Outside, the dusk wind grew, unnoticed, and the wind beneath the door carried cold.
It was during the hour of the ox, when sick men die most easily because they do not regret their ebbing strength, that this wind rose to a high peak, unaccompanied by rain or snow or sleet or any manifestation of the other powers, raging recklessly past walls and doors, round courtyards and over the black, invisible fields, not seeming a destroyer but an angry force demanding entrance, demanding that men should come forth from their snug shelter and join in the eddying dance of the wind.
The priest woke in the darkness and heard the sobbing of Winter Cherry from the floor near the door.
“And now what moves you, girl?” he asked, when he had lit the lamp.
She cried, softly: “He did not speak.”
The priest replied: “Listen to the winds. There are two winds, just as there are the two principles of Ying and Yang. So there are two sorts of people—men and women. Just as the winds meet, just as the Ying meets the Yang, so people meet. All will be well. Come; I will take you to your room.”
She said: “I do not know even if he loves me.”
“You will see,” he answered. In her room she paused a moment and then said: “I still remember her, when I last saw her and she was sorry for me. And when she died she left one of her hair-combs, kingfisher combs, in the room where she hanged herself. I have kept it.”
“Give it to me,” the priest told her, and she obeyed. “”Why! it is broken in two halves. She knew, then, that death would part her from her lover. I am glad that you have told me all your troubles. Tomorrow you shall have your Ah Lai. Now sleep.”
He left the room and went back to his own. On his way, he saw Han Im about to enter the room of the Emperor. From within came the Emperor’s voice, calling. Han Im shrugged his shoulders and they went in together.
“Let the lamp be lit,” the Emperor cried. “Let more lamps be brought. I cannot sleep, and I am afraid. Call the girl Winter Cherry so that I may not be alone.”
The priest sat down on the floor. “When at the Great Sacrifice, you ploughed your ceremonial furrow, did you turn or stop half way?” he asked.
The Emperor cried: “You are impertinent. I . . .”
The priest interrupted him. “A thing either is or is not,” he replied. “If you are the Emperor, I shall leave you. If you are yet the Scholar of the Stream, I could stay.”
Han Im lit the lamp and was going back to stand beside the door when the priest said: “Put it out. It is for him to learn that thought in the darkness is wiser than thought by lamplight. Wu Ti did not thus call for lights.”
“What of Wu Ti?” the Emperor asked.
The priest said: “Han Im, tell him the story. He should know it already.”
Han Im blew out the lamp and said: “If it is your will, Sire . . .”
The priest cried: “It is not his will but my will. Tell him the story.”
Han Im began: “When Li Fu-Yen, the mistress of the Emperor Wu Ti, died, he sent for magicians to bring her spirit back, and one magician, Shao Weng, did bring her spirit to him so that, seated behind a curtain, he was permitted to see his beloved. Do you not remember, Sire, how he cried:
The Emperor said: “I remember.”
The priest went on: “It would be strange if, here in this dark, another priest should follow a little in the footsteps of Shao Weng.”
The Emperor asked: “Could you do that?”
The priest replied: “With Tao it is possible. But what matters is the heart. The Emperor Wu Ti forgot that he was an Emperor and resigned himself to the will of Shao Weng. He made his mind empty, and the fullness of the Infinite poured in. He asked permission to go beyond the curtain, where her figure walked, but because this permission was not given to him he did not go. Such was the character of Wu Ti.”
The Emperor said: “To make the mind empty is to be like a child. And yet, to have the reason for making the mind empty, one must have passed through childhood. How can you reconcile these two?”
The priest told him: “Because you have asked, by that you have emptied your mind. Therein you have done what is necessary. But there is more yet.”
“What?” asked the Emperor.
The priest replied: “When you first mounted the Dragon Throne you did much good to your people. You forbade extravagance, you established houses for the study of literature and the training of performers in plays. You founded the Han-Lin Academy, where scholars study before they are allowed to govern. And then, for ten years, you have passed these things by and thought only of yourself and your lady. By what of these actions would you choose to be remembered when, in the unthinkable future, historians shall allow one line to your reign?”
The Emperor replied: “I had rather be known for the Academy.”
The priest returned: “Good. But yet, in these last ten years, there have been many whom you have wronged. Would you right those wrongs now?”
For the first time the Emperor’s voice seemed softer. It was almost as though he took pleasure from what he said as he uttered the single word: “Yes.”
The priest said: “If the Scholar of the Stream would write an edict to say that he renounces all his claims on the girl Winter Cherry and gives her (all laws, customs and conventions notwithstanding) to the boy, Kuen Ah Lai, who loves her and is loved by her, and if the Scholar of the Stream would affix the Emperor’s sign-manual at the foot of the paper, one wrong would have been righted.”
Han Im asked: “Shall I light the lamp?”
The Emperor replied: “No. It is not needed now. The fear has passed.”
The priest said: “Han Im, it is not fitting that you should share this. Go and prepare a draft of the edict.”
When Han Im had gone out, the priest lit incense at the bottom of a deep bowl, so that when their eyes again were accustomed to the darkness (for even the flicker of the tinder seemed bright) it was possible to see a faint glow from this bowl. Then he said: “It would be a strange tale if the Guardian of the Secret Spring were sent on an errand, and if he succeeded in that errand; it would be strange if, like Shao Weng, he searched the thousand hills and plumbed the thousand depths, if finally he found, in the Blessed Isles, tales of a fair lady who waited for reunion with her lord. It would be stranger still if having come to a palace in the clouds, he knocked and to him came the maid named Piece of Jade, who told him that her mistress, too, had waited news from across the barrier. And most miraculous of all would it be if this lady herself came to meet him with hair disordered by her sudden joy above her white forehead, her kingfisher pins awry in her haste, and gave him messages of love, saying that she also was waiting for their union, sending her lover half of her broken hair-comb for a token, and, for proof that she was she, telling of words which they spoke together at midnight in the palace garden when seven moons and seven days had passed, words that no other lips had spoken, words that no other ears had heard.”
The high wind had dropped to little more than a rustle and the room was filled with the acrid, sweet smell of the incense. A voice called somewhere else in the building and then was silent.
The Emperor, tenseness in his voice, asked: “What were these words of recognition?”
The priest replied: “Would she not have said that they prayed to be like two one-winged birds, mating, or two limbs of the one tree?”
The Emperor cried: “These were our very words! So did we pledge each other on the day of the double seven. And the token?”