Wusun

“ Why else did the white man overcome Gela?"
He turned to Gray, with a moody smile on his lined face.
"Your people, O Man-from-the-Outside, will not find the Wusun, if they send again. That is my thought. The sun passes from the heavens and it is night; the camel leaves his bones to dry in the sands. So will the Wusun pass from Mongolia. The priests of Buddha are powerful. Soon the sands will climb over the walls of Sungan." ”

“ Gray recalled the majestic face of Bassalor Danek, and the anger of the Wusun at the entrance of Wu Fang Chien.
"They made some kind of a covenant, didn't they, with the Chinese Emperor?"
"Timur said it was an agreement by which the Wusun were to keep their city inviolate, and not to leave its boundaries. Even the invading sands have not dislodged them. Timur described them as numerous as the trees of the Thian Shan, the Celestial Mountains, at first. Now only a few survive. The Chinese have posted lepers around them." ”

“ It is for the good of his people."
"I, who have come across the desert to the Wusun, know that it is not so. I call upon the Wusun to abide by the law of Mongolia."
"The marriage feast is being prepared. The White Spirit will be clothed in the robe of blessed felicity."
"Let it be so." Gray looked at the old man steadily. "Let there be a marriage this night, according to the custom of the Wusun. But I, as well as Gela, claim the girl. You know the law?"
"If two men say that a woman is theirs, they must decide the matter with weapons in their hands."
"That is the law, Timur. ”

“ She flushed rosily.
"The white man is precious in my sight," she said dearly. "His life is like to the warmth of the sun, and if he dies, my life would pass, even as water vanishes when it is poured upon the sands."
"Verily," pondered Timur, stroking his beard, "is he a brave man. But how then may Wu Fang Chien be appeased?"
Anger flashed into the girl's expressive face.
"So the Wusun are weak of soul," she accused. "Their heart is like the soul of a gully jackal. They would give up the warrior who came to be their friend, to buy their own comfort! Aie! Are you such men?" ”

“ Some citrons, melons and date trees grew by the canals of Sungan. At times a caravan would come to Sungan from China bringing other food.
Through his glasses Gray made out the figures of lepers outside the wall. Garluk explained that these were "the evil fate of the Wusun." They were put there to keep the Wusun within the wall. For centuries he and his people had been pent up. They were diminishing in numbers, due to the captivity. Occasionally some adventurous man would escape through the lepers and the Chinese soldiers, cross the desert to Khotan or Kashgar. ”

“ The earliest annals of China mentioned the Huing-nu—light-eyed devils—who came down into the desert. The manuscripts of antiquity bore the name of the Wusun—the "Tall Ones." And the children of the Aryan conquerors had survived, fighting against the Mongolians for several hundred years.
"They survive to-day," said the historian earnestly. "Marco Polo, the first European to enter China, passed along the northern frontier of the Wusun land. He called their king Prester John and a Christian. You have heard of the myth of Prester John, sometimes called the monarch of Asia. ”

“ And she would not. If Gray was to face the Chinese, she would be at his side. How often do men judge correctly the true strength of a woman's devotion?
"We have planned otherwise," pointed out Timur. "For you——"
"I have spoken, you have heard."
Bassalor Danek questioned the councilor as to what had been said. Then the chieftain rose.
"Say to the woman," he announced, "that I, the leader of the Wusun, have decided. What my wisdom decides, she cannot alter by hot words. Who is she, but a fair woman? I am master of the talisman of the Wusun." ”

“ Bassalor Danek has agreed."
Gray checked an exclamation with difficulty.
"That may not be," he said sternly. "The White Spirit is not one to marry among the Wusun."
Garluk laughed. "Did not Gela, the strongest of the Wusun, take her from the yellow priests? Does she not wear the talisman which is the same as that of our shrine? Gela as yet has no wife. Why should he not marry?"
While the two watched him, Gray considered the new turn affairs had taken. All his instincts prompted him to cry out that the thing was impossible. Mary must be protected. ”

“ By a slave of the Chinese Emperor. It speaks of the captive race of the Wusun. Plainly they were even then under the kang of the Chinese priests. 'In the city of Sungan are the captive people ... greatly fallen since the age when they were conquerors ... they cling to their hearths and towers ... in the sand. There they will always be——'"
He broke off his reading and glanced up at Gray. "Splendid! I must take a rubbing of this."
He ordered Muhammed Bai to bring charcoal and a clean sheet of paper. The charcoal he rubbed over the stone. ”

“ Buddhism rules inner China, Tibet, part of Turkestan, some of India, and—under guise of Shamanism, Southeastern Siberia."
Gray made no response. He was studying the face of Delabar—that intellectual, nervous, unstable face.
"Buddhism has ruled Central Asia since the time of Sakuntala—the great Sakuntala," went on the scientist. "And the laws of Buddha are ancient and very binding. The Wusun are enemies of Buddhism. They are greater enemies than the Manchus, of Northern and Eastern China. That is because the Wusun hold in reverence a symbol that is hateful to the priests of the temples." ”

