The heat of Peking—-The wall by moonlight—Tongshan—“Your devoted milkman”—The eye of the mistress—A little fort—In case of an outbreak—The Temple of the Sleeping Buddha—A runaway bride—The San Shan An—My own temple courtyard—The missing outfit—The Language Officer—Friends in need.
It was David, I think, who said in his haste, that all men are liars, but I suppose he was right, if he meant as he probably did, that at one time or another, we are all of us given to making rash statements. I expect it would be a rash statement to say that Peking in the summer is the hottest place in the world, and that the heat of West Africa, that much-maligned land, is nothing to it, and yet, even when I think over the matter at my leisure, I know that the heat, for about six weeks, is something very hard to bear. I suspect it is living in a stone house inside the city walls that makes it so hot. Could I have slept in the open I might have taken a different view. I slept, or rather I did not sleep, with two windows wide open, and an electric fan going, but, since Peking mosquitoes are of the very aggressive order, bred in the imperial canal, the great open drain that runs through the city, it was always necessary to keep the mosquito curtains drawn. If anyone doubts that a house with mosquito-proof 351windows and doors is an airless death-trap, let him try and sleep under mosquito curtains, while hoping for a breath of cool air from the electric fan. Fully half the air is cut off, but as the mosquito curtains are raised during the daytime, the air over the bed is renewed daily. In that abomination a mosquito-proof house, it is never renewed.
Since it was a choice between little air and plenty of mosquitoes. I chose the shortage of air, and generally went to bed with a deep soup plate full of cold water, and a large sponge. It made the bed decidedly wet, but that was an advantage.
I did not go away because the war had started between the North and the South, and no one knew exactly what was going to happen. To be at the heart of things is often to be too close, wiser eyes than mine saw nothing. Once there was a rumour that the Southern army would march on Peking, and that promised excitement, but in the city itself, though there was martial law, there was no excitement, and the only pleasant thing to do was to go on moonlight evenings and sit on the wall. There was a cool breath of air there, if there was anywhere, and at any rate the moonlight lent it a glamour, and the fireflies, that came out after the rain, gave the added touch that made it fairyland.
But at last the heat was too much even for me, who am not wont to complain of whatever sort of weather is doled out to me, and I accepted the invitation of a friend to stay at Tongshan, which is a great railway centre, a place where there is a coal mine, and some large cement works run by capable and efficient Germans.
And at Tongshan I lived in the house that was 352held for defence during the Boxer trouble. The barrier at the gate—the barrier that is at the gate of all Chinese houses, to keep off evil spirits, who can only move in a straight line—was so curious that I took a photograph of it, and against the walls that surround the grounds were the look-out places which the railwaymen manned, and from which they kept watch and ward.
I have always liked the feeling of living in a fort—a place where men have helped to make history, but I have observed that it is always the immediate trifle that is to the fore that counts, and my friend\'s servants were a perpetual joy and delight to me. They used to write her letters. There was one, a touching one, from the milkman I shall remember with joy. A “cunningful” cook had misrepresented him, and he wished to be taken into favour again, and he signed himself distractedly “Your devoted milkman.” The cow was brought round so that it might be milked before the eyes of the buyer, and only a Chinaman, surely, would have been capable of concealing a bottle of water up his sleeves and letting it run slowly down his arm as he milked, so that the cow was unjustly accused of giving very poor milk. Besides, when the cow\'s character was cleared, who knew from where that water had been taken, and how much dirt it had washed off the arm down which it ran. No pleading took that milkman into favour again, despite the tenderness expressed in his signature. Another man had been away, and returning, wished a small job as watchman at six dollars a month, and begging for it by letter, he signed himself fervently “Your own Ah Foo.” But the crowning boy was the No. 1 boy. He was a 353delicious person without intending it. When first my friend engaged him, she acquired at the same time a small dog, and she soon realised that the rigorous Chinese winter was hard on dogs, and that Ben must have a little coat. The question was how to make the coat. No. 1 boy came to the rescue.
