BOOK IV. THE NEMESIS OF FATE (continued 2)

In a few days after that dreadful night, when the dead and mutilated had been removed from the open space and order had been restored throughout the suburbs, these people, as industrious ants, began to rebuild on the embers, amid ashes, their homes and stores and temples. Abroad over the black blot rose the garrulous noise of their labour; and over the debris, ash, 261and dead, creative life in its various phases hummed persistently. Men were coming and going, some carrying bricks, others chiselling granite blocks; some were whipsawing logs into floors, joists, beams, and doors, while others were putting together the piles of wood, brick and stone.

A kind of bitter happiness pervaded those building this new suburb in the midst of the old, and they chattered, cursed, railed. Hucksters with viands and sweetmeats passed and repassed; children played among the logs; soldiers moved back and forth; silent groups stood scowling along the waterfront, and among the brick-heaps and half-completed buildings troops of spectators came and went. Sometimes a lone being slunk along, looking vainly for some spot; if found—weep; if not—vanish.

At the northwest and northeast corners of the Mission Compound the marines had thrown barricades across the Old River Street and had mounted ordnance on each. Sentries patrolled these barricades as well as the whole circuit of the Mission Walls. On the river opposite the open space a French cruiser and gunboats still anchored; their cannon covering all approaches and even holding the city at their mercy.

One day about a month after the night-feast of the Gods and toward the third hour after sunrise, the sentries on the east barricade noticed a movement 262among the Chinese patrols stationed farther down Old River Street.

Presently a single sedan with four bearers and one attendant came swiftly toward the barricade. Near the redoubt the sedan stopped and the attendant cautiously advanced toward a sentry, holding before him an open card. The marine reached down his gun and the attendant stuck the card on the bayonet.

After some delay a squad of marines marched out of the north gate to the east barricade and, with these sailors acting as an escort, the sedan entered the redoubt and disappeared within the walls of the Mission. At the entrance it passed through double ranks of marines standing at present arms and was carried into the building to the rear of the sombre Visigothic chapel. When it was set down in the bishop’s own study, an old man, trembling, withered, tottered out of it.

The bishop came up to him and bowed.

“Your Excellency does me great honour. How will I ever be able to repay such kindness?”

Tai Lin made no reply. Aged and shrunk, without the strength of self-support, he sank into a chair beside a table and, leaning forward, buried his head in his arms.

The bishop sat down on the other side of the table and, lolling back in his chair, caressed his pallid hands, now and then cracking his knuckles.

263Sometimes a tremor passed through the body of Tai Lin.

Sometimes the bishop bit his lips.

Tai Lin raised his head and looked piteously at him.

“I cannot find her.” Then the old man’s head sank again upon the table.

“It is very unfortunate,” communed the bishop in soft, sad tones. “Human frailty, alas, human frailty! When I sent the priest to be instructor to your wife, I thought him a noble, a virtuous man. It has broken my heart to find out that by being tempted he has lost his soul. What could be worse! I would rather the Mission be wholly destroyed than one soul lost. We came here to save souls, not to lose them. And now, in the opinion of your countrymen, all our benevolence, all our good deeds, our self-sacrifice, our prayers and labours are gone, utterly forgotten on account of this one evil act. You complain bitterly. You have lost a wife—God a soul.”

Silence again ensued. Several times the bishop cleared his throat as if to speak.

Tai Lin remained motionless.

“Did you ever think that—that—perhaps the priest was not wholly to blame?” asked the bishop with mild concern.

Tai Lin looked at him dully.

“Yes; you are right. She was not to blame.” 264He answered mechanically. “She could do no wrong.

“Once I gave her a little stool. She always sat on that at my feet. You do not know, but that is the way it was. She patted my hand—now, she is gone—all is gone.”

The old quavering head fell forward upon the table. Sometimes a tremor passed through his body, but no sound broke the silence.

The bishop picked his teeth, white, narrow teeth, set far apart. This was a sign of meditation.

“Did you ever see this ring?” he asked gently, as he placed on the table the pearl that the wife had given to the Breton.

Tai Lin raised his head, looked at the pearl and shuddered.

“I noticed,” continued the bishop sympathetically, “that he had this ring the very first day after his return from your wife. She made him promise not to part with it. I thought it might show a little—a very sudden—I may be wrong—but a woman’s passion.”

“My ring.” Tai Lin’s voice was almost inaudible in its calmness.

“Have you ever noticed any eagerness on her part for his coming?” asked the bishop with compassionate reluctance.

Tai Lin continued looking mutely at the ring.

“I did not know, but—I suspected it,” went on 265the bishop in the same pitying tones. “I noticed that when he was prevented from going to your palace she would send long letters to him—as bishop I read them. They were filled with tender endearments, the most passionate riotous words. It is difficult for me to speak of this. I hope I have not offended Your Excellency, for there is only one desire in my heart—the truth. To seek the truth and to live uprightly have been the two master wishes of my life. But, alas, how hard it is to discover truth! To do this one must pray to God. There is no other way. And since this terrible affair I have been continually on my knees. God has smiled. His smile has penetrated the darkness surrounding this mystery and all is now clear, but to understand, one must first understand women.

“It is strange the attributes men clothe women in: Some deceive themselves into looking upon her as an angel, when they ought to close their eyes and cry, Scat! Others make her a tantalising riddle, and spend their lives trying to solve it; a sweet enigma, which they do not try seriously to know, lest knowing they find out what they do not wish.

“Woman is not a riddle, she is not an angel, she is not an enigma. She is an animal—that is all.

“To understand a woman, study a feline. She has all their attributes. Like them she only ceases to want when satiated; when she desires, she does 266nothing else—like an animal she follows the scent of her wishes. A woman never rests except when asleep; she never sleeps unless her hungers have been satiated. Nothing is more alarming than a woman with one eye open; like animals, when they doze they think of to-morrow’s hunt. Women, as felines, have only three hungers: When these are allayed they are at peace; when not, they prowl—they cannot help it. Hunger and reason are always in conflict, but when reason is lacking there is no contention, no delay, and they hasten on the warm trail of their desires. There are no difficulties they will not surmount if the scent of the game is strong. Feline-like they are velvety-heeled, and we hear not their comings nor goings. One never suspects they have claws until they lacerate. They are not satisfied with one victim; they suck the heart’s blood, then sniff for another. Old age has not much blood—no, not very much.”

For some moments the bishop cracked his knuckles in silence; his cavitous eyes fixed keenly on the old, withered man before him, who still looked dumbly at the pearl on the table.

“Yes; they are best caged,” resumed the bishop in soft, meditative tones. “And yet those closely confined are most dangerous when given a little liberty. The breath of freedom—that insane folly—soon heats the blood and leads them to wild excesses. Had I not felt so sure of the priest’s virtue, 267I would not have permitted him to teach her and lay himself open to temptation. I did not think he would submit. But no risk is so great as to be lenient or careless with the caged. Open the bars and animals will go forth. Play with their claws and they will scratch. Tantalise their hungers and uncaged they will gorge. The wisest way is to teach them a few tricks—a very few, and when not performing keep them behind bars. Man’s greatest self-deception is to believe that they are tamed. No animal has ever yet been so gentled that it could be left to its own instincts. Nothing is more dangerous. How many keepers have been lacerated to death by this one act of careless confidence!

“But I do not know how she could have managed it,” the bishop’s tones became filled with deep concern. “Surely she was not so bold and immodest as to come from behind the screen?”

Tai Lin raised his eyes from the ring and looked startled, mutely about him.

The bishop wiped his lips, and behind the handkerchief a smile flickered.

“Yet there are worse things than her coming from behind the screen,” he continued compassionately. “If it had only stopped there, for the pride of beauty may have moved her unconsciously; impelled by nature she may have crept unseen to his side.

268“This manner of movement is peculiar to women and—snakes.

“Did Your Excellency know that during the first month of the world’s birth these two met—a snake and a woman? Being unable to swallow each other, they made perpetual compact—to devour man.

“Since then they have possessed many attributes in common. Their tongues have the same forked rapidity; poison lurks in their kisses; death in their embraces. One-half of them is allurement, the other half desire. In gorgeous bedeckment they resemble flowers—men often mistake them for such. Their backs are beautiful with radiant colours, their bellies pallid. One coaxes what the other devours. Nothing can equal the subtlety of their movement! One never feels them until bitten; one never knows them until the heart has been clogged by their poison. Thinking them an innocent flower on account of their hues and beauty, one reaches out after them and finds—what Your Excellency has discovered.”

A shudder passed through the old man.

The bishop picked his teeth.

Time passed.

Tai Lin sat up; never taking his eyes away from the ring, he spoke, but as much to himself as to the bishop, feebly, piteously calm:

“I do not know why she did this.”

269There are some silences that men hesitate to break; the silence of a tempest, the silence of an abyss, the silence of a broken heart.

The bishop made no attempt to answer or break the oppressive stillness that followed Tai Lin’s simple statement.

It was a long time before he spoke again, then his voice was quiet, but in his tardy speech lay decision not less terrible than it was calm.

