The wife sobbed but made no reply.
“Why are you crying?” asked the maid again.
“Go away, Kim! Go away!” she cried brokenly. “You cannot understand—I do
not know! Go away—please go away!”
The servant left her. But that night when she came to the bishop’s door
she hesitated, picked the hem of her garment; turned away; came back,
then knocked ruefully on the portal.
When the Breton came to the wife’s apartments he no longer stood on the
threshold waiting for her salutation or expectant of her laughter.
Crossing the room, naïvely eager, he sat down in his chair and, looking
up to certain crevices in the screen, remained silent with a smile in
his eyes.
Day by day these silences grew longer. Without laughter, without
converse, almost without movement, each sat close to the screen—so close
that her red pouting finger tips were hardly over his head, and
sometimes through the crevices just above them flashed a light, dark and
lustrous.
In this manner it came about that Silence held them more and more
beneath its velvet hand, although this stillness of theirs was not mute
nor somnolent. At intervals it was broken by a question, a reprimand, a
whisper; a word that caressed or a burst of scorn; only laughter came
not again. Their conversations were no more than flashes; an ignition,
an illumination.
Sometimes the Breton would look up as if about to say something and the
wife, breathless, would demand:
“What?”
He never spoke. Yet one day in the midst of their silence he lifted his
eyes to the crevice, his lips moved, but only his eyes uttered.
Hastily the wife withdrew her fingers; there was a flutter of silk;
constrained stillness.
“Oh, well,” she commented, turning back to the screen, “it doesn’t
matter; if a man can’t get ivory from a rat’s mouth, how can a woman
expect truth from a man’s?”
He turned away toward the windows.
In a few moments her fingers were again thrust redly through the
crevices.
“Are you?” she whispered.
The Breton looked up.
Again there was silence.
“Do you know what it is?” she still whispered.
Once more he raised his eyes to the crevices above the finger-tips.
“It is a rain-drop, priest, iridescent—but trembling on the eaves’
edge.”
While these silences grew longer, they at the same time were drawing to
an end. No stillness can last for long in this world so full of noises,
and in time a second but greater restlessness lay hold of the wife. No
longer petulant, she became irritable, and often impatiently moving her
chair aside, she wandered about the room. And as time passed, this
unrest of the wife increased until it came about that she could not sit
for long beside the screen without getting up and moving uneasily, even
wearily, about the room; now by a table, then back to the screen; her
hands at one moment plucking flowers from their vases, in the next
tossing the folds of the silken tapestries.
One day she suddenly drew her fingers from the crevices, started to
cross the room, came back, and peremptorily ordered the Breton to go
away and stay away.
“Go!” she commanded, stamping her foot.
The Breton looked up wonderingly and his eyes smiled.
Presently he heard her open the shell-latticed window, then all was
still. The larks and thrushes from their swaying bamboo cages fluttered
and chirped questioningly. For there are silences that make birds as
well as women inquisitive. They cocked their heads, chirped, and looked
down unapprovingly upon the priest.
“What! I thought you had gone!”
The Breton turned his eyes expectantly to the crevices just above his
head.
“Are you not going?” she demanded coldly.
The Breton rose from his chair, uncertain, but the light in his eyes
untroubled.
“Sit down!”
The stillness that followed was not broken until after the feathery
shadows of the bamboo had crept across the translucent shells of the
latticed windows. Then the wife, very close to him, whispered:
“Priest.”
The Breton did not move.
“Is not this screen a nuisance!” she cried irritably, and her voice
would have been savage had it not been for the music of its tones.
The Breton neither answered nor turned his eyes away.
“Priest, shall I come out?”
He still looked up into the crevices.
“Shall I?”
A questioning light came into his eyes.
“Would it make you happy?” she whispered.
The light deepened.
“Well, I don’t!” she exclaimed scornfully. “At its best it is nothing;
in its truth it is false. Such hopes men lay to gold and rubies in their
mountain caskets: to the cloudy pearl in the jade depths of the sea.
Sought; found; lost; forgotten; its gold, cloud—gold and its pearl
moon-mist! How ridiculous!”
“Would you truly be happy?” Again her voice was without its impatience;
again it trembled with tenderness.
A light in the eyes of the Breton answered.
The birds fluttered and beat their wings against the bars of their
cages.
Evening was approaching. The cawing of the white-headed crows could now
be heard contending for their roosts in the banians.
The light in the room mellowed, became a rose-saffron, while the wind of
sundown blew in through an open window.
Suddenly the wicket in the screen was opened and the wife, leaning
against the lintel, looked down at him.
With difficulty the Breton priest rose from his chair. A flush swept
across his face, then pallor. He lifted his hand to the neck of his
robe; a film came over his eyes.
For a moment the wife fluttered on the screen’s threshold, then came
down and sat on a stool close by but with her back to him.
CHAPTER EIGHT
THE DELUGE FAMILY
In the phenomena of national life there are certain conditions that
force men into such a labyrinthine existence that they resemble, in
their bore and burrow, the teredo. These terebrants—human and
otherwise—exist to destroy; hence their dignity. Sometimes, like the
hymenoptera, they destroy to soar.
The Terebration of mankind—always more or less terrible—has left its
wrecks sticking desolately above the floods of Time in all parts of the
world, and shall through all ages leave its wreckage. These human
teredines, which have existed to a greater or less degree among all
nations during every period of their duration, are known by many names.
In the Latin countries they are called the Carbonari; in Russia, the
Nihilists; Germany, the Socialists—a teredo degenerated into a tapeworm;
Ireland, the Clan-na-gael; Greece, the Haeteria. In France there has
always been a mess of wrigglers, known and unnamed; in the Balkans is
another spew, which are allied to the necrophan, and China, the old and
huge nation, has its swarm of teredo in labyrinths also old and huge
like itself, and filled with unknown terror.
The Tien Tu Hin, unlike the teredines of Europe, is not nihilistic,
anarchistic, or a tapeworm; but is regarded by some as next to the end
of the world; by others as the millennium; yet, in truth, what will come
out of its two hundred and forty years of boring is not known. Such
things are not even conjectured in the depths of its endless labyrinths.
During all ages secret political organisations have had prolific progeny
in China, and when a dynasty becomes rotten they attack it like an old
pile in the sea. They gnaw into it; devour; eat upward or downward
according to the tide. The result is a cyst full of worms. When a storm
rises it vanishes or protrudes a stump at low tide.
Secret political societies in China like religions in the Occident, have
their immaculate conceptions, stars, signs and noises; the product of
which is a founder having the divinity of a god and the respect; who
ascends high places to preach; who governs and plays at dumb-bells with
the moon. An instance of this was Chang Kioh, immaculated some years
subsequent to Christ and a disciple of Lao-Tze, who, also, was not only
immaculately engendered, but was eighty years in gestation, born with a
white beard, and during his senile infancy wrote in five thousand
characters the religion of Taoism. This disciple formed the Yellow
Turban Rebels and with them destroyed the Great Han dynasties.
Matrêya, the Buddhist Messiah, has been immaculately foaled, rebelled,
and beheaded a good many times in this old land, while the Taiping
Rebellion, which started an half century ago and destroyed more than
twenty millions, all came about because Hung Hsiu Chüan was the younger
brother of Jesus and received visitations from God.
But stranger things than teredines swarming out of divinity have
destroyed dynasties in China. That of the Mongols, founded by Genghis
Khan, was annihilated by a ditty of the children of Honan and Hupeh, who
sang in childish treble:
“Down will Mongol kings be thrown,
When moves the One-eyed Man of Stone”
During the year 1344, the One-Eyed Man of Stone was found at a place
called Huanglingkuang by some labourers, who were repairing the banks of
the Yellow River. The rebellions resulting ended in the expulsion of the
Mongols and the establishment of the Ming dynasty by the Buddhist
acolyte, Chu Yuan Chang.
