Silhouettes of Peking

by L. de Hoyer; D. de Martel; Sapajou; D. de Warzee

  “So much the better,” he said. “You must be an optimist.”

  “Yes, as much as possible. But your speech does not please me at all. I draw three conclusions from it: (1) You have suffered too, (2) you are afraid of Mrs. Brixton, and (3) we shall be thirteen at table to-morrow.”

  “Wait a bit,” said Maugrais, “I have an idea. The third conclusion is rather troublesome. I see one remedy. Do you know Chatours?”

  “Who is Chatours?”

  “A young man you ought to know, old man. Besides, he is a friend of mine. I can recommend him unreservedly. Each year, by means that would prove expensive to you or me, he manages to save ten or twelve thousand francs which he immediately spends in Egypt, India or wherever his fancy takes him. This time it is China upon which his choice has fallen. He has been in Peking nearly four months now, in a comfortable Chinese house studying Chinese history, smoking opium in spite of the prohibition, and frequenting only the Chinese with whom he appears already thoroughly at home. He is really very original. He cannot understand living abroad without adopting the customs of the natives and becoming absolutely familiarized with their ways. He thinks European society here only makes the outlook ugly and serves to introduce ideas that are to be deplored.”

  “Oh, yes, now I remember, I have heard of him …”

  “Just think, once the ‘boy’ in a neighbouring yamen cut off his pigtail and Chatours gave him to understand that if in a week it had not grown again, he would strangle him for the good of aesthetics. The boy ran away and has never come back. Chatours does nothing like other people. He goes about in a sedan chair and though he often comes to see me for the sake of old times, he has implored me never to try to violate his sanctuary where it is more than probable the most unheard of things occur. I tried sending my boy to have a look round, but he saw no one but a fat old servant, probably an eunuch, who spouted Confucius at him.”

  “Yes, I have heard people speak of him. He has even managed to get himself a bad reputation in Peking. He was seen, it seems, in a box at the new theatre at Chienmen with some Chinese actors. I think it was he, too, who having tried to rape the daughter of the Chinese ex-Minister to Panama, was very indignant at her resistance and declared that it was in direct contradiction with the characteristic docility and the traditional passiveness of the Eastern woman. I wonder what makes you think such an extraordinary person would condescend to accept the invitation of a humble Occidental like myself!”

  Maugrais got up without answering and left the room. Telephoning to Chatours, he asked him to come round at once and share his lunch.

  “You will see,” he said when he returned to the smoking room, “the fellow is neither quite wild nor quite civilized. He is shy like all original people, the sight of a stranger of your colour will put him out of countenance at first. I will begin by asking if he is free to-morrow. Most likely he is; then he will not dare refuse. Besides he likes exaggerating his repugnance for society. He is not really averse to frequenting it. Once the contact is made, he soon discovers the strange undercurrents that influence our sayings and doings. If possible, put him next to Mrs. Brixton. Perhaps that may lead to all sorts of unexpected things.”

  Ten minutes afterwards, Chatours arrived. His head was completely shaved, but in spite of that, he was rather nice looking, even elegant.

  “How handsome you look like that,” said Maugrais after the usual introductions.

  “It is comfortable,” answered Chatours in a tired voice, “and it saves several minutes of absurd labour every day. I have also discovered a temple which, according to some of my Chinese friends, possesses a priest with Tibetan secrets of the greatest importance. I can talk enough Chinese to make myself understood by this sage, and I mean to wring from him some of this knowledge which has been handed down century by century, from the Brahmins to the Lamas, and finally from a Lama to this priest. A lengthy stay in his temple will help me to win his confidence. Perhaps I may return with treasures of untold worth.”

  “Is that why your mane has fallen under the scissors?”

  “Yes, at least, that is one of the reasons.”

  “When do you leave?”

  “In a few days, I hope.”

  “I suppose, after this, then, you will only pay flying visits to Peking?”

