Chapter XVII: Part III: The Sack (5)

One night, after journeying for a long time, we camped in one of these little mountain burgs, taking full possession, so that there should be no treachery while it was dark. The night passed quietly, for even fifty miles beyond Peking the terror lies heavy on the land, and in the morning we wandered to the massive iron-clad gates and the tall watch-towers which stood sentinel on either side to see if there was anything to be had. How old these were, how very old! For, mounting the staircase leading to the towers, we found that, although the rude rooms beneath showed signs of having been recently occupied, the stone steps which led to the roof-chambers were covered with enormous cobwebs and great layers of dust, showing that nothing had been disturbed for very many years. That was as it should be. At the very top of one tower we discovered a locked door, and beating it in amid showers of dust, we penetrated a room such as a witch of mediaeval Europe would dearly have loved. Nothing but cobwebs, dust, flapping, grey-yellow paper and decay. It was immensely old.

And yet we found something. For there were some chests hidden away, and prizing these open, we discovered great books of yellow parchment, so old and so sodden that they fell to pieces as soon as one touched them. They were in some Mongol or Manchu script. They, too, were centuries old. But there was something else--a great discovery. Beneath the books we found helmets, inlaid with silver and gold and embellished with black velvet trappings studded with little iron knobs. There were also complete suits of chain armour. It seemed to us in that early morning that we were suddenly discovering the Middle Ages, perhaps even the Dark Ages. For these things were not even early Manchu; they were Mongol; Mogul--the war-dress of conquerors whose bodies had been rotting in the dust for five, six, seven, eight, or even nine centuries. These relics had lain there undisturbed for all this time because China has been merely tilling the fields and neglecting everything else. In a curious mood we donned these suits and went down below clad as the conquerors of old.

There were some Indian troopers waiting, and when they saw these things they exclaimed and muttered excitedly to one another, casting half-startled looks. These were the same trappings and war-dresses as in the days of the Great Moguls at Delhi. The very same. The conquerors who had swept across high Asia had worn such things, and every man from Northern India must have understood their meaning and message. As they looked the Indian troopers chattered and talked to one another in a growing excitement. It seemed as if we had suddenly dug up some links of the half-forgotten past which showed how the chain of armed men had been tightly bound by Genghis Khan and Batu Khan, and all the other great Khans, from the Great Wall of China all round Northern and Central Asia, until it had reached down over the Himalayas into India. It was very curious.

When we had finished this reconnaissance, which carried us in every direction under the shadow of the Great Wall, we turned bridle and made back towards Peking by another route. A day's march away from the capital, word was brought us that there were still numbers of disbanded soldiery and suspected Boxers hiding in the Nan-Hai-tsu--a great Imperial Hunting Park, which had fallen into decay during the present century. We would have to sweep this park, which was dozens of miles broad and quite wild, and scatter any bands we might find. So starting after midnight, we marched hard in the gloom for several hours with native guides leading us, and daylight found us under the encircling wall of the ancient hunting-ground. We halted there a bit and refreshed ourselves quickly, and then galloped in through a breach. There were miles upon miles of beautiful grass stretches, and we and our mounts were fairly pumped before we saw or heard anything. But towards midday we came on some tiny hills and a few low buildings, which seemed suspicious, and no sooner had we approached than a whole nest of men rushed out on us, firing and shouting as they ran. Some had only huge lances made of bamboo, fifteen feet and more long, and tipped with iron and with little red pennons fluttering; yet these were the most effective of all. Waving these lances violently, and holding them in such a manner that it was impossible to get near, these men scattered our charge before it got home and unhorsed a number of troopers. Then it became a general _melee_, which ended in the killing or capture of a few of the enemy and the rapid escape of the remainder.

Very late in the evening we rode into Peking with our helmets and our coats of mail and our long lances as trophies. The capital seemed terribly listless and oppressed after the country beyond, and I was bitterly sorry that expedition had not lasted for weeks and months.

XII

SUSPENSE

October, 1900.

