The Symbol
To Marion Dillard there was mockery in the symbolism of the night.
She was alone. On the table before her was an open telegram—the
grating fitted into the last opening of the trap. She was a
dark-haired, slender girl with that aspect of capacity and
independence with which the great war endowed our women: the high
courage that no assault of evil fortune could bludgeon into
servility. She sat in her chair before the table, to the eye,
unconquered.
But it was to the eye only. In the magnificence about her the
wreckage impending was incredible; the great house fitted with every
luxury, the library in which she sat, its rug the treasure of a
temple, its walls paneled!
To Marion Dillard, in her chair before the table, with the telegram
open before her, the whole setting was grotesque. All over the city,
white with newly fallen snow, were the symbols of this majestic
celebration of the birth of the Saviour. They were not absent in
this room. Holly wreaths hung in the windows, and the strange ivory
image, representing the crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth, which her
father had always so greatly prized, had been brought out, after the
usual custom on this night, and placed on the table. It sat on a
black silk cloth embroidered with a white cross. As a work of art it
was not conspicuously excellent; but her father prized it for the
memory of a great adventure.
Marion Dillard leaned back in the chair, reviewing the events that
had moved against her as though with some sinister design. Her
father was dead. A cross of white marble stood on a hilltop in
France to his memory. It had been erected by every people in the
great war, for her father, moved by a high, adventurous idealism,
too old for longer service in the American army, had taken his own
fortune—and, alas, the fortune which he held in trust for
another—and with it maintained a hospital base on the western front
for the benefit of every injured man, friend or enemy.
Marion Dillard reflected: Of what avail was it that her father had
not realized that this trust money was going into his big
conception? He had drawn on his resources in America until every
item of his great fortune was pledged, and by some error, this
estate, in trust, had gone into the common fund. Appalled, when she
came to examine the accounts, Marion had endeavored to cover the
matter, hoping that the decision of the United States Circuit Court
of Appeals in a suit to recover a tract of coal lands in the south
would be decided in favor of her father’s estate, and thus furnish
the money to replace this trust. And so she had somehow managed to
go on.
This telegram on the table was the end. “Reversed and dismissed,”
were the sinister words of it. On this night commemorating the birth
of that great founder of brotherhood, whose idealistic conceptions
her father had always so magnificently followed, she must decide
what she would do.
The thing was sharp and clear before her. She must either wreck the
majestic legend of her father, or degrade herself! As she had
carried the thing along by various shifts since her father’s death,
she could easily make it appear that she had, herself, embezzled
this trust fund. That would leave the memory of her father clean;
but it clearly meant that she herself could not escape the criminal
courts. The heirs of her father’s friend were insistent and hostile.
They would have the pound of flesh, now that the fortune was gone.
For a time she sat motionless, her eyes vaguely on the carved ivory
image on the table before her. Then, she got up, and, with her hands
clasped behind her back, stood looking down at the crucifix.
It was about ten inches high, rudely carved in the Chinese fashion
out of the segment of an elephant’s tusk four inches in diameter.
The cross represented the trunk of a tree, the roots thrust out for
the base. The figure, with arms extended, was nailed to the broken
limbs of this tree-trunk, forming the cross. The whole top of the
tree-trunk made the head of the figure, thrown back under a crown of
thorns. And there in the quaint English letters cut around the base
was the legend: “Inasmuch as you have turned your head to save us,
may He turn His head to save you.”
Well, the thing was an idle hope. There was no help in the world:
either her own life or the memory of her father was on the way to
dreadful wreckage!
Then desperation overcame her. She went out of the library through
the great hall to the door. A maid helped her into her coat. She
gave a direction that the servants should be dismissed for the
night, no one should remain up, she would let herself in with her
latchkey when she returned. She went out.
At the bronze gates as she passed into the street a man sauntering
along the wall spoke to her. She knew him at once. It was Walker of
the Secret Service. So they were already beginning to keep her under
surveillance! The explanation of this detective did not mislead her.
He was looking for a dangerous criminal, he said, who had come into
the city and had made inquiries about this house.
