CHAPTER TWO

THE SCHOLAR

A few days after the Breton had received his instructions from the bishop he was summoned to the palace of Tai Lin, thence peremptorily to an apartment belonging to his Excellency’s wife, the tea-farmer’s daughter. This room, with its alternate slabs of rose and white marble, its walls hung with curtains of crimson silk embroidered down the centre in characters of gold; its beams and pillars lacquered a dark red and overcast by a tracery of golden filigree, was filled with an amber light that a sun ray shooting through a shell-latticed window diffused among its shadows.

The Breton had stood for some time beside one of the pillars, waiting without restlessness or impatience the coming of his scholar, when unconsciously he raised his head and looked expectantly toward the carved screen-work—a mass of gold and sang-de-bœuf lacquer—that reached to both sides of the room and from the ceiling to the marble floor.

Suddenly a chime of music, which was laughter, filled the room, bringing a flush to his face. The first chime no sooner died away than came another and another; never in his life before had there fallen about him such sounds—like music laughing, or laughter from a bird’s throat. Had that been heard in his native land, it would have been honoured with a shrine. The melancholy peasants rising from their knees before its sanctuary would have said, “Is it not true that Bretagne is under the Eye of God? Over yonder the Devil is buried beneath Mont St. Michel and now the Virgin is heard to laugh.”

So the eyes of the Breton, propped open wide with wonder, stared at the screen. But not another sound was heard until the wife said softly:

“Priest, come—sit here.”

For an instant he hesitated, then went over to the screen and sat down in a chair of teak and mother-of-pearl, which had been placed beside it. He heard a trembling silken rustle, then the room was again filled with the music of the wife’s laughter.

“Why, priest,” she exclaimed in the midst of her merriment, “your eyes are really blue! Who would ever have thought such a thing! Blue! Isn’t that strange!” she added wonderingly.

The Breton bowed his head, but made no answer.

“Look up!” she commanded.

He raised his eyes to the crevices near his head.

“Priest,” said the wife presently, her voice still gentle with wonder, “if your eyes were not so soft, I would say they were sapphires; were they not so strangely bright, I would say they were as the sky when the moon loiters behind the mountains. So these are the eyes of devils——”

The Breton took no notice of her comments.

“And you are the priest,” she drawled presently.

“Yes,” he answered softly, “a priest of God.”

“And what have you come to teach me, priest?” she inquired, mockery and laughter trembling in her demure tones.

“As the bishop has ordered.”

“Indeed!” she commented disdainfully. “And what did he order?”

“To save your soul,” replied the Breton reverently, “for the glory——”

The laughter of the wife interrupted him.

“And he sent you to do it?”

“Yes,” he apologised, “the bishop has sent me.”

“How thoughtful of him! No doubt you will succeed!”

“Yes, God will be here,” he answered simply.

“Why did not the bishop send someone else?”

“I do not know.”

“You did not ask to come?”

“No.”

“Indeed! If he asked you to go elsewhere to-morrow, would you go?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, very well. I may not want you any more. I am not at all firm in my desire, and you are so young. My last teacher, who had had the learning of seventy winters, said the ignorance of youth was really pitiable, especially in men. No; I don’t think you will do,” she commented with candour, “not at all.”

The Breton gazed dreamily through the half-opened shell-latticed window, and only the restless hopping and chirp of the thrushes in the golden bamboo cages broke the silence, or sometimes a dulled sound, which was the noise of the surrounding city in its labour.

“Priest,” her voice came from just above him, and as he turned his head, a ring set with a large pear-shaped pearl dropped from the crevices into his lap. He looked up and tried to speak. His lips moved, but that was all, for just overhead a little pink finger tip clung to the edge of the crevices.

“Oh, you need not thank me,” she exclaimed coldly, “that ring is not for you. It is for your bishop, who wishes to save my soul.”

“Yes, he wishes it,” the Breton answered thoughtfully, as he fingered the ring in his lap.

“And you?”

“I shall pray for you.”

“Indeed!”

“Yes, I will teach you,” he added gently, oblivious of her mockery.

“What?”

“To love God and——”

“How monotonous you are, priest,” she interrupted impatiently.

