“She spoke. He drank in her words his ears open to the wisdom that fell from her lips, whilst outside, months, even years passed by. But one day a terrible noise broke the religious silence of the sanctuary. A jealous priest, followed by an armed horde, violated the holy place to kill the intruder. Opening a secret door, the maiden led him through an underground passage and suddenly disappeared. The young man felt a great shock, and when he recovered his senses, he found himself before the picture. His friend had finished speaking with the priest, who was regarding him paternally. ‘Where am I,’ he stammered, ‘What has happened to me?’ The priest took his hand and said calmly, ‘Nothing at all, a too intense current of Tao fluid bewildered you. It went to your head, now you are all right again.’ This picture represents the moment of the young man’s awakening. We may gather this experience turned him into a good neophyte, a Shi of the Holy doctrine of Laotzu.”
Maugrais left the picture and examined a Satsuma incense burner representing a sleeping cat. “That story you have just told us is really beautiful,” sighed Blanche, “but are you sure that it is the subject of the picture?”
“No,” answered Maugrais gravely, “but that is of no importance.”
“How funny you are,” laughed Blanche. Tell me, is that how you amuse little Miss de Frissonges when you take her for long rides round Peking?” Maugrais coloured slightly, like a school boy found out, and went towards the door a little embarrassed.
“Oh no, we practise the cardinal virtue of the Taoist, silence.” But Blanche once started, insisted. “Come now, I saw you the other day at the Russian Legation. You were so deep in conversation that you never even turned your head in my direction. As soon as you catch sight of her at a dinner or a tea you take shelter by her side.”
And as Maugrais, still smiling, bowed a little stiffly and opened the door, she threw after him these words, perhaps prompted by her instinct of grande amoureuse, “All right, I know why you never leave Melle de Frissonges any more.” Maugrais stopped short at the door and waited. “Because you are afraid of the Other.” And she burst into a hearty laugh that he could still hear ringing in his ears, as he crossed the small courtyard, covered with a pang where the flowers, drooping in the heat, gave out only a feeble and rather morbid perfume.
CHAPTER V
THE clock on the Hong Kong Bank had just struck three. Jean finished putting on his riding things. He reckoned he had fully a quarter of an hour before Melle de Frissonges was due, so he did not hurry. Pacing his room he cast a glance at the mirror and made a face. His sloppy coat was badly cut, his breeches did not fit sufficiently snug at the knee and wrinkled, his brown leather boots, too broad in the instep, did not mould his calf. His last pair from Europe was worn out long ago and they were a badly copied pair, as could easily be seen, made by a Japanese boot maker in Hatamen Street.
“After all,” he thought, “we all get like that after five or six years in Peking. Every one knows I am no longer a griffin. Besides, no one remembers what the chic anglais is any more. Maybe my little Chinese tailor and his cut are criticized, but what do I care?” However, he could not help recalling the time when, as a smart horseman, he used to prance down the Avenue du Bois; he thought of Paris on a beautiful spring morning; the Avenue des Acacias full of people. He used to ride his handsome chestnut slowly along the road towards the pigeon shooting, recognizing, here and there among the crowd, friends with whom he amused himself and friendly faces he bowed to as he passed. How far away it all seemed. He certainly had loved his life in Paris. It had been the artificial life of pleasure that most of the young men of his age led but all the same it had pleased him. He appreciated the wit of the theatres on the Boulevards, he adored supper parties at the Pré Catalan and expeditions to Montmartre in gay society. The excursions by motor on the lovely roads through Brittany and Normandy, the flying visits to fashionable sea-side resorts during the summer months had amused him. He had enjoyed being a part of the crowd hungry for pleasure, for whom life was an eternal carnival and whose sole occupation seemed to be seeking amusement.
However, he was blasé and skeptical, and could not content himself with simply watching amusedly all these puppets. He delighted in trying to discover people’s real feelings under their masks.