Marion Dillard replied with some polite appreciation of the
thoughtfulness of the police for her security, and went on. At the
end of the bronze fence, as she passed, she observed another figure
crouched against the wall as though it also kept guard on her house;
but it moved away as she approached, as though to conceal itself
around the turn of the wall inclosing the spacious grounds. She
smiled grimly. The watch kept on her would be efficient; here was
another. She went along the street to the great bridge.
She paused for a moment before the immense stone lions on their
great pedestals at the bridge head. They looked old, haggard,
changing into monsters under a draping of snow! Then she set out to
walk across the bridge into the country beyond, past the cathedral
on the hill, lighted, and from which the melody of vague and distant
music descended. And the feeling in the girl as she moved dreadfully
in the night, became a sort of wonder. Was this a vast delusion,
or was there in fact a Will in the universe determined on
righteousness, and moving events to the aid of those who devoted
their lives to its service?
She went on, walking stiffly like a dead body hypnotized into a
pretension of life.
* * * * *
There was no sound on the sea. It was a vast, endless desert of
water on which the sun lay as though fixed. Only the chugging of the
rusted freighter broke the immobility of the silence. The tramp
looked like a battered derelict, not battered by the stormy elements
of the sea; but haggard by the creeping detritus of inactivities in
crowded tropical ports. The steel hull was covered with rust; the
stack leprous, and the metal devices of the deck newly covered with
a cheap paint.
There was no breath of air in the world, either to disturb the
immense placidity of the sea or to vary the thin line of smoke
vaguely blending into the distant sky line.
Two men sat against a drum on the rear of the ship. If one had been
searching the world for types of the worst human derelicts, the
search would have ended at the drum on the rear of this tramp. The
types were villainous, but they were distinct—in marked contrast.
The little man was speaking.
“Cut along with it, Colonel,” he said. “How much did the Chink give
you?”
He was a thin, nervous creature, with a habit of fingering his face,
as though to remove some invisible thing clinging to it. It was
impossible to place the man, either in nationality or environment of
life. He might have been a Cockney, born under the Bow Bells; but it
was more probable that he was a New York gunman. He had picked up
habits of speech in every degraded port of the east, as a traveling
rat picks up a scurvy.
The man he addressed was big, with a putty-colored face, dead-black
hair plastered down with water over an immense head beginning to
grow bald. He was dressed in a worn frock coat—the clothes of a
clergyman—threadbare, but clean. His shoes, even, showed evidences
of an attempt at polish. He wore a clean, white, starched shirt and
a low collar with a black string tie. A huge black stogy hung in the
corner of his mouth. He sat relaxed in a heap against the drum, he
had a white handkerchief over his shirt front, tucked into the
collar in order to protect his linen from the ash and while his body
remained immobile he whittled a piece of pine board. The long knife
blade polished to the edge of a razor, moved on the wood as in some
grotesque manner of caress. He gave the appearance of one
unutterably weary; an immense sagging body in which all the fibers
were relaxed.
He was devitalized with opium.
His voice, when he spoke, presented the same evidence of utter
languor. His lips scarcely moved, and the sound seemed to creep out
in a slow drawl.
“The Chink gave me two yellow boys. He had six in his hand. ‘You
bring Major Dillard of the American Division here to-night,’ he
said, ‘and you get the other four.’ Of course, he didn’t speak
English. He spoke the Manchu dialect. I know the Manchu dialect.
That’s where I had a flock; but I came in when the Boxers started.
That’s how I came to be on hand when the Allied armies began their
march under old von Waldersee.... You understand, I had left the
mission.”
He spoke with a nice discriminating care in the selection of his
words, as though it were a thing in which he had a particular and
consuming pride. The gunman laughed.
“You mean you had been kicked to hell out of it, and were livin’ on
the country.”
There was a faint protest in the Colonel’s drawl.
“It’s true I was not sent out by any of the great sectarian
missions. I adopted the work, and I was not in favor with the
regular organizations in China. They resisted my endeavors.”
“I’d say they did,” his companion interrupted. “You’re the worst
crook in the world barrin’ one, not so far away.” He laughed.
“There’s a circular posted up in every mission in Asia givin’ your
mug, and tellin’ what a damned impostor you are. Some vitriol in the
descriptions of you, Colonel. I’ve seen ’em.”
The man was not disturbed. The drawl continued:
“Yes, Mr. Bow Bell,” he said; “quite true, quite true. I was not in
favor with the regular organizations.”
