Thank You, Mr. Moto
To R.S.M.
That Indefatigable Traveler and Sinologist
Chapter 1
I often like to think that the entire sequence of events of the afternoon and evening, which I am now trying to set down, tend to prove a theory to which I used to be partial. The theory is that man, even an individual among the pitifully small number of great ones that have risen above the mediocrity of the race, drifts rather helplessly on the current of circumstances. He cannot alter circumstances to suit himself. The Julius Caesars, the Ghenghis Khans, and the Hitlers are types tossed to the surface by half-recognized subterranean forces of history, moving in the turmoil like rice grains in boiling water. I used to believe that no individual ever turned the stream of events from its course. At any rate I never tried that afternoon. Even if I had had a premonition that I could have altered a single detail of circumstances, I should not have exerted myself. I had learned from my years in China, that undue exertion of nearly any form leads to difficult consequences, and at any rate is undignified.
I finished the page I was writing and locked it with the rest of my manuscript in the drawer of my red lacquer desk, comfortably aware that I should probably never complete it, and that it made no great difference either way. The rather battered silver travelling clock on my desk, one of the few objects I had left to remind me that I had a past, indicated that the hour was a quarter past six, which meant that the afternoon had barely started in Peking. My perpetual calendar on the desk showed that the day was mid July.
I was buttoned in a blue Chinese robe of the latest sartorial style, and felt relaxed and comfortable. It annoyed me that it would not be suitable to continue in such a costume where I was going. I leaned back in my chair and raised my voice, but not loudly, being certain a servant was always in easy earshot. My voice mingled with the droning of the cicadas in the trees beyond my courtyard walls.
“Yao,” I said. My number one boy pushed back the reed screen of the door quietly, and walked across the grey tiled floor with whiskey and a soda syphon, and we conversed in the telegraphic grammar of China.
“Lay me out a clean white suit,” I said. “I am going to a party at Mr. Montgomery’s.”
There was actually no need to tell him where I was going, because like any other servant in Peking, Yao knew his master’s social engagements as accurately as he knew his weaknesses.
“You may have dinner ready at nine o’clock,” I added. “I do not know whether I will be back for it or not. I do not know whether I will bring guests back with me or not, but if I do come back I shall want a good dinner.”
My vagueness did not upset him. I doubt if there is any place in the world, where one may be as noncommittal and still be confident of perfect service as in Peking. I knew that my white suit and my white shoes would be immaculate, and they were. Yao helped me on with my coat and knelt down to arrange the cuffs of my trousers.
“Get me another handkerchief,” I said, “and I have no money in my pocket.”
“Last night,” said Yao, “you used up all your money.”
“Very well,” I said, “lend me ten dollars.”
Yao was my banker at times, and not any more dishonest than several other financiers I have dealt with. I walked through my courtyard where the yard coolie was watering a border of blue and white flowers, past the spirit screen which guarded the red door of the grey outer wall. The door was opened almost automatically by the door keeper, who I knew would be ready to perform that function at any hour of the day or night that might bring me home. My ricksha with my puller, in clean white clothes, was ready at the gate. A moment later we were out of the narrow residential alley, rolling south along a broad street toward the Legation Quarter. My boy was running smoothly and seemingly tirelessly, as a good ricksha boy should run. The sights and sounds of Peking in summer seemed to move on either side of me, unrolling as a scroll painting might unroll, changing with each street corner but never really changing. I could come near to seeing with my eyes closed, simply from the sounds I heard. A deeper note in the patter of slippered feet told me that we were passing close by the pink stucco wall of the Forbidden City, where the yellow-tiled roof of its pavilions rose above it, shimmering silkily beneath the blue sky that was growing darker with the drooping of the sun. There was a high squeak of a water carrier’s barrow, the rumble of a man-drawn cart, a patter of donkeys’ hoofs, a whistling of a trained flock of pigeons in the sky, the blare of a radio from the door of an open shop and the noise of a motor horn, but such sounds did not disturb a pervading impression of serenity. I could hear the brass castanets of the sweetmeat vender and the tinkling of the fan venders’ bells, and the cry of a melon seller. Those sounds all came together into an endless wave of sound, peaceful, enveloping, the noise of China where men lived and died according to fixed etiquette, where nothing mattered very much, except perhaps tranquillity. I felt tranquil enough at any rate and I was very glad to be so. I was pleased with the thought that nothing would ever change the city very much and that I was a part of it in a way, as much at any rate as a foreigner might be. I took a fan from my pocket, a fan with a poem on it, about cranes and lotus blossoms, which my Manchu friend Prince Tung had given me.
