VII
THE ALTAR OF HEAVEN
IT stands open to the sky, three round terraces of white marble, placed one above the other, which are reached by four marble staircases, and these face the four points of the compass. It represents the celestial sphere with its cardinal points. A great park surrounds it and this again is surrounded by high walls. And hither, year after year, on the night of the winter solstice, for then heaven is reborn, generation after generation came the Son of Heaven solemnly to worship the original creator of his house. Escorted by princes and the great men of the realm, followed by his troops, the emperor purified by fasting proceeded to the altar. And here awaited him princes and ministers and mandarins, each in his allotted place, musicians and the dancers of the sacred dance. In the scanty light of the great torches the ceremonial robes were darkly splendid. And before the tablet on which were inscribed the words: Imperial Heaven -- Supreme Emperor, he offered incense, jade, and silk, broth and rice spirit. He knelt and knocked his forehead against the marble pavement nine times. And here at the very spot where the vice-regent of heaven and earth knelt down, Willard B. Untermeyer wrote his name in a fine bold hand and the town and state he came from, Hastings, Nebraska. So he sought to attach his fleeting personality to the recollection of that grandeur of which some dim rumour had reached him. He thought that so men would remember him when he was no more. He aimed in this crude way at immortality. But vain are the hopes of men. For no sooner had he sauntered down the steps than a Chinese caretaker who had been leaning against the balustrade, idly looking at the blue sky, came forward, spat neatly on the spot where Willard B. Untermeyer had written, and with his foot smeared his spittle over the name. In a moment no trace remained that Willard B. Untermeyer had ever visited that place.
VIII
THE SERVANTS OF GOD
THEY were sitting side by side, two missionaries, talking to one another of perfectly trivial things, in the way people talk who wish to show each other civility but have nothing in common; and they would have been surprised to be told that they had certainly one admirable thing in common, goodness, for both had this also in common, humility; though perhaps in the Englishman it was more deliberate, and so, if more conspicuous less natural, than it was in the Frenchman. Otherwise the contrasts between them were almost ludicrous. The Frenchman was hard on eighty, a tall man, still unbent; and his large bones suggested that in youth he had been a man of uncommon strength. Now his only sign of power lay in his eyes, immensely large so that you could not help noticing their strange expression, and flashing. That is an epithet often applied to eyes, but I do not think I have ever seen any to which it might be applied so fitly. There was really a flame in them and they seemed to emit light. They had a wildness which hardly suggested sanity. They were the eyes of a prophet in Israel. His nose was large and aggressive, his chin was firm and square. At no time could he have been a man to trifle with, but in his prime he must have been terrific. Perhaps the passion of his eyes bespoke battles long fought out in the uttermost depths of his heart, and his soul cried out in them, vanquished and bleeding, yet triumphant, and he exulted in the unclosed wound which he offered in willing sacrifice to Almighty God. He felt the cold in his old bones and he wore wrapped about him like a soldier's cloak a great fur and on his head a cap of Chinese sable. He was a magnificent figure. He had been in China for half a century and thrice he had fled for his life when the Chinese had attacked his mission.
"I trust they won't attack it again," he said, smiling, "for I am too old now to make these precipitate journeys." He shrugged his shoulders: "Je serai martyr."
He lit a long black cigar and puffed it with great enjoyment.
The other was very much younger, he could not have been more than fifty, and he had not been in China for more than twenty years. He was a member of the English Church Mission and he was dressed in a grey tweed suit and a spotted tie. He sought to look as little like a clergyman as possible. He was a little taller than the average, but he was so fat that he looked stumpy. He had a round good-natured face, with red cheeks and a grey moustache of the variety known as toothbrush. He was very bald, but with a pardonable and touching vanity he had grown his hair long enough on one side to be brought over the scalp and so give himself at all events the illusion that his head was well-covered. He was a jovial fellow, with a hearty laugh, and it rang out loudly, honest and true, when he chaffed his friends or was chaffed by them. He had the humour of a schoolboy and you could imagine him shaking in all his bulk when someone slipped on a piece of orange peel. But the laughter would be stopped, and he would redden, as it struck him suddenly that the man who slipped might have hurt himself, and then he would be all kindness and sympathy. For it was impossible to be with him for ten minutes without realising the tenderness of his heart. You felt that it would be impossible to ask him to do anything he would not gladly do, and if perhaps at first his heartiness would make it difficult to go to him in your spiritual needs you could be sure in all practical affairs of his attention, sympathy, and good sense. He was a man whose purse was always open to the indigent and whose time was always at the service of those who wanted it. And yet perhaps it is unjust to say that in the affairs of the soul his help would not be very effectual, for though he could not speak to you, like the old Frenchman, with the authority of a church that has never admitted doubt or with the compelling fire of the ascetic, he would share your distress with such a candid sympathy, consoling you with his own hesitations, less a minister of God then than a halting, tremulous man of the same flesh as yourself, who sought to share with you the hope and the consolation with which his own soul was refreshed, that perhaps in his own way he had something as good to offer as the other.
His story was a little unusual. He had been a soldier and he was pleased to talk of the old days when he had hunted with the Quorn and danced through the London season. He had no unhealthy feeling of past sin.
"I was a great dancer in my young days," he said, "but I expect I should be quite out of it now with all these new dances."
It was a good life so long as it lasted and though he did not for a moment regret it, he had no feeling of resentment for it. The call had come when he was in India. He did not exactly know how or why, it had just come, a sudden feeling that he must give up his life to bringing the heathen to the belief in Christ, but it was a feeling that he could not resist; it gave him no peace. He was a happy man now, enjoying his work.
"It's a slow business," he said, "but I see signs of progress and I love the Chinese. I wouldn't change my life here for any in the world."
The two missionaries said good-bye to one another.
"When are you going home?" asked the Englishman.