Mr ——— at the railway station had a dog, and “Marcus,” said the boy, “have two coats.”
“Oh well borrow one and copy it,” said his mistress, relieved.
“My tink,” said the boy confidentially, and he sank his voice, “Missie bolly, more better not send back.” And he looked at her to see if this wisdom would sink in.
“Boy!”
“Marcus have two coats,” repeated he reproachfully.
0496
The owner of Marcus, on the story being told to him, when the coat was borrowed with every assurance it should be returned, admitted that if occasionally he saw among his accounts a coat for Marcus he always paid for it, and supposed the old one had worn out. Thinking it over, he thought perhaps he had supplied a friend or two, or more possibly his friends\' servants. No. 1 boy made a mistake in taking his mistress into his confidence, instead of charging her for “one piecey dog coat.”
But, of course that is the trouble with Missies, as compared with Masters, they have such inquiring minds. There was once a man of violent temper who was in the habit of letting off steam on his No. 1 boy. He abused him roundly, and even beat him whenever he felt out of sorts, yet greatly to the surprise of all his friends, the boy put up with him, and made him a very excellent servant. Presently he married, and then, much to his surprise, before a month was out the boy, who had been faithful and long-suffering for so long, came and gave notice.
“But why?” asked the astonished man.
“Master beat,” said the boy laconically.
“D——n it,” said the man, “I\'ve beaten you a dozen times before. Why do you complain now?”
“Before time,” explained the boy solemnly, “when Master beat, my put down one dollar, sugar, one dollar flour. Now Missie come, no can. My go.”
He did not mind a beating so long as he could make his master pay for it, but when an inquiring mistress questioned these little items for groceries that she knew had never been used, he gave up the place, he could no longer get even with his master. It was a truly Chinese way of looking at things.
These were some of the stories they told me in the house they had fortified against the Boxers and held till the ships sent them a guard. And once the sailors came there was no more danger, It was the luckless country people who feared. The older men pitied and understood the situation, but the mischievous young midshipmen took a fearful joy in scaring the problematical enemy.
“Who goes there?”
“Belong my,” answered the shivering coolie, endeavouring to slip past, and in deadly terror that the pointed rifle would go off. They were ground between two millstones those unfortunate peasants. The Boxers harried them, and then the foreigners came and avenged their wrongs on these who had done probably no harm. Always it is these helpless serfs who suffer in case of war. Other classes may suffer—these are sure to.
They will never hold this house again should necessity arise, for the well that gave them water has gone dry.
Of course everyone hopes and says, that the necessity never will arise again but for all that, they are not, the foreign settlers in China, quite as certain of their safety as one would be in a country town in England, for instance. They came in to afternoon tea and tennis, men and women, and they gave all attention to the amusement in hand, a lighthearted, cheerful set of people, and then one little speech and one saw there was another side. There was always the might be. Everything was going on as usual, everywhere around were peaceable, subservient people, and yet—and yet terrible things had happened in the past, who could say if they would not happen again. Every now and again, not dominating the conversation, but running a subcurrent to it, would come up the topic of the preparations they had made in case of “another outbreak.”
One woman kept a box of clothes at Tientsin.
“I wonder you don\'t,” she said looking at her hostess. “No, my dear, don\'t you remember yet, I never take sugar. Thank you. You ought to think about it, you know. It is really so awkward if one has to rush away in a hurry to find oneself without clothes.”
Another woman laughed, and yet she was very much in earnest.
“That\'s not the first thing to worry about. There, that was vantage to them,” she interpolated, taking an interest in the game of tennis, “that young 356woman\'s going to make a nice little player. No, what I think is that the place they have chosen to hold is far too far away. Want your clothes in Tientsin? I\'m not at all sure you\'ll get over that mile and a half from your house in safety, and I\'ve farther still to go, with two little children too. Why don\'t you get your husband to——— Oh there they\'ve finished! Now have I time for another set?”