There were a great many rickshas already near the willow tree by the Montgomerys’ front gate. The ricksha coolies were squatting beneath the tree, discussing the eccentricities and peccadillos of their masters and their mistresses. They would be glad to wait there until two o’clock in the morning, if necessary, without complaint. A band was playing on the terrace of the Montgomery house, which was a two-story European structure, but the strange cosmopolitan life of Peking moved easily around it. Nearly everyone knew everyone else down to the last detail of scandalous gossip, and the knowledge that there was nothing hidden except by the scant mercies of convention was rather reassuring. The British, Russian, German, Italian, Japanese and the Chinese officials were there. Everyone was there. White-robed servants were passing cocktails and appetizers. Mr. Montgomery, fat and perspiring, in his white silk suit, shook hands with me.
“Glad to see you aboard, Tom,” he said. There was something buoyantly reminiscent of old days in America about Joe Montgomery, which frequently made me restless. My hostess, Elsa Montgomery, drew me aside.
“Tom,” she said. “Don’t you feel nervous?”
“Why?” I asked.
“Because the army has been drawn out of the city,” she said. “It has been a definite fact since yesterday. There are only the police. Anything might happen.” A boy passed with a tray of cocktails. I took one.
“Elsa,” I said. “You know that nothing ever happens.”
“But aren’t you interested?” she asked.
“Not in Chinese politics,” I said. “It doesn’t pay to be, because they change too fast.”
“You must know a great deal about them though,” she said. “You play around with the Chinese so much, but you never say anything.”
“Meaning you don’t approve of my native friends?” I answered. “Well, there’s nothing really to say. Everything goes on. I’m writing a book about that.”
“Why Tom!” she said. “I didn’t know you were writing a book. I didn’t know you were doing anything.”
“As a matter of fact,” I answered, “I didn’t know I was writing a book myself until a week ago. It’s better to say you’re doing something than nothing out here, isn’t it? Otherwise one might be misunderstood.”
Then she turned away from me and said: “Why, how do you do, Mr. Moto. You know Mr. Moto, don’t you, Tom?”
Mr. Moto and I had met on several occasions. He was a small rather chunky Japanese; in well-fitting European clothes, who appeared occasionally—perhaps three times a year—in Peking and stayed at his Consulate and disappeared without warning. Mr. Moto shook hands effusively and drew in his breath politely.
“Oh yes,” he said. “Oh yes. Mr. Nelson and I are very good friends. Oh yes.” His eyes which were rather protruding moved toward me searchingly. His smile was nervous and determined. “So you are writing a book!” he said. “I did not know.”
I looked back at him and we both stood smiling, determinedly and heartily, seemingly waiting for the other to grow tired.
“It would be interesting if you wrote one too,” I said. “Let me read yours, and you can read mine.”
Mr. Moto laughed artificially. “Ha! Ha!” he said. “That would be very funny. You are such a clever man, and I am so very stupid.”
Though it was true he laughed, I have a tolerable faculty for sensing moods. In Mr. Moto’s manner toward me there was a new empressment. He was no longer lightly casual; his narrow eyes were analyzing me as he smiled. I was aware that he was trying to place me in the order of recognized personages and I guessed the reason for his interest. It lay in the feebly jocular remark that I was writing a book.
“Your book,” said Mr. Moto, “what is it about?”
“The manuscript is in the drawer of the red lacquer desk in my sitting room,” I said. “Drop in any time and read it, when I am out, Mr. Moto, but I am afraid it isn’t the sort of thing you’re interested in.”
“Thank you,” said Mr. Moto and he bowed, “thank you very much. Good bye.”
