The quadrangles are one-storied, constructed of blue pressed brick, covered by dark tiles. Around the sides and between each run pillared cloisters. The intervening courts and spaces are planted with shrubs and flowers, while vines and ivy cling to the pillars of the cloisters sometimes covering the wide-spreading eaves.
The chapel that stands just within the north gate is built entirely of dark granite in the early Visigothic manner of architecture, when that type had not yet freed itself from Roman construction. It is a parallelogram with perfectly plain exterior. The only windows are along the sides, narrow and high, with a bar of iron running lengthwise through the centre. Looking at this chapel from the side it resembles a prison, while the front, with low vaulted doors is as cold and forbidding as a tomb. It in no way has the appearance of a Catholic church; neither plain nor flying buttresses, neither pinnacles nor porches, nor niches. It is without ornamentation; about it is not a line but what is sombre and desolate. Within, the chapel is not less gloomy than it is without. The central nave, tunnel-vaulted, is always dim with shadows, while the two side aisles, separated from the central nave by a row of dark lacquered pillars, are low, tomby. In the semicircular apse, groined and dim, is an altar of blackwood, its front ornamented with two dragons coiled in contention and having over their open mouths a cross with golden rays—symbolic of the Mission itself and its aspiration.
To this Mission, some ten years before the Breton priest had left the Monastery of St. Pol de Leon, a stranger came, dropping down like a wild bird in its flight. No one knew from what place he had come, hence they spoke of him always as the Unknown. The bishop treated him with deference.
This stranger lived alone in the southwest quadrangle next to the outer wall, dwelling there for two years in complete seclusion. After that he went out labouring as a priest among the people. But it was said that while he was scrupulous in the performance of his religious duties yet he was never known to make a convert. When any of his fellow-priests attempted to ask him a question he raised his eyebrows and they became hushed. No one was ever known to ask him twice. He seldom spoke and when he did, he growled or commanded; when he acted, his actions were final. He wandered everywhere, driven hither and thither by an unrest of his own. He knew the city intimately and the labyrinths of its suburbs; the fields adjoining and the villages beyond the fields. He would be gone a fortnight, return to the Mission for a day or two and then go away for a month. Where he had been no one dared to inquire and only on one occasion were his acts known.
The village of Sam Ma is distant from Yingching about thirty-five miles by boat and almost twenty by paths across the rice-fields and hills. During one fifth moon cholera broke out in this village, and in the midst of the epidemic the Unknown appeared. He assumed command over the village; segregated, doctored, punished, rewarded, beat, buried. In the beginning the villagers obeyed because they feared him; in the end, they were obedient because they worshipped him. But when the epidemic was over and the elders went to his house to express their gratitude, they found it empty.
Nevertheless, the inhabitants of Sam Ma still perpetuate the memory of this Unknown man in their customary manner. And if any traveller, reading these lines, should go to their village, which is situated on the river of the Falling Brook he will find on a wooded knoll just without the walls, a shrine standing next to the Temple of the Goddess of Mercy. Within this shrine on an ebony altar covered with a gold-embroidered mantle is a tablet before which burns a taper by day and night. This tablet bears a name and beside it these words:
“He looked upon the people as he would on a man that is wounded; he looked for the path of righteousness as if he could not see it.”
Such is all that has been discovered concerning this mysterious man and it was into this environment that the Breton priest came from the Monastery of St. Pol de Leon. It is said that at once this gloomy man and the youth found out each other in a way, not unlike that reciprocal attraction wherein the tempest finds on the sea’s calm bosom rest and lightning finds fire in the hearts of rocks.
Henceforth, the older man ceased to disappear or even leave the Mission unless accompanied by the Breton. They studied together, travelled together, enduring hardships and dangers. It was noted that while one loved and growled, the other loved and was silent; for whole days they uttered not a word and it was this mutual taciturnity, which is the surest sign of love between men, that made an unbreakable strand in the net that Fate was in due time to cast and to draw in.