A STORY OF LEGATION STREET
DURING THE BOXER REBELLION
BY ONE WHO WAS THERE
"THE S.G."
A ROMANCE OF PEKING
JULIAN CROSKEY
It is with extreme diffidence that the author presumes to mention a celebrated name in the pages of this hasty trifle. But as the opportunity may not occur to him again, and current events have given that name prominence in connection with topics touched on in the story of "Valda." he ventures to express here his veneration for the administrative genius, and his remorseful appreciation of the magnanimity of his former Chief,
SIR ROBERT HART, BART.,
INSPECTOR-GENERAL OF THE IMPERIAL MARITIME CUSTOMS
OF CHINA AT PEKING,
who for forty years has controlled the destinies of HUNDREDS of Europeans and Americans scattered among the thirty Treaty Ports of the vast Iittoral of China, and to whom is due most of the real progress that China has made toward commercial civilization.
"THE S.G."
A ROMANCE OF PEKING
BY
JULIAN CROSKEY
("MR. M----")
AUTHOR OF "MAX," "MERLIN," "THE SHEN'S PIGTAIL," ETC.
MASON
30 COLUMBIA PLACE
BROOKLYN, N.Y.
1900
COPYRIGHT, 1900, BY JULIAN CROSKEY
The discrepancy between the running title and
that on the cover is due to the tardy
discovery that VALDA has
seen service before.
EAGLE PRINT, BROOKLYN-NEW YORK
CONTENTS.
I. VALDA'S FIRST MEETING WITH THE S.G.
II. VALDA LEAVES PEKING
III. VALDA RETURNS TO CHINA
IV. THE WALLS OF PEKING
V. SOCIETY IN PEKING
VI. VALDA'S SECOND MEETING WITH THE S.G.
VII. BLAKE
VIII. THE S. G. CALLS ON VALDA
IX. VALDA CALLS UN THE S. G.
X. THE STOLEN DESPATCH
XI. THE CIPHER
XII. THE S. G.'S NEW PICCOLO PLAYER
XIII. RUSSIAN DIPLOMACY
XIV. KUEL-LIEN
XV. THE OPENING OF THE YEAR 1900
XVI. THE RACE MEETING
XVII. THE REAPPEARANCE OF BLAKE
XVIII. THE GATHERING OF THE STORM
XIX. A MOMENTOUS INTERVIEW
XX. PRINCE TUAN
XXI. PREPARATIONS FOR DEFENCE
XXII. THE FLIGHT THAT FAILED
XXIII. BLAKE GETS FITS PROMOTION L'ENVOI
OTHER BOOKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR.
** The author is ashamed to saddle his trifling story with these references to past work, but is advised that, as he has thrice changed his pen-name, it is a necessary concession to the business of advertisement.
MAX: A NOVEL. (John Lane, London and New York, 1897. Third Edition.)
"The luckless Max is throughout most terribly and pathetically hu man. We are reminded at times of the methods of Mr. George Moore, at times of those of Mr. Gissing but never to Mr. Croskey's disadvantage. Every chapter is thorough, and every chapter takes Max one step nearer to his dismal destiny. The opium scenes impress us as by far the best of their kind in English fiction. --- London Daily Chronicle.
"There is a Hogarthian touch in Mr. Croskey's " Max." It is a weird, terrible, and pathetic story."--- Dundee Advertiser.
"Max is extremely original, often brilliant, and sometimes much too daring."- Woman.
"The description of the insidious temptation reminds one of the pages of De Quincey, and is scarcely inferior to the writing of that famous essayist. "-Liverpool Mercury.
" There is a fine literary ring throughout the book, and a magnificent moral for those who can grasp it. The author describes with almost De Quincey-like vividness the helpless thraldom of opium."---Belfast News
"Naomi is pictured with an extraordinary and touching sweetness." --- Bradford Observer.
"We hope that Julian Croskey, having disburdened his mind, will see his career in a more favorable light. We do not believe that his years have been so 'wasted' as he imagines."-London Academy, April, '98.
"The tragic and mysterious death of Sit Arthur Curtis in the Cariboo bush has broken up one of the most interesting outfits of all that have struck the Klondike trail. Mr. Croskey left this port yesterday for China. Those who have read ' MAX' will probably surmise that this gentleman is identical with 'Mr. M---,' who made an abortive attempt to 'reform' China with 500 revolvers." ---Vancouver.
"A novel that is based to a large extent on actual experiences in the life of a man must always have a great fascination for the reader. Here is unbared to the common gaze the life of a man who, filled with noble ambition and youthful ardour, has been suddenly checked in his ambitious course by a freak of fortune. Then for a time he drifts out of the busy world into enforced seclusion. When he takes his place among men again the interest of the story begins. To win renown by a literary career is his aim, but the task is not an easy one. Though gifted with gemus, the habits of his former life clog and hinder him. The failure of his hopes leads him to take his life and so end his chequered career."-Book and News Gazette.
MERLIN : AN EXTRAVAGANZA. (London, 1896 ; Masterpiece Library.)
"As fresh in its presentation as any novel that has appeared for some years past." ---Morning Post.
"A unique story, delightfully improbable, singularly fascinating." --- Telegraph.
" For our part, we devoured these pages while we chided the author for asking us to swallow such a meal of tough impossibilities. Unless we are much mistaken, this is the very effect Mr. Croskey set himself to produce." -- Literary World.
THE SHEN'S PIGTAIL. (1894. London, Unwin; New York, Putnam.)
"There is much brightness in the sketches; the novelty of the material too, is not unwelcome."----Saturday Review.
"The literary etchings are bitten in effectively with very mordant acid; the General is a capital portrait."---London Academy.
"Material of so rare and uncommon an excellence opens up a new world."---Manchester Guardian.
"The most realistic, as well as brightest, sketch of Anglo-Chinese life that has yet appeared in fiction. The book is full of delicate humor and acute observation."-Evening News.
"A cleverer or more novel detective story I have never come across. Mr. M-'s knowledge of native life in China is wonderful."---To-day.
"It is long since we have read such an original story. There is a fascinating air of mystery about it, and the local coloring is at once brilliant and unfamiliar. The author sows quite a Hardyish delicacy of handling undelicate subjects."---Literary World.
"'The General' is a character sketch that is perfectly delicious. 'A Little Chinese Party,' as risque as risque can well be, might be read by the British Matron without a blush."---N. Y. World.
"The author has a new field which reminds me of Kipling."---N. Y. Outlook.
"A very bright and amusing volume. The stories are not only good, but told with art in a neat and happy style."---Phil. Times.
"These stories give an admirable idea of Anglo-China life. It seems not improbable that the author is the American who got into serious trouble two years ago for smuggling rifles into the interior."---S. F. Chronicle.
" Lively, original, and amusing."---N. Y. Churchman.
"Novel, fresh, and entertaining."---Inter-Ocean.
"Its clever analysis of motive and minute tracery of detail would do credit to Conan Doyle. "-Detroit Free Press.
"Abounds in poignant humor, sarcastic at times, but withal truly delicious."-Boston Times.
"Mr. M- will doubtless be recognized by many, but although some allusion is made to a Chinese Secret Society, nothing is indiscreetly mentioned."-Shanghai Daily News.
THE CHEST OF OPIUM. (" Vagabond" Library, London, 1896.)
"The writer has a marvellous acquaintance with the Chinese."---Pall Mall Gazette.
"Mr. M. writes on China as one who has authority, and his story is singularly interesting."---London Chronicle.
"One of those realistic Anglo-Chinese stories for which the author has established a reputation approached by no other. One scarcely knows whether to admire most the profound knowledge of things Chinese or the admirable astuteness of the detective."--Glasgow Herald.
"The character sketching is capitally done, and the interest and curiosity of the reader are maintained at a high pich by the unusualness and acuteness of observation that the author shows. "---Sheffield Independent.
"In the interest and excitement of reading Mr. M's tale, we confess freely that he seemed to become suddenly master of the entire Chinese 'anguage. All this is no doubt due to the art of Mr. M---, who tells his story with such adroitness that you are compelled to master him as you go along."---Newcastle Leader.
CELESTIAL SHUDDERS. (Forthcoming.)
Six stories of Chinese torture, some of which appeared in magazines five years ago; containing among others.
THE FATE OF CONYBEARE, a psychological study of an intellectual man who is transformed by mumpers into a hairy beast going on all fours. "The most terrible and incredible, yet awfully possible and inevitably convincing horror concerning the human soul that we have read since 'Jekyll and Hyde' and 'The Mark of the Beast.'"---The Bungalow Book.
THE DRUNKARD. "One of the most dramatic sketches of delirium tremens we have ever read."---Newsagent.
"Most pathetically and powerfully written. There is not an ounce of exaggeration in its grim humor."---Public Opinion.
"Pathetic, though gruesome; a psychological study of unusual interest of the deterioration of a fine English gentleman into a mere sot." --- Philadelphia Bulletin.
" A weird and realistic sketch of the last days of a drunkard. Written in a firm, straightforward manner, and gives a vivid insight into Anglo Chinese life."---Boston Times.
" Psychologically curious and curiously sad."---Boston Literary Work
" A most vivid and terrible description of a wrecked manhood."---Buffalo Express.
" A relentlessly realistic study."---London Daily Chronicle.
CHINESE HORROR (1895). "A short and terrible tale of torture, fitly named. Such a powerful and weirdly fascinating story I have seldom met with."---Newsagent.
"Horrible though it is, it is powerful and convincing."-London Daily Chronicle.
"The most vivid and hair-raising description of torture we ever read. Its matter-of-fact ghastliness distinctly produces what is known as "gooseskin." ---Scotsman.
"Too awful to believe; but a splendid piece of writing."---Free Press.
"We question if Mr. M--- has ever done anything better than this short story which he is pleased to call padding.' ---Glasgow Herald.
"'Chinese Horror' is indeed horrible --- too horrible almost for words. It is not, perhaps, unwise for the English world to know something of the diabolical cruelty which is covered by Chinese 'civilization'". ---Court Circular.
(For other notices see back.)
VALDA:
A ROMANCE OF PEKING.
CHAPTER I.
Valda's First Meeting with the S. G.
VALDA BERISKOFF was the daughter of a former Russian Minister at the court of Peking.
When Count Beriskoff married an American heiress who was globetrotting in China, he was compelled to leave little Valda entirely to her Manchu mother. The mother, on whom the Count bestowed the pension which backstairs etiquette has established as proper from a minister, and whose connection with a foreigner it was fortunately possible to conceal, was sold, together with her pension to Sheng Ta-jen, a Chinese mandarin of the second class who belonged to the General Council and had the entree of the forbidden city. This mandarin happened one day to get into trouble through a chip or scratch on one of the
twenty-five seals which passed through his hands, and was thrown into prison, during which misfortune he was bled to the extent of several hundred dollars a day for the necessaries of life. As he
[p. 2]
was not a rich man, ruin stared him in the face when he was suddenly released, reinstated and, soon after, promoted. His Manchu concubine had bribed a Manchu member of the Inner Council on his behalf. What the sum was, where she had obtained it, and by what means she had `placed' it, her husband did not know, but he immediately married her, and then gradually, admitted her to his confidence, until she obtained an entire ascendency in the household. In this way little Valda began life with the advantages of a Chinese education. She was also initiated at an early age into the mystery of palace intrigues, for she became the medium of communication between her mother and the Russian Legation. Valda was not of course, her Chinese name. Nor am I sure that it was Russian, but we will let that pass.
When she was tell years of age her Chinese life came to an abrupt conclusion. Valda's mother, being a Manchu, had not permitted the child to be crippled, and at this time she was beginning to ride abroad in a tomboy fashion which scandalized her Chinese step-mothers, but which received the cachet of approval of a Manchu Prince of sporting proclivities. One day, having left her groom to drink wine and play cards at a suburban guard house, she was enjoying an evening gallop all by her lone in the direction of
[p. 3]
the Imperial Hunting Park, when she was overtaken by three young foreigners returning from their Sunday outing in the Hills. They had just taken on board the last of many stout and champagnes (a favorite Peking beverage), and were inclined to have some fun. (the childs equestrian eccentricities had been talked of in the Mess, and she was supposed to be a precocious nu-chi). Mounted on strong cross-bred ponies, fed on beans, the young men easily caught up with Valdas little potbellied mare and began to crowd her, with very immature Chinese jests picked out of Stent. Valda had a high spirit, as well as a malicious humour, and retorted not only with some choice repartee as cultivated in the womens quarter, but with her whip as well. Then one of the young men, a handsome and stalwart youth indeed, snatched her off her pony and kissed her. Valda fought wildly and fell to the ground, spraining her ankle. Her captor dismounted, and, unaware of her hurt, teased her almost indecently while his companions sat on their ponies roaring with laughter. They were all mere boys; one a student interpreter of the British Legation and the others junior assistants of the Revenue Mess, six months out from Europe.
Suddenly the two stopped laughing; the other, looking up at them and then over his shoulder, whispered
[p. 4]
"Good God, the S. G.!"
The two dismounted and the third stood up, and all looked as sheepish and terrified as schoolboys caught by a master. The cause of their discomfiture was the appearance on the road, a little distance off, of a mild insignificant-looking personage jogging along on an old white pony, his head bowed and his mustache showing the satisfied smile of a valetudinarian who feels that his constitutional has done him good.
"This means the sack," said Blake the prime culprit, gloomily.
"It's all right," whispered another "We can say its an accident. I don't believe he has seen."
"The `S. G.' not see!" said Blake bitterly. "When he sees with his boots! "
"I don't care," said the Legation man "Your 'S. G.' can't say anything to me. Thank God I don't serve under a blooming Inquisition."
The sedate passenger rode up, and only now raising his head, touched his helmet with his fly-whisk and said pleasantly,
"Good evening, gentlemen."
"Good evening, sir!" they responded with suspicious alacrity. And the consular man made bold to add, "Pretty warm, isn't it, sir?"
The mild-faced personage did not acknowledge this remark, but said, "You had better ride on, gentlemen. The south
[p. 5]
Gate closes at seven."
Heavily the three young men mounted their ponies and, starting at a deferential jog trot, soon gave the bit to their impatient ponies and disappeared in a cloud of dust, the only word spoken being a muttered 'Damn' from the youth who had pestered Valda.
[p. 6]
CHAPTER II.
Valda Leaves Peking,
IN the meantime the S. G. had caught Valda's pony and replaced her in the saddle. In ordinary life he was known as Mr. Pericord ; officially, as the Superintendent General of Imperial Revenues.
"It is rather unusual for a young Chinese lady to ride abroad, and alone is it not ? " he said gently, as if he would excuse the misbehaviour of his fellow foreigners. -
His Chinese was perfect-just as perfect, both in accent and form of address, as a native's. So perfect, that Valda scarcely noticed the incongruity; all she noticed was the voice, grave, gentle, winning, fascinating.
"I am not Chinese," she said, still sulkily, for all foreigners were as yet barbarians to her. "I am Manchu. My mother conies from beyond the Wall."
"The honorable father is a military officer?" In China personal questions are polite.
Valda told him the name of the mandarin she believed to be her father, and the S. G. lapsed into silence.
When four big men in the livery of the
[p. 7]
superintendent General of Revenues tipped little Valda out of a big official chair in front of Sheng "Ta-jen's residence, there consternation in the household. What it meant, Valda could not understand; when first her mother, and then her step-father, cross-questioned her over and over again as to every word that had passed between her and the S. G., she began to think that she had been guilty of some fearful impropriety. But the secret of it was simply this, in the words of the mandarin to his wife:
`'If the Tsung Shui-wu Ssu has found out through the child that we have secret communications with the Russian Embassy, my head will pay the forfeit. He has long suspected that our friends are intriguing to supplant his influence, and he is so cunning and patient that if he only discovers your past history he will the next day have proof against me. You must km down to my home in Wuchang at once, wife."
"To be under the eye of his Hankow commisioner," said the lady bitterly. "How can you escape his vigilance if once you rouse his suspicion ? The net-work of his agents extends to the four corners of the Empire."
In this trepidation, Valda was kept a close prisoner for a week; with the result that one afternoon she slipped away without telling anyone, and way laid the S.G.
[p. 8]
on his customary constitutional.
"Ching, lord," he accosted him humbly.
The S. G. raised his eyes; he was riding in a brown study, for he was about to bring off his great coup of the Opium Convention, and the affair was so delicate and audacious, and involved such an immense change in the revenue, that in spite of his Napoleonic power of closing the door of his brain during this brief hour of relaxation, he could not dismiss the subject from his thoughts.
"Ching, young master," he responded bravely as he passed, but so absently that he mistook Valda for a boy.
Valda gazed after the bowed figure on the white pony with a feeling which choked her; a disappointment that was despair-a stupefaction -which a child might feel who was struck by a passer-by. Then, stung by her innate daring and impulsiveness, she smote her pony smartly, and overtook him.
"Ta-jen-pardon-but I want to, I must, thank you. Forgive-please forgive-the small one's impertinence."
Mr. Pericord brought his old pony to a walk and dismissed the cares of state for the winning suavity which his enemies called 'soft soap' but which was the quiet unaffected kindness of a great and gracious nature.
"Thank you, my child what for? Ah,
[p. 9]
now I remember your face; it is for me to ask pardon for my discourtesy in forgetting it. I trust your ankle no longer pains you ? "
"My ankle ?" That was all poor little Valda could say. Something so much less simple than a forgotten sprain teas paining her, but she could not then interpret what it was. And so she said nothing and wished she had died before she had accosted him, while at the same time keeping timidly by his side because she could think of no other way than being swallowed up by the earth by which she could excuse herself on that desolate road.
The S. G. was really bored, if he was not positively annoyed by this tactless intrusion; but his almost feminine intuition showed him the child's perplexity, and with a good grace he resigned himself to the complete interruption of his thoughts. The only discourtesy he used was the one best calculated to relieve the strange girl's embarrassment; He took out his watch and discovered that it was much later than he thought, and therefore suggested a canter. Every woman can probably picture to herself just how the girl felt as she followed him: the unrelenting blush of shame, the impotent self-hatred, the sensation of being dragged at her pony's tail rather than carried on his back. When they passed through the Gate she relieved him of her company without a
[p. 10]
word, and turning up a side street, rode furiously through narrow alleys followed by a pandemonium of imprecations from the coolies whose stalls or burdens she upset.
And that was the last impression Valda carried away with her of the city of her birth. Through the agency of the Russian Legation she was placed in the Jesuit Foundling Convent at Tien-Tsin for a year, to teach her French, after which she was packed off to her father in St. Petersburg, he having of his own initiative sent for her in the interim. His wife having died and left him her fortune without other incumbrances, the Count had determined to seek out his Chinese daughter to amuse his declining years. When he saw how remarkably handsome and intelligent she was, he decided to adopt her and gave her the best Continental education.
[p. 11]
CHAPTER III.
Valda's Return to China.
IT happened that within a year of her return the Count, who was now in the Foreign Office, had occasion to conduct some delicate negotiations in connection with the Kuldja Treaty in which it was of advantage to him to be able to deal direct whit a special Chinese envoy without the intervention of the resident ambassador's interpreter. In this, Valda's Chinese came in opportunely, enabling him to score quite a little diplomatic triumph. Without any definite prospects for her future, he nevertheless saw the possibilities of the case and was careful, in the scheme of her education, to provide against her entirely forgetting her Chinese. Nothing more was necessary than that she should hold a brief conversation with one of her fellow countrymen every few months, and this was easily arranged.
During the next seven years Valda was transformed into a modern Russo-French society girl. She acquired all the usual accomplishments, and what was Mongolian in her was no more in evidence that it is in pure bred Russians. The only point in which she differed from her fellows was in her remarkable aptitude for,
[p. 12]
and experience in, Asiatic politics. This gained her something like a European reputation, owing to her father's peculiar arrangement that she should be periodically introduced to the Chinese Ministers of the different countries in which her education was carried on. By the age of fifteen I think she was known by sight to all the attaches of the Chinese embassies
in Berlin, Paris, and London, and regard ed both by them and by diplomats as a Russian spy of quite a new and harmless sort. It is not usual for spies to call openly at embassies. Valda knew twice as much about Peking intrigues as all the Foreign Offices put together, and it ended in them seeking her, not her them. It was a common jest of grey haired ministers to say, when China came onto the carpet, "We must send for Miss Valda Beriskoff." This flattered the Count. For once the epithet `Russian spy' became an epithet of admiration and endearment, and gave Valda a unique eclat when she finally made her debut in society.
In consequence of this unbroken connection with Chinese politics, Valda was never allowed to forget the hero of her childhood. The quiet, reserved figure of the S. G. was always before her eyes, although he shunned advertisement as sedulously as politicians court it. His name never appeared in the papers. None outside the cabinets knew of his existence.
[p. 13]
When a T. Pericord, Esquire, of Peking, was gazetted in the list of British "birthday honours,' when the rumors went abroad that he had been asked for the second time to become the British Minister at Peking with an earldom for a bribe, people scarcely talked of it; none knew who he was, or what he had done, and as the society gabbler dreads nothing so much as to appear ignorant of other people's biographies, he shunned the topic
of Pericord.
Great Britain possesses numbers of obscure celebrities like these, although none wielding such power as wielded by this Ms. Pericord in another country's service. Sir Claude MacDonald Lord Kitchener, Milner, Rhodes --- only when some trifle such as a war or a massacre brings their name into prominence does society discover that they have been potentates for years.
But to Valda this name possessed all the significance it possessed up and down the coast of China and in the palaces of the Forbidden City.
And as, year after year, year after year went by and still the Tsung Shui-wu Ssu remained the chief name to conjure by in all the Chinese Embassies, she began to think that she must have been mistaken in associating it with a person who had interested himself in her. The name must stand for some ancient and immovable institution like that of the Board of Rites or
[p. 14]
of the Dragon Throne itself. It could not refer only and individually to a slight, mild-faced, middle-aged man with a gentle voice and absent-minded eyes, who never went anywhere except to sneak out by the aide door of his fu for a timid amble in the dusk of the evening, who had been afraid to say a word to his own employes, and who, it was said, had no other way of amusing himself than by shutting himself up in a back roots and playing a melancholy big fiddle.
In this way the memory of the S. G. was perpetuated in her growing mind; a sort of dream, crowded down by bare dry facts of colorless reality.
When Valda was seventeen years of age, the Prince Pauloskoff Tomski, (I am sorry I don't know the correct way of writing these names) sought her hand in marriage. The Count, to whom the proposal was made, was delighted. It was the crown of his life's ambition. He informed Valda of the honour awaiting her, and desired her to arrange the date of the ceremony without delay, as the Prince was liable to die at any minute. I don't suppose he told Valda this in so many words, for the Prince made up well enough to deceive a girl as to his age, and the disease which was destroying him did not admit of detailed description.
But to the Count's amazement, Valda refused to obey him. She said she did
[p. 15]
not want to marry. The Count, seriously alarmed, questioned her very closely, but could discover no symptoms of a clandestine love affair. The girl, in fact, shewed a supercilious indifference to all the handsome gallants whose names her father tentatively introduced. What was the meaning of this? The girl was incomprehensible. Simply, she did not want to marry at all. Incidentally, the idea of the Prince filled her with loathing.