“Yes; it is all over. I am glad you told me. She shall suffer. When you said they were animals you told the truth. I always believed that, but thought her different. I was not mistaken. She has been more a snake than beast. Your words have been learned, only there is no such poison in a snake’s mouth as in a woman’s heart.

“No; I do not ask you why you did not stop this crime when you saw its beginning, because I know you have made roguery holy to escape its responsibility and to enjoy its profits. You have your own protection, but she shall die.”

The bishop, who had been picking his teeth, leaned forward.

“She shall be lyngcheed,” added Tai Lin softly.

“But she may be a Christian,” interposed the bishop.

“Lyngcheed,” reiterated Tai Lin meditatively.

“She may be a Christian,” said the bishop again.

“Yes,” continued Tai Lin, heedless of the 270bishop’s words. “Yes, that is her punishment by the laws of the Empire.”

“But she may have become a Christian.”

“Yes; it is necessary that she shall die.”

“She is undoubtedly a Christian by this time,” interrupted the bishop decisively.

“What do I care if she is a Christian!” and Tai Lin rose up savagely, quaveringly before him.

“Well—you know,” and the bishop wrung caressingly his bony, bloodless hands, “Christians are entitled to our protection. Yes, yes, we could not permit you to——”

“She is my wife and by the law shall be punished.”

“Christians are not subject to your laws. They are under the protection of the Church. The Church does not recognise your pagan marriage. By becoming a Christian she is free and entitled to our protection——”

“I will hammer this Mission into dust!” and Tai Lin brought his trembling fist weakly down upon the table.

“There are three warships in the river,” commented the bishop softly.

“I will sink them!”

“There are battleships at Hong Kong; ten thousand troops at Saigon. A word from me and this city will be bombarded. A cable from me and ten thousand French troops will be landed. You 271know I speak the truth. Do you want to be held responsible for the death of a myriad multitude? Responsible for the loss of three kingdoms——

“How posterity would revile your name! How contemptuous will be held your descendants! Even then you cannot regain her.

“Beware! Beware!

“Disaster surely falls on him that opposes the Church, for it is God’s world-child; mankind and kingdoms its servants. Do not think that this child sleeps, curled up in a lotus-bud, or is drifting to a Nirvana. It is moving onward to Universal Power.”

The bishop leaned farther over the table; turning his head he looked up into the face of Tai Lin and, flushing from the intensity of his feelings, became ashen. His lips were parted, showing the long, narrow gleam of his teeth, while his jet eyes, set so deep in their sockets, glittered and had a speech of their own.

“You think, in this country,” he continued in a voice intense with feeling, “that the Church is the cat’s-paw of European nations; that they get missionaries killed to have an excuse for conquest? Bah! What are these nations? The Church’s hammer and tongs. The Church commands, they obey. You cannot injure a servant of God with impunity. You cannot oppose the Church without ruin. The Church of God must be the Spiritual 272Ruler of the world. It cares not who holds the few hours of temporal sway. Accept our Spiritual Dominance in peace and be your own rulers; attempt to destroy and you shall become the Servant of the World.

“You know that no army ever landed in this country that did not come at our wish and command. Why are all of these gunboats creeping up and down your rivers? Who are they to obey? Dare you punish a Christian without our leave? Has not the church placed them above your laws? And yet you come to me and threaten to destroy this Mission; kill this priest and lyngchee a Christian woman! What could be more ridiculous? How would you do it? Where would you begin and where would you end?”

After a moment of silence the bishop drew back in his chair. Gradually his ashen flush faded and he again became pallid.

Tai Lin stood motionless. Presently his head sank upon his bosom, but the frown on his withered face did not go away.

The silence was broken by the bishop, speaking compassionately.

“I am sorry for Your Excellency. You are a wronged man. When one is cast out by a father one can forget; when one is scorned by a son one can grieve and forgive, but when a man’s wife discards him he cannot forget, nor grieve nor forgive. 273He has been injured internally and abroad. His heart has been splintered; his name befouled; his thoughts and hopes, like green scum, are cast adrift; his children and children’s children are bastardised; he is alone in the profundity of his sorrow and yet conspicuous because of her sin.

“Most of our sins die with us, but the sins of such a woman live on. Like abhorrent weeds they have seeds, which by Time’s winds, are scattered abroad to tare the fields of men. Quick should be her cut-off. There is no law in this land wiser than the one that makes death the penalty of her crime. It is the same law that God himself gave to Moses, our Great Elder. I can understand the threefold reason why you should have her lyngcheed and sympathise with you.

“A man should be known before the world as just; the laws of the Empire should not be deceived; the stigma should be removed from your descendants, for if not, men will ever say there was baseness in your household and your whole progeny will be heralded as bastards. How can the wick of one’s memory be tended by those whom the world repudiates?”

The bishop leaned close to Tai Lin and lowering his voice spoke with greater intensity.

“Would you have me aid you?”

Tai Lin looked at him dully, incredulously.

The bishop tapped the table with his finger-tips.

274“You called her Christian,” mumbled Tai Lin.

“Yes, yes; but you don’t understand. You were going to act against the Church, not with it.”

The bishop caressed his hands.

“Now if you and I could come to some agreement.”

“You?”

“Yes; whereby the Church withdraws its protection——”

“I agree,” cried Tai Lin. “Where is she! Where is she!”

“What will you agree to?”

“Anything,” cried Tai Lin hoarsely, groping feebly the table’s edge.

One by one the bishop pulled his fingers until the knuckles cracked in each, which he did only in moments of great pleasure.

“Will Your Excellency agree to deed your park to the Church if it withdraws its protection and sanctions her punishment?”

“No!” answered Tai Lin decisively.

“But if she is found and given over to you?” interposed the bishop eagerly.

Tai Lin did not answer for some time.

“No,” he said finally. “You will take my park and then squeal Christian! Christian! Christian! I know you rogues.”

The bishop picked his teeth. Once in a while he 275clacked his tongue, which was a sign of perplexity. Presently he smiled.

“We will draw up a contingent bond signed and attested to the effect that the park shall not become the property of the Church until the last stroke of the lyngchee.”

A purple pallor overspread the seams and wrinkles of Tai Lin’s face; his glowing eyes became vacuous.

The bishop moved uneasily.

Tai Lin fumbled at the throat of his robe.

Suddenly he bent over the table toward the bishop.

“The priest?”

The bishop rose and whispered for some time in his ear.

“Make the bond!” commanded Tai Lin huskily.

The bishop hastened from the room and when he returned he brought with him the commandant of the marines.

The bonds were drawn and signed.

Tai Lin rose. For a moment he stood looking thoughtfully at the ring on the table, then, without noticing the bows of the bishop, got into his sedan.

As he was being carried out of the Gateway he caused his bearers to stop, and, lifting the blind, looked back long and fixedly at the House of God.

276

CHAPTER EIGHT AND SO IT ENDED

After passing under the waterfall curtaining the doorway of the Grotto of the Sleepless Dragon, one apparently stands upon the edge of an abyss out of which come blasts of cold moist air and a stillness, which, in contrast to the splashing roar of the cataract, is appalling. The floor of the cavern slopes downward some ten degrees, and in the subdued rays filtered through the prisms of falling waters the nearby walls with their columns and pilasters cleave imperceptibly out of the dim light, white as the clearest marble. The floor is covered with a dust piled about like drifted snow and swept by the cave winds into hollows, ridges and crescents. Water dripping from stalactites trickles over corrugated pilasters, and farther down the incline runs in greater volume from their bases. This crystalline seepage has formed colossal cups, which in their endless overflow have made saucers, then platters and these, running out from each side of the cavern, overlap toward the centre. These accretions of calcareous ooze form more and more, as one advances, a series of overlaying crusts 277which, in the lower incline, become the roofs of abysses, resounding with an hollow rumble when stepped upon. Sometimes, like the covering of a tiger’s trap, they support one man, sometimes an hundred. These covered abysses—no other than the maw of the Sleepless Dragon—probably hold the bones and accoutrements of the Manchu regiments that pursued so relentlessly the youthful Emperor. In them also are the bones of treasure hunters, robbers, and nameless, numberless others for whom the Sleepless Dragon accounts not.

However, there came a day when the danger of the abysses was averted to those that entered and stopped long enough on the threshold to become accustomed to the soft, shadowless light that lay about them; or to those that impatiently lit their resinous torches, for there had been made in the snow-like drifts a distinct trail of footsteps which, passing and repassing, had trodden down the dust; and along this new path were marks such as one sees in winter where boughs have been dragged through the snow. This trail made of feet and boughs began where the mist from the waterfall floated and continued down the incline until it almost reached the edge of the first plate-like formation of calcareous deposits, then turned to the right and ran straight into the wall between two huge corrugated stalagmites. In a jagged recess almost behind the left-hand stalagmite was a 278narrow opening, the lower part of which was ragged, the upper chiselled and smooth. This exit, heading away from the concealed abysses, had in some ages past been made by man into a doorway.