Thus through all the ages of China—and they have been many—this
terebration of man has ceased at no time. Yet the Tien Tu Hin, with more
than a ten million swarm of human teredo, with more than all the
wreckers that have gone before, is still silent. What will come out of
it man not only does not know, but its immensity forbids conjecture.
Among members it is called the Hung Kia, the Deluge Family; a family so
vast and wide that it is beyond our comprehension; it exceeds anything
ever conceived by man, and its labyrinths extend from Siberia to
Siam—half of Europe could be lost in them. They crawl under oceans to
the Straits Settlements; throughout the Malay Archipelago; the
Philippines, India, Burma, Australia, the Pacific Islands, North,
Central, and South America. This brotherhood of the Deluge Family, bound
by the same oaths, actuated by the same principles and obedient to the
same commands, has in its hidden recesses untold millions. While there
have been directed against it the most terrible penal laws, they avail
not nor reach down into the depths where it lives, travels, thrives, and
year after year, in its endless labyrinths, becomes more dreaded, its
murmur more terrible.
The terror about this society is its serenity and long quietude. Up to
the present time it has hardly more than growled, but silently these two
hundred and forty years it has been burrowing, burrowing.
A statesman in the reign of Kiuking said:
“The Empire rests on something like a volcano.”
Occasionally there have been sporadic outbreaks, and while some of them
have been extensive enough to annihilate many European kingdoms, they
are only thought of in the light of incidents, a source for anecdotes.
The hour of the Rebellion is not yet; but will come with a manifestation
from Heaven. This may be a red star in the East, or when the Five Flags
rise of their own accord from the earth, but more probably when the
phœnix sing from the wutung, for at that hour the Man has been born, and
on that day from all the fields of the Empire shall rise up those sown
of the dragon’s teeth: then will the silence of Ages be broken,
labyrinths uncoil, and a murmur come from depths so deep and unknown
that even the world itself shall shrink with dread.
The Tien Tu Hin was founded about 1674, in the Province of Fokien, in
the Putien District of the Fuchin Prefecture. Here, among the Chui Lien
Hills, in a vale charming on account of its solitude, was situated the
Buddhist monastery of Shaolintze, built by the priest Tahtsunye during
the Tang dynasty of the seventh century. But a thousand years later the
monks—whether forgetful or in accordance with the wishes of the Immortal
Tah—spent their time in the study of the arts of war, eventually
becoming so famous for their knowledge and ability that men came from
all parts of the Empire to receive instruction.
In the reign of Kanghi, the tributary state of Silu threw off its
allegiance and sent an army into China, defeating successively all
Imperial forces brought against it. Edicts were posted throughout the
Empire calling upon someone to free the country from the enemy. Chu
Kiuntah, a student at the monastery, took the edict and hastened to the
Vale of Shaolintze. After consultation the one hundred and twenty-eight
monks offered their services.
The Emperor raised them all to the rank of general, conferred plenary
powers upon them, and gave into their keeping a triangular iron seal
engraved with four characters.
In three months the Prince of Silu sued for peace, and the monks
returned to the capital in the midst of the triumphant songs of the
populace, while the grateful monarch offered them any offices they might
choose. They asked nothing other than permission to live in peaceful
seclusion amongst their hills of Chui Lien.
Years passed, and there rose high in court—as in the courts of other
nations—two ministers, Chenwangyao and Changchensui, who plotted for the
seizure of the Empire, believing that it was well within their grasp if
they could get rid of the monks of Shaolintze.
Accordingly they memoralised the Emperor, accusing the monks of treason;
showing that since they destroyed the victorious army of Silu with ease,
it would not be difficult for them to conquer China. They thus persuaded
the Emperor that his domains might at any time be taken from him and
begged to be allowed to destroy them secretly.
Receiving the Emperor’s sanction, the two ministers placed themselves at
the head of the Imperial Guards and set out for Fokien. But after
arriving in the Prefecture of Fuchui, they were unable to find the
monastery hidden away among the Chui Lien Hills, and were about to turn
back when they came upon the monk, Ma Eifuh.
Ma Eifuh ranked seventh in military skill among the monks, but to all
accounts first in lechery, and owing to his hot passion for the wife and
the daughter of Chu Kuintah, had been bambooed and expelled from the
monastery. It was while wandering about, raging under this punishment
and disgrace, that he came upon the Imperial Guards.
That night he led them to the monastery in the Vale of Shaolintze.
Gunpowder was placed about its walls and exploded. One hundred and nine
of the monks were instantly killed, but the surviving eighteen, still
retaining possession of the triangular seal, escaped into a court and
then crawling through a dog hole got clear of the burning buildings.
Aided by a thick fog, which came suddenly down into the Vale, they
passed the Guards and proceeded to the village of Huangchuen, where
thirteen died. Hence comes one of the terrible sayings of the Deluge
Family:
“On Huangchuen road they died,
And through a myriad years we abide,
They shall be avenged.”
The five survivors, Tsai Tehchung, Tang Tahung, Ma Chaohing, Hu Tehti,
and Li Shepkai, are now known as the Five Patriarchs. These five monks,
having burned the bodies of their brothers, were proceeding to Chung
Shawanken, in the Prefecture of Huenchuenfu, when suddenly—as the Jews
in their flight from the army of Egypt—they found water in front of them
and the Imperial Guards in their rear.
The immortal founder of the monastery, Tahtsuntze, seeing their danger,
sent down two clouds, which changed into planks of copper and iron,
forming a bridge over which the monks passed and safely reached the
Temple of Kaochi.
After several days they continued on their way eastward, but before long
learned that soldiers were again in pursuit, and thereupon they crossed
over into Hukwang where they stayed for two weeks. Again narrowly
escaping the Guards, the monks fled to the monastery of Pao Chu, where
they remained a number of days overwhelmed with distress and despair.
But it was here that they met Chen Chinan, destined, as it seemed, by
Heaven to become the founder of the Tien Tu Hin.
Chen Chinan, a member of the Hanlin Academy, had been President of the
Board of Censors at the time when Chenwangyao and Changchensui
memoralised the throne to destroy the monks, and had vigorously
remonstrated with the Emperor. This remonstrance brought upon him the
hatred of the two ministers that accused him as being a supporter of the
monks. He was thereupon deprived of his office and expelled from court.
Having returned to his home in Hukwang, he was devoting himself to study
when he met the monks as they were fleeing from the monastery of Pao
Chu. Filled with compassion, he led them to his home, called the Grotto
of the White Stork.
So now, when one member meets another and asks him whence he comes, the
answer is: “From the White-Stork Grotto.”
After taking care of the monks in his home for several weeks, Chen
Chinan took them to an extensive establishment called the
Hunghauting,—the Red Flower Pavilion,—where they dwelt until one day, as
they were sauntering along the banks of the beautiful Kungwei River,
they spied a strange object floating in its current; this object brought
about their departure.
Bringing the flotsam ashore, the monks found it to be a large stone
tripod having two ears, such as are used in burning incense. On the
bottom were engraved four large characters: Fan Tsing, Fuh Ming, Destroy
Tsing, Restore Ming. Around these was a circle of smaller characters
denoting its weight to be fifty-two catties and thirteen taels.
The monks carried this granite vessel to the top of a neighbouring hill,
where they erected an altar of stones. They used guava twigs for candles
and grass for incense, water instead of wine. As they prayed to Heaven
that a Ming Emperor would avenge the crime of Shaolintze, the twigs and
grass burst into flame. Seeing this the monks returned in great haste to
the Red Flower Pavilion and told Chen Chinan what had happened.
