母子遂抽身 Mother and Sons Withdraw
三藏道：「令堂老菩薩盛情，已不敢領，怎麼又承賢昆玉厚愛？決不敢領。今朝定要起身，萬勿見罪。不然，久違欽限，罪不容誅矣。」那老嫗與二子見他執一不住，便生起惱來道：「好意留他，他這等固執要去。要去便就去了罷，只管勞叨甚麼？」母子遂抽身進去。三藏道：「令堂老菩萨盛情，已不敢领，怎么又承贤昆玉厚爱？决不敢领。今朝定要起身，万勿见罪。不然，久违钦限，罪不容诛矣。」那老妪与二子见他执一不住，便生起恼来道：「好意留他，他这等固执要去。要去便就去了罢，只管劳叨甚么？」母子遂抽身进去。
逐句解 Line by line
Tripitaka said, "Your honoured mother's kindness I dare not accept already — how then could I accept the worthy brothers' generosity too? I absolutely dare not. I must set out this very day, and beg you not to hold it against me. Otherwise I shall have overrun the imperial term so far that execution would not answer for the crime."
賢昆玉 — the worthy jade brothers — is a courtesy for another man's brothers, and Tripitaka uses it to two boys who have just offered him their school fees. He is being scrupulously polite while refusing everything. 罪不容誅 is the phrase to stop on. It means a crime so great that putting the offender to death would not settle the account. It appears once in the whole novel. He is talking about being late. A monk with an imperial travel warrant has overrun the date he gave the throne, and the language he reaches for is the language of capital crime. Nothing in the chapter suggests he is exaggerating for effect — this is genuinely how he thinks about the eleven years. 久違欽限 — long past the imperial term — puts it in the vocabulary of the civil service, which is where his anxiety has lived all along.
The old lady and her two sons, seeing that no persuasion would hold him, grew angry: "We keep him here out of kindness and he is this stubborn about leaving. If he wants to go then let him go, and be done — why keep on at him?"
The temper is the point and it is beautifully judged. They have not been refused a favour; they have been refused the chance to do one. And their response is to turn on each other — the reproach is addressed to whoever in the room is still pressing him. 要去便就去了罷 ends on the light word, the little sound that makes a sentence a shrug rather than an order. It is the second of three in this chapter and all three are somebody giving up on an argument: Tripitaka offering to walk on alone, the old lady washing her hands of him, and Kou Hong putting off the monks who arrived too late. 只管勞叨甚麼 — why keep on nagging — uses the question word that the plain reading gives its modern sound. Five sites in this chapter want the older one and the chain gets all five wrong.
Mother and sons then turned and went inside.
Seven characters, and they close the movement. The women and the boys came out of the family half of the house to look at four strangers, stayed to argue, offered their own money, were refused, lost their tempers, and have now gone back through the same door in silence. It is the second time this chapter has moved people across that line, and the first time nobody sent them. The squire ordered them back before the meal; this time they go by themselves, and angry. 母子 takes its full reading without any help, from a pairing added to the tables at the end of the previous chapter. It appears twice here and is correct both times — the cheapest possible check that the corrections travelled.
The refusal lands and the household stops being charming. Nobody has been insulted, nobody has been cheated, and a woman and two boys walk out of a room in a temper because a guest will not let them spend their money on him.
Tripitaka's ground for refusing is the one he gave Kou Hong three passages ago, and it has hardened. He is past the date he promised the emperor, and he describes the position in the language of a capital offence. It is very unlikely that any Tang emperor would execute a monk for coming back late from India. It is entirely likely that a man eleven years overdue would think so at four in the morning.
And the seven characters at the end do more work than any speech in the passage. Mother and sons then turned and went inside. The chapter has spent two thousand characters carefully bringing this family out into the guest rooms one at a time, and here they all go back through the door at once, without another word.