Part 11 (2/2)
CHAPTER XI
”ONE SOUL”
Mr. Kit-ze continued to gesticulate and to cry out to the magistrate, although those near-by sought to restrain him. He even tried to pa.s.s the barrier, but was each time pushed back by the guards.
The magistrate at first appeared not to notice him, but after a while, overcome by his curiosity, he turned his head and called to Mr. Kit-ze: ”What do you want, fellow? I'll put you in the _cangue_[3] if you don't cease that noise.”
”A word!” cried Mr. Kit-ze. ”A word with you, O most high and exalted!”
The magistrate eyed him a moment nonchalantly. Then he said to a runner: ”Bring him here.”
Mr. Kit-ze approached and, falling upon his heels, prostrated himself three times before the _yangban_, touching his forehead to the floor each time.
As he arose, there fluttered from his fingers a strip of yellow ribbon, and those who were near to him saw stamped upon it in red a dragon with four wings and tongue extended.
”See!” said Mr. Kit-ze, as he held it before the magistrate. ”See! O renowned son of a renowned father. O most exalted, I claim the promise.”
A look of intelligence began to dawn in the magistrate's eye. He looked closely at the streamer of yellow ribbon. ”Go on,” he said to Mr.
Kit-ze. ”Go on, but keep your head above your shoulders, so as to make clear what you are trying to say.”
”On a blessed day for your poor, miserable servant,” began Mr. Kit-ze, ”your exalted person came down the Han in a craft that went to grief in the rapids. Your polemen, losing their heads, deserted, and but for the a.s.sistance of the unworthy being now speaking to you and his poleman, there would have been neither craft nor cargo belonging to your exalted self to enter Seoul. You gave me _yen_, but you gave me this too,”
holding the ribbon nearer as he spoke, ”and your most eloquent tongue, that always speaks straight, declared that if there was ever anything this miserable wretch desired of you that could be granted, it should be so.”
”I remember,” said the magistrate. ”Go on.”
”I ask you now, O renowned and honorable, to spare the hair of the daughter of him who is known as the exalted teacher,” and here Mr.
Kit-ze turned toward Helen, who, ever since his sudden appearance, had been regarding him with a questioning if not puzzled wonder. How had he come there, and where were the others? Had he alone learned of their whereabouts, and how had it so happened?
”Take instead something of your wretched servant's,” continued Mr.
Kit-ze to the magistrate, ”and leave undisturbed the beautiful strands that are a happiness to her whom they adorn and a joy in the eyes of those who love her.”
”Oh, Mr. Kit-ze,” said Helen softly, a great, warm flood of feeling sweeping over her heart as she comprehended what he had asked and noted the deep earnestness in his eyes as he turned them upon her, ”don't mind about my hair; please don't. It won't be so dreadful to me to lose it.
Don't get yourself into trouble for my sake,” and now she laid her hand upon his shoulder in earnest pleading.
”I'll fear to suffer nothing if done for _you_, O daughter of the honorable teacher.” And now his eyes were misty with feeling as their gaze lingered upon her.
”Come, is this all you want?” asked the magistrate impatiently and evidently resenting the conversation now going on between Helen and Mr.
Kit-ze.
”Yes, it is all your wretched servant has to ask of you,” replied Mr.
Kit-ze. ”O most honorable,” he began to plead, ”spare, I entreat you, the beautiful hair of her who is the daughter of the exalted teacher, and nothing more will I ask of you. Nothing!”
”But the _miriok_, Mr. Kit-ze, the _miriok_?” said Helen in an undertone and surprised that he had seemed to take no thought of it in his appeal to the magistrate. For he surely had heard enough of the proceedings to understand why she and Dorothy had been brought before the _yangban_.
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