CHAPTER ONE
PRO DEO ET ECCLESIA
It is not a matter to wonder at that the Mission of Yingching was
founded during the latter part of the sixteenth century,—an age known
elsewhere for its deception and cajolery,—but it is remarkable that M.
Ricci should remain the greatest of its bishops though more than three
centuries have gone by.
From the beginning of that eventful day when the Viceroy granted him
permission to build a little house where he might forget his hours in
prayer and study, until he had laid secure the foundations of this
Mission, which even Time and innumerable vicissitudes have not
destroyed, the life of Ricci was passed more brilliantly than any of his
successors. While most of them have faithfully continued his policy,
they have done so only with that crudity that is to be expected from the
efforts of mediocre men when they seek to emulate the schemes of master
minds.
The successes of the bishop had been many; the fruition of his schemes
was continuous and like the orange tree there mingled promiscuously
together the sprouting bud, the bloom, and the golden fruit. Yet
numerous as had been his victories they were all overshadowed by one
failure—the securing of a foothold within the walls of Yingching. Many
had been the schemes carefully planned toward this end, only, through
some fatality, to fail. But the bishop smiled and was hopeful, for no
one knew better than he that in the march of ill-fortune there are to be
found points of attack called opportunities, which assailed at the right
moment end in victory; one must watch and wait; when there is seen a gap
or point of weakness, fall upon it—perhaps to be repulsed, perhaps to
succeed. So the bishop waited and watched as ill-fortune in a lazy, long
column filed by. Often he had made the attack and failed but he was not
disheartened nor did his failures ever alter the serenity that men noted
on his brow, a serenity that was conspicuous.
One day—which might be called the beginning day of this history—the
bishop was seated in his study with a peasant woman kneeling before him,
and on his lips played or twitched that peculiar, unfathomable smile
which someone once said was the shadowy echo of a scheme’s contented
laughter.
“Yes,” the bishop repeated musingly, “you will secrete yourself,
listening to all that is said, seeing all that is done, and report to me
each day. You must undertake to gain her confidence as much as possible
and do nothing that may cause her displeasure.”
The bishop, tapping the tips of his fingers together, settled back in
his chair and smiled, one might almost say, rapturously.
“Since this matter is arranged, you may go,” he said, leaning forward
and looking down at the woman that knelt at his feet. “But remember,” he
continued with gentle firmness, firmness that left no doubt, “that you
are first the servant of God and afterwards the maid of Tai Lin’s wife.
Never, as you value your soul, neglect to report to me all that is said
and done each day between the priest and this wife. Go and obey!”
A hesitant knock aroused the bishop from his musings. The Breton priest,
entering softly, knelt down and received his blessing then rising, stood
dreamily waiting.
For some time the bishop sat rubbing with both forefingers his high,
narrow nose. And as he contemplated the handsome, sad Breton a satisfied
smile passed across his covered lips.
“I have new duties for you,” he said presently in soft, thoughtful
tones. “Tai Lin, the former Viceroy of Chekiang, has asked for a tutor
to instruct his young wife, and I have selected you.”
The Breton made no sign that he heard.
“Do you understand what that means?” demanded the bishop with purring
severity as he leaned forward, pressing his bony knuckles against the
sides of his knees. “God has intrusted you with its accomplishment, and
there must be no failure in tasks imposed by Him.
“Tai Lin is one of the richest men in this province,” he continued
meditatively, as he leaned back in his chair and struck stiffly together
the tips of his bloodless fingers. “Some say his wealth is limitless;
this to a degree is true, for I know that he alone owns the great
Erh-tung mines of white copper in Yunnan; the camphor groves of Si Kiang
belong to him; the jade mines of Yu-Shan, and those boundless forests of
teak that lie between the Me Kong and Song Ho rivers; besides—there is
his great park in the heart of Yingching.”
For some moments the bishop sat silent, his eyes half closed, his
fingers motionless.
“Yes, that magnificent park, that wonderful park—— But this young wife,
have you heard of her?” he demanded, suddenly sitting up.
Again the Breton looked at him questioningly.
“She was a tea-farmer’s daughter, beautiful, it is said, as a wild
animal, and though permitted to run wild among the hills and woodlands
she acquired some learning the reputation of which, no doubt, spread
among the neighbouring villages and finally reached the ears of Tai Lin,
then Viceroy of Chekiang. The beauty of this woman must be of some
subtle, tireless kind if we are to believe in rumour and the influence
she has over Tai Lin seems to prove it. He is less than a child in her
hands. He does not seem to have any desire that is not hers nor any
pleasure or thought in life that does not, in some manner, revolve about
her.
“Strange, strange, that a woman with no other power than fleeting beauty
or the skim of learning should rule so absolutely a man accustomed to be
despot over tens of millions. It is said that within a month after she
entered the palace at Hangchau her influence was felt in all directions.
Tai Ling was a Confucian when he married this tea-farmer’s daughter, a
ridiculer of all religions, yet she caused him to rebuild the Buddhist
Temples of Yoh Miao and Ting Tzy; found hospitals and schools; send
caravans loaded with food to the starving in Kwangsi and Shensi. She
does whatever she pleases with him. This man to whom the Emperor has
given the title of Great, is a nonentity; he amounts to nothing; the
wife is everything. What could be more fortunate?”
Again the bishop relapsed into silence, while the eyes of the Breton
looked meditatively along the book shelves behind him.
“Such are the ways of God, and nothing is more beautiful than His
compassion in so deeply instilling in the heart of woman—even against
her own acts—religion’s spirit, causing her to yield to the agency of
His ministers and become an instrument in their hands for the salvation
of mankind! Thus this very creature that caused man’s fall and the
desolation of God’s garden, becomes an aid in his redemption. That
villainous curiosity that caused her to spy around among the leaves of
the Forbidden Tree still forces her into the thick foliage of her
husband’s thoughts; while that insatiable appetite that made her devour
the apple that led to earth, still insatiable, causes her to hunger for
that fruit that shall again unlock the Gates of Heaven. And just as she
tempted man forth from Paradise by the deliciousness of desire, so shall
she lead him back.
“If she alone can persuade him to build temples, found hospitals and
give aid to the starving, how beneficent will prove her labours under
proper tutelage! If she can cause Buddhist monasteries to be built she
can erect Roman cathedrals; if she can scatter money broadcast among
these hungry heathen, she can fill the coffers of our Mission. But
beyond all of this there is something else.”
The bishop suddenly ceased speaking and his black, cavitous eyes closed
as he tilted back his head.
“You know,” he resumed thoughtfully, “how our predecessors have laboured
without success to gain a foothold within the walls of the city and how
we have followed in their footsteps. Now, at last, the Eye of God looks
down upon us: this opportunity allowed by Him must not be neglected. You
must spare no effort nor fail to use any means to save her soul; to
accomplish this end whatever means are employed, God will sanction.
Exaltibimus te, Domine.”
For a long time the bishop gazed steadily at the Breton, and the deep
silence was only broken by the cracking of his knuckles as he pulled one
finger after another.
Presently he lay back in his high ebony chair, and a dim ray of light
shafted in from the high-barred casement rested upon his pallid face:
his thin, tight lips parted in a smile, while his hands, whitish and
long, clasped to his breast an ivory cross imaged with the Christ.
