.d loves men and women alike.”
”Is it permitted to a small wife to wors.h.i.+p the foreign-born G.o.d?”
Dong-Yung lifted her eyes to the face of Foh-Kyung. ”Teach me, O my Lord Master! My understanding is but young and fearful--”
Foh-Kyung moved into the sunlight beside her.
”Their G.o.d loves all the world. Their G.o.d is different, little Flower, from the painted images, full of blessings, not curses. He loves even little girl babies that mothers would throw away. Truly his heart is still more loving than the heart of a mother.”
”And yet I am fearful--” Dong-Yung looked back into the shadows of the guest-hall, where the ancestral tablets glowed upon the wall, and crimson tapers stood ready before them. ”Our G.o.ds I have touched and handled.”
”Nay, in the Jesus way there is no fear left.” Foh-Kyung's voice dropped lower. Its sound filled Dong-Yung with longing. ”When the wind screams in the chimneys at night, it is but the wind, not evil spirits. When the summer breeze blows in at the open door, we need not bar it. It is but the summer breeze from the rice-fields, uninhabited by witch-ghosts.
When we eat our morning rice, we are compelled to make no offering to the kitchen G.o.ds in the stove corner. They cannot curse our food. Ah, in the Jesus way there is no more fear!”
Dong-Yung drew away from her lord and master and looked at him anxiously. He was not seeing her at all. His eyes looked beyond, across the fragile, lily-petals, through the solid black wall, at a vision he saw in the world. Dong-Yung bent her head to sniff the familiar sweet springtime orchid hanging from the jade stud on her shoulder.
”Your words are words of good hearing, O beloved Teacher. Nevertheless, let me follow six paces behind. I am not worthy to touch your hand. Six paces behind, when the sun s.h.i.+nes in your face, my feet walk in the shadow of your garments.”
Foh-Kyung gathered his gaze back from his visions and looked at his small wife, standing in a pool of suns.h.i.+ne before him. Overhead the lazy crows flew by, winging out from their city roosts to the rice-fields for the day's food.
”Tea-boiled eggs!” cried a vender from beyond the wall. A man stopped at the gate, put down his shoulder-tray of food, and bargained with the ancient, mahogany-scalped gate-keeper. Faint odours of food frying in oil stole out from the depths of the house behind him. And Dong-Yung, very quiet and pa.s.sive in the pose of her body, gazed up at Foh-Kyung with those strange, secretive, ardent eyes. All around him was China, its very essence and sound and smell. Dong-Yung was a part of it all; nay, she was even the very heart of it, swaying there in the yellow light among the lily-petals.
”Precious Jewel! Yet it is sweeter to walk side by side, our feet stepping out into the sunlight together, and our shadows mingling behind. I want you beside me.”
The last words rang with sudden warmth. Dong-Yung trembled and crimsoned. It was not seemly that a man speak to a woman thus, even though that man was a husband and the woman his wife, not even though the words were said in an open court, where the eyes of the great wife might spy and listen. And yet Dong-Yung thrilled to those words.
An amah called, ”The morning rice is ready.”
Dong-Yung hurried into the open room, where the light was still faint, filtering in through a high-silled window and the door. A round, brown table stood in the center of the room. In the corner of the room behind stood the crescentic, white plaster stove, with its dull wooden kettle-lids and its crackling straw. Two cooks, country women, sat in the hidden corner behind the stove, and poked in the great bales of straw and gossiped. Their voices and the answers of the serving amah filled the kitchen with noise. In their decorous niche at the upper right hand of the stove sat the two kitchen G.o.ds, small ancient idols, with hidden hands and crossed feet, gazing out upon a continually hungry world. Since time was they had sat there, ensconced at the very root of life, seemingly placid and unseeing and unhearing, yet venomously watching to be placated with food. Opposite the stove, on the white wall, hung a row of bra.s.s hooks, from which dangled porcelain spoons with pierced handles. On a serving-table stood the piled bowls for the day, blue-and-white rice patterns, of a thin, translucent ware, showing the delicate light through the rice seeds; red-and-green dragoned bowls for the puddings; and tiny saucer-like platters for the vegetables. The tea-cups, saucered and lidded, but unhandled, stood in a row before the polished bra.s.s hot-water kettle.
The whole room was full of a stirring, wakening life, of the crackling straw fire, of the steaming rice, all white and separate-kerneled in its great, shallow, black iron kettles lidded with those heavy hand-made wooden lids while the boiling tea water hissed, and spat out a snake of white steam.
With that curious democracy of China, where high and low alike are friendly, Dong-Yung hurried into her beloved kitchen.
”Has the master come?” asked the serving maid.
”Coming, coming,” Dong-Yung answered, ”I myself will take in his morning rice, after I have offered the morning oblations to the G.o.ds.”
Dong-Yung selected two of the daintiest blue-and-white rice-pattern bowls. The cook lifted off the wooden lid of the rice-kettle, and Dong-Yung scooped up a dipperful of the snow-white kernels. On the tiny shelf before each G.o.d, the father and mother G.o.d of the household, Dong-Yung placed her offering. She stood off a moment, surveying them in pleased satisfaction--the round, blue bowls, with the faint tracery of light; the complacent G.o.ds above, red and green and crimson, so age-long, comfortably ensconced in their warm stove corner. She made swift obeisance with her hands and body before those ancient idols. A slant of suns.h.i.+ne swept in from the high windows and fell over her in a shaft of light. The thoughts of her heart were all warm and mixed and confused. She was happy. She loved her kitchen, her G.o.ds, all the familiar ways of Chinese life. She loved her silken, satin clothes, perfumed and embroidered and orchid-crowned, yet most of all she loved her lord and master. Perhaps it was this love for him that made all the rest of life so precious, that made each bowl of white rice an oblation, each daily act a glorification. So she flung out her arms and bent her head before the kitchen G.o.ds, the symbol of her ancient happiness.
”Dong-Yung, I do not wish you to do this any more.”
Dong-Yung turned, her obeisance half arrested in mid-air. Foh-Kyung stood in the doorway.
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