Tuen
Slave and Empress
9781465632500
118 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
The sun had set in the land where the dragon reigns, and darkness and silence and rest and sleep, the ministers of the night, waited to come to their own. But their presence was not needed in the eastern portion of the province of Hunan, for a wonderful stillness hung over all the barren landscape, and there was no sign of life. On the banks of the streams the patient buffalo no longer went his ceaseless rounds, working the pumps that sent water over the thirsty earth; the shrill cries of the boatmen that were wont to echo on the river were hushed; not even a bird crossed the quiet sky; and where the waving rice-fields had once stretched out proud and green under the summer sun, was now but a lonely waste that gave no hope of harvest, for man and beast had either perished or fled. The great Tai-ping rebellion had stirred this peaceful country to its very centre, and war and war's grim follower, famine, had swept through this once fertile province, and naught was left to tell of what had been, save a few scattered ruins. Suddenly, against the purplish shadows of the distant mountains, a little group could be seen moving slowly along, the only living things in all this vast solitude. On they came over the parched levels, but the man who was leading the way walked with bowed head, as one that saw not, but only went forward because he must. He was small in stature, and thin and lithe, while his complexion showed through its dark, the pallor of the student. His face was of the Oriental type peculiar to the Chinese Empire, and his carefully braided cue also indicated his nationality. He had dark, sloping eyes that you might have thought sleepy if you had not seen them light up as he talked, his forehead was low and broad, his mouth large, and most amiable in its expression, and when the long sleeves of his tunic fell back, they disclosed soft, delicate hands, unused to toil. His costume consisted of an outer tunic of worn and faded silk, girded at the waist with a sash, from which hung a bag containing flint and steel for lighting his pipe, a soiled pouch that had once held tobacco, but was now empty, another bag for his pipe, and a satin case shaped like the sheath for a short sword, from which protruded nothing more formidable, however, than the handle of a fan. His loose pantaloons, dust-stained and frayed, were met below the knees by cloth stockings, once white, but now dyed with mud, and his shoes of embroidered felt, the toes of which curled up in a curious fashion, showed many gaping holes. Upon his head he wore a cone-shaped hat of bamboo, the peak at the top adorned with a blue button from which fell a blue silk fringe, and his tunic being cut low at the neck and buttoned diagonally across his breast, left exposed his slender bronzed neck. He was followed by a woman whose dress was similar to his own, and also much the worse for wear, who led by the hand a little boy about four years old, while on her other side was a daughter, now almost as tall as her mother. But as the father walked slowly, even majestically, at the head of his little family, bearing on a pole thrown across his shoulders, all his worldly goods, there was an independence in his carriage, a pride in his mien, that told of better days not yet forgotten, and made the evident poverty of his appearance seem of but little moment. A learned man once advanced the theory that in the olden days the children of Abraham and Keturah, driven forth by unkind kinsmen, wandered on until they reached the flowery Kingdom, and there the family of the old patriarch multiplied as the stars of heaven, as the sand upon the sea-shore, and became a mighty nation. But the centuries came and went in silence, and man kept no record of their flight; and of the early settlers of this, one of the first countries inhabited by human beings, history can tell us nothing.
