BOOK III. THE BEGINNING (continued 2)

By the hand of thoughtful Fate the Breton was led into its labyrinths and became part of it and of its terror.

144

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 145and 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 146of 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 147rim 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.”

148“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 149suppose 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 150open 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.

151Presently 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.”

152He 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. 153The 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, 154holding 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.”

155

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 156for 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 157threshold, 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 158remonstrance 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 159a 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 160hide 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.

161“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 162dull 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!”

163“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 164in 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 165one 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 166return. 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.

167The 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 168this 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 169when 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 170forth 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.

171A 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.

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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 173joked 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, 174grew 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 175was 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 176upon 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 177procession 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.

178All 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 179he 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 180and 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 181boatman. 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.

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