BOOK III. THE BEGINNING
CHAPTER ONEPRO 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 togetherthe 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 aspossible 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 heleaned 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 mustbe 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 theagency 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 andhow 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 TWOTHE 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. Thefirst 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 tuosprosternor, 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 coveredwith 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 theroom 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 THREEHOMO! 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, butthey 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 outsideof 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 unconsciouslyaway 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 bubbletinctured 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 hadnot 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 FOURA 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 displayof 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 thebund’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 willout-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 thatquestion. 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 thecourse 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 tomy 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 dreamingabout. 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.”