Passing through this secret portal the passage is confined for some distance by narrow walls, and the low roof makes it necessary in places to crawl upon the knees. The tunnel ends by opening into a vast cavern similar to the one first entered; but on advancing the walls and ceilings grow invisible to the light of torches and it becomes like a vast field. Here and there brooks of crystal water gurgle dully as they trickle into a circular lake that fills the lower basin. When torches are held over the edge of this lake there streams upward out of the abysmal depths shoals of pallid, eyeless fishes.

From this subterranean field caverns, like highways, diverged in several directions. And one of them—fortunately or otherwise—led into what was once a little corner of Paradise, cast like a gleaming pearl into this damp cellar of earth. In the centre a fire of pine branches had once blazed and crackled cheerily, giving the shadows of the chamber the soft whiteness of a snow-drift, but where the light of the pine blaze fell it sparkled and glistened as though incrusted with jewels. In the sides of the cavern were numerous openings; at one end curved a half arch, in the other a hole 279that led to the underground field. From the dome jewelled stalactites ten to twenty feet in length hung pendant, while here and there rose great stalagmites like fluted pillars. The walls were hung with draperies falling in unbroken, graceful folds, now softly white as a swan’s breast, now a curtain sown thick with precious stone. Around the wall’s base cups had formed similar to those in the first cave, and were filled with transparent water. Pearly, diamonded furniture was crowded about. Thrones, pedestals, dais and couches draped lightly in gleaming folds, coruscating as though studded with all the jewels of Yu Ngao. In this cavern joyousness and laughter echoed.

The wife, like an uncaged lark of an hundred spirits, was Happiness itself; and when laughter was not on her lips her song found its way through the columned depths. To her birdlike notes, numberless echoes blended in perfect harmony as though some subterranean chorus had taken up her song and was sending it through the uttermost caverns as she had sent it into the hearts of men. Sometimes, after she had ceased, her words could be heard, echoing, echoing, echoing. These caverns and grottoes were reluctant to yield up their music, and slowly smothered or rather caressed their tones into silence as much as to dumbly signify that it was the first time an echo from heaven had drifted thither.

280One day not long after they had taken up their abode in this pearl-shell, Tsang’s wife, smiling and chattering, bustled about the fire. Tsang sat on his heels and smoked contentedly by her side. While on a high couch of marble, the wife directed, commenting, sometimes with laughter, sometimes with the gayest mockery. The Breton sat at her feet, smiling at last and at all times, for since the night of the Propitiation of the Gods of the Waters he had at no time ceased to do this.

Suddenly the wife’s laughter stopped and she knelt down beside him.

“What is the matter?” she demanded fearfully.

The Breton had laughed.

“Did you ever do that before?” Her demure anxiety and troubled looks brought another uncertain, low laugh from his lips.

“Tsi, did you hear him?” she demanded, turning to Tsang’s wife.

“Yes, Your Excellency.”

“Tsang, did you hear him?”

“Yes, Your Excellency.”

Then she turned to him and said beseechingly.

“Do it again.”

In gayest hours, however, it seems that moments of sadness or foreboding must inevitably 281intrude, as sea-fogs slink in and envelop sunlit meadows. In such a manner one day there came into the song and laughter of the wife this uneasy unrest. She appeared trying to escape from something, but it overtook her and her song-laughter stopped.

She moved closely to the Breton.

“Why were you and Tsang gone so long to-day?”

“We were looking for the treasure of Yu N——”

“Treasure!” she interrupted indignantly, drawing away from him. “And I thought you different.” She drew farther away.

“I do not know why men care for nothing else,” she complained, half sorrowfully, half angrily. “From children to old age they think of nothing else. They go into war for it, and temples and jails and yamens; no mud can cover it, nor filth stick so closely but what they fondle it more than—than——”

The Breton reached out his hand toward her, but she drew back.

“You would rather——” Tears were creeping into her complaint.

“But, Your Excellency,” commented Tsang opportunely, “what can you do without money? Fate is the only thing on earth that cannot be marketed for it.”

282She turned on him scornfully.

“Oyah! This whole Ming treasure cannot coax one lark to sing.”

“It could persuade kingdoms.”

“It cannot open a single night-closed lotus bud.”

“It could turn night into day.”

“It cannot stop a tear.”

“Some it could.”

“It cannot add one hour to life.”

“Life is spanned by its pleasures; the rich have three lives to the poor man’s one.”

“It cannot buy——” She hesitated and nervously picked the hem of her jacket.

“Why don’t you answer me?” she pleaded, turning to the Breton.

“Yes.”

“Will you never learn to talk?”

“No.”

“Why?”

“I would interrupt you.”

She leaned close to him and looked up forgivingly.

“I was not angry, but I don’t want you to go away and leave me for so long. I—I——”

“What is it?”

She turned her head away, then answered guiltily.

“I dreamed something that I cannot forget. If 283I only had not dreamed it,” she cried as she snuggled closer to him.

“It is nothing,” he added reassuringly.

“Yes; I know,” she answered, “that you will call this dream just some airy tapestry of sleep, strangely woven, perhaps, and hued, but still the gauzy slumber-work of my foolish mind, which in waking hours I should see plainly through; and yet—I cannot—won’t you let me tell it to you?”

She put her little hand in his and looked up imploringly, then nestling closer, she continued with naïve intentness:

“I know this dream came late in the night, because it was for hours and hours that I could not sleep. Fear’s tugging finger many times caused me to rise and peer into the shadow where you and Tsang were sleeping. It must have been after the third watch, when he builded the fire, that I dreamed. I know you will think this a very foolish dream.”

For a long time he looked into her upturned eyes; then putting her hand against his cheek, she turned his face away.

For some moments there was an hushed, uncertain silence, then suddenly she burst into tears, and throwing her arms about the neck of the Breton she clung passionately to him.

“Do not let dreams disturb Your Excellency,” commented Tsang. “What are they? Reflections 284in the Great River whereon we float. Now how can reflections stem the river or check the course of our craft?”

“Tsang!”

“Tsang!” said his wife, leading him aside, “do you know that was a very bad dream?”

“Boil your rice, Tsi, boil your rice! How can dreams affect the stringed puppets of Fate, squawking and crowing, thising and thating, squeaking out our long or short verse until Fate gets weary and snaps the string. Bah! What have we to do with this inane performance? Go pluck your fowl.”

“I know, Tsang, but I tell you that was a bad dream, a very bad dream, and nothing good will come of it.”

“You are always dreaming.”

“Yes, and——”

“What! those lice-familiar bonzes.”

“They told——”

“Bah!”

“Women’s tears are peculiarly like rain from heaven. Every so often in the strange azure of their being are gathered fleeting rifts of storm clouds, and when these are full swoln and all rays of sunshine hid, it takes but a small clap of thunder to bring on a storm, while a world of prayer and beseechment cannot stop its flood or drizzle—as the storm may be—until self-exhausted, then 285one word and, like the formula of God, there is light.”

“To-morrow,” said the Breton, “I will send Tsang to see if we can go away.”

“Will you?” Again her lips, upturned, quivered with joy, and her eyes, smiling through tears, shone like stars through mists.

“Tsi,” she cried, rising and clapping her hands, “we are going away from this dreadful place.”

“That dream may turn out all right after all,” answered Tsi, “but——”

“Oh, dreams are nothing,” interrupted the wife with merriment, “unless”—looking mockingly at the Breton—“they are mist clouds of yesterday blown across to-night’s darkened dome, or as Tsang says, ‘contorted images reflected in the river of Life.’ No, Tsi, we should not worry when scholars so wise have spoken,” and she bowed roguishly to the Breton as her laughter, charming and tender, fell gratefully upon their ears. So again happiness reigned within the Tomb of Yu Ngao.

The wife, the Breton, and the two peasants were gathered about the fire; the wife was helping Tsi prepare the meal, moving in rhythm to the song she was singing, while the Breton watched her with eyes round and bright.

“Come, rice is ready.” She beckoned imperiously 286to him, holding out her hand, but as he came to her side she drew up, tossing her head haughtily.

“Sit down!” Then seating herself beside him, she slipped for a fleeting moment one little hand into his.

“No, Tsang,” commented the wife mockingly, “I do not think you will make a good farmer, unless you do as I say. You are too wean-less from Fate. If your rice failed to grow, you would at once allot it to Fate, and on your doorstep smoke your pipe. Now, Tsang, you should inquire into the many reasons that prevent your rice from growing. On this river of yours, you drift and do not try to row.”

“Yes, Your Excellency, that is true. But to contend against Fate or to make rice grow would be to seek disaster. We cannot hasten what Fate has decreed must go slow, or retard that that by Fate is moved speedily. Fast or slow the River moves on, and whether we row with it or against it this boat of ours makes the same landing.”

“Why don’t you change boats, fateful man?”

“How can we, Your Excellency, when we are but luggage to be tossed hither and thither at the will of the Great Boatmaster? Sometimes he throws us into a junk, sometimes into a flower-boat; again we cling to a bit of wood.”