* * * * *

Another month has come and there has been practically no change. They say now Prince Ching has no power to treat, and that he is a mere Japanese prisoner. Li Hung Chang is in Tientsin, too, it appears. He is to be the other plenipotentiary when negotiations really commence, but for the time being he is the Russian captive. The Russians have him surrounded with their troops, and no one but a favoured few may even see him. Already there has been trouble with the British on this score at Tientsin, and some people say that some pretext will be seized to bring about an international crisis among the expeditionary corps. They are fighting about the destroyed railway up to Peking already. Various people are claiming the right to rebuild the line, and refuse to give up the sections they have garrisoned. Everywhere there are pretty complications in the air.

Meanwhile, in Peking itself things have become more and more quiet, and as the policing is slowly improving, confidence is a little restored. But still new troops are being marched in all the time--notably German troops--and as soon as night closes down all these men fall to looting and outraging in any way they can. They say that the Kaiser, in his farewell speech to his first contingent, before Peking had been heard of for weeks, told the men to act in this way. They are strictly obeying orders. Even the officers of the new troops take a hand in this looting in a modified way. They force their way into the remains of the curio shops, take the few pieces which are left, place a dollar or so on the counter and then walk out. This makes a legitimate purchase.

In the Japanese district, which is now the best policed and the most tranquil, shops are being reopened, but are now being panic-stricken by this new procedure. It is the refinement of the game, and there is no redress possible. Beyond this I know not of a thing worth the mentioning.

XIII

STILL DRIFTING

October, 1900.

* * * * *

There is, after all, to be no immediate peace--that seems now quite certain. We hear that the Russians have invaded all Manchuria and are strengthening their hold there by bringing in more and more troops from the Amur districts. They say, too, that the French have crossed the Tonkin frontier. But really accurately we know nothing very much of what is being done. With sixty or seventy thousand soldiery suddenly flung down on the ruined stretch of country between Peking and the sea, everything has been put in the most horrible confusion. You can get nothing, nor hear anything. Telegrams are the only things which are coming through with any regularity, and even these are cut to pieces by the field telegraphs or continually getting lost. The mails, it is true, have at last arrived, but they are all mixed in such a way, and there is such old correspondence heaped on top of the new, that general instructions and the proposals made read in this way seem to be the ravings of madmen. There are hundreds of despatches of April, May and June, showing the calibre of some Foreign Offices in an unmistakable way. I sometimes wonder if only the fools are left in the home offices.

Still, after a good many headaches, one can begin to appreciate the general plan which was finally settled on by the various _Chancelleries_, and to understand what delayed the relief so much. Most of all it has been the South African war. Also, is seems to me, they wanted Waldersee, the German Field Marshal, to have time to take over the supreme command for the sake of peace in Asia, and so that there should be an enormous massed advance on Peking, which would capture all North China to Christendom and enslave the cunning old Empress Dowager, and do everything as arranged in Europe. It was, above all, necessary not to cause an imbroglio in Europe.

Of course, the very opposite has happened, and everybody is now as discontented and jealous as before the siege. Waldersee is in Tientsin and has been there for weeks for some new decision to be made. The grand advance is finished and done with, but now some column commanders wish to push down into the south of the province and isolate the Court, if possible. Meetings are being held the whole time, but as Waldersee is coming up, nothing is to be done until his arrival. By one ingenious stroke--the sudden flight of the Court--the Chinese have turned the tables on allied Europe and made us all ridiculous. Any one might have anticipated something of this--there is a precedent in the histories. Yet history is only made to be immediately forgotten.

XIV

PUNITIVE EXPEDITIONS

October, 1900.

* * * * *

At length Waldersee has arrived. He made a sort of entry which seemed to me farcical. I only noticed that he was very old, and that the hats that have been served out to the special German expeditionary corps are absurd. They are made of straw and are shaped after the manner of the Colonial hats used in South Africa. They have also a cockade of the German colours sewn to the turned-up edge. This must be some Berlin tailor's idea of an appropriate head-dress for a summer and autumn campaign in the East. The hat is quite useless, and had it been a month earlier all the men would certainly have died of sunstroke.

