Indiscreet Letters From Peking Part 26

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 wis.h.i.+ng 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sed 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. "d.a.m.ned Germans," said the smaller officer, who was the senior, and who had been quite silent for some time. "d.a.m.ned 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 j.a.panese. It was to be a new arrangement. They went on talking in this wise for a long time, and I heard these sc.r.a.ps 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 j.a.pAN

THE PAGEANT OF PEKING (In collaboration with Donald Mennie)

Romantic

INDISCREET LETTERS FROM PEKING

THE FORBIDDEN BOUNDARY

THE HUMAN COBWEB

THE UNKNOWN G.o.d

THE ROMANCE OF A FEW DAYS

THE REVOLT

THE ETERNAL PRIESTESS

THE ALTAR FIRE

w.a.n.g, THE NINTH