"Let's go faster," said the girl. "Somehow, the dark makes me uneasy to-night."
Skirting the town, they struck at last the open road beyond, and saw against a fading sky the low black bulk of the nunnery, pierced with orange squares. Past its landward wall, lanterns moved slowly, clustered here and there by twos and threes, and dispersed. Cackling argument came from the ditch, wherever the lantern-bearers halted; and on the face of the wall, among elbowing shadows, shone dim strips of scarlet. Both pillars of the gate were plastered with them.
"Placards," said Heywood. "Things are ripening fast." Lighting match from match, he studied the long red scrolls, crowded with neat rows of symbols. He read them off slowly.
'The Garden of the Three Exquisites.'--Pshaw! that's a theatre notice: enterprising manager.--Ah, more like it. Long preamble, regular trimetrical platitudes--here we are:--
"'These Red-Bristled Ghosts teach their dupes to break the ancestral tablets, and to worship the picture of a naked infant, which points one finger toward heaven, another toward earth.--To each man entering the False Religion, a pill is given which confuses and darkens the mind.--Why they dig out babies' eyes: from one hundred pounds of Chinese lead can be extracted seven pounds of silver, and the remaining ninety-three pounds can be sold at the original cost. This silver can be extracted only by the elixir of black eyes. The green eyes of barbarians are of no use.'--Really, what follows is too--er--obscure. But here's the close: 'Tao-tais of the villages, assemble your population. Patriots, join! Let us hurl back these wizard-beasts beyond the oceans, to take their place among the strange things of creation!'"
"And the big characters," she added, "the big characters you tried to hide, are 'Kill' and 'Burn'?"
Gray eyes and dark eyes met steadily, while the last match, reddening the blood in his fingers, slowly burned out.
At the top of the nunnery stairs, Rudolph met them with awkward ceremony, and with that smiling air of encouragement which a nurse might use in trying cheerfully to deceive a sick man. Heywood laughed, without mercy, at this pious fraud.
"Hallo, you Red-Bristled Ghost!" he cried. "We came early--straight from our walk. Are the rest coming? And did my cook arrive to help yours?"