“How ridiculous!” she interrupted gaily. 287“Life is no such muddy stream; rather it is the expanse of heaven wherein we are birds of passage, and all that great width from horizon to horizon have we to flit in. All the heavens, Tsang, are ours, and we may mingle as we please with exuberant flights or, solitary, seek the reedy marsh. There is no restraint; eastward, westward, upward, or downward, whither we will so we may go. We may rise, singing like a lark to the very floor of heaven, or crouch in a hollow—an owl, but of the plumage of Fate, Tsang, we have our choice. Haven’t we?” and taking hold of the Breton’s ear she pulled his head toward her, looking fondly up into his eyes.

“But I am a good farmer,” said Tsi, gazing compassionately at her husband, “for I was raised in the paddy-fields of Hungshan.”

“On our farm, Tsi, we will not plant any rice, only tea-shrubs or mulberry trees, and among them azaleas and bushy camelias, where the chickens can hide their nests. How I love to hunt eggs and tend those little fuzzy chickens when they go peek, peek——”

“Listen!” said Tsi, springing to her feet.

They listened, and presently from some distant cave came a murmuring rumble.

“Tsang!”

“Sit down! What comes, comes, and that is the end of it.”

288The Breton, on hearing these sounds, looked at the wife, paled, but did not move. Presently the rumble grew more distinct, and the Breton, without a word, left the chamber by the small hole in the end.

It was some time before he returned, and when he came into the circle of light a cry rang from the lips of the wife and, throwing herself on his breast, she clasped her arms about his neck.

Those few moments had altered the Breton. His face was stony and life seemed to have gone from him. When he spoke his tones were less speech than gloomy reverberations.

“They have found us.”

Tsang came up to him, holding in his hands a huge, double-edged sword of the Mings.

“Fate has overtaken me at last,” he commented contentedly. “Thus it ever is. It hauls men out of bed as well as devouring them on fields of battle. Who can hope to escape by panting up into lofty towers or sneaking into the earth’s rumbling guts? Bah! But I can save you and get vengeance for their stealing my house. This is a Ming sword. As they come through that narrow hole I will cut their heads off one by one. You can get out. I will give myself up to the magistrate and tell him that more than fourteen days ago you went down the Si Kiang into Tong King; you can go to Pakhoi 289then get a junk for Singapore. Let my wife get the babies and take them all with you.”

The Breton made no reply.

“Her Excellency?” the voice of Tsang pleaded.

He hesitated.

The wife unclasped her arms and, turning to Tsang, pointed into the darkened recesses.

“Go!” she faltered.

Stumbling, reluctant, the two peasants went into the darkness, then looking up into the Breton’s face she again put her little hands upon his breast. For a moment she wavered, then her eyes closed and softly as a flower whose stem is severed, she sank to the floor.

The Breton fell on his knees beside her and lifting her head to his breast brokenly endeavoured to coax back that consciousness which had left him alone in the depths of earth and dismay.

In the outer caverns the rumbling noises grew louder.

The fire smouldered though, and the red glow of the dying embers still lighted the two still forms.

One by one the embers darkened.

Suddenly a priest, followed by others, burst into the cavern and in a moment it was filled with their red-glaring torches.

The Breton did not move nor raise his head.

Holding their flaming knots overhead, the 290priests surrounded the two motionless figures on the cavern’s floor, but as they looked their clangour and jibes grew still, for that silencer, Grief, was amongst them.

Presently one of them stepped from out of the circle and rested his hand on the Breton’s shoulder.

“Come.”

291

CHAPTER NINE JUDGMENT

While the penal laws of China are the old codes of the ancient world, their antiquity is not significant of their decay, and though some of them were in force on those days when the Rameses held their High Courts; when Moses judged from Sinai and Solon revised the Laws of Draco, they still deal out justice to mankind. While Egypt’s Empire is buried under a waste of ages and the marbles of Athens are the sarcophagus of its laws and their makers. The Children of God, no longer dwelling under their splintered Mont, are lawless and scattered abroad as small dust. Yet the old Code of China remains vigorous and pristine, exercising in the same lands their power over one-third the human race.

This Code, begun at that period the Occident regards almost as civilisation’s break of day, is not less than a Promethean performance, regardless of the fact as to whether it was proclaimed in the beginning of human institutions or at the present time. No example of man’s intellect is more remarkable. It not only has all the principles of 292modern legislature, but it has them tempered and strengthened by the experience of the fullest ages of man; it gives the right of pardon, the right of appeal, respect for individual liberty, and holds responsible magistrates charged with repression of crime. It is majestic in its plainness, its reasonableness, its consistency and moderation. Without incoherence, it calmly, concisely lays down laws for man’s conduct, and no European Code is at once so copious and consistent or is so free from intricacy, bigotry, and fiction as are these old laws of China.

Yet few penal codes portray so many apparently paradoxical principles of judicature; the unaccountable mixture of cruelty to prisoners, mingled with a paternal solicitude for the welfare and happiness of the people; with a constant fatherly effort to coax them into obedience and yet with the hand of cold rage punishing the guilty. But in this strange attitude is exhibited one of the basic principles of Chinese criminal law; by the rigour of its punishments it is intended that the law shall operate in terrorem, and the penalties laid down in the Code are almost always higher than the punishments intended to be inflicted. This is done, not only that the sovereign may exercise his mercy beyond the bonds of the law,—the commonness of which proving its beneficial effects,—but also that those tempted to commit crime are by 293the very terror of relentless punishment restrained in pathways of uprightness.

Let it be said, however, that in all its phases the Code of China—notwithstanding the terror of its punishments—shows a paternal solicitude for those over whom it lifts its terrible but not unkindly hand. Like a father it threatens and coaxes; like a mother it punishes and caresses. Thus the common name by which the people address magistrates is “Our Father and Mother.” With parental care this heavy Code endeavours to legislate for every possible contingency and exercise its power justly in all of the infinite shades of difference that grow out of human contention. It is minute yet concise, redundant but direct; it is restrictive, making the responsibility of officials such that they can be put to death for not enforcing the laws; and yet it permits magistrates many liberties provided they do not interfere with the ultimate execution of justice. Under this Code there are no juries to panel, there are no lawyers to delay the course of justice nor pervert it. The magistrate is judge, jury, and lawyer. He summons, questions, decides. Trials are open to the public and there is heard the testimony of witnesses; there it is considered and judgment rendered.

So the time came when this ancient Code was to render judgment upon the wife of Tai Lin; this 294same old code that had for almost innumerable generations punished and protected a vast portion of mankind; a code that they looked up to and reverenced, a code possessing for them awe and fear and gratitude, for they were the laws their fathers made untold ages ago, and as dutiful children they loved as they dreaded and shunned them. So the hour came when a lone magistrate empowered by the solemn authority of laws by time sanctioned was to render judgment upon her. There was to be no one to defend her, no one to prosecute her. It was simple; was she innocent or guilty? If guilty, were there extenuating circumstances? If the testimony showed that she was in most part innocent she should go free; if guilty, since her husband demanded it, she must die. If she denied her guilt she should be recommended to the sovereign for mercy. If she confessed, then must she be cut into a thousand pieces naked before the eyes of the multitude.

Under the first cold pallor of day, down before the Tablets of his forefathers in the Great Ancestral Hall, sat Tai Lin. All night and part of the day before had he been seated there with his face buried in his hands. Long and still had he waited for the breaking of this day and now when the pale, inevitable hour had come, mingling its wane light with the radiance of the tapers, he did not move.

295Toward the second hour after sunrise the magistrate of Namhoi arrived, followed by the bishop and French Consul together with their retinues. They entered the Ancestral Hall. Tai Lin lifted his head heavily from the table and returned their salutations as they slowly crossed the hall and took their seats beside him. Along the left side sat the officials of the magistrate’s court; on the right the French Consul and priests of the Mission; all of which Tai Lin saw dully, then his head sank again upon the table.

The magistrate raised his hand; there was a movement among those stationed in the lower part of the hall, but the prisoner did not respond to this silent command. And this court so strangely convened in the sanctuary of Tai Lin’s fathers, waited, frowned, and grew restless.

Suddenly in the midst of this increasing impatience a low involuntary ejaculation burst from the lips of the priests.

On the left side of the hall through an oval aperture, half hid by a silken curtain and illumined by a shaft of morning sunlight, stood the wife, so radiant, so beautiful, that those priests who had seen her only as dead in the red glaring dusk of their torches gaped incredulously. For a moment she fluttered in the sunlight, then stepped lightly, daintily into the Hall of the Dead. But on finding herself in the midst of men staring at her in silence, 296she stopped, her lustrous eyes widening in frightened wonder and clasping her hand upon her bosom she pressed back against the curved lintel.

The magistrate hesitated, frowned, then made the sign for her to come forward and kneel down before him, but she drew back, her great imploring eyes looking dumbly about her. Finally he raised his hand and the first clerk on the left rose and read the charges; namely, that she, the wife of the great man, Tai Lin, had, on the night of the Propitiation of the Gods of the Waters, stolen away with a foreign priest and had lived alone with him in the Grotto of the Sleepless Dragon. As the clerk read the charge and its details she cast a hurried, appealing look around her and trembling, clutched the curtain for support.