  “Probably. Peking tires me, everything here is just a bit rotten. There are no real Chinese and the sight of all the round heads to which modern ideas have fitted that great invention of this century, the bowler, makes me sick.”

  “But there are not only Chinese in Peking,” said Beaurelois, who thought the moment had come to speak. “The Europeans, as a community, are quite interesting and you will see the like nowhere else. You would have to search very thoroughly before discovering, in our midst, the ideas that are killing the old world.”

  “Perhaps, but I mistrust that legend about broad mindedness across the seas. Does no one talk scandal in Peking? Don’t you take any interest in the doings of your neighbours?”

  “No!”

  “Well, seldom, and anyhow not maliciously,” corrected Maugrais.

  “Don’t you people in Peking ostentatiously extend a very welcoming hand to rich scamps? Are not unknown genius and virtue as we understand them, obliged to give way to mediocrity ‘en place’ as we used to say?”

  “You always must exaggerate,” said Maugrais. “Probably we have neither great genius nor great virtues here. There are witty, well behaved and even amiable people and also people we like and others we don’t….”

  “And, also, there are no scamps, not even millionaire ones,” said Beaurelois laughing.

  “And if there were,” continued Maugrais, “we have not come across them, we don’t even know if they exist, or where they live if they do. Peking is a city of officials, slightly formal and perhaps a trifle snobbish, but, anyhow, clean minded and agreeable to frequent. It is a casual and temporary agglomeration of people who have seen the world, have stayed in Paris and London; passed through Florence and Athens, played with politics in Petrograd or with finance in America; people who have crossed all the seas, made collections in the East and made love in Venice… but it is above everything else, a city that has given birth to a special type of human being… the Peking silhouette.”

  “Of which you are a good specimen,” interrupted Beaurelois.

  “Not altogether.” Maugrais tried to defend himself, smilingly. Then suddenly turning to Chatours, “look here, old man, what are you doing to-morrow?” And he glanced significantly at Beaurelois.

  “Eating, thinking and not sleeping.”

  “That’s not right. You must not leave this city, I can assure you, without studying the life the Europeans lead here,” said Beaurelois.

  “Perhaps I am wrong. What do you suggest I do?’

  “Well, you can have no excuse for refusing to dine with me to-morrow night. You will meet, I am vain enough to believe, the nicest people in town and you will still be able to carry out easily that programme you have just planned for your day.”

  Chatours was about to attempt to invent a reason for refusing this invitation when he saw Maugrais make a sign to him to accept. In his mind he began to doubt. Beaurelois, with an understanding quite unusual in him, observed what was taking place and seized the opportunity to interpret the silence according to his own wishes.

  “Its quite understood, then, isn’t it? You will have lots of time when you are with your priest to cultivate your love of solitude; a little gaiety will amuse you and you need only remember as much of it as pleases you.”

  Chatours smiled; as a matter of fact he was flattered by the way he was being pressed. To show he considered the invitation accepted, Maugrais changed the conversation. “Tell me how goes your adventure with young Chu. I hear you met with an unexpected resistance.”

  Chatours looked sad, “I am afraid, my friend, this country is going to the dogs. In less than three years the Japanese will be in Peking. A country that wants a place in the sun must
be able to depend on one of the two greatest forces in the world, military or moral. China has never been able to obtain the former and is beginning to lose the latter. European civilization has scarcely touched it and its own ancient civilization is rapidly dying out. Its special sort of civilization is made up of traditions, of a mass of fatalistic philosophy, of healthy morality, and of family customs. At Yukatan I saw an architect try to restore one of those monuments of the long vanished culture of the Mayas; as his work progressed, the building lost its balance; balance that was based not on mathematical calculations, but on the laws of assimilation which regulate not only the men and beasts, but the things of this world. It was useless to try to erect scaffolding or anything of that sort; this building, a hundred times centenarian, finally crumbled at the feet of the horrified American. My friends, modern Chinese are incompetent architects and they will make the magnificent structure of China which has been preserved for 40 centuries, crumble to pieces through lack of moral balance.”

