Indiscreet Letters From Peking | Page 8

it was no good. We soon discovered that each one of us had been simulating a false interest in our never-ending discussion. We really wished to see with our own eyes these Legation Guards who might still save the situation.
Strolling out in the warm night, just as we were, we first came on them in the French Legation. The French detachment were merely sailors belonging to what they call their Compagnies de debarquement, and they were all brushing each other down and cursing the sacree poussiere. Such a leading motif has this Peking dust become that the very sailors notice it. Also we found two priests from Monseigneur F----'s Cathedral, sitting in the garden and patiently waiting for the Minister's return. I heard afterwards that they would not move until P---- decided that twenty-five sailors should march the next day to the Cathedral--in fact at daylight.
In all the Legations I found it was much the same thing--the men of the various detachments were brushing each other down and exchanging congratulations that they had been picked for Peking service. It was, perhaps, only because they were so glad to be allotted shore-duty after interminable service afloat off China's muddy coasts that they congratulated one another; but it might be also because they had heard tell throughout the fleets that the men who had come in '98, after the _coup d'etat_, had had the finest time which could be imagined--all loafing and no duties. They did not seem to understand or suspect....
I found later in the night that there had actually been a little trouble at the Tientsin station. The British had tried to get through a hundred marines instead of the maximum of seventy-five which had been agreed on. The Chinese authorities had then refused to let the train go, and although an English ship's captain had threatened to hang the station-master, in the end the point was won by the Chinese. By one or two in the morning everybody was very gay, walking about and having drinks with one another, and saying that it was all right now. Then it was that I remembered that it was already June--the historic month which has seen more crises than any other--and I became a little gloomy again. It was so terribly sultry and dry that it seemed as if anything could happen. I felt convinced that the guards were too few.

V
THE PLOT THICKENS
4th June, 1900.
* * * * *
No matter in what light you look at it, you realise that somehow--in some wonderful, inexplicable manner--normal conditions have ceased long ago--in the month of May, I believe. The days, which a couple of weeks ago had but twenty-four hours, have now at least forty-two. You cannot exactly say why this strange state of affairs obtains, for as yet there is nothing very definite to fix upon, and you have absolutely no physical sensation of fear; but the mercury of both the barometer and the thermometer has been somehow badly shaken, and the mainsprings of all watches and clocks, although still much as the mainsprings of clocks and watches in other parts of the world--bringing your mind to bear on it you know they are exactly the same--are merely mechanism, and allow the day to have at least forty-two hours. It is strange, is it not, and you begin to understand vaguely some of the quite impossible Indian metaphysics which tell you gravely that what is, is not, and that what is not can still be.... In the crushing heat you can understand that.
Perhaps it is all because the hours are now split into ten separate and different parts by the fierce rumours which rage for a few minutes and then, dissipating their strength through their very violence, die away as suddenly as they came. The air is charged with electricity of human passions until it throbs painfully, and then.... You are merrily eating your tiffin or your dinner, and quite calmly cursing your "_boy_" because something is not properly iced. Your "boy," who is a Bannerman or Manchu and of Roman Catholic family, as are all servants of polite Peking society, does not move a muscle nor show any passing indignation, as he would were the ordinary rules and regulations of life still in existence. He, like everyone of the hundreds of thousands of Peking and the millions of North China, is waiting--waiting more patiently than impatient Westerners, but waiting just as anxiously; waiting with ear wide open to every rumour; waiting with an eye on every shadow--to know whether the storm is going to break or blow away. There is something disconcerting, startling, unseemly in being waited on by those who you know are in turn waiting on battle, murder, and sudden death. You feel that something may come suddenly at any