For a long time this man, destined to some yet unknown end, remained in
deep meditation.
“It is the will of Heaven,” he said presently, “that the dynasty of
Tsing shall be destroyed.”
When the time came for the five monks to depart, Chen Chinan stood
before them, and lifting his hands, spoke:
“Go forth, ye Five Patriarchs, to all quarters of the earth; over
mountains and moorlands, across the great lakes and five seas. Transmit
from man to man our secret words and signs. Be patient, and Heaven shall
in its wisdom manifest the time for the assembling of the Deluge
Family.”
Chen Chinan then returned to his Grotto of the White Stork, while the
Five Patriarchs went their separate ways to organise the Deluge in Five
Grand Sections, and to prepare for their assembly.
More than two hundred and forty years have passed, yet their successors
cease in no way this preparation.
The Deluge Family founded, this dreaded assembly of men above whose
labyrinths a third of mankind waits to be redeemed by it or be drowned
in it—a Deluge of blood: to hurl the world into war and bring out of it
Universal Peace.
The Deluge Family—like other families—has acquired in the course of time
peculiarities besides that of vastness.
In writing the members use superfluous or half characters in such a
manner as to make what is written unreadable to the uninitiated. In
speaking they have a vocabulary of their own.
In the language of the Hung Kia, fowls are known by numbers; a goose is
six, a duck eight. Beef is called great vegetables, and a fish a
tail-shaker or wave-borer. A dog is a mosquito and that insect a needle,
while a mosquito curtain is a lantern. Wine is known as red or green
water; oil as family harmony and water as three rivers. To ask a person
to smoke tobacco is to request him to bite ginger. To smoke opium is
biting clouds and the name of opium is clouds travelling. To ask persons
to dine is inviting them to farm sand and waves. A teacup is called a
lotus bud; a wine cup a lotus seed, and a plate, a lotus leaf.
Chop-sticks are golden selectors and roast pork becomes golden brindle.
In speaking of the Deluge Family, a Lodge is called the Red Flower
Pavilion or the Pine and Cedar Grove. To join the Society is to enter
the Circle or be Born. To hold a meeting is known as letting loose the
horses. A member is called heung—fragrance or a hero. A non-member is a
partridge or wind of a leper. A road is a thread, and to travel is
walking the thread. Sometimes the meaning of their vocabulary is
unaccountable. An Ancestral Hall is called a privy and a market
Universal Peace. In this strange language a bed is a drying stage and to
sleep is to dry. A sword is called silken crepe, and a dagger young
lion. A cannon is a black dog, its report a dog’s bark, its powder a
dog’s dung. A handkerchief is a white cloud, a fan the crescent moon.
The ears are known as fair wind, and to cut them off is to lower the
fair wind. Cutting off the head is called washing the face. The sea is
the great sky, and to murder by drowning is to bathe; while to be
drowned in the sea is to be lowered into the great sky.
The members have numerous ways of testing one another by arranging and
handing tea-cups, tobacco pipes, and other articles.
One member may ask another why his nose bleeds, and he answers: “It is
the Waters of the Deluge flowing out of their channels.” This terrible
enigma is derived from a saying by Mencius, “And a Deluge shall overflow
the country.”
A member may ask: “Why is your face yellow?” and is answered: “It is
troubled for my country.” Or, “Why is your face red?” and answered: “I
have been drinking wine in the Temple of War.”
“What do you hope for?”
“The Market of Universal Peace.”
The entire ritual is carried on in verse—a rhythm of terrors—while
conversation between members is in poetic form. If a member is asked to
rescue a brother it is done by placing a pot of tea with a single cup
before him. Should he be unable to do anything with the commands he
throws the tea away, but if able, he drinks, saying:
“A horseman comes with might and speed
To save his prince, alone, in need,
And with him comes the Age’s horde
To give the throne to our Ming Lord.”
If a pot of tea and three cups are put before a member he is being asked
to take part in a fight. If he consents he drinks the middle cup,
repeating:
“Lu, Kwang, and Chang in the garden swore,
To heed Duke Tsai’s commands no more,
And through all Ages let their fame,
Be upheld in Virtue’s name.”
There are thirty-six arrangements of tea-cups, each signifying something
different and each answerable with a verse. In the like manner the
presence of an unknown brother is made manifest first by some secret
sign, which he should answer, then by the repetition of a verse. Should
a junk be attacked by pirates and the crew as well as pirates be members
of the Deluge Family, the crew repeats:
“Our mast is eyed with Deluge light,
And softly shines by day or night;
Men rob not one another
When in the Circle born a brother.”
Members sometimes teach their wives verses for emergencies, as in
rebellions, and should an attempt be made to ravish her, she repeats:
“The sun shines redly in the East,
I wilt, a flower with fragrance ceased,
Fresher flowers beyond are found,
My husband to the Flood is bound.”
Whenever a member needs assistance in a fight, he holds up the right
hand with thumb, first, and second fingers expanded an equal distance
apart, while the third and fourth fingers are closed; at the same time,
the thumb and the first two fingers of the left hand are placed open on
the right elbow. To call to battle is to hold the right hand over the
head with the thumb pointing upwards. We know of nothing more terrifying
than this pointing up of thumbs to Heaven.
When a fight is about to take place, the queue is looped over the right
shoulder after having been brought around the neck and fastened in what
is called the sign of Shou. A cry rises from those that have laid upon
themselves this sign. It is not thunder, not a moan. It is the growl of
Eternity, “Hung Shun Tien”—The Deluge obeys Heaven.
This vast Brotherhood is subject to twenty-one rules: Ten Prohibitions;
Ten Punishable Offences. In addition there are thirty-six oaths
bequeathed by the Five Patriarchs. Death is the inevitable punishment
for those that break them.
Oath Seven reads: “If any brother is unable to escape you swear to
assist him, no matter what are the consequences. If there are any that
do not adhere to these feelings of kinship, let thunder annihilate
them.”
Number Twenty reads: “If officials arrest a brother, his escape is most
important. You swear to see to this. Those that refuse to give such aid
shall die beneath ten thousand knives.”
The last of the Great Oaths is the Apocalypse of this Empire in its
gloom. “All ye that enter the Deluge Family, scholars, husbandmen,
merchants, industrious labourers, mechanics, Confucianists, Buddhists,
Taoists, physicians, astrologers, geomancers, lictors, thieves, pirates,
officials, executioners, and all others, swear loyalty above all things.
Ye are the hands and feet of one body, obedient to the Head. Ye must bow
down to the Five Seal-bearers and obey them. If any show duplicity or
fail to exert themselves, let them die beneath ten thousand knives.”
Such is the Tien Tu Hin, the Association of Heaven and Earth: enormous,
unseen; filled with terror and serenity; vast, invisible; its labyrinths
endless as are the veins of the earth, and like the earth’s depths,
asurge with molten lava; calm, portentous, peaceful, terrible; born to
avenge a crime; fostered to destroy a dynasty; matured to establish
Universal Peace.
By the hand of thoughtful Fate the Breton was led into its labyrinths
and became part of it and of its terror.
CHAPTER NINE
THE DERELICT
The Brotherhood of Tien Tu Hin, swallowing in its deluge all degrees of
mankind, likewise swallows now and then one of those nameless Europeans
whom Fate has utterly cast adrift in those mysterious currents of the
Orient Seas.
While not generally understood, yet it is true that most Occidentals,
who by choice have drifted heretofore on Orient streams, have almost
always been derelicts of some kind. Thither noble scions, criminals,
priests, soldiers of fortune have drifted. Some have prospered and some
in the wild surge of these seas have been wrecked and sunk.