The names which the two derelicts applied to one another they had
themselves selected, inspired by the impression produced upon each
other at the time of their meeting on the ship. The big man had
called the gunman Mr. Bow Bell, and the gunman had named his
companion Colonel Swank. They had made no further inquiry. Men of
this character are not concerned about names.
Bow Bell put his fingers over his face, drawing them gently down and
removing them together from the point of his chin, as though he
brushed something away.
“So you crawled out of your rat hole, when the column started, to
see what you could pinch. Good pickin’, eh, what?”
Colonel Swank made a low, murmured exclamation.
“History tells us,” he said, “how the rich cities of antiquity were
looted by the soldiery of invading armies; but there can hardly have
been a parallel to this in any known case. The whole country for a
considerable distance on either side of the line of march was
denuded of every article of value, even the venerated images of
Buddha in the holy temple of Ten Thousand Ages were broken to pieces
with dynamite, under the impression that they concealed articles of
value. Of course, the Chinese population stowed away everything they
could; but they could not hide the women, and they were not always
able to conceal their treasures; such as carved ivory, cloisonné,
vases, silks, furs, and the like.”
“The lid was off,” said Bow Bell, “about as it would be in India if
the English went out. I once asked a Rajah in the Punjab what he
would do if the English left India, and you ought to have seen his
grin. ‘I’d take my regiment and go down to the coast, and there
wouldn’t be a virgin or a ten-anna bit left in Bombay.’ ... Cut
along with your story. The Chink gave you two gold twenties to bring
in Major Dillard, with four more in his hand if you put it over. You
brought him in, didn’t you? Gawd, is there anything you wouldn’t do
for a hundred and twenty dollars! Name it, Colonel, let me hear what
it sounds like.”
Swank’s voice did not change. He was unresponsive to the taunt.
“Yes,” he said, “I was so fortunate as to induce Major Dillard to
visit the monastery under my guidance, though it required some
diplomatic effort, and some insistence; but the Major had confidence
in my cloth, and he was making every effort to prevent a looting of
the country along the line of march.”
Bow Bell laughed in a high staccato.
“Confidence in your cloth! It was just a piece of your damned luck
that the American officer never heard of you. He thought you were an
honest-to-God missionary. You’d know all the tricks. You’d be
sanctimonious enough to fool the Devil, for a handful of yellow boys
minted in America. I’d lay a quid on the Saints that you fooled him
all right.... Well, go on and tell me about it. You say the old
Viceroy, with the Boxers on one side and the foreign devils on the
other, was cooped up in a monastery along the line of march, with
the women of all the important families in the Province, and
everything of value that they hadn’t time to bury. You’d nose it
out, Johnny-on-the-spot. You couldn’t get it yourself—some Chink
would have put a knife in you—and it was no good to you for the
foreign devils to get it, so you took your little old hundred and
twenty, and went in to the American Headquarters to see Major
Dillard, eh, what!”
He went on condensing the unessentials in the hope of getting
Colonel Swank forward with his narrative.
“The viceroy was sick, and too old to travel. It was all he could do
to sit up. His only chance was to put himself under the protection
of the American Expeditionary Force. The English were on ahead, and
he knew what the Russians and Germans would do to him. Gawd! He’d
gathered it up for ’em! It was like saying, ‘Come along, boys. I’ve
got the stuff corralled for you. Here’s the girlies, and here’s the
pieces of eight. Go to it. Gawd!... No wonder they dug up the yellow
boys.... You’d ’a’ got more if you had held out. Did that occur to
you?”
Swank made a vague gesture,—a languorous moving of his hand over his
threadbare knee.
“One should not consider a reward for aiding others in distress;
besides my resources were very low at the time, and American gold in
the East was at a premium.”
“Too hungry to trade, eh, what?” said Bow Bell. “I have been like
that; but you must have been damned hungry, Colonel. Gawd! You must
have been starved to the bone ... cut along. Was it night?”
“It was evening,” continued Colonel Swank. “Night was coming on by
the time I had persuaded Major Dillard to come with me. I had a good
deal of difficulty to get him to come with me alone, without a
guard. Not that he was afraid. This American officer was not afraid.