  He went towards the door without taking leave, Maugrais stopped him with a gesture. “If I understand rightly, you are stating that China’s downfall is at hand just because the daughter of the ex-minister Chu chooses to resist your advances.”

  Chatours paused a second, thinking, his hand on the door knob, then he said gravely, almost sadly, “That’s it, you have understood,” and he disappeared.

  Beaurelois took out his watch. “Past one, I must take my departure too. I don’t want to keep my wife waiting. I suppose that the result of our conversation is that your place will be put at our table to-morrow.” He held out his hand. “And remember what I say, you are on a dangerous incline. You are too much alone, you are yielding to the debilitating air of this place. Take care you don’t shortly become a Peking silhouette, one of those peculiar people who avoid Europeans like the plague and isolate themselves in a temple in the Chinese quarter, seeking, alone, the origin of some long forgotten hieroglyphics and, at nights, air their melancholy on the Tartar Wall which overlooks the yellow roofs of the Imperial City, dreaming of the barbarous and splendid past related in the Court annals. I am afraid I detect a tendency in you to become a ‘Chinese-loving misanthrope’ and that would be a calamity. You must pull yourself together, come out of your seclusion, see your friends, and above all…” he concluded as he went into the hall, “come to dinner to-morrow.”

  As soon as Maugrais found himself alone, he took a long look at the Japanese prints that decorated the smoking room walls. His glance rested on the slender distorted body of one of Utamaru’s Geisha. “Her head, studded with pins, the typical head dress of the courtisan, seems like a halo of love encircling her,” he said to himself, “as for her little body always bent or distorted, with neither shoulders nor hips, it appears to indicate that, mastered by man’s sensuality, the musme carries through the endless ages an indissolvable alliance of pain and love. But there is a great deal of truth in Beaurelois’s words and advice,” he thought. “I certainly felt better when I used to get up at six, see my ponies at their training on the race course and coming home sit down to write a dispatch about the programme of the developement of the Chinese railways, with the illusion that not only would it be read, but that it might prove useful. And when I cursed my partner for his bad play at bridge in the Club in the afternoons, and when at dinner, I made love to my neighbour, who very often was not even listening to me and would reply, for instance, that she did not feel any draught, yes, I certainly felt better, both physically and morally.”

  He thought for an instant, then he rose. “Well, let’s take up our old existence; I’ll follow a programme of activities and a mode of living. I shall start my abandoned work again, that old plan for the merging of French industrial companies in China. Even if the Board of Directors of my Company don’t approve of the idea, it will be astonished at my waking up. Then I shall begin to go out, to small dinner parties especially, they are less boring and the food is better. I shall play bridge at the Club again. I shall also take more exercise, riding and going for long walks on Sundays with the members of the Sunday Club, composed of the sporting elite of Peking, who, each Sunday, lunch in some temple in the Western Hills. And last but not least, I shall go home on leave in the autumn. It is strange but true that a European must sometimes return to his native air in order to get rid of the morbid germs of the East. He comes back a few months later with new blood, more ambition and fresh aspirations, all of which seem to diminish here. He comes back also with a desire to live which before he left was noticeably slight…”

  He walked over to his desk, his mind quite made up. “Where shall we begin?” He thought for a minute, ready for the fray. “Well, let’s start by dining to-morrow with the Beaurelois,” and satisfied with this decision, he came back to the sofa, and lay down again on the couch, pulling towards him the cushions which had grown more supple and obedient as if overcome with reverence for this awakening energy.

  CHAPTER II

  SEATED at her dressing table, Blanche de Beaurelois put the last touches to her hair, sticking a hairpin here and there to sustain the clever structure of golden curls that her maid had not been able to steady thoroughly.

  This extremely important part of her dressing terminated, she cast a complacent glance at her mirror. The reflection it shewed apparently gratified her, for she immediately gave herself into the expert hands of the faithful Eugenie, who was waiting to slip her frock over her head.