After a year of foolish efforts, the Count, Count entirely lost his temper. The alliance meant everything to him. Its defeat meant ruin. He told Valda that she was illegitimate, that he intended to disinherit her, and that the best thing she could do was to go back to China and marry a coolie. Valda took him at his word, and said quietly that there was nothing she would desire so much. The Count had an apoplectic fit and died soon after.
Valda returned to China as the ward of the Russian Minister at Peking. She had a good wardrobe, a sparkling presence, Parisian accomplishments, and the grand style. Peking, with its attaches of every nationality, is not such a bad hunting ground for a portionless belle, and Valda could have made a better match than her origin warranted, if she had desired and her guardian had approved. She did not, however, marry.
The young Russian took her place, of
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course, in the holy of holies of Peking Society, which, as it numbered in all about one hundred members, (excepting only missionaries and children) divided itself in more numerous, exclusive, and scandal-mongering cliques than even in Shanghai or Simla. Passing globetrotters and parliamentary journalists, entertained by their ministers and invited everywhere with an alacrity which would be suspicious to less unsophisticated persons, go home with stories of the large hospitality of the East and the homelike good fellowship which exists among all the members of these isolated settlements. They little wot of all the heart-burnings which trouble these worthy goodfellows, especially over the priority of getting the ear of a stranger.
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CHAPTER IV
The Walls of Peking.
Valda, as a child, had travelled from Peking to Tien-Tsin by boat, a leisurely four days journey. She returned by rail, in four hours. Somehow, her hereditary instincts told her that this thing was abnormal, not of the soil. When she found that the line terminated as soon as the long squat walls with their uncouth towers broke the skyline, the uneasy foreboding was confirmed. It was a violation of traditions as venerable and immovable as those walls, that swift artificial traction should cut an unheeding path through the feng-shuis of graves and antiquity which hallowed these barren plains. If only, (some passionate misgiving cried within her) the noisy anachronism had been able at once to carry itself right through that barrier, the spell of seclusion night have been dissipated forever. But there ahead still couched the squat, grim monster of the ancient city, intact, sardonical, gazing with its blank mud brow towards the arrested innovation, sluggishly cherishing the ancient backwardness and all its vast mysterious potentiality of resistance and resentment. Valda knew the city and its people born there, the
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sluggish foulness of its poverty and millions rested a reminiscent ground-work for her intuitive comprehension of its character and sentiment; and as in advance she pictured to herself, behind the flat grey mound, the mazy panorama of miles and miles of narrow winding alleys, swarming with the ant-like industry of stolid crowds, it seemed to her that the steel rails and imbedded trestles over which the steam horse thundered, were mere ephemeral cobwebs, spun only to be swept away.
Valda expressed a wish to hire a native cart to carry her through the Chinese city to the Chien Men, instead of using the buggy which the minister had sent to meet her. Valda's origin had, of course, been sedulously concealed, and it appeared perfectly natural to the attache who escorted her that this charming young woman should be curious to see Chinese Peking before immuring herself in the aristocratic avenues of the Tartar City.
The jolting cart, with its rude and comfortless utilitarianism of construction, restored Valda to a sense of home-coming which the railway, the mode of travel to which she had been accustomed for the past eight years, had entirely failed to impart. This was China; this was the immemorial civilization of the East based on the only primitive foundations of expedience and economy. Trained in culture and luxury as she had been, she now felt
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a scornful contempt for the showy extravagances which Western civilization had grown to depend on as indispensables. And then she smiled on her companion and said with a charming shudder --
"What hopeless barbarity everywhere!"
"We shall change it all when Russia rules Peking," responded the attache.
"Ah!" Valda remembered. Intrigue a patient relentless purpose -- international rivalries forever wrestling in mortal strife a beneath the tranquil surface of stereotyped courtesies -- and behind, in the background, gaping with vacant grin, the countless millions of China, storing up beneath their apathy an energy which might submerge Russia itself in its flood.
"Our influence is already paramount, I hear?" suggested Valda.
"But for one man we should dictate the Yamen's s policy, annex the land, and monopolize the trade, of each district in succession as soon as we were ready to assimilate it."
"So? They told me that Sir Claude had succumbed unresistingly to the precedents of Sir Thomas Wade."
"Oh, the British Minister does not alarm us," replied the young diplomat with a
smile of approval for his companion's intelligence. "Our stumbling block is Mr. Pericord, the S. G. I. R. D. Fortunately, we have the assurance of Holy Writ that no man can live forever, or the impreg-
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nable persistance of this solemn-faced dullard would drive our minister to despair."
"The S. G.! " murmured Valda softly. Then she lapsed into silence.
A shadow fell over the cart; Valda looked up and shuddered. In front of them, so close that it seemed that it might fall and crush them, loomed a vast cliff-like embankment, a square tower of uncouth solidity squatting heavily alone. It was the city wall. Sheer from a rubbly base it towered, gray, and crumbling, yet massive and inscandible; far as the eye could reach it stretched away on either hand, clean-cut and straight, solidly buttressed, ponderously yet symmetrically be-towered. In front of them the black arched mouth of a tunnel, appearing in proportion to the cliff it pierced a mere burrow, yet wide and lofty enough to admit three loaded camels abreast. Scattered on either side of the road, a suburb of caravansaries, mat sheds, reed huts, dwarfed to the proportions of bee hives and cucumber frames.
Half an hour before, Valda had looked forward to the Wall as to an old familiar friend, harmless and homelike; now its awful antiquity and strength crushed her with an unspeakable sense of foreboding. The barrier to the civilization of the West; the rampart of the prejudices of the East; and yet folding in its massive
[p. 21]
womb a brood of the very snakes who were plotting its downfall. The ugly simile -- Valda knew Milton and Dante better than Chu-Tza or Menicius -- had scarcely occurred to her that she repented it revulsively, and, thinking softly of the man whom her companion had called a solemn-faced dullard, felt hopelessly that her metaphor should have been that of angels hugged in the embrace of a cobra.
"They say these huge walls serve no other purpose than to keep out the fresh air," she said pensively, " that they would be worse than useless for defence."
"They do say so,'' sneered the Russian attache. "We have a habit of despising systems we do not use."
"But I suppose it is true that these walls could offer no resistance to artillery?"
"The people who say that imagine that Chinese walls are the same as those of mediaeval cities of Europe. Granite or brick walls are merely death-traps to those behind them. Mud embankments fifty feet thick are advocated nowadays as the only protection against shell fire. That is what these wall are, only they are too high and these towers are explosive targets. When they have been battered a little they will form a ridge over a hundred feet thick, in which event even siege shells would bury themselves."
Valda was astonished "Do you mean to say that Peking would be capable of
[p. 22]
standing a siege?"
"The walls could be defended at any one point," he replied indifferently. "But they have a circuit of twenty or thirty miles, so that it would not be difficult to scale them somewhere -- if one had 100,000 men to spare for simultaneous assaults from at half a dozen quarters."
"There would still remain the Imperial City," said Valda half to herself. "And the Palace after that."
"You seem well up in the topography of the old shop," the attache said in surprise. "But you have touched the kernel of the matter: it is that, we count on if we should ever have to hold Peking -- against other Powers. An enemy once within the walls, but outside the Imperial Wall, would be in a death-trap. Peking could only be taken by starvation."
"What do you mean by a death-trap?"
"Well, there is the population; you can't exterminate that. Ten thousand or fifty thousand men (they would have to keep together) wouldn't cover a square inch on a chart of a city like this. There are walls all around them which can't be crossed in a hop, skip and a jump. Where would you be if the Chinese got hold of the gates and mount a few guns on the wall?"
"I don't like to think of it," Valda murmured with a shiver. "Suppose, without war or a siege or anything like
[p. 23]
the crowd were to turn against us; the Legations, I mean? What hope of escape should we have?"
"Revolvers for us and arsenic for you," replied the Russian.
They were by this time passing under the long and gloomy tunnel of the gate. "Abandon hope, all ye who enter here," whispered Valda, as if afraid that the guards should ever hear her.
"Come, come," said the attache gallantly, taking advantage of the gloom to press her hand. "That is not exactly the spirit in which a debutante should look forward to the most brilliant little coterie of fashion to he found east of Moscow."
"So that is what you think yourselves? " laughed Valda, rallying. "Are you so very gay then?"
"We should be absolutely frivolous if it were not again for that solemn-faced gentleman I referred to just now. Somehow one can't come within a block of the man without feeling either choked with an atmosphere of statistics or chilled with an atmosphere of Secret Reports. The poor fellow lacks what these prigs of English call our 'Muscovite Veneer.' He wears a worried look, to quote the ghastly vulgarity of these student boys."
"I am afraid you have not a very good opinion of your fellow Europeans in Peking, Captain Vassilich."
[p. 24]
"Oh, they will pass, they will pass -- until they do pass. We must put up with their airs for a year or two longer, I suppose, until Peking is called Alexanderburg."
"Or New Tokio."
"Never! " said the Captain sharply. "I for my part would sooner let loose the whole flood of fanaticism which is brooding like a poisonous miasma"-- he waved his hand towards the crowded alleys -- "all round us in a million secretive hearts, than see Japan paramount at Peking."
"And be yourself its first victim, most likely," said Valda scornfully.
"With all my heart, if by so doing I could stave off the Yellow Union which would swallow up Russia in half a
century. But what an astonishing insight into Asiatic politics you seem to possess, Miss Beriskoff!"
"Oh, I read the papers, you know," she answered.
[p. 25]
CHAPTER V
Society in Peking.
Valda was at once embarked on the full tide of the gaieties of Peking Society, and invitations poured in on her, every salon being eager to claim this new attraction before its rivals. A ball at the French legation, a dinner at the British, a hill picnic by the students' mess, were organized in her special honor within the first fortnight; but the invitation which alone excited her anticipations was a plain unpretentious card bearing these printed words:
"Mr. Pericord requests the pleasure of Miss Beriskoff's and H. E. M. de Samovar's presence at a garden party to be held in the grounds of the Superintendancy General of Chinese Imperial Revenues on Saturday next."
"Mister Pericord?" she said questioningly, in a voice which caused the Minister to look at her searchingly. "Is the Superintendant General a -- a bachelor?"
M. de Samovar uttered a low laugh. "Ha, ha, Miss Valda you aim at the highest front the start, then? For our own sakes I wish he were, but no such luck. Mr. Pericord has a genius for rendering himself inaccessible to
Feminine
[p. 26]
intrigues. Mrs. Pericord has lived in London for the past five years, but the S. G. lets it be fully understood that he is only a grass widower, and only to that extent . . . . . . . ."
Valda blushed indignantly and turned away. She understood the insinuation, and was not shocked at her guardian's indelicacy because she was accustomed to the manners of Russian noblemen; but it hurt her that even diplomatic scandal could associate the least suggestion of sensuality with the face which abode in her memory as the type of goodness
Valda entered the beautiful grounds, hung with endless chains of paper lanterns and idealized by the soft strains of the famous band, with a fluttering uneasiness which contrasted strangely with her habitual self-assurance. She was received by a florid young man with a Scotch accent; "We are delighted to welcome so charming an accession to our dull society here," he said with elaborate clumsiness.
Valda scarcely glanced at the old young man (his face was that of a boy, but his hair was grizzled at the sides); a feeling of bitter disappointment beset her, and she turned her eyes away with such a look in them as a woman might wear whose life's dream had been cruelly shattered.
"Take my arm, Miss Beriskoff," said the military attache. "The minister will
[p. 27]
be buried in a game of whist with the other gray beards for the next three hours, so you must allow me to be your chaperon. What do you think of the S. G. 's private musicians? The man divides his time equally between them and the Revenue, and they say the Revenue runs itself while the S. G. runs the Band."
"You did not tell me there had been a change in the head of the Revenue Service, Captain Vassilich," Valda said wearily.
"I don't suppose I did. If I could have told you that I could have as easily told you that the Great Wall had taken unto itself wings and joined the chorus of angels."
Valda turned on him quickly; her eyes flashed with painful eagerness. "But surely that young man who appears to act as host is not the Superintendant General who was here before I was born?"
"Oh, Cinderpan? He's only one of the Royal Family: a Vice-Assistant Temporary Acting Secretary or something of the sort who relieves the great man of the onus of performing the common courtesies of society. Its a wonder we were not received by his boy. He looks on us as a lot of idle butterflies who have got to be kept in good humor, but as to condescending to appear at his own garden parties -- oh, you cannot expect that of a man who collects the revenue of the Chinese Empire,
[p. 28]
-- and keeps his own private band."
Valda smiled charmingly; she seemed to find her companion's wit full of entertainment,
"Then does the S. G. never go out?"
"I don't think he has accepted an invitation for the last five years -- since he relieved himself of Mrs. Pericord's dictatorship. They do say he takes a constitutional occasionally, but if so, he manages to slip out of the city by a tunnel or an airship, for no one ever encounters him."
The next day Valda borrowed one of the Minister's ponies and rode out along the Tung-Chou Road alone. She returned dejected. Whenever she could escape the round of gaieties -- the tennis-parties and afternoon teas at the Peking Club, the picnics to the Hills, the undress boudoir calls, the official receptions -- she rode out if possible alone; but whether it was because the young men of the Messes always happened to be emerging from their 'Barracks' just as she passed, or because the dust blinded her, or because she found the country too squalid and uninteresting, the effect of her gallops seemed only to be depression and weariness, and she soon abandoned them. It was only by accident that she learned later that the S. G. had been out of the capital, summering at a coast resort called Pei-tai-ho. And he returned, as he went, unannounced.
[p. 29]
But it was not till the winter came, cutting off Peking from all the world by its barrier of ice in the Gulf of Pechile, that the brilliant little society of Lebanon Street was thrown entirely on its own resources for amusement. The opening of the skating rink---the flooded tennis grounds of the Peking Club --- inaugurated the three months of isolation with a brilliant display of Chinese furs, both on the caps and cloaks of the high mandarins invited, and on the muffs and jackets of the foreign women. Sleigh rides, toboggan parties, soirees, and balls, replaced the languid garden parties and picnic excursions of the oppressive summer, and for the rest, all the world (a few hundred persons at the most) depended on the S. G.'s fortnightly courier service for the mails from Shanghai.
And now it was that the S. G, the Veiled Prophet of the Revenue Myth, as the young consulars delighted to dub him to their chums of the I. R. D., came out of his shell and condescended to show himself once a month at a public dinner, and even to be at home to callers once a week. Every young man who could play a musical instrument was now to have the chance of a lifetime of attracting the personal attention of the S. G., and anecdotes were revived of all the `careers' that had been made by a happy knack of the banjo or a fluty mouthing of
[p. 30]
the clarionet.
But if the young men practiced and hoped, what of the wives of secretaries and Assistants who had intrigued to obtain a transfer to Peking for the express purpose of offering their charms to the retiring grass-widower? It had come to be accepted as the duty of all married women in the Revenue Service to forget their modesty when the chance presented itself to obtain their husband's promotion by a little bit of flirtation; and everyone in Peking except the S. G. himself knew that every woman attended his receptions with this avowed intention. In fact, it was whispered that they even cast lots among themselves as to whose turn it should be to monopolize the bashful old bachelor and inveigle him into his conservatory.
[p. 31]
CHAPTER VI.
Valda's Second Meeting with the S. G.
VALDA listened to these boudoir anecdotes with silent indignation. But what were her feelings when her guardian began to hint that she herself was expected to use her charms on behalf of Russian diplomacy?
"You are far and away the cleverest woman in Peking," said Mr. Samovar, "and you are the only one of the lot who understands the first thing about Asiatic politics. The opportunity presents itself to you to perform a signal service for your country. You are aware that we intend to annex Manchuria to our Amur province of eastern Siberia. There are a great many exceedingly delicate question, connected with this stride, each one of which, in some inexplicable fashion, seems to come around to, and depend on, this sphinx-like Mr. Pericord. Not the least important of these questions is that connected with the collection of duties at the Port of Niuchuang, which is at present administered by the department which he controls. Now if Manchuria is to be a part of Russia, Niuchuang, which is the Port of Mukden, should be administered, and its tariff regulated, by us.
[p. 32]
We were already in process of pecifically engrossing this port by means of certain loans or railway concessions, when the United States Government, which ignores all the established precedents, crudely, although, I must confess, very skillfully addressed a circular to the Powers virtually demanding a recognition of the "Open Door" fiction for all the Treaty Ports. This circular was aimed straight at our own heads with reference to this very Port of Niuchuang, where American imports of piece goods and oil form a growing item of the trade. Bluffed in this vulgar fashion, we were compelled for the time being to declare that we had no intention of altering the tariff or assuming the collection of the duties. But of course we have no intention of allowing this transparent bluff of a non-military Republic to turn aside the manifest destiny of Russia. It has therefore become extremely important for us to know just what secret understanding exists between the Chinese Government and Great Britain and Japan towards enforcing the Open Door policy-when we are ready to declare our hand. I have sounded the Tsung-li Yamen and find that they know nothing. Between ourselves, our enemies are negotiating directly with Mr. Pericord, who arrogates to himself, as he has always done in the administration of the Revenue, the astonishing claim to keep in his own
[p. 33]
pocket, as it were, the documents relating to this vital understanding, to be placed in the Yamen's hands only when the matter reaches the stage of active interference. Until I know what this understanding amounts to, my hands are tied and I might almost say the whole Eastern policy of Russia is brought to a standstill. Valda" -- -here M. de Samovar laid his hand on her shoulder and looked at her impressively-"Valda, I entrust to you the vital task of sounding Mr. Pericord personally on this topic. You have all the facts. You will meet him at dinner to-night. A woman of your intelligence need not be told by what means a timid but sympathetic man is best persuaded to part with his secrets."
Valda withdrew her shoulder from her guardian's hand as she might have shuddered from the touch of an asp, and walked away froth him. M. de Samovar looked after her with an evil perplexity.
"Let the girl play the false," he muttered, "and she shall find that Peking is not St. Petersburg. "
At last Valda was to nice.. the hero of her childhood: to look on the face which had haunted her during eight years crowded with new sensations, in the whirl o social triumphs, in the din of masculine flattery, in the very midst of whispered courtship from some of the
[p. 34]
handsomest and most celebrated beaux of Europe. Everyone had wondered at the strange girl's indifference to these flatteries, her aversion to marriage, her coldness, her inaccessibility. She herself perhaps had sometimes wondered at her apathy. Now, at last, her heart told her why she had kept herself unclaimed, and an awful misgiving beset her that she should find she had cherished an utter delusion, prepared for herself a disappointment full only of bathos and ridicule.
Had she hoped then to marry this man? That would be an absurd conclusion; a child of ten years does not think of marriage, and it would have been sufficient for her as she grew older, to remember that Mr. Pericord had already a wife. Did she love him? Again, does a child realize what is meant by love, and does a young woman fasten her affections on the memory of a man, a man too of almost insignificant appearance, old enough to be her father? To analyze the sexual character of a Russo-Manchu half-caste would be beyond the diagnosis of a Lavater, and to the girl herself this inexplicable fondness appeared now something unnatural and even shameful; but' sympathies do not reason, and her knees literally trembled, and her heart fluttered with terror, as she prepared to see the grave face and weak body transformed into the decrepitude of old age.
[p. 35]
"Welcome to Peking, Miss Beriskoff."
Valda laughed outright: laughed almost hysterically. She pressed the firm white hand with school-girl cordiality, and retorted gaily
"But, sir, I have already been than months in Peking! Does Your Grandeur dare to imply that no one can have arrived in Peking until she has received the official recognition of your handshake? I think I have attended half a dozen of your garden parties, but I really did not know until this minute that the Superintendant General of Chinese Revenues was anything more corporeal than a Board!"
To say that this speech spread consternation though the assembled guests would but faintly indicate the astonishment, I might almost say terror, which was depicted on the faces of the young men, the ladies, the Staff, even the grizzled Ministers, who had to stroke their mustaches with a simultaneous uplifting of long-fingered hands which had the air of a salute. And when they ventured to raise their eyes stealthily to the face of the Veiled Prophet, the Grand Llama, thus audaciously bearded, their consternation was changed to a profound alarm for the anticipated pleasures of the evening. For the S. G. was blushing deeply, ---blushing to the very top of his bald forehead, and his hand visibly trembled as he still held it outstretched.
[p. 36]
"I really did not know that I had been guilty of any such presumption, mademoiselle," he stammered, with the offended but frightened look of a snubbed schoolboy.
"Oh, forgive me! " murmured Valda, turning hastily away to hide her own burning blushes and not less manifest confusion; terrified at the bounding of her heart which it did not seem possible that she could control sufficiently to go into dinner sedately.
For the man who had greeted her with such grave and modest benignity was the same man, the very same, with the same low sympathetic voice, who had lifted her onto her pony after putting to flight her tormentors, who had carried her through the very courtyard she had just traversed, who had enquired tenderly if her ankle pained; not a day older, not a wrinkle, not new white hair in the iron-gray bear, only a little firmer and more upright in carriage, a little more self-assured, a little fuller in the face, a little younger in the eyes, as if-she thought with senseless rejoicing-the resumption of his bachelordom had taken away the petty worries which carve crow's-feet on the brows of genius. And so it was that a wild elation had siezed her, a mad revulsion from the mortal misgivings which had made her knees to quake, a boundless joy to look at last upon the incarnation of her dubious
[p. 37]
dreams and evanescent memories, so that she uttered the first gay coquetries of her heart, entirely forgetting that she was a stranger and a guest, and her host a great Personage whom women were wont to bow to with little less awe than to royalty.
She was brought back to her senses by a little pat on the shoulder, and the voice of her guardian at her ear.
"Magnificent!" he whispered with an encouraging smile. "But be careful, for he is as shy as a two-year-old. Do not be in a hurry to press your advantage. The impression is made and it will bear fruit even if he sulks for a week. You've got in ahead of the rest and that is the main thing."
Valda's new found joy vanished into air. She shuddered at her guardian's touch, and all her thoughts seemed turned to desecration.
[p. 38]
CHAPTER VII.
Blake.
FOR the rest of the evening Valda was absorbed in listening to her idol from a distance, and in watching the attitude towards him of the guests, as various in rank and importance as they were cosmopolitan in nationality. There were representatives of a dozen different countries, Austrian, Belgian, Italian, Spanish, Japanese, as well as American, British, French, German and Russian; the wives of these, their attaches and Secretaries; three or four great mandarins, including Prince Ching and the Governor of Peking; the Roman and Anglican Bishops; a sprinkling of chaplains, doctors, consular students, and Revenue Assistants, together with some winter-bound travellers and savants and the heads of the two chief colleges in the capital, one of whom was privately the special correspondent of the Times. The S. G., as a purely Chinese official, was compelled to be more catholic in his hospitality than the Legations, who scrutinized their lists of 'eligibles' by the light of national obligations, and the private preferences of their women folk.