It seemed to me that it would be hard to find a place in the world where so many types and interests mingled in apparent friendliness, as there in the Montgomerys’ garden. There were the Chinese and the Japanese and Russians, for instance, instinctively each of them suspicious of the other, but all affable and smiling; bound together temporarily by an American jazz tune, that cultural gift of our nation to every outpost of the world.
“Elsa,” I said to Mrs. Montgomery. “I’ll tell you something, and remember I told you, when it happens. There is going to be some new sort of political trouble here. I have found it out just now.”
“Just now?” said Mrs. Montgomery. “Just now, this minute?”
“Has it ever occurred to you,” I asked her, “that every time in the last year when there as been any sort of crisis or tension in North China—and believe me, there has been a lot of it—that Mr. Moto has always appeared? Not that it really matters. None of these things really matter.”
“I’ve heard other people say that it is a Mr. Takahara who makes the trouble,” she remarked. “Do you know him?”
“No,” I said. “It doesn’t matter, does it?”
“Nothing does matter to you, does it?”
“Elsa,” I said, “when you get as old as I am—”
“You’re not so old,” she interrupted.
“When you get as old as I am intellectually,” I said. “If you ever do, you’ll find there’s only one thing that matters—keeping out of trouble.”
She may have been aware of some implication in what I said. At any rate she did not seem altogether happy, and I no longer interested her.
“Here comes Major Best,” she said in a tone which indicated plainly enough that Major Best was more interesting. He was walking toward us, easily and competently, across the courtyard, holding a highball glass in his hand, as he had walked a hundred times before. I only know now that there was a tragic fatality in his seemingly casual appearance that afternoon. I only know now that that whole afternoon was a part of a drama where all the characters mingled, utterly unconscious of what was to happen. When I think of it in that manner, the Montgomerys’ garden, with its green bushy trees against a sky that was dustless and clear, assumes the proportions of a stage. All the people there in my memory seem now to have been walking in a hard bright light … the Chinese in their silk robes the only persons clinging to a national costume, the rest of us in European clothes, but nearly all of us with the mark of the Orient on our faces. Some made weary by it, some sodden and some violent.
Major Jameson Best was a recognizable type, just as, I suppose, we all were. His white clothes were perfect like the clothes of most Englishmen, surrounding a body which steady exercise kept perpetually fit. The cut of his hair, growing grey at the temples, was perfect. His face had all the sharp angles and lines of a British face, those singularly determined, conventional lines, not to be changed by any experience; but somehow one knew very well that Jameson Best had seen plenty. The things he had seen were written in the corners of a tight, even mouth, and in the wrinkles around his eyes. There was a reflection in his eyes such as occasionally appears in the eyes of a jaded traveller. Though there were mysterious suspicious gaps which no one could fill, everyone knew parts of his history. He had been to Tibet and Turkestan. He had been captured by the bandits in Manchuria. It was said he could speak a dozen dialects but he never displayed the knowledge. All of that was reflected in his eyes. They were a pale washed-out grey, level and mirthless even when he laughed.
He came toward us, walking softly.
“Well,” he said to Mrs. Montgomery. “Everybody’s here, what? And now Nelson’s here it’s perfect, what? Nelson, how about a spot of dinner with me tête-à-tête? We haven’t settled the affairs of the nation for a long while, have we young fellow? You and I will cut off together when Mrs.’ Montgomery throws us out, eh what?”
“Thanks,” I said, “I’d like to, Best.”
He smiled; there was a flicker in his eyes which was not humorous. “That’s topping,” he said. “Join me when you’re ready, eh?” He took a sip from his highball, bowed and moved away. I looked at Elsa whose increasing restlessness indicated that she wished me to move on also.
“The war was won,” I said, “on the playing fields of Eton.”
“What’s got into Jamy?” said Elsa. “I didn’t know you two were such friends. I thought—”
“You thought he had other interests,” I remarked. “Which girl is it now?”
“The new one,” said Elsa. “Don’t say you haven’t heard? The one who came out here last spring and keeps staying and staying. Miss Joyce, of course. She’s dancing on the terrace now.” I glanced toward the terrace long enough to see that Major Best was not moving in that direction.
“I didn’t know that you and Jameson Best were such friends,” Elsa said again.
“Neither did I,” I answered. “Don’t you see what’s happening?”
