Page:The Recluse by W Paul Cook.djvu/68



Su-rah, Fourth born of the Children of Chan, lived in days when the Sons of Heaven ruled supreme in the East, when China was a power to fear both for her brave warriors and for the ancient wisdom of her men of learning.

Of each of these, the Mandarin Chan knew much, having in his youth, served in the many engagements against the barbarians beyond the Wall, flat faced, snub nosed creatures whose descendants were to over run Europe to such an extent, that in litanies even now may be found the words, “From the Mongols, God protect us!”

So he was not a stranger to battle, altho in the script from which this scrap is torn he is described as a semi-recluse, free from the vanities of life as it was lived in his day, musing over his collected writings and studying out the final path to the Halls of Contentment, along which he must presently pass.

A gentle, kind, old man, we see him thru the medium of the inkbrush of that long dead scribe who traced the tale in a religious work, as a singular miracle proving the infinite Mercy of the Goddess Kwan-Yin. Kind in an odd way, we may believe when we learn that before Su-rah was five days old she was betrothed to a man already in middle age and possessing no apparent merit as far as we know except the wealth the scribe claims was beyond even a poor man’s dreams.

Yet, the unknown, un-named wooer was a friend of Chan’s, a dear friend, which in itseflitself [sic] explains a good deal, and we will charitably suppose that the Mandarin intended in his own way to insure the future happiness of his only daughter.

So, with an unsuspected surprise hanging over her, Su-rah grew older along with her three brothers and learned to hide her emotions, to be calm always, to be silent in the presence of elders, in short to follow in every way the traditions of the House of Chan, whose records were lost in antiquity when the aurochs roamed in England, before ever the Romans came.

In Shi-kung-su, Chan and his family dwelt in the winter months, safe within the Great Wall’s protection, but when summer came and the world hummed with busy stir of growing things, Mandarin and sons and Su-rah, accompanied by a crowd of servants and private soldiers, moved from the noisome odors of the crowded city out where breezes came over flowers instead of offal, to Chan’s summer palace outside the Wall.

None knew who the original owners or builders were, except that some one in China’s feudal period had constructed a grim stone castle, but whatever it might have been long ago and still seemed from outside, it was no longer anything within but a very beautifully furnished palace and in place of the courtyard was a huge garden, riotous with flowers, sprawling vines and flowering shrubs.

To Su-rah, it was for a long time her idea of what the First Heaven must be like. One might say that she grew up in the garden, only existing in the city, but living when they returned to the palace.

Not always though did life run smoothly even there. Once within her memory and often before that, the Tartars had swung in from the unknown mysterious distances of the Northern Gobi deserts.

Then all was confusion and running to and fro, picking up this bundle and dropping that one and finally taking none at all in the hurry to reach the safety of the Wall, satisfied if they escaped with their lives.

Su-rah’s first great adventure had come before she was three and her only dim impression of it, but one that was never forgotten, was her first sight of a Tartar.

Short, stocky, with a helmet of hide upon his head where seemingly short horns grew, he sat on his horse in a slanting rain, observing the fugitives as they entered the gate and were secure behind the Wall.

Just too late he had been to cut them off from retreat and for a long time after that, Su-rah’s nurse frightened her with stories