The Breton waited, with eyes lowered dreamily before him.
CHAPTER TWO
THE SCHOLAR
A few days after the Breton had received his instructions from the
bishop he was summoned to the palace of Tai Lin, thence peremptorily to
an apartment belonging to his Excellency’s wife, the tea-farmer’s
daughter. This room, with its alternate slabs of rose and white marble,
its walls hung with curtains of crimson silk embroidered down the centre
in characters of gold; its beams and pillars lacquered a dark red and
overcast by a tracery of golden filigree, was filled with an amber light
that a sun ray shooting through a shell-latticed window diffused among
its shadows.
The Breton had stood for some time beside one of the pillars, waiting
without restlessness or impatience the coming of his scholar, when
unconsciously he raised his head and looked expectantly toward the
carved screen-work—a mass of gold and sang-de-bœuf lacquer—that reached
to both sides of the room and from the ceiling to the marble floor.
Suddenly a chime of music, which was laughter, filled the room, bringing
a flush to his face. The first chime no sooner died away than came
another and another; never in his life before had there fallen about him
such sounds—like music laughing, or laughter from a bird’s throat. Had
that been heard in his native land, it would have been honoured with a
shrine. The melancholy peasants rising from their knees before its
sanctuary would have said, “Is it not true that Bretagne is under the
Eye of God? Over yonder the Devil is buried beneath Mont St. Michel and
now the Virgin is heard to laugh.”
So the eyes of the Breton, propped open wide with wonder, stared at the
screen. But not another sound was heard until the wife said softly:
“Priest, come—sit here.”
For an instant he hesitated, then went over to the screen and sat down
in a chair of teak and mother-of-pearl, which had been placed beside it.
He heard a trembling silken rustle, then the room was again filled with
the music of the wife’s laughter.
“Why, priest,” she exclaimed in the midst of her merriment, “your eyes
are really blue! Who would ever have thought such a thing! Blue! Isn’t
that strange!” she added wonderingly.
The Breton bowed his head, but made no answer.
“Look up!” she commanded.
He raised his eyes to the crevices near his head.
“Priest,” said the wife presently, her voice still gentle with wonder,
“if your eyes were not so soft, I would say they were sapphires; were
they not so strangely bright, I would say they were as the sky when the
moon loiters behind the mountains. So these are the eyes of devils——”
The Breton took no notice of her comments.
“And you are the priest,” she drawled presently.
“Yes,” he answered softly, “a priest of God.”
“And what have you come to teach me, priest?” she inquired, mockery and
laughter trembling in her demure tones.
“As the bishop has ordered.”
“Indeed!” she commented disdainfully. “And what did he order?”
“To save your soul,” replied the Breton reverently, “for the glory——”
The laughter of the wife interrupted him.
“And he sent you to do it?”
“Yes,” he apologised, “the bishop has sent me.”
“How thoughtful of him! No doubt you will succeed!”
“Yes, God will be here,” he answered simply.
“Why did not the bishop send someone else?”
“I do not know.”
“You did not ask to come?”
“No.”
“Indeed! If he asked you to go elsewhere to-morrow, would you go?”
“Yes.”
“Oh, very well. I may not want you any more. I am not at all firm in my
desire, and you are so young. My last teacher, who had had the learning
of seventy winters, said the ignorance of youth was really pitiable,
especially in men. No; I don’t think you will do,” she commented with
candour, “not at all.”
The Breton gazed dreamily through the half-opened shell-latticed window,
and only the restless hopping and chirp of the thrushes in the golden
bamboo cages broke the silence, or sometimes a dulled sound, which was
the noise of the surrounding city in its labour.
“Priest,” her voice came from just above him, and as he turned his head,
a ring set with a large pear-shaped pearl dropped from the crevices into
his lap. He looked up and tried to speak. His lips moved, but that was
all, for just overhead a little pink finger tip clung to the edge of the
crevices.
“Oh, you need not thank me,” she exclaimed coldly, “that ring is not for
you. It is for your bishop, who wishes to save my soul.”
“Yes, he wishes it,” the Breton answered thoughtfully, as he fingered
the ring in his lap.
“And you?”
“I shall pray for you.”
“Indeed!”
“Yes, I will teach you,” he added gently, oblivious of her mockery.
“What?”
“To love God and——”
“How monotonous you are, priest,” she interrupted impatiently.
“No,” he answered, looking gravely up to the crevices, “to love God is
not monotonous; to pray to Him is happiness.”
“I suppose you pray all the time?” she asked with mock compassion.
“Yes; ad Jesum crucifixion.”
“I never heard of Him,” she commented lightly.
“Our Lord, who was crucified.”
“Indeed! And what had He been doing?”
“He died to save men.”
“How useless!” she sighed.
“From the crucifix came the cross; from torture, salvation.”
“Dreadful! And you pray to Him?”
“Yes; to Jesus crucified,” he answered softly.
“Let me hear you,” she commanded unconcernedly as though thinking of
other things.
The Breton, bowing his head, began in a low monotonous tone. “Eu,
amantissime Jesu, qui sponsae sanguinum mihi esse voluisti ad pedes tuos
prosternor, ut meum in te amorem debitamque gratitudinem contester. Sed
quid rependam tibi mi Jesu——”
After the first few words of the Breton’s prayer the wife began to
laugh, at first softly to herself, but as the Breton continued, her
merriment increased until the music peals of her laughter stopped him
completely.
“What a noise you are making!” she exclaimed. “I never heard such
sounds!” And she fell again to laughing. “You must not mind my
laughter,” she said, breathless, “I cannot help it. You never laugh?”
she inquired when her merriment had subsided.
“No.”
“I did not think so. I laugh all the time. But then you are a priest,”
she added consolingly. “Are you going to finish your prayer?”
The Breton looked hesitantly at the screen, then resumed his prayer. “Mi
Jesu, qui usque in finem dilexisti me? Manibus ac pedibus imo et cordi
tuo inscripsisti me, magno sane et conspicuo charactere. Quis mihi hoc
tribuat ut sicut tu me, ita et ego te cordi meo inscriptum circumferam.
O Jesu——”
“No,” interrupted the wife meditatively, “I would not say that your
hands were disagreeable to look at. My honourable husband told me that
the hands of foreigners were speckled and covered with red hairs like
the wood spider—just think of it! But I should say that your hands
are—you can put on that ring, if you wish.”
The Breton did not touch the pearl in his lap.
“I said you could put on that ring,” she enjoined imperiously. “No, on
the other hand; yes—— Now, go on with your prayer.”
And once more the Breton began his prayer to the crucified Christ.
“O Jesus quam profuso mi charitatis effectu complexus es qui non tantum
manus et pedes, verum et opulentissimum pectus mihi operiri voluisti, ut
inexhausto bonorum coelestium affluentia desiderium meum expleas——”
“And priest,” his Excellency’s wife again interrupted with the same
meditative interest, “I would not say that it is annoying, either, to
look at your face. Do you know,” she added naïvely, “that I was almost
afraid to see you? I did not know what you would look like. My
honourable husband has been telling me of the English, who have a wad of
red hair on each cheek; isn’t that frightful?” And she laughed softly to
herself, merrily as a child.
“You never even smile, do you?”
He made no answer.
“I do not think so; your face is too sad. And I suppose,” she sighed
deprecatingly, “that it comes from all this dull praying.”