You could tell that by his face. There was no way to frighten him;
but it was irregular, and he had practically to go incognito. The
Viceroy had stipulated with me that I should bring the American
officer alone. He did not wish the common soldiers to know what the
monastery contained. I had some difficulty to convince Major
Dillard; but as I have said, he had faith in my cloth.”
“Gawd,” said the gunman, and he spat violently on the deck. “Suppose
he had been on to you, you damned old renegade. My word, you were in
luck!... Did they send a yellow chair?”
The placidity of Swank was unmoved.
“No,” he said, “as it happened, the chairs were red. It was some of
the chairs in which the women had been brought in. You know, a bride
in China is always sent to the house of her husband in a red chair.
All the red chairs in the province had been commandeered to bring in
the young daughters of the high Chinese residents, to the protection
of the Viceroy. They sent what they had. Yellow is the Royal color
in China. The Viceroy couldn’t use it.”
Bow Bell interrupted with a sort of vehemence.
“Damn it, man, get on. You’re the slowest brute I ever saw to get
into a story. It was night when you set out with Major Dillard in
the red chairs. How far was it to the monastery?”
But the deliberation of Swank’s narration was not to be hurried. His
hand moved the long sharp blade of his knife slowly along the piece
of soft wood, removing a shaving like a ribbon. He went on in his
slow drawl.
“The monastery was a few miles west of the advancing column. The
American Division had just come up; behind it was a smart regiment
from Berlin; and behind that, farther down, were the Russians. You
see the whole Expeditionary Force in China had been put under the
command of Count von Waldersee. The German Emperor had intrigued for
this supreme command; had, in fact, openly solicited it from the
Chancelleries of Europe. You will find it all described in the
memoirs of von Eckerman. The German Emperor thought he would make a
great point in the world if the supreme command of the allied forces
in China should be put under a German officer. The Asiatic would be
impressed with the superior importance of German Arms—‘Observe, if
you please, how all Nations looking about for a leader have selected
a German general!’”
Swank paused as from the weariness of effort.
“The Emperor was immensely keen about it; but it only made the
Chancelleries of Europe laugh. It was Wilhelm II at his theatricals;
besides, any Prime Minister of discretion could see the awkward
situations that would confront the nominal head of the Expeditionary
Forces; and so the Chancelleries of Europe laughed, and, turning
away their faces, gravely acceded to the Emperor’s request. That is
how von Waldersee came to command the column. He was a big,
purple-faced German, wearing a helmet with a black eagle on the top
of it, and a white chin strap; and he always rode a black charger.
The theatrical conceptions of the Emperor must be carried out in
detail. And the officious von Waldersee was overlooking no occasion.
An orderly had just arrived from the German High Command as I
entered to interview Major Dillard, and as it happened the American
general put the message, that this orderly carried, into his pocket
as he came out with me.”
Bow Bell cursed under his breath.
“I know all that,” he said. “Everybody knows it. Get on to the real
thing. What happened to the Viceroy, and the girlies, and the loot?”
Undisturbed, unmoved, and deliberate, Colonel Swank continued with
his narrative.
“We set out in the red chairs. I was in front, for I was to lead the
way, and Major Dillard was directly behind. We traveled for about
three miles west, across the fields, and then through a wood to a
slight elevation on which the monastery was situated. We passed
first under that queer thing which is to be found in China—a sort of
gateway, and triumphal arch; but without any supporting wall about
it. This arch had now a big tarpaulin stretched across it on which
was painted an immense white cross. Through the arch, on a
flag-paved road we approached the main structure of the monastery.
True to the usual form of architecture, the lower part was of stone,
and the upper part of wood. It was crowned by towers, roofed with
yellow tiles, and painted in vivid colors. On the corner of the roof
were innumerable bells, that rang weirdly in the slight wind. On
either side of it, standing on immense pedestals were two enormous
lions. Very strange these lions appeared before us as we entered the
paved court. They had that old haggard, sinister aspect that the
Oriental alone can give to the features of a beast; that aspect of
merging, as by some degeneration, into a monster. Before us was a
double-roofed square tower, with a door on either side.
