Hilda listened to the old service with a rapt, tender face. John Bradley was coming home for six months of holiday next week. She had no doubt that he’d come to see her mother.
Mrs. Gregory was not displeased. It was no part of her regret to wish that Basil should live all his life wifeless and childless. And the rift between her boy and her saved her the jealousy that happier mothers must suffer when their first-born son weds. Sorry recompense—but recompense.
Basil Gregory did not make a very brave bridegroom. But only his mother noticed it. Most wedding-guests have little eye to spare for mere bridegrooms. And there is something about the function so trying to masculine sensitiveness that before now kings and heroes have carried themselves a little craven at their happiest triumph.
Basil Gregory saw two girls beside him at God’s altar.
As he passed down the aisle with his wife’s shy hand on his arm, he felt the touch of a smaller, tawnier hand. Its weight hurt him; it was heavy with fabulous nail-protectors and with priceless rings. He was madly in love with his wife, and, too, he was madly miserable, because he knew now that they two would never be quite alone—neither by day nor by night. His mother saw and knew. Just before they passed her he stumbled a little, startled by the sound of a Chinese gong.
And a few hours later, in the still sweetness of the dark, it smote him again.
Rest, Wu Li Chang! Be satisfied! The Englishman is punished. He has broken his mother’s heart. Your curse is fulfilled. Basil Gregory heard your gong cry out a soul’s damnation to-day above his wife’s “I will.” So long as he lives he will hear it, a bitter, relentless knell. When ginger is hottest in his mouth, when wine bubbles reddest in his cup, when the English girl he loves lifts with tired, triumphant hands their firstborn toward his arms, through the young mother’s misty smile he will see Nang’s face, above the baby’s first cry he will hear the throbbing note of a Chinese gong.
Rest! Sleep in your Sze-chuan grave! Your hideous vengeance is complete, life-long, soul-deep. It is greater than even you could have planned. Almost it is adequate.
“The great mountain must crumble,
The strong beam must break,