Wus

“ Wu quizzed good-naturedly.
Really, she must do better than this. She would not give offense. “Not only civilized,” she said, contriving a slight laugh—it was an awkward one—“but refined to the last degree.”
There was very fine sarcasm and some contempt in the little bow he gave her—not a Chinese bow—but his voice was sincere and almost pleading. “My dear Mrs. Gregory,” he began, “there is not so very much difference between the East and West, after all. Perhaps we in the East have a finer sense of art; certainly we care more for nature. ”

“ He’d punish—strike to the quick, flay to the raw nerve—but not wrangle with his condemned. “The sound of that gong will ring in your ears as long as you live. Go where you will, you will hear it. Go where you will, you will see, waking and sleeping, a pagoda by a lotus lake, while you live; and when you die, you will feel the vengeance of a Wu. Never again will you look upon your mother’s face without seeing too the dead face of Wu Nang Ping—and mine.” ”

“ Wu watched his hostess with lynx eyes, and the more he watched the more be respected and admired. Late at night, in the hour he invariably spent alone, and had done so from his first coming to England—the hour in which he read and wrote and spoke and thought in Chinese, when in spirit, and bodily too, he made obeisance to his ancestors’ tablets across the world—he wrote down carefully much that she had said and that he had learned from her. Among his many sons the gods might send a daughter, and if they did she too should learn of Ellen Muir. ”

“ Wu will never forgive you or the poor child; though it’s he himself he ought not to forgive for having let a Chinese girl out and unwatched so with us English about. He’ll punish you both, and what Wu does he does well. There’ll be no escaping him. No boat will take you beyond his reach, no spot on earth hide you. You can’t stay in China with her. Her position would be too intolerable,85 even for one of us to inflict on a woman. ”

“ And after lunch he took Wu into an inner room more like China, less like Hades. But until he died Wu hated the Chinese Legation at Portland Place. And he stayed there for five years. Then he went to Oxford.
London he never learned to like. There was no reason why he should. But he did learn to like the country places all over the kingdom’s two islands. For he and Muir traveled together at Christmas and at Easter and in the summer. ”

“ Wu had no wish for dinner. He had been crying—almost for the first time in his life; the Chinese rarely weep—and besides, he was very sick. Muir dressed without speaking much, and when dinner was served mercifully left the boy to himself and his pillows.
Across China an old man in shabby robes left his rice untouched, and bowed long before the ancestral tablets of his race. ”

“ The mandarin pointed to where it hung.
Mrs. Gregory half smothered a moan.
260 “The sword with rather a gruesome history——”
“Oh! don’t, please, Mr. Wu,” she broke in, “please—I—I couldn’t bear it now.”
“But, my dear Mrs. Gregory,” he persisted blandly, “good news will keep. Time is not pressing. Besides, tea has not yet been brought in.”
“Tea!” she panted distractedly; “oh! Mr. Wu, you must please excuse me.”
“I beg you to excuse me,” the Chinese corrected, a little arrogantly. “For countless generations my ancestors have drunk tea at this hour, and our tradition must be kept up. ”

“ The fan shut with an ominous click—a rattle of ivory, a hiss and a rustle of silk. “It lies by that door”—he pointed it with his fan—“which leads to my own inner chamber.”
The woman smothered a scream, but she could not smother a groan.
Wu laughed. He took a step towards her. “Have you no desire to hear my news of your son?” he asked softly. “Good news? I promised that you should—I am here to keep my promise.” The terrible significance of his words could not have been clearer, but he emphasized it hideously by gliding still a little nearer to the stricken, appalled woman. ”

“ Wu the grandfather was never long or far from the side of Wu the grandson. James Muir had taught one Wu almost as much (though not as systematically) as he had taught the other. And they had taught him more than he had taught them: the child unconsciously, the mandarin with conscious glee. All three had been eager to learn, the men more eager than the boy; and the teacher who is at home always has a wide and deep advantage over the teacher who is abroad. ”

“ Until the door opened and Wu came in, she sat cowering, her eyes riveted on her cup, her fingers knotting and unknotting in her lap, and under the lace of her sleeve the costly jewel she had worn to pay honor to Sing Kung Yah winked and danced.
She did not look up at the mandarin’s step, and for a space he stood and studied her, hatred and contempt for Basil Gregory’s mother ugly on his face, pity for his vicarious victim—and she a woman—in his Chinese eyes. And in his heart there was self-pity too: his sacrificial office was in no way to the liking of Wu Li Chang. ”