“No,” she said, “do you?” The boy passed with a tray of cocktails and I took another, my third.
“Another affair,” I said. “The Major wants to be seen leaving here with me. He wants everyone to know just how he is spending his evening. He knows that I generally go home early. Well, it doesn’t matter.”
She began to laugh. “Tom,” she said, “that’s too clever to be right.”
“No,” I told her, “it’s too easy not to be. The human mind is almost always the same, Elsa. If you’ll excuse me, I think I might dance now.”
“With Miss Joyce?” she asked.
“Perhaps,” I said. “It doesn’t matter, does it?”
“Probably not,” said Elsa, “but I am a little sorry for Miss Joyce.”
“You’re probably right,” I told her. “But it doesn’t matter, does it?”
Chapter 2
I drank a fourth cocktail and moved toward the terrace. I had seen Eleanor Joyce, this girl of whom Mrs. Montgomery had spoken, often enough during the last few months. In a community as small as the foreign community of Peking everybody meets, and a stranger is always welcome. I had not suspected until that afternoon that Eleanor Joyce might be that kind of girl, as one delicately puts it: The idea interested me and a sort of mental upset occurred which had happened often enough before in the lives of casual males. Eleanor Joyce ceased to be an abstraction, and became a person. I stood on the edge of the terrace, waiting with a new interest until I saw her.
The dancers were moving on the terrace, idiotically, aimlessly, when one comes to think of it. I found myself watching them, with an odd sense of embarrassment for their behavior, contrasting their movements with tribal dance rhythms. When I did this the whole affair of the dance descended to a primitive sort of plane, that had to do with biology and taboos and natural selection. The dancing was not really as good as most unsophisticated folk dancing. The slow steps and the polite turnings were stylized and vapid. As I stood there I had an impression of the whole world I knew falling into a drowsy dance, moving to an inhibited syncopation. I could imagine all the foreigners in Peking turning to that impulsive beat. Something was moving us along ridiculous lines, something that none of us recognized and that none of us understood. Behind the deepening blue of the North China sky an orchestra of the gods that made us all ridiculous was playing, enormous and timeless.
I saw the faces I knew move past me, some amused, some intense, some languid. One could not help wondering what force of circumstance had gathered these dancers together, strangers in a strange land from every end of the earth. Some had run from disillusion only to find more of it. Some had run to escape disgrace and probably had found that running did no good. Some of us had come there seeking something new and there was nothing new. But there was one thing which we all had in common—a certain dangerous initiative, not possessed by our countrymen at home. I saw the dancers moving past me, young, old, plain or beautiful. It made no difference which, for they all had a certain sameness, a common wistfulness, a common loneliness, a common sense perhaps of being together in a land where they were not particularly wanted.
The beat of the music quickened and Eleanor Joyce moved past me, lightly adjusted to the music’s unexpected change. For a moment she was so close I could have touched her. For a moment she was distinct, in focus, while all the other dancers were blurred; then she was lost again. She had appeared and disappeared, as irrationally as friends and acquaintances in a lifetime; and the dance was like a miniature of human existence after I saw her, as steady, as commanding, and as meaningless. She had been dancing with young Boldini of the Italian Legation. She had been leaning away from him, laughing at something he was saying, giving a hint, probably intentional, of a nymph struggling in a satyr’s arms. She had been pure and bright at that moment, probably the result of an optical illusion, but the impression was desirable and I had no great wish to analyze it. She had been dressed in green and brown, a tailored dress of chartreuse green foulard, a brown belt, brown sandals, brown trimming on her hat; and arms and legs were consciously burned to a golden brown. She might have been in any one of a hundred country clubs, or at a European watering place, instead of on the Montgomerys’ terrace in the Legation Quarter of Peking. She was as finished in color and line as one of the year’s newest motor models. I could imagine, as I had before when I had seen her, that she had as little individuality, should one bother to lift the hood. Yet I knew that she must be different, or she would not have been there that afternoon. She was not the first girl I had seen come to Peking, out of nowhere, to stay a while and disappear. She was not an adventuress. I wondered what she wanted. I wondered what the place gave her, what she saw, what she thought—probably almost nothing. Then I saw her again and I stepped toward her across the terrace.