“No,” he answered, looking gravely up to the crevices, “to love God is not monotonous; to pray to Him is happiness.”

“I suppose you pray all the time?” she asked with mock compassion.

“Yes; ad Jesum crucifixion.”

“I never heard of Him,” she commented lightly.

“Our Lord, who was crucified.”

“Indeed! And what had He been doing?”

“He died to save men.”

“How useless!” she sighed.

“From the crucifix came the cross; from torture, salvation.”

“Dreadful! And you pray to Him?”

“Yes; to Jesus crucified,” he answered softly.

“Let me hear you,” she commanded unconcernedly as though thinking of other things.

The Breton, bowing his head, began in a low monotonous tone. “Eu, amantissime Jesu, qui sponsae sanguinum mihi esse voluisti ad pedes tuos prosternor, ut meum in te amorem debitamque gratitudinem contester. Sed quid rependam tibi mi Jesu——”

After the first few words of the Breton’s prayer the wife began to laugh, at first softly to herself, but as the Breton continued, her merriment increased until the music peals of her laughter stopped him completely.

“What a noise you are making!” she exclaimed. “I never heard such sounds!” And she fell again to laughing. “You must not mind my laughter,” she said, breathless, “I cannot help it. You never laugh?” she inquired when her merriment had subsided.

“No.”

“I did not think so. I laugh all the time. But then you are a priest,” she added consolingly. “Are you going to finish your prayer?”

The Breton looked hesitantly at the screen, then resumed his prayer. “Mi Jesu, qui usque in finem dilexisti me? Manibus ac pedibus imo et cordi tuo inscripsisti me, magno sane et conspicuo charactere. Quis mihi hoc tribuat ut sicut tu me, ita et ego te cordi meo inscriptum circumferam. O Jesu——”

“No,” interrupted the wife meditatively, “I would not say that your hands were disagreeable to look at. My honourable husband told me that the hands of foreigners were speckled and covered with red hairs like the wood spider—just think of it! But I should say that your hands are—you can put on that ring, if you wish.”

The Breton did not touch the pearl in his lap.

“I said you could put on that ring,” she enjoined imperiously. “No, on the other hand; yes—— Now, go on with your prayer.”

And once more the Breton began his prayer to the crucified Christ.

“O Jesus quam profuso mi charitatis effectu complexus es qui non tantum manus et pedes, verum et opulentissimum pectus mihi operiri voluisti, ut inexhausto bonorum coelestium affluentia desiderium meum expleas——”

“And priest,” his Excellency’s wife again interrupted with the same meditative interest, “I would not say that it is annoying, either, to look at your face. Do you know,” she added naïvely, “that I was almost afraid to see you? I did not know what you would look like. My honourable husband has been telling me of the English, who have a wad of red hair on each cheek; isn’t that frightful?” And she laughed softly to herself, merrily as a child.

“You never even smile, do you?”

He made no answer.

“I do not think so; your face is too sad. And I suppose,” she sighed deprecatingly, “that it comes from all this dull praying.”

The Breton was looking sorrowfully across the room to the sunlit shells, opalescent in the latticed windows.

“Are you going to finish your prayer?” she asked with mock wonder.

He turned his head and looked steadily up to the crevices.

“You do not wish it,” he said sadly.

“I do!” she exclaimed, petulantly slapping the screen.

“Salve, O benedictum vulnus lateris tui mi Jesu! Salve, O fons amoris, O thesaure inaestimabilis, O requies animae meae ausimne benignissime Jesu.”

As the Breton uttered these lines, he turned his eyes once more toward the crevices whence she spoke.

“Ad sacram hanc aram ad hoc sanctum sanctorum, accidere ardens que amore cor turum.”

“Do you know,” she interrupted, a subdued tremor in her voice, “I don’t believe that devils have such eyes. They are like the ocean. I was on the sea once when I came here from Hangchau and I watched the waters. I noticed the sea, though always blue, the blue changed. Sometimes shadows swift or faltering crept into it, and oh, how sad it was! Suddenly these dark waters would become light. I never saw such brightness. The sea smiled and—don’t, please don’t look at me.”