“ Now Wu, albeit clothed in the raiment of a scholar, was a man skilled in the art of war.
And Wen, Lord of Wei, came unto him and said:—
“I am a man of peace, caring not for military affairs.”
And Wu said:—
“Your actions are witnesses of your mind; why do your words say not what is in your heart?
“You do prepare and dress hides and leather through the four seasons, ornamenting them with red lacquer and the figures of panthers and elephants; which give not warmth in winter, neither in summer, coolness. ”

“ Many books have I read on the subject of war and fighting; but the work composed by Sun Wu is the profoundest of them all. [Sun Tzŭ was a native of the Ch‘i state, his personal name was Wu. He wrote the Art of War in 13 chapters for Ho Lü, King of Wu. Its principles were tested on women, and he was subsequently made a general. He led an army westwards, crushed the Ch‘u State and entered Ying the capital. In the north, he kept Ch‘i and Chin in awe. A hundred years and more after his time, Sun Pin lived. He was a descendant of Wu] . ”

“ Christian got up. Voss did not urge him to stay longer, but accompanied him to the door. There he said in a changed voice: “What kind of a man are you? One sits before you and pours out one’s soul, and you sit there in silence. ”

“ He had known such slight men by the dozens and twenties at Oxford, scant-minded, uncultured, clad like popinjays; and for this—this English nothing, this manling thing too slight for Wu Li Chang’s hate, almost unworth his crushing—she had made the father that had adored and cherished her grandsire to a mongrel of shame. The pain at Wu Li Chang’s heart was greater and gnawed sharper than that at Basil Gregory’s. The Chinese was the bigger man, and paid the bigger penalty. ”

“ On one occasion Wu had journeyed to a certain Buddhist temple and was rudely received by the priests. Wu was religious but not sufficiently religious to bow before a slight. He pondered over the matter, finally deciding on a course of action. On one of the temple walls he drew the picture of a donkey. That night all the furniture in the temple was kicked to pieces. The priests were victims of badly ruffled nerves. Wu fanned himself gently. He fanned the back of his neck and his heels. It is good to cool one's heels while one watches the distraught antics of those who have caused affront. ”

“ Rest, Wu Li Chang! Be satisfied! The Englishman is punished. He has broken his mother’s heart. Your curse is fulfilled. Basil Gregory heard your gong cry out a soul’s damnation to-day above his wife’s “I will.” So long as he lives he will hear it, a bitter, relentless knell. When ginger is hottest in his mouth, when wine bubbles reddest in his cup, when the English girl he loves lifts with tired, triumphant hands their firstborn toward his arms, through the young mother’s misty314 smile he will see Nang’s face, above the baby’s first cry he will hear the throbbing note of a Chinese gong. ”

“ As the tumult grew the trial was adjourned until the 7th, and Hus removed in the custody of the Bishop of Riga. ‘Do not fear for me,’ he said, as he grasped the hands of his friends. ‘We do not fear,’ they answered. ‘I know you do not,’ he added. As Mladenowic and Chlum watched him mount the steps of the tower adjoining the convent, they saw him ‘smile, as if in gladness after his mockery, and hold out a hand as if blessing the people.’ That same night, as if to reassure them of his constancy, Hus wrote to his friends in Constance. ”

“ What have we done to start you on this career of kidnapping—of ship-scuttling—of incendiarism, among the coolies out there—and all the rest of it?”
Wu looked at his watch, put it back in his pocket, picked up his hat, and rose deliberately. “Mr. Gregory,” he said coldly, “my time is of a certain value. Time is money, you Westerners say. Well, I never waste time—although I am never in a hurry. You will excuse me if I wish you a very good afternoon.”
“No so fast, Mr. Wu,” the shipper said ferociously, thrusting himself between Wu and the door. ”