The Breton was looking sorrowfully across the room to the sunlit shells,
opalescent in the latticed windows.
“Are you going to finish your prayer?” she asked with mock wonder.
He turned his head and looked steadily up to the crevices.
“You do not wish it,” he said sadly.
“I do!” she exclaimed, petulantly slapping the screen.
“Salve, O benedictum vulnus lateris tui mi Jesu! Salve, O fons amoris, O
thesaure inaestimabilis, O requies animae meae ausimne benignissime
Jesu.”
As the Breton uttered these lines, he turned his eyes once more toward
the crevices whence she spoke.
“Ad sacram hanc aram ad hoc sanctum sanctorum, accidere ardens que amore
cor turum.”
“Do you know,” she interrupted, a subdued tremor in her voice, “I don’t
believe that devils have such eyes. They are like the ocean. I was on
the sea once when I came here from Hangchau and I watched the waters. I
noticed the sea, though always blue, the blue changed. Sometimes shadows
swift or faltering crept into it, and oh, how sad it was! Suddenly these
dark waters would become light. I never saw such brightness. The sea
smiled and—don’t, please don’t look at me.”
CHAPTER THREE
HOMO! MUTATO!
While the weeks and then months that followed the Breton’s advent into
the palace of Tai Lin were as widely different to the past years of his
life as is sunlight to sorrow, yet in themselves these weeks varied but
little.
Unseen and impregnable behind her great screen the tea-farmer’s daughter
usurped all the liberties of her childhood. She mocked his learning,
derided his God, then whispered—which was another way of caressing; and
when the Breton looked up, injured yet forgiving, to the crevices above
his head, she filled the room with the music peals of her laughter,
sometimes coldly derisive, again like a rapturous song dropped from a
heaven unconjectured by the Breton priest.
In the beginning only two men in the Mission noticed that a lingering
uncertainty had come into his actions; a greater dreaminess into his
preoccupation and a brightness into his melancholy eyes. As weeks went
on he became more hurried and restless, so that even a vagueness came at
times into his prayers. This was apparent to many, but they attributed
it to Breton eccentricity, and they would have been confirmed in this
belief had they watched him leave the Mission in haste, then after
passing through the Great Southern Gate, go forward reluctantly. When he
reached the park entrance he often passed it, wandered about, or sought
refuge in the Tower of the Water Clock, where dripped, dripped, dripped
those relentless drops meditatively from their age-worn jars of granite.
In the late afternoons when the lessons were over and the wife had
dismissed him in silence, or scornfully or with laughter, he left the
park only to move unconcernedly through the streets, apparently seeing
nothing; not even hearing the multitudinous cries and noises that
resounded about him. He was drifted along like flotsam in their currents
and carried around through their endless windings until, as flotsam, he
was tossed up on the threshold of the Mission gates.
At first these street currents brought him back to the Mission more or
less quickly. But as time hastened on they began to take him further and
wider in their drift or leave him stranded momentarily or longer in some
temple grounds, or on the river’s bank, until at last sundown did not
find him at the Mission and after a while dusk crept in before him.
One night he sat on the edge of the cloister outside of his door. His
eyes were half closed, a faint upward curl fluttered in the corners of
his mouth, a fulness pouted his lower lip. He had been sitting thus for
a long time when the Unknown priest came and stood looking down at him
steadfastly, weighted with intuition—a gaze to be avoided.
Presently he began to talk aloud to himself.
“It has come.”
“Spontaneous?”
“Yes.”
“Fungoid?”
“No; it takes a night to produce a mushroom and only a minute to shrivel
it. An instant produces this or a mountain. Ages can not alter it. I
know of no name unless it be called volcanic; an upheaval, a something
from the depths; made up of scoria that destroys but is itself
indestructible.”
“What are you doing?” he growled.
The Breton looked up.
“Are you asleep?”
“No.”
“Are you praying?”
“No.”
“What are you doing?”
“Thinking,” the Breton answered softly.
“A bad trick,” he grumbled as he went on, leaving the Breton alone in
the night.
It was in this manner that these two priests, who had for so long a time
been inseparable, drew unconsciously away from each other. One dreamed
and the other remembered: two extremes, which look alike and which
effectually hid from the other priests the parting of their ways. For
instead of a single silence—which had been mutual—came one both double
and divergent. Two such silences cannot drift together. Nothing is more
selfish than self communion.
But as the Breton drew off more and more to himself he did so so
unconsciously that his affection for the Unknown was in no way
diminished but was simply put away in one of those inner chambers of the
heart until—as was destined—it was brought forth again unaltered or
changed.
The Unknown priest now went on his journeys alone, and soon drifted back
to that solitary, stern seclusiveness in which he had lived before the
Breton came. Again he left the Mission for weeks at a time, and the
Breton no more noticed his comings and goings than did the others that
dwelt in the Mission. Both priests were busy; one dreamed; the other
succoured; two things hard to wear out or become threadbare.
The lessons of the wife began about an hour after midday and continued
until she left the Breton alone, waiting by the screen. This she did
peremptorily, moodily, in laughter, in silence, in mockery. She cajoled
him when it was her humour, reprimanded and laughed at him. She
questioned, then derided his answers. She wondered and scorned—like a
child pouting with hauteur. Yet in the midst of all this the Breton
could not or did not care to distinguish one mood from another, for as
music is music, regardless of what it expresses, so were the mood tones
that came from behind the screen, and in time no amount of scorn or
laughter or derision could alter this music.
“What a people you are, priest,” she chided, “to practise benevolence
for Heaven’s payment! Don’t you know that men are fools that try to make
themselves the creditors of Heaven?”
She lowered her voice to a pleading whisper: “How can you do such a
thing?”
The Breton looked up; contrition flashed across his face and instantly
the rooms were filled with triumphant laughter.
But while her mockery, her commands, and derision affected him in no
way, there were words, however, which were spoken in such inexplainable,
whispering tones that they remained with him always. And after he came
to enter the park before the hour of midday the memory of these words
were so vividly recurrent in the song and solitude of the park that
every sunbeam sent them scintillating through his revery. The memory of
one word—and he was hid in the cloud of its thought.
As when a rapid rushes down over a cliff and a white cloud rises from
the gorge without any will or substance of its own, so did the sudden
tumbled memory of her half-whispered words cause to rise and permeate
his whole consciousness, a mist-cloud through which passed an
iridescence more beautiful, more brilliant than the rainbow in the
gorge.
And when the pealing rose from the meadow—a song shot toward heaven—the
Breton stopped, held his breath, so near was its song like her laughter
or her chiding. Thus each day he drifted rather than wandered about the
park as he waited for that hour when once more he should be seated
beside the screen. This sombre Breton, moving half-restlessly,
half-contentedly among the groves of flowery tamarix and wutung, among
orchards of bloomed almonds and lichee; along hillsides terraced in
orange and pomegranate; beside iris-circled ponds and down outstretching
streams, moved in a sort of a radiance, not incomparable to a bubble
adrift. For as a bubble reflects whatever surrounds it, whether upon the
banks, upon the stream, or clouds immeasurable overhead, illuminating
with inward mysterious brightness their lights, shades, colours, and
perspectives, so his nature as of other men took on the forms and
colouring of his surroundings and like a bubble tinctured them with a
radiance that came from within himself.
