Part 49 (2/2)

In the peculiar quiet of mid-afternoon, when the shadows begin to creep down from the eaves of the paG.o.das and zigzag across the rice-fields to bed, Foh-Kyung and Dong-Yung arrived at the camp-ground of the foreigners. The lazy native streets were still dull with the end of labour. At the gate of the camp-ground the rickshaw coolies tipped down the bamboo shafts, to the ground. Dong-Yung stepped out quickly, and looked at her lord and master. He smiled.

”Nay, I do not fear,” Dong-Yung answered, with her eyes on his face.

”Yet this place is strange, and lays a coldness around my heart.”

”Regard not their awkward ways,” said Foh-Kyung, as he turned in at the gate; ”in their hearts they have the secret of life.”

The gate-keeper bowed, and slipped the coin, warm from Foh-Kyung's hand, into his ready pocket.

”Walk beside me, little Wife of my Heart.” Foh-Kyung stopped in the wide gravelled road and waited for Dong-Yung. Standing there in the sunlight, more vivid yet than the light itself, in his imperial yellow robes he was the end of life, nay, life itself, to Dong-Yung. ”We go to the house of the foreign priest to seek until we find the foreign G.o.d. Let us go side by side.”

Dong-Yung, stepping with slow, small-footed grace, walked beside him.

”My understanding is as the understanding of a little child, beloved Teacher; but my heart lies like a sh.e.l.l in thy hand, its words but as the echo of thine. My honour is great that thou do not forget me in the magnitude of the search.”

Dong-Yung's pleated satin skirts swayed to and fro against the imperial yellow of Foh-Kyung's robe. Her face coloured like a pale spring blossom, looked strangely ethereal above her brocade jacket. Her heart still beat thickly, half with fear and half with the secret rapture of their quest and her lord's desire for her.

Foh-Kyung took a silken and ivory fan from an inner pocket and spread it in the air. Dong-Yung knew the fan well. It came from a famous jeweller's on Nanking Road, and had been designed by an old court poet of long ago. The tiny ivory spokes were fretted like ivy-twigs in the North, but on the leaves of silk was painted a love-story of the South.

There was a tea-house, with a maiden playing a lute, and the words of the song, fantastic black ideographs, floated off to the ears of her lover. Foh-Kyung spread out its leaves in the sun, and looked at it and smiled.”

”Never is the heart of man satisfied,” he said, ”alone. Neither when the willow fuzz flies in the spring, or when the midnight snow silvers the palms. Least of all is it satisfied when it seeks the presence of G.o.d above. I want thee beside me.”

Dong-Yung hid her delight. Already for the third time he said those words--those words that changed all the world from one of a loving following-after to a marvelous oneness.

So they stepped across the lawn together. It was to Dong-Yung as if she stepped into an unknown land. She walked on flat green gra.s.s. Flowers in stiff and ordered rows went sedately round and round beneath a lurid red brick wall. A strange, square-cornered, flat-topped house squatted in the midst of the flat green gra.s.s. On the lawn at one side was a white-covered table, with a man and a woman sitting beside it. The four corners of the table-cloth dripped downward to the flat green gra.s.s. It was all very strange and ugly. Perhaps it was a garden, but no one would have guessed it. Dong-Yung longed to put each flower plant in a dragon bowl by itself and place it where the sun caught its petals one by one as the hours flew by. She longed for a narrow, tile-edged patch to guide her feet through all that flat green expanse. A little s.h.i.+ver ran over her. She looked back, down the wide gravelled way, through the gate, where the gate-keeper sat, tipped back against the wall on his stool, to the shop of the money-changer's opposite. A boy leaned half across the polished wood counter and shook his fist in the face of the money-changer. ”Thou thief!” he cried. ”Give me my two cas.h.!.+” Dong-Yung was rea.s.sured. Around her lay all the dear familiar things; at her side walked her lord and master. And he had said they were seeking a new freedom, a G.o.d of love. Her thoughts stirred at her heart and caught her breath away.

The foreigners rose to greet them. Dong-Yung touched the hand of an alien man. She did not like it at all. The foreign-born woman made her sit down beside her, and offered her bitter, strong tea in delicate, lidless cups, with handles bent like a twisted flower-branch.

”I have been meaning to call for a long time, Mrs. Li,” said the foreign-born woman.

”The great wife will receive thee with much honour,” Dong-Yung answered.

”I am so glad you came with your husband.”

”Yes,” Dong-Yung answered, with a little smile. ”The customs of the foreign-born are pleasant to our eyes.”

”I am glad you like them,” said the foreign-born woman. ”I couldn't bear not to go everywhere with my husband.”

Dong-Yung liked her suddenly on account of the look that sprang up a moment in her eyes and vanished again. She looked across at the priest, her husband, a man in black, with thin lips and seeing eyes. The eyes of the foreign woman, looking at the priest, her husband, showed how much she loved him. ”She loves him even as a small wife loves,” Dong-Yung thought to herself. Dong-Yung watched the two men, the one in imperial yellow, the one in black, sitting beside each other and talking.

Dong-Yung knew they were talking of the search. The foreign-born woman was speaking to her again.

”The doctor told me I would die if I came to China, but John felt he had a call. I would not stand in his way.”

The woman's face was illumined.

”And now you are very happy?” Dong-Yung announced.

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