“We got down from the chairs and went in. At the door stood the old
Chinese official who had given me the two yellow boys. He now handed
me the remaining four, and we entered the monastery. Within there
was an immense image of Buddha, covered with gold leaf. The temple
was lofty, and dimly lighted, and the colossal image of Buddha,
glittering as though of pure gold, and holding the sacred lotus in
his hand, ascended into the lofty upper spaces of the temple. A
circular stairway, mounted around the inner walls of the temple so
that one might go up to the very face of the Buddha, sitting in his
eternal calm.
“All along this stairway there were images in clay, painted in
divers colors.
“About us as we entered the temple were crowds of Buddhist priests,
their heads shaven, and wearing the characteristic dress—the long
yellow robe confined at the waist by a sash, and felt-soled
slippers. They moved noiselessly, as though they were the spirit
company attendant on this immense image. However, we were not come
to idle before the wonders of a Buddhist monastery. The Chinese
official went on and we followed behind him. He passed through a
door at the rear of the shrine, and we were at once in an immense,
low room. It was a very big room.
“One was not able to see what decorations the walls had contained,
as they were heaped on all sides to the ceiling with bales of silks,
furs, and embroideries; and all about were chests and boxes, piled
in some confusion, as though they had just been brought in. The
whole chamber was a warehouse, and it was filled to the ceiling,
except for a narrow passage through the middle. This we traversed,
and, coming to the end of it, passed through a yellow door into
another chamber. We entered here a room of lesser dimensions; but it
was fitted up after the usual idea of Chinese luxury—great mirrors
around the walls; rich rugs on the floor; a variety of clocks, all
going at a different hour; and many screens and tapestries.
“In the middle of the room in a chair padded with silk cushions sat
the Viceroy. He was an ancient man, evidently at the end of life.
His face was like wrinkled parchment. The white, straggling beard
remained on his face; but the whole dome of his skull was bald. It
was as bare as the palm of a hand. It was yellow with age.
“But the most striking thing in the place was the women.
“The whole room was literally crowded with young Chinese women; the
daughters of the important men of the province. They sat about on
the priceless carpets, clothed in exquisite silks, embroidered with
designs of their hereditary houses. They looked like quaint dolls,
their hair knotted in the usual Chinese fashion with gum, and thrust
through with ornaments of jade, and gold pins; their mouths
painted.”
“Gawd,” said Bow Bell, “what a layout for the Hun! Mohammed couldn’t
beat it in his heaven. Get along!”
Colonel Swank continued in his dreary, monotonous voice.
“The Viceroy was too ill to rise; but he made a salute in the German
fashion with his hand when Major Dillard entered; and he began at
once to address the American through the Chinese official who
accompanied us, and whose English was as good as my own. He asked
for protection to the Monastery, and a guard; and extending his hand
to the great storeroom through which we had passed, he offered the
American anything that he wished in payment for this protection.
Major Dillard endeavored to explain that the Allied Armies were not
on a quest of loot; but were merely endeavoring to relieve the
legations at Pekin, and establish order in the country; that they
could receive no compensation for this service; and that he would
endeavor to protect the Monastery.
“But he was disturbed about a guard.
“The American Expeditionary Force was not large, and he was easily
able to see the international complications that might arise if he
left here an American guard to clash, perhaps, with the German
division behind him.”
Swank moved slightly in his position against the drum of the
freighter. The ash from the half-burned stogy fell on the white
cotton handkerchief. There came a shadow of interest into his voice.
“At this moment,” he said, “while Major Dillard was engaged with the
difficult problem before him, an extraordinary event occurred. There
was a clamor of voices outside. A Chinese guard hurtled through the
door, and fell on the floor before the Viceroy. There was a sound of
heavy footsteps, the clang of side arms, the echo of guttural
voices, and a moment later a dozen German officers entered the room.
“They were young Prussian under-officers from the portion of the
German company behind the American Division. They stopped inside the
door, lost for a moment in wonder at the very miracle of the thing
they were seeking. Then they noticed Major Dillard standing beside
the Viceroy’s chair. They brought their heels together and made him
a formal military salute; but it was clear they regarded him as of
no particular importance—as merely a soldier from the American
Division to be accorded the usual amenities; but not to be permitted
to interfere with any design they had in mind.
“There followed a brief, verbal passage at arms, with a shattering
dramatic sequel.