To anyone less romantic than Valda, it
[p. 39]
would have been difficult to see in Mr. Pericord anything to attract such tremulous sympathy as she felt. The man seemed a type of self-obliteration; a negative quantity, something regular and mechanical, inspiring confidence and respect indeed, but far too unemotional to inspire emotion. Seated at the head of his table, he spoke scarcely at all, or if he exhibited any symptom of domestic naturalness, it was to his head boy or butler, when he called his attention by a gentle look to the wants of his guests. But to them, to the ministers and great ladies on his either hand, he merely listened; graciously, it is true, but with an absent air which betrayed the habit of the recluse. And yet one had but to look round the faces of the guests to perceive that there was in this man a rare attraction and impressiveness; the ministers and high Mandarins might be perceived to lift their eyes quickly when he spoke, as if in the midst of their conversation they were listening to catch the simplest word from his lips. But more especially in the young men of his own staff was this reverence to be noticed. Not the youngest and most reckless but seemed imbued with an air of devotion and love as he looked at his chief; and one perceived, if one did not understand, how for thirty years he had controlled the destinies of hundreds of employes with hardly a single instance of mutiny or ingratitude.
[p. 40]
Valda remarked especially this expression of devotion in a young man who sat opposite her, whose strong and handsome face wore an air of settled melancholy. He looked like one who bore patiently an unmerited injury, because he was conscious of integrity and wished to retrieve a lost position. The more she looked at him, the more familiar did his features appear; and then suddenly the conviction came to her that this was the very boy who had snatched her from her pony and kissed her eight years before. After dinner it was the custom to dance, many guests coming in later for that purpose only. Seeing her melancholy vis-a-vis standing alone near her, Valda assumed the privilege of her Russian audacity to say to him:
"Are you not somewhat ungallant, Mr. Blake, to stand idle when you see that I am dying for a waltz and have no partner?"
A bright smile broke up the gloom of the man's face and he offered her his arm with alacrity.
"You dance very well," she said. "How is it that you appear so isolated here? Are you a new arrival?"
"It is not that," he replied, "although it is true that I only returned from leave a month ago. I used to know a good many people when I was at Peking before, and there are several members of my service up here who have been stationed at the same ports as myself during the last seven years.
[p. 41]
But I am out of favor, you see; I am supposed to be in the S. G.' s black books. When a man has once got that sort of bad name his friends are prone to give him the cold shoulder---at Peking. "
"But what makes you think you are in his black books?" (Valda said `his' as if to her as much as to Blake there was only one `he' in China).
"Well, you see, I have had only one promotion in seven years, and that is always a sure sign of disgrace in our Service, when the Chief is known never to lose sight of the meanest of his 500 Assistants. Assistants. And then, until my leave came, I was kept for unusually long spells in the two worst ports in the Yellow Book --Hainan and Pakhoi: in fact this is my first transfer north since I was sent down eight years ago. Most men are generally expected to resign when they receive this treatment. I have returned a year before my leave was up, and that in the face of a very cold letter from Mr. Pericord suggesting that after my prolonged residence in malarial districts he would have supposed that I should wish to reside in Europe indefinitely. But, you see, I have faith in the justice of my Chief . . . . ."
Valda, who had been imperceptibly steering her partner backwards towards the portieres of the card room, suddenly came to a standstill. "Now, what was that you were saying? Tell me again; I
[p. 42]
am extremely interested in this mysterious Service of yours."
"I see that I have made myself ridiculous," he said coldly.
"No, no! You were saying that you had faith in your chief -- that you meant to rehabilate yourself. . . . ."
"I did not say so, but you have read my purpose," he replied with renewed eagerness. "The S. G. might ignore me for twenty years without shaking my firm conviction in his justice and generosity. I was a poor lad, without influence or ability, when he nominated me to the Service on the petition of my mother, who had no introduction save the rumour of his goodness; and if my punishment has been over-severe for a trivial fault, I do not forget that the S. G. has the cares of an empire on his shoulders as well as hundreds besides myself to keep an eye on, and I acquiesce in the inexorable rule that in the Revenue an Assistant must never incur suspicion."
A murmured conversation on the other side of the of the curtains had ceased; Valda raised her fair arm to the portiere as if to prevent her companion from looking beyond.
"What was your fault?" she murmured with a soft look which stirred the blood in the young man's pulses.
"I would rather not tell you," he said awkwardly.
[p. 43]
"I expect you had been drinking."
"That, I am ashamed to say, is the very truth!" he said eagerly. "I had been out to the hills with a consular man who insisted on mixing stout with my champagne, and as I had virtually never taken anything more intoxicating than a Vermouth and bitters I simply didn't know what I was doing. And yet I am well aware that what I did was the very gravest fault in the Revenue Decalogue -- one which, if the native feeling had been as hostile then as it is now, might have seriously compromised the Service. I give you my word, Miss Beriskoff, that I have not touched wine since that day."
"Now if Mr. Pericord could have heard that explanation, and not take steps at once to repair his injustice," said Valda vivaciously, stepping quickly aside from her position between the curtains, "then I should really believe what everyone says, that your S. G. is not a man, but a . . ."
"Machine," said a gravely gentle voice behind them. "I am afraid you would be right, Miss Beriskoff."
Blake started, and turned deadly pale -- he understood why Valda had decoyed him thither and drawn him on to confess himself. The S. G. had been standing immediately behind them during the interview, in conversation with the British Ambassador.
"Let me assure you, sir, " stammered
[p. 44]
Blake indignantly, "that had I been aware. . ."
But the S. G. slowly turned his back on him as if he had not heard, and walked pensively away.
"Pardon me if I leave you here, Miss Beriskoff," said Blake haughtily. "You have friends at hand; I have not."
"You are unkind," said Valda sadly, without making any motion to detain him.
Blake turned sharply, a blush of shame fighting with his wounded pride. "I am a brute," he replied. "Forgive me. Your intention was of the kindest."
"Come, come," murmured Valda, slipping her hand timidly to his arm and looking up at him with a reproachful shyness, "must you be so harsh towards a little trick like that? For punishment I insist that you shall take me to the buffet and pledge me by breaking your pledge."
Blake, overwhelmed by coquetries to which he was an utter stranger, succumbed like melted wax.
"Why have you done it, why have you have you done it?" he whispered incoherently as they left the buffet; the glass of champagne had gone to his head.
"Oh, I like to make allies," said Valda airily. "I suppose you are in love with me now?"
Blake did not reply.
"Once but, twice shy, I see," she said.
[p. 45]
"The last indiscretion left an abiding impression."
"You do not know what that indiscretion was, or you would not tempt me."
Valda laughed mischievously. She remembered the occasion very distinctly. A reckless joy seemed to have seized upon her and to be tingling in her veins with the exuberance of her childish gallops. Why was it? Why was she so happy, why did even the memory of this young man's rudeness seem like bright sunshine? She had found him -- found the hero of her dreams; the searching quiet eye, the low melodious voice, the steadfast magnetic hand -- all had remained unchanged by time as if waiting -- waiting for her return, a child no longer, but a woman. She looked again at Blake; her hero! Yes, it was through him that she had found her hero; and perhaps that was why the young man also appeared charming in her eyes, as if he reflected the noble image of his chief.
"Do I not?" she said, with a sparkling glance. "Perhaps a 'little bird' . . . ."
Blake joined in her happiness with a hearty laugh. The S. G's 'little bird' -- the mysterious agency which told him everything that was going on in every junior Revenue Mess all over the Empire -- was the standing joke par excellence in Peking.
[p. 46]
CHAPTER VIII.
The S. G. Calls on Valda.
ON the following afternoon there was a commotion among the servants in the Russian Legation. The Tsung Shui-wu Ssu had called in person. His greatness was represented by a diminutive slip of pasteboard which had the air of having lain in a drawer for twenty years, and which bore an antiquated style the simple legend "Mr. Pericord."
He had humbly requested the fur smothered Cossack to convey it to Miss Beriskoff. Valda, looking through a window, smiled as she saw the thin and threadbare gray overcoat and round hat of a style long dead and buried; the wardrobe, one might think, that the poor Young Scotchman had brought out with him in the fifties. It was so characteristic; everyone else was muffled in costly furs and continually receiving fresh cases of boots and hats and collars and coats fot fear they should fall behind the fashion, but the greatest man of the community, when he took the astonishing step of calling on a mere woman, could find nothing better in which to array himself than these relics of his youth.
"I am afraid, Miss Beriskoff," he began at once, standing near the door with his old hat in one hand and the other
[p. 47]
stretched over one of the charcoal braziers which stood on either side of the entrance -- "I am afraid I did not sufficiently show my appreciation of your -- your, ahem, repartee -- I mean the very proper snub you administered to me for never having called on so charming a young lady. Is it too late to repair the discourtesy?"
"Do come near the fire, sir." she said humbly; "you are shivering. It is I who am overwhelmed with my audacity -- my gaucherie. I was afraid I had put myself irrevocally in your black books."
"Ah, you continue to fling at my head the idle talk of the young men about my severity, Miss Beriskoff ? I envy Mr. Blake his champion. Would that I could find as fair an advocate to take my part sometimes."
"Oh, Mr. Pericord," she answered impulsively, stretching eagerly forward to take his hand, and then drawing back in confusion, "I -- I would do anything -- for you."
The room was dark save for the fire and the dim glow of the braziers, and the dull winter twilight that crept through the heavy curtains. Tea was brought -- tea in tall glasses, with lemons and brandy in lieu of milk -- but that was the only interruption of their privacy. M. de Samovar, if he was in the house, refrained from coming to welcome his distinguished visitor.
Mr. Pericord remained for two hours;
[p. 48]
before half this time had elapsed the rumour of this unprecedented visit had spread not only to all the other tea-tables of Legation street, but into the Forbidden City itself, whither certain magnates of the Tsung-li Yamen were swiftly and secretly bidden, to inform the Dowager Empress what was meant by this prolonged stay of the Tsung Shui Wu Ssu at the Russian Legation.
And these everlasting fears of intrigue were not without reason. A note had been brought in to Valda by a Chinese servant, which bore these words --
"Niuchuang -- now. "
She knew that her guardian was listening, and that she was expected to commence her despicable task at once. Dropping the paper into the fire, as she thought, with a sigh, she tactfully brought the conversation round to the political embroglio in Manchuria.
Mr. Pericord was, long before this, talking to the girl as to an old friend; it was rarely indeed that he could unbosom himself to a sympathetic listener, for a man in his position is denied the luxury of friends. And so here he sat in the pleasant gloaming, forgetful of time and engagements, greedily if unconsciously absorbing this brief spell of sympathy and homeliness, and allowing himself to talk as unreservedly as if intrigue and diplomacy were unknown.
At last, with a sigh, he rose.
[p. 49]
"The best of friends must part, I suppose," he smiled -- he was never conspicuous for originality. "I am sorry to go. I have enjoyed myself more during these few minutes than during many years, Miss Beriskoff."
He looked at the clock.
"Good gracious, did I say a few minutes? Then the Treasurer of Paoting must have been waiting at the Superintendancy for an hour! What excuse shall I make to him, Miss Beriskoff?"
"Let him wait, sir," she answered. "You can always rule China, but it is not often you can forget that China exists. Sometimes I wish it did not -- when I see how it monopolizes you. I am jealous of China. And I know very well that it will not permit you to call at the Russian Legation again. "
"You are right," he said gravely. "My visit will certainly be misinterpreted. And yet I dont think we have mentioned politics once, have we, unless it was some reference to the future of my pet port Niuchuang. You see it is seldom I am able to meet anyone who does not talk politics. There is an atmosphere of Asiatic intrigue about Peking which affects even the women. You will keep yourself unspotted from its taint, will you not, my child?"
Valda, with a sob, lifted her face to his. He hesitated; then he kissed her on the
[p. 50]
brow.
"But sometimes you will come to see me, dear friend," he whispered.
For full a minute they stood silent in the warm darkness, hands pressed in hands; Valda striving with her sobs, Mr. Pericord carried away with the incense of second youth.
"Wait here," said Valda prettily, reluctantly and slowly drawing her fingers out of his. "It is altogether too cold for you to return in so thin a coat. See, it is snowing. I will bring you a robe."
She ran out of the room. Mr. Pericord turned towards the fireplace. A bit of paper in the fender caught his eye and he picked it up. ''Niuchuang -- now," he read, in the familiar hand of the Russian Minister.
When Valda returned, bearing a splendid overcoat of sable belonging to her guardian, Mr. Pericord was leaning against the mantlepiece with bowed head. His attitude was full of fatigue; the glimpse she caught of his face in the firelight seemed haggard and wrinkled.
"You are tired?" she said gently. "I wish you could stay all night."
The S. G. allowed her to wrap him in the robe.
"Did you say that I was to come to the side gate in Tung Chiao street?" she whispered, looking up in his face affectionately,
[p. 51]
as a daughter might, with her hands on his sleeve. "But I shall be so afraid of disturbing you when you are busy."
"Yes, better not -- better not," he replied, coldly and absently, and moved to the door.
Valda stood tottering, as if some one had dealt her a cruel and treacherous blow. She looked after him -- but bitter rebellious tears blinded her beseeching eyes; she tried to call to him, but her voice was choked.
"Valda, you deserve the Grand Cross," said the voice of her guardian behind her. "I happened to overhear a little of your conversation with your visitor -- on Manchurian politics, I think it was: nothing else reached my ears, I assure you. Of course it was quite a confidential conversation, and no possible blame can attach to you if Mr. Pericord should inadvertently have said things which he would not say to me. All is fair in diplomacy and Peking, you know -- you have heard the saying before to day, I see. You have cleared up one of our most vexatious doubts. You have enabled me to learn something of the most vital importance. I perceive that the United States' Open Door circular, instead of being an empty 'bluff' unbacked by any of the military powers, is on the contrary the indication of a definite conspiracy to defeat our acquisition of Manchuria. A secret alliance
[p. 52]
exists against us of a far more formidable character than I imagined. A desperate remedy becomes imperative. We must appeal to the 'last resource' while England still has her hands full of Egypt and Africa, and the United States is tied up with Aguinaldo and the Bryanites. A war now -- yes, even a riot and reprisals, -- no matter what, so that we can get an army into Peking and remove . . . ."
Valda looked at her guardian steadfastly; had he been less preoccupied with his diplomatic reflections, he might have thought that she had aged by ten years in a day.
"What will be the ultimate effect of our policy on Mr. Pericord? she asked quietly.
"Oh, it will spell ruin for him, I suppose," replied the Minister, indifferently. "The one supreme hold he has on the Palace is the idea that as long as he collects the revenue none of the Open Ports can be alienated or annexed. He scored a triumph over us in this connection by means of that bull-dog of his, McCleavy Brown. But all these Englishmen and Americans must be cleared out. Above all, a devoted servant of the Czar (such as I myself, for instance) must stand in the shoes of Mr. Pericord. -- Now I must write my despatch for to-morrow's courier, dear. I shall have dinner served in my study."
[p. 53]
CHAPTER IX.
Valda Calls on the S. G.
VALDA also had her dinner served in private, but she did not eat, While her French maid was enjoying the savory dishes, Valda was out on foot alone in the bitter cold, which was not so keen as the cruel chill at her heart. Now she hurried, now she hesitated and half turned back, while always she shrank close to the shadow, dreading that even the bright moon should detect the purpose of her errand. The streets were entirely deserted at this hour, and one might have taken Peking for a vast uncovered catacomb, so silent, so untenanted, so white and death-like looked its eyeless avenues. Everywhere, on either hand, nothing was to be seen but plastered and painted walls, and crisp and glittering snow. No lighted windows or hospitable doors broke this still monotony; Chinese houses of any pretention never abut on the sidewalk, but sequester themselves behind stucco walls whose very gates are again blinded by a piece o wall in front.
The few belated passengers she passed intensified the oppressive mystery and silence, for they glided by like wraiths, their hands hugged in their sleeves, their faces muffled in cowls or hairy ear-flaps,
[p. 54]
their backs bent to avoid the icy blast, their footfalls deadened by the thick felt soles of their shoes. Valda attracted no attention, because she was cowled in a native feng-mao, a combined cap and cape which is held by a visor-like flap across the chin. Overhead, the stars and moon shone down with an electric brilliance, marking the city in white and black squares as rigid and clear cut as a checker board's.
Valda reached at length the spacious compound which enclosed the Yamen of the Superintendancy General. Here at last there was an air of bustle, which caused her hastily to shrink into the shadow of the opposite wall. A squad of soldiers were stamping about in the street to keep their feet warm, their rifles carelessly stacked in the middle of the road, with huge lanterns bearing monstrous Chinese characters on their paper globes, slung haphazard from the muzzles. It looked like a group of goblin giants. The men were Chih-li braves, tall stout fellows even when stripped; but in their loose winter uniforms, thickly padded with cotton wool, their legs swathed in padded leggings, their heads picturesquely muffed in huge black turbans, they were swelled out to twice their bulk. A couple of shabby Manchu ponies stood dejectedly by the wall, with high-peaked wooden saddles and massive brass stirrups; half a
[p. 55]
dozen tawdry sign-boards on poles were leaning lop-sidedly by the gate, their ragamuffin bearers in conical red hats squatting in a circle hard by and surreptiously smoking. Valda learnt, by the big gilt letters on these wooden standards, that the Mandarin for whom they were waiting was none other than the Treasurer of Chih-li, an official second only in importance to the Viceroy.
At that minute the great man, in his great green pagoda-like chair, carried low down by four bearers using swing-poles, was borne out, obsequiously followed by his fat conical-hatted pipe-bearers and the high-booted and leather-aproned officers of his escort; and behind them bowed the solemn tingchais of the S. G., who closed the gates as soon as the rabble got under way.
Then Valda was all alone again in the deserted street, like a shivering angel shut out of paradise. She knew that Mr. Pericord could not yet have had his dinner; she knew that her visit at this hour, so soon after parting from him, alone and in stealth, would bear the worst construction in his eyes; and her tortured heart still felt the dull wound of his inexplicable rudeness on leaving her. And yet, it was impossible that he could have meant anything; their conversation had been so sweetly intimate; the pure kiss which he had pressed on her brow had been a compact of enduring
[p. 56]
friendship on his part, and a yearning love on hers. Perhaps he had been preoccupied by the thought of the visitor waiting for him at home; her momentary absence from the room had allowed him to remember the pressing calls of duty. If by any chance he had, in rehearsing the confidances they had interchanged, conceived a seldom absent fear of indiscretion -- if he had remembered that the fascinating young woman was still the ward of the Russian Minister, his secret enemy; well, the news that Valda was bringing to him now would dissipate all these suspicions and prove at once the thoroughness of her devotion.
Fortified by these reasons, though still trembling with painful doubts, she turned down the side street, and, unfastening the wicket gate he had told her of, touched the electric bell three times.
The door opened mechanically, admitting her to a small ante-room, where she seated herself, aware that she would be inspected through a peep-hole by Mr. Pericord's confidential valet, and her presence announced without other formality. The S. G., in instructing her, had explained that there was nothing necessarily clandestine about this secresy, but that he was so pestered by lady petitioners that it was the only means he could devise to protect his precious time and save them the annoyance of being told that he was not at home in the presence of official visitors.
[p. 57]
Valda was kept waiting for what seem to her hours, and her courage dwindled to misery. Then Mr. Pericord himself entered, and this increased her wretchedness, for she fully expected that he would at least invite her to his drawing room, not to his sanctum.
"Yes, Miss Beriskoff?" he said. He carried the robe she had lent him on his arm. "You are going to a party and found that you need this, perhaps?"
For a moment she stood looking with the incredulous reproach of a pet animal whose advances are repulsed. Then her woman's pride came to her rescue and she said wearily --
"I did not imagine that you could treat a woman quite so cruelly, Mr. Pericord. I have compromised myself by this unusual call, in order to give you some information which I have just learned and which concerns you vitally. But I should prefer not to mention it here where you are liable to be interrupted."
"Experience has compelled me to forego receiving private revelations, I regret to say, Miss Beriskoff. I am not the less grateful for your thoughtfulness. Will you allow me to send you home in my chair?''
To his astonishment, Valda burst into a passion of tears. How was he to know that this simple offer recalled the beginning of her life's secret, and recalled it with
[p. 58]
a contrast which nearly broke her heart?
"Oh, what have I done, what have I done?" she cried wildly, when at last she could control her sobs. "Two hours ago, Mr. Pericord, you honoured me with the name of friend. You yourself invited me to use the privilege of this entrance whenever I could spare the time to see you. I come to tell you something of vital importance, something needing immediate action, and you greet me as a stranger -- you refuse even to listen to me."
"I am compelled to, Miss Beriskoff."
"But why -- why? I will not believe that it is simple rudeness; I have known you so long! Tell me the reason of it, Mr. Pericord. I implore you, tell me, before it shall be too late for us to recover the sympathies of this afternoon!"
"You make too much of a trifle," he replied, evidently distressed, and astonished at her claiming a long acquaintance. "I have not by any means decided to repudiate the friendship which promised so much more solace to me than you can imagine. I wished only to hint, without hurting your feelings more than necessary, that the many years that I have resided in Peking have compelled me to be skeptical. Private communications, especially when emanating from certain of the Legations, have so frequently proved the reverse of disinterested that I have
[p. 59]
been compelled to make a rule not to listen to them. And, as perhaps your friend Mr. Blake has told you, my rules do not admit of exceptions."
"You think that I am M. de Samovar's tool -- a spy, perhaps?" she said with a low-voiced scorn, which might have convinced a man of stone.
"Let us avoid all politics, I beseech you!" he replied, deeply moved.
She went close to him, and taking his reluctant hand, turned her flashing eyes full on his.
"I insist on knowing why you suspect me, Mr. Pericord."
He looked at her distressfully, and then, suddenly recaptured by his habitual distrust, or perhaps reminded of some intrigue just imparted by the Treasurer, he withdrew his hand.
"Since you insist, here is the proof of your duplicity. But as I said before, I wish to overlook it. If you will grant me this one favor, of avoiding all allusion to political affairs, I shall still endeavor to deserve your friendship."
Reluctantly, but with a grave sternness which terrified her, he produced from his pocket the slip of paper he had picked up in the fender.
Valda was overwhelmed. She sank into a chair, murmuring -- "My God, what can I do?"
She rose impetuously. "I do not care
[p. 60]
-- I have not time to explain, she cried. "Whether you will listen or not, I will tell you that the Russian minister, my guardian, is at this very moment -- ."
Mr. Pericord held up his hand.
"Since you refuse to respect my rules, I shall wish you good evening, Miss Beriskoff."
With a cold bow and a reproachful look, he was gone.
Then the latent strength and initiative of Valda's character asserted itself; a strength inherited from her mother, who possessed in excess the bold qualities which distinguish Manchu women. She wrote a brief note on the stamped paper which stood on a small writing desk, and, muffling herself in Mr. Samovar's fur overcoat which she had lent to Mr. Pericord, she went out without one backward glance and sought the building which contained the quarters of the Revenue Mess. Here she sent up the note by a boy. In a few minutes she was joined by Blake.
This occurred on the 2nd of January.
[p. 61]
CHAPTER X.
The Stolen Despatch.
THREE days latter much excitement was caused in Legation street by the following circular addressed to the foreign ministers by Mr. Pericord.
"The S. G. of I. R. D. regrets to inform Your excellencies that he has just received a telegram front the Treasurer of Chih-li to the effect that yesterday, shortly after midnight at no great distance from Paoting Fu, the courier employed by this Department for the transmission of Your Excellencies' mail to the coast was waylaid by robbers, and his mail-bag broken into. Whether any matter is missing from the bag cannot be ascertained until its contents are checked at Shanghai, where the courier is not due before seven days, schedule time, dependent on weather. The Shanghai Commissioner has been instructed by wire to telegraph the results of his inspection immediately In the meantime the Nieh-tai of Paoting has been commanded to use every means to discover and apprehend the offenders. -- Signed, J. R. Cinderpan, Acting Assistant Secretary."