“It\'s after six.”
“Good gracious! And baby to bath! I must go. You speak to your husband about another place, my dear. He\'ll have some influence.”
“No, I wouldn\'t try to hold any place again,” said my host, thinking of the past, “I should be on the train and off to Tientsin at the first hint of danger.”
“But suppose you couldn\'t get away in time?”
“Well, of course, that\'s possible,” he said thoughtfully, “and the Chinese are beggars at pulling up railways.”
I listened, and then I understood how people get used to contemplating a danger that is only possible, and not actually impending.
“If anything happens to Yuan Shih K\'ai,” but then, of course, though that is not only a possible, but even a probable danger, everyone hopes that nothing will happen to Yuan Shih K\'ai, just as if anything did happen to him, they would hope things would not be as bad as they had feared, and if their worst fears were realised, then they would hope that they would be the lucky ones who would not be overwhelmed. This is human nature, at least one side of human nature, the side of human nature that has made of the British a great colonising people. The autumn was coming, the golden, glowing 357autumn of Northern China, so, coming back to Peking, I determined to find out some place where I could enjoy its beauties and write the book which my publisher expected. Most people seem to think that the writing of a book is a mere question of plenty of time, a good pen, paper, and ink. “You press the button, we do the rest,” promises a certain firm that makes cameras; but I do not find either writing or taking photographs quite so simple a matter as all that. To do either, even as well as I can, I want to be by myself, for I am a sociable being, I do love the society of my kind, to talk to them, to exchange ideas with them, and when I am doing that, I cannot give the time and attention it requires to writing. Everyone who writes in China, and anyone who writes at all is moved to take pen in hand to try and elucidate its mysteries, wants to write in a temple in the Western Hills. I was no exception to the rule. The Western Hills, whose rugged outlines you can see from Peking, called me, and I set out to look for a temple. It was going to be easy enough to get one, for “Legation” Peking goes to the hills in the summer, and when autumn holds the land goes back to the joys of city life.
The first I inspected was the Temple of the Sleeping Buddha, a temple which has many courtyards, and a figure of the Buddha, peacefully sleeping. An emblem of peace looks the great bronze figure. He is, of course, represented clothed, only his feet are bare, and the faithful bring him offerings of shoes, rows and rows of shoes there were on a shelf at the side of the temple, some colossal, three or four feet long, and some tiny, some made after the fashion of the ordinary Chinese shoe, of silk or 358quilted satin, but some make-believe, and very excellent make-believe, of paper. Looking at them I could not have told the difference, and as the Buddha\'s eyes are shut, he could not even go as far as that. He certainly could not put them on, for his feet are pressed closely together, the feet of a profoundly sleeping man. All is peace here. Here there is no trouble, no anxiety, that sleeping figure seems to say.
But there was for all that. Where in the world is there no trouble?
0504
It takes about three and a half hours to reach the Sleeping Buddha Temple from Peking. First I took a rickshaw across the city. Then from the northwest gate, the Hsi Chih Men, still by rickshaw, I went to the Summer Palace, and I did the remaining five miles into the heart of the hills on a donkey. I don\'t like riding a donkey, five miles on a donkey on an uncomfortable Chinese saddle, riding astride, wearies me to death, and when I was just thinking life was no longer worth living I arrived, and wandered into a courtyard where, at the head of some steps, stood a little Chinese girl. She was dressed in the usual dress of a girl of the better classes, a coat and trousers, like a man usually wears with us, only the coat had a high collar standing up against her cheeks, and because she was unmarried, she wore her hair simply drawn back from her face and plaited in a long tail down her back, much as an English schoolgirl wears it. She made me a pretty, shy salutation, and called to her friend the Englishwoman, who had rented the courtyard, and who was living here while she painted pictures. This lady was returning to Peking she said, next day, but she 359very kindly invited me to luncheon, and she told me the Chinese girl\'s story. She was pr............