The flotsam of humanity, like the drift of rivers, like the derelicts of
the sea, is but wreckage of some sort hurried along in those
irresistible currents that we call Fate. Each village has its little
eddy where, round and round in quiet whirl, the neighbouring drift
collects. Each country has its maelstrom, a black whirlpool where is
collected the debris of human kind. This debris, starting at the top in
wide circles, whirls round; swirling deeper and deeper until it
disappears through that narrow abysmal funnel. These terrible vortices
are never still and never without their debris. London is such a
maelstrom, so is Paris, so is New York.
The world also has its colossal eddy, but they that drift upon the
world’s currents are derelicts, not debris; it is true both are
wreckage, but there is a wide difference between them. Debris is scum;
derelicts are wrecks. Scum from scum arises; derelicts may be the wrecks
of greatness. Debris is unnamed; the House of Orleans is a derelict, and
its princes have died by the wash of the China Sea.
The seas are awash with derelicts of different kinds. Some, in due time,
like the hulks of the old East Indiamen, become thrifty, incrustating
themselves with spray gusts of silver, and furring themselves with the
fur of their drift; a wealth clings to them and they become stranded by
riches. They are found imbedded in all Oriental ports, and while they
have formed a new environment, they still remain conspicuous.
Again these seas are adrift with derelicts that would succour; as when
men float on the sea in an open boat suddenly behold with immeasurable
joy a speck in the distance. It approaches, they board it, but only too
often to find it hollow.
Derelicts most known are those that destroy. Deserted, forsaken, alone
in this coaxing wilderness of waves, they drink deeply of their
unrestraint and become master-derelicts of death; hurling themselves,
areek with froth, on vessels they sink and on rocks which destroy.
In a fisherman’s hut near by the Bay of Tai Wan, a hovel mud-walled,
windowless, rice-thatched, cluttered with poverty, dark and dismal,
there lay dying a derelict of this latter kind.
The only brightness within the hut was a floating taper burning before
the Ancestral Tablets and sending through the gloom its trembling,
hesitant rays. This glimmering light that fell agleam on the tablets lit
the faces and forms of three persons, two peasants and a foreigner. The
stranger lay upon the only bed in the hut, and the peasants squatted
beside him. A clot of blood was upon his bosom, and a red froth oozed
from between his teeth, which the woman was wiping away with a wet
cloth, while her husband kept his eyes fixed and reverent upon a Great
Medallion suspended from the neck of the dying man, and glittering
beside the wound in his breast.
This Symbol or Seal consisted of two parts: the outer being about four
inches square, but quinquangular in shape and made from a rare green
stone found only in the jungled mountains of Yunnan, resembling the
green of a tiger’s eye; gleaming, glittering in the dusk. On each of the
five corners was a raised gold character, and a golden rim ran around
the edge. The second part consisted of a mottled bloodstone placed on
the centre of the other, octagonal in shape, about an inch in diameter,
and having on its high, rounded apex a gold trigram, the meaning of
which is not less terrible than it is unknown. This blood-green stone
with its glint of gold glittered with a light peculiarly significant,
and the peasant’s eyes grew round as he watched it shudder on the breast
of the dying man.
He whispered to his wife: “It is the Great Symbol.”
She drew back with an expression of terror.
“If they find him here, we will be beheaded!”
“Yes.”
“What shall we do?”
“Nurse him.”
The woman wiped the red froth from the man’s lips and the red clot from
his bosom.
“If he dies?” the peasant woman whispered.
“We will bury him.”
“And that?” she pointed to the Great Symbol.
The man on the bed moved uneasily; his eyes opened, but he saw nothing.
“He is going to talk again in his own speech,” said the woman, moving
cautiously away. “Find someone to understand,” she pleaded. “Who knows
what he may say?—and perhaps he will tell what to do with that Eye.”
“I heard to-day that a foreigner was in the village.”
“One of these?”
“No; a priest from Yingching.”
The peasant buried his face in his arms, and for some time crouched on
his heels. Afterward he went quietly out.
The woman fetched some clean water, and continued to bathe the man’s
bosom and lips. She crooned to herself.
“I do not see why men do these things. If they would only plant their
own rice this would not happen. I do not understand what crop they
expect to get. When the rice-fields are burned how can there be any
rice? When the mulberry bushes are cut down how can there be any worms?
When the worms are dead who shall spin silk? They kill, kill, kill, and
their killings they cannot eat. They bring home neither pigs nor fowl.
Once I said to one of them, ‘Why do you kill?’ And he answered, ‘We are
soldiers.’ Now I do not understand that.
“Poor man, and what will your wife say? To come across the Five Seas
just to get stuck full of holes. Now who will carry back your bones? I
do not know why you foreigners are such devils to fight and to pray. My
husband belongs to the Deluge Family, but I will not let—— No, no, you
must not get up. Poor man, poor man, I don’t suppose you will ever fight
any more. If you had only spoken to your wife she could have told you
that this would happen. When men don’t speak to their wives they get
into trouble. I wish you did not have that Eye upon your breast. How
terrible it is to be a great man; how sorry I am for their—— No, no, do
not talk, you are getting blood all over my bed.”
The man, endeavouring to speak, had turned upon his side, and a quantity
of blood spurted from his mouth. After that he rested easier, and the
red froth ceased to ooze from between his teeth, though it still came
from the wound in his side. This the woman continued to wipe away.
Suddenly he snapped his fingers imperiously.
“Cha——”
The woman hastily brought a bowl of tea and held it to his lips, but he
could not drink.
Thus as she tended him the hours of night passed. She became restless,
and sometimes left his side to peer into the darkness, where was heard
only the swish of wing and splash of wild fowl.
There came a mumbling from the bed, then coughing, and another spurting
of blood. As the woman washed his face he opened his eyes, bright with
the delirium of death, and resting his hand upon her head he began to
speak in gentle, piteous tones.
The woman, turning away, saw through the open door the approach of a
bobbing lantern. She returned to the bed and threw a rough cloth over
the wounded man, put a jar in front of the taper, and seating herself by
the door waited.
The Breton priest entered, followed by the woman’s husband and several
others. Without hesitation he crossed the room and sat down by the bed.
The woman took the jar from in front of the taper, and as the priest
drew the rough coverlet from the dying man the light fell upon the Great
Symbol. The men that came with him gazed at it for a moment then bowed
their heads thrice to the floor.
As the priest took hold of the man’s hand he opened his eyes to look at
him and smiled. Then in a low, uncertain voice began a quatrain of
college revelry. His eyes closed; he mumbled.
Suddenly he began to speak again. He pleaded and a woman’s name trembled
on his lips.
The Breton turned away.
The derelict choked, spat blood upon the Breton, then lay still. Tears
rolled down his cheeks, sometimes mingling with his blood to scintillate
for an instant like rubies on the coarse cloth. This grief of his was
more than bitter—it was the grief of the strong dying, a packing of pain
into Eternity. He moaned and brought a pallor to the cheeks of the
priest. He sighed and the pain of it was indescribable.
Presently he began to breathe hoarsely, then mumbling, speaking—the
speech of his wild life. One moment in combat with Malay praus; hurtling
through the water; repelling boarders; cursing, exultant, frenzied and
the swish of the kris was in the air. Then followed commands, as when
the typhoon is on sea, and in his quivering tones was the echo of the
wind’s scream. Fights in the jungle—soft, creeping, peering, throttling.
Then in the open, commands, curses, silence.
Suddenly, as he muttered the ritual of the Deluge Family—sombre and
unrelenting, he rose up in bed with his hand over the dripping wound. As
he fell the priest turned him gently upon his side, and taking the bowl
of fresh water the woman brought him, bathed his face.