The bishop raised his hand, at which sign a priest rose and testified how they had gone into the Great Cavern and in one of its darkened chambers came upon this woman and a priest. She was lying upon the floor with her head resting upon his breast. Tai Lin lifted his head and fastening his dull gaze on his wife devoured each detail of the priest’s recital, and as priest after priest testified how they came upon the guilty pair alone in that cavern’s most solitary chamber his face began to twitch and darken, while a glow came into his eyes.

Suddenly in the midst of a priest’s testimony he 297cried out, a choking strangled cry, a cry inarticulate and yet so vivid in its anguish that it sent a tremor through all those in that great room.

The wife straightened up, for a moment she wavered, then going swiftly over to him she fell on her knees before the table and resting her little fingers upon the edge looked up into his face.

“My husband, do not do that. You do not know how it hurt. No, no, you must not—I have done wrong. Do not be angry and cry out as you did. It was terrible for you to do that, because it is all over and I have suffered more than all these Yamen-men can lay upon me. Forgive me, my husband, send these men away. You do not know how they frighten me. Won’t you forgive me? You must not let these two wee moons of fault outweigh my years of love. Don’t you remember how I used to sit on the stool at your feet; and you let me pull your ears. Won’t you forgive me, my husband?

“No, no, you must not! He just came each day and went away. I do not know how it happened. At first I did not understand, then I tried to harden my heart, but each day when he returned my frozen resolution melted as the sun of the fourth moon melts the earth’s bosom and brings forth again the verdure of spring. I do not know how it all happened. But as a swimmer in the sea was my little heart in the blue deep of 298his eyes, and each day their tides overwhelmed my strength and bore me away on their flood.

“No, no, he did no wrong—his love was not other than the will-less tide that some light from heaven——”

Tai Lin brought his fist feebly down upon the table. He tried to speak. For a moment the tiny tips of the wife’s fingers clung to the table’s edge. Frightened, she looked up into his face convulsed with rage, then her fingers slipped and she fell sobbing beside the table.

The bishop leaned over and spoke to the magistrate.

“Do you confess your guilt?” he demanded.

There came no answer but her sobs.

“Did you not live with the priest in the Sleepless Dragon Cavern?” interrupted the magistrate.

Paying no attention to his question, she again lifted her hands to Tai Lin. For some time there was silence, then the bishop began to speak in a low, firm voice that would have been chilling had it not been tempered by a purring gentleness.

“This is very sad,” he commenced in tones full of pity, “but it is necessary that justice be done. This wife insists that she is innocent—someone must be guilty. If she is without sin the priest must have by force stolen her away and upon him punishment must fall. Since he is guilty, he shall die.”

299As the bishop leaned back in his chair an approving murmur rose from all parts of the hall.

The wife’s sobs suddenly ceased. She no longer held her hands to Tai Lin. And forgetful of all those silent men around her she dumbly, beseechingly looked up into the bishop’s face.

“The guilty alone must die,” he repeated in the same gentle, decisive tones.

“No! No!”

“Yes; we must have justice,” he interrupted firmly, “for the knowledge of our uprightness is spread over all countries and the people look up to us for it.”

“Oh, why do you say that?” she cried, holding out her hands to him. “Is it not better to give mercy than to demand justice? I know you men of greatness love justice, but it is so deep, while mercy is like the heavens where every little act shines out as the light of a star and tinges the depths of whole regions! Oh, Great Sir, don’t be just and your fame will spread over all lands. Nothing is so wide as mercy. Wherever the skies cast their shadows, wherever stars shine, wherever dews fall from heaven, men will love you. Oh, do not hurt him—if you only knew——”

Tai Lin, listening to her sobbing appeal, again brought his fist down upon the table.

The bishop leaned forward and said gently:

“If he is guilty, he must die.”

300She made no reply.

The loud ticking of the Consul’s watch reverberated through the silent hall.

The bishop watched her keenly and a frown came upon his pallid brow as her head sank lower and lower upon her bosom.

The ticking of the Consul’s watch was now drowned in the deep breathing of those about her.

Presently the wife raised her head and searched long and questioningly the eyes of the bishop; then slowly she rose to her feet and looked over the head of her judges, somewhere beyond the Great Golden Altar of the race of Tai. A calm and contented expression came into her face; the colour flowed back into her cheeks and a happy light filled her eyes.

“I am guilty,” she said demurely.

The thin lips of the bishop twitched, and he looked over at Tai Lin, who sat grasping the table’s edge with both hands, his mouth half open, his eyes dull.

“What! Do you confess?” demanded the magistrate.

“Yes,” she replied in low tones, still looking over their heads beyond the altar.

“You confess to all charges?”

“Yes.”

“Did you persuade the priest?” inquired the bishop mildly.

301She looked at him in startled wonder, then again her head sank upon her bosom and only the bishop, her husband, and magistrate heard the scarcely audible answer.

“Yes.”

The hand of the bishop trembled as he held it before his lips; again he looked over at Tai Lin, who momentarily sat as one strangling, then rising, overturned the table before him and passed half down the hall. Suddenly he stopped, clutched at his throat, and would have fallen had not those near took hold of him and half carrying, dragged him from the hall of his fathers.

The magistrate turned to the bishop.

“Does he mean that?”

“Yes.”

“Then she shall be given the silken scarf that she may die in the seclusion of——”

“Is that according to his complaint? Is that in accordance with the law?”

“What! You would not——”

“Yes,” interrupted the bishop decisively.

“I cannot,” feebly muttered the magistrate.

“It is his demand—the law of the Empire! Dare you fail to enforce it?”

The quiet tone of this last question was ominous and the magistrate moved uneasily; he pondered the marble floor; sometimes he glanced sideways at the bishop and once, lifting his eye to 302the wife, shuddered. Then the bishop touched him firmly on the arm and, turning to the first secretary on his left, he lifted his hand and the clerk brought him the Vermilion Pencil.

“It is done.”

Again the lips of the bishop twitched.

“Remember,” he said, leaning over and whispering in the magistrate’s ear, “I hold you responsible for the carrying out of the law. Beware she does not die beforehand.”

The magistrate rose without replying and, followed by all of his retinue other than the first clerk, passed out of the hall. The bishop leaned back in his chair, pulled and cracked his long bony fingers until one of the priests came and spoke to him. A frown passed across his face, but he rose hastily, and, as he passed the wife she looked up, moving close to him.

“Will he be free?” she asked timidly.

The bishop lowered his head and, as he whispered, her eyes sparkled with joy. She clapped her little hands together and uttered a happy cry.

Then the bishop followed by his priests passed out of the hall.

The first clerk still continued writing, apparently oblivious to the beautiful woman, who, smiling to herself, still gazed over, somewhere beyond the Golden Tablets of Tai.

303“Foolish woman, why did you confess?” he demanded brusquely.

“Oh, I did not know what else to do,” she answered lightly, turning her head to one side.

“No doubt,” he replied gruffly; “but it is not the first time a woman’s tongue has been the knife to lyngchee her body.”

“Indeed?” she inquired mockingly.

“Woman, why did you lie?” he continued harshly.

She turned away.

“Why did you lie?” he demanded again.

“Oh, I don’t know,” she interrupted with gay raillery. “Don’t you see that I but follow the ways of Nature, wherein the straightest trees are felled the soonest, and the cleanest wells are first drunk up; wherein the most innocent bird is quickest netted, and the tenderest flower is first plucked, that it for one fleeting instant might pleasure man’s nostril? Thus in such fashion, Mr. Clerk, must my uprightness be cut down; my good name and virtue drunk up; my innocence conquered and confined while the little flower of my life—plucked and cast aside—— Oh, well, I do not grieve,” she continued carelessly. “They can take me away from earth, but not from him. The silken scarf is for the neck. Whoever heard of it strangling the heart?”

“Unfortunate woman! Unfortunate woman!” 304interrupted the clerk, rising. “There is to be no silken scarf for you.”

“What do you mean?” she asked, startled.

“Woman, do you not know the law? You are to die naked before the multitude.”

Lifting her little hands to her temples she swayed and fell down before him.

“No, no,” she cried, clutching his robe. “They have all gone and left me but you, won’t you save me? No, no, don’t go,” she pleaded, holding on to his robe as he started to move away. “Talk with me. How can you leave? Listen! Why can I not have, in all this wide house of the world, just one little corner to die in?”

“I can do nothing,” he replied, his rough voice trembling. “You are to die by the lyngchee.”

Her eyes opened wide as she looked up at him, then she sank down, pallid on the floor in the Hall of the Dead.