He had found keen enjoyment in studying the activities of what is commonly known as la vie parisienne. Frequenting actors, an ardent first-night goer, in touch with the best known journalists, hearing the gossip those politicians who haunt the boulevard restaurants love to spread, he felt he was really living the slightly superficial though intense life usually led by the true Parisian, though, in reality, he was only studying the habits and customs.
But after a few seasons, this brilliant but monotonous life had finished by boring him; little by little he had tired of always discovering the same type with different features. A liaison which dragged on, while neither would own that the great passion had gradually changed to indifference, was the climax. He found it impossible to continue the life he was leading. People it had formerly interested and amused him to watch, changed to puppets whose oddities shocked him; he began to exaggerate their absurdities and they appeared to his eyes as caricatures out of Sem’s wittily sarcastic albums. Now he only watched absently their movements as a bored onlooker who yawns from his box at a play he has already seen. He knew by heart all their tricks and mannerisms.
In the middle of this moral crisis, he got a chance to go to China. Without a moment’s hesitation, he accepted. The Far East attracted him; he wanted to see for himself what truth there was in all the queer novels which vaunted the joys of living so far away from old Europe, comparing, in high flown language, the superiority of the art, the beauty of the landscapes, with the ugliness of our civilisation.
Life in Peking fascinated him immediately. The brilliant light lending a gay and picturesque atmosphere to the most commonplace sight and making the least attractive ruin quite poetic, had strongly impressed his artistic nature. He never tired of looking at the city when it was bathed in the sunlight; even the tawdriness of the processions in the streets appealed to him; the sun rays playing on the yellow tiles of the Forbidden City always surprised him afresh. He loved to wander down the wide avenues or the Hutungs in the Chinese City thinking of their constancy since the time Marco Polo wandered there too.
He had not yet ceased to thrill as he passed through the lanes in the cypress wood near the Temple of Heaven and each time his fancy took him to his favourite spot, he recalled with pleasure, in the ruined loneliness of this holy place, the pomp of the ceremonies and the display of splendour in the time of the great Emperors.
The free and easy life here pleased him too. But something was worrying him just now. He could not define what it was. The remembrance of that scene on the Wall with Mrs. Brixton was hateful to him. The woman seemed to haunt him in some way. She had awakened strange emotions in his breast, aroused desires he had thought vanished since his arrival in the Far East, for he had forgotten his former adventures. Since coming to Peking he had had no sentimental adventures as yet, even if he had not been precisely chaste.
The discovery of his ardent desire for her astonished him. He found himself ready to do the most foolish things in order to possess her. But at the same time a vague feeling of disquietude seized him. He recalled the familiar landscapes of former times, not that he regretted that life but the urge to rid himself of these surroundings was upon him. He felt the atmosphere, full of the dust of ages, enclosed him like a shroud, dulled his energy and paralysed his will. Little by little his whole being was becoming impregnated with it like poison that slowly but surely does its deadly work of destruction.
All these thoughts passed through his mind; he did not notice the flight of time. Chu, the fat first “boy” appeared in the doorway, his broad face wearing its usual grin. In his pidgin English, he said “Missy come.”
Downstairs Miss de Frissonges was getting out of her rickshaw. “How silly of me to be so late,”
she held out her hand to Jean, “nearly half an hour. Forgive me, but, as I was starting, the mail came. There were letters from France. I could not resist reading them at once. I do so love hearing the news from over there,” she added suddenly thoughtful.
The mafoos brought up the ponies, two pretty Mongolian animals well kept, bright coated and rather small. Their shape and size recalled but little of their prototypes in Europe. Strong necked, too short bodies, a sportsman like Graziolli would criticize them, for he spouted pedigree on every occasion and boasted of the superiority of the thoroughbred or the anglo-arab.
However, these two ponies were not bad specimens of the strong little sure-footed animals who could do a dozen miles across country without a rest, jumping without any hesitation the Kaoliang hedges or the mud walls on the Chinese country side.
