Reaching the house he pounded on the door; but the typhoon's song was deafening—a Gargantuan roar. After a moment's hesitation Moh-chien undid the latch and entered. The tiny, open courtyard was empty. He pushed back under the eaves and philosophically sat himself down.
With the passing of a half hour the roar of the wind lessened, but the rain continued. At first he had thought the habitation empty, but now with the partial cessation of sound he could hear the murmur of voices directly at his back. He rose, to knock again at this inner door. As he was scrambling to his feet, a woman's voice rang shrilly, "I saw you! You smiled at her! You ogled at her! A brazen hussy! Her cheeks flaming scarlet with sin—and paint!"
"But, Mei-an," came a man's worried reply, "I swear I—"
His words were blanked by the torrent that poured forth: "I know! You would make her your 'small wife'! Her feet are bound—golden lilies—and she can do no labor. I will become your drudge—and hers. You would have me do her bidding. Never! Rather than that, I would—"
"Stop! You stress too much my smiling upon a singsong girl—"
"Aieeeeee!"
Then shriek after shriek echoed through the court, mingled with the dying obbligato of the storm.
"Aieee! Aieee!"
Moh-chien frowned, pausing with his hand lifted to knock and demand entrance. Then he shook his head. He dared not break into this family quarrel. He knew the symptoms here, a fit of ch'i—"wrath matter," that queer Oriental form of hysteria which so often attacked his countrymen. He had heard women screeching on their housetops for hours. He had seen men, under its influence, stagger sightlessly to an enemy's door and thrust a dagger into their own bosoms. And in China to have men die on one's doorstep is a worse fate than death itself: the Gods do not forgive the living. Ch'i.
The woman's cries continued. The door opened, and Moh-chien hastily stepped back. A young man, little more than a boy in age, ran out, muttering. The husband. Moh-chien leaned back and ruefully gazed out upon the storm, the steady downpour of rain. It was better to stay where he was, till the torrent slackened.
With the slow crawling gait of time the mournful wail of the woman changed to racking sobs.
The air grew perceptibly colder and danker.
The scholar shivered. There was a feeling, in that courtyard, as if the door of a crypt had been opened. A rush of wind, long pent up with dusty bones. . . .
In a distant corner a light appeared, a tiny point of flame. It flickered dimly for a moment, gave a desperate leap and went out.
The sobbing of the woman inside became dulled to catching, quick-drawn inhalations of breath. But now, from the corner of the courtyard, whence had come the light, he heard a scratching sound. A pause, then a mewing and whining in one.
An overmastering fear drove him to his feet and to the outer door of the house. Thick darkness was about him. Suddenly that grave-mound was illumined; blue lights began to dance about its new-bricked walls. The sound inside was following him. He tried to console himself with the thought that he was an old man; if death were imminent, surely a place was prepared for him in that land of demigods who had once been scholars.
The noise whirled round and round like a top, in the brick-paved yard.
