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 that, 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 as 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. The 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. The 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 troops 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 the 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.

Tai 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 they 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.

The 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, “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.

“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; again 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 pencil 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 around 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 close 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.

A 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 sword. 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

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

1. The Latin has been transcribed as printed. 2. Silently corrected typographical errors. 3. Retained anachronistic and non-standard spellings as printed. 4. Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.