Heretofore the Breton’s impressionable, melancholy nature had, as a
bubble in the gloom of a cañon, whirled round and round in sombre
eddies. There had been no sunlight since the dim glimmer of his
childhood—and all that had been reflected in him whirling along through
the cloistered dusk had been a shadow—devoid of change as well as of
brightness. But now, as a bubble in the sunlight iridescent with a
myriad hues, he drifted along, his happiness modified and yet illumined
by the melancholy of a race that has known so little of sunshine and so
much of Breton gloom. In this park there was not a flower but whose
brightness was reflected within him; every nodding blade of grass, the
water-fowls’ gay plumage, the heavens, the mist clouds adrift like
himself in the tranquil air; the double brightness of sun in sky and
stream. And from within himself, from the very depths of his sombrous
nature, shone forth that something, which man has yet to name, and
subtly tinctured each image with rainbow tints.
In this manner—not uncommon in life—had the Breton been precipitated
from the cloisters; not into the world’s wild meadow, but into Tai Lin’s
park. This had all happened so suddenly, so completely, that it was as
impossible for him to remember the time when this sunlight had not
surrounded him as it was to conjecture that inevitable hour when
setting, he would again be in darkness; not the shadow of the past, but
the darkness of one that had known the sun.
The languorous flash of the Breton’s eye spoke frankly, even insistently
of this change—for the tongue cannot wag one’s thoughts more carelessly
than are the eyes loquacious of the heart’s secrets—and one day the
Unknown, as if exasperated by his indifference, took roughly hold of his
shoulder and demanded:
“What is the matter with you?”
The Breton looked at him wonderingly.
“Do you know that for two months you have not said a word? I doubt if
you have prayed. You no longer go with me. What are you dreaming about?”
“I do not know,” answered the Breton absently.
As weeks vanished, or rather seemingly blended into an hour, which had
just past, the wife of Tai Lin laughed somewhat less at him, an
hesitancy sometimes came into her mockery; impatience fluttered at times
in her manner, and silences began to creep in more frequently. In these
moments of stillness, when only the sensuous crinkle of silk was heard,
the caressing tremor of the fan or the soft pulse tap, tap, of her foot,
the Breton leaned forward on the table.
CHAPTER FOUR
A DRAGON AND THE GROTTO
Along the waterfront of the southern suburbs, which were penned in
between the walls of the city and the river, ran a wide wooden bund that
extended for some distance over the water.
The street of the Sombre Heavens leaving the city through the Great
Southern Gate debouches almost into the middle of it, at which place it
has the appearance of a narrow field, so wide is it, and so dense and
multitudinous are the suburbs that crouch beneath the old south walls of
Yingching, with its towers and frown of a thousand years.
Just across the river, with its myriads of quarrelling boats, is the
Monastery of Wa-lam-tze, where five hundred monks with their fowls doze
and blink in alcoved groves or in halls that are of marble. Opposite the
western end whirls the black pool of Pakngotam, fathomless at this
place, but connected subterraneously with distant points. A pig thrown
into it will be found at Ko-Chao, two hundred and fifty miles away,
where it boils up in the hollow of three hills. It is also connected
with Chukow, two hundred and eighty miles distant, and comes up for the
last time at Shukwan among the marshes on the borders of the southern
sea. Beyond Pakngotam is the monastery Tai Tung, where the earth holds a
mysterious abyss that is a source of terror and confidence, for the
noxious fumes and vapours that rise out of it—as from the cleft in the
Temple of Phytia—presage tempests on land and sea. When a storm
approaches, even at a great distance, a thick lurid mist rolls out of
this Dragon’s mouth and covers the groves of the Monastery. It is
believed that these vapours are forced out by the violent beatings of
the earth’s pulse, that are no other than the subterranean streams of
Pakngotam. These pulsations are caused in distant places by the storms’
weight forcing the vapours through the veins of the earth to the
Dragon’s mouth, where they are spit forth as warning of the tempest’s
approach. Thus this gigantic barometer portrays not only the
commiseration and sublimity of the gods, but their watchfulness over the
old city of Yingching.
During low water the bund at the foot of the Street of the Sombre
Heavens is used for the execution of criminals, although there is a
Court of Execution not far from the southeast corner of the city walls.
But this portion of the bund, so wide and prominent, is almost always
used, especially when it is desired to make a greater display of
official grandeur and the Law’s vermilion majesty.
The Breton in leaving the park of Tai Lin usually passed out of the city
by the Great Southern Gate, and following the Street of the Sombre
Heavens came nearly every evening to this part of the bund, where he
loitered instead of continuing on his way to the Mission. Eventually the
bund loafers became accustomed to his tall form standing at evening
motionless on the bund’s very edge, his garments blown by the river’s
wind, and his eyes dreamily lowered on the floods rolling at his feet.
Men passing him commented:
“Scholar.”
“He is wasting his time.”
“He thinks,” said one.
“A fool,” replied another.
“He is a wise man,” growled a misanthrope.
“Why?”
“He is thinking of jumping into bed.”
“He dreams,” said a boat-woman.
“About what?” demanded a slipper boat-girl with bated breath.
“Who knows, Alinn, when the dreamer does not!”
One late afternoon as the sun hung red in the purple mist, which rises
from the rice fields beyond Honam, the Breton was dreaming as usual on
the bund’s edge when a sampan gondoliered by a boat-girl glided to a
landing stair not far from him. Under the bamboo awning sat a foreigner
talking eagerly to her as she moved easily and gracefully her ponderous
oar. The boat passed under the bund. Presently the foreigner mounted the
landing stage, but at the top of the stairs stopped perplexed and
uncertain, then pattered hastily over to the edge.
“Hi! Cumsha! Hi!” he cried, frantically shaking his umbrella at the
slipper boat as it started on its way across the river.
The boat trembled momentarily in the dark mighty currents, then turned
slowly around and approached that part of the bund where the stranger
stood beside the Breton.
“I know you,” he commented, as he glanced quickly up at the Breton, “but
look at that,” and he pointed to the girl as she moved with so much
grace her slender craft. “A water nymph, sir, in blue pantlets! I am the
Reverend Tobias Hook, and I tell you, my young friend, there is not
another like her from Wampoa to Wu-Chau; she is a vision of triple
dimples, and when you see them you will ooze with envy. What an ideal
for a convert! How admirable she will be around the house! I have cumsha
for you, my little lost lamb,” he chirped as the girl steadied her boat
in the currents below them.
“Throw it down,” she answered in a matter-of-fact way.
“My poor lamb, will you not answer?”
“What?”
“What I spiritually beseeched of you in the boat.”
“I forget.”
“Will you not receive what I offered?”
“I am afraid.”
“Think of what you will have.”
“I would rather have that cumsha.”
“Think! think what you will have,” he repeated ecstatically.
“This is my sampan; I live on the river because I was born here and will
die here.”
“Come with me,” he held out his hands.
“Throw that cumsha or I will go.”
As she started to swing her great oar the stranger threw a few coppers
into the boat and, leaning on his umbrella, watched her cross the river,
his eyes dancing as they followed her lithe body swaying in rhythmic
motion to the movement of the great oar. Finally, when she was lost to
sight among the other craft, he turned to the Breton, shaking his head
solemnly.