“ Nay. You will have a place by the side of the Gur-Khan, because of your beauty which—so said the One-Who-Kills-Swiftly—is like to the sun. The Wusun will safeguard the Kha Rakcha, even as he demanded. ”

“ Think it's because the Wusun actually exist, and he wants to keep us from the Gobi?"
Delabar was aroused from his muse.
"A Chinese official seldom acts on his own initiative," he responded. "Wu Fang Chien has received instructions. Yes, I think he intends to bar our passage beyond Liangchowfu. By advancing as we are from Honanfu, we are running blindly into danger."
Gray squinted back at the dusty road, nursing his rifle across his knees. His brown face was impassive, the skin about the eyes deeply wrinkled from exposure. The eyes themselves were narrow and hard. ”

“ So far, we had seen no human beings in the ruins. There were any number of tracks, however, and vegetation that pointed to the presence of wells."
"Then Mary and I discovered the Wusun." Sir Lionel laughed suddenly, harshly. He gained control of himself at once. "They came—these inhabitants of Sungan—from behind the stone heaps and out of what seemed to be holes in the ground. As I said, it was late evening, and I could not see their faces well. Still, I saw——"
He checked himself, and fell silent, as if pondering. Gray guessed that he thought better of what he was going to say. ”

“ They appear to have been a nomad tribe, inhabiting part of the present Chinese province of Kan-suh, and to have been driven W. by Hiung-nu tribes of the same stock. They conquered a tribe called the Wusun, who lived in the basin of the Ili river, and settled for some time in their territory. The date of these events is placed between 175 and 140 B.C. They then attacked another tribe known as Sakas, and drove them to Persia and India. ”

“ 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? ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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] . ”

“ But Low Soong began to understand, and as each moment passed understood more and more. The women and the peasants of no other race chatter so much or so incessantly as the Chinese do; only the gentlemen and the children are often still. But no other race has so little need of words. The Chinese is the psychic of all the races. Even the women have wizard minds. They are all sensitives. And as the girls paced silently, but arm in arm, Low Soong learned it all.
In the early afternoon Basil contrived to send a note to Miss Wu, and it reached her safely. ”

“ And Wu rarely gave that permission, even to Nang Ping. That bit of garden was his outer solitude, and this room was his indoor privacy. It was here and there he kept alone.
No race prizes privacy more, more realizes its value, conserves and guards it with more dignity and skill, or with so much. A people of interminable clans, knit together and interdependent as is no other people, yet it is with the Chinese people, both Mongol and Tartar, that individuality has its fullest rights, its surest safety. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ Said Chou Yü, “Of old Ma Yüan said to Kuang-Wu, ‘This is an age when not only do princes select their ministers, but ministers choose their princes.’ Now our General Sun calls to him the wise and treats his officers well. Thus he engages the help of the wonderful and gets the services of the extraordinary in a way that few others do. But if you are not engaged elsewhere come with me to Wu as the best thing to do.”
Lu Su returned with him and saw Sun Ch‘üan, who treated him with the greatest deference and with him discussed affairs very fully. ”

“ Every tong in China would have torn at the vitals of any one rash enough to exercise against Sing Kung Yah a social ostracism contrary to his wish. And so the unprecedented festivity of the kinswoman’s widowhood was tolerated even by the Chinese whom it both shocked and affronted.
But anything more, or kindlier, than tolerance, even the great Wu was powerless to win for her—at least from the Chinese. And both he and she knew this, and it was the one fly in her very nice amber. She would have been ostracized fiercely if those of their own caste had dared ”

“ 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. ”

“ But far beyond the riches he amassed he amassed power and influence. The ramifications of his influence were endless and tortuous. Tze-Shi felt Wu’s influence as she decreed policies, signed edicts and enacted laws of tremendous reach, weaving and fraying out the destiny of China, and there was not a coolie in Hong Kong but felt and obeyed it. No one in China—unless it was Tze-Shi herself—wielded more power than Wu.
He held the Chinese in Shanghai, in Penang and in Rangoon, in Bentick Street and in Yokohoma, in the hollow of his hand. ”

“ Now Sun Ts‘ê acquired a new adherent in the person of Ch‘ên Wu. He was a soldier of middle height, sallow of complexion and dark eye, an odd looking man. But Sun held him in high esteem, gave him rank and put him in the van for the attack on Hsüeh Li. As van-leader he and half a score horsemen made a dash into the enemy’s formation, where they slew half a hundred men. So Hsüeh Li would not fight but remained within his defences. As Sun was attacking the city a spy came in with the news that Liu Yu and Chai Jung had gone to attack Nuichu, which made Sun move thither in haste. ”

“ Nang Ping rejoined. “The Japanese go more to Cambridge.”
“Yes—and yet,” Mrs. Gregory said musingly, but more interested in watching the servants than she was in her talk with this rather wooden and very painted-faced child of the East, “your name—‘Wu,’ I mean—has seemed familiar to me from the first, and now I seem to remember that the man I knew at Oxford had a surname rather like that—or even that. How odd!”
“There are many Wus in China,” the girl said. “It is a most large clan. All our clans are very large. We are, you know, so old.” ”

“ 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. ”