The smile seemed painted immortally upon the Mongol's bronze face. He nodded slightly.
"You refer, I presume, to the incident at Rangoon—when I came near committing a grave error? For the while I was deluded into believing it would be wiser for you not to continue to Shingtse-lunpo; I now see that I was wrong. I crave your forgiveness for that—er—almost indiscretion."
Once more the grim humor of the situation, the grotesquery of it, became apparent to Trent. This anomaly of a creature! Eternally the two elements of his being seemed warring—the Lucifer and the Buddha.
"Perhaps you will understand more clearly," said Hsien Sgam, "if I go back into the years—the years of the locust, your Christian Bible calls them.... You will forgive the fact that I am personal. It is necessary."
He spoke to one of the serving-women and she disappeared behind a curtain, to return a moment later with a silver tray. Trent almost laughed aloud; perhaps it was the tension.... Cigarettes!... He welcomed the smoke; it would clear his brain. Both he and the Mongol lighted their cheroots in a candle-flame. The latter's face seemed to swim in the blue clouds, his woman's-mouth twisted into that persistent, graven smile.
"I am an experiment," Hsien Sgam commenced. "Whether a success or a failure, I will let you judge. It is the custom in Mongolia to deliver one child from every family to the lamas for monastic training. I was chosen from a group of four brothers and destined from birth for holy orders. Very early—so early that I cannot quite remember it—I was given into the charge of the abbot of a monastery at Urga. I was a—I believe 'acolyte' is your word for it. When I was fourteen there was a celebration at Urga; it is called the Ts'am Haren. During the races I was injured; my pony fell on my limb. I was ill for many days. When I grew better they told me I would be lame, always.... That very night my mother had a vision: she saw me harnessed in golden mail and upon a white horse, leading a great army. I was on a mountain-top, she said, with legions about me, on the slopes and in the valleys; and at my feet was Asia. She saw a flame, with the face of Timur the Lame in it, descend into my body. Thus the soul of the great conqueror came to rest in the body of her second born."
The smile had faded from Hsien Sgam's face; there was in his eyes a glow that hid the devil-light. All the beauty of Buddha shone upon the bronze features.
"That was how I became a—what is the word?—messiah?" He went on: "A conference of the princes was held in the palace of the Hut'ukt'u, and it was proposed that I be sent to acquire the learning of the white lords. The Hut'ukt'u opposed it, for he was afraid that eventually I would have more power than he. But in the night I was taken away, by swiftest camel, and with the treasure of my house in goatskin bags. My mother accompanied me to Kalgan, then turned back—but my father went on to Peking. The Manchu woman was on the throne at the time. She had heard that a Mongol prince was being sent away to be educated in Western schools and return and establish an independent empire, and she, like the Hut'ukt'u, was afraid. She sent assassins. I escaped—but my father...."
He shrugged; smiled. The shining look went from his face; his beauty was again that of Lucifer, the fallen angel.
"So I went. I studied after the manner of Englishmen.... I wonder"—he leaned across the table toward Trent—"I wonder if you can understand my feelings there, a boy, in an alien land? Gray buildings and rushing trains and electricity—the roar of a modern Babylon—after yoürts and camels and candlelight! There where men denounce polygamy and encourage prostitution!