305

CHAPTER TEN A FRIEND

The law does not procrastinate in China; and the execution of the wife was fixed on the following afternoon. When the sun rose that day out of a fogless sea it proved to be one of those gentle winter mornings of the semi-tropics. In northern latitudes such mornings are often called the smile of spring, but in this land they are more than the birth from winter’s womb—they are an awakening on the bosom of summer and there pervades abroad an inexpressible atmosphere of compassion. On such mornings it is said that the tiger comes forth from his lair and in the sunned jungle glade lounges heedless of his quarry, so that neither men nor the most timid of jungle deer have fear of him, for the peace of the day has gone into his terrible heart and he purrs and purrs and purrs like a kitten on a woman’s lap.

In other lands, upon this same twenty-fourth day of winter, whole nations were meeting together around their Christmas hearths; their spirits also gentled by those feelings of domestic love and attachment, which they regard as hallowed; 306songs and laughter burst from their lips and happy with remembrance of months past, joyous with anticipation of those future, their carols were rising upon all sides, while with kindnesses and benevolence they sought to lift their hearts above earth and with the shepherds from their sheepfold, cry peace and good will unto all.

But the sunlight of this day as well as its spirit seemed to have shunned the Catholic Mission of Yingching. Within its Compound were neither songs nor laughter—only a brooding silence, while around the stern Visigothic Chapel ranged patrols of soldiers. Whether it had been a matter of policy with the bishop or whether it had been included in the agreement between Tai Lin and himself, is not known, but from the time the Breton was brought from the Grotto of the Sleepless Dragon he had been confined in this gloomy chapel and surrounded by a battalion of Chinese troops.

About the fourth hour after the sun had passed the zenith and light rifts of fog were beginning to drift in from the sea, a man passed hastily through the south gate of the Mission Compound and emerged from the cloisters of the bishop’s dwelling. After searching with quick but penetrative glances the court surrounding the Chapel, he let his chin rest upon his bosom and, putting his 307hands behind his back walked slowly, thoughtfully, toward the Chapel.

At the circle of troops he was stopped.

“What!” he cried indignantly, with piping sternness.

The soldiers did not move and an officer came up.

“Command these men to stand aside. I am the bishop.”

The soldiers drew to one side and the officers bowed. In front of the Chapel door a sentry barred his passage, but at the command of the officer who had followed, the door was unbolted and the stranger passed within.

“Ha, ha, diplomacy! diplomacy!” he chuckled to himself as he stood blinking in the gloom of the low, vaulted vestibule. “Ha, ha,” and he pattered down the aisle toward the altar, crying in a shrill, gleeful voice:

“Well, well, let me coax you when they asked me to get off the bund; they never knew what I would do. To obey is to conquer; to smile is to be supreme as Mrs. Hook——”

The Breton rose from his seat on the altar steps, and resting his two hands on the shoulder of his visitor, looked down into his eyes.

The Reverend Hook wriggled, smiled furtively, and squirmed from under the Breton’s gaze.

308“Well, here I am; diplomacy, mind you, diplomacy. Made up my mind to see you; see you I would—knew it would not be for long. I suppose you are next? But you know all about those caves and your knowledge must not be lost. That would never do. Heard you were more than a mile inside—my—my—— Now the first thing I want you to tell me——”

The Breton turned wearily away and sat down again on the steps of the altar.

“Am I hurting his feelings? Poor diplomacy, poor diplomacy,” muttered the Reverend Hook to himself.

“Well, I went down on the bund this morning,” he resumed cheerily, keeping his eye on the Breton. “It is all fenced except the waterside, and in the very spot—neither a foot more nor less—exactly where you used to stand—the very place where I gave you the maps to the Grotto—they have put up the crucifix. At the bottom are two black stones and a tub, but not a very big one. On the left, under a red silk canopy, are three chairs—don’t understand why there should be three. Just then a priest came along and said I had not been invited—think of that! French soldiers strutting up and down—French gunboats anchored along the waterfront. Now, I want to know who is doing this execution—Frenchmen or Chinese? You know I am a good friend of yours—or I would never 309have given you those secrets of the Dragon Grotto,—but I want to say that these Catholic priests are trying to run this country. I went over to our Consul. He just swore. He said if he were God—he is a blasphemous wretch—he would invent something new in hell for these priests. Kept getting madder and madder, then he grabbed me by the collar and threw me out of the door. That crazy Consul has the Mission-phobia—but he won’t last. He can’t mistreat an American Methodist missionary with impunity; let me coax you. What have I got to do with this business on the bund? I gave you the secrets of the Grotto, but how did I know that all this was going to happen?”

For some moments the Reverend Hook became contemplative, then he began to shake his head.

“Terrible, terrible, so young, so beautiful, so beautiful, so beautiful—and I will never see her, and all those others will. And they will take off her clothes. Oh, oh, oh.”

His breath and words failed him. He pattered back and forth before the altar in little restless strides.

The Breton sat bowed upon the altar steps.

“Why don’t those countries with gunboats stop it! Why don’t they stop it!” he cried shrilly, never ceasing his nervous patter, and casting hurried glances at the priest as he repassed the altar steps.

310Suddenly he stopped.

“Why don’t you do something?”

The Breton raised his head.

“Why don’t you do something?” repeated the Reverend Hook in shriller tones.

“Do what?” asked the Breton wearily.

“Do what? Stop it! Stop it!”

The Breton looked at him.

“The execution!”

“I have nothing to do with it,” replied the Breton.

“What?” screeched the Reverend Hook, jumping back and throwing up his hands. “You have nothing to do with it?”

The Breton with a sigh bowed his head, while his visitor stood looking at him appalled.

Presently he began to walk back and forth, muttering aloud.

“I did not think it—how can he do it? Gave up everything for him—so beautiful, so beautiful. Thus they throw themselves away; always have done it, always will, all except Mrs. Hook. Now they are going to take off her clothes—before those Frenchmen—cut the skin of her beautiful brow and let it hang down over her eyes—eyes that made men tremble. Then they will cut off her little ears and pieces from her cheeks. Then her lips—and to think he has kissed them. Then her white arms—then her beautiful—beautiful—Oh! 311oh! oh! And he sleeps here, doubled up like a ground-hog!”

The Reverend Hook’s excitement overcame him, and weeping copiously he pattered over and stood in front of the priest. After several efforts he mumbled lugubriously.

“I am going, but I want to say that I didn’t think it.”

The Breton looked up.

“You are going?”

“And I want to say that I didn’t think it,” he sobbed.

“What?” asked the Breton drearily.

“That you would let them kill her.”

The Breton sat erect, his eyes searching. Then springing to his feet he seized his visitor and thrust him back to where the last glimmer of narrow sunlight fell upon his face.

“Don’t, don’t—at sunset they lyngchee——”

Sometimes there comes from the lips of men a cry that no one can describe, unless it be compared to that abandoned cry that is said to have come from a Crucifix some centuries ago, but which echoes yet at times from hearts of other men; so now there came such a cry from the lips of the Breton. He staggered back, and his hands clutching at his throat, tore open the bosom of his long black robe; he tottered against the altar and bent over it. Then it was that the Great Symbol of the 312Tien Tu Hin fell from his bared bosom and lay gleaming upon the outer folds of his robes, its terrible green jewel glistering in the dun shadows of the Chapel as the tiger’s eye glitters in the jungle’s dusk.

Suddenly the Breton drew himself up, and shaking his head and shoulders as a wounded animal, threw open the Chapel door; for a moment he stood under the vaulted entrance and the slanting rays of the sun fell on the Great Symbol.

The sentry looked up, hesitated, looked again at the glittering Eye, and dropped upon his knees. A patrol of soldiers started to rush forward, then stopped; awe and reverence overcast their features, for there, under the gloomy vestibule, in the red sunlight, calm and yet awful, stood their prisoner—upon his bosom the Eye of the Age’s Wrath.

As the Breton advanced toward them many fell upon their knees and struck their foreheads thrice upon the ground. An officer from one of the buildings in the rear shouted for the soldiers to seize him, but this command was no sooner heard than those kneeling rose, and marshalled themselves behind him. Other soldiers came with their guns and formed another line, and those that did not follow saw upon the faces of this guard, which constituted more than half of the battalion, the sternness of death. As the Breton moved toward 313the north gate, apparently oblivious to those that followed him, the soldiers dropped their queues over their right shoulders in a loop, then bringing the end around the neck, tied it in two loose slipknots to the loop—all of which is called the Sign of Shou. Carrying their guns in the left hand they held their right hands over their heads with the thumb pointing upward, and as they went out of the Mission gate there went up that terrible cry:

“Hung Shun Tien!”

314

CHAPTER ELEVEN ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACTHANI

Early upon the day of the execution four French gunboats and a cruiser got up steam and moved slowly down the river toward the bund. The cruiser anchored opposite the place of execution with the gunboats on either side of it but nearer to the bund, so that the five vessels formed a cordon in shape of a semi-circle. From within this space all river craft were driven out and the guns of the warships trained across the empty waters upon the bund, where early in the morning guards of marines landed. On these warships the day wore slowly, tiresomely along, and it was not until lengthening shadows began to creep reluctantly across the river that they became enlivened with men clustering over their rigging and sides, laughing with jests.