The circular was not under trader cover to each Legation separately, but carried round by a tingchai, on a clip. It was
[p. 62]
handed in open, initialed as seen, and returned to the bearer. All the Legations were within a ten minutes walk of the Superintendancy General.
Mr. Samovar happened to be in the drawing-room with Valda when it came. She was trying over a new piece of music, a love song, which had just arrived from St. Petersburg. Without ceasing to play, she turned her head and watched her guardian's face. In the dim rich setting of that profusely decorated room, the silent movement of her head, and the intentness of her glance, would have struck an artist as something vaguely dramatic.
Not less dramatic was the look of commingled rage and dismay which overspread the brow of the minister. "By God," he muttered, "has that fox caught me in my own trap? But no -- it is an accident -- well, we shall see."
His boy reappeared to say that the messenger was waiting for the clip.
"But I must keep this," said M. de Samovar haughtily. "I must hold a proof. . ." Then he seemed suddenly to recollect that he was the last man who should show misgiving concerning the affair, and hastily initialing the sheet with the pencil attached, he handed it to the boy and took up the song that Valda was playing.
Ten days later, information was received that the mail was short of one cover only.
[p. 63]
The anxiety of private correspondents (the courier carried several hundred private letters out of Peking each week) being thus relieved, nothing was felt but a rather piquant curiosity as to who was the fortunate (or unfortunate) sufferer. This of course could not be ascertained for two or three months, for it was impossible to delay the dispatch of the mail by steamer, and only the non-acknowledgment of the mysterious letter would betray its disappearance. Such an accident had not been known to happen since the stormy times of the Taiping Rebellion, and everyone agreed especially when no trace of the robbers was found, Chinese statecraft was at the bottom of the mischief. The abstracted cover, it was hinted, was an important despatch from one of the Ministers to his Government. And of course, if any of the Ministers had sent a despatch important enough to be filched, he couldn't be expected to declare it. He, whoever he was, might have what suspicions he chose. To suspect Mr. Pericord of destroying for his own private ends, the credit of the splendid service which he had reduced to such clock-work regularity, was beyond the back-biting of his most malicious enemies. Thus the affair was forgotten long before any confirmation could be expected, although doubtless many lived in hopes of being able to claim this speck of notoriety.
But something else occurred within the
[p. 64]
month to temporarily dismiss every other scandal from this little gossiping society, which siezed on the slightest social rumour like hungry wolves. Mr. Blake, an American Revenue Assistant employed as English Tutor in Mr. Pericord's Chinese College, had disappeared from Peking. None had seen him leave the city by cart with his baggage, nor was any mention made of his arrival by train in the next week's Tientsin sheet. Gossip was not able to hint at a 'mysterious disappearance' with the insinuation of a crime, for if there had been anything of that sort the Revenue Department would have caused an investigation. But the Superintendancy General preserved a stolid silence. The members of the I. R. D., when questioned, shook their heads, thereby intimating, in a manner quite familiar to all Pekingites, that the injunction of He Who Must Be Obeyed lay heavily on their souls. A new tutor was appointed to the Tung Wen without comment.
In short, everyone knew that Blake had been 'sacked,' and, although none knew why, the air was rife with plausible explanations. To begin with, he was on the S. G.'s 'black books;' that was common gossip. It was whispered that he had formerly been addicted to secret drinking, or even opium smoking, and that after swearing to reform he had been
[p. 65]
guilty of a relapse. These two sins are held in China to be greatly worse than murder. Not to drink at all is a serious misdemeanor, but even that is better than drinking alone. Smoking opium is simply damnation; you may drink a bottle of Chlorodyne a day or even spot yourself all over with morphia injections, but to smoke, like a common Chinaman, is filthy.
Another explanation, which was greedily swallowed and maliciously circulated by the women, was that Blake had been seen alone at night with Miss Beriskoff; some even went so far as to assert, on the strength of their 'boys'' boudoir bulletins, that she had been seen slipping out of the I. R. D. compound disguised in a man's coat. Nothing passes unseen in China, and nothing -- -at least with reference to his Staff -- failed to reach the ears of the S. G. through his 'little bird.' Anything in the nature of a clandestine liaison on the part of an Assistant might cause his dismissal, not on moral grounds, but because it was liable to 'compromise the Service.'
This audacious scandal was encouraged by Valda's temporary disappearance from social functions on the plea of a chill.
The plain facts of the matter were as follows.
The day after the holding up of the courier, Blake sought a private audience
[p. 66]
with his Chief. He said --
"It was I who robbed the mail, sir."
The S. G., who had in his long experience encountered nearly every form of monomania and depravity that is to be found in young men, was for once in his life bewildered. For a moment he appeared almost startled; for another moment, shocked. Then he looked steadfastly at Blake with an air which seemed visibly petrifying into the frigidity of an iceberg.
"Explain yourself," he said.
"Sir," cried Blake, "I did it for the Service! A person -- to be frank, a lady"
"I gave you credit for something better than this, Blake. I expect my Staff to be at least as inflexible to corruption as I try to be myself. Women are notoriously dangerous; you are distinctly warned in the Instructions to beware of exchanging confidences with the members of a certain Legation. But one whose blandishments were so unblushing -- so manifestly insincere. . . . ."
Blake was astonished. "Pardon me, sir. If one thing was manifest, it was surely the lady's attachment to yourself. As for me . . . ." Poor Blake smiled bitterly.
"Attachment is easily feigned," said the S. G., with something of the same bitterness in his voice. "We too, are easily deceived and even when convinced
[p. 67]
of the fact, a sting of regret is left behind which obscures our conviction. Only one rule can safeguard a man in a centre of intrigue like this. It is and I have so often reiterated it in the Instructions -- do not play with edged tools. However" -- and with a sigh he resumed his air of sternness, -- "the mischief is done. You will please inform me by what means you carried out your robbery."
Blake bowed his head. "You will remember, sir, that on the 3rd I asked you for two days' shooting leave. I rode along the Paoting Government Road alone, with a spare pony. I performed the last twenty miles at night, a little ahead of the courier. I waylaid him, and knocked him down. In the struggle he rode over me. When I had rifled the bag, I rode back unseen to railhead, where I left my saddle and ponies with a friendly Belgian and got a ride back on the gang truck. Thus the Service escapes suspicion, at the price of my ponies and this." He glanced down at the hand thrust between the buttons of his waistcoat, which was the only sling he used for a crushed arm.
"Proceed," said Mr. Pericord.
The young man bravely bore up against the terrible simplicity of that word, and produced from his breast-pocket a long envelope bearing the royal arms of Russia.
"I stole this. It contains, I believe, information which it is important for you to
[p. 68]
know."
Mr. Pericord drew back; he did not touch it.
"That! " he exclaimed. "Good God, can so young a child have been privy to a conspiracy like this? Nothing short of my complete ruin. . . I, to have intercepted an official despatch by highway robbery. . ."
Then he recovered his usual impenetrability.
"I am sorry, Blake. You have allowed Miss Beriskoff to use you as a tool for a very malicious plot to bring me into disgrace. I do not know that I have ever been entrapped into so difficult a dilemma. I am sorry for you, but I must adhere to my rule in such cases, of observing a strictly noncommittal attitude. For my part, I do not know who is the culprit or what mail is missing. The offence, as you are aware, carries with it a penal sentence of, I think, fourteen years hard labor. For the rest, you must do as you think fit. Your resignation will not be gazetted for a month, so giving you ample time to leave Peking before it is published."
"My resignation?" stammered the unfortunate man, turning as white as a sheet.
"What else?" said the S. G. in stern surprise.
Blake's head sank on his breast like that of an ox under the poll-axe. He was some seconds in recovering the faculty of
[p. 69]
thought. Then he held out the despatch again and said in a dull careless voice,
"You may as well at least read it, sir. I dont think I care to be sent to prison, and so it will not be restored to M. de Samovar in any case."
"You have not, by chance, stolen the Russian cipher also, I suppose?"
"The. . . cipher. . " Blake put the useless document back in his pocket. The despair and anguish on the man's face made a pitiable spectacle.
"For God's sake tell me what I am to do, sir," he implored faintly.
The S. G.'s patience gave way.
"You may as well offer your services to the Russian Minister or Viceroy Li, who are both such confirmed well-wishers of the Superintendancy General. I do not think you can do me a worse harm in the employment of my enemies than you have done me in my service. Or since you are such an adept at muscular brigandage, you might assist Prince Tuan in drilling his new sect of Boxers."
"By God, I think I will," muttered the broken man, driven to recklessness. Boxer was the Peking nickname for the local self-drilling clubs recently established.
"Your salary will be paid up to the end of the quarter," the S. G. said, turning his back on Blake in order to make an entry in one of the mysterious ledgers which lined the standing-desk. "I think," he
[p.70]
added, extending a slip of paper behind him without turning his head, "to avoid unnecessary comments, you had better take
it now, Mr. Blake."
The slip was a cheque on Tientsin for 500 taels, virtually a gift of $700 from Mr. Pericord' s private pocket.
Blake was a grown man, not particularly gushing, although under the spell of Valda's sympathy he had talked like a schoolboy. At this practical proof of his chief's thoughtfulness he was moved to say many things. He was a big robust fellow, and he was struck with a vague sense of pathos in the bowed and fragile form before him, realizing for the first time that the S. G. was an old man, and a lonely one. But it is hard to speak to a man's back. A little catch of the breath was the only thing that broke the silence, and Blake went slowly out.
When he had left the room, Mr. Pericord leaned his head in his hand wearily. All his life had been a struggle to suppress the sentimental side of his nature, which was as soft as a woman's. Scenes like this, of devotion which he was compelled to repudiate, hurt him.
"Cruel Necessity! " he murmured with a sigh.
[p.71]
CHAPTER XI.
The Cipher.
BLAKE, before his disappearance, sought a farewell interview with Valda. He told her everything the S. G. had said to him, and his manly tenderness was profoundly grieved to witness the girl's distress when she learnt in what light Mr. Pericord regarded her. He concluded by handing her the fatal despatch with a rather mournful attempt at cheerfulness.
"Since no one else will have it, I must give it back to you, " he said. "I suppose you did'nt know that the Ministers use a cipher. I think the best thing you can do -for me, at least-will be to slip it among Mr. Samovar's papers and let him think he never sent it off. It's one of those things which are of no importance to anyone except the owner, as they say in the Lost ads."
"I will take it," replied Valda resolutely, "but I am not going to let your chivalrous sacrifice be in vain. What can I say to you? To speak of my gratitude and remorse would sound like hypocrisy in face of the trouble I have got you into- And yet. . .) '
"Please dont worry yourself about that, Miss Beriskoff. I dare say I shall fall on
[p.72]
my feet when I have got over the stun of it. After all, there are other things besides the Revenue Service. . . "
"Oh, dont say that!"
"I mean, there are other ways of serving the S. G. than by working out statistics or teaching young Manchu brats how to say foreign devil. Don't think for a moment that I have gone back on my loyalty. Even if Mr. Pericord had been unjust, which he certainly hasn't, it would be enough for me that he is the only man in the world to you."
Valda looked at him with an expression divided between remorse and admiration. Her eyes were suffused with regret.
"If I only knew what I could do to repair it!" she murmured, as if she would make him forget that his sacrifice had been for a rival. "I would give everything I possess . . . ...
"Except the one thing. "
"Would that I could give that too," she murmured, blushing deeply. "But I cannot. "
As she said this she continued to look at him with a sidelong glance not absolutely discouraging to a rejected suitor, and gradually her hand stole out towards him.
Blake hesitated a moment, as if he felt he was taking an unfair advantage. Then, overmastered by her beauty, he took her hand and imprinted on it a passionate but
[p.73]
hopeless kiss.
"I have read your secret, Miss Beriskoff, "he said. "But you can't expect me to look at such an attachment calmly. Please don't think it is vulgar jealousy. My respect for him would not leave room for such a thought even if he were a man of my own age. But it kills me to see anyone so young and beautiful as you, throwing away your heart on a man who has no feeling, and who, forgive me for saying it, is already married and old enough to be your father."
"I cannot help it! "
"Well, I ought to say goodbye now. I am not likely to find myself in the same company with you again. That mail robbery --- I suppose some one will find out that I left my ponies down there, soon---puts me out of respectable society as well as out of the service. I dont know where I shall go. But" --- here his self-control broke down --- "God knows, Valda, I shall pray for your happiness!"
Valda listened to his lecture with an air of contrition and shame little to be expected from a high-spirited coquette. No haughty lifting of the head, no flash of resentment, interrupted him. On the contrary, when he ceased, she was quietly crying.
He turned from her abruptly, biting his moustache. "Damn me," he muttered to
Himself --- "I have no tact."
[p.74]
Then Valda suddenly flung her arms round his neck.
"My brave, chivalrous friend!" she sobbed. "I cannot help it! His image has been in my mind so many years. The early impression was only strengthened by absence. . "
Then Blake remembered her.
"You! " he muttered. "The little Chinese tom-boy!" He held her off from him, enveloping her in his deep gaze.
"Well, since something else left no impression at all, there can be no harm in repeating it."
So he kissed her on the lips, and, this time Valda did not struggle.
M. de Samovar had been delighted by Mr. Pericord's visit to Valda. Apart from providing him with information of a valuable nature, it promised much for the future. M. de Samovar was a keen man of the world and able to form a penetrating estimate of Mr. Pericord' s character; and he had little doubt, from the conversation he had listened to, that the timid and self-isolated Superintendant was ready to fall a slave to Valda's charms. And he foresaw that it would be a thorough slavery. Mr. Pericord had probably never yet succumbed to a real infatuation, and it is just these ascetic and self-controlled men who abandon themselves entirely when they are captured after middle age. He would re-
[p.75]
veal everything that Valda wished to know, and M. de Samovar imagined that he had a strong hold over his ward to compel her to act as his tool.
The nature of this hold was as follows; and it explains why the polished aristocrat had so little scruple in compromising the future of his ward. Before Count Beriskoff died, he virtually disowned Valda in his will by leaving her only a legacy, while the bulk of his estates went to a distant relative who was formally styled next-of kin. After his death, a sealed letter was forwarded to M. de Samovar which explained Valda's origin. In it the Count reviled Valda for her disobedience, and advised Samovar to employ her as a spy, the only thing for which she was fitted. His malice even went to the extent of expressing doubt if he was actually her father. It was this letter, which contained some singular allegations, which the Minister counted on as a final instrument to bend Valda to his will.
But for some mysterious reason, the friendship between Valda and the S. G. had come to a conclusion as soon as begun. Mr. Pericord did not repeat his call, and Valda obstinately refused to seek him. The robbery of the mail had increased M. de Samovar's diplomatic anxieties, and although he did not yet know if it was his own despatch which had disappeared, he was impatient to see his little scheme con-
[p.76]
summated.
"Are the very fates against Russia?" he exclaimed. "Not only is a most important communication delayed by a mail robbery, but I have to live in daily dread of learning that that communication has fallen into the hands of my enemy. Should that be so, and should he find a means of reading its contents, our influence in Peking would be ruined; our diplomacy would be held up to the scorn and horror of the civilized world, and I should probably be transferred to Siberia. I hold in my hand only one instrument capable of piercing the armor of this terrible man, and that instrument fails me at the last moment. By heaven, I scarcely wonder at your father disowning you."
"Would it make so much difference then," said Valda softly, "if Mr. Pericord learnt the contents of your despatch?"
"It would make the step I contemplate quite impossible. Apart from the precautions which would be taken to prevent it, I could not venture to set the scheme in motion if there was the remotest chance of it being traced back to this Legation. Our diplomacy has not been conspicuous for scruples when we strike for big stakes, but this is a thing which squeamish Europe would stand aghast at. We might even be called assassins, if an accident happened. "
" An accident ?"
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"Well, you never know quite how far a Chinese mob will go when it is started. Peking is an awkward place for a revolution. But nothing short of a revolution in Peking would give us an excuse to occupy it with an army."
Valda became thoughtful. "But even if it should have been your despatch that was stolen, no one could decipher it, could they?"
"Thank God, no, I think not.---But that is not the question. I ask you once more, Valda, will you call on Mr. Pericord, or won't you?"
"No! " replied Valda angrily. "I never wish to speak to Mr. Pericord again."
"You may do much worse than be the friend of an irreproachable gentleman," the minister said menacingly. "You forget the facts of your birth. You will continue to enjoy every luxury, and a brilliant position in society, while you remain my ward, but I am afraid you would find a small annuity a poor offset for the stigma of illegitimacy if I turn you out into the cold. If it is not Mr. Pericord, it will be Captain Vassilich."
From that day M. de Samovar was gratified by perceiving a change in Valda. She had evidently not understood the crude realities of her situation, and it had humbled her to recall them bluntly. The attentions of Captain Vassilich were already
[p.78]
of a gross nature, and if once he knew that she was nothing more than an illegitimate half-caste they would become unbearable. This alone might plausibly explain Valda's new affection for her guardian, which impelled her so frequently to betray an intelligent interest in his work, and to seek the shelter of his study. It was true that her intimacy with Mr. Pericord was not renewed, but Valda had not the less fallen in with the Minister's desires. One day, when M. de Samovar had again pressed her on this point, with the renewed threat of handing her over to the tender mercies of his attache, Valda had astonished him by a brilliant plot of her own.
"I should have little chance of regaining Mr. Pericord' s esteem if my name were compromised, sir," she said penitently. "But if you will trust and assist me, I believe I can find a way to Mr. Pericord's confidential papers, if I cannot to his confidence. And if your despatch should have fallen into his hands, that would serve your purpose still better."
"You are a genius, Valda. What is your plan?"
Valda told him.
"It is an excellent idea, " said M. de Samovar thoughtfully. "I will write to Shanghai for one at once."
Thus re-established in her guardian's esteem, Valda began to insinuate herself in his confidence until she became a daily as-
[p.79]
sistant in his cabinet, frequently acting as his amanuensis for private despatches. And at length her opportunity came.
A cipher despatch from M. de Muravieff, the Chief of the Foreign Office, at St. Petersburg, arrived while the Minister's Secretary was absent on a hunting excursion. Valda wrote down the interpretation while M. de Samovar deciphered it by a code which he drew from a locked drawer. Valda made a note of the drawer and of the manner in which her guardian used the cipher. It consisted of apiece of stencil of the same size as the official despatch paper, pierced at haphazard by narrow slits like the perforations on a sheet of automatic music. M. de Samovar placed this perforated board over the despatch and read out the scattered words which remained visible, then he turned to a page in a small book which bore the title of Common Prayer, and as Valda spelled out the words she had taken down, the Minister substituted for each letter another letter of the alphabet. What the find result was, she could not see, for the duplicate system was intended to hide the contents even from the Secretary.
[p.80]
CHAPTER XII.
The S. G: s New Piccolo Player.
A FORTNIGHT later occurred the Russian Ball, perhaps the most notable event of the Peking winter season, on account of the great size and magnificence of the ball-room in this Legation, and the running of a special guest-train from Tientsin for the occasion. Two or three gunboats are always allowed to be frozen up in the Peiho as a winter garrison for the northern port, and their officers formed a desirable quota of uniformed dancing men. Tientsin has nothing whatever to do during the winter except to amuse itself, and only a lack of hotel accommodation, and a general objection to prison walls; prevented a large proportion of its population from residing in the capital. As it was, Peking was more inclined to empty itself into Tientsin than vice versa. No amount of magnificence and gayety could banish the sense of gloom and fear which lurked behind the sombre halls of Peking; but the foreign settlements of Tientsin, situated two miles away from the walled native city, were full of foreign life,
[p. 81]
fine stores, and open metaled streets, and there a European or American felt a sense of security and custom.
Diplomatic hostilities did not, of course, interfere with the social intercourse between the Russian Legation and the Superintendency-General, and, as usual on such occasions, Mr. Pericord obligingly lent his band for the evening. And he went still further ; he put in an appearance himself. The affairs of the despatch might at any time become public, and it was essential to provide against anything so disastrous as an open rupture with the Embassy.
When Mr. Pericord slipped in, unobserved, late in the evening, the Chinese band was playing an old sweet waltz which was his particular favorite, and which he had been at personal pains to have rendered beautifully; but when he caught the strains he was disappointed. The culminating beauty of a certain passage had been produced by the piccolo, and he knew that to-night that little triumph would be wanting. The piccolo is an easy thing to make a noise on, but one of the hardest instruments to use effectively in conjunction with two score of flutes and trumpets. With it, time is everything; and since the loss of the only
[p.82]
player he had been able to train, he had not found a satisfactory substitute.
What was his delight, then-for the whole soul of this hard-worked man went into this only recreation-what was his delight to hear the loud silvery trill of the speaking whistle join in at the accustomed passage, its exuberant pipe flung out with the ease and precision of a master player!
Mr. Pericord, an unaccustomed interest lighting up his tired eyes, moved nearer to the stand and looked up at his pet performers. In the center, facing the conductor, sat an ununiformed boy of remarkable beauty, clad in a purple silk kua-tza. The ball-room was close, and several of the performers had removed their caps. The boy was remarkably conspicuous in the shadow by the exceeding whiteness of his shaven forehead, framed in a charming group of bristles like a woman's comb. His queue was magnificently thick and glossy, and its silken tassel lay coiled on the floor by his chair, showing that it would reach to his heels when standing. But again and again, the glistening whiteness of his forehead caught the eye. It was a whiteness one sees in a less degree on a Chinaman's head after his weekly shave.
[p.83]
But one would say that the snowy scalp had never before been exposed to the air uncovered. The effect of it, over the more swarthy face and purple jacket, was startling and beautiful, like the aureole of an angel. And the boy was playing divinely.
"It is a great liberty I have taken, sir," said Monsieur de Samovar," but how could I resist---I, who love fine music only less than your Excellency ? The lad came up with one of my guests from Tientsin, and when he heard your band play, he begged so earnestly to take a part that I allowed him to arrange it with your conductor during supper. And he plays well, does he not? "
"I will ask your Excellency to introduce me to the lad's master," said Mr. Pericord, without committing himself to more. When he found that the guest in question was a French man in his own service, he did not hesitate to request the transfer of the youth. If it had been a Russian outsider, he might have had suspicions.
Mr. Pericord stayed longer than his usual quarter of an hour, which was the most he vouchsafed to a public entertainment. He appeared to linger and to look about him uneasily.
"I do not see Miss Beriskoff," he said to his host. " I trust that my
[p. 84]
presence is not responsible for her absence. She is offended with me, perhaps?"
" Impossible, my dear Mr. Pericord. It is my ward, on the contrary, who would seem to owe you an apology. However, it is simply an ordinary indisposition which keeps her to her room to-night."
" I intended no unkindness. I came here this evening with the hope of removing the bad impression she has conceived of me. Perhaps I might ask your Excellency to convey that intention to her. I will do myself the honor of calling on Miss Beriskoff tomorrow."
" Too late," muttered M. de Samovar to himself.
When, on the following day, Mr. Pericord called at the Embassy he received the astounding news that Valda had disappeared.
