Messer Marco Polo Part 9

CHAPTER XIX

And one dusk the moon rose over the Chinese garden, and Marco Polo finished telling her of what John saw on Patmos and he an old man...

"'Veni, Domine Jesu.

"'Gratia Domini nostri Jesu Christi c.u.m omnibus vobis. Amen!'"

"It is very difficult, Marco Polo. I don't quite understand."

"I don't quite understand myself, Golden Bells. But that is all I can tell you. But you will understand more," he said. "My mission is finished now, and I will go back. I will stop at the court of Prester John, and he will send a bishop surely or some great cardinal to baptize you and to teach you the rest."

"You will go back?" A great pain stabbed her. "I never thought, some how, of you as going back."

"I have come on a mission, Golden Bells, and I must go back."

"There is a woman, maybe, in Venice--" And she turned her head away from him and from the moon.

"I would not have you thinking that, Golden Bells. There is none in Venice has duty from me. And if the queen of the world were there, and she pledged me, I could never look at her, and I after knowing you, Golden Bells!"

"Is it money, Marco Polo?" she whispered in the dusk. "It is maybe your uncle and your father are pressing you to return. Let you not worry then, for my father the great Khan will settle with them, too.

There is not a horse in all Tartary that your uncle cannot have, nor a woman, either. And your father can have all the jewels of the treasury, and all the swords, too, even the sword with which my father conquered China. My father will give him that if I ask. Only let you not be leaving this moonlit garden."

"Dear Golden Bells, it isn't that; but I came here for converts--"

"Oh, Marco Polo, listen! There is a folk at Kai-fung-fu, and they are an evil folk and a cowardly folk, and my father abhors them. I shall ask my father to send captains of war and fighting men to convert them to your faith, Marco Polo, or lop off their heads. And we can send a few hundreds to the Pope at Rome, and he will never know how they were converted, and he will be satisfied. Only let you not be going away from me in my moonlit garden. You will only be turning to trade, Marco Polo, and marrying a woman. Let you stay here in the moonlit garden!"

"Ah, little Golden Bells, there is no place in the world like your moonlit garden. There is no place I'd be liefer than in the moonlit garden. But little Golden Bells, I set out in life to preach the Lord Jesus crucified. It was for that I came China."

"Let you not be fooling yourself, young Marco Polo. Let you not always be ascribing to G.o.d the things that are mine. You did not come to preach to China, you came to see me, and your mind stirred up with the story the sea-captain told, of me playing 'Willow Branches' at the Lake of Cranes. O Marco Polo, before you came there were the moon and the sun and the stars, and I was lonely. O Marco Polo," she cried, "you wouldn't go, you couldn't go! What would you be doing in cold Venice, far from the warm moonlit garden."

"Sure, I'll be lonely, too, little Golden Bells, a white monk in a monastery, praying for you."

"But I don't want to be prayed for, Marco Polo." She stamped her foot.

"I want to be loved. And there you have it out of me, and a great shame to you that you made me say it, me that was desired of many, and would have no man until you came. And surely it is the harsh G.o.d you have made out of The Kindly Person you spoke of. And 'tis not He would have my heart broken, and you turning yourself into a crabbed monk.

And how do you know your preaching will convert any? 'Tis few you converted here. Ah, I'm sorry, dear Marco Polo; I shouldn't have said it, but there is despair on me, and I afraid of losing you."

"'Tis true, though. I have nothing, n.o.body to show."

"You have me. Am n't I converted? Am n't I a Christian? Marco Polo, let me tell you something. I said to my father I wanted to marry you, and I asked him if he would give you a province to govern, and he said, 'Sure and welcome.' And I asked him for Yangchan, the pleasantest city in all China. And he said, 'Sure and welcome, Golden Bells.' And I told him we would be married, and go there and govern his people kindly. And you wouldn't shame me before my own father, and all the people of China. You couldn't do that, Marco Polo. Marco Polo,"--she came toward him, her eye s.h.i.+ning,--"let you stay!"

"Christ protect me! Christ guide me! Christ before me!"

"Marco Polo!"