Of course, now with Waldersee in Peking, something more has to be done, and the rumour is to-day that the Court has begun fleeing yet farther to the West. The rulers of China are being kept accurately informed of every move by some one, and any indication of a pursuit will see them penetrate farther and farther towards the vast regions of Central Asia. It seems to me that it would be almost amusing (would not the consequences be so tragic) to begin this pursuit and really to attempt to push the Court so far away that it finally lost touch with all the rest of China. Then something beneficial to everyone might come. An ultimatum, to which attention would be paid, might be served, and guarantees exacted which would do service for a number of years. At present the flight has done no harm whatever to China. The Court is not even ridiculous in the eyes of the populace. It is merely terribly unfortunate--a really luckless Court, which deserves to be commiserated with and wept over rather than upbraided. For it is plain to everyone that the first and last reason for all this is the foreigner and no one else. Everything the foreigner does is always a source of trouble.

Even the machinery of government has not been disturbed by the fact that vast Peking, the vaunted capital, is in the hands of ruthless invaders. At first everyone thought that with the Palace empty, and all the great Boards and offices made mere camping-places for thousands of hostile soldiery, the government of the whole empire would be paralysed--sterilised. Yet that has not happened. The government goes on much the same as ever. We know that now. For as the Court flees it issues edicts, receives reports and accounts, is met with tribute from provincial governors and viceroys, is clothed and banqueted, makes fresh appointments, does its day's work while it runs. I cannot understand, therefore, how this is to end. It is beyond the keenest intellects in Peking, and people are now simply waiting for things to happen and to accept facts as they may be dealt out by the Fates. It is an inevitable policy. For you must always accept facts when you cannot mould them.

XV

THE CLIMAX

October, 1900.

* * * * *

I am becoming tired of it all once again--inexpressibly tired. It seems to me at times now as if those of us who remain had been very sick, and then, when we had become convalescent, had been ordered by some cruel fate to remain sitting in our sick-rooms forever. A siege is always a hospital--a hospital where mad thoughts abound and where mad things are done; where, under the stimulus of an unnatural excitement, new beings are evolved, beings who, while having the outward shape of their former selves, and, indeed, most of the old outward characteristics, are yet reborn in some subtle way and are no longer the same.

For you can never be exactly the same; about that there is no doubt. You have been made sick, as it were, by tasting a dangerous poison. Great soldiers have often told their men after great battles have been fought and great wars won that they have tasted the salt of life. The salt of life! Is it true, or is it merely a mistake, such as life-loving man most naturally makes? For it can be nothing but the salt of death which has lain for a brief instant on the tongue of every soldier--a revolting salt which the soldier refuses to swallow and only is compelled to with strange cries and demon-like mutterings. Sometimes, poor mortal, all his struggles and his oaths are in vain. The dread salt is forced down his throat and he dies. The very fortunate have only an acrid taste which defies analysis left them. Of these more fortunate there are, however, many classes. Some, because they are neurotic or have some hereditary taint, the existence of which they have never suspected, in the end succumb; others do not entirely succumb, but carry traces to their graves; yet others do not appear to mind at all. It is a very subtle poison, which may lie hidden in the blood for many months and many years. I believe it is a terrible thing.

Nobody should have been allowed to stay behind after hearing for so many weeks that ceaseless roar, sustaining that endless strain, enduring so much. They should have been made to forget--by force.

And yet even this nobody understands or cares to speak of, although a number of men are still half mad. The newcomers, soldiers and civilians alike, who never cease streaming in now to gaze and gape and inquire how it was all done, are quite indifferent. Some say that it must have been an immense farce--that there was really nothing worth speaking about. Others wish to know curious details which have no general importance. The Englishmen are proud, and want to know whether you were inside the British Legation, their Legation, and when they have heard yes or no their interest ceases. They little know what the Legation stood for. The Americans march up to the Tartar Wall, talk about "Uncle Sam's boys," and exclaim that it requires no guessing to tell who saved the Legations. The French are the same, so are the Germans, so even the Italians. Only the Japanese and the Russians say nothing.

