CHAPTER ONE
THE YOUNGER
It is necessary to go back some years prior to the time of the typhoon
through whose swirl of devastation two priests from the French Mission
of Yingching had struggled and survived, in order that by some knowledge
of their past, though it is extremely meagre, a better understanding may
be had of the events concerning which this book is written.
Whether the brilliant crepuscular rays from the western sky, the
darkness with its labyrinthian uncertainty, the mangling crunch of the
wind, the conflagration of the heavens, the crucifix, chaos, then the
calm sun of noonday are only symbolic of these priests’ lives, or has in
it a more material prognostication of their future, cannot be judged
until the last words have been written.
Concerning the early life of these two priests nothing is known of the
old man and but little of the youth prior to the time with which this
book deals, although it is said that the younger priest came from
Bretagne, first from an old ruin called the Château Carhaix-sur-Mer,
then from a monastery at St. Pol de Leon, which knowledge is important
in explaining his melancholy seclusiveness, his endless meditation: for
this melancholy silence of the Bretons comes with their land, a gift of
the Sorrow of God.
The Château Carhaix-sur-Mer in which this Breton priest spent his
childhood stands on the edge of a ravine that runs through a moorland
lying between a stretch of woods and the cliffs. The town of Lanilis is
south of it; Plouzevede and Lesneven are to the eastward, while
Plouneur-Trez is north.
The sea along this coast is safest when it frowns and most dangerous
when it smiles.
It has been likened to a woman.
From the Château he was taken to a Jesuit monastery and college in St.
Pol de Leon, a town of monasteries and nunneries and churches, which,
like itself, are the patchwork of different ages. From almost its very
beginning until now the cobbled streets of this old town have been
filled with monks and priests, while bevies of white-hooded nuns have
flitted silently through its shadows as pigeons on the roof-tops and in
their comings and goings have left no trace of their passage. Thus this
grey old town, with its slumbers, its periodical bustle at Pardons and
its endless decay, exists as those who dwell in it—but to mourn and to
pray.
In the moss-cowled monastery, where only the chanting of monks was heard
or other sounds equally solemn, the sombreness of the Breton was changed
to a gentler melancholy and the Spirit of Christ is said to have so
deeply affected him that when he departed from the monastery for the
Mission in China, an old monk, kneeling in the shadows of the gateway
asked his blessing, saying:
“I discern a martyr.”
The Mission of Yingching is not without its history and its antiquity.
China has always been a tempting field for missionary effort and from
the time the spirit of proselyting first took hold of men there has been
no nation that has not at some time or other sent into this old land
their priests and missionaries, their apostles and martyrs.
Christianity is not very old in any part of the world, as far as the age
of the world goes, but it is far older in China than most people
believe; older there, in fact, than in any other part of the world
outside the cradle of its infancy.
During those years so momentous to the Roman Church, when her monks,
penetrating through the gloomy forests of Europe, sought the conversion
of the Goths and the Vandals, the old Bavarians and Alemanni, there were
at that time in China more Christians than in all these sombre woods.
And while the monks with those devout females, Bertha of Kent, and
Clotilda, Queen of the Franks, were bringing over by intrigue their
recalcitrant lords to a quasi-Christianity, the Nestorian Fathers in
Asia were gaining through education their tens of thousands of
adherents. When Columban, the Irish monk of Banchor, with Boniface, the
English monk from Devon, were labouring among the Saxons and Goths,
cutting down their sacred oaks, overturning their altars and at last
securing the crown of martyrdom at the hands of our exasperated
forefathers, the Nestorians were building schools and founding colleges,
so that toward the end of the eighth century there were in China more
Christians than to-day dwell in the whole of Asia.
But when ambition and lust of power crept into the aims of the
Nestorians their influence began to decline; when they made education
secondary and intrigue the first element in conversion faith in them was
destroyed; their power crumbled; their beliefs vanished and now all that
is left of their multitudinous congregations is, in the ancient city of
Singanfu, a pillar of stone.
Though the Mission of Yingching was founded more than three hundred
years ago the present site or compound dates back only to the middle of
the nineteenth century when, after the city ex-muros had been destroyed
by the bombardment of French gunboats, the Catholic Church took
possession of a large tract of land in the western suburbs, which was
afterwards divided into two portions; an enclosed tract in which is the
Mission, containing nearly eleven acres and an open space some six
hundred feet in width between the southern wall of the compound and the
river. This vacant tract had been part of the land seized by the Church
after the bombardment, but owing to the strenuous and persistent
opposition of the Chinese provincial authorities as well as the
inhabitants of the city to the Church acquiring such a large piece of
land in the populous western suburbs, a compromise was finally agreed
upon whereby the Church was confirmed in its title to eleven acres,
while the Chinese were to retain ownership to the tract between the
Mission and the river but were not to erect buildings upon it or to
prevent in any way the Mission from enjoying the cool winds of the river
or having free access to their boats. So this tract of land remained an
open field in the midst of a crowded population.
