And one dusk the moon rose over the Chinese garden, and Marco Polo
finished telling her of what John saw on Patmos and he an old man...
"'Veni, Domine Jesu.
"'Gratia Domini nostri Jesu Christi cum omnibus vobis. Amen!'"
"It is very difficult, Marco Polo. I don't quite understand."
"I don't quite understand myself, Golden Bells. But that is all I can
tell you. But you will understand more," he said. "My mission is
finished now, and I will go back. I will stop at the court of Prester
John, and he will send a bishop surely or some great cardinal to
baptize you and to teach you the rest."
"You will go back?" A great pain stabbed her. "I never thought, some
how, of you as going back."
"I have come on a mission, Golden Bells, and I must go back."
"There is a woman, maybe, in Venice--" And she turned her head away
from him and from the moon.
"I would not have you thinking that, Golden Bells. There is none in
Venice has duty from me. And if the queen of the world were there, and
she pledged me, I could never look at her, and I after knowing you,
Golden Bells!"
"Is it money, Marco Polo?" she whispered in the dusk. "It is maybe
your uncle and your father are pressing you to return. Let you not
worry then, for my father the great Khan will settle with them, too.
There is not a horse in all Tartary that your uncle cannot have, nor a
woman, either. And your father can have all the jewels of the
treasury, and all the swords, too, even the sword with which my father
conquered China. My father will give him that if I ask. Only let you
not be leaving this moonlit garden."
"Dear Golden Bells, it isn't that; but I came here for converts--"
"Oh, Marco Polo, listen! There is a folk at Kai-fung-fu, and they are
an evil folk and a cowardly folk, and my father abhors them. I shall
ask my father to send captains of war and fighting men to convert them
to your faith, Marco Polo, or lop off their heads. And we can send a
few hundreds to the Pope at Rome, and he will never know how they were
converted, and he will be satisfied. Only let you not be going away
from me in my moonlit garden. You will only be turning to trade, Marco
Polo, and marrying a woman. Let you stay here in the moonlit garden!"
"Ah, little Golden Bells, there is no place in the world like your
moonlit garden. There is no place I'd be liefer than in the moonlit
garden. But little Golden Bells, I set out in life to preach the Lord
Jesus crucified. It was for that I came China."
"Let you not be fooling yourself, young Marco Polo. Let you not always
be ascribing to God the things that are mine. You did not come to
preach to China, you came to see me, and your mind stirred up with the
story the sea-captain told, of me playing 'Willow Branches' at the Lake
of Cranes. O Marco Polo, before you came there were the moon and the
sun and the stars, and I was lonely. O Marco Polo," she cried, "you
wouldn't go, you couldn't go! What would you be doing in cold Venice,
far from the warm moonlit garden."
"Sure, I'll be lonely, too, little Golden Bells, a white monk in a
monastery, praying for you."
"But I don't want to be prayed for, Marco Polo." She stamped her foot.
"I want to be loved. And there you have it out of me, and a great
shame to you that you made me say it, me that was desired of many, and
would have no man until you came. And surely it is the harsh God you
have made out of The Kindly Person you spoke of. And 'tis not He would
have my heart broken, and you turning yourself into a crabbed monk.
And how do you know your preaching will convert any? 'Tis few you
converted here. Ah, I'm sorry, dear Marco Polo; I shouldn't have said
it, but there is despair on me, and I afraid of losing you."
"'Tis true, though. I have nothing, nobody to show."
"You have me. Am n't I converted? Am n't I a Christian? Marco Polo,
let me tell you something. I said to my father I wanted to marry you,
and I asked him if he would give you a province to govern, and he said,
'Sure and welcome.' And I asked him for Yangchan, the pleasantest city
in all China. And he said, 'Sure and welcome, Golden Bells.' And I
told him we would be married, and go there and govern his people
kindly. And you wouldn't shame me before my own father, and all the
people of China. You couldn't do that, Marco Polo. Marco Polo,"--she
came toward him, her eye shining,--"let you stay!"
"Christ protect me! Christ guide me! Christ before me!"
"Marco Polo!"
"Christ behind me!"
"The moon, Marco Polo, and me, Golden Bells, and the nightingale in the
apple-tree!"
"Christ on my right hand! Christ my left! Christ below me!"
Her arms were around his neck, cheek came close to his.
"Marco Polo! Marco Polo!"
"Christ above me!"
"My Marco Polo!"
"O, God! Golden Bells!"
And he put his arms around her, and his cheek to hers, and all the
battle and the disappointment and the fear and the strangeness went out
of him. And down by the lake the wee frogs chirruped, and in the
apple-tree the nightingale never ceased from singing. And they stayed
there shoulder to shoulder and cheek to cheek. And the moon rose
higher. And it seemed only a moment they were there, until they heard
the voice of Li Po in the garden.
"Are you there, Golden Bells? Are you there at all, at all? For two
hours I've been hunting and couldn't get sight or sign of you. I have
the new song, Golden Bells. For a long time I was dumb, but a little
while ago the power came to me, and I have the new song, Golden Bells,
the marrying song..."