CHAPTER ONE
THE YOUNGER

It is necessary to go back some years prior to the time of the typhoon through whose swirl of devastation two priests from the French Mission of Yingching had struggled and survived, in order that by some knowledge of their past, though it is extremely meagre, a better understanding may be had of the events concerning which this book is written.

Whether the brilliant crepuscular rays from the western sky, the darkness with its labyrinthian uncertainty, the mangling crunch of the wind, the conflagration of the heavens, the crucifix, chaos, then the calm sun of noonday are only symbolic of these priests’ lives, or has in it a more material prognostication of their future, cannot be judged until the last words have been written.

Concerning the early life of these two priests nothing is known of the old man and but little of the youth prior to the time with which this book deals, although it is said that the younger priest came from Bretagne, first from an old ruin called the ChÂteau Carhaix-sur-Mer, then from a monastery at St. Pol de Leon, which knowledge is important in explaining his melancholy seclusiveness, his endless meditation: for this melancholy silence of the Bretons comes with their land, a gift of the Sorrow of God.

The ChÂteau Carhaix-sur-Mer in which this Breton priest spent his childhood stands on the edge of a ravine that runs through a moorland lying between a stretch of woods and the cliffs. The town of Lanilis is south of it; Plouzevede and Lesneven are to the eastward, while Plouneur-Trez is north.

The sea along this coast is safest when it frowns and most dangerous when it smiles.

It has been likened to a woman.

From the ChÂteau he was taken to a Jesuit monastery and college in St. Pol de Leon, a town of monasteries and nunneries and churches, which, like itself, are the patchwork of different ages. From almost its very beginning until now the cobbled streets of this old town have been filled with monks and priests, while bevies of white-hooded nuns have flitted silently through its shadows as pigeons on the roof-tops and in their comings and goings have left no trace of their passage. Thus this grey old town, with its slumbers, its periodical bustle at Pardons and its endless decay, exists as those who dwell in it—but to mourn and to pray.

In the moss-cowled monastery, where only the chanting of monks was heard or other sounds equally solemn, the sombreness of the Breton was changed to a gentler melancholy and the Spirit of Christ is said to have so deeply affected him that when he departed from the monastery for the Mission in China, an old monk, kneeling in the shadows of the gateway asked his blessing, saying:

“I discern a martyr.”

The Mission of Yingching is not without its history and its antiquity. China has always been a tempting field for missionary effort and from the time the spirit of proselyting first took hold of men there has been no nation that has not at some time or other sent into this old land their priests and missionaries, their apostles and martyrs.

Christianity is not very old in any part of the world, as far as the age of the world goes, but it is far older in China than most people believe; older there, in fact, than in any other part of the world outside the cradle of its infancy.

During those years so momentous to the Roman Church, when her monks, penetrating through the gloomy forests of Europe, sought the conversion of the Goths and the Vandals, the old Bavarians and Alemanni, there were at that time in China more Christians than in all these sombre woods. And while the monks with those devout females, Bertha of Kent, and Clotilda, Queen of the Franks, were bringing over by intrigue their recalcitrant lords to a quasi-Christianity, the Nestorian Fathers in Asia were gaining through education their tens of thousands of adherents. When Columban, the Irish monk of Banchor, with Boniface, the English monk from Devon, were labouring among the Saxons and Goths, cutting down their sacred oaks, overturning their altars and at last securing the crown of martyrdom at the hands of our exasperated forefathers, the Nestorians were building schools and founding colleges, so that toward the end of the eighth century there were in China more Christians than to-day dwell in the whole of Asia.

But when ambition and lust of power crept into the aims of the Nestorians their influence began to decline; when they made education secondary and intrigue the first element in conversion faith in them was destroyed; their power crumbled; their beliefs vanished and now all that is left of their multitudinous congregations is, in the ancient city of Singanfu, a pillar of stone.

Though the Mission of Yingching was founded more than three hundred years ago the present site or compound dates back only to the middle of the nineteenth century when, after the city ex-muros had been destroyed by the bombardment of French gunboats, the Catholic Church took possession of a large tract of land in the western suburbs, which was afterwards divided into two portions; an enclosed tract in which is the Mission, containing nearly eleven acres and an open space some six hundred feet in width between the southern wall of the compound and the river. This vacant tract had been part of the land seized by the Church after the bombardment, but owing to the strenuous and persistent opposition of the Chinese provincial authorities as well as the inhabitants of the city to the Church acquiring such a large piece of land in the populous western suburbs, a compromise was finally agreed upon whereby the Church was confirmed in its title to eleven acres, while the Chinese were to retain ownership to the tract between the Mission and the river but were not to erect buildings upon it or to prevent in any way the Mission from enjoying the cool winds of the river or having free access to their boats. So this tract of land remained an open field in the midst of a crowded population.

