And alas, alas, I had brought it on myself, for I was not to be congratulated, I have no son, but I was answered too. I have called the gods dead, but they are not dead. What if the temple crumbles? There is the cloudless sky and the growing green around it. This woman was old, and grey, and bent. The gods have given her three sons, and she is content. This child had the smallpox, and by and by when it shall have passed—Ah but that is beyond me. What compensation can there be for the scarred face and blinded eyes? Only if we understood all things, perhaps the savour would be gone from life. Behind all is the All Merciful, the dead gods in the temples are but a manifestation of the Great Power that is over all.
I thought of that little temple outside the walls of Peking, and the old woman who congratulated me on the son I had not as I stood taking my last look at the Yuan T'ing. And then I looked again away down the valley to the folds of the hills where the other temples nestled, embowered in trees. Far away I could see the sheer walls of the Po Ta La climbing up the hill-side golden and red and white with the evening sunlight falling upon them, and making me feel that just so from this very spot at this very hour they should be looked at, and then I went down, a ten minutes' weary scramble, I was very, very tired, to my cart and across the Jehol River again, back to the missionary compound.
Never again shall I visit that valley of temples that lies among the hills of Inner Mongolia, never again, and though, of course, since the days of Marco Polo Europeans have visited it, it is so distant, so difficult to come at that they have not gone in battalions. But those temples in the folds of the hills are beautiful beyond dreaming, and though their glory has gone, still in their decay, with the eternal hills round and behind them, they form a fitting memorial to the man who set them there to the glory of God and for his humble mother's sake.
CHAPTER XVIII—IN A WUPAN
The difficulties of the laundry—A friend in need—A strange picnic party—The authority of the parent—Travelling in a mule litter—Rain—A frequented highway—Yellow oiled paper—Restricted quarters—Dodging the smoke—“What a lot you eat!”—Charm of the river—Modest Chinamen—The best-beloved grandchild—The gorges of the Lanho—The Wall again—Effect of rain on the Chinaman—The captain's cash-box—A gentleman of Babylon—Lanchou.