“Please,” I said to Boldini and then I was a part of the dance. I was holding her in my arms, quite impersonally, in a close conventional embrace. She smiled at me quickly—even teeth, firm chin, brown eyes that sparkled as she smiled, dark brown hair.
“Hello,” she said, “I haven’t seen you for a long while.”
“I don’t go out much,” I said.
“No,” she said, “I know you don’t.” She glanced at me sidewise. “You’re rather eccentric, aren’t you?”
“Perhaps,” I said. “Everyone gets eccentric who stays out here for a while. I am tired of dancing. Are you?”
“But you’ve just started dancing,” she said. “You can’t be tired.”
“I mean I’d like to talk to you,” I said.
“I’ve often wondered if you ever would,” she answered. “You’ve had chances enough. I wonder what makes you want to now.”
“Well,” I said, “it doesn’t matter, does it?”
“No,” she said, “but I am very flattered, really. I suppose you think you’re being nice, don’t you?”
“No,” I said, “not very. I was standing there and I began to think about you, that’s all.”
We sat down in two chairs beside a lotus pool a few yards away from the terrace.
“What were you thinking about me?” she asked.
“Rather impertinent things,” I said. She looked hard at me through the dusk.
“I suppose you talk to everyone this way,” she remarked. “I don’t mind it really. Well, what were you thinking?”
“I was wondering what brought you here,” I said. “If one stays here long enough one wonders that about all sorts of people. There must be something here you like because you’ve stayed.”
She leaned back in her chair and looked up at the sky.
“I like the world,” she said. “I left home to see the world.”
“Have you seen it?” I asked.
“Quite a good deal,” she said, “but not enough. Why shouldn’t I?”
“No reason,” I said. “It isn’t even unusual as long as your family doesn’t mind.”
She smiled at me. “As a matter of fact, they don’t approve of it,” she said. “I rather thought you would. Why shouldn’t I? Men see the world. You’ve seen it, haven’t you?”
“Yes,” I said.
“And now you’re tired of seeing it? You’re trying to get away from it now. Well, I’m not tired. I never will be.”
“Probably not,” I told her. “If you call this seeing the world, but you’d get tired if you really saw it. As it is, you’ll only get into trouble. That’s what always happens to a girl who wanders about indefinitely alone.”
Miss Joyce looked at me again. Her lips curled up faintly.
“Are you going to protect me, Mr. Nelson?” she asked.
“No,” I said. “I wasn’t thinking of that—not this afternoon.”
“What were you thinking of?” she asked. I offered her a cigarette and took one myself.
“I was thinking if you really must get into trouble, Miss Joyce,” I said, “that you’d do very well to get into trouble with me.”
Miss Joyce tapped the end of her cigarette delicately. Her face was vague in the growing dusk but I saw that she was amused.
“That’s very delicately put,” she said. “I suppose you know what the answer ought to be.”
“Yes,” I said. “The answer is ‘Thank you very much Mr. Nelson, but I am quite able to look out for myself.’ That isn’t the real answer, of course. It’s just as well it isn’t.”
“You’re not being very polite?” she asked.
“No,” I said, “I don’t suppose I am, but it doesn’t matter, does it?”
“Then you might as well go on,” she said. “Why do you think I might refuse?”
There seemed just then no harm in being frank and perhaps I felt that it might do her good. There was something about her poise and complete assurance that made me wish to puncture it.
“You’re too. careful, I suppose,” I said. “You have an instinct for self-preservation which will keep you on nice boats and with nice people until you find a vice-president of a reputable trust company to marry. In the meanwhile, you can see the world, a somewhat antiseptic world where there will be no malaria or tropical diseases, where there will be personally conducted tours to interesting places and where the latest style of dress is always available. By the way, that’s a most successful dress you’re wearing now, Miss Joyce.”
She dropped her cigarette on the grass and stepped on it. “Do you really think I’m like that?” she asked.
“Yes,” I said, “rather, but it doesn’t matter, does it?”
“I wish,” she said and her voice was sharper, “that you wouldn’t use that phrase again.”
“Very well,” I said. “Why not?”