At first I was at some pains to explain to each separate man what really occurred. I pulled out my rough map, all thumb-marked and dirtied with brick chips and the soil of the trenches, and showed stage by stage how the drama unrolled. It was no good. Poor me! nobody quite understood. Some thought possibly that I was a glib liar; others did not even trouble to think anything. How much they understood! They had not the background, the atmosphere, the long weeks which were necessary to teach even us ourselves. They had not tasted the poison and did not yet suspect its existence. So I gradually desisted. Now I say nothing, never a word. I listen and understand how history is made. It is best never to explain or argue if you thoroughly understand. Rhetoric is only the amplification of something long understood in one's heart of hearts.

I am, therefore, tired of it all, inexpressibly tired. I wish to escape from my hospital, to go away to some clean land where they understand so little of such things that their indifference will in the end, perhaps, convince me and make me forget.

Yet can one ever forget?

XVI

THE END

November, 1900.

* * * * *

Another month, and I have made up my mind quite suddenly. I have finished with it--at least, in outward form. After waiting a couple of weeks and wondering what I should do, a last argument brought it about--an argument with a German which ended by enraging me to an impossible point and making me challenge him to anything he liked. That showed me that my last safe moment had arrived.

He was a youngish officer sent from the Field-Marshal's staff to discuss some diplomatic-military details with my chief. The business part was soon over, for there was really little to decide, and then the man fell to talking about what should be done. He said that were there not so much rivalry and jealousy, and could Waldersee only act as he wished, they would have proper punitive expeditions which would shoot all the headmen of every village for hundreds of miles, and make such an example of everybody that the memory would endure for generations in every district where there had been Boxers. The officer was eloquent because he had only just arrived, and understood nothing--absolutely nothing. For some reason our stars crossed and I hated him immediately. So I waited until he had finished so that I could begin. Then I began.

I cannot even remember all I said, for I was greatly enraged by the brutality of the man's ideas, but I treated him as he had never been treated before. As I poured out my lava stream and he slowly understood what I meant, he first became very red, and then very pale, and finally he stood up. I took advantage of that action, and since we all still are armed, I told him he could have satisfaction, at once if he wished, and at any number of paces he chose to name.

My chief then suddenly intervened, and, trembling violently, said that it could not go on--that it was a mistake. He took the blame on his shoulders, he said, and would apologise himself later on. For many minutes he harangued, and in the end the officer went away with his eyes glittering, but not too reluctantly. He knew that I could have killed him with my second chamber unless his first shot hit my vitals....

After that there was a second scene--but one which was much more brief. My chief attempted to deal with me, and to him I spoke my mind. I am afraid I said many things which were so brusque that modern society would have reproved me. I told him that it was well known that he and every other man of position had been tremulously fearing death at every turn for weeks, and had been unwilling to do anything when they might have really saved the situation; merely because they were so afraid; that everything had been misstated in the reports, and that although the full truth might not be known for years, eventually it would be known and people would understand. I said that this petty life created by men without stomachs had ended by disgusting me, and that I had finished with it for good and for ever. Then I went out in silence, slamming the door behind me with all the strength of my arms. It was a most enormous slam. It had to be so; it was my last word. In my commandeered residence I found that the breath of misfortune had also come. The rightful owners had managed to steal into Peking in the train of some big official who had had an escort of foreign soldiery provided him, and now smilingly and cringingly greeted me, and thanked me for my guardianship during their unavoidable absence. The Manchu women were grouped round in great excitement. They did not relish the change--they did not want it. The tall and stately one who had first touched my knee on that dark night during the sack was not there.