" I can only suppose," said M. de Samovar indifferently, "that she has eloped with the gentleman who recently left your service. Mr. Blake probably slipped in among the crowd of guests from Tientsin. The results of her indiscretion be on her own head!"
Mr. Pericord seemed strangely moved. He stood for some moments lost in regretful thoughts.
[p. 85]
"We can trust no one," he said at length. sadly, taking his leave.
If the mysterious disappearance of Blake on the 7th of January caused a sensation, the mysterious disappearance of Valda three weeks later caused a veritable scandal. As in the former case the Argus-eyed boys had seen no foreign baggage loaded on sleighs for the terminus, and the Tientsin newspaper recorded no arrival of a well-known young lady from Peking. The members of the Embassy preserved an official silence similar to that imposed on the Revenue Mess regarding Blake. Of course, Legation street society jumped to only one conclusion: she had eloped with Blake and they were either hiding in the Chinese city or had left Peking overland. They might have joined a camel caravan for Russia, via Kiatka, or they might have gone down to Shanghai by canal boat, via Chinan and Chin-kiang; probably the latter, as the port of Shanghai is never closed by ice and is in bi-weekly steamer connection with Yokohama and Hong Kong, for America or Europe.
The most singular point about the affair was the equanimity of her guardian, M. de Samovar. He ap-
[p. 86]
peared in no way distressed; " Young people will be young people," was all he said. And as week after week went by without her reappearance, M. de Samovar seemed to grow quite cheerful, as if a load had been removed from his mind. When Mr. Pericord one day referred in a regretful manner to the mail robbery, he replied with a cordiality which almost smacked of triumph---
" Oh, that doesn't trouble me at all, Mr. Pericord. I, at least, lost nothing. I am afraid you were the only loser."
In the meantime the new piccolo player discovered at the Russian Ball had been placed on the strength of the S. G.'s private band. Further, he had been taken into Mr. Pericord's household, as a cupbearer or second boy, to save him from the risks which might attend such remarkable beauty as he possessed. The lad waited at the informal tiffins of the Superintendency, and became known as "Gazelle Eyes." His carriage, his pouting breast, his graceful neck, were as gazelle-like as his fine eyes. Speculations were made as to his origin, and it was concluded that he was one of those rarer ayes among Chinese, a descendant of the Parsee or Arabian immigrants who filtered in
[p. 87]
with Mohammedanism. These hand types, with their straight eyebrows and fine noses, are sometimes met with in Yunnan and Shensi. And Gazelle Eyes said he came from " beyond the Wall."
The proper name of Gazelle Eyes was Wang Kuei-lien. He proved invaluable in more ways than as a piccolo player. His knowledge of the private characters of high mandarins and of the intrigues seething with within the Yellow City itself was marvelous. He explained it by saying that his uncle was one of the eunuchs of the Palace, although the eunuchs are supposed to be without relations. This would have probably caused Wang's dismissal, for Mr. Pericord's constant preoccupation was the exclusion spies from his household, had not the lad found occasion to prove his loyalty in a very singular and indeed embarrassing manner.
The incident occurred at one of the S. G.'s receptions. The wife of Senior Assistant, who thought ought to be the wife of a Commissioner, had at length secured the long watched for opportunity of getting the S. G. to herself. It was one of the women who had spoken of her unblushing intentions in the presence of Valda. "What is there in it?" she
[p. 88]
had said airily; "it's like wheedling a new bonnet out of papa, that's all." " Or a box of candies from the pasha," suggested a lapdog Under Secretary with plastered straw hair.
This woman, a stout and handsome creature, had dragged the reluctant S. G. into a shady corner of the conservatory, and suddenly threw her fleshy arms round his neck.
" Oh, forgive me, Mr. Pericord ! " she sobbed theatrically. "I cannot help it; I must tell you, if you banish me from Peking tomorrow. You are so lonely. Oh, I wish I could do anything to bring a smile to your dear lips ! "
Now, Mr. Pericord was only flesh and blood, and the sort of man who, being far too diffident to make advances himself, was liable to fall an easy prey to women audacious enough to make love to him. It is, therefore, not impossible that Mrs. --- might have then and there captured his passing fancy sufficiently to entice him into some demonstration which 13e would certainly atone for by sending her husband down-with a promotion-bad not an interruption occurred. This interruption came from Kuei-lien, the piccolo player. The boy moved swiftly from behind a shrub and said in a voice of breathless passion, in Chinese
[p. 89]
Stop, master! she is fooling you! she has talked it all over with her husband and the other women, and they are all waiting to see how she succeeds. You will see how they look at you when you go back to the drawing-room! "
In the face of such an unpleasant hint no man could be expected to make love, even if he were less sensitive than the bashful S. G., and Mr. Pericord abruptly dismissed his siren on the excuse that business called him, and slipped away by a back door. He sent for the boy and reprimanded him with severity; but Kuei-lien was able to give a satisfactory reason for his insinuation, quoting, several English-speaking boys as his authority, and the S. G. ended by being not only appeased but amused and grateful. To such a man, ridicule is terrible; an act which saves him from it is proportionately esteemed; but to any man less accustomed to gratuitous devotion than the S. G. was, the eager, almost the jealous, heat of Kuei-lien's interruption would have appeared remarkable. Chinese are faithful servants, but they are not apt to interfere in things which dont concern them.
[p. 90]
CHAPTER XIII.
Russian Diplomacy.
A WEEK or two later another act of clandestine loyalty was traced to the near boy, which could not fail to convince Mr. Pericord of his trustworthiness; and, indeed, it convinced Mr. Pericord of some startling things besides.
When the nears reached Peking that one cover had been stolen from the mail-bag, M. de Samovar had gone to the extent of repeating its contents by wire over the Siberian system. There followed a succession of telegraphic communications, with delays between, which convinced the Chinese government that something of the highest importance eras being discussed. At length, in February, the minister received definite instructions from Count Muravieff. The message ran as follows----but, of curse, in cipher:
"Boer war by no means finished---England's hands full for another six months---Aguinaldo active--- United States cannot spare troops from Philippines---Presidential election, anti-Imperialism, bars foreign enterprises ---Japan finances low, new cruisers not finished ; strike. Push Pericord
[p. 91]
appoint Russian Commissioner Niuchuang. Demand T sung-li Yamen no British on Shanhaikuan Railway, and our nominee, Hsu, to be Governor, Mukden. If obstinate, secret backing England and America or Japan, foment. Assure T- support. Instruct Consul General Tientsin prepare seize Taku Railway. Must strike within six months, or Roberts ready for China."
Then M. de Samovar paid an official visit to the Superintendent of Revenues, and informed him that it would facilitate business if a Russian nominee were appointed to the Commissionership of Niuchuang.
Mr. Pericord received the demand with his usual grave politeness, and assured his Excellency that he would give the matter his attention; but when the minister had gone, the S. G. was no longer able to maintain his mask of indifference. The demand was precisely similar to the seizure of Port Arthur after the Japanese had captured it. The admirable civil service he had built up was as much, and as valuable, a part of China as the land itself. The possession of any branch of it formed just as much a pied-a-terre for further encroachments as the possession of a harbor did. If Russia claimed the right to collect the
[p. 92]
customs duties at Niuchuang, Japan would make the same claim for Fusan and Foochow, Germany for Chefoo, Great Britain for Shanghai and the River Ports, Italy for Amoy, France for Lungchow and Mengtze, and perhaps the United States for Tientsin; and, as for himself, his occupation would be gone, for the Chinese Government would hold him responsible for the loss of its main source of revenue. But to whom was he to turn for help? He was an Englishman, and England and America were tile natural defenders of the Open Door policy which preserved the integrity of China; but England and America had looked on the seizures of Port Arthur and Kiaochao without lifting a hand, and they were at present too full of their own troubles to interfere on anything short of direct proof of Russia's ultimate intention. It was entirely a case of diplomacy; he wanted something in his hand, no matter how unsubstantial, on which to make time by a " bluff."
M. de Samovar had accurately foreseen this perplexity, and had anticipated nothing more serious than the usual Chinese delays in acquiescing to the inevitable; and he did not expect any reply to his request until he should reiterate it.
[p. 93]
To his astonishment he received the very next morning the following despatch, formally sealed and addressed to H. E. Monsieur de Samovar, H. I. K. M.'s Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to the Court of Peking, at the Legation, Peking, China, and carried across the street by hand.
"Sir.---In reference to Y. E.'s verbal request of yesterday, that a person of Russian nationality be appointed to the Commissionership of Niuchuang, I have the honour to inform your Excellency that such a step is not at present contemplated by this Department.---I have the honor to be, Sir, your Excellency's most obedient humble servant, T. Pericord, Superintendent General of the Imperial Revenue Department of China."
When M. Samovar received this, his expression was not amiable. " What does it mean, Roupensky ? " he said to his secretary. " What can the man have to rely on that he dares give me a flat refusal like this ?"
" I expect we shall find, if we send the boy to enquire, that he invited Conger and MacDonald to a game of whist last night. You know nothing will out-bluff an American. When they have said a thing you cam never tell whether they will weaken
[p. 94]
till you call their hand. It couldn't be MacDonald, for he mould have had to refer the matter to his Foreign Office, and Lord Salisbury is too deliberate to answer over the wires."
" Well, there it is. It is meant for a defiance, or he would have been careful not to put it on paper. It means that we have got to teach the Yamen once for all that the Russian Minister, and not this nondescript Scotchman, dictates what shall and what shall not be done in Northern China."
"And that can only be done by a Russian army within the galls of Peking."
" Before six months are out that shall happen," said M. de Samovar ominously. " Russia, as the champion of peace, must be the first to insist that the persons of envoys be respected. There are symptoms m the air that Peking will not be safe for foreigners this summer."
"Your Excellency has a fine weather-sense," murmured the secretary, suppressing a smile.
At about the same time the printing office of the Statistical Department at Shanghai was wagging its head over the following telegram received that morning from Mr. Pericord:
[p. 95]
" Gazette. Fourth Assistants A. Substitute Unattached for Resigned after name of Blake in this quarter's issue."
" That is the first time I have ever known the S. G. to change his mind, said the Statistical Secretary; " and before we go to press we shall have another wire telling us to shove him up into the Third B's. I am glad for Blake, for he is a steady, hard-working fellow, and the only thing again him is that he speaks Chinese too well to please his Commissioners."
The " Revenue Gazette" referred to is published quarterly at Shanghai in a yellow-bound book of no meagre dimensions, and is, to about a thousand men on the coast, a publication far more eagerly awaited than a new Kipling volume by fiction maniacs. It records the rank, promotions, transfers, leaves and dismissals of the staff. It is divided in five parts: the Indoor Staff (foreign), the Outdoor Staff (foreign), Indoor Staff, Clerks, linguists, and Shupans (native); Outdoor Staff, boatmen, carpenters, weighers, watchmen (native); and the Coast Survey and Lighthouse Departments. The Indoor Staff is divided into ten grades: Commissioners, Acting Commissioners and Assistants-in-charge, First Assistants A, First As-
[p. 96]
sistants B, Second Assistants A, Second Assistants B, and so on, the lowest being Fourth Assistants B. The whole service includes eight or nine hundred foreigners and three or four thousand natives, distributed among some thirty-five ports opened by treaty to foreign trade. Over all these the S. G. watched with autocratic eye. The conduct of at least six hundred individuals of this huge staff was the subject of his personal monthly scrutiny, by means of secret reports. Never seeing them, save by their photographs on joining, he knew the character and habits of each, registering them cumulatively as the years went on, in his mysterious ledgers, so that at any moment, and at any place, he could put his finger on the right man for an emergency. And so the Statistical Department had ceased to wonder when the S. G. individually dictated the entries in the " Gazette" concerning an insignificant Assistant like Blake. Blake had been dismissed in January, but the " Gazette " was not due till March, so that his resignation was not known outside of Peking. Marked as " Unattached " he might remain lost to view for a year without forfeiting his right to reappear in his ordinary vocation. Many so-called "unattached" Assistants are engaged
[p. 97]
on special missions which is not advisable to advertise.
What was the reason of these two prompt volte-faces on the part of the methodical S.G. ?
[p. 98]
CHAPTER XIV.
Kuei-lien.
IN the previous chapter we recorded M. de Samovar's bomb shell demand for a new Commissioner at Niuchuang. As soon as he had departed, Mr. Pericord, deep in perplexity and with his head sunk on his breast, returned slowly to his sanctum. His movements about the house were always quiet, and all the doors opened noiselessly. On entering his study, he surprised the boy Kuei-lien within.
His mind being imbued with fears of Russia, he associated the lad's intrusion with the thought of Russian intrigues; perhaps he was a spy, like Valda.
" Since you appear to be taking the place of my boy, Kuei-lien, you may bring me my tea," was all he said.
He sank into a chair and drew from a pigeon-hole marked N (R) a bundle of papers. In turning them over he lighted on one which had certainly not been placed there by himself, for the paper was of a different style to that furnished by Parkin and Gotto to the Revenue Department.
Mr. Pericord scrutinized the paper closely. He had little doubt that it
[p. 99]
had just been placed thereby the new servant, and he supposed that it was a spurious despatch to conceal the theft of some important document. But he had no sooner glanced over it than his face betrayed something like excitement. It was a translation of part of a despatch from M. de Samovor to Count Muravieff. Although not entire, it bore the date and preamble, which made it clear that it pretended to be a reproduction of the letter stolen from the courier by Blake. This only increased Mr. Pericord's suspicions. It seemed to explain the mystery of the mail robbery. M. de Samovar was trying to blind him, Mr. Pericord, by putting into his hands a false statement of Russia's intentions which should have every appearance of being authentic. Having failed in the first instance through 11r. Pericord's refusal to read the stolen letter, he had now bribed this servant to place in his desk an apparent translation of that letter. He recalled how the new piccolo-player had been thrust on his attention by M. de Samovar, and he had no doubt that Wang was a spy.
When he read the document, all these suspicions were scattered. There could be no doubt of its authenticity and genuineness. The
[p. 100]
stolen despatch had indeed been a bona-fide communication, in cipher, and this was unmistakably a bona-fide translation of that cipher. The whole process of decipherment was shown, as may be seen by the anglicised rendering of one sentence, which was, however, spread over four lines of meaningless words
[query. Mohat bigotizmef lateris add note - Mht b g t z m f l t r s ad n t q r Niu Chuang must be ours.
The disclosures contained in this confidential despatch were such as the Minister could not possibly have desired Mr. Pericord to know. They frankly revealed Russia's intrigues in Manchuria and Russia's secret understanding with Germany regarding the Open Door question. They contained a reference to France which alone was sufficient to detach that power from the Russian alliance. In fact, this was an instrument in Mr. Pericord's hands which, without any diplomatic pressure, would enable him to stiffen the back of the Tsung-li Yamen to resist Russia's interference. He had merely to make certain hints in private conversation with M. de Samovar to cause that gentleman to withdraw his demand for a Russian Commissioner at Niuchuang.
[p. 101]
The placing of the paper in his desk at that juncture was indeed the work of a friend. Blake's loyalty in intention he had never doubted; but now he was compelled to suppose that the person who had instigated Blake had also been loyal. That person was Valda. Valda had protested a gratuitous devotion to him in a manner which it had been cruelly hard to doubt. But what had the piccolo-player to do with Valda and Blake?
Kuei-lien brought in the tea. Mr. Pericord, while apparently absorbed in his documents, studied the youth attentively, His own face, had he known it, afforded a curious study. One might have thought that he was indulging in a reprehensible espionage.
"You have thick hair," he said, lifting the boy's heavy queue as it fell onto the arm of his chair when Kuei-lien stooped over the tea-tray.
The boy's hand trembled so that he spilt the tea; his face crimsoned over. Although the remark was natural enough, Mr. Pericord's voice have quivered as if it had required a strong effort of will to utter the words. So a younger man's voice might quiver when venturing the first tentative word of love to a proud beauty.
"They say our hair grows long because we cut it in front," faltered the
[p. 102]
boy, bending low over the tray. There was no light save that of the open grate in the room.
Mr. Pericord stole a glance at the white scalp visible beyond the rim of the neat skull-cap. He noticed the shell-like delicacy of the boy's small ear. Although, when the eye is used to it, the Chinese custom has a distinct beauty of its own, Mr. Pericord seemed to see something pathetic and regretful in that neatly shaven temple.
"Yao pei-tang, tong-chia ? " said the boy, holding the sugar tongs. It was the first time he had been allowed the privilege of waiting on the S. G. in person.
"Two lumps, please," replied the S. G. absently, in English. The boy, who professed ignorance of English, dropped in two pieces of sugar.
"Don't go, Kuei-lien," Mr. Pericord murmured, apparently busy with the papers on his knee. He always took his afternoon tea in his arm-chair, seated by the fire. It was his only hour of relaxation, apart from his morning hour in bed.
Mr. Pericord made no allusion to the strange document, but said presently, with the air of a man who is trying to solve a doubt, " Will you bring your whistle, Kuei-lien, and play to me? "
[p. 103]
The boy was proficient on all simple flute instruments, and could produce from an ordinary brass whistle melodies well adapted for a small room.
Kuei-lien obeyed, and seating himself on a low stool in the opposite shadow of the fireplace, played some of the old and simple ballad airs which were Mr. Pericord's favorites. The S. G. listened with his chin resting on his palm. At length he moved, and, stooping over the arm of the chair, reached for a big violoncello, swathed in an old green bag. He tuned it a little and scraped the chords.
" See if you can accompany me, Kuei-lien," he said.
After snatches of some of his stereotyped band pieces, the S. G. passed imperceptibly to a new Russian love-song which had appeared in Peking for the first time that winter, introduced by Miss Beriskoff. The boy continued to accompany without wavering. Indeed, he whistled the air with the facility and expression of familiarity, independent of the 'cello's sub-tones. The singular duet produced a pretty harmony, and at one passage in the song the deep, low wail of the strings seemed to sneak like the impassioned voice of a man.
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When Kuei-lien ceased, of his own accord, the air of the darkened room was quivering with human emotion. The walls, or the atmosphere, of a small room, especially in the gloaming of firelight, have the sympathetic capacity of re-echoing, for a little while, the unspoken passions of the soul which are interchanged in music. Mr. Pericord, who had a sensitive imagination, evidently felt this mysterious influence, for he sat for some minutes in silence, his bow hanging idly from his hand. He uttered a deep sigh. Then, in a voice full of sadness and regret, he said
" Thank you, Kuei-lien ; I must not detain you any longer."
The next day, the piccolo-player was relieved of further personal attendance on the S. G. He was not dismissed, but, on the contrary, removed from the servants' quarters in the rear of the compound to a small sleeping room in the house. His duties, however, were quietly taken from him, and he was left to amuse himself how he might, with certain implied restrictions which would prevent him coming within sight of his master. The other servants supposed that the boy was to go through a course of study preparatory to promoting him to a
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subordinate clerkship on the staff, a step that would have surprised no one, for Kuei-lien was obviously " above his place." Had there peen any women in this ascetic household, they might have whispered that the S. G. had private reasons for shunning the sight of his beautiful musician, as Saul sometimes shunned David.
The roam allotted to Kuei-lien had at one time been a boudoir, and the books, photographs, ornaments, and piano had never been removed. This isolated room was situated immediately over the S. G.'s study, and was connected with it by along disused speaking tube. Here the lonely lad was sometimes heard playing to himself.
In spite of the opportune Russian document, Mr. Pericord evidently did not absolve the boy of all suspicion. He had no sooner despatched his curt reply to Mr. Samovar than he had misgivings concerning its wisdom. Indeed, in many things, his usual clearness of action seemed to be forsaking him. He was often preoccupied, as a business man will sometimes be by domestic cares. A slight sound, especially the faint echo of music, would disturb him.
Meeting Mr. Samovar one day, he said to him:
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"You have no news of Miss Beriskoff, M. de Samovar?"
" I believe her to be in Shanghai," replied the minister.
After some hesitation the S. G. said: "The piccolo-player whom you introduced to me bears a remarkable resemblance to your ward, M. de Samovar."
Mr. Samovar laughed frankly. "I don't wonder; he is Valda's brother!" Then he told Mr. Pericord the facts of Valda's birth.
" Of course you attribute all sorts of base motives to me now, Mr. Pericord," he concluded with the same air of frankness. "But I declare you would do me an injustice. You know what Chinese and their relatives are. Valda had, unknown to me, renewed acquaintance with her precious family, and, of course, they pestered her for foreign positions. This Wang, after all, played the piccolo well. But if you have the slightest suspicion of his honesty, send him back to me. My attache, Vassilich, has taken a fancy to him."
Mr. Pericord did not send Kuei-lien back. Nevertheless, he was informed that the boy sometimes slipped out to the Russian embassy, and he appeared by no means set at ease by Mr. Samovar's explanation.
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CHAPTER XV
The Opening of the Year 1900
IN the meantime had gone the great festival of China New Year, which heralded in the 25th year of the unhappy Emperor Kuang Hsu, the 5th cycle of the Manchu dynasty he represented, and the last year of the 19th century of Christendom. This 19th century had been almost as pregnant in change and prophesy for China as for Europe. It had seen the steadfast encroachment of Western innovations on a civilization which had endured without change for years. It had suffered the shoe of three foreign wars and witnessed the introduction of militant Christianity, of modern weapons, of foreign, loans, of telegraphs, of railways. It had felt, what made a far deeper impression than the burning of the Summer Palace or the destruction of the Pei-yang fleet, the suave but inflexible grip of a methodical and conscientious foreigner on the collection of the revenue, and watched with impotent jealousy the sure extension of his fingers until, in the ramifications of a great civil service, they spread over all the corners of the Empire and threatened to close in on the very
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likin and land-tax which supported a million of proud but greedy extortionists. In fact, solid and impenetrable as was the bulk of native conservatism, no observant Chinaman could leave his inland home without realizing that an irresistible encroachment had taken place and could never be pushed back save by the extermination of every foreigner, and every convert to foreignism, within the limits of the Empire.
For Europe and America, on the other hand, the year 1900 was welcomed with rejoicing as the eve of the millennium; the threshold of that 20th century which must surely witness the culmination of scientific socialism, bringing with it the sublimation of enlightenment and the universal dominion of peace. It was to be the century of the brotherhood of nations: a liberty, fraternity, and equality, which should include even China in its benevolent embrace.
On this day it was the custom for all the high mandarins of the Tsung-li Yamen to pay their respects to the Legations in a body. The appearance of these cavalcades, these processions of eight-bearer chairs, this sea of sign-poles, this swarm of conical-hatted retainers and peacock-plumed secretaries, in
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the quiet precincts of Legation street brought home to the observer in most startling fashion the isolation and " taboo " of the foreign minister in Peking. Only then did one realize how utterly ignored were these representatives of the Great Powers by the Court to which they were accredited. They lived as unnoticed in one small street of the vast city as any insignificant colony of Shansi Mohammedans or Mongolian camel-drivers clustered in reed huts outside the northern gates; as unrecognized by the high society of the capital as the Chinese colony in New York. The Imperial City, the home of the government of the Empire, the center of all the intrigues which they were here to take a hand in, was to them literally nothing more than a wall; none had ever entered its gates, walked in its spacious avenues and wondrous parks, nor even, from the parapet of the Tartar Wall, seen more of its thronging palaces than a glimpse of yellow tile through the tops of trees. Twice a year these powerful representatives of foreign states were permitted to bow before the Emperor's effigy---and even the poor boy himself was but a waxen effigy---in one of the pavilions outside the gate; once a year the great mandarins of the foreign office
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condescended to pay an official visit.