The dying man opened his eyes.
“Where am I?”
“In a hut near the village of Tai Po.”
“Who are you?”
“A priest.”
“A rogue like myself.”
“You are wounded.”
“I am dying.”
The derelict raised his head and looked sternly at the men in the room,
who seeing him look at them, fell upon their knees, striking their heads
thrice upon the floor.
“It is well.”
He studied the sad profile above him.
“Priest,” his voice was without its wildness, “priest, I am dying. It is
what I have been trying to do for many years—by land and by sea——”
The pain of speaking became too great.
He fumbled with the chain around his neck, consisting of gold links each
about an inch and a half in length, and made up of two dragons
contending for a pearl.
The priest removed it, and the derelict, taking it in his hands,
whispered:
“Closer!”
The Breton bent near to him, and the chain with the Great Seal of the
Tien Tu Hin was hung around his neck.
“Never take it off,” the dying man whispered hoarsely. “I—I—command.”
His eyes closed and the pallor of death came upon him.
The priest leaned close; all listened, for the speech of the derelict
was precious.
His lips moved, and the Breton bending closer heard:
“Alice——”
And so he died.
The priest on his knees held his crucifix over the body of the derelict.
Hours passed, and still the Breton did not move. The stillness in the
room was unbroken, and the men crouching upon the floor hardly breathed.
The only sounds were the weird flight of wild fowl as they winged their
way through the night.
A cock crowed.
Night was ending, and the priest, rising, stood before the men with the
Great Symbol glittering on his breast. Thrice again the men struck their
foreheads upon the earthen floor.
“At the break of day we will bury him.”
The men wrapped the body in a shroud of rough cloth, and when darkness
began to give away to that cold grey dusk that, without being night nor
day, is yet the sick pallor of Time, they went forth and followed along
the embankment of the paddy-fields until they came to a low hillside
close to the sea.
It was natural that this casket of the derelict should mould near the
ocean’s wash, for on its turbulent stream he had been blown hither and
thither, unknown, unseen, a wreck in its wayward currents. There had he
drifted and fought and mourned—a sad and perhaps terrible soul. Well
might the sea dirge to his spirit its eonic plaint—that melancholy chant
of Eternity. And well was it that they should remain forever together,
the living sorrow and the dead.
Low down on the hillside they dug his grave.
A rift of light, almost lurid, glowed just above the rim of swaying
waters.
They put the derelict in his grave, and the priest, holding his crucifix
above him, stood over the open tomb. Upon his upturned face shone the
red light of morning, while a vaporous mist like streams of incense rose
from the grave and broken earth around him. As the priest prayed the
Great Symbol rose and fell upon his bosom with the rhythm of his silent
prayer, quivering and afire in the red glare of heaven.
The men, seeing the Great Eye flashing redly, knelt down before the
Breton and rested their foreheads upon the earth.
The prayer ended; then the priest sounded, terrifying in its majestic
intonations, the awful Taps of the God of Wrath.
“Dies Irae, dies illa
Solvet saeculum in favillâ
Teste David cum Sybilla.
“Lacrymosa dies illa
Dua refurget ex favillâ
Judicandus homo reus
Huic ergo parce Deus.”
CHAPTER TEN
TWILIGHT
The Bay of Tai Wan, where the Breton had been for more than a month and
upon whose shore he had buried the derelict, is a long distance down the
coast southeast of Yingching, and is famous on account of the evil
spoken of it. This bay and country has a bad name, which is due to God
as well as to those that dwell on its wild wash.
The waters of the bay are not blue, but a reddish-brown, and are
serrated with the fins of the spotted shark, which lurk in its depths;
for the feed in this bay is sometimes abundant, not only when the gale
is upon the sea, but more often when men come together. The mountains
that surround the bay on the south, west, and north are not high, but
they are sinister; their south slopes desolate; those on the north
gloomy with thickets. The narrow valleys extending back from the bay are
diked, terraced, and made into paddy-fields, or are walled and made into
towns, armed, forbidding. The lowlands below them are also dammed from
the sea tides, and in those places not suitable for rice are salt pans,
where the sea is evaporated for its salt.
The men that live on the Bay of Tai Wan have no settled occupation. They
are farmers when the time comes to sow rice and to harvest it; they are
fishermen, who know the bed of the sea; smugglers in their peaceful
moods, but pirates always, and months are few when their mountains do
not resound with the noise of combat; when the brown surge of the bay is
without loitering spars, or dead or wreckage.
The secrets of this turbulent place, the fights fought there; the deeds
of valour; the hopes and the end of hopes—gone down in its depths are
without number. To look upon its waters is to shudder; to live there is
to fear neither God nor His judgment; to go there requires the courage
of a child, so the bishop had sent the Breton.
The priest, leaving Yingching at daybreak, sent no word to the wife, but
went away happy in that nameless credulity, which belongs ordinarily to
neither man nor woman, but only to children or such as he. And yet the
Breton was not to blame, for happiness was the cause of it. Many weeks
had already passed since the wife had opened the wicket and had come
down to sit beside him—weeks that had vanished with the brevity of a
dream.
Each day she fluttered for a moment on the threshold, then came down and
seated herself near him; but it always remained as the first day, a
vision, a tremor, a silence. The wife sat with her back to him, and not
often did the Breton dare to raise his eyes nor even glance furtively at
the beautiful contour of her neck and shoulders, nor at the delicate
bloom that crept back from her cheek. But sometimes there was a quick
turning of her head, a flash of light—then he trembled.
The happiness of all this nearness, stillness, and flashes brought about
no change in the outward demeanour of the Breton. There is but little
difference in appearance of a torrent at half flood and nearly at full
flood. Only the beginnings and what ensues from it are noticed. The
flood was still rising, and when the Breton was sent by the bishop to
the wild Bay of Tai Wan, he left as he had remained during the past
weeks, dreaming, without smiles, joyous, silent.
The priest’s journey was distant, and his stay among these turbulent
sea-dwellers had been long; but he had much to do to keep him busy; much
to remember and dream about, which kept him happy.
The people had received him with scowls, suspicion, and threats. In the
market place of Hsia Wan a rock thrown at him struck a boy hooting by
his side. He dressed the wound. Crossing a narrow islet to the village
of Yat Ho, his boat was purposely overturned; without a word of
remonstrance or show of concern, he paid the boatman and went on his
way. At midnight he passed through the tiger-infested woods of Foshui
and Sanshu from Tai Po to the hut of the fisher. In this way it was not
long before his dreaminess was construed into fearlessness and admired
by those amphibious bandits of the bay. And whomever a Chinese pirate
admires men should stand in awe of or look upon him as a child.
The Breton went about his duties without cessation except at dusk, and
then, when those about him had ceased their labours, he would seek the
solitude of the sea-bank as he had that of the river. It is doubtful if
he perceived that instead of the great city with its lessening but
varied noises there were behind him mountains down whose desolate sides
came gloom instead of twilight, while the only sounds that rose from
them were the bark of jackal and scream of night-bird. Not after the
hour of sundown were to be heard at all the hard noises of labour, nor
the wild mutter of these sea-dwellers in their daily life. When the
evening guns had boomed from the walls of their villages and from their
low long boats at anchorage had come the last roll of kettle-drum, the
clash of cymbals, and burst of crackers, a deep silence brooded over all
except cries from the mountains and the sea’s muffled splash.