The Mission is surrounded by a wall some fifteen feet in height, having
two gates. The main entrance placed on the north while from the south
wall a gate opens into the field, through which entered those coming
from the river. Buildings accommodating several hundred native
communicants, schools, quarters, and other establishments necessary to a
Mission are arranged in quadrangles, these quadrangles in turn forming a
large semi-quadrangle paralleling the enclosing walls other than on the
north side, which gave the quadrangles as a whole the form of the letter
E, the bishop’s residence forming the centre stroke while between it and
the north gate stands a chapel, solitary and massive.
The quadrangles are one-storied, constructed of blue pressed brick,
covered by dark tiles. Around the sides and between each run pillared
cloisters. The intervening courts and spaces are planted with shrubs and
flowers, while vines and ivy cling to the pillars of the cloisters
sometimes covering the wide-spreading eaves.
The chapel that stands just within the north gate is built entirely of
dark granite in the early Visigothic manner of architecture, when that
type had not yet freed itself from Roman construction. It is a
parallelogram with perfectly plain exterior. The only windows are along
the sides, narrow and high, with a bar of iron running lengthwise
through the centre. Looking at this chapel from the side it resembles a
prison, while the front, with low vaulted doors is as cold and
forbidding as a tomb. It in no way has the appearance of a Catholic
church; neither plain nor flying buttresses, neither pinnacles nor
porches, nor niches. It is without ornamentation; about it is not a line
but what is sombre and desolate. Within, the chapel is not less gloomy
than it is without. The central nave, tunnel-vaulted, is always dim with
shadows, while the two side aisles, separated from the central nave by a
row of dark lacquered pillars, are low, tomby. In the semicircular apse,
groined and dim, is an altar of blackwood, its front ornamented with two
dragons coiled in contention and having over their open mouths a cross
with golden rays—symbolic of the Mission itself and its aspiration.
To this Mission, some ten years before the Breton priest had left the
Monastery of St. Pol de Leon, a stranger came, dropping down like a wild
bird in its flight. No one knew from what place he had come, hence they
spoke of him always as the Unknown. The bishop treated him with
deference.
This stranger lived alone in the southwest quadrangle next to the outer
wall, dwelling there for two years in complete seclusion. After that he
went out labouring as a priest among the people. But it was said that
while he was scrupulous in the performance of his religious duties yet
he was never known to make a convert. When any of his fellow-priests
attempted to ask him a question he raised his eyebrows and they became
hushed. No one was ever known to ask him twice. He seldom spoke and when
he did, he growled or commanded; when he acted, his actions were final.
He wandered everywhere, driven hither and thither by an unrest of his
own. He knew the city intimately and the labyrinths of its suburbs; the
fields adjoining and the villages beyond the fields. He would be gone a
fortnight, return to the Mission for a day or two and then go away for a
month. Where he had been no one dared to inquire and only on one
occasion were his acts known.
The village of Sam Ma is distant from Yingching about thirty-five miles
by boat and almost twenty by paths across the rice-fields and hills.
During one fifth moon cholera broke out in this village, and in the
midst of the epidemic the Unknown appeared. He assumed command over the
village; segregated, doctored, punished, rewarded, beat, buried. In the
beginning the villagers obeyed because they feared him; in the end, they
were obedient because they worshipped him. But when the epidemic was
over and the elders went to his house to express their gratitude, they
found it empty.
Nevertheless, the inhabitants of Sam Ma still perpetuate the memory of
this Unknown man in their customary manner. And if any traveller,
reading these lines, should go to their village, which is situated on
the river of the Falling Brook he will find on a wooded knoll just
without the walls, a shrine standing next to the Temple of the Goddess
of Mercy. Within this shrine on an ebony altar covered with a
gold-embroidered mantle is a tablet before which burns a taper by day
and night. This tablet bears a name and beside it these words:
“He looked upon the people as he would on a man that is wounded; he
looked for the path of righteousness as if he could not see it.”
Such is all that has been discovered concerning this mysterious man and
it was into this environment that the Breton priest came from the
Monastery of St. Pol de Leon. It is said that at once this gloomy man
and the youth found out each other in a way, not unlike that reciprocal
attraction wherein the tempest finds on the sea’s calm bosom rest and
lightning finds fire in the hearts of rocks.
Henceforth, the older man ceased to disappear or even leave the Mission
unless accompanied by the Breton. They studied together, travelled
together, enduring hardships and dangers. It was noted that while one
loved and growled, the other loved and was silent; for whole days they
uttered not a word and it was this mutual taciturnity, which is the
surest sign of love between men, that made an unbreakable strand in the
net that Fate was in due time to cast and to draw in.