“Ah me,” he sighed. “I was just in time; another day—who knows—it might
have been too late.... It is going to be contentious. I see it, I hear
it, I know it; but let it come, I will out-Solomon Solomon with the keen
edge of my diplomacy, and mark you, the infant of my desire will not be
severed.”
For some moments the Reverend Tobias Hook balanced himself, now on his
heels, now on his toes.
“My young friend,” he resumed with impressive solemnity, “reverence
diplomacy primarily and late, for it is the right healing hand of our
Maker. It alone diagnoses the depths and shallows of diseased
contentions. With subtle pills it ruddies up a pale hope, or judiciously
phialing out poppied words it bats the eye of envy. And when the
distemper of ambition rolls up the pulse of those around you lay on the
gentle fingers of diplomacy, pucker up the wise silent lips, and
blinking, fashion out a cure. If, in due time, you should fall, as men
have fallen from Adam down, into the fever and ague of marriage, you
will need for your own health’s sake this physician’s calming dosage.
“Marriage, marriage,” he soliloquised bitterly, jamming the point of his
umbrella viciously into the planks, “that, my young friend, is the act
that strips us and leaves us naked of hope. Why did I marry? A question.
Was I lonely? No. I was wallowing in youth. Was it greed? No, for it has
further impoverished my poverty. Was it ambition? No, I tempt not what
caused the fall of angels. Was it love? There is no need to ask that
question. Nor is there any use to take the whole inventory of my mind. I
did it—that is all.
“This thing and theory of the one woman, my young friend, is like a
nettle found in the White Cloud Hills; it tickles sensationally at
first, then leaves a rash burning the rest of life. In this nettle
simile lies the substance of my whole contention. At the moment of
discovery our vision is distorted so that we discern in this very nettle
a rose, a lily, or what not so that it is pleasing to our fancy. We
pluck, we pop the other eye, and before we know we begin to scratch.
“Moreover, in this rose and lily metaphor lies argument for another
drift to the point we are getting at. We grant the one woman to be the
perfect rose or lily; man ambling through the garden of womankind spies
this choicest flower and plucks it—which is marriage—then for his
temerity wanders the rest of life through this endless blooming garden
with an herb whose hues are soon no hues, whose perfume has become an
odour, and its sweets so galled that the very bees forsake it and
hornets extract substance from it for their stings. Furthermore, my
young friend, in your feeble youth, unstrengthened by the vicissitudes
of matrimony, nor toiled, nor calloused by it, I warn you that the
sweetness of one rose is soon blown. No cook can concoct a meal out of
one dish, nor prayers nor Aladdins make one meal fill out the course of
life. It is variety and abundance that peppers and adorns the monotony
of this rutted earth. Ah, if our discretion would only come in youth and
our follies in old age! What happiness! We would die from a surfeit of
it.”
The Reverend Hook stepped closer to the Breton and laid his hand
consolingly on his shoulder.
“My young friend, I have watched you for many weeks standing at dusk on
this bund and holding dialogue with empty space, and I conceived the
thoughts I have given birth to—that there is a woman in it, for nothing
but female imaginings can make a man a companion to shadows and vapours,
squeezing music out of noise and plastering the air thick with visions.
“Now mark me, I do not complain of lathering in this fragrant soap that
so cleanses our minds of sorrow, but let lather be lather; temporarily
it laves us in joy but in the One love—no! no! with it comes only moody
agitations of the heart. You try to crib on nature and deceive yourself
into believing that the lily cannot lose its whiteness, nor the rose its
perfume. Ah, my young dreamer, if you had Mrs. Hook for one week—that is
all!
“But let us be cheerful, retrospect your thoughts back to that little
dimpled darling in blue pantlets! Could anything be finer? She is
curried to my taste, sir, and when chutneyed with a little strife—what a
morsel! What a dish!... If I can clasp her once, just once, mark you,
she will wail for the love of me.”
The Reverend Tobias Hook became meditative at this pleasing thought. He
folded his hands on the head of his umbrella and gazed abstractedly down
into the sombre flowing waters that the Chinese call the Pearl River;
not, however, because pearls are found in its silty bed, but pearls are
euphemistic of tears. This is the River of Tears, dark in sunlight,
melancholy and sullen at dusk, and at midnight a dark flood that mourns.
There is an immense terribleness about it and its sorrow; robbing,
feeding, contemplating, nursing, and in due time devouring the
innumerable millions it has reared. The giving of man to this River of
his tears and his dead has been without end, as long as they have dwelt
on its banks it has been so, yet they conceal this fact from themselves
by calling its dark flood the River of Pearls, by giving gods to its
depths; to its banks, temples and pagodas.
Suddenly the Reverend Tobias Hook was aroused from his sweet musings by
the falling of dusk.
“I must hasten!” he exclaimed abruptly; “to-morrow I will come back. I
want to talk to you about the Treasure hidden in the Grotto of the
Sleepless Dragon, and that, sir, is worth dreaming about. But I cannot
stay.” He shook his head dolefully and looked furtively over his
shoulder.
“Mrs. Hook is at the Willow Gate this very moment watching for me, and
when she sees my rolling, sensuous gait, my pouted under lip and
high-distempered cheek she will cluck, sir, she will cluck with rage.”
CHAPTER FIVE
THE MONSOON
“Do you know what is the matter with you?” demanded the Unknown gruffly
as he stopped the Breton hastening out of the Mission Gate.
The priest looked up.
“You are happy,” the Unknown grumbled.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“I do not know.”
“What do you think?”
“I think it is from God.”
While the Breton did not perceive it, the wife had in a way become less
wilful, though her moods were yet as the river’s wind; her words as
changeful as the mocking-bird’s song; her impetuosity as uncertain as
those strange storms that come down through the gorges of Kai Fong. One
moment sweetly naïve as a child, the next abrupt and full of cold scorn;
she still chided, still coaxed and scolded, though sometimes her words
caressed. She questioned and derided as in the past, and still brought
doubt into his sensitive eyes only to laugh it away.
The fact is, however, that in the rapid rush of time, the wife laughed
less, and in no such manner as she did during the first weeks of his
tutorship; then it was part of her always, and he heard it even in her
most impatient moments. She welcomed him with it; mocked and scorned
with its music, and when he departed its petulant echoes ceased at no
time in his heart.
So as months passed and the eyes of the Breton lost their melancholy
shadows, there crept imperceptibly into the wife’s laughter a softened,
doubtful tingle. It was as though the sadness, which went out from his
eyes, was finding its way into her laugh.
“Will you never finish that book?” she complained.
“You do not like it?” He looked up hastily, a shadow in his eyes.
“No!” she answered sharply.
“I have two other books,” he suggested, not turning his eyes away from
the crevices.
“No!” she cried impatiently, “not another book!”
“What shall I teach you?” he asked softly.
“I do not know,” she mused vaguely; “but it’s something! something!”
“And you do not know?” His eyes became suddenly bright.
“No.”
“Then it is from God.”
“Please don’t pray,” she pleaded.
“You do not——”
“I know—but it is so tiresome,” she interrupted plaintively. “Priest,”
she whispered.
He looked up.
“I know, I know,” her whisper was constrained. “Do you?”
He shook his head.
“Do you wish to?”
He could scarcely hear and did not at all understand, so he made no
answer and the questioning in his eyes did not change.