The Viceroy, to prevent the execution from precipitating a riot or collision with foreigners, had previously posted proclamations that no one should come forth from their homes or traverse the Street of the Sombre Heavens for seven blocks back from the bund; neither were they to be seen upon the waterfront for seven blocks east and west of the Street of the Sombre Heavens. So 315that, when the soft, mellow sunlight of this eventful day streamed down upon the deserted streets, bathing their unaccustomed solitude in a serene, peaceful warmth, it made these turbulent thoroughfares appear like village streets basking in spring sunshine.

About the third hour in the afternoon sedan chairs, soldiers, officers on horseback, and pedestrians began to come into the vacant Street of the Sombre Heavens, and soon the enclosed space on the bund became a scene not less brilliant than it was ominous. The crowd assembled there stood about in the form of a crescent blunted on the left horn and facing the river; petty mandarins in official gold-brocaded robes, red-coated soldiers, and French marines in white and blue, Manchus clothed in rich stuffs, and French officers, goldlaced and brilliant, formed in parts this bizarre horn, in whose centre stood a crucifix with black stones and tub beside it.

Over all brooded a silence.

About an hour before sunset a salute was fired from the cruiser, and two boats crossed the open waters. In their stems were the Bishop of Yingching and officers of the Fleet. As the boats approached the bund the marines were drawn up in double ranks, extending from the landing stage to the three ebony chairs under the silken canopy.

The bishop was first to ascend the ladder, and 316as he stepped upon the bund he drew himself up to his fullest stature, scrutinising those assembled before him; then with slow steps, with haughtiness, solitary and full of unmeasured pride, walked down the files of marines to the elevated platform beneath the canopy. For a fleeting moment he hesitated, then sat down in the middle chair. A group of French officers, glittering in gold lace, followed and took up their station to the right, while part of the marines drew off to one side of the gate, part on the other.

The sun was sinking.

The French officers gaily carried on their animated conversation. The bishop was silent. And the Chinese, in spite of their brilliant robes, were grave, uneasy; anxiously they cast their eyes at the sun slanting through the rigging of the warships, but not until it had sunk below the gun-platforms on the masts did the rolling boom of kettle-drum break the oppressive stillness. This was echoed from without by clash of cymbals and blare of trumpet; the marines presented arms and the Chinese troops drew up in order.

The magistrate approached.

When the flag-bearers and musicians came on the bund the spectators rose upon their tiptoes to see enter three stolid men dressed in flowing garments of the Ming dynasty, and from whose caps waved the golden pheasant’s long, slender plume. 317The first carried a huge beheading sword upright before him, glinting in the red rays of the sun. One of the others carried a small basket of knives—the cutting up knives, while about the neck of the third were suspended ropes and chains. These men went over and stood beside the crucifix. Behind the executioners had followed a half-dozen men carrying red, oblong boards attached to long handles and inscribed in golden characters; some denoting the magistrate’s honours and rank, others commanding the people to keep out of the way and be quiet. Two officers on horseback rode behind them, followed by three men, one bearing an official fan, another a crimson table to place before the magistrate, while the third bore a gold-embroidered umbrella of state. After these came men dressed in long red robes and black, conical hats, who were the “wolves and tigers” of the Yamen, and their passage was of crackling whips, the rattle and grind of chains; the clanking crunch of implements of torture. After them came men swinging censers, which left streams of fragrant smoke along the pathway, and half hid in these clouds of incense pattered two old men, receiving petitions from the people. The sedan of the magistrate now entered, followed by officers on horses and soldiers carrying arms and flags.

When the magistrate stepped out of his sedan under the canopy he started in unrestrained astonishment. 318The bishop, without rising, nodded his head in salutation. Slowly the magistrate went and sat down on the bishop’s left, and before him was placed the crimson-covered table; upon it the Vermilion Pencil.

The sun had sunk below the house tops of Honan.

The bishop frowned and glanced impatiently toward the gate.

Flecks of night fog scurrying along the sky were being tinged with the last rays of the sun, when a solitary sedan was borne swiftly, silently through the gate to the vacant chair under the red canopy.

Those that had known Tai Lin looked in horror at the shrunken, quavering old man, who now sat down on the bishop’s right—a shuddering of shrivelled skin.

“Is he alive?” whispered one man to another.

“Yes.”

“I doubt it.”

“Look at his eyes.”

They were like coals. The spectators were fascinated by them, and the terror of what was to happen crept upon all. Many furtively looked toward the gate; others turned away to the river; some watched the three executioners beside the crucifix; others looked at the bishop.

Suddenly there was a movement among the 319troops at the gateway as a sedan, mournful in blue and white and thickly surrounded by soldiers, was carried across the bund and silently put down in front of the magistrate. The soldiers filed to one side, the curtain was drawn and the wife stepped daintily out.

When her eyes rested upon the magistrate who had judged her she drew up to her full height, tossed back her head, while a flush darkened the delicate pallor of her cheeks.

The spectators surged forward, and as they looked upon her there went over them something like a great sigh.

The wife, turning away from the magistrate, perceived the bishop leaning forward in his chair. Instantly, as a shaft of sunlight, a rare, sweet smile dimpled her features, and in the joy of her gratitude she moved closer, spontaneously holding out her hands. But as she stepped toward him smiling so happily, so gratefully, the bishop became immovable, as one paralysed by fear. His thin, tight lips opened, his cavernous eyes grew dull, his face became chalky, then, with an effort, he shrunk back in his chair.

Tai Lin had never moved nor uttered a sound since he had taken his seat, but when the bishop recoiled from the tiny thankful hands of the wife, he was no longer hid from her, and she looked up into his burning eyes, into his face, where over 320the loose-hanging skin a myriad deep-crossed wrinkles charactered the pain and wrack of a strong man’s heart. For a moment her slender form swayed, she pressed her little hands together, then held them up to him; her lips parted, and falling before him she clasped his legs in her arms.

The straining ears of the spectators could hear no sound as they watched her body tremble with sobs; nor could they see any leniency creep into the face of Tai Lin as he leaned over and peered down at her.

Blindly she reached up her hand, and the crowd saw him shrink back, a sweat breaking out upon his face when, in her blind fumbling, she found one of his nerveless hands and drew it down to her cheek. Breathlessly, fearfully the spectators watched the flames in his eyes flicker and then—go out: they saw him reach down his other hand and rest it upon her head; his lips moved, but no one heard what he said unless——

The bishop straightened up in his chair, a scowl swept across his face, and touching the magistrate on the arm, spoke to him, with an imperious gesture toward the wife sobbing at the feet of Tai Lin.

The magistrate hesitated, then picked up the Vermilion Pencil. Slowly, weighingly, he lifted it, and two of the executioners sprang forward and, seizing the wife, dragged her over to the crucifix.

321Tai Lin sat for a moment stupefied then, half-rising and uttering a cry, he held out his hands. Again a frown swept across the bishop’s face and leaning over he spoke to him in low, rapid tones. As he talked, now and then snapping his fingers, an uneasy movement began to ebb in the crowd. Presently Tai Lin’s head sank upon his bosom and the bishop, turning away, nodded to the magistrate. The Vermilion Pencil was again lifted from the crimson table. The executioners that had dragged the wife to the crucifix tore in twain her long outer robe and threw it aside. At this her tears and supplications ceased. Two spots burned redly in her cheeks.

Tai Lin bent forward, grasping the arms of his chair. Those spectators that once looked at him did not turn away nor look at the wife. The fascination of her beauty was less than that of his terror. They watched his eyes glow and burn in their sunken sockets until a dull film came over them. Yet no one in all that great crowd saw him breathe nor show any twitching signs of life. He looked to many like the carven image that is found in the Temple of Death.

The executioners ranged the black stones side by side so that there was a space of about three inches between them. They stood the wife against the crucifix, but in stretching out her arms found that the cross piece was low and in their haste 322they were a long time altering it. During these painful moments not a sound nor movement came from those crowded there.

Finally they tied her to the cross with thongs about her wrists and ankles and one that pressed into the soft delicate contour of her neck. Thus she stood looking somewhere over and beyond those assembled around, her great, mournful eyes filled with the light and shadows of other thoughts, but wholly oblivious to the terror about her and to the fear that brooded there.

The executioner stepped up to her and rested his hand upon the bosom of her silken jacket. But as he moved his hand to tear it off there came a choking cry.

Tai Lin had risen to his feet; heavily he lifted his hands and the spectators could see he was trying in vain to speak as one gasps in a nightmare. He shook his quavering head and a foam oozed out of the corners of his mouth. Then as the executioner again raised his hand, Tai Lin with stupendous effort held out his heavy arms to her. His face became purple, his lips black, and a bloody ooze seeped out of them. A tremor passed through his gaunt form. For a moment he stood still and erect, then his arms fell to his side and he sank down lifeless in his chair. A convulsive movement shot through the multitude, followed by breathless silence.

323The wife waited with closed eyes for the brutal hand. She did not see Tai Lin rise from his chair; she did not hear his choked cry, nor know that he had fallen dead. Now and then a tear struggled out and lingered momentarily on her long lashes. These little salt globules were the only signs of life in her, and the eyes of some watched them trickle away drop by drop.

