LXI.

THE HUSBAND PUNISHED.

Ching Hsing, of Wên-têng, was a young fellow of some literary reputation, who lived next door to a Mr. Ch‘ên, their studios being separated only by a low wall. One evening Ch‘ên was crossing a piece of waste ground when he heard a young girl crying among some pine-trees hard by. He approached, and saw a girdle hanging from one of the branches, as if its owner was just on the point of hanging herself. Ch‘ên asked her what was the matter, and then she brushed away her tears, and said, “My mother has gone away and left me in charge of my brother-in-law; but he’s a scamp, and won’t continue to take care of me; and now there is nothing left for me but to die.” Hereupon the girl began crying again, and Ch‘ên untied the girdle and bade her go and find herself a husband; to which she said there was very little chance of that; and then Ch‘ên offered to take her to his own home--an offer which she very gladly accepted. Soon after they arrived, his neighbour Ching thought he heard a noise, and jumped over the wall to have a peep, when lo and behold! at the door of Ch‘ên’s house stood this young lady, who immediately ran away into the garden on seeing Ching. The two young men pursued her, but without success, and were obliged to return each to his own room, Ching being greatly astonished to find the same girl now standing at his door. On addressing the young lady, she told him that his neighbour’s destiny was too poor a one for her,[344] and that she came from Shantung, and that her name was Ch‘i A-hsia. She finally agreed to take up her residence with Ching; but after a few days, finding that a great number of his friends were constantly calling, she declared it was too noisy a place for her, and that she would only visit him in the evening. This she continued to do for a few days, telling him in reply to his inquiries that her home was not very far off. One evening, however, she remarked that their present _liaison_ was not very creditable to either; that her father was a mandarin on the western frontier, and that she was about to set out with her mother to join him; begging him meanwhile to make a formal request for the celebration of their nuptials, in order to prevent them from being thus separated. She further said that they started in ten days or so, and then Ching began to reflect that if he married her she would have to take her place in the family, and that would make his first wife jealous; so he determined to get rid of the latter, and when she came in he began to abuse her right and left. His wife bore it as long as she could, but at length cried out it were better she should die; upon which Ching advised her not to bring trouble on them all like that, but to go back to her own home. He then drove her away, his wife asking all the time what she had done to be sent away like this after ten years of blameless life with him.[345] Ching, however, paid no heed to her entreaties, and when he had got rid of her he set to work at once to get the house whitewashed and made generally clean, himself being on the tip-toe of expectation for the arrival of Miss A-hsia. But he waited and waited, and no A-hsia came; she seemed gone like a stone dropped into the sea. Meanwhile emissaries came from his late wife’s family begging him to take her back; and when he flatly refused, she married a gentleman of position named Hsia, whose property adjoined Ching’s, and who had long been at feud with him in consequence, as is usual in such cases. This made Ching furious, but he still hoped that A-hsia would come, and tried to console himself in this way. Yet more than a year passed away and still no signs of her, until one day, at the festival of the Sea Spirits, he saw among the crowds of girls passing in and out one who very much resembled A-hsia. Ching moved towards her, following her as she threaded her way through the crowd as far as the temple gate, where he lost sight of her altogether, to his great mortification and regret. Another six months passed away, when one day he met a young lady dressed in red, accompanied by an old man-servant, and riding on a black mule. It was A-hsia. So he asked the old man the name of his young mistress, and learnt from him that she was the second wife of a gentleman named Chêng, having been married to him about a fortnight previously. Ching now thought she could not be A-hsia, but just then the young lady, hearing them talking, turned her head, and Ching saw that he was right. And now, finding that she had actually married another man, he was overwhelmed with rage, and cried out in a loud voice, “A-hsia! A-hsia! why did you break faith?” The servant here objected to his mistress being thus addressed by a stranger, and was squaring up to Ching, when A-hsia bade him desist; and, raising her veil, replied, “And you, faithless one, how do you dare meet my gaze?” “You are the faithless one,” said Ching, “not I.” “To be faithless to your wife is worse than being faithless to me,” rejoined A-hsia; “if you behaved like that to her, how should I have been treated at your hands? Because of the fair fame of your ancestors, and the honours gained by them, I was willing to ally myself with you; but now that you have discarded your wife, your thread of official advancement has been cut short in the realms below, and Mr. Ch‘ên is to take the place that should have been yours at the head of the examination list. As for myself, I am now part of the Chêng family; think no more of me.” Ching hung his head and could make no reply; and A-hsia whipped up her mule and disappeared from his sight, leaving him to return home disconsolate. At the forthcoming examination, everything turned out as she had predicted; Mr. Ch‘ên was at the top of the list, and he himself was thrown out. It was clear that his luck was gone. At forty he had no wife, and was so poor that he was glad to pick up a meal where he could. One day he called on Mr. Chêng, who treated him well and kept him there for the night; and while there Chêng’s second wife saw him, and asked her husband if his guest’s name wasn’t Ching. “It is,” said he, “how could you guess that?” “Well,” replied she, “before I married you, I took refuge in his house, and he was then very kind to me. Although he has now sunk low, yet his ancestors’ influence on the family fortunes is not yet exhausted;[346] besides he is an old acquaintance of yours, and you should try and do something for him.” Chêng consented, and having first given him a new suit of clothes, kept him in the house several days. At night a slave-girl came to him with twenty ounces of silver for him, and Mrs. Chêng, who was outside the window, said, “This is a trifling return for your past kindness to me. Go and get yourself a good wife. The family luck is not yet exhausted, but will descend to your sons and grandchildren. Do not behave like this again, and so shorten your term of life.” Ching thanked her and went home, using ten ounces of silver to procure a concubine from a neighbouring family, who was very ugly and ill-tempered. However, she bore him a son, and he by-and-by graduated as doctor. Mr. Chêng became Vice-President of the Board of Civil Office,[347] and at his death A-hsia attended the funeral; but when they opened her chair on its return home, she was gone, and then people knew for the first time that she was not mortal flesh and blood. Alas! for the perversity of mankind, rejecting the old and craving for the new?[348] And then when they come back to the familiar nest, the birds have all flown. Thus does heaven punish such people.

FOOTNOTES:

[344] See No. XLVI., note 271.

[345] See No. LIII., note 288.

[346] The virtuous conduct of any individual will result not only in happiness and prosperity to himself, but a certain quantity of these will descend to his posterity, unless, as in the present case, there is one among them whose personal wickedness neutralizes any benefits that would otherwise accrue therefrom. Here we have an instance where the crimes of a descendant still left a balance of good fortune surviving from the accumulated virtue of generations.

[347] One of the six departments of State administration.

[348] This seems a curious charge to bring against a people who for a stolid and bigoted conservatism have rarely, if ever, been equalled. Mencius, however, uttered one golden sentence which might be brought to bear upon the occasionally foolish opposition of the Chinese to measures of proved advantage to the commonwealth. “Live,” said the Sage, “in harmony with the age in which you are born.”