“Rest your ear here,” she whispered, putting her little finger through
the crevice.
He hesitated for a moment, then in the manner of a boy pressed his ear
tightly to the crevice. For a moment there was perfect stillness, then a
hurried, alarmed fluttering of silk.
Presently far from the screen he heard the wife strike her hands softly,
nervously together.
“You must go,” she cried, her voice trembling. “Please don’t stand
there.”
But before the Breton left that afternoon the dusk of a monsoon storm
had darkened the rooms and as he passed through the park masses of
clouds as black as the night-sea rushed along across the sky like
enormous billows frothed with a grey foam. The narrow streets were
filled with hurrying men; shopkeepers were putting up shutters, and
barring doors; hucksters ceased their cries; itinerant barbers,
money-changers, and fortune-tellers were hastily, silently departing.
Sentries left their posts; mothers screamed after wayward brats; beggars
sought the shelter of temples, and the chant of the blind was still.
The Breton, instead of returning to the Mission, went as swiftly as
possible through the tortuous streets to the East Gate, thence made his
way toward their outer edge, where a small Catholic community lived,
almost buried under the tumbled side of this vast, old brick-heap—a
plastered chip from the Rock of St. Peter.
The streets were now deserted. Here and there people stood in their
doorways and watched him pass. Fowls hovered by threshold and children,
still devilish, scurried hither and thither—storm-tempters and scorners.
When the Breton reached the edge of the suburbs he turned southward and
hastened along the embankment of an old canal; to the right was the
city; on his left the fields, and beyond darkness.
There came the rumble-boom of distant thunder.
It was twilight.
No one could be seen; no sounds were heard. Upon the earth rested that
vasty stillness which belongs to dusk when dusk is the forepart of a
storm. Night birds, day beasts, men, insects, all were sheltered. It was
night.
The Breton hastened on.
As he drew near to the Catholic community, a flame of lightning burst
out of the blackness; a terrific thunder-crash followed; then again
impenetrable gloom was around him. But that flash, as though it were the
torch of God thrust out of heaven, illumed for one brief second a dismal
scene.
Before him on the bank of the old canal stood a man with head bowed upon
his bosom, his hands hanging loosely to his side while the wild
night-wind whipped thin garments about his body. At the man’s feet
cowered a woman holding a baby to her breast, and, crouching over it,
sought to ward off the storm. Two small children clung to his legs. This
group did not speak, nor move, nor sob.
The Breton approached them.
“Why are you out in this storm?” he asked gently.
“It welcomes us,” the man growled carelessly.
“Where is your house?”
“It is here.”
“Your beds?”
“We do not sleep.”
“Your food?”
“We do not eat.”
“Who sent you here?”
“Fate.”
“It cannot protect you.”
“Who can protect whom Fate deserts?”
“But the storm——”
“Bah! the storm will come and go with its good and ruin. Fate remains
unaltered.”
“Let me shelter you.”
“Where?”
“I am a Christian and near are my friends.”
“You are my enemy,” the man replied with the same nonchalance.
“Your enemy?”
“Leave us.”
“I cannot.”
“You wish the eyes of my children?”
“I wish to help you.”
“You do?”
“Yes.”
“Kill us.”
“Will you not go?”
“Owls consort with owls; finches with finches.”
“My wish is to help you.”
“To-day you took away my house and gave it to Chun Ping, who is a
Christian, a river-pirate, a buyer and seller of stolen goods. You know
this, the mandarins know this, but you work together, you do these
villainies together—weak governments and powerful gods sleep in the same
bed.
“How many years have I sweated that I might have that little house? What
man can say I am not honest? That I did not give alms to the blind and
cash to the gods in the Temple? Did I not intend to save money that my
sons could study and take the Examinations? Now—it is all gone.
“Chun Ping wanted my house; he went with your priests and said it was
his. The priests said it was his house. I went to the Yamen and showed
them my red deed and white deed. They said, ‘It is your house; give us
money and we will protect you.’ I gave them all my money. They gave my
house to Chun Ping. They said, ‘We dare not offend these Christians;
they have gunboats in the river. Go away.’ To-night your priests came
and put me out.”
The Breton made no answer.
When the lightning flashed again it showed two men standing silently
over the woman and children.
The black breakers of the storm-sea overhead began to fall amid the
crash and boom of thunder.
The children were terror-stricken; the mother sobbed and cooed. The
priest stared out into the night toward the Catholic community.
The storm grew worse and the still group bowed under it. The teeth of
the little children chattered, but they did not cry nor speak. The
mother had ceased her sobs and no longer cooed to her baby.
“We must go!” said the Breton, and he took up one of the children; the
man picked up the other and a cage in which fluttered a bedraggled bird.
They started off and the mother with her baby hugged tightly to her
breast, followed.
The Breton, leading the way, went up to the door of a house and knocked.
No answer.
He went to another.
“Who knocks?” demanded a man from within.
“We are caught in the storm.”
“Who are you?”
The priest turned to the man behind him.
“Tsang.”
“It is the family of Tsang.”
There came no response. He knocked on the door again, but it was
useless. So they went on, in the reek of rain and wind-blasts, from
house to house.
Suddenly the man Tsang stopped. He beat violently on a door.
“What do you want?” growled a rough voice from within.
“My house!”
“Who are you?”
“I am Tsang.”
“You are a rat.”
“I am an honest man. Give me my house.”
“Give me your wife. I am cold.”
“Christian!”
“The eyes of your brats are worth two taels. Their spleen is useless.”
“I will raise a mob and destroy you.”
“The Christian gunboats in the river will tear you into rags.”
“You have destroyed your ancestral tablets.”
“I cooked to-night’s rice with yours.”
“You may deceive men, but you cannot close the eye of Fate. You will yet
be cut into a thousand pieces.”
“Bah! The Law is a rusty knife, my Church is a new cannon. They dare not
question me.”
“By the Temple of the One God, you have a shop to receive stolen goods.”
“I am a Christian.”
“You stole the jade-tablets from the Ancestral Hall of Ho.”
“I am a Christian.”
“You were aboard the pirate junk that killed thirty people near the Lob
pagoda on the fifth day of the last moon.”
“I am a Christian.”
“You stole the daughter of the Widow Chin and sold her to a
whoremonger.”
“You had none old enough.”
“You cannot escape. Fate will overtake you though the Yamen runners
fail.”
The priest took the man’s arm and dragged him away.
They trudged on, whither? This thought did not occur to any of them.
They now forgot the wind and the waters that flowed underfoot. To the
man Tsang this raging of the elements seemed a natural portion of his
ruin. He became part of this environment of wrath and was contented in
it. The storm was companionable. This tempest and the man held converse,
which was friendly.
The Breton led the way while the mother trudged on behind. This woman
hardly knew that she was turned out of doors and was wandering about in
the night through a wreck of waters. What did she care for these rending
winds; this night vomit of heaven; these red forks of fire or blare of
thunder?
Her babe suckled.
So they went on in single file until suddenly the little boy on the
Breton’s shoulder began to cry, which was next best to the stopping of
the storm.
The Breton turned to the man.
“Where can we find shelter for your wife and babies?”
“In to-morrow.”
“But to-night?”
“Let us go to the river.”
“Why?”
“We can drown.”