“Major Dillard explained that the Monastery was under the protection
of the American Division; that it must not be disturbed; and
requested the German officers to withdraw. They replied with a
courtesy in which there was a high contempt; that as the American
Division had passed on, and the German Company arrived on the
ground, the Monastery was under the _protection_—they got a
sneering, contemptuous note in the word—of the German Expeditionary
Force, and they must insist on their right of control.
“They looked about at the rich loot, the ancient Viceroy, and the
painted women, and what they meant by protection to the monastery
was as clear as light.
“They were all under the influence of liquor; one or two of them
were plainly drunk. It was evident that Major Dillard could not
control them, and it was clear that their contention of their right
of control over the Chinese territory adjacent to their Division was
in point of legal virtue superior to that of the American Division
that had passed on, and from which Major Dillard had returned here.
They spoke with an exaggerated courtesy to the American; but they
were clearly intending to seize the monastery, to ignore any claim
of the Americans over it, and they made that intention insolently
evident. The old Chinese Viceroy understood it at once. Despair
enveloped him. His chin dropped on his bosom, and he put out his
hands like one resigned to the inevitable. The young, insolent
Prussians advanced into the room.
“It was at this moment that the dramatic sequel arrived.”
Colonel Swank paused; he made a slight gesture with the hand in
which the long sharp blade of his knife moved on the soft wood.
“I have mentioned,” he said, “how in character were the acts of
Wilhelm II in this international affair, and now one of these
theatrical gestures intervened with a shattering dénouement. Major
Dillard offered no further argument. He took out of his pocket the
message which he had received from von Waldersee as we were setting
out and read it: It was an order of the High Command putting a
portion of a German Company under the command of that foreign
general whose division it followed. And, thus, this order put the
German advance guard, of which these Prussians were officers under
the command of the American General. It was the Emperor’s gracious
return for the grant of the supreme command to von Waldersee. Major
Dillard made no comment. He gave a curt order as though he were
addressing a sergeant’s squad:
“The Prussians were to remain and guard the Monastery during the
whole of the Allied occupation; nothing should be disturbed; they
would be held responsible for every life and every article, and for
the rigid preservation of order. It was a hard, clear, comprehensive
direction: And they were to report to him in Pekin.
“The amazement of the young Prussian officers was beyond any word to
express. Their jaws dropped; their very eyes bulged. The drunken
ones were instantly sober. They recognized the black eagle and the
signature of the German High Command. Every vestige of human
initiative vanished out of them. Von Waldersee’s order was an ukase
of the All Highest—the direction of the Emperor—a command of the War
Lord. They formed in a line before the American, clicked their
heels, and saluted. And he set them about the outside of the
Monastery as a guard; and went away in his chair.”
Bow Bell threw himself forward from the iron drum of the tramp with
a great cackle of laughter.
“Gawd!” he cried. “Could you beat it! A look-in, and then to be
snapped up like that! Gawd!” He rocked himself on the deck, his
hands clasped about his knees. “I can see ’em,” he stuttered. “Oh,
my word!” He continued to rock in his paroxysms of laughter. “And
they couldn’t touch a girlie or a cash piece. Gawd! what a neat
little hell!”
He turned toward his companion.
“And what did you do, you fat, old crook? What did you do? Stay on
for a little of the loot the American wouldn’t take?”
Colonel Swank resumed his narrative as though there had been no
interruption.
“I remained,” he said, “though not entirely at my own initiative.
The old Viceroy had drawn the conclusion from some remarks of Major
Dillard that the white cross which the monks had put up before the
gate of the Monastery was a protecting symbol of the great Christian
religions, and that in some manner its effect on Major Dillard had
produced the result which followed. This impression doubtless arose
from the fact that in his order to the Prussian officers Major
Dillard had directed that the cross should be permitted to remain.
It was his idea doubtless that this religious symbol would help to
protect the Monastery from the remainder of the Expeditionary Force.
They might take it to be a hospital, or some missionary place of
refuge. But the Viceroy got the idea that it was to the sacredness
of this symbol that he owed his protection, and he began to inquire
of me upon the point. Why was the cross a sacred symbol in our
religion?