As dusk deepens this Bay of Tai Wan takes on a terror of its own. By day
its waters are a reddish-brown, and its wave-crests look like yellow
floss; by night it is black, and its wave-crests flashes of fire. This
strange phenomenon is due to the fact that the sea along this coast
teems with phosphorescent protozoa, making it a red-brown by day, and
when night falls there is seen in every movement of the waters a glint
of green fire. Wave-crests moving shoreward are as an endless flight of
monstrous fire-flies. Where the sea breaks on the wash and rocks the
spray becomes a shower of green sparks, so that the shore-line burns
with a cold, livid fire. Among the flame-crests are seen zig-zag
lines—the fiery trace of shark fins. Sometimes a green coal glows in the
blackness, a tortoise floating in the break of the sea; sometimes a
swarm of flying fishes rise from the waves, their scales and membranous
wings adrift with a green fire, and for a moment their flight is
ghastly. Looking down the edge of a cliff the shallow sea is filled with
monsters aflame. Man never witnessed a more horrible sight than the sea
at Tai Wan by night. Nothing that moves escapes the clinging protozoa:
fish darting through the blackness have every scale, spine, maw, and
tooth covered with this ghastly glow; the hairy legs and bodies of
sea-spiders, their protruding eyes and fangs glitter in frightful
luminosity; gleaming snakes glance through the depths. Squids sometimes
hide their fire-covered bodies in a black vomit, but crustacea,
sea-toads, and larvæ all burning in this livid fire wriggle about under
the black waters.
It was over this sea that the Breton dreamed and was joyous; it was by
this sea that he buried the derelict whose chain and Seal he wore under
his robe—a promise to the dead, but in due time to be more precious to
him than all the jewels that have bedecked men, and more powerful than
Empires.
* * * * *
The Breton once more stood before the screen, eager, hesitant; straining
his ears for the music of a silken rustle; his eyes for one pink
finger-tip. He waited a long time, but heard nothing, nor saw even one
little finger resting shyly in a crevice.
“What, you here?”
He raised his eyes joyously.
“Well?”
“I have come back,” his words were almost inaudible.
“Indeed!”
He looked down happily.
“How did you happen to return? Did I send for you?” The voice of the
wife was cold, vibrant.
The Breton’s eyes wandered contentedly from crevice to crevice.
“Sit down!” she petulantly commanded.
There was silence.
“Where have you been?”
“To the Bay of Tai Wan.”
“Why did you go?”
The Breton, discovering in the crevice a little finger, did not answer.
“Oh, very well! I suppose you were glad. It must have been a great
relief. I was getting tired.”
Heedlessly the Breton heard the stamp of her foot and contentedly
waited, though no sound was heard but its restless, impatient tapping.
“Why did you go away?”
“I buried a man——”
“Did that take you all these weeks?”
“No—but——”
“Priest!” she interrupted impatiently, “don’t give me excuses! Those
veiling rags under which men hide their scared swarm of sins! Bah!”
He looked happily expectant at the crevices just over his head.
“Oh, well, it is immaterial,” she continued coldly, carelessly; “you are
only my instructor. Come and go when you please. I have sought your
learning, not you.” Her foot tapped measuredly. “Learning satisfies
every craving of the heart, man—nothing. Learning is steadfast; a
friend, who coaxes away the weariness of hours, hueing dull days with
treasures from forgotten time, a wealth from the ends of the earth. It
has a hundred attributes; man—not one. It is a cloak for chilled age, a
balm for pain, an ointment for misfortune, and man—Oyah!”
The Breton thumbed contentedly the leaves of his book.
Presently the tapping of her foot ceased. He heard the soft, sensual
rustle of her garments, then the wicket opened.
The pink had gone out of the wife’s cheeks; her face was pallid and her
long lustrous eyes looked larger yet from the darkness that was under
them.
The Breton glanced furtively at her as she came down and sat with her
back to him.
“I am——” he ventured, uncertain.
“Yes?” she drawled, turning her head slightly toward him.
“I have thought about it.”
“Indeed!”
“Have I——”
“Oh, yes,” she interrupted coldly, “your teaching has been quite
delightful; so learned.”
“I was away a long time.”
“Yes?”
“I hastened back.”
“On account of my studies, I suppose?”
“Yes,” he apologised.
“How thoughtful of you!”
“I could not——”
“Oh—it did not matter. No doubt if it had not been for the lessons you
would not have come.”
Something in her tone made him look furtively at the pale altered
contour of her cheek.
“Of course not!” she exclaimed vexedly. “How could I ask such a thing!
It would be very annoying were it not for the instruction!”
“I enjoy——”
“Oh, you do! Don’t you suppose I know that? Instruct! Instruct!
Instruct! I am tired of it!”
“You——”
“No, I don’t!” she interrupted savagely. “What is the good of all this
learning, all these black books? Who loves me any more for it? Does it
add a dearer pink to my cheek?” She turned her face partly toward him
and in her voice was a wave of pain. “Do you think it gives lustre to my
eye or music to my words?” Her tones became mocking. “Do you really
think it will puff away wrinkles? A cosmetic, a tire-woman, a——” She
stamped her foot peevishly. “I tell you, priest, I will have no more of
it, never!”
“Learning enlightens,” said the Breton aimlessly, “as a mirror——”
“Oyah! A mirror! So is a tub of water holding the image of the sun, but
what warmth comes from that reflection? I would like you to tell me,
priest, with all your learning, what there is substantial in a reflected
image? What if learning were the painting of the world’s ocean acts,
could fish dwell in its mock waters? And I would like to know if there
is the fragrance of one rose in ten myriad miles of embroidered
flowers?”
He did not reply, and again came the half-kindly truce of silence, but
only half, for there was still the tapping of her foot. And how varied
is that speech! What a world of meaning is in the tapping of a woman’s
foot! So the Breton listened, wonderingly to the thoughts that came from
the tap, tap, tap on the marble floor.
“Did you study?” he ventured hesitatingly.
“Oh, yes,” she responded with mock carelessness, “and I learned many
things.”
“Yes,” she added bitterly, “many things; and in the first place, I
learned that learning is like dragging the sea for the jewels of night.
I also learned that a brilliant cloud is easily scattered and that the
fairest sunrise fades the soonest. Moreover,” she continued with
increasing bitterness, “I have learned that trees blown away by passing
winds have more branches than——” She stopped. A tremor in her voice was
mastering her. Again came the tapping of her foot: petulant, impatient,
then slower, softer and more uncertain.
“But why should I grieve?” She communed to herself, her voice full of
weariness, filled with the quiver of hopeless pain. “No one cares for
me, no one ever thinks of me caged here forever in this cold, gilded
chamber, while they move far and wide, gay travellers on the many rivers
of life. Now and then one stops and with a small laugh drops a crumb
between my bars and passes on. They loiter through the world’s
flower-gardens, and I—sometimes there comes swiftly past a whiff of
perfume. They drain deep the different wines of pleasure, while into my
tiny cup, bar-fastened, is poured a few drops of water. They move abroad
under the broad sunlight, and I—moveless in this wee shadow. They hear
ever that great symphony, the world’s laugh, and I—no one ever laughs
alone. Their cheeks are stained by the dews of an hundred skies, mine—by
tears. They sleep that they might hasten the morrow, and I—to forget
to-day. They weave and I untangle. Their threads are of a hundred hues,
mine—one sad colour. Untangling! Untangling! And when will it all end?
To-day is yesterday; yesterday as days gone; to-morrow—oh, if I only did
not know! If I only——”
She burst into tears.
The Breton’s lips parted, his eyes grew round. Presently he began to
realise that she was sobbing almost at his feet. His hands tightened
their clasp on the arms of the chair and a pallor came into his face. It
was difficult for him to recognise this bitter, passionate outburst in
the very joy of his return. He never before had seen a woman sob, and
during all of the months they had been together he had only known her in
careless, exuberant happiness, a joyousness almost divine. Now crying so
heart-brokenly before him, she appeared as someone else. Grief in her
was more than paradoxical—it was laughter weeping, it was the sobbing of
song.