Social intercourse there was none; the Legations were simply tolerated and ignored, and the real capital of China retained its haughty seclusion unbroken, treating Europe and America, in the persons of their Ambassadors, like tributary states, as contemptible as Corea. And the stolid millions, whose din around them was like the hoarse murmur of the sea against an islet, took note of this official contempt for the foreigners, and looked curiously through their gates, wondering how soon the signal would come to divide among themselves the spoils within.
On previous occasions there had wont to be a show of at least a spurious cordiality and empressement on the part of the visiting mandarins; the glass of champagne which they took at each Legation assisted the hollow cheerfulness. But this year everyone noticed an impalpable something in the bearing of these visitors which rendered cordiality impossible. They seemed with one accord to look on their foreign hosts with a sort of shivering curiosity, as if behind them they saw ghostly apparitions. It was observed that at the German embassy they refused to take wine. The whole ceremony was felt to have
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been a fiasco, and everyone was ? Relieved when it was over.
And all the time in the surrounding streets, and for miles and miles throughout the monstrous city, the increasing and reverberant din of crackers and cannon seemed to be sending a tocsin of unholy revel, as if the stolid millions had awoke to a consciousness of their conglomerate strength, and were indulging in war dances of defiance and insult. Even New York on the Fourth of July cannot compare with the smallest Chinese village for fiendish revelry of noise when China's New Year comes round. And Chinese crackers have at least the merit of continuity.
The winter had passed away and the ice of the Peiho melted, bringing Peking once more in touch with the outer world. With the advent of the first steamer from Shanghai, carrying a swarm of merchants for Tientsin and syndicate-mongers for Peking, the sombre medieval atmosphere, which had reasserted its sway during the closed months, seemed to be dissipated by the revivifying influx of Western civilization and American enterprise. But only at the first flush: old residents of the north could not long shut their eyes to a some-
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thing in the air, an uneasiness, ; a mysterious and ominous agitation like that beneath the oily surface of a whirlpool which reminded some of the peculiar symptoms which, in 1870, had preceded the massacre of Tientsin. On that occasion, China, always stolid and impenetrable to the outward eye, had been convulsed in all its prejudices by a treaty which had opened the interior to missionaries; and the result, after two years of imperceptible seething, had been the sudden and fanatic outbreak which resulted in the barbarous killing of a score or snore of Catholic nuns and priests, as well as of the French consul himself. Then followed twenty years of acquiescence, culminating in 1890 in a series of anti-missionary riots all along the valley of the Yangtze. Another spell of ten years witnessed the Japanese war, the invasion of missionaries into the remotest provinces, the seizure of Fort Arthur by the Russians, Kiaochao by the Germans, and Wei-hai-wei by the British, and finally the projection and active construction of railroads everywhere, as if all obstacles had been overcome, and China existed only as the happy hunting ground of foreign capitalists; while its ancient prejudices, its
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proud mandarinate, its secluded court, were ignored as images whose clay had passed for ever.
This railway enterprise and foreign encroachment was most conspicuous in the two northern provinces of shantung and Chih-li. In the mountains of the Shantung promontory, peculiarly sacred to the memory of Confucius and the cult of Buddha, German mining engineers were prospecting everywhere under the escort of German marines. The hardy and independent natives were being handled dictatorially by the iron fist of German soldiers. It was a treatment to which they were not used. Chu, the Governor-General, in his capital, Chinan, felt that at any moment a German agent might set up a Yamen of his own and reduce him, the viceroy, to the position of a mere figurehead, until such time as the whole province, with its population of twenty millions, should be openly annexed to Kiaochao. In the face of this menace, the Governor called upon the people to form themselves into a volunteer militia, and practice drill at home. The idea had first taken root during the Japanese invasion in 1895.
The same thing was going on in the contiguous province of Chih-li. A great trunk railway line had been
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projected to connect Canton in the extreme south with Peking in the extreme north, a distance of over 2,000 miles, crossing the river Yangtze at Hankow. This was being energetically rushed forward by. Belgian engineers, who, by the spring of 1900, had already a hundred miles open from Peking to Panting-fu. In another direction, from Tientsin northward to Shanhaikuan and Niuchuang, a system was growing up in the hands of British and Russian engineers, which would speedily connect the imperial province of Manchuria with the Trans-Siberian trunk line. This activity, desecrating as it did all the superstitions of the people, aroused a feeling of unrest similar to that in Shantung. The Emperor (in reality the Dowager Empress) issued an edict encouraging the people to form themselves into volunteer corps for the defence of their homes. In this way the Boxer organization was established.
Now as soon as the imperial sanction raised this secret society to the rank of a national organization, all the other secret societies, heretofore as much against the Emperor as against the missionary, felt that their time was come to revel in anarchy and bloodshed. They would for the time being drop all notions of rebel
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lion, and cloak their designs under the patriotic cry " Expel the foreigners." They began with the native c converts to Christianity, slaughtering them wholesale.
The anti-foreign feeling once let loose, the foreign ministers at Peking were thunderstruck to perceive that China was still as retrogressive as ever. All these railways and telegraph poles, instead of, as they had fondly hoped, heralding the dawn of a new civilization in China, simply served as red rags to the bull of fanaticism. Still they did nothing. Legation street had for so many years been worried by the cry of wolf that it had long since adopted the weary conviction that nothing could be done and that, if left alone, the trouble would die away of its own accord. So, whenever a despairing cry from some poor missionary who saw his toil of years swept away in a moment, arrived, they put it in a pigeon-hole and politely hinted to the Tsung-li Yamen that there appeared to be some slight disturbance in the provinces, and the Chinese ministers as politely assented, with the grave assurance that the usual Imperial Edict would be forthcoming and their Excellencies need have no anxiety.
Such was the state of things at the date of the spring race meeting.
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CHAPTER XVI.
The Race Meeting.
THE Cup race of the International Club was the principal social event of the Peking legationers during the month of May. After that the tropical summer, which followed close on the heels of winter, rendered riding uncomfortable, and in June the ponies were put out to grass, not to be brought back to the stables till September. Apart from a little pig and deer shooting in the winter, riding was almost the only amusement of the young men of Legation street. Everyone kept one pony; most, even of the youngest juniors on $100 a month, kept two; and a considerable number of them kept quite ambitious racing stables. Their mounts were the sturdy Manchu ponies, many of which were descended from a cross by the British cavalry mounts turned adrift after the occupation of Peking in 1860. They came down in droves of shaggy grass-blown mustangs or cayuses in a virtually wild state, when the very smell of a foreigner made them ungovernable, so that they could only be mounted by first throwing a bag over their heads. In this state they are called griffins. After the Peking foreigners had taken
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their pick, buying them at from $20 to $50, the droves passed on to Tientsin, and thence by steamer to Shanghai, where they fetched at auction from $50 to $100.
But no one would recognize the unkempt griffin in the close-clipped, well-groomed, superbly muscular form they presented after a month or two of beans and wheat and hard training. Then one saw that the Mongolian pony makes one of the best military mounts in the world. There were upwards of two hundred of these spirited beasts in the stables of Legation street.
This was noted by one of the great princes who were wont to grace the spring meeting with their presence.
" Do you see that, Yu ? " he said to his companion, as a score of young Legation men cantered onto the course, as spick and span and spirited as their ponies. " We could equip a couple of squadrons of light cavalry on those yang ma, which would ride round any of those Cossacks they can bring up for the first three months at least."
"And they would feed the foreign devils for the same length of time, after we have cut off their provisions," responded Yu gloomily.
"Ah, I am glad you mentioned that,
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Ho-chi," said the prince. " We must see to that when the time comes. We must pen theta all up in one legation,
" That is the first thing to do, your Highness."
The man thus obsequiously addressed, who rode a large piebald pony, was a swarthy and big-limbed Tartar, magnificently clothed in semi-military costume, and surrounded by a brilliant escort of Manchu princes and Chinese mandarins. A gloomy hatred seemed to hang on his brow like a thundercloud as he sat haughtily watching the assembly of foreign fashion in the Grand Stand opposite. The foreign ministers, as they trotted past, bowed to such of the nobles as they were personally acquainted with, but without formality, since these in the Prince's following were uninvited guests. Invitations to the Grand Stand had indeed been issued, but had been ignored by the prince. Prince Ching, on the other hand, together with such of the Tsung-li minister s as could afford to defy the Tartar, were to be seen in the enclosure surrounded by the brightly dressed women of the Legations.
Sir Claude MacDonald, a graceful cavalier with melancholy face and sweeping mustaches, rode past ac-
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companied by Mr. Conger and several ladies. He nodded familiarly and indifferently to the Tartar nobles, allowing them to see that they were of far less importance to Her Britannic Majesty's representative than the thoughtful, sturdy Republican on one side of him, and the brilliant Chickago belle on the other.
"Who is that farmer-like fellow who sits on his horse as if he were a sack of rice ?" inquired the prince.
"It is the Flower Flag minister, your Highness," replied the ex-Governor of Shansi. "In America they never gallop, because their cavalry is only used to perform long marches."
"The man has a good face," said the prince, who, outside his hereditary hatred, was of generous nature. "These Americans, I understand, are not among our enemies? "
"Not hitherto, your Highness. Formerly they were vassals of England, and they speak the English language still. But two years ago they fought their first foreign war, and being victorious, it is reported that their King is puffed up with pride and contemplates establishing a colony within the four seas, in imitation of England."
"But I beg your Highness to note that this compels them to seek our
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friendship," put in the wizened Sheng, whose wife once had the honor of infatuating the Tartar prince. " These American people are like our own, wholly devoted to money-making, and they will never permit their king to incur the expense of war when they can gain more by peace. Besides, when all other nations are using force, they can gain prestige by sticking to diplomacy."
" Then you shall see to them when the time comes, my worthy friend," said the soldier contemptuously. " Provided they had no share in the destruction of my glorious brother's garden, and have not laid claim to any part of our territory, I bear them no grudge."
The French and Russian ministers ambled by. They bowed with great politeness and flattering smiles, and their courtesy was returned in kind.
" These men are our worst enemies and our greatest friends, your Highness," said Yu. "Fa-Gwo (France) does not count without O-Gwo (Russia), for she dare not send her troops abroad and has never learned England's secret of maintaining foreign possessions without expense. O-Gwo is our neighbor to the north and desires to eat up the home of the glorious dynasty (Manchuria). She em-
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ploys tens of thousands of our people to build the roads of the steam-horse. Therefore she dreads war, lest she should lose her influence as a friend, and she will not permit the other nations to make war lest in the confusion she should be numbered among our enemies."
" Leave Russia to me," said the prince grimly. " She will find when the day comes that I have not spent twenty years on the border for nothing."
" Oh, your Highness, Russia is our very good friend," said Sheng. "She cannot complete her railway or resist Japan without our alliance, and will, if need be, even join us in thrusting out the other barbarians."
"How much do they pay you to say that?" said the prince with a grim smile.
" What words, Highness?" murmured the old mandarin tremulously, and his rivals smiled and exchanged nods.
A slight, cold-faced gentleman, precisely dressed, rode past, sitting stiffly erect. He took no notice of the prince whatever.
" Very good, my friend," muttered the prince, his dark face growing purple under a sudden access of his ungovernable temper. "By the tombs
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of my ancestors! does a barbarian dog dare to slight me beneath the shadow of my walls? Who is this sword-faced coxcomb?"
"That is the Te-Gwo (German) Tsung-Ling, your Highness. His master is the war-lord of Europe, and all the servants under him carry themselves stiffly, like despots whose right is might. These presumptuous Germans have dared to lay hands on a portion of our sacred empire and shoot our people like dogs."
" Then, by the shade of Kang Hsi, the dogs shall eat him!" cried the prince furiously, whirling his horse round and galloping out of the enclosure, followed by his tumultuous escort.
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CHAPTER XVII.
The Reappearance of Blake.
THAT black browed ruffian is lacking in the usual good manners of Chinese, apparently," said Baron von Ketteler to M. Pichon. " I regret that your Excellency should have condescended to notice the fellow."
" The father of the heir presumptive can scarcely be ignored, M. le Baron," replied the French minister deprecatingly. His position in Peking was the most uncomfortable of all the foreign envoys, for he was not only responsible for the enormous vested interests of the Roman Catholic clergy, but he had special instructions to maintain cordial relations with the German representative while practically supporting the policy of Russia. It was believed that Russian and German interests at Peking were identical, but, on the other hand, the diplomatic methods of the two empires were widely sundered. To the Baron, diplomacy was subordinated to the first duty of exacting a rigorous respect towards the representative of the German Emperor; to M. de Samovar, personal dignity counted for nothing beside the gaining of diplomatic ends.
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"I equally regret that your Excellency should have seen fit to put a slight on so notoriously hostile a personage as Prince Tuan," said M. de Samovar. " I must take the liberty of hinting that in the present uneasy state of popular feeling it is not judicious to throw the Imperial faction into the arms of intriguers like Chu of Shantung, whom, I think, I observed among the prince's escort. A portion of His Majesty the Emperor William's territory is now as conterminous with China as our own."
"As for that," replied Baron von Ketteler, "we at least have nothing to fear. I might even go so far as to say that it would suit us to have to suppress hostility near Kiaochao."
" I am afraid your Excellency will not have long to wait for that opportunity," replied the Russian minister with ill-concealed annoyance. " But in the meantime you forget that you yourself are within the walls of Peking."
" What does your Excellency mean by that?" said the Baron haughtily. " One might almost imagine from the tone of your remark that Peking was a Russian instead of a Chinese capital. I trust that I am capable of upholding the dignity of the master I serve under any circumstances."
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"I am afraid M. le Baron forgets that he has not an army at his back," interposed the Spanish envoy, Senor de Cologan, the doyen of the Corps Diplomatique, with a pacific smile. "I, for one, should feel decidedly uncomfortable at the Legation if Prince Tuan were to take offence. He has: unfortunately, a most ungovernable temper."
"And for that very reason is of m account," replied M. Ketteler. "I assure you, gentlemen, that Prince Tuan and his coterie are regarded with far more dislike by the President of the Tsung-li Yamen than we are."
"That would be more reassuring if Prince Ching were a younger man," put in the United States Charge d'Affaires, who was more conversant with the French language than Mr. Conger. "I'm afraid the Yamen would cut about as much figure as a pack of old women if those fire-eating Manchus get the bit in their teeth. What do you say, Sir Claude? "
" Oh, these little rumors of hostilities really amount to nothing, gentlemen," replied the British minister, stroking his mustache with a bored air. "Judging by the reports of my predecessors, a similar condition of things has existed intermittently ever since the legations mere established."
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" Come, gentlemen," said Miss Conger, vivaciously, " you are at the races now, not at the council-board. Which of you is going to bet me a box of gloves against Mr. Cheshire's gray? "
" It depends on who's up, my dear young lady," replied the fatherly M. de Cologan, in English. " If it is Mr. Cheshire himself I will bet you a dozen boxes, for he always goes at a trot."
"What has become of your ward?" asked Lady MacDonald of M. de Samovar. " You have never allowed that charming girl to be carried off by a Revenue man-and a disgraced junior at that? "
" Nevertheless, that predacious department generally succeeds in carrying off all the good things, does it not, your ladyship? See, is that not a Revenue man who leads on the black? "
" It is Mr. Blake himself," said Lady MacDonald, quietly.
And such indeed, to the astonishment of everybody, appeared to be the fact. The pony, a big bull-necked runaway whom Blake had broken in and whom no one but Blake could mount, was well known; but everyone supposed that the animal had been sent down to Shanghai, as it had not been auctioned at either Peking or Tientsin after Blake's disappearance. Nor, of
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course, had Blake been heard of since then. Now only, as the fiery beast dashed past the stand in a lather of foam, did the spectators recognize in the lithe form and splendid horsemanship of the rider, the disgraced and banished Assistant. There was a buzz of comment. The scent of a scandal lent piquancy to the excitement. No one cheered. The ladies craned forward beneath their parasols, whispering eagerly while they watched for his return. Blake bore the reputation of being the handsomest man in Peking, in spite of his gloominess and taciturnity; the rumor of his disgrace, capped by the audacity of eloping with the ward of the Russian minister, had elevated him onto the pedestal of romance.
"I suppose this is the diplomatic way of answering my question, M. de Samovar," said Lady MacDonald coldly. "I must congratulate you on arranging a dramatic surprise. It only remains to see Miss Beriskoff reappear to produce quite a curtain."
"I assure your ladyship that I was quite unaware of this gentleman's presence in Peking. In fact, I had very good reasons for supposing that he had left the country. Since he has the hardihood to show his face here again after the -- the equivocal circum-
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stances connected with his departure, it will be my duty to -- Will your ladyship pardon me if I leave you for a moment?"
Lady MacDonald looked around at him with intense surprise. The usually suave and unemotional diplomatist seemed to be positively quivering with anger. He left his seat and gave a whispered order in Russian to his attache, Captain Vassilich, who in his turn descended and whispered instructions to the minister's Cossack attendants.
These attendants, together with a score of mafoos riding their masters' second mounts, formed a group at the side of the Grand Stand. Among them might have been noticed a handsome and handsomely dressed boy, lounging side-saddle fashion on a small pony which belonged to Mr. Pericord's stable. The boy was probably in attendance on some lady guests staying with the Superintendent for the races. He had thrown one leg over the pommel of his saddle in order to watch the races at his ease.
When Captain Vassilich walked up to the Cossack sergeant and gave him his instructions, this boy listened unobserved, although he could not be expected to understand the Russian language. At the same time the cries
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from the Grand Stand told that the jockeys were coming up the last stretch. "Here they come! The black leads! Black Bess! Black Bess!" was the shout. As the superb stallion flew past, his rider bending his head low over the beast's neck as if to avoid recognition, one lady remarked: "How haggard Mr. Blake looks, poor fellow! Where has he been all this time?"
Others, apparently, felt the same curiosity, for as soon as the flag went down proclaiming Blake the winner of the S. G.'s famous cup, everyone began flocking out of the enclosure towards the paddock. Blake's mount was pulling hard, and had shot a hundred yards beyond the winning post. Blake, as he sawed him to a trot, seemed to hesitate whether to turn back and face society, or to disappear again. At this moment the boy, who was still listening to what Vassilich was saying, gave his pony a smart cut and galloped after Blake. In his haste he forgot to throw his leg astride the saddle, but he seemed to sit as easily sideways.
Every one noticed and admired this graceful feat. To their surprise, the boy galloped straight up to Blake and addressed him impetuously. There was a hurried whispered collo-
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quy; the man appeared astonished, a prey to a strange conflict of emotions; then with a look of despair, as two Cossacks cantered towards him, he gave the rein to his beast and shot like an arrow from the course.
Nothing more was seen of Blake. After a host of surmises, society came to the conclusion that the the unfortunate man was mad, and the old sinister rumor of his drinking habits was revived to account for his eccentric reappearance.
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CHAPTER XVIII.
The Gathering of the Storm.
THE incident of Blake's reappearance, and indeed all the sporting gossip which usually occupies Peking for a fortnight after the cup race, was to be immediately swallowed up in far more serious topics. The autumn of 1899 had been exceptionally dry, the snowfall had been slight, and for the first time in many years the spring had been rainless. Consequently there was much distress in the north, and starving country-folk began filtering into the capital. They thronged the gates, and as many of them had never seen foreigners before, their presence became a decided nuisance, and on more than one occasion the young men of Legation street were obliged to spur their ponies to force a way through the crowd. This resulted in the trampling of a beggar or two, and suddenly the curiosity became converted into a furious clamor. Orders were issued by the S. G. that none of his staff were to ride beyond the walls without leave.
It is a curious thing that in China the ordinary residents of the settlements never realize the state of popular feeling about them. Their boys
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are such notorious alarmists that it is the fashion to ignore rumors of riot until the riot occurs. The only result of the rumors is to make the foreigners a little more sensitive and therefore resentful of the customary insults When a man feels that he is surrounded by hatred, the barking of a dog is enough to upset his nerves and make him impatient and scornful. He unconsciously does his best to precipitate the gathering outbreak. It was a dictum of Anson Burlinghame that half the bitter hatred of Chinese to foreigners is the cumulative result of the strangers' overbearing manner, and this has grown truer every day during forty years. A Chinaman never forgets the loss of face which is implied by an unretaliated blow, and these blows have been freely distributed of late by the swarm of newcomers who care nothing for native susceptibilities. Germany, for instance, will not wipe out the memory of her sailors' high-handedness for many decades, though she rule Shantung with a stick of candy. While Legation street was amusing itself with horse-races, Shantung and Chih-li were seething with an ungovernable resentment against all things foreign, the result of many recent defeats and encroachments,
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superadded to the accumulated hatred of years. All North China was bubbling on the edge of an awful upheaval, and the ministers were busying themselves about the construction of summer bungalows in the hills.
Mr. Pericord sat in his office gazing at a letter with an air of profound and anxious distress. This letter was a copy of one addressed two days before to the French minister by Bishop Favier, Vicar Apostolic of Peking. It was dated the 19th of May, 1900, and ran as follows:
"Mr. Minister: From day to day the situation becomes more serious and threatening. In the Prefecture of Paoting-Fu more than seventy Christians have been massacred; near Icheou, only three days ago, three neophytes were cut in pieces. Many villages have been pillaged and burned; a great many others have been completely abandoned.
"More than 2,000 Christians are fleeing, without bread, without clothing, without shelter. At Peking alone about four hundred refugees, men, women, and children, are already lodged at our house and that of the Sisters; before eight days we will probably have many thousands.
"We will have to dismiss the
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schools and the colleges, also use all the hospitals to make room for these unfortunate people.
"Upon the east of us pillage and incendiarism are imminent; we are hourly receiving the most alarming news. Peking is surrounded on all sides; the 'Boxers' are daily coming nearer the capital, delayed only by the destruction which they are making of Christians.
"Believe me, I pray you, Mr. Minister, that I am well informed and say nothing lightly.
"Religious persecution is only one object. The real purpose is the extermination of Europeans, a purpose which is clearly set forth and written upon the banners of the 'Boxers.' Their associates await them at Peking, where they will begin by attacking the churches and finish with the legations.
"For us here at the Paotang the day is practically ended. All the city knows it; everybody is speaking of it, and a popular outbreak is manifest.
"Under these circumstances, Mr. Minister, I believe it my duty to ask you kindly to send us at least forty or fifty marines to protect our persons and our property."
Mr. Pericord looked up at the entrance of his secretary.
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"You have got it, I see," he said sadly. "I do not know whether to hope that our diplomatists have at length awakened or not. The usual polite remonstrance would be worse than useless, and yet, in the present state of court feeling, I am not sure that forcible language would not be almost worse."
"You need not have any fear of the language being too forcible, sir," replied Cinderpan with a bitter grin. "It begins with the usual 'I have the honour to inform your Highness and your Excellencies,' 'demands' half a dozen absolutely inadequate precautions, and ends with 'I improve the occasion to reiterate to your Highness and your excellencies the assurance of my highest consideration.' Could anything be more inert than a 'demand' couched in such soap-sud terms?"