“I explained it to him: that, Jesus of Nazareth, the Messiah of the
Christians, had been crucified on a tree, and that this cross was
symbolical of that crucifixion; of that vicarious atonement for the
sins of the world. He did not understand the metaphysics of my
explanation; but he understood its physical essentials; that the God
of the Christians had been crucified on a tree, and that this
concrete representation was, therefore, sacred, as the images of
Buddha in his eternal calm, with the lotus flower in his hand; that
the cross meant to all Western religions what the image of Buddha
meant to Asia.
“He understood crucifixion. It was a torture of death known to the
Chinese; but reserved only for the lowest criminals. It had been
supplanted in later years by the _lingchi_, or death of a thousand
cuts; but it was an old practice, and the archives of his province
contained ancient paintings of it. He interrogated me minutely upon
the details of this crucifixion, and I gave him an accurate picture
of it: The Man of Sorrows crowned with thorns, and nailed to the
cross. But in the translation I made use always of the Chinese word
for tree. A lack of precision in language which had presently a
definite result.”
Again Bow Bell spat upon the deck.
“The hell you did,” he said. “You sanctimonious old crook. You ought
to have had your tongue cut out. No missionary society would put up
with you for a minute. You used to be a faro dealer in Hongkong
until you got too cursed crooked for even a Chinese gambler to stand
you.”
Colonel Swank did not resent this digression.
“For a week,” he said, “I remained in the Monastery as a guest of
the Viceroy. I was treated like a prince. I dined on roast quail
covered with clotted cream, and candied rose leaves; and then I was
given a present for Major Dillard and sent on to the American
Division. I traveled in a chair like an envoy, parallel to, but at
some distance from, the line of march, and I overtook him before he
reached Pekin.”
“And what was the present?” said Bow Bell. “Twelve she asses laden
with gold?”
“No,” replied the Colonel in his weary drawl, “it was not. It was a
carving in ivory representing the crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth
as I had described it, wrapped in a piece of black silk embroidered
with a white cross, not worth a pound and six pence. The carving, a
mediocre work of art, might have been worth a hundred dollars in
America.
“You will recall that I used the word tree in my description to the
Viceroy, and this carving represented an ivory tree made of the
whole segment of an elephant tusk. It was about four inches in
diameter, and ten inches high. The base represented the roots of the
tree spread out, so that the thing would stand in balance. Broken
limbs represented the cross pieces to which the hands of the figure
were nailed. The feet were spiked together on the trunk; the head
thrown back, and encircled with a crown of thorns, made the entire
top of the carving, that is to say, the top of the tree.”
“Well, for Gawd’s sake,” said Bow Bell. “A piece of carved
elephant’s tusk for a job like that!... Did you steal it?”
Colonel Swank went on:
“And it was carved in tiny English letters around the base with a
legend, not badly worded for a pagan imitation of the Scriptures:
‘Inasmuch as you turned your head to save us, may He turn His head
to save you’.... No, I didn’t steal it. How could I steal it? There
was a Chinese runner on each side of the chair. I was never out of
sight of them, and they each had a knife. I delivered it to the
Major.”
“Well, he didn’t get much for his trouble,” said Bow Bell. “It’s no
good to be good!”
His voice descended into a confidential note; he leaned a little
toward his companion.
“Now, you said you had a notion about this thing at the beginning of
your talk. What was that notion, Colonel?”
“As I recall,” Swank continued, “it was a discourse about the
exaggerated value which devotees of a religion place upon their
symbols. They all seem to feel that the sacredness of these symbols
is an ample payment for any immensity of service. It is a very
strange and universal belief. The English resident of a native state
in India once received a gold Buddha for saving a Rajah’s life, and
it was not even gold. It was only plated.”
“But that’s not all you said,” interrupted Bow Bell. “You said you
were going to America. You said you were going to find that
crucifix. You said you had a notion about it. What is your notion?”
For a moment Colonel Swank did not reply. His hand moved the long
sharp blade of the knife peeling off ribbons of pine from the piece
of soft wood. The sun was going down, and the sea continued to be as
placid as a sheet of glass. There was no one in sight on the rear of
the deck of the freighter; but at the moment Swank began to speak
one of the Chinese crew appeared. The Colonel lowered his voice, and
what he said passed in a whisper to his companion.
What happened after that was fatal and unforeseen for this
ill-omened person.
Bow Bell looked quickly about the deck. The individual of the
Chinese crew had passed behind the leprous stack of the freighter.
