Page:Mr. Wu (IA mrwumilnlouisejo00milniala).pdf/252

 Wu turned to the Englishman. "You do not understand our barbaric tongue. I have been telling my servants that when they next hear me strike upon that gong they may release you to come here. You will find your mother here. It will be a tremendous meeting. Back to the pagoda! To-morrow it will be destroyed. Back to the pagoda, and wait there, thinking of my daughter, and listen for the gong to sound—for when it strikes you will know that you are free. These doors and all the gates of my garden will be reopened then, and you will be free to go—wherever you will—with her."

"With her?" Basil Gregory gasped, bewildered and dazed.

"Yes," Wu Li Chang told him with a curt smile, "for with my striking of this gong your debt will be fully discharged. Your mother will have paid it."

Gregory made one supreme, straining effort to get at Wu. "You monster!" he sobbed, "you monster of hell!"

"Quite so," the Chinese said calmly. "Western logic is an unfathomable mystery. You dishonored my daughter," he began fiercely, and then broke off abruptly. He'd waste no more words on this English thing. He'd punish—strike to the quick, flay to the raw nerve—but not wrangle with his condemned. "The sound of that gong will ring in your ears as long as you live. Go where you will, you will hear it. Go where you will, you will see, waking and sleeping, a pagoda by a lotus lake, while you live; and when you die, you will feel the vengeance of a Wu. Never again will you look upon your mother's face without seeing too the dead face of Wu Nang Ping—and mine."

"Oh!" Basil moaned imploringly, "you can't—you can't do this awful thing."