The Best Short Stories of 1919 | Page 6

caught and curbed
by Chinese etiquette. Dressed, as she was, in pale-gray satin trousers,
loose, and banded at the knee with wide blue stripes, and with a soft
jacket to match, she was as beautiful in the eyes of the approaching
man as the newly opened lilies. What he was in her eyes it would be
hard for any modern woman to grasp: that rapture of adoration, that
bliss of worship, has lingered only in rare hearts and rarer spots on the
earth's surface.
Foh-Kyung came out slowly through the ancestral hall. The sunlight
edged it like a bright border. The doors were wide open, and
Dong-Yung saw the decorous rows of square chairs and square tables

set rhythmically along the walls, and the covered dais at the head for
the guest of honor. Long crimson scrolls, sprawled with gold
ideographs, hung from ceiling to floor. A rosewood cabinet, filled with
vases, peach bloom, imperial yellow, and turquoise blue, gleamed like
a lighted lamp in the shadowy morning light of the room.
Foh-Kyung stooped to smell the lilies.
"They perfume the very air we breathe. Little Jewel, I love our old
Chinese ways. I love the custom of the lily-planting and the day the
lilies bloom. I love to think the gods smell them in heaven, and are
gracious to mortals for their fragrance's sake."
"I am so happy!" Dong-Yung said, poking the toe of her slipper in and
out the sunlight. She looked up at the man before her, and saw he was
tall and slim and as subtle-featured as the cross-legged bronze Buddha
himself. His long, thin hands were hid, crossed and slipped along the
wrists within the loose apricot satin sleeves of his brocaded garment.
His feet, in their black satin slippers and tight-fitting white muslin
socks, were austere and aristocratic. Dong-Yung, when he was absent,
loved best to think of him thus, with his hands hidden and his eyes
smiling.
"The willow-leaves will bud soon," answered Dong-Yung, glancing
over her shoulder at the tapering, yellowing twigs of the ancient tree.
"And the beech-blossoms," continued Foh-Kyung. "'The earth is the
Lord's, and the fullness thereof.'"
"The foreign devil's wisdom," answered Dong-Yung.
"It is greater than ours, Dong-Yung; greater and lovelier. To-day,
to-day, I will go to their hall of ceremonial worship and say to their
holy priest that I think and believe the Jesus way."
"Oh, most-beloved Master, is it also permitted to women, to a small
wife, to believe the Jesus way?"

"I will believe for thee, too, little Lotus Flower in the Pond."
"Tell me, O Teacher of Knowledge--tell me that in my heart and in my
mind I may follow a little way whither thou goest in thy heart and in
thy mind!"
Foh-Kyung moved out of the shadow of the ancestral hall and stood in
the warm sunlight beside Dong-Yung, his small wife. His hands were
still withheld and hidden, clasping his wrists within the wide, loose
apricot sleeves of his gown, but his eyes looked as if they touched her.
Dong-Yung hid her happiness even as the flowers hide theirs, within
silent, incurving petals.
"The water is cold as the chill of death. Go, bring me hot water--water
hot enough to scald an egg."
Foh-Kyung and Dong-Yung turned to the casement in the upper
right-hand wing and listened apprehensively. The quick chatter of
angry voices rushed out into the sunlight.
"The honorable great wife is very cross this morning." Dong-Yung
shivered and turned back to the lilies. "To-day perhaps she will beat me
again. Would that at least I had borne my lord a young prince for a son;
then perhaps--"
"Go not near her, little Jewel. Stay in thine own rooms. Nay, I have
sons a-plenty. Do not regret the childlessness. I would not have your
body go down one foot into the grave for a child. I love thee for
thyself."
"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-colored 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