"What would you?" replied the S. G. wearily, taking the memorial of the Diplomatic Corps in his hand. "Nothing can be done in dealing with a 'body' like the Tsung-li Yamen. There is only one maxim that is of any avail in diplomacy, and that is, find the man, and talk to him as to a man."
"There is only one man who can do that, and he is not a minister," said Cinderpan.
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"Leave me, my dear James," murmured Mr. Pericord, who had begun to peruse the so-called ultimatum.
The S. G., after some minutes reflection, blew the whistle of a speaking tube and called, "I should like to speak to you, Kuei-lien."
The piccolo-player entered, and stood in the shadow by the door, as was his wont.
"I believe you told me that you had a relative in the Palace, Kuei-lien."
"Yes, master."
"Your relative is in a position to deliver a verbal message to one of the Imperial princes."
The S. G. said this rather as a statement of fact than a question, and the boy appeared embarrassed. Then he said impetuously --
"I will deliver a message to the Emperor himself if it is your wish, master."
"I do not want you to run any risks, Kuei-lien. And yet" -- his voice was scarcely audible -- "you are the only one I can trust."
"Is it Prince Tuan?"
The S. G. looked up keenly. He made no comment on the lad's intuition.
"I desire greatly to have a private conference with his Highness. If it
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were known that I had sought such an interview it would forfeit the confidence the Yamen has in me, and excite the gravest suspicion towards me on the part of the ministers. And yet, it is the only hope; I say nothing of the ruin of my life's work in this country. The lives of all our friends are in danger.
Why did he say, "our?"
"I will bring the prince here this evening, master."
"Kuei-lien, I have something to say to you. A certain minister seeks my downfall; for him it would be of more importance than the lives of all the foreigners." The boy looked up.
"If he knew -- and I understand that he employs agents to watch me, even in my own household; if he knew that I had sought audience with the prince, he would have in his hands the advantage which he has long intrigued for in vain. He came near obtaining it a few weeks ago when a Mr. Blake, who had been in my employ, rashly showed his face on the race-course. An unknown friend warned Mr. Blake of his danger, and he fled in time to escape arrest. That friend of Mr. Blake's unconsciously saved me also. I was going to say, if this minister of whom I speak were to hear of my present purpose, I
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should not complain. I am willing to sacrifice my favor at Court if by so doing I can avert a terrible disaster."
"I understand, sir," said the boy in a low and quivering voice. "I do not think it is possible for anyone to serve Mr. Pericord and his enemies as well."
The S. G. sank his head on his hand. The boy, with a lingering look from the dark corner where he stood, went out.
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CHAPTER XIX.
A Momentous Interview.
AT midnight, with the utmost secrecy, a swarthy, broad-shouldered Chinaman, with the face of a Roman Antony, was introduced into Mr. Pericord's study. He had come entirely unattended, save by the lad, Kuei-lien, and he was dressed in the mean garb of a coolie.
"The lowly abode is greatly honored," said the S. G. gravely.
"Let us waive ceremony," replied the visitor brusquely. "The Tsung Shui-wu Ssu is known to me by reputation as a faithful servant of my house and a man of few words. Speak."
"Your Highness conspires to raise a race-war against foreigners this year."
The man leapt to his feet with a furious gesture.
"Who -- who are you who dare to tell me my purposes?" he roared. "Conspire! A Chinese head had fallen for less than that."
"My nationality shall not stand in the way of your vengeance when the time comes, Prince Tuan," replied the S. G. calmly. "I speak to your ears alone, as man to man, and there is
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not another in whose manliness I should show this confidence. Your conspiracy is that of a patriot and a prince, and will deserve the more honorable name of war when it declares itself. For forty years I have served your royal house faithfully, and been its councillor in troublous times when your Highness has stood aloof in the mountains. I might claim the privilege of offering that counsel now to one who will shortly be in the place of the Son of Heaven. Am I permitted to speak?"
"Speak; nothing will change my purpose."
"In unloosing the hatred of the ignorant people against foreigners, your Highness will undo my life's work. I do not speak of that work a sit affects my own fondness and ambitions in it. The first result of the crusade will be to drive from the treaty ports all the foreigners residing there, and among them the foreign staffs which I maintain for the collection of revenue. Then, the taxes, such as can be collected when the system I have established is dis organized, will be seized by the viceroys, each in his own province. The revenues which are remitted to me here every three months will cease to flow in. Forced loans on the gran-
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dees of Peking will alienate all sympathies from you. But money is the sinews of war."
The prince, although but a heavywitted soldier, was impressed by this unexpected forecast.
"So be it," he said sulkily; "better that the nation be plunged in ruin than lose its independence."
"Its independence is safe for many years, Prince; secured by the rivalries of the Powers, long enough, at least, for the formation of an army to uphold it if the finances are devoted to that purpose. But to precipitate matters now is to court invasion while you are unprepared."
"That is as it may be," replied the prince with a certain rude cunning, "but unfortunately a well-disciplined army is not easily aroused to fanaticism. All great conquests, such as those of my noble ancestors over the more civilized Chinese, have been accomplished by the spirit, the impulse. This spirit is not to be found in the Chinese once in a thousand years. The destiny of accidents has ripened it now; I take it on the bound and hurl it at my country's enemies."
"I see your Highness is more versed in history than I knew," said the S. G. with profound dejection. "I do not dispute your theory, although I
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think that you are making a mistake in relying on your Chinese subjects. They are a peaceable and money-loving people, and they will weary of a war in which victory brings them no rest. Your Highness has underestimated the growth of civilization which has been sapping their turbulence. The Emperor himself has shown a fondness for our foreign inventions as far as he can understand them in toy railways and electric launches. Kang Yu-wei was not an adventurer who adopts new ideas for the sake of personal aggrandisement. Lin, Kia, and Fan were wealthy and responsible gentlemen, who would not lightly risk their liberty unless they felt sure that change was inevitable. Lo, Wu, and Wang, your ambassadors in Europe and America, are not the less Chinese because they speak French and English and are honored guests of fashionable society abroad. Li Hung-Chang built the Tientsin railway, and his brother developed the coal and iron mines at Wuchang. Sheng devotes himself to the telegraphs. Yuan has adopted foreign drill and arms. These, at least, are not pro-foreign mandarins. I say these things, your Highness, to convince you that while you have buried
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yourself in the wilds of Manchuria a public opinion has been growing up which trends inevitably to the adoption of foreign methods; it will never again be forced into line with a reactionary conservatism."
The prince, only enraged at the convincingness of these words, had been clenching his big fists, and with difficulty abstained from interruption.
"I will stamp it out!" he cried at length. "I will stamp this public opinion out until the only vestige remaining dissipates itself in the stream of blood! Do you think I am ignorant of your plots because I have kept aloof from Peking? It is you yourself, Pericord, who are at the bottom of all this. The names you have mentioned are those of the ringleaders in the treasonable conspiracy of the Pao Yang Hui. You yourself founded this society ten years ago through the madman, Mason. You escaped suspicion by sacrificing your tool, but the revelations extracted from his servants are still in the archives of the loyal Liu at Nanking. I tell you it is not a public opinion. It is a conspiracy, the object of which is to place the whole administration of the Empire in the hands of your foreign civil service and your foreign-trained Chinese, and since no Manchu will conde-
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scend to learn your barbarous tongue it will end in an attempt to overthrow our holy dynasty. It is a treason, I say, and, by my ancestors! as treason it shall be wiped out in blood."
"Your Highness forgets that the holy Emperor in person endorsed the Memorials of Kang Yu-wei. A king cannot conspire against himself."
"Kuang Hsu a king!" retorted the prince contemptuously, "The puppet has forfeited all rights to be called Son of Heaven, since he smuggled into the Palace the accursed Book which claims that title for Wild Pig, your God. Nothing save the necessity that I myself should play dictator has kept that wax-faced virgin alive. So soon as ever the winnowing fan of war has sifted out the true leaders from the false, so that my will shall guide while my face is hidden, Po Chun, my son, shall reign, even though he may never perform the sacred rites to his father."
"Be sure that I sympathize with your Highness' ambition," replied M. Pericord, quietly. "It is not in my province to concern myself with Palace intrigues. But ambition does not necessitate fanaticism. Why must your Highness connect a state intrigue with an anti-foreign crusade?"
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CHAPTER XX.
Prince Tuan.
THE prince was evidently affected by the peculiar power of the S. G. to extract confidence.
"I will tell your Greatness, and you will understand why the Throne itself is a small thing beside my patriotism. When I was still a boy of ten years of age, in 1860, my beloved brother, the sainted Emperor Hsien Feng, was forced to flee northward by the approach of the French and British invaders. The allies, instead of pursuing us, revenged themselves by the wanton destruction of my brother's Summer Palace, the gardens of the Yuan Ming Yuan. This insult, and the defeat of his army, broke my brother's heart. A palace was seized within the Imperial City as a residence for the British envoy. The Emperor declared he would never return while his capital was contaminated by the foreigners' presence. On the 17th of August the bitterness of his humiliation overcame him, and he died.
"He died deserted. No sooner was his sickness manifest than his brother Kung, accompanied by his concubine Tzu Hsi, the present Dowager Empress, left him and hurried to Peking
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to put his son on the throne. Of all his family, I alone, a mere boy, remained by my elder brother's bed. And the dying Emperor said to me: 'Ko-Ko, never forget this day. My own sloth has ruined me. I have neglected my army, and, with ten million braves ready to die at my command, have fled before ten thousand red-heads. Be thou a soldier; train thy son, when thou hast one, to be strong and brave: and go not nigh the accursed capital until thou canst purge it of barbarians.'
"Then I swore an oath to avenge my brother, though to do so I should have to place my own son upon the throne. You know that, owing to certain ancient restrictions of the ancestral rites, the prophecies say that this will sound the death-knell of the Ta Ching dynasty. I care not.
"Pursuant to this promise, I spent twenty years of my manhood seeking battle everywhere against the turbulent mountaineers and cattle raiders of the north. I travelled everywhere through the confines of Manchuria and Shensi, and watched the encroachments of Russia. My son Po Chun, as he grew up, I have trained in the same hardy exercises as I myself have loved, and taught him also to learn by heart the mountainous
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topography of the border. And when I conquered an unruly hill tribe, I conciliated it, teaching its hardy horsemen to prepare themselves against a more dangerous enemy than the government.
"Not until 1892, when the rebellion of the Ko Lao Hui and the Manchu Vegetarians seemed to betoken an awakening of the nation to some vague sense of patriotism, did I consent to take up my residence m Peking. The war with Japan opened my eyes to the fact that all my energy in training men to the use of bow and spear had been wasted, and that nothing could save my country but magazine rifles. Although I abhor all things that are foreign, I have thrown my energies into the task of re-arming and re-organizing the army, assisted by trusty lieutenants like Yuan. This occupied me for three years.
"Then I realized that the time had come to take the great step of placing my son on the throne. During my long absence the hated spirit of foreign innovation, as you have just told me, had begun to infect even the Court to which I belong, and I discovered, to my horror, that the puny Emperor himself was secretly reading all sorts of foreign books, and filling the gar-
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dens of his palace with foreign toys worked by electricity and steam. When Kuang Hsu appended the vermilion signature to the outrageous proclamation prepared by Kang Yu-wei, I hesitated no longer. I entered the apartments of my aged sister-in-law, and called upon her once more to exercise her power to save the Empire from slipping out of our hands. The result was what you know. Kuang Hsu was sequestered on an island in the lake, and the government was once more declared to be in the hands of a regency. My son, Po Chun, was named as heir presumptive, should Kuang Hsu die.
"Even then I might have gone no further, leaving the rest to my son. But when the rumors of this intrigue found their way into Legation street, the ministers demanded to see the Emperor in person. They virtually declared by that act that they considered themselves the regency, and Kuang Hsu their nominee. That decided me. In the preoccupations of politics and war I had almost forgotten my oath. The audacious presumption of these foreigners -- but I do not include your Greatness in that term -- has sealed their fate. They must be driven from Peking."
"I am grateful for the confidence
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your Highness has reposed in me," Mr. Pericord said, gravely, as if this extraordinary confession were the most natural thing in the world. "I need not say that it will be held sacred. Nevertheless, I have to beg that you will consider the courtesies of war, and warn the foreign ministers to leave Peking before their personal safety is jeopardized."
"Let them use their own discretion on that point. The warnings are manifest enough without any necessity that I should disclose the intentions you attribute to me. Yes, let them see to themselves! For, by the tombs of my ancestors! there are some among them -- "
"Enough, your Highness," interposed the S. G. peremptorily. "They are my fellow-countrymen. My duty forbids that I should leave Peking, even if my services did not ensure respect to my office. As a high officer of the state, my humble counsel remains always at your Highness' disposal. The war you are about to levy will be the downfall of your House. It is my duty to express that opinion, and my duty is done."
"And right manfully, too, by the beard of Kang Hsi! Rest assured that I respect and honor you, Mr. Pericord. Good night."
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As the prince was about to leave the room, Kuei-lien darted forward and, prostrating himself, burst into a long and passionate harangue in support of the S. G.'s arguments. Tuan listened with unexpected patience. Then he lifted the lad by the hand.
"What, you too, boy? You, whose mother is, next to my own royal stepmother, the bravest patriot of them all? Verily, the Tsung Shui-wu Ssu casts a spell upon all who serve him. You shall enter the service of my son when the splendor of the throne shines once more untarnished by the presence of presumptuous foreigners. So fear not."
"My service is pledged elsewhere, your Highness," said Kuei-lien sadly.
"And your heart, too, girl," whispered the prince, not unkindly, suddenly grasping the boy's shoulder and looking closely in his face. Then he laughed gruffly and strode away.
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CHAPTER XXI.
Preparations for Defence.
IT may be imagined that Mr. Pericord found food for the most anxious thought in this revelation of the prince's purpose.
Tuan had virtually volunteered the information that ever since the Japanese war he had been re-organizing the army with the distinct intention of declaring war against all foreign powers, in order to reclaim the sovereign rights abandoned by his brother Hsien Feng. The treaties which admitted the right of foreigners to travel in the interior, to live in separate settlements under extraterritorial jurisdiction, and to have their representatives resident in Peking, were to be abrogated. Evidently the manner of effecting this would be, not by an honorable declaration of war, but by instigating the people to massacre. In fact, the war had already been in progress a month, and it might at any moment culminate in an attack on Legation street. It was too late to do anything save warn the ministers to flee. The S. G. was a Chinese stateman, the prince's confidence had been given to him as to a loyal servant of the Throne, and it was impossible for him to betray that
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confidence. But if only he had known this a month earlier!
He called privately on the British minister.
"But, my dear Mr. Pericord," said Sir Claude, who appeared far from upset by the S. G.'s warning, "you seem to forget your own good deeds. Your foresight is so infallible that it has become a second nature to you, and your right does not know what your left is doing. I assure you that I acted promptly on your warning of three weeks ago, and am quite ready for our truculent prince."
" My warning---three weeks ago? I wish I could recollect anything of the sort. What do you refer to?"
" Ah, well---of course; you are perfectly right to have no official knowledge of the matter. When you label a man Unattached, I suppose it means that you disown responsibility for his services. Of course, it is well understood that you cannot officially undertake to protect us foreign devils. As a devotion-inspiring autocrat, you beat even my friend Cecil Rhodes."
" I confess that you bewilder me, Sir Claude. Would you be kind enough to explain how any member of the Revenue service has been able to reassure you concerning these riots?"
" Certainly. It happened on the
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day of the Cup race. Your man, who is an American, sent a note to Conger to meet him behind the stables during the second race. Conger, who is my very good friend, beckoned to me to accompany him. In this way we did the whole thing in fifteen minutes without any of our boys, coolies, or linguists being any the wiser. Your man-a fine fellow: you choose your instruments well - has managed to get into the confidence of Tuan's right-hand man, Tung, by serving him as a drill-instructor. He gave us positive assurance that Tuan meant to shut the gates of Peking on us at the beginning of June, when an attack was to be made on Tientsin while we were being held as hostages if it failed. Mr. Unattached added that the Boxer rascals would probably get out of hand and try to massacre us. I have lost no time in laying in sand and provisions, I assure
"Sand ? Provisions ? Are you speaking of a balloon trip, Sir Claude? The idea is original, but you can scarcely carry-"
The British minister burst into a hearty laugh.
"Original? By Jove, it is, Mr. Pericord, and I will make a note of it at once. A balloon! By gad, that is
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the very thing. But the sand and provisions I meant were a different sort of ballast. I suppose we shall have to feed at least five hundred mouths, it may be for a month, and you can't beat sand-bags for bullet-stoppers."
"But, do you mean to say that you intend to stay in Peking in face of such a warning; in face, too, of the information I have just given you ? "
" What else, my dear sir? You couldn't possibly have supposed that we should run away? Why, such a splendid opportunity wouldn't occur again in a century."
" Opportunity? "
" Yes ; don't you see? Our friend Samovar is privately encouraging Tuan, with the intention of occupying Peking in force with a Russian army before America or England can transport troops to the spot. This, by the bye, is also a tip from your secret service man, and, of course, can only emanate from you, who seem to know everything. Well, they all thinly it takes an army to occupy Peking. I hope to undeceive them. When Alexieff, or Nodzu, or whoever it may be, arrives under the walls of Peking, I hope to have the honor of receiving him in person at the Chien Men, and
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pointing to the Union Jack and the Stars and Stripes, and asking what I can do for him. But that is a minor matter. Not to be too bumptious, I trust to give these damned Chinamen the sort of a lesson Powell has been administering to the Boers."
" You would convert Legation street into a new Mafeking?" said the S. G. nervously. "Is it not a terrible risk? I am an old man, and know nothing of soldiering, Sir Claude, but it appears to me that, commanded as we are from the wall and hemmed in in the midst of a hostile population---."
" What is sauce for the goose may be sauce for the gander. I tell you, Mr. Pericord, that I would not miss this opportunity if I had no one but my wife to share the risk of it! I am sick of diplomacy. I eras not cut out for a diplomat, and the lies and trickery which taint the very air of Peking, make me almost forget the plain duty of an English gentleman. Now, thank the Lord, I am allowed to remember that I am a soldier by trade. Looked at from that point of view, the policy which I am sent here to represent seems a policy of letting our prestige go to the dogs, and, by God! I mean to save it as the civilians saved India in the days of the Mu-
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tiny, or I don't want to leave Peking alive!"
The tyro men locked hands; the S. G.'s eyes were moist. I
" I, too, am an Englishman," he said in a low voice, as if he were half ashamed of having spent his life in the service of China. " And I thank God for it."
" We will see this thing through, Pericord-you, I and Conger."
" I shall do my part if it becomes necessary," the S. G. replied, reverting to the cautious misgivings of experience. "But theoretically, I do not approve. I do not approve, Sir Claude. I shall endeavor to prevail on Mr. Conger to follow prudence rather than valor. I am afraid you have not calculated all the risks."
Another conversation on the same topic may as well be inserted here, although it did not occur until three weeks later, when the dangers forecast by Mr. Pericord had become facts. It was on the 12th June, when Tung Fu-hsiang marched out to stop the advance of Seymour's relief column, shutting the gates of Peking behind him.
" Mr. Conger," said Sir Claude MacDonald, "we are in a trap. We have got to get our backs against the
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wall and prepare for the worst. I certainly did not quite realize the magnitude of Tuan's preparations when I determined to hold the Legation, and I see now that if Seymour is defeated we stand a poor chance of getting out of Peking alive."
"We have put our hand to the plough, and we cannot turn back if we want to, as Mr. Dooley puts it," replied the United States minister with his quiet smile.
"Just so; and we don't mean to. But I wish to God your Legation was next to mine. In times of danger, British and American blue jackets leave always been brothers. But I am sorry to say there is little love lost between my men and those of my neighbour Samovar."
"Nor between mine and those of my neighbour Ketteler," replied the United States minister, visibly distressed. "I tell you, Sir Claude, it is not much use my pretending to be equal to this emergency. I have not slept for three nights, and the thought of my wife and my guests unmans me. I look to you to decide on the proper military measures to be taken."
"'We shall have to pull together and rely on ourselves, that is obvious. Our men will not work, with Dutchmen and Dagoes."
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" Mr. Samovar and Mr. Pichon appear to be concocting some private arrangement of their own, and Baron Ketteler appears to resent any suggestion on military matters. You, thank God, are a soldier and have dealt with similar situations before. Between us we muster, I think, just 200 English-speaking men. As Mr. Samovar refuses to have a telephone passed over his roof, my secretary, Mr. Squiers, suggests this code of flash signals between us in case of attack by night."
"An excellent suggestion, sir; and we will rig up a heliograph as well, besides working Pericord's splendid notion of a balloon. But---look here, Conger." Sir Claude laid his hand on the minister's shoulder. "As you say, I have been in tight places before; things were not always comfortable at Zanzibar, to say nothing of the Niger Territories. Now---this is a damned awkward thing to talk about. Do you see these paper packages? Our doctor has had a hundred of them put up. As an ordinary prescription they would be marked ` Poison.' Put a few in your pocket. It's a ghastly thing for a man to have to shoot his own wife, don't you know."
"May I ask you for a drink?" said Mr. Conger, sinking into a chair with
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shaking hands. "Insomnia has played the devil with my nerves. Thank you. Yes, if it comes to that---"
"Of course you will have to stand by your own Legation as long as it is possible to keep up a show of diplomatic relations with this scoundrelly Yamen. It is a pity your government is not a little more generous in its building grants. Send your missionary women over to me if you are crowded. Ketteler, I presume, can hold the east end of the street unless they put a gun on the wall behind; but the moment Ketteler is pushed in you must all come over to my place and make the best of it."
"That is very good of you."
" If it comes to shelling us from the Chien Men, well, Samovar will intercept some of the trouble. He never expected to play shield to the British Legation, I'll be bound. And between ourselves, Conger---"
The rest of Sir Claude's words were uttered in a whisper.
No sooner had the Legation guards passed within the walls of Peking, then the Boxers broke across the Peking-Tientsin railroad behind them and burnt the stations of Feng-tai and Huang-tsun. The retreat of the foreigners was cut off. Seventy miles
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as the crow flies separated them from the port of Tientsin, and the intervening plains were swarming with thousands of rebels. On June 5th, Rear Admiral Kempff cabled to Washington: "Engagement begun." He referred to a collision outside Tientsin between the territorial garrison under General Nieh and the Boxers. He little thought that his pregnant words announced the commencement of war between China, and the world.
On this day railway communication with the coast entirely ceased, and the Boxers, joined by the Imperial troops sent out to quiet them, commenced openly drilling within sight of the walls at Feng-tai.
Then M. de Samovar played his trump card. He called on the Tsung-li Yamen and formally offered to suppress the rebellion with Russian troops, thus forming an alliance with China against all the world. To his profound chagrin, the offer was refused. On the very day that he was to call for a definite reply, Prince Tuan was appointed President of the Board of Foreign Affairs in supersession of Prince Ching. Russia's diplomacy, steadily pursued with a single purpose since the seizure of Port Arthur in 1895, was mysteriously defeated.