Bow Bell spoke softly, and leaned over toward his companion.
“You’re going to get a lot of ash on your shirt, Colonel,” he said;
and taking hold of the hand in which his companion held the knife
with which he had been whittling the piece of packing board, he
brought it up with a firm grasp, and drove the long blade into the
man’s chest just under the heart, guiding it carefully with the
fingers of his left hand so that the blade would enter in the
interstice between the ribs.
For a moment the huge body of the man did not move. Then, his eyes
widened, and his mouth extended in a sort of wonder.
“Why, you dirty little beast!” he drawled. “You dirty little beast!”
Then his head fell forward, the great, slack body quivered,
shuddered, and was motionless.
Bow Bell turned the handle of the knife down, pressed the blade in
against the chest to prevent hemorrhage, buttoned the frock coat
over the knife, tucked the disturbed, cotton handkerchief into the
man’s collar: And to the eye, Colonel Swank, drunk with opium, had
fallen asleep over his narrative, his chin sunk comfortably on his
chest, the body propped against the drum, and supported by Bow
Bell’s shoulder.
A moment later the Chinese deck hand came out from behind the stack,
and moved along the rail of the rear deck, making his inspection of
the ship. And the iron nerve of Bow Bell presented itself.
“Hey, John,” he said. “Speakee Linglish?”
“Vellee good,” replied the Chinaman, continuing to move along
the rail. “Speakum Plittsburg: Hullee-lup, hullee-lup, lu
lalle—bastard!—Speakum Hongkong pololo plony belong-house.” His
voice, went suddenly up in a high, sharp, whining cry: “Lide ’im
off, Major. Oh, damn!”
Then he shuffled off unconcernedly along the rail around the rear of
the ship, and disappeared toward the prow.
Night descended.
A little later Bow Bell lifted the apparently opium-drunken body of
Colonel Swank to his feet, and helped him to the rail of the ship.
There the two stood for a moment close together as in confidential
talk, until, as the gunman turned away, the opium-drunken Colonel,
by some loss of balance, fell forward over the rail into the sea.
With a great cry Bow Bell ran forward to report the accident.
* * * * *
It was midnight when Marion Dillard returned.
Despair like an opiate had finally drugged her into a sort of
physical submission, and she had turned back to the comfort of her
house as one on his way to death warms himself before a fire. She
let herself in.
The house was silent. The servants, pleased to obtain a holiday on
this night, had gone out. She removed her coat and hat, and laid
them on a console in the hall; and went into the library. She moved
softly, as one will under a breaking mental tension. It was
midnight; the great clocks of the city were beginning to strike.
The door to the library was open. Marion Dillard turned from the
hall into the room; but on the threshold she stopped. The figure of
a man leaned over the library table, a cap pulled over his eyes, a
dark handkerchief tied around the lower part of his face. He held
the massive, carved ivory crucifix in his hands, and he was intent
on some undertaking with it.
The girl took a step forward, and, at the sound, the figure turned,
and a weapon flashed in his hand. Immediately the silence in the
room was shattered by the explosion of a shot. Marion Dillard
imagined that the burglar had fired at her; but, if so, why did the
creature sway, put out a convulsive hand, drop his weapon on the
rug, and crumple in a heap.
The voice of the detective, whom she had found on guard at the gate
as she went out gave the explanation. Walker came forward from
behind the curtain of a window.
“Bad gunman,” he said, “wanted all over the world. I had to kill
him.”
And he indicated the crumpled body of Mr. Bow Bell.
“But what was he doing to that ivory crucifix? It looked like he was
trying to twist it.”
Marion Dillard went forward and took up the heavy piece of carved
ivory.
The head thrown back crowned with thorns, making the top of the tree
on which the figure was impaled, had been twisted around until it
faced backward. It was loose, and she lifted the head out of the
carving.
The whole interior of the ivory tree was hollow, and packed with
rice powder.
The girl picked up a metal paper knife, and loosened the powder in
the hollow ivory. Hard pellets were embedded in the rice powder, and
when she released them, great oriental pearls appeared—huge,
magnificent—a double handful of them; unequaled, matchless,
priceless, worth the ransom of a province.
And at the moment, the last stroke of the clocks sounded above the
city, commemorating the hour of the birth of the Saviour of the
World.