“When men fear death less than poverty, should they not be held in
contempt?”
“It is true.”
“We must find protection.”
“Let us go to your Mission.”
“You hate Christians.”
“I despise them!”
“We cannot.”
“Then let us go to the Temple of the Five Gods. It stands to reason that
five gods have more compassion than one.”
The man now led the way. The woman still followed, falling behind like a
tired dog, and like a dog she made no complaint. Often they stopped and,
halting, waited for her; when she caught up, this mother would give a
long whistling sigh and sink down in the mud.
“Come,” said the man, “we must hasten or the Temple will be
overcrowded.”
“With whom?” asked the Breton.
“With rags and lice.”
“What?”
“Yes, the temples in the Middle Kingdom are now only the refuge of
beggars—as in your country they are filled with plotters.”
“Are there no robbers?” asked the mother feebly.
“No,” he replied consolingly. “Fate is impartial—our temples have only
vermin; the beasts were reserved for this priest’s Church.”
Presently they reached the outer gates of the Temple of the Five Gods;
it was ajar. They crossed the court, where the water reached high above
their ankles, and ascending the granite steps hesitated on the
threshold. They lingered, uncertain before the huge doorway, which
looked like the entrance to some abyss, then the Breton stepped in,
closely followed by the man and the woman.
The lightning’s glare lit up dimly, momentarily, the temple’s vast hall,
where dark heaps of shadowy forms were huddled along the sides. At times
these heaps shuddered, and from out of the depths of them came groans.
At the farther end of the temple’s hall, on a huge ebon altar, were the
images of the Five Gods. And when the red flare of lightning inflamed
their terrible eyes, these gods looked down upon the sprawling wreck of
man and grinned.
Toward these monsters the Breton made his way, followed by the man Tsang
and the mother. Close by the altar they found a vacant spot where they
crouched, while the wind that came through the great entrance blew full
upon them. The child in the Breton’s arms shook with cold, and taking
off his robe, he wrapped it about the little thing.
The mother cooed and talked to her baby.
Presently they all nodded and slept—except the Breton and the Five Gods
above him. The child’s chubby face rested softly, securely against his
neck, and that indefinable murmur of its sleep gave him a strange thrill
of comfort. In the slumber breathing of a child, as in the breath of
solitudes, are awakened memories and thoughts, which altogether might be
called the symphony of revery. And the Breton heard in the child’s
sleeping sighs a voice, which vanquished the blackness of the night.
Without this refuge of the forsaken pounded the deafening chum of wind
and rain and thunder. But the priest, crouching in front of the altar,
listening to the echo of another voice, heard nothing. The gods looked
down upon him and—smiled.
CHAPTER SIX
A GIFT
The monsoon, with its wrack and pain, passed away much in the manner as
the man Tsang said it would; for the monsoon repletes more than it
destroys, and the prayer that goes up for it is a great prayer.
“I was alone to suffer,” commented the outcast complacently, “but in the
vomit of the monsoon Fate relented and the priest came.”
Just outside of the Bamboo Gate in the easterly part of the southern
suburbs, close to where the alley of the Old Dog opens kennel-like into
the Street of Ivory-workers, the Breton provided a home for Tsang’s
family, and thither the street currents drifted him more often than he
knew. The little Tsangs toddled out to meet him, climbed upon him,
smeared his robe with rice and kale, kissed him, prodded his blue eyes,
and cried when he went away. The man Tsang revered him and cautioned his
neighbours that Fate had peculiarly redeemed this one priest out of the
whole utterly damned tribe of them all.
“Why is it?” demanded one of his neighbours.
“How do I know!” answered Tsang indignantly. “Such things belong to
Fate, and, neighbours, don’t woman Fate, don’t spy, don’t peep!”
While the Breton went every few days to Tsang’s hole in the Kennel of
the Old Dog, yet he came always by evening to the bund where a certain
murmur rising from the river softened the grind and crunch of the city’s
toil. Some days, as on this day, which was the fourth of the fifth
moon—other noises in addition to its murmurs came from it and the
rasped, bruised milling of man was completely drowned in them. On this
day the river revelled in the gaiety of those whom it fed, and all the
careless joy, the wine, the froth, and ribbons of Yingching laughed
there. Wherever the eye could reach were seen the tatters and tinsels of
ten myriads silks swishing and fluttering in the river wind. The
buildings along the bund pulled over their time-pocked and shrivelled
forms robes of satin. Sea-going junks hovered above the river like
gigantic butterflies, their great ribbed sails turned into gorgeous,
trembling wings of silk. The flower-boats along the southern bank were
voluptuous in silken wraps; their eaves ear-ringed with lanterns, while
on their flower-clustered balconies crowded dainty pouting creatures,
their music and laughter mingling with the joy of the day. Among these
winged junks and flower-boats darted slender slipper craft like
gay-breasted swallows, twittering, perking, and quivering in
mid-currents.
Nothing can exceed the gaiety of this sombre river during the Festival
of the Dragon boats; and when the Breton came to the bund on this
day—which in Western chronology comes in June—he found it in a gay
swelter of excitement. On this day were the races of the Dragon boats;
and the cleared course, which extended from the west side of Pakngotam’s
black pool to the Island of the Sea-Pearl, was lined with boat-loads of
gesticulating spectators, howling and chattering as the Dragon craft
rushed up and down stream, propelled by naked, sweating demons and urged
on with cries, gongs, and flags.
But these unaccustomed pleasure sounds, emanating from a river that of
itself mourned and was sombre, were lost upon the Breton as he stood
over the bund’s edge dreaming, listening alone to the murmur underfoot.
The rattle of hucksters, the scoldings and screechings of old boatwomen,
the men’s voices nonchalantly cursing or chanting in falsetto tones the
theatricals of the river, the splash of oars, burst of crackers, cries
of children in their sports, the shrill songs of slipper boat-girls, the
howl and clangour of the Dragon boats and the dull pandemonium that rose
from the goals did not cause him to raise his head nor turn away from
the yellow waters. It mattered in no way to him that the loom of life,
always dully clangorous about this bund, wove upon this day a few bright
strands through its warp of gloom. He did not look up nor make note of
it, for he was no longer of its woof nor its warp nor the ravelled ends
that fell by the loom.
Within the quiet places of the Breton’s love the world nor its noises
could not penetrate. Only gentle thoughts made their way thither,
invoking feelings deeper than themselves; thoughts veiled from the world
and such that even he must fall into deep communing to lift apart their
shadowy screen. He revelled in that fair region where there are no paths
nor guideposts—the wilderness of meditation. With unuplifted eyes he
paced on through groves where none had gone before him nor shall follow.
Love danced ahead of him, thought ambled after. Now he stopped to listen
to music; now to laughter that was more than music, now to chidings that
were a little of both. Sometimes he lingered over a slumbering, sensuous
rustle that drew down from heaven the inspiration of a dream.
So the Breton cared in no manner what the world might do around him,
whether it toiled along—as it did ordinarily—on all fours, or rushed
wildly exuberant into the morrow. Whatever it might be he had a region
separate from it—a region where the running brooks of thought had no end
of babbling, where the wind scattered its stars without number, and in
its horizonless heaven the fairy tumbled clouds were imaged and
tinctured with the iridescence of meditative love.