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" Valda has played me false," M. de Samovar exclaimed, with a ferocity which for once showed the true color of the Muscovite. " Vassilich, seek her out; she is---" here he whispered in the attaches ear. "Instead of discovering anything important at the Superintendency-General, she has betrayed our designs to Pericord and he has played off Prince Tuan against me. Let the girl be brought back to the Legation, and I will force the truth from her if my Cossacks have to tear her limbs off."
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CHAPTER XXII.
The Flight that Failed.
ON the 10th of June the Recorder of Victories at the Board of War received a telegram from the Viceroy of Tientsin announcing the departure of Seymour's relief column. The S. G., as head of a courier service which worked in conjunction with the Imperial Post, had close relations with this Board; and the ominous information reached him ten minutes after it had been deciphered.
Mr. Pericord appeared utterly prostrated by the news. Every one on his staff had perceived in his conduct since the outbreak an indecision and preoccupation very different to his usual attitude in crises, but his distress on receipt of the welcome intelligence puzzled even Cinderpan.
" What has come over the Chief?" he said to the second secretary, Hayrick. "Is he sinking into dotage, or is there something behind all this which none of us has suspected? I'll never believe that he meant to bring off the Pao-Wang revolution himself. "
" Pooh, the S. G. has enough to think about without changing the Government. It's my belief he wants
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to retire, and foresees that if the Powers take over the Government of Peking they will force him to take the helm. It'll mean an earldom and all that, of course, and be a doocid fine thing for the service, but it looks to me as if there was a private worry on his mind."
" Oh, he's in love!" laughed a junior, getting off his stock witticism. This jejune chestnut had come into vogue from some private theatricals given by the mess.
In the meantime Mr. Pericord had remained lost in sad reflections.
"Impossible, impossible," he murmured to himself poignantly. " I must disillusion her at any cost."
Then, with vaccinating hand, he rang the bell. Kuei-lien appeared.
"My boy," Mr. Pericord said, not looking at the youth but speaking very gently, " I must again entrust to you a mission which I may not perform openly. A foreign army has to-day started from Tientsin to rescue the envoys here; by so doing it seals their doom. This army is an army of invasion, but in numbers it is a mere battalion, quite inadequate for the purpose. It will simply enrage the Government, and its certain defeat will send the wavering to the banners of Prince Tuan."
[p. 164]
He paused for a little while, and then resumed---
" To-morrow or the next day all the foreigners in Peking will be prisoners. The next few hours are the last chance for the women to withdraw. If there is a general exodus, suspicion will be aroused and they will be stopped;
y only a few, therefore, can go.---Count Beriskoff, unlike his successor, was my friend. He married an American, and some of his wife's relatives are at present guests of my equally good friend Mr. Conger. Count Beriskoff had a daughter---"
He turned away and looked out of the window. Kuei-lien was silent.
" Miss Beriskoff," continued the S. G., "may still be in Peking. If so, it would be natural that she should seek the protection of her father's relatives. The United States Legation is the only one which is regarded with friendship by the Tsung-li Yamen. I think that a party quickly leaving that legation would be unmolested. Go, I beg of you, Kuei-lien, and at once, and tell them what I say. And if by any means you could find and warn Miss Beriskoff---"
"Are you so anxious, master," faltered Kuei-lien in Chinese, " that she should go?"
Mr. Pericord turned his large eyes
[p. 165]
full on the boy. Their pupils dilated to the rim of the iris, as if a mortal pain had gripped his heart.
" For her sake, for her sake!" he groaned. "Yes, Kuei-lien; you---Miss Beriskoff, I mean---must leave me, must leave Peking."
"But if she would rather stay?" faltered the boy in a low voice, hanging his head.
"It cannot be---no, it cannot be.'
Kuei-lien moved near to him and lifted his deep and pleading eyes.
"Let me stay, master. Only as your servant---only a native servant, who would rather die by your side than go back to a life of gayety."
" Kuei-lien, we are speaking of Miss Beriskoff," said Mr. Pericord hopelessly. "Listen, child; you do not understand. She might have been my own daughter. Count Beriskoff and I were friends; twenty years ago I was not always a recluseSometimes, desipientes, we shared the same pleasures together . . "
He passed his hand over his forehead.
" I am afraid it is true what they say of me, that I am growing old; you perceive it too, do you not, Kuei-lien? You have never thought, perhaps, that he whom you have chosen
[p. 166]
to call master is an old man, old enough . . "
He turned from the window and, crossing the room, laid his hand on the youth's shoulder.
"May, child," he murmured soothingly, "do not weep. My heart is heavy enough without the tears of those I love. Go, go, my boy, and if you cannot find Miss Beriskoff, then accompany Miss Conger yourself. Perhaps you will find her again in Tientsin; find her, I pray God, restored to the natural affections of youth : brilliant once more with that high spirit which first reminded me I was old; go---"
"What message shall I give her, sir, from you? I have heard it said among the servants that once when she came to you in secret, wishing to do you a service, you dismissed her harshly, saying that she was a spy."
" I have learned my mistake, Kuei-lien ; how could I have dreamed . . . But all that is past; better that I had continued to suspect her. Tell her---tell her, Kuei-lien, that I shall never forgive myself---never forget her. Tell her that now---now, when, I must never see her again---she takes away with her an old man's love: a love which he would not be at liberty to utter, which would only be a shame and weariness to her . . ."
[p. 167]
" No, no---I love you!" cried the boy.
Mr. Pericord's voice hardened.
"Go, Kuei-lien," he said gravely, with a slight emphasis on the Chinese name. " No breath of scandal must ever rest on the name of Miss Beriskoff; nor will I, even in the privacy of my own heart, recognize any fact which could compromise her. Go, boy; every moment is precious. And," he added, wearily, "ching, not tsai-chien, Kuei-lien. Presentiment tells me that I may not see you again."
The boy fell on his knees and sobbed with passionate silence over his master's hand. Then Mr. Pericord bent over him and kissed his brow with infinite tenderness.
" My daughter," he whispered. " Do you understand?"
An hour later some ladies, including Miss.---and Miss Woodward, left the United States Legation in closed carts, escorted by Mr. Under-Secretary Bainbridge and a squad of marines. Unexpected deference was shown to them by the guards of the Ha Ta gate, and they passed through the Chinese city unmolested. Once outside the walls and in the open plain they experienced such an expansiveness of relief that they only
[p. 168]
then realized under what a tense strain they had all been living during the past week. None had been outside the city during that time, and they fully expected to find the train service still in operation at the terminus. But when they reached Machia Po they were confronted by a heap of cinders; and the only rolling stock visible was a string of wheels buried beneath a tangle of twisted iron-work. At the same time there gathered about them from the village a group of silent natives, whose pale-blue sleeves were stained with dark patches. Some of them carried under their jackets crude iron swords, in wooden sheaths, such as village smithies hammer out of nail-rod.
"What are we to do?"
"There was nothing to be done but to turn back. They had no provisions with which to attempt the journey overland, and, infested by rioters as the country was, they could expect no relays of ponies.
" Wait; isn't that a foreigner over there?" said Miss W---, pointing to a man on a black horse who was advancing slowly at the head of a company of natives marching with some show of discipline.
" Why, yes; and I declare I believe it is Black Bess. There is no other
[p. 169]
black pony of that size in Peking. These wretched Boxers have stolen it, I suppose. How that poor Mr. Blake would swear if he saw it in that shaggy condition."
But here their attention was drawn away by the thunder of hoofs behind. Turning in alarm they beheld a small party of Cossacks bearing down on them from the direction of the city in a swirl of yellow dust.
"That is the handsome Captain Vassilich at their head," said one of the ladies. " I suppose M. de Samovar has sent him to escort us back. I do hope nothing has happened in Legation street."
Captain Vassilich pulled his pony to its haunches as he raised his helmet with an air of unwonted constraint.
" I am very sorry, Mr. Bainbridge, but I am informed that Miss Beriskoff is of your party. I am sorry to say that M. de Samovar cannot for a moment consent to her departure. Of course, Mr. Conger can do as he pleases, but our minister considers it extremely injudicious for any foreigners to appear to be fleeing at this juncture. Miss Beriskoff must return with me, if you please."
" Miss Beriskoff! " exclaimed the Under Secretary, too astonished to be
[p. 170]
his dignity. "I thought Miss Beriskoff had eloped to---Europe months ago?"
" We have information that she has been hiding in Peking," replied Vassilich, somewhat confused.
" Well, you can see for yourself she is not in the carts."
" Oh, she will be disguised, of course. Ah !"
His exclamation was drawn by seeing one of the native servants who had accompanied the fugitives on horseback, dart out from the tawdry cavalcade and gallop off in the direction of the village.
" It is she! After her, men! Ten roubles each if you catch her! "
The Cossacks dashed forward on their hardy ponies, quickly spreading out to outflank the fugitive. The marines, who were on foot, moved leisurely in front of the carts and began carelessly handling their rifles. There was no love lost between the American sailors and the Russian Legation guards.
The boy rode straight towards the man on the black horse. Then, just as a Cossack was stretching out the butt of his spear to trip the little pony, the boy cried aloud in English---
" Help Alan ! Help ! Save me! "
The black pony seemed to be gal-
[p. 171]
vanized into a thunderbolt. There was a rush, a shock, and the Cossack and his mount rolled over and over in a cloud of dust.
" A renegade, by God!" shouted Vassilich, driving his spurs home and drawing a revolver. " Catch the girl, men. Leave this rascal to me."
Vassilich fired as he galloped, and the mandarin-hat of the leader spun into the air, revealing the unmistakable lineaments of a foreigner.
"Blake! " muttered the attache. The next moment he dropped on his pony's neck, shot through the lungs, and the renegade wheeled round, stooped for his hat at full speed, and crushed it low over his brow.
But in this instant Kuei-lien's pony stumbled, and five Cossacks swooped towards him.
" Ta chiang ! " shouted the renegade to his native followers.
Then, to the astonishment of the Newark's marines, each Chinaman brought from behind his back a short repeating carbine, and dropping oil their knees with a precision which spoke of drill, they fired a volley at the Russians which brought two of them to the ground and put the rest to flight.
"Point blank at 200 yards, by Jove!" said the Newark's lieutenant.
[p. 172]
" Guess it's sporting Mausers they've got, and know how to use them. Give 'em Springfield, lads."
But before the men could fire, the Boxer leader---every one was a Boxer at that time---galloped forward with uplifted hand.
" Stop, for God's sake!" he shouted in English. " Here, sir, stop your men and I'll stop mine. Mr. Bainbridge knows me; I am an American, too. If another shot is fired the ladies will have a poor chance of getting home again. These Chinamen are drilled blue jackets."
They were also drilled soldiers, it was evident, for they had seized the second's lull to open out and cast themselves on their faces. As there were at least fifty of them, to half a dozen men in the ladies' escort, and as they were armed with the finest weapon yet invented, and, further more, supported by a gathering swarm of genuine Boxers behind, the intervention was permitted.
The man rode up and uncovered his head with a look of gloomy shame. "Lieutenant---Mrs. Woodward----my name is Blake; I was dismissed from the Revenue Service some months ago. I have taken command of these men in the hopes of keeping down the anti-foreign feeling. They are good
[p. 173]
fellows---Admiral Ting's old crew, and I just saved them from being common rebels. These d-d Cossacks don's count; they are a worse gang than the Boxers themselves. But if yon fire a shot you know very well that it may put an end to any hopes of saving Legation street. Would you mind withdrawing as quickly as you can before that riff-raff bring out their old horse pistols?"
" Your hand, Blake," said Bainbridge, extending his own. " Whether you've turned Boxer or riot, I guess you'll always be on the right side when the pull comes. And, by the by, old chap, have a look at your Service ` Gazette ' next time you're a civilized American. I kind of fancy that you're wrong about being Dismissed."
[p. 174]
CHAPTER XXIII.
Blake Gets His Promotion.
THE hapless fugitives turned sadly back to Peking. Blake sat gazing after them for some seconds like a man who realizes that he is an outcast. Then a timid voice said from behind:
" Alan ! "
He turned and saw the Chinese youth whom he had saved from the Cossacks.
" It is you, Valda," he said, looking mournfully at her tonsured head. "When you warned me on the race course I thought I recognized you, although you spoke Chinese. But afterwards when I fled I refused to believe it. I persuaded myself that it was a nightmare of my imagination."
" Why should you be so anxious to disbelieve your own eyes ? Am I so very ugly in this dress ? "
" Are you quite shameless?" he said fiercely. " Is it quite impossible to place any misconstruction on your freak? You would not think so, I fancy, if you had heard the remarks of Prince Tuan's suite about you when you passed with Mr. Pericord's guests."
" A woman does not cut off her hair for a passing freak," Valda replied
[p. 175]
with quiet dignity, but with a pathetic touch of feminine regret and reproach.
"You seem almost more beautiful as you are," said Blake harshly. " Mr. Pericord did not find you any less . . . No, damn me!" he shouted aloud, unconsciously lashing his pony and wrenching it back again; " I cannot discuss it: it makes me mad to think about it . . . Stand still, you brute, will you?"
" When you have recovered your temper, Mr. Blake, I shall be ready to explain anything you wish to know." Valda turned her tired little pony, at a walk, back toward the walls of Peking.
Blake sent his big black with one bound to her side.
" Have I any right to ask explanations from you, Miss Beriskoff?" he said humbly, although the passion in his voice was hardly controlled.
" I have no one else to turn to," she answered in a low voice, without looking at him.
" Oh, my God, forgive me! Do not tell me anything. If I can serve youWhat else---what else have I to live for except to show how I love you, Valda ?"
" Men have strange ways of proving their love," she murmured
[p. 176]
" There is at least one way which is common to all honorable men. With the deepest humility, Valda-I am not worthy of you, I am a disgraced and penniless man-but I place my life and my heart at your feet, and if you will marry me "
Valda turned her head and gave him one quick, full glance, in which there was a trace of tender mockery.
It is, on the whole, lucky for plain men that passion makes them rhetorical. A little touch of extravagance often finds the way to the heart of a coquette. But Valda did not say anything; she continued to let her drooping pony walk toward Peking, while Blake was all the time wrestling with the impatience of his.
"You do not say anything, Valda. May I dare to hope---"
" That I have forgotten Mr. Pericord ? I shall never do that, Alan."
" Ah !" perhaps Blake had forgotten. It is not easy for a young man to remember a gray-haired rival.
" Perhaps, if you knew my origin, you would not be so eager to---marry me. The daughter of a Russian Count is, no doubt, a respectable match even for a Revenue man. But the daughter of a---"
"Hush, dearest. Do you forget that I recognized you when we said good
[p. 177]
bye? Would not the ease with which you gear your present disguise remind me? When a man loves a woman as I love you, he does not ask to see her pedigree."
" I always believed that I was Count Beriskoff's daughter. My mother is the wife of the Grand Councillor Sheng, and now a very great lady in the Imperial City. But my father---I no longer know who my father is. A greater man than Count Beriskoff has called me his daughter to-day."
Blake stared at her in astonishment. Then intuition, which love will sharpen and refine incredibly in die most obtuse of men, made him understand everything. He knew, as distinctly as if he had overheard it, that the S. G. had taken upon himself this preposterous stigma to save the girl from the unnatural devotion which had obsessed her. He understood, too, that at present Valda wished to believe it, as a salve to the disloyalty of her affections. Mr. Pericord had indeed cured her to his own forfeit, and yet without forfeiting more than jest that particle of passion which differentiates a daughter's tenderness from a wife's.
" You will marry me then, my darling?" he whispered, bending towards her.
[p. 178]
She put out her hand, and he seized it.
" We had better ride straight to Tientsin, had we not? I think between us we can pass through ten million Boxers in these togs."
She looked at him fondly and trustfully. It was a pleasant thought to be transformed once more into an admired beauty, and to leave the murky city which was not only rife with horrible dangers, but which would always remind her of her double shame. She sat, looking silently towards the dull, squat walls of her birthplace. Blake did not interrupt her, thinking she was taking a mental farewell.
"He is there," she said at last.
Blake felt the unconscious test which her loyalty was putting to his. He realized, almost with a sense of awe, the primitive heroism of his fiancee's character. And he remembered his own deep-seated devotion to the grave Chief who remained at his post at the risk of his life.
" If you are willing, Valda," he said gently, " we will go back."
" My husband!" she said. With that word, she realized something of her own sublimity, and rejoiced to feel that her riper love had not missed a hero.
[p. 179]
Then, when Blake had issued instructions to his soldiery, the pain rode back to Peking.
L'ENVOI.
I have not yet received any definite news of what befell our friends during the tragic six weeks between the 10th of June and the 16th of July, when the blood-soaked city was as mysteriously and completely veiled from the ken of civilization as if some vast-winged dragon had rapt it away in a cloud back to the filmy chasms of antiquity. But one very characteristic, and on the whole satisfactory item, I am able to report, on the strength of a letter which has reached me to-day from Shanghai.
It will be remembered that about the 20th July, after the lesson administered by the capture of Tientsin by the allies, and the entire defeat of Tung's troops by the Legation guards, the Chinese Government graciously vouchsafed permission to the foreign ministers to communicate with their respective homes. The Commissioner at Shanghai, and indeed the Revenue Service all over China, was awaiting news regarding the safety of the
[p. 180]
Superintendent General with more anxiety than any Foreign Office awaited news of its diplomatic representative. Apart from the personal love and veneration for their chiefs, the entire careers of a thousand foreigners depended on this news.
When, therefore, a telegram arrived from Chinan, addressed in the familiar code-word " Custos," the rumor ran around the General Office, the Opium Desk, the Import Desk, the Export Desk, the Transit Pass Desk, the Half Duty (Coast-wise) Desk, and a11 the branches of the Statistical Department, like a streak of lightning, and almost before the envied ting-chai had passed the cover to the Commissioner a score of Senior and Junior Assistants, backed by a crowd of linguists and shupans, flocked round the "Forbidden Gate " of the Commissioner's cosy office to hear the momentous news.
Mr. B---broke the envelope in the midst of a pin-drop silence. He glanced over the telegram.
"This concerns you, I think, K---," he said, passing it carelessly to the Statistical Secretary.
The latter gentleman read it aloud.
" Gazette, Third Quarter. Fourth Assistants A. Blake to be promoted to Second B for special services, with
[p. 181]
transfer In Charge to Niuchuang. -- Pericord."
A howl of good-natured execration welcomed the luck of Blake. After six weeks of mortal silence --- nothing but a cold item of routine! Nevertheless this very absence of all personal news brought back to them the Touch of the Vanished Hand which they loved, and the Staff went wild with joy; "Pericord"--- that contained everything they wanted to know, and the shroffs and coolies in the weighing-sheds were kicked out of the way in order that the Outdoor Staff might repair in a body to their club to celebrate the Salvation of the Service.
But almost on the heels of the first telegram came a second. The contents of this were as follows.
"S. G. informed that during interruption of communications a laxity of discipline observable among Out-port Staffs. Statistical Department will prepare circular in conformity with instructions contained in Circulars Nos. 73 and 109 of 187---, reminding Commissioners and Assistants-in-Charge that prestige of Service must be maintained. --- By order, Cinderpan."
"Here, no business can stand this, you know," said the Commissioner, laying aside his work and vainly try
[p.182]
ing to restrain a delighted grin. "The 'little bird' and the Threatening Letter at once! Gentlemen, if any you care to drop in to the club during the next half-hour I shall be obliged to stand you a cocktail to inaugurate the revival of Despotic Discipline."
Then a cheer went up which nearly typhooned the roof of the new Custom House. Next to the S. G., the Port Commissioner is the greatest man in the land, and when he unbends even the Indoor Staff is apt to forget its dignity.
THE END.
THE WANDERJAHRE CLUB
This club has existed nomadically for ten years, and numbers about 100 members scattered all over the world. It is made up of wanderers who are story-tellers and story-tellers who, if not habitual vagabonds, have the daring, the romance, and the modesty of the wanderlust deep seated in their souls. Not a few of its members have since achieved fame as novelists, war-correspondents, pioneers, and scouts; and not a few have left their bones in the Klondike, the Philippines, and South Africa. But their fame and their heroism is not recognized in the club nor blazoned on printed rolls; the qualification of membership is brave and simple manhood, in which literacy counts for little and notoriety for naught. And from this fraternity of manhood women are not excluded. Some of its best loved brothers are women who have dared to fare for themselves and face the world independently like men; one of them still wields the pick in the Yukon, and many wield the pen in more dangerous wilds.
Among such a fraternity there inevitably grows up an unwritten code of ethics and art which brushes aside the overgrowth of phrases and reposes on the bare bedrock of natural truth. No shams or hypocrisies can survive in the hard school of necessity and adventure. Starvation, and the danger of death soon reveal the essential truths which are common to human nature. But every member of the Wanderjahre feels bitterly the oppression of cant the moment he tries to assimilate himself to the pretentious civilization of cities, and there has thus grown up in the club a spirit of hardy rebellion which demands expression. The eve of the twentieth century has appeared to them an apt moment in which to concentrate and organize their forces for a social crusade. They do not aspire to be agitators, but believe that an extension of the club, combined with a reduction to print, and a periodical discussion, of their simple tenets of manliness, would afford a welcome outlet for the dissatisfaction of all those who pursue ambition in the face of the slow oppression of society. This oppression weighs heavily on artists, and more heavily on those who demand, in spite of poverty, to walk abroad, if they choose, in a shirtwaist. In short: The watchword of the Wanderjahres is Liberty, within the confines of manliness, virtue, and truth.
It is proposed to establish in various capitals a modest club room and headquarters, and to inaugurate a small monthly journal to be mailed free to members wherever found. The immediate objects of the club are: (1) To afford a fixed address, a rendezvous, an agency for forwarding mails, and a bureau of information, for scattered and perhaps homeless wanderers. (2) To help each other in difficulties by advice, arbitration, introductions, and, when possible, by cash. (3) To keep absent members in touch with home and with each other, to give them a chance to tell the reason of their exile, and to let the world know something of the unpretentious heroism of its rejected. (4) To form a brotherhood of kindred spirits who suffer in solitude, to uphold the virtues of adventurousness and enterprise, and to combat, by the ideal of manhood in the rough, the degeneracy of effete culture and unnecessary shams.
It is contrary to the idea of the club to parade a list of well-known names or to affect fashion and luxury. For literary men and women, it is a club of workers who have their name to make; for wanderers, it is a letterbox and cosy corner where a pipe can be smoked and a good story told without fear of contaminating the furniture. As the club develops committees will be formed to appoint local secretaries and establish local headquarters in different towns. Members of both sexes are now invited to join. The entrance fee and annual subscription for those who join this year will be one dollar, or four shillings, which should be forwarded with application. For 10c. (6d.), a booklet containing an account of the aims and history of the club will be forwarded.
Address, by letter only, JULIAN CROSKEY, 20 Joralemon Street, Brooklyn, N. Y., or " Ravenshead," Creffield Road, Acton, London.
Local applications to ---
C. F. KENYON, Westminster House, Eccles, England.
PHILIP HILTON, Roberts Horse, Pretoria.
ROGER POCOCK, ex -N. W. Mounted Police, somewhere in Patagonia.
Dr. CHIPMAN, Hudson, Quebec.
CHARLES MORRIS, Dawson City.
.'. Applicants for membership would oblige by stating if they are willing to act as local secretaries, pro tem. Old friends of M--- in China please write.
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