With one hand covering the poor wounded eye, the two women watched the cart until it was lost in a bend of the road, and the servant said, “My great lady, return to your home. Sad, indeed, is your fate, but the gods know all.” Together they went back to the city, and some weeks later the poor heart was comforted by the birth of her little son.
Years passed; Yü Yüch Ying’s parents died, after great reverses and reduced to poverty, all by their powerful enemy. The mother took in sewing and washing and most of all gave herself to the care of her son, and in this quiet manner twelve years came and went. No word had come from her husband and no word of their life-story did the mother tell [[136]]her son. Their great enemy year by year grew richer, and more powerful, and more unscrupulous.
The year little Ting Lang was twelve the display of the Lantern Feast, the fifteenth of the first month, was most beautiful, and among all displays none exceeded Yen Sung’s. Hither little Ting Lang bent his steps, and as he was running along he pushed against a small boy who fell down, and at once began in great anger to revile Ting Lang’s father. Little Ting Lang did not understand what he said, as his mother always told him that his father was away on government business. He no longer cared to see the beautiful lanterns. Home he went as fast as he could, and rushing in, he prostrated himself before his mother, and implored her to tell him who his father was and why he didn’t come back.
The mother’s heart was centred in the boy. He was “the point of her heart,” as fond Chinese mothers say when the Western mother would say “my sweetheart.” Taking him by the hand she raised him up, and said, with all the mother-love shining in her eyes, “My son, you are too young yet to know all. Some day when you are a little older I will tell you the history of our sad lives. We have a great and powerful enemy and it is only by this quiet living [[137]]that you and I have lived in peace. Wait a little longer, son, and you shall know all.”
The boy was quick and impetuous and said, “Mother, unless you tell me now I cannot live. I am no longer a child. I will to know now.”
“Not now, my son,” was the quiet but sad reply.
Hearing this, the boy rushed from the room and out into the back court where there was a well and, as he ran by, he kicked a brick into the well and dashed into a grape arbour.
The mother, rushing out after him, only able to see with one eye, and not seeing her boy, but only hearing the splash as the brick struck the water, concluded that he had jumped into the well. Sitting down by the well, she exclaimed:
“Ai, ja. What have I to live for now? My son is in the well, his father in banishment in Hsiang Yang, all is gone. I cannot keep my promise and send him to his father. Alas! alas! My fate is indeed bitter. I too will end my sorrows in the well. At least in death I can be with my boy. His shall also be my grave,” and rising, she gathered her skirt about her head preparatory to jumping in, when Ting Lang rushed out from his hiding-place and, grasping her, shouted:
“Mother, don’t. I am alive. I hid to [[138]]frighten you. Why is my father in banishment? What promise did you make him about me? Tell me, or I truly will beat my brains out against the bricks.”