The Mission is surrounded by a wall some fifteen feet in height, having two gates. The main entrance placed on the north while from the south wall a gate opens into the field, through which entered those coming from the river. Buildings accommodating several hundred native communicants, schools, quarters, and other establishments necessary to a Mission are arranged in quadrangles, these quadrangles in turn forming a large semi-quadrangle paralleling the enclosing walls other than on the north side, which gave the quadrangles as a whole the form of the letter E, the bishop’s residence forming the centre stroke while between it and the north gate stands a chapel, solitary and massive.

The quadrangles are one-storied, constructed of blue pressed brick, covered by dark tiles. Around the sides and between each run pillared cloisters. The intervening courts and spaces are planted with shrubs and flowers, while vines and ivy cling to the pillars of the cloisters sometimes covering the wide-spreading eaves.

The chapel that stands just within the north gate is built entirely of dark granite in the early Visigothic manner of architecture, when that type had not yet freed itself from Roman construction. It is a parallelogram with perfectly plain exterior. The only windows are along the sides, narrow and high, with a bar of iron running lengthwise through the centre. Looking at this chapel from the side it resembles a prison, while the front, with low vaulted doors is as cold and forbidding as a tomb. It in no way has the appearance of a Catholic church; neither plain nor flying buttresses, neither pinnacles nor porches, nor niches. It is without ornamentation; about it is not a line but what is sombre and desolate. Within, the chapel is not less gloomy than it is without. The central nave, tunnel-vaulted, is always dim with shadows, while the two side aisles, separated from the central nave by a row of dark lacquered pillars, are low, tomby. In the semicircular apse, groined and dim, is an altar of blackwood, its front ornamented with two dragons coiled in contention and having over their open mouths a cross with golden rays—symbolic of the Mission itself and its aspiration.

To this Mission, some ten years before the Breton priest had left the Monastery of St. Pol de Leon, a stranger came, dropping down like a wild bird in its flight. No one knew from what place he had come, hence they spoke of him always as the Unknown. The bishop treated him with deference.

This stranger lived alone in the southwest quadrangle next to the outer wall, dwelling there for two years in complete seclusion. After that he went out labouring as a priest among the people. But it was said that while he was scrupulous in the performance of his religious duties yet he was never known to make a convert. When any of his fellow-priests attempted to ask him a question he raised his eyebrows and they became hushed. No one was ever known to ask him twice. He seldom spoke and when he did, he growled or commanded; when he acted, his actions were final. He wandered everywhere, driven hither and thither by an unrest of his own. He knew the city intimately and the labyrinths of its suburbs; the fields adjoining and the villages beyond the fields. He would be gone a fortnight, return to the Mission for a day or two and then go away for a month. Where he had been no one dared to inquire and only on one occasion were his acts known.

The village of Sam Ma is distant from Yingching about thirty-five miles by boat and almost twenty by paths across the rice-fields and hills. During one fifth moon cholera broke out in this village, and in the midst of the epidemic the Unknown appeared. He assumed command over the village; segregated, doctored, punished, rewarded, beat, buried. In the beginning the villagers obeyed because they feared him; in the end, they were obedient because they worshipped him. But when the epidemic was over and the elders went to his house to express their gratitude, they found it empty.

Nevertheless, the inhabitants of Sam Ma still perpetuate the memory of this Unknown man in their customary manner. And if any traveller, reading these lines, should go to their village, which is situated on the river of the Falling Brook he will find on a wooded knoll just without the walls, a shrine standing next to the Temple of the Goddess of Mercy. Within this shrine on an ebony altar covered with a gold-embroidered mantle is a tablet before which burns a taper by day and night. This tablet bears a name and beside it these words:

“He looked upon the people as he would on a man that is wounded; he looked for the path of righteousness as if he could not see it.”

Such is all that has been discovered concerning this mysterious man and it was into this environment that the Breton priest came from the Monastery of St. Pol de Leon. It is said that at once this gloomy man and the youth found out each other in a way, not unlike that reciprocal attraction wherein the tempest finds on the sea’s calm bosom rest and lightning finds fire in the hearts of rocks.

Henceforth, the older man ceased to disappear or even leave the Mission unless accompanied by the Breton. They studied together, travelled together, enduring hardships and dangers. It was noted that while one loved and growled, the other loved and was silent; for whole days they uttered not a word and it was this mutual taciturnity, which is the surest sign of love between men, that made an unbreakable strand in the net that Fate was in due time to cast and to draw in.