“ The others nodded assent, and dispatched a messenger to the king to say he must fight the great Woof and master him or resign his sovereignty.
“For a bear with feathers,” added the messenger, “is no bear at all, and the king we obey must resemble the rest of us.”
“I wear feathers because it pleases me,” growled the king. “Am I not a great magician? But I will fight, nevertheless, and if Woof masters me he shall be king in my stead.”
Then he visited his friends, the gulls, who were even then feasting upon the dead bear, and told them of the coming battle. ”

“ They were bringing Basil Gregory to Wu Li Chang.
They had not met or exchanged a message since Wu had bent and gathered up Nang Ping where she had swooned at Basil’s feet. Since then no slightest message from the outer world had reached the prisoner in the pagoda. Wu’s servants had brought him food, and, on the second night, even a rug; but not once had they spoken to him or appeared to hear what he said to them.
The hours in the pagoda had marked him. And—why not? Those other hours there had marked Nang Ping down to doom. The man does not go scot-free. Never! ”

“ Wu the grandson had played beside it when still almost a baby. He knew its significance, its great value, and that there was no finer coffin in China. The precious Shi-mu wood, from one solid piece of which it had been carved, was hidden beneath layer after layer of priceless lacquer and Kweichow varnish, both inside and out. And little Wu, who knew each of its elaborate, fantastic details as well as if it had been a favorite picture-book, had never been able to determine which was the more gorgeous—the33 vermilion of its surface or the gold leaf of the arabesque that decorated it. ”

“ I, too, had a daughter——”
“Had!” the woman’s lips just breathed it.
“And family history has repeated itself—so far.”
For some moments there was silence in the room—a silence far more poignant than any words—a silence chill and kindless as the voicelessness of death. Then Florence Gregory started up at the sounds of bolts withdrawn and of panels sliding in their grooves.
Wu rose too, carried the sword, and put it beside the gong. “It is growing dark,” he said. ”

“ In the midst of them stands Huss, habited in a simple dark robe; his sharpened features, and the yellow, corpse-like pallor of his face, tell of prison and of suffering. He is defending himself; and there is a trembling earnestness in the manner with which his hand grasps the Bible. ”

“ O curse of Europe! That such men as you pour into Asia and do this damnable thing! You’ll boil in oil for this. You insufferable ass! Don’t you realize in the least who and what her father is? You might better have affronted Tze-Shi herself. Boil in oil, I tell you, and, by God, so you ought! If it were not for your mother, I’d help Wu to heat it. How would you like some Chinese man to do to your sister what you have done to this girl? ”

“ Even so, the effect of the article would not have been possible had it not been for one little weakness of the people of Wu. In most ways, they are not a credulous folk; indeed, one may show them a plain fact ninety-nine ways without convincing them ”

“ Sun Wu’s saying, that in war one cannot make certain of conquering, [7] is very different indeed from what other books tell us. [8] Wu Ch‘i was a man of the same stamp as Sun Wu: they both wrote books on war, and they are linked together in popular speech as “Sun and Wu.” But Wu Ch‘i’s remarks on war are less weighty, his rules are rougher and more crudely stated, and there is not the same unity of plan as in Sun Tzŭ’s work, where the style is terse, but the meaning fully brought out. ”

“ To begin with, there was the disappearance of Wuff. The young wolf, who had been growing manifestly restive of late and at times distinctly ill-tempered even toward his master, at last found the summons of his kind to be stronger than the appeal of human companionship. Standing with Ru one evening near the rear cave entrance, he started forward with sudden alertness and with wildly gleaming eyes as a long-drawn, doleful call sounded from far away out of the twilight. ”

“ Should any one ask me whether men can be made to move like these snakes, I say, yes. The men of Wu and Yueh hate each other; yet, if they cross a river in the same boat and a storm overtake them, they help each other like the two hands. ”

“ Sau, feminine, ‘sow, hog,’ from the equivalent Middle High German and Old High German sû, feminine; corresponding to Anglo-Saxon sû, English sow, Old Icelandic sýr, ‘sow.’ Dutch zog, zeug, ‘sow,’ belong further, like Anglo-Saxon sŭgu (Gothic *sugus) , and Suabian, Middle Low German, and Middle English suge, to Old Teutonic sû, whence also Schwein (Gothic swein, neuter) is derived. The term sû, ‘pig,’ is essentially West Aryan; compare Latin sû-s, Greek ὗ-ς, σῦ-ς, to which Zend hu, ‘boar,’ is allied ”