Thus the Breton lingered on the bund until dusk passed into night to
scatter the noises around; then he came forth from the region of his
dreams with the slight semblance of a smile on his lips and hastened to
the Mission.
Often, however, he was awakened from midst of these dreams and
ruthlessly snatched out of his heaven by no less a personage than his
new acquaintance the Reverend Tobias Hook. Fortunately or otherwise, as
it may prove to be—the Reverend Hook came often to the bund when the
Breton was there. It was too evident that he did not come solely for
recreation, or to breathe in that open spot the river’s wind, since he
spent his time, either in extolling the charms of some new nymph he had
discovered in the river or in the wilderness of Yingching and whose
conversion he was about to undertake in spite of Mrs. Hook; or he
expatiated without end concerning the Grotto of the Sleepless Dragon,
where Yu Ngao, the last of the Ming Emperors, sought refuge with his
retinue and imperial treasure—to be seen not again by mankind.
At first the Reverend Hook was chilled by the dreamy indifference of the
Breton, and it was only after he had found that silence was a part of
the priest’s nature that he unloosed his endless chain of information
and argument concerning these caverns from whose mysterious depths no
man has even been known to return. The gaining of this knowledge had
been one of his chief pursuits, a task he had found delightful with
expectation, and he believed in due time would not be without its
rewards.
From every source, from legends and histories, he had collected
information concerning these caves, all of which he unfolded as he
coaxed and argued, tilting himself on his heels and toes in his
pleadings with the Breton to go with him to these Grottoes, where the
Great Earth Dragon guards so zealously the melancholy secret of the
Emperor.
The Breton listened but did not go, nor did he even make reply.
“And why not, sir, why not?” the Reverend Tobias Hook would demand
shrilly, cocking himself on his toes.
The Breton did not answer.
Fate was yet to drive him thither.
This day the Reverend Hook came later than usual, and had not talked
with the Breton long before he pulled a roll of papers from his coat
pocket and began on his favourite subject—the treasure in the Dragon’s
Grotto.
“Young sir,” he continued reprovingly, “you must undress your mind of
any thought that I burrow for personal gain. Disillusionate yourself! I
scorn, sir, that puffed Huckster, that old dealer, who bundles up men’s
honour and upon the open market of the world traffics in their virtue. I
am an antiquarian, sir, a subterraneous hunter.
“Of course,” he added in a modified tone, “it would be but right for me
to adorn my sideboard with a few platters and pitchers of gold, a few
jade vases and urns for my parlour; a reserve of pearls and emeralds to
cool the hot distemper of my wife,—which, my young friend, cannot be too
few,—for she falls into the most parboiled ecstatics not less than once
a day. Sometimes in the very middle of the night a sudden thought
pierces her in a tender spot and out she bounces; before I can disengage
my eyelids from heavy sleep she has me stalled on the floor, rides me
with her knees, and plays horse with my beard.
“Now, sir, you see the nakedness of my plans; if I can get hold of the
jewels of Yu Ngao, I will be able to ransom myself from these frolics.
Ah! if I can but coax her into skirts again I will flounce them with
emeralds, and every time she weeps I will match each dewy tear with ten
big pearls.
“No, no, my young friend, do not berate wealth, for though in youth it
is a mill that grinds out follies, when youth is done it mills the
rarest comforts.
“These papers,” and the Reverend Hook unrolled the papers he had been
holding, “are maps and other information concerning the Grottos. This is
the triple labour of years. I have screwed it out of legends and pulled
it out of the deepest records.
“This map,” and he handed one of the sheets to the Breton, “is the route
to the Grottos from Yingching. A scrutiny of this one, on the other
hand, shows it to be a map of the path leading from the river to the
true cavern under the falls. These other manuscripts are historical
proofs; they defy refutation, and no man’s eyes but yours have or ever
will discover them.
“I tell you, sir, the treasure of the whole Ming dynasty is there,
hoarded in the earth’s dark cellars and misered there these hundreds of
years by unchristian superstitions. Do you know that if all the Chinese
in this country were hunting you in maddest frenzy you would be safe
from them in the Grotto of the Sleepless Dragon? They won’t go near it.
But we, unburdened by such superstitions, can filch these jewels from
the Old Dragon with impunity, with gaiety.
“Ah! what a treasure! Cry havoc, my young friend, to reservation, and
let your mind’s eye romp through these dim-eyed caverns, where in great
heaps lie the garniture of Empires. Plates of gold enough to feed two
thousand three hundred and eight of royal blood, cups and bowls to
match; pitchers and little saucers as numerous as the golden plaques
that lay on the sky at night. Shields, swords, cuirasses studded with
jewels. Priceless urns of jade, slop over, sir, with brimming measures
of pearls; there are rubies that by comparison would jaundice the
reddest blood, while emeralds are so thickly strewn about that they lay
in wrinkled folds like moss-green carpets.
“Disport yourself among these hillocks of wealth that would make
Croesus’ spirit mundane with envy. Dine from golden platters, splash in
basins of silver, play hockey with emeralds, shower the gloom with
handfuls of pearls, and with the big round rubies shoot a game of
marbles——”
The Reverend Tobias Hook stopped suddenly and peered through the gloom,
now ebbing imperceptibly into the quietude of night. The Dragon boats no
longer scurried over the water, and the dwellers on the river had ceased
their clamour. The yellow flood was becoming darkly sullen, impatient
for that hour when man’s noisy hum would be silent.
For some time the Reverend Tobias Hook contemplated seriously the
darkening of these waters, then with sudden resolution shoved the papers
containing the maps and secrets of the Grotto of the Sleepless Dragon
into the hands of the Breton, who took them unconcernedly, not even
raising his eyes from the waters—now an abyss that muttered.
Soon afterwards the Reverend Hook went softly away, and in uncertain
mind disappeared up the Street of the Sombre Heavens.
The Breton continued gazing down into the depths that whispered until
night had settled about him, then he put into his bosom the little man’s
terrible gift.
CHAPTER SEVEN
DAWN
The laugh of the wife, like her song, had departed. No longer it pealed
through the rooms—nor its echo. Her laugh was gone; slowly,
imperceptibly had it vanished as music stolen away and smothered by the
wind. But neither she nor the Breton knew that it was no more.
The wife of Tai Lin had become silent, musing, seclusive. She no longer
contradicted her husband, nor laughed at him, nor mocked nor caressed
him.
“She is outgrowing her childhood,” sighed Tai Lin to himself.
This wife of his, instead of sitting on a stool at his feet as she used
to do, would remain for hours by the screen when she thought that none
were about her but the thrushes in their bamboo cages overhead. By noon
or by night, moved by sudden impulse, she would creep through the
screen’s wicket into the outer apartment and, nestling in the chair that
stood beside it, bury her face in her arms and cry softly to herself
with that grief that is very old.
But she was not alone with her tears, nor with the thrushes complaining
overhead—she was never alone. At all hours a maidservant hovered about
her, and only when the Breton came did this servant retire behind an
oval doorway that led from her mistress’ room to an open court. There
she concealed herself and listened to the words between them; to their
silences; to the going away of the wife’s laughter and the coming of her
tears. After a time she began to shake her head, perplexedly, fatefully.
One day, as the wife sat in the outer apartment sobbing to herself, this
maidservant stole up to her, and kneeling down by the table, asked
gently: