The Cloud Dream of the Nine | Page 9

because she refused to listen to the wooing of his undesirable son. She had sought Yang because her affinity with him had been divinely disclosed. White-cap went on: "I have already made promise to you of this humble body, but there are three reasons why I ought not to be mated to your Excellency. First, I have not told my parents; second, I can accompany you only after changing this mermaid form of mine. I still have scales and fishy odours with fins that would defile my lord's presence. Third, there are spies of my unwelcome royal suitor all around us. Our meeting will arouse their anger and cause disaster." The General waived all the objections. "Your ladyship was a fairy in a former life," he said, "and you therefore have a spiritual nature. Between men and disembodied spirits intercourse may be carried on [pxxxi] without wrong, then why should I have aversion to scales and fins? Why should we miss this opportunity to seal our happy contract?" So they "swore the oath of marriage and found great delight in each other." After this encounter Yang's military victories were more glorious than ever and he returned home the greatest man of the age.
On Yang's return to the capital the highest honour had been prepared for him that can fall to the lot of an Imperial subject. A marriage had been arranged between him and the lovely Princess of the Imperial family, Princess Orchid, and he became a Prince in rank. How this marriage was arranged, and Yang's marriage with Justice Cheung's daughter, Jewel, who was raised to Imperial rank by adoption, was consummated, and how the reunion took place with Cloudlet and Chin See, the reader is told with many thrilling and humorous details.
Yang's aged mother was brought with great ceremony to the capital. Honours and gifts were showered upon her. The two Princesses bowed before her as dutiful daughters-in-law, and the six secondary wives also delighted in giving her honour. Yang's princely household was so great that palaces, halls, galleries and pagodas were requisitioned. His life with his eight wives, their children and his aged mother, was a revelation of earthly bliss and wondrous grandeur. The Emperor's reign was also a notable time of peace and prosperity. Even in old age Yang and his ladies had beauty and the power of enjoyment.
But a day came when the Master heard "faint voices calling from another world." "Slowly his spirit withdraws from earthly delights." [pxxxii]
One day, while sitting in a high tower from which there was a view of Chin River stretching in silvery reaches for a hundred miles, he drew forth his green stone flute and played for his ladies a "plaintive air as though heaped-up sorrows and tears had broken forth upon them." The two Princesses asked why he should suggest such sorrow in the midst of their exceeding happiness with "golden flowers dropping petals" at his feet, and "our loving hearts around you?" The Master pointed to distant ruins of palaces that had held famous men and their women folk. He spoke of his boyhood as a poor scholar and the wonderful triumphs of his career and their nine rare affinities. "Children who gather wood or feed their cattle on the hillside," he said, "will sing their songs and tell our mournful story, saying, 'This is where Master Yang made merry with his wives and family. All his honours and delights, all the pretty faces of his ladies are gone for ever.'" Hearing the Master's words the ladies were moved and knew that he "was about to meet the Enlightened One."
Then there appeared an old man leaning upon a staff. His "eyebrows were an ell long and his eyes were like the blue waves of the sea." He was the aged priest of Lotus Peak who had come to summon Yang. He conversed with Yang, who did not at first recognise him--and in a little while Yang woke to find himself in a small cell in a monastery on a mountain side. He looked at himself and at his dress. He was again Song-jin the acolyte. His earthly power and his eight wives had vanished as a dream that is gone. The Teacher came to him and said: "You have soared on the wings of worldly delight and have [pxxxiii] seen and known for yourself. You say that you have dreamed a dream of mortal life upon the wheel and now you think the world and the dream itself to be different. But this is not so. If you think it so, this shows that you are not awakened from your sleep." Song-jin replied: "I am a darkened soul and so cannot distinguish which is the dream and which is the actual reality. Please open to me the