“Because it’s too much like you, Mr. Nelson,” she said. “I should rather be like the person you think I am than like the person I think you are.”
“Go ahead,” I answered. “It’s only fair to give me your opinion. What sort of a person do you think I am?”
“Rather undesirable,” she said. “An American gone native. I’ve seen them in Paris and I’ve seen them here. We can’t stand change of environment. Now an Englishman keeps his own world about him.”
“Oh quite,” I said. “Jolly well so, like Major Best. The war was won on the playing fields of Eton.”
“Yes,” she said. “It was. Not by crawling into a corner on a small income and allowing oneself to be pampered by Chinese servants, and allowing everything to drift by and becoming immersed in Chinese culture.”
“You know a good deal about me,” I said.
“Yes,” she answered. “Everyone talks about nothing except personalities here. You’re finished, Mr. Nelson. Pretty soon the Chinese dogs won’t growl at you any more. I’ve begun but I hope I won’t end in the way you have.”
“I’m sure you won’t,” I said. “The dogs will always take you for an American girl, but it doesn’t matter, does it?”
I used the phrase unconsciously. I had never thought of myself as being finished until she had spoken.
“You’re probably right,” I added, “but I’d rather finish here than anywhere else in the world.”
“Yes,” she said, “It’s decorative and comfortable.” Then she looked up. Someone had moved in front of us and I knew the talk was over. Mr. Moto was standing bowing.
“Do you know Mr. Moto?” asked Miss Joyce.
“Oh yes,” said Mr. Moto, “oh yes. Mr. Nelson and I are very good friends. He has been talking to you about his book perhaps.”
“No,” I answered, “not exactly. I’ll never finish that book. Miss Joyce knows I won’t.”
Mr. Moto bowed to her. “Perhaps Miss Joyce would care to dance,” he said. Miss Joyce looked at me and smiled.
“It’s a way to see the world,” she answered. “I should be delighted, Mr. Moto.”
Chapter 3
Time of late years had begun to move past me easily. Day elided smoothly with the night, and I had begun to accept the fact, with a subtle sort of resignation which was not unpleasant. I had been restless once. I had struggled against time. I had had desires. I had filled my days with activities which could not be encompassed by hours, but the timelessness of that city where tradition and where the past mingled indefinably with the present, where the modern phrase of politeness was an apology for disturbing one’s neighbor’s chariot, had made me broad-minded about time. I looked at my watch and found without surprise that the hour was getting on to half past eight. A middle-aged Chinese in a long black robe spoke to me—Prince Tung. He spoke in the birdlike, bell-like tones of his native tongue, every phrase perfect, every gesture a mirror of etiquette, that made my conversation with Eleanor Joyce, which was still running through my mind, seem crude and nakedly barbarous.
“You have not been lately to my poor house,” he said. “I have missed you. There are the crickets; you have not seen the crickets.”
His words brought me back to the other side of my life which touched upon China. It brought me back to a world which was shifting, enigmatic, fascinating. It was a world which was dying perhaps but one which I respected. It was a brutal world, a merciless world, but one which was inconceivably cultivated and polite, with a cultivation that rose above sordidness and disrepair and above the annoyances of the present. I admired Prince Tung intensely and was proud that he honored me with a casual friendship. Prince Tung came of a Manchu family which had been powerful at court in the days of the Empire. He had seen the Forbidden City as a boy and could describe the great days vividly. Like most of the Manchus he had been improvident with money and now he gave evidence of being very poor. He was withdrawn from politics; he spent most of his time in part of his ruined palace, near the northern gate of the city, writing poetry on scrolls with his brushes, but his tastes were catholic and foreigners amused him: If his amusement was contemptuous, his manner never showed it. He had an ingrained politeness, cultivated by a slavish childhood study of the classics.
“You are amused, my master?” I said to him.
“Yes,” said Prince Tung. “I am diverted. Your people always divert me. I say this to you because you will understand, too well perhaps for your own good.”
Prince Tung smiled and placed his delicate hands inside his sleeves.
“That young woman you were speaking to, for instance. I never can understand. Is she well-bred?”
“Yes,” I said. “Decidedly so, I think.”
“Well,” said Prince Tung. “That is very interesting. I never can understand.”
