The pride of the gentle gardener lay in a few plants of zinnias close to a dripping tap. In bright red, gold, and white, he accepted them as substitutes for the sacred lotus, and prison flowers never flaunted more freely. As innocent as they, he deftly, tirelessly trained each plant, caressed each opening bud, cherished it as if it were a jewel, and found surcease of the pangs of exile, easement for the restraints upon liberty, and blissful consolation. Tendance upon the garden under the strait shadow of wall was to him, not a duty, not a pastime, but a ritual. The captive was happy, for here was the end of his pilgrimage.
Exemplary conduct, combined with the art with which he forced salads from the boorish soils, found him favour and earned privileges and concessions.
Hu Dra kept no count of the passing months. What was time to a contemplative Buddhist whose being was permeated with the hope of release from delusions and sorrow and of attaining final sanctification?
One morning he was summarily marched into the presence of the big loud-voiced man whose orders were obeyed with instant smartness, who told him, to his amazement and despair, that he must depart with his property. The seals of a sack were broken before him, and its contents displayed and duly accounted for—a sleeping-mat, a small red blanket, the elastic-side boots, two scrolls of sinfully painted silk, a hard round hat stuffed with gaudy handkerchiefs, three watches and varied jewellery in a ginger-jar, the quaintly carved toilet devices, the jam-tin full of nuggets, and a chamois-leather bag delusively heavy with fine gold.
The same authority which had ordered his affairs ever since he had been torn from the burnt hills now commanded him to begone.
For nigh upon two years he had dwelt passively in dream-land. This was but another wonderment entrancingly agreeable. Without endeavouring to elucidate the incomprehensible, he accepted the gifts of the gods, and asked for a yellow zinnia. It was a reality, a guarantee, an assurance.
Good, though gruff, the gaoler was wont to say that his departing guest gazed on the flower with almost religious fervour and mumbled over it a prayer; and the gaoler's insight was true, for in comparison with a flower, the masonic emblem, the pride of Tsing Hi's life was to Hu Dra but tinsel.
It passed all understanding.,
Hastening to escape from the land of bewilderment and easily gotten riches, Hu Dra-the quietest, the happiest, the wealthiest of a great company of his fellows boarded a steamer for Hong-Kong.
Many a long year after, Tim, who had blossomed into a sub-inspector, had retired on pension, and had lost most of his brogue in the process, confided in me the whole story.