"Christ behind me!"

"The moon, Marco Polo, and me, Golden Bells, and the nightingale in the apple-tree!"

"Christ on my right hand! Christ my left! Christ below me!"

Her arms were around his neck, cheek came close to his.

"Marco Polo! Marco Polo!"

"Christ above me!"

"My Marco Polo!"

"O, G.o.d! Golden Bells!"

And he put his arms around her, and his cheek to hers, and all the battle and the disappointment and the fear and the strangeness went out of him. And down by the lake the wee frogs chirruped, and in the apple-tree the nightingale never ceased from singing. And they stayed there shoulder to shoulder and cheek to cheek. And the moon rose higher. And it seemed only a moment they were there, until they heard the voice of Li Po in the garden.

"Are you there, Golden Bells? Are you there at all, at all? For two hours I've been hunting and couldn't get sight or sign of you. I have the new song, Golden Bells. For a long time I was dumb, but a little while ago the power came to me, and I have the new song, Golden Bells, the marrying song..."

CHAPTER XX

"Thus far," said Malachi of the Long Glen, "the story of Marco Polo."

"That is a warm story, Malachi of the Glen, a warm and colored story, and great life to it, and Golden Bells is as alive to me as herself there by the fire, and I can see Marco Polo as plain as I can see my cousin Randall, and he playing with dogs..."

"If they weren't real and live and warm, what would a story be, Brian Oge, but a jumble of dead words? A house with n.o.body in it, the poorest thing in the world."

"But Marco Polo came back to Venice, Malachi, and fought in the sea-wars."

"There's more to tell, Brian Oge. But sometimes I wonder shouldn't the best part of the story be kept to yourself. The people aren't as wise as they used to be, brown lad. The end of a story now is a bit of kissing and courting and the kettle boiling to be making tea.

"But the older ones were wiser, Brian Donn. They knew that the rhythm of life is long and swinging, and that time doesn't stop short as a clock. Sure, what is a kiss from the finest of women but a pleasant thing, like a long putt sunk, or the first salmon of the year caught like a trout, or the ball through the goal before the whistle blows?

And there's many a well-filled belly over a hungry soul.

"But a story is how destiny is interwoven, the fine and gallant and the tragic points of life. And you mustn't look at them with the eyes of the body, but you must feel with the antennae of your being. Now, if you were to look at the Lord Jesus with physical eyes, what would it be but a kindly, crazy man and He coming to a hard and bitter end? Look at it simply, and what was the story of Troy but a dirty row over a woman?

"But often times the stories with endings that grocer's daughters do not be liking are the stories that are worth while. And the worth while stories do be lasting. Never clip a story half-ways because Widow Robinson doesn't like to have her mind disturbed, and she warming her breadth at the fire. The Widow Robinson may have a white coin to buy a book with, and think you're the grand author entirely and you pleasing her. But Lord G.o.d, who gave you the stories, know you for a louse.

"I call to your mind the stories of great English writer--the plays of the Prince of Denmark, and the poor blind king on the cliff, and the Scottish chieftain and his terrible wife. The Widow Robinson will not like those stories, and she will be keeping her white coin... But those stories will endure forever...

"I will now tell you of Marco Polo, and him leaving China..."

CHAPTER XXI

You must see him now as he was seventeen years after he had come to China, and fourteen years after his wife, little Golden Bells, had died, a lean figure of a man, with his hair streaked with gray, a lean, hard face on him and savage eyes, and all the body of him steel and whale-bone from riding on the great Khan's business, and riding fast and furious, so that he might sleep and forget; but forgetting never came to him... You might think he was a harsh man from his face and eyes, but he was the straight man in administering justice, and he had the soft heart for the poor--the heart of Golden Bells. He was easily moved to anger, but the fine Chinese people never minded him, knowing he was a suffering man. Though never a word of Golden Bells came from his mouth, barring maybe that line of Dante's, the saddest line in the world, and that he used to repeat to himself and no one there:

..."'la bella persona Che mi fu tolta...che mi fu tolta'; who was taken from me; Taken! Taken from me!"