The tears of the wife did not ebb as tears often do but each sob seemed
to gain greater force from the one gone before. Her face was half hid in
her little hands, her wide sleeves had fallen away and her tears
trickling down her bare arms fell two jewelled streams into her lap.
The Breton sat rigid in his chair watching her slight form shake with
each convulsive sob but he said nothing, did nothing; not even his eyes
moved.
At times her crying ceased; there was a moment of questioned silence,
then her tears fell faster and despair crept into her sobs.
It was during one of these choked, silent hesitancies that the priest
mumbled:
“Your husband loves you——”
She straightened up. Her hands still over her eyes and a sob trembling
on her lips.
“Your husband loves you,” repeated the Breton monotonously. “Your
husband——”
She stamped her foot and fell again to weeping.
The Breton moved uneasily. A tenseness came into the lines about his
mouth.
“Your husband——”
“What do you know about love?” she demanded in the midst of her sobs.
And presently the priest said: “It is something from God.”
“Yes!” she drawled with mocking, scornful bitterness. “Indeed! Why, I
thought it was just a violet thrown in a rocky waste; a sunbeam cast
upon the cold sea; dew dropped into the desert; a bundle of burnt
prayers tossed upon the wind; a—a——” She choked, turned her face away
and again tears gathered on her lashes.
Presently she began to sob softly, full of pain.
“Don’t,” he whispered.
Her tears flowed faster.
“Don’t,” he begged again.
“You—don’t—care!” she sobbed.
The Breton did not reply.
“I—know—you don’t.”
The Breton’s lips moved, but he said nothing.
“You—you——”
“Don’t.”
“I wish—I were dead——”
“No!”
“And why shouldn’t I?” she demanded fiercely. “One is better dead than
one’s heart strangled by this silken scarf. Why must one live forever on
this desert, scanning each day the sky-line for what cannot come?”
She picked restlessly the folds of her robe, her tears falling upon her
unrestful hands.
“You would not care,” she continued hopelessly. “You never even asked if
I had been sick, and yet I come before you all white with troubled
pallor——”
“You——”
“Oh, no!” she interrupted, scornfully, turning her head and glancing
coldly at him. “I have been more than well and happy. Why—I have laughed
and sung each hour of the day away; no bird in all the park has been
gayer than I, and my cheeks? Oh, I whitened them; they became so ruddy.
Oh, yes, how happy, how happy——”
She was looking at the Breton, pleading, tearful.
“Don’t you know,” she begged, “don’t you know that I have not laughed
nor sung all these weeks? No caged bird ever—ever—I think you would have
cared if you could have seen me cowering now in one corner, now in
another; counting the moments for the coming of day, then longing for
night. And oh, how ill I have been; now burning with fever, then cold,
chilling. I did not know what had happened: one little thought parching
my lips, making my heart shrink and draw high into my throat. A noise
like a footfall would make it beat so painfully I could not breathe, and
when I heard someone coming, I trembled all over. I grew feverish, then
cold, a dimness would come over my eyes. All day and night I cried for
tardy sleep—and when one begs for sleep is it not a wish for death? Oh,
if you only knew,” she cried, striking the palms of her little hands
passionately together. “If you only knew!” She rose from her stool and
stood looking at him.
The Breton stood up, as she came close to him, her hands clasped on her
breast, her eyes questioning, beseeching. He looked down at her for a
moment, then raising his head, closed his eyes.
She stepped nearer, quivering, hesitant.
“Tell me you will not go away again.”
The Breton did not answer.
“Tell me,” she whispered, moving closer so that their robes touched and
she felt him tremble.
Through the open windows came the grumble of the surrounding city. All
else was still; the birds in the cages above them and the birds in the
park without. Man was yet in the midst of his toil and Nature still
somnolent in the afternoon heat.
“Promise me?” She lifted her clasped hands and rested them lightly on
his bosom.
The thrushes in the bamboo cages above them began to flutter, and in the
park the calling of pheasants was heard. With the breath of evening
larks, pehlings, birds of a hundred spirits came forth from their
hidings. The hum of the city grew less and less.
Neither had moved.
The shadow of the feathery bamboo that grew by the fish-pond without
came softly in through the open shell-latticed window; furtively it
crept across the floor, slowly it ascended the lacquered wall
and—vanished.
After a while the sun’s rays were gone and a yellow light diffused
through the room, burnished anew its golden fretwork. An orange-saffron
glimmer lingered for a few moments, then came the fleeting rose blush of
twilight, caressingly tinging the paled faces of the Breton and the wife
standing so still and so silent in its parting light.
Gently as silken floss is wafted upward by a breath so the little hands
of the wife stole from the Breton’s bosom to his shoulders.
And when the songs of the birds in the park had ceased; when only the
quarrelling of the white-headed crows was heard; when the hum from the
city had died away; when silence with dusk had closed around them the
hands of the wife crept lightly around the Breton’s neck. Her lips
parted, her eyes, tearful, yet happy, looked up into his face.
Dusk deepened.
Heavily the Breton lifted his hands, resting them gently but firmly upon
her arms.
A joyous flush spread over her face and neck; her lips quivered as if to
smile or burst into joyful tears; she laid her cheek lightly on his
bosom. The Breton’s fingers closed around her wrists; trembling, with
difficulty he took them from his shoulders.
Gently he put her away from him and as he crossed the room he heard a
little moan, also the crinkling fall of silk.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
NIGHT
The Breton went calmly out of the Hall of Guests and came unconcernedly
down the Lion Steps into the Park as though without thought or in
profound meditation. His head was thrown slightly back and his hands
hung loosely by his side. Softly he went into the dusk as though
watching the crows and herons still unsettled in the darkened domes of
the great trees.
Dusk was deepening into night as he passed out the gateway and the
streets were filled with their night streams of hurrying men. The stores
had closed, street stalls were leaving. The seal cutter that sat near
the gate and always welcomed him, had departed, as had his neighbour,
the money-changer, who had gone before dusk with his strings of cash. A
short way up the street a fussing cook stopped his grumbling to offer
him a cake; a fortune teller peered momentarily into his face, then
jumped dramatically to one side. Itinerant barbers, apothecaries,
shoemakers, dentists, storytellers, geomancers, astrologers and
book-sellers joked and reviled as he passed them in their packing-up and
counting of the profits of the day. Beggars innumerable and hucksters
with trays slung over their shoulders, with rattles and wailing
whistles, jostled against him. Unresistingly, unconscious of these men
and their noises, he was carried along in this dusk-stream through the
tortuous channels of Yingching.
Sometimes with jest they brushed roughly against him, peered up into his
face, only to draw hastily away with a look of silent fear. Sometimes a
swiftly borne mandarin’s chair came by him and the attendants would
thrust him brutally against the walls or into a corner. A line of
singing bonzes, modulating their tones by the sound of wooden cymbals
and mingling their melancholy chant with the evening noises carried him
along with them.
In and through the twisting streets the monks took him until they
vanished, and another crowd shoved him along through the night. Only
here and there were lights in front of tea-houses, from which came jests
and songs and the laughter tinkling of wine cups. In front of one of
these several sedans had stopped and blocked the way. The crowd growled
and cursed and surging forward, was forcing the Breton in front of them,
when from one of the chairs a dainty singing-girl stepped out. This dusk
crowd, at the sight of her, grew licentious in a moment and there rose a
tumult of comments. The girl wavered, almost terror-stricken, at this
mob of men. She peered around for a place to flee, but they were all
around her and the way to the tea-house was closed. The wit of the crowd
grew more violent when the girl, looking up, saw the Breton standing
silently beside her. For a moment she hesitated, then lifted up her arms
to him like a child seeking protection and rested them on his bosom. He
looked down at her unconcernedly, while the crowd jeered as only a
Chinese crowd can do and poured upon him and the little singing-girl
clinging for protection their storm of lascivious wit.