“We were talking together frankly,” I told him. “She told me I was finished.”
He did not grasp my meaning at first and I had difficulty in explaining the phrase in Chinese.
“Oh,” said Prince Tung. “At length I see. What is your honorable age? I have forgotten.”
“Thirty-four,” I said.
“Then she is very nearly right,” said Prince Tung. “You should have sons by now who are grown to men. Personally I was married at fifteen and besides I have had six concubines. My family is large and I no longer worry. You should have your birds and your walks and conversations. You should no longer worry.”
“I don’t very much,” I said.
“Very much is not adequate,” said Prince Tung. “For example, I will tell you something. Things are very bad in the city to-day. A merchant, one of my best friends, has sent several boxes for safekeeping to the Legation bank this afternoon. I shall do the same to-morrow, but I am not worried.”
“What things are very bad?” I asked. I knew he would not answer me when I asked him for he never liked a direct question.
“It is nothing,” he said. “It has been said also that certain persons who frequently concoct trouble are about. The country is being clawed again by the barbarians. It is bitter that we are living through the period of turmoil which invariably follows the conclusion of a dynasty. These times have always been uncomfortable but they will pass.”
“Are you worried about your property?” I asked.
Prince Tung smiled again. “I have never worried about my property,” he said. “There is nothing I can do.” His reply did not exasperate me as it might have a few years back.
“But you have friends, you have influence,” I said.
“Perhaps,” said Prince Tung. “Until the time arises. One can never tell.”
Then I heard Major Best calling me. His voice was clipped and matter-of-fact and reassuring.
“I say, Nelson,” he called. “Are you ready now?”
The last red glow of the sunset was on the street outside. The ricksha lamps were lighted. Major Best laid his hand on my arm. I felt his fingers on the sleeve of my coat, closing on my arm, more tightly than was necessary.
“I say,” said Best. “Did that Prince Tung Johnny say anything to you?”
“He said things were bad in the city,” I answered. “Why?”
I heard the Major draw in a deep breath and he dropped my arm.
“I saw a man in the street to-day,” he said. “I can tell a Chinese face in a crowd. He saw me too. I hope he didn’t know I knew him.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Because my life wouldn’t be worth tuppence,” said Major Best. “Come. We’ve time for a spot of whiskey before dinner.”
I looked at him, not particularly startled, for one deals in exaggerations so often that they do not mean much. I have heard plenty of people say that their lives would not be worth tuppence if they did not arrive in time at the Jones’ party. I looked at Jameson Best and I could not see his face clearly. Then I remembered that Peking is probably the safest city in the world.
Chapter 4
Our rickshas padded through the gate of the wall of the Legation Quarter and turned right and then left, on Hatamen Street. It was broad like all the streets of North Chinese cities. Police with revolvers in olive drab uniforms were directing the traffic. The open fronts of shops were squares of light. The Chinese characters above their doorways were dim above them, and Hatamen Street was a river of sound. The falsetto chant of Chinese voices and Chinese laughter erased the disturbing thoughts that were in my mind. Eleanor Joyce had said that I was finished, but her voice no longer bothered me, for it was lost in that sea of other voices, in that surge of humanity about us. The smell of Chinese cooking came pleasantly to my nostrils. There was a broad tolerance emanating from that conglomeration of sounds and smells that gave me a love for the city of Peking. It was a noble city with its walls and avenues, its hidden temples and its palaces. It was a city of the imagination, a city of the spirit falling into a dreamlike ruin; falling into memories as fantastic as the figures on a Chinese scroll; always changing but never changed.
There was that realization, comforting and complete, that the high grey walls of the Tartar City were guarding us; that the pavilioned towers above the gates were staring out into the night, warding off the evil spirits from an uncertain world outside. The walls were shutting out the clamor of South China, the floods and the starvation of the Yellow River and the sinister vacancy of the mountain passes that stretched northward like huge steps, beyond the ancient Great Wall to the Mongolian Plateau. Peking was designed by its builders to resist evil fortune. Even its straightest streets had occasional eccentric curves designed to break the dangers of symmetry. The courtyards of its houses were designed so that only harmonious spirits should enter and, on the whole, everything had been done well.