Used to all kinds of sports, the young girl mounted her pony without any help from Jean. She had scarcely touched the saddle when the pony became impatient and bounded forward. Shortening her reins she immediately controlled it, talking to it and stroking it gently. After a few attempts at getting away, the animal calmed down and obeyed her without making any more difficulties. Maugrais could not help admiring the ease with which the girl mastered her mount, though for a moment he felt slightly anxious. Melle de Frissonges was slender and straightly built, and even the grey bowler, the usual hat for this sport, which is so unbecoming to most women, seemed to suit her. She had drawn her hair back under it and looked like a young boy; the exercise had caused the blood to rush to her face; and she was quite rosy as she listened to her companion’s compliments. “Bravo, little lady,” he said “you have an excellent seat and good hands.”
“I can’t take credit for that,” she retorted. I have ridden since I was nine and at the Korean mines where I was born and where I lived until we came here it was almost my only distraction.”
“Which way shall we go?” he asked as they left the Compound going down Legation Street. “Into the country, to the East or to the Race Course?”
“Not to the Race Course, heaps of people are there to-day.”
She was going to say “Mrs. Brixton too,” but some instinct warned her, so to hide her thoughts she added jokingly, “thanks, I have had enough of bores.”
“All right, let’s go to the Tomb of the Princess. We will follow the Canal and pretend we find it cool.”
They turned to the left and soon reached the Hatamen Gate. Here they slowed up, for between the two gates where the Peking-Mukden line runs, a crowd of conveyances pressed in all directions.
Rickshaws with fat men stretched out sanctimoniously in them or with women clad in silks varying in shade from white to water green or pale blue, jostled against heavy carts with uneven teams of mules, horses and donkeys harnessed to them. They transported enormous pot-bellied jars of rice wine to the near-by market. A string of donkeys were scarcely visible under the loads of hay they carried, only their long ears could be seen. A few camels, not yet returned to their Mongolian pasture lands, surpassed in height all other animals. They were waiting, very patient and resigned, to cross the line. A few tufts of hair on their elongated scraggy necks were all that remained of their winter coat.
Pedestrians walked with caution, picking their way; some carried their purchases, tiny parcels hanging from a string, others carried a cage in which strutted the family bird. It was carefully protected from the hot sun by a blue linen cover.
In the midst of this crowd, a blind man, guided by some charitable person, struck a gong at intervals to warn people of his approach, so that they should make way for him or help him pass. In the midst of shouts and oaths, the wheelbarrows of some water carriers squeaked as they jolted over the uneven stones. Two cheery looking policemen were very deliberately trying to assist all that impatient mob. Suddenly, however, they got excited and shouted to make way for a travelling chair. Two richly caparaisoned mules were harnessed to it, one in front and the other behind. The animals ambling along swung the chair slowly and gently to and fro; the silken curtains were drawn aside to admit the air. Stretched on bright coloured, embroidered cushions, an old man in military uniform dozed. Some soldiers followed the chair. In all probability, some city official summoned to the capital.
Busy steering their mounts through this seething mass of humanity which would not stir in spite of the mafoo’s cries, Jean and his companion did not speak. He felt good humoured now, he had forgotten his previous gloomy thoughts. He had ceased any attempt at self examination. The girl engrossed all his attention. He felt affection for her because he was convinced she was unlike other girls. She possessed great personality, quite different from the little girls in the Far East, from Shanghai or elsewhere who appeared from time to time at the Saturday evening dances at the Wagons Lits Hotel, and whom one ran across again sometimes at picnics. With them, he had only been able to broach a conversation so banal that he was always bored to tears; a game of tennis, a foxtrot was unmixed joy to them and their imagination could not soar beyond. They never thought there was anything else, any higher emotions than the satisfaction a cup of tea and cakes after some violent exercise procured them and which was their idea of a good time.