Suddenly those that stood nearest the Breton saw him shudder, then sway,
as if to fall. He staggered back among the crowd as one choking for a
breath of fresh air; he forced his way through them, then moved
listlessly along through the half-vacant street.
Again the dusk crowd caught up with him and hurried him along the Street
of the Marble Portal, thence into the broad Avenue of Peace, which leads
to the Gate of Eternal Rest, the last of the city gates to be closed.
These men, who but a moment before had been aburst with jest, hastened
silently on.
Down the street was heard the sound of wedding music—a bride happy and
smiling was being carried with her trosseau to the home of the groom.
The crowd was once more full of laughter and jest, for no people so love
to mock the misfortunes or cajole the vanity of others as the people of
this old land. None are more skilful in its use and abuse. They are at
it during all hours and in all places where men or women congregate; in
markets, streets, and temples, they hurl it from window to window; and
on the boats in the river old women are perched on the high poops with
no other purpose than to revile and abuse. Their fund is inexhaustible;
they can rail most viciously at one another, foam with vituperations,
then part as friendly as they met.
So once more the Breton, in the half stupor of his terrible sorrow, was
forced to listen to lascivious and brutal jests hurled so relentlessly
upon one perhaps as beautiful and—and——
The crowd forced the Breton against the wall. Flaring torches and
swaying lanterns could now be seen winding toward them. The head of the
procession came by—an old man bearing a large gold-brocaded umbrella,
which he held over the bride as she entered and left the sedan. Behind
him came men bearing great lanterns inscribed with propitiatory
sentences: “May the phœnix sing harmoniously”—another way of wishing
that the bride will give birth to a son. As the crowd deciphered these
various illumined wishes, they commented upon them in sarcasm which
cannot be uttered. The musicians who followed did their utmost to drown
the abuse heaped upon them, as did the bearers of halberds, dragon
heads, titular flags, and honorary tablets, denoting the honours and
rank of the bride’s father, but there was no compassion in the crowd as
they assailed with their vituperation these unfortunate symbols of human
vanity.
Parties of young lads, fantastically dressed, tripped gaily by playing
on drums and flutes, followed by bearers arrayed in red robes and
burdened under many vermilion-lacquered boxes containing the bride’s
trosseau. The contents of these boxes came in for a new outburst of
lecherous jest. Men turned to one another and those nearest the Breton
surrounded him and delivered grave conjectures as to what they
contained—doubts that were brutal.
The bride approached, securely locked in her red and gold sedan,
surrounded by quivering, silken lanterns. The acme of the crowd’s
pleasure was now reached and their licentiousness ended in a final
outburst. They jested upon everything appertaining to a bride or a
woman, from the size of her feet to the possibilities of her
extravagances. They took a maternal interest in her, and gravely advised
her as to what to do upon this night. Nothing had been left unsaid when
the wedding procession vanished in the darkness of the narrow streets.
Silent, even sombre, became the crowd as it hastened with the Breton
toward the Gate of Eternal Rest under whose shadowy portals soldiers
were drawn up preparatory to closing the gates for the night. The crowd
hurried through and, once beyond the walls, vanished, dispersing almost
instantly in the black labyrinth of the suburbs.
The Breton went on alone, his manner unchanged by the vanishing of those
that had but a moment before elbowed and jostled him along through the
streets. In and out, winding, turning, twisting through this black
network, he threaded his way. Through narrow passages, up and down
hollow worn stairs, under gloom-weighted portals, along the edges of
canals and over bridges that spanned them, he went carelessly along,
neither faltering nor stumbling.
When he came to the north entrance of the Mission Compound he stopped
for the first time. He stood for a moment, unloosened the neck of his
robe, then went slowly along the wall until he came to the northwest
corner; turning, he followed the western side until he passed out into
the open space lying between the Mission and the river. Again he
hesitated for a moment, then crossed to the river’s overhanging bank
where its black waters swirled straight down below his feet.
All around him brooded silent night. But from the flower-boats down the
river came the faint echo of laughter and songs and music. From the
sampans and junks anchored across the river came an occasional volley of
crackers by which the simple boatman warned the devils of the night that
he was still alert. Sometimes was heard from these rocking boats a
child’s fretful cry. As night wore on the noises of revelry ceased. The
boatmen and the night devils slept in peace and the children’s cries
were hushed.
The world was asleep. No sounds were heard but what came from the river
at the Breton’s feet, for when the insect hum of man was stilled and a
nation of them slept on its banks this river communed aloud and to those
that sought it there was peace, even enticement in its coaxing, as well
as terror.
The Breton leaned perilously over this compassionate, sweet-voiced river
upon which only the day before he had looked impatiently as he waited
his cumbersome sea-junk to make headway against its flood. Eagerly had
he watched for the first sight of the Sea-Guarding Tower on the north
wall, then for the two slender pagodas, which are the city’s masts.
And this was the end.
At last he sought this river over whose bosom he had dreamed so long and
so happily. But he had come to it now an outcast; a priest that had
repudiated his God and defiled his sacred brotherhood; a man that had
sinned—a man—yes—again he hears her fall; again he hears the little moan
that broke from her lips; again he sees her lying as dead in the
twilight. It is he that did this——
The Breton mechanically took off his rosary and crucifix and dropped
them into the waters. He drew himself up, then hesitated. Presently his
chin sank to his bosom and he stood motionless on the very brink of this
strange River of Pearls, which has never been known to smile since
mankind came to dwell on its banks, other than to those that sought it
in the night, then a smile came from its murky depths and it was
illumined with more delicate traceries than are reflected from the
fretwork of heaven.
To those that are happy and look upon it in the sunlight, this
melancholy river is forever sombrously brooding; its bosom is an abyss
and its voice that of grief. But for those that seek it, repose is found
there, and in its dreadful monologue contentedness, a paradox only
understood by those whose hearts, as its bosom, are allow with tears.
Those listening forget, and plans are not made with the sound of its
voice in the ear. Innumerable have been the weary pilgrims that have
questioned and have been pleased with its answer; more have sought than
have fled from it and its voice has been the rarest of music to them;
its bosom the kindest. Holding its arms open to him, entreating,
enticing so gently, this dreadful yet kindly river flowed on by the
Breton to the sea.
Night was passing. The golden-jetted horologue of Eternity turned
slowly. No moon came up, but in endless succession rose the
constellations. Majestically these bright markers of unending Time
crossed the firmament and with infinite grandeur, ignorant of the riot
of man, a pulse beat went through the universe.
Day approached.
A fog came up the river and the stars were seen no more. The Breton
still stood erect upon the bank; his eyes peered into the waters below
him; his hands still hung listlessly by his side.
Suddenly there rose from the Mission Compound, reverberant in the still
air of dawn, those stately cadences, which are the chant of a world’s
grief.
“Stabat Mater dolorosa,
Juxta crucem lacrymosa,
Dum pendebat filius,
Contristatem et dolentem,
Pertransivit gladius.”
The priest tottered.
From across the river sounded the halloo of a boatman. This was echoed
and re-echoed from different parts. The riverside had awakened.
“Fac me cruce custodiri,
Morte Christi praemunire,
Confoveri gratia,
Quando—”
The Breton shuddered—he also had awakened.