  A tardy sunbeam at the end of this June day, streamed through the wide open bay window and flooded the whole room with a soft light. It shewed up the harmonious lines of the young woman’s figure. Fairly tall, full figured, hair like gold, she looked like one of those beauties Rubens loved to paint. She had already passed her thirtieth year but was still capable of holding her own; even if the sharp tongued Maxwell, the new American secretary, said, and probably rightly too, that there might be some surprises at “the unpacking”, it was certainly true that Blanche looked a very desirable person and really cut out for “love’s duel” as La Fontaine has it. Perhaps she was rather too free in her use of those cosmetics which are supposed to assist women in correcting the imperfections of their complexions, for she was never without a layer of paint. This gave her face an artificial brilliancy without which it would have certainly looked better.

  But in this country of the colourful Mings should we blame a woman for brightening the natural richness of her colour, should the touching up of her face be counted as a crime against her, even if it should be done with the idea of hiding the unwanted wrinkles?

  During the ten years that followed her marriage with Baron de Beaurelois, Blanche could boast of never having failed in her role of a great coquette. Soon after her marriage, she had gone to Japan, then to China, her husband being interested in the building of railways and in public works.

  At Tokio first, then in Shanghai where she stayed some time, she had many adventures which amply justified the remark made about her; like nature, her heart abhorred a vacuum. Lately in Peking the place had been filled by a young Lieutenant in the British Guard who had now returned to India with his regiment.

  Beaurelois was plump, rather nice looking, with upturned moustache. He always wore a selfsatisfied air which blinded him to the extent of doubting the virtue of all women except his own wife’s. He was on the whole, an almost perfect type of the betrayed but sympathetic husband.

  Nobody minded his conjugal misfortunes. He did not even inspire that mixture of pity and contempt that men in his case usually do. It was an understood thing that he was the husband of an unfaithful wife and for ten years, everyone whose business took them to China, recognised the situation without even thinking of emitting a criticism. After a vacation, those who returned from Europe simply asked, “by the way, with whom is the Baroness now?” Then their curiosity satisfied, sure to avoid making awkward remarks in the future, they greeted Beaurelois with pleasure and shook hands with him effusively.

  And when playing bridge,
even if he had one of those extraordinary no trump hands, and even when his persistent luck seemed out of the common, a less lucky opponent would scarcely take the trouble to smile at the winner.

  Like happy nations, he had no history. Maybe because his temperament forbade those effusions for which his wife easily found vigorous substitutes, maybe, on the contrary, Blanche, artful when it was a question of calming any suspicion, knew how to reserve a certain share of her affection for his personal use. Whatever the reason, he never sought distraction from the humdrum monotony of his married life. On the contrary, he was most attentive to his wife and took a lot of trouble to increase the opportunities for her to meet the people she liked. No one smiled any more so accustomed were they to see the happiest of the triangle regularly make fast friends with the man who was, for the time being, Mme. de Beaurelois’s choice.

  Lately, Blanche had been worrying him; she was irritable for nothing, extremely nervous and had not been at all herself since the departure of the British regiment. She had even given him such frequent proofs of her affection in their moments of intimacy, that, although he was very flattered, he was not a little astonished, unused as he was to such treatment. Only the other day she had been complaining that her friends neglected her, and had led Louis up to the point of proposing this dinner party. Without seeming to touch on the subject she had mentioned Jean Maugrais’s name. He had been in her mind some time now, as a possible candidate for the little lieutenant’s place. It would please her to replace that sportsman by an intellectual, whose solid biceps and splendid figure promised great things for the tête-à-tête during which she meant to encourage more intimate relations later on. And great was her disappointment when she received the note refusing her invitation; she was not even satisfied at the result of her husband’s visit, but happily, another last minute refusal had given her a fresh occasion for asking Maugrais to reconsider his answer and to her surprise he accepted with pleasure.