The rightful owners irritated me intensely with their obsequiousness. I was irritated because they lived: they should have ceased to exist long ago. They were still very much afraid, although they had reached Peking in safety, for they half thought that I would hand them over to some provost-marshal as Boxer partisans in order to get rid of them. They were very afraid. The Manchu women were all talking and praising me, and telling wonderful stories of all I had done. But the most important one of them was absent. I became vaguely conscious that this also meant something, that perhaps there was to be another tragedy. I found her later wishing to kill herself, to commit suicide, so that she, too, need never return to her other life.... That was more terrible than the other scenes. I could do nothing, yet my responsibility had been great. In the end something was arranged. I hardly remember what.

I was soon ready to go; on the same afternoon I had completed all my preparations. I had so little to prepare. Then I rode out for the last time with all my men behind me, and not a single other person. We passed down the streets out from the Tartar City, through the ruins of the great Ch'ien Men Gate, and then followed straight along the vast main street, still covered with _debris_ and dirt, and skulls and broken weapons, as if the weeks and months which had gone by since the fighting had been quite unheeded. Near the outer gates of the city I met my three cavalrymen of the Indian regiment waiting to bid good-bye. They joined me with some attempt at gaiety, but that soon fizzled out. I had so plainly collapsed.

We passed into the country with the tall crops still rotting as they stood, because everyone had fled and no one dared to return. We went on faster and faster as the roads broadened, and as we galloped we met new troops marching in on Peking. They were Germans driving captives of many kinds in front of them. "Damned Germans," said the smaller officer, who was the senior, and who had been quite silent for some time. "Damned Germans," repeated the two others mechanically, as if this was a new creed, and I, approving, faintly smiled. That stirred them to talk again, and they told me that the expeditions had been settled on, and that they would have to go, too. Orders had come from home that they must not fall out with Waldersee. It was highly important to placate the Germans because of South Africa. But the Americans would not go, neither would the Russians, nor yet the Japanese. It was to be a new arrangement. They went on talking in this wise for a long time, and I heard these scraps of conversation vaguely as in a dream. Cynically I thought that, although I was leaving it all behind me in company of men who were strangers to Peking, the last words would still be concerned with our tortuous diplomacy. Yet my gallant friends were only trying to console me--to make me forget. Such things they understood far better than others. They were from India, where men think a good deal, and sometimes act. They were treating me as best they could. Then when we came to a sharp rise over which the road curled and crawled, they halted suddenly, stretched out their hands, and bade me good-bye. They meant it to be a sharp wrench--to be over quickly. Just on the rim of the horizon stretched the grey of the fading Tartar Walls with their high-pitched towers. The sun sinking behind the western hills threw some last flames of golden fire, but the air remained chill. It was becoming cold, and even the dust no longer rose in clouds. Everything was pinned to the soil--tired--finished....

I rode on abruptly. Then, for the last time, my cavalrymen turned round and shouted faintly back to me. It was a word which carried well. "Chubb, Chubb, Chubb," they were shouting, to give my thoughts a turn. They knew what I must be thinking. They knew; they had been in India. I quickened my horse into a gallop, rode faster and faster, and before night had fallen I had gained the river-boats. It was over....

* * * * * *

BOOKS BY PUTNAM WEALE

Political

MANCHU AND MUSCOVITE

THE RE-SHAPING OF THE FAR EAST (2 volumes)

THE TRUCE IN THE EAST AND ITS AFTER-MATH

THE COMING STRUGGLE IN EASTERN ASIA

THE CONFLICT OF COLOUR

THE TRUTH ABOUT CHINA AND JAPAN

THE PAGEANT OF PEKING (In collaboration with Donald Mennie)

Romantic

INDISCREET LETTERS FROM PEKING

THE FORBIDDEN BOUNDARY

THE HUMAN COBWEB

THE UNKNOWN GOD

THE ROMANCE OF A FEW DAYS

THE REVOLT

THE ETERNAL PRIESTESS

THE ALTAR FIRE

WANG, THE NINTH