He felt incapable of sharing their simple enjoyment in life which needs a perfect physical balance but which also rather shows that those who possess it have their heart or brain in their stomachs. So up to now he had persistently avoided girls, preferring the society of women. He relied on them for more deeper impressions, for less worn sentiments and for a more complicated understanding of life’s contingencies.
The pair were now out of the crowd; the ponies were restless at being made to wait among all the rickshaws; the young people gave them their heads and they galloped off. In a few strides they had crossed the willow bordered road leading to the gate at the east of the second wall that surrounds the Chinese City. The Mafoo followed, almost hidden in a cloud of dust.
On the right bank of the stream, the dyers were spreading out large pieces of stuff to dry; on the opposite side, weavers spun rapidly between two boards the brass ball fastened to each thread. They had fixed their skeins of silk on to trestles to obtain a stronger twist. A flock of geese and ducks were feeding, white specks on the dark water.
“I did not see you at the American Legation ball the other night,” said Maugrais, as they slowed up. They pulled into a walk as they went over the old stone bridge thrown across the Peking-Tientsin Canal. After the siege of the Legations by the Boxers in 1900, when the railway was cut, the first people to leave passed this way.
“No,” she answered, “I went to Pa Ta Chu for the week end with Mme. de Beaurelois. Didn’t you know she had been in the Hills for some time. They have rented the big temple at the top for two months and every Saturday regularly they go there. I preferred accepting their invitation to dancing. We went on horseback; by Pa Li Tchoang it doesn’t take more than an hour and a half.”
“Were you many?”
“No, we three, your friend Chatours and young Graziolli who was invited by Mme. de Beaurelois for me, Mme. de Maricourt without her husband and the British officer who is beginning a flirtation with her. You see,” she added smiling, “flirtations were not ignored in the programme and our hostess had forgotten nothing.”
“I hope you enjoyed yourself.”
“Yes, pretty well. All day Sunday we went for long walks; we visited the Temple where the mummy of Kang Hsi’s father lies. You know whom I mean; that Emperor who, tired of the splendours of this world, did like Charles Quint, he withdrew into a monastery and spent the rest of his life praying for forgiveness of his sins. After dinner, we were not fatigued enough to sleep, so we strolled about under the great trees on a kind of esplanade overlooking the entire plain.”
“Graziolli’s chatter annoyed me. He understood at last and went to join the others grouped round Mme. de Beaurelois. They left me to myself; I sat on a stone wall and dreamed, dozing. Not a sound rose from the slumbering earth. Only the bell of a mule, as h
is shoes struck the stony road, broke the silence of the night from time to time. Far away in the pale moonlight, the silver face of the lake in the Summer palace could be distinguished. The farm dogs in the neighbourhood barked occasionally, answering each other; in the valley below, the lights went out one by one. Only a reddish glow marked the great city, and a dark blurred outline, its walls.”
“For one moment I thought I was in some corner of the Alps. I was living in a large house, half farm, half mansion. As if ashamed of the crevices, its walls were covered with ivy and honeysuckle. The harvest was in, it was the end of a warm summer’s day; the last cart, full of golden wheat was slowly wending its way home drawn by two pairs of white oxen, their horns decorated with ribbons. The harvest chief having climbed to the top, seemed to preside over this festivity. He held a branch of a birch tree in one hand and a bunch of cornflowers in the other. The youths, their faces tanned by the sun, followed slowly, their coats over their arms, their shirts open. They had forgotten the day’s fatigue; one was singing a song in broad dialect, whilst the others joined in the chorus. The girls from the farms, with poppies in their hair, followed the procession. A little later they paired off in front of the house and danced to the sounds of fife and drum. I was expected to open the dance with the harvest chief and then to dance with each man in turn. I had reached this part of my delightful dream when Graziolli brutally broke the spell by some silly remark about the coming tennis tournament in which I am playing with him.”
Silhouettes of Peking Page 7