Presently men turned to look at one another, then a wave of consternation swept over the bund. They began to whisper. And it was in the midst of this terrified hum that the magistrate raised his hand in command of silence.

“The Great Man, Tai Lin, has saluted the World. He alone was the accuser. The prisoner is free.”

As the executioner cut the deep-sunk thongs away and the wife sank down unconscious at the foot of the crucifix, there rose a noise half a sigh, half a strange murmur, the voice of this multitude, a crowd of men that shrank, shivered, then surged forward to look at the dead man still in the chair and a slender body lying limp at the foot of the cross, beautiful even in the guise of death; necklaced with a ribbon of bruised flesh, braceletted with wristlets of angry red.

It was over this swaying, murmuring mob that the bishop rose and lifted his hand imperiously.

“How is it,” he cried in clear, ringing tones, 324“that a magistrate of the Middle Kingdom dares hush up a public crime? This guilty woman was taken in the midst of her sin. In trial she confessed her guilt and was condemned by the law and her husband’s command. Dare a magistrate act contrary to this? Dare he act contrary to the three hundred and eighty-first section of the Code? Let him beware!”

The bishop turned, and with his thin lips curling looked sternly down upon the astonished magistrate. Over the bund fell a stillness—the silence of suspense. The eyes of the spectators, propped widely open, did not look away from the pallid man towering above them—with his relentless gaze rivetted upon his fellow judge.

The magistrate moved uneasily in his chair. He looked at the warships riding sombrely at their anchorage, he contemplated the marines drawn up at the gateway and the chained, watchful cannon. He studied thoughtfully his Vermilion Pencil. Presently he raised his hand.

“Does the Eldest Son of the Great Man Tai Lin demand death?”

There came no answer.

“Does any member of the Tai family demand her death?”

Not a sound replied but the crowd’s deep breathing and a faint wavering hum from the city.

325“Does any man of the Middle Kingdom demand the cutting into pieces of this woman?”

The multitude held its breath, straining to catch the slightest sound that might be the noise of a human voice. But they heard only the running waters sobbing below their feet and the last distant echo of the day’s work.

The magistrate lay down his Vermilion Pencil and looked triumphantly at the bishop, but his implacable gaze did not alter and the smile of the magistrate was lost.

“She is free.”

“Ah!” The bishop uttered this exclamation so softly that the magistrate alone heard and he looked furtively away.

“It is in accordance with the law,” he replied.

“Ah!”

“No one demands it.”

“Ah!”

“You are not a man of the Middle Kingdom.”

A slight smile curled the bishop’s thin lips as he drew a package from his robe and threw it down upon the table.

The magistrate carelessly, even with hauteur, opened it. As he read, a pallor came into his yellow face and his hand shook as though with palsy when he refolded the document. Again he turned his eyes toward the grim warships in the river; 326again to the calm, stern array of marines and their cannon unchained and alert.

He leaned over his table as one in a stupor.

Immovable the bishop towered over him, his lips tight drawn, his eye fixed.

The magistrate lifted the Vermilion Pencil.

The spectators had watched this conversation between the bishop and the magistrate without comprehending what had passed between them, but when they again saw the Vermilion Pencil rise slowly, when they saw the executioners lift up the still unconscious woman from the foot of the cross and revive her, a shudder passed through them. They swayed backward as from a sudden yawning of an abyss. They were shoved backward one over another until the bund around the crucifix was again clear.

The executioner, having revived the wife, bound her once more to the crucifix; again the thongs hid the red rings around her wrists and neck. Her eyes, still moist with tears, cast one fleeting, reproving look around her, full of injured, startled wonder.

Then the executioner with the beheading sword came and stood on the right of the crucifix; the one with the reviving sponge stood on the left, while in front of her was the other, his sleeves rolled up and by his side a small basket of knives. These men did not take their eyes away from the 327pencil of death, which again lay on the crimson cloth.

The Pencil moved.

Involuntarily the spectators turned away as they heard a cry of gentle protestation.

The executioner cut the left shoulder of her jacket, laying bare her arm and part of her bosom, which was not unlike ivory sheened with the pink of silk. She looked up into the face of her slayer, and those spectators that dared to raise their eyes saw his hand waver. Then the ascending Pencil stopped. The first stroke was now to be given.

When the Breton went out of the Mission gate followed by the Children of the Deluge, he turned east upon Old River Street and as he went along there rose at certain intervals that terrible cry, “Hung Shun Tien!” Men stopped in their labour at the sound of this, and when they saw the tall black-robed Breton with the Great Symbol gleaming on his bosom, when they saw the stern, armed array behind him holding overhead their right hands with thumbs pointing upward, they either drew back in consternation or put aside the implements of their labour and joined themselves to this body of sombre men. They asked no questions; they looked neither to the right nor to the left, but simply dropped their queues over their right shoulders in a loop and brought the end 328around the neck, tying it in the Sign of Shou. Then they held their right hands overhead and when the others cried out: “Hung Shun Tien!” so cried they.

In this manner beggars peeped out of their holes and joined them. Merchants came from their gilded shops and rolling up their silken robes took their places beside the beggars. Thieves crept out from their hidings and sentries left their stations. Hucksters put down their trays and scholars their brushes. Itinerant barbers, physicians, cooks, fortune-tellers, robbers, clerks, silk robes, and tatters; youths and tottering old men; from mansions and cellars and hovels and holes came the Children of the Deluge to follow the black-robed man upon whose bosom the Symbol rested.

As the Deluge burst through the labyrinthine windings of the suburbs in their race with death, the old men and those that were feeble, panting, and wheezing, dropped out, but new recruits took their places and the flood was swollen as it rushed along, so that before the head debouched into the Street of the Sombre Heavens, the rear could no longer hear the battle-cry of the van falling sonorous and terrible upon the silence of twilight.

The wife had closed her eyes, waiting for the stroke that would cause the drooping brow to 329close them forever. The executioner had raised his knife when there fell upon the silence of the bund a rumble, a roar, and then that cry of terror:

“Hung Shun Tien!”

While the marines endeavoured to get their cannon in position, the Chinese troops ran thither and thither, uttering cries of terror. The spectators separated into two parts, one panic-stricken while the other threw their queues over their right shoulders in the sign of Shou and echoed that terrible cry.

A deluge of men overflowed the whole bund, and marines, spectators, and soldiers were lost in it.

As though unconscious of this great flood of mankind aroused by him the Breton went through the way which the Eye gleaming sullenly on his bosom opened for him. And as he stepped out into the open space toward the crucifix, this now vast multitude became silent. Those that were near saw him draw his hand across his eyes; shaggily shake his head and shoulders, then go slowly over to the crucifix.

The executioners drew away as he approached, and two fell upon their knees obedient to the mandate of the Eye aglitter in the gathering gloom.

The Breton stood for a moment silently beside the crucifix.

“I have come,” he said softly.

330A smile passed over the lips of the wife, but she did not open her eyes.

“I have come,” he repeated in the same soft, questioning tones.

Uncertain, fearful, her eyes opened. She looked at him and smiled. She looked at him again, and out over the bund echoed a cry so full of joy that the falling night seemed turned into the break of day, and the lark’s note quivered in the air. Some men in the multitude smiled foolishly and wiped away a tear, others laughed to choke a sob.

The Breton picked up the beheading sword at his feet, handling it as lightly as a knife. Without haste, seemingly oblivious to all about him, he cut the cords from her wrists. No one moved. They watched, fascinated, the great sword play delicately about her; cutting the cords of her ankles, severing the thongs about her wrists and neck.

The wife was free. Holding out her hands, she clasped them around his neck. He drew his black robe around her so that only her head was seen nestling beside the Great Symbol.

For some moments thus they stood—motionless beside the crucifix, while the army of the Deluge, gigantic and terrible, awaited his command.

The Breton hesitated.

Presently he began to move backwards toward the bund’s edge, carrying the wife in his left arm and still grasping in his right the executioner’s 331sword. Behind and below him called the old voice of the river—before him the old silence of man.

The Deluge pondered.

The crucifix held out its arms in the gloom; one to man and one to the river. The husband dead was unseen; the bishop crouching in his chair became a part of the approaching void of night and the bond of blood on the bund at his feet fluttered and in the night wind vanished.

The day was done.

Thoughtfully and for some time the Breton gazed at those before him, without anger or wonder or pain. Then he looked down in the face upturned to his, where eyes were full of laughter and delight, where lips smiled and murmured and caressed.

Her little hands tightened around his neck and drew his head down until their lips met.

Darkness was falling. The fog coming in from the sea scudded low down on the river and its veil was being drawn over multitude and water. All distant were hid in it other than upon the bund’s edge, where still stood a darkened figure.

Suddenly the Deluge began to move.

Night had fallen: from its shadows came only the crunch of that remorseless flood as it moved onward—back into those abysses whence it had come forth—the Night of Time, the Heart of Man.

THE END