by Ann Bridge
She started violently as the door opened. Joanna came in, summery, neat and cool, but looking very disturbed; she apologised for being late—“I was with poor Chang.”
“What’s wrong with Chang?” Amber asked—the Number Two with the face of a saint was a great favourite of hers.
“Oh, it’s so awful,” Joanna said. “His little Ch’o Sur is dead.”
“Oh no—when?” Amber was deeply distressed. Little fat Ch’o Sur was Chang’s only son; she knew him well; he had often played with Dickie, with curious dignity and solemnity, in the compound and the upper garden.
“It was while Dickie was ill—that’s what makes it so frightful,” said Joanna. “But no one told me—how could I know? I thought Chang looked very tired and miserable, and I begged him to take a day off, but he wouldn’t—and the child died”—her voice shook a little—“when he wasn’t there.”
“What was it?” Amber asked.
“I can’t make sure—I wish I was better at Chinese! From where he put his hand I think it may have been appendicitis. I only found out just now, when I was sorting Dickie’s things. His dressing-gown had shrunk when it was disinfected, and I thought it would do for Ch’o Sur, so I sent for Chang and told him. His poor face all crumpled up, and he said ‘Ssŭ-loh!’” (He’s dead.)
“But why didn’t he tell you?” Amber asked.
“I know—that’s what I said to him,” said Joanna, unaffectedly dabbing at her eyes. “And do you know what he said? The T’ai-t’ai was such a kind T’ai-t’ai and she was hen chao-chi (very worried) about Young Master and he knew she would be very sorry if she knew, so he wouldn’t say anything to me, for fear of causing me any more distress. He went and let his child die without seeing him again, rather than trouble us!”
“Good Heavens!” said Amber. “Oh, poor Chang. He simply worshipped that child.”
“If he’d been with us years and years, like the Hugos’ boys, or the Leroys’, I could understand it better,” said Joanna, “but we’ve only been here a few months—we’d no sort of claim on him. It’s incredible.”
“He really is a saint, like his face——” Amber was beginning, when the lienzas were pushed aside and Dickie dashed across the loggia and hammered on the French windows to be let in, shouting something indistinguishable.
“Go round! Go round!” Joanna called through the glass, waving towards the front door. Dickie continued to hammer and shout; but as his mother continued to wave, he eventually gave in and went. “I can’t have him in and out here all day—it makes the room so hot,” Joanna said. “He oughtn’t to be out now, either—I wonder where Miss Carruthers is?”
At that moment Dickie burst in, this time by the door from the hall. His face was scarlet—he was gibbering with excitement. “The soldiers are in my forpress!” he at last brought out.
“What soldiers?” Joanna asked tranquilly.
“Ours! The Guarb!”
“Oh nonsense, Dickie—what do you mean? Stand still, Mr. Fidgets,” she adjured the child, who was tugging at her hand and bouncing up and down.
“Come and see! Come and see! They’ve gop guns! They’re fighting the Sovieps!” Dickie squeaked.
Miss Carruthers appeared at the door. “Break is over, Dickie—come back,” she said repressively.
“What is all this about soldiers, Miss Carruthers?” Joanna asked.
“Oh, I’ve no idea, Mrs. Grant-Howard. I saw some men up there, so I came away.”
“Do let’s go and see!” said Amber. “May we, Dickie and I? Just for a minute?”
“You’re as bad as Dickie, Amber,” said Joanna, smiling tolerantly. “All right. They won’t be five minutes, Miss Carruthers,” she said easily. Joanna had learned out of long experience never to seek to placate governesses—“Their maw is so ravening for that,” she said frequently to Nugent, “if once you begin.”
Amber and Dickie ran out by the front door and round the corner of the house towards the garden. The drive, passing the portico, swept on behind a group of trees to a private gate into the Jade Canal Road, only used for the exit of cars at garden parties and receptions. The first thing Amber saw was a group of soldiers and a couple of machine-guns by this gate, of which the little panel which Dickie called “the person-gape” stood ajar. But Dickie tugged her on towards the upper garden. What thrilled him was the noble use to which his “forpress” was being put at last; it was this which he desired Amber to see. As they crossed the lawn Amber caught a glimpse of the servants standing in a chattering group at the corner of the house next to the kitchen compound, from which a small door led through into the garden. Clearly, she thought, as she hurried along with Dickie, something was up. They passed through the bushes and trees which masked the grey ugliness of the Soviet garden wall, and emerged into Dickie’s private territory. Soldiers in khaki, sure enough, with fixed bayonets, were lined up at intervals along the wall, while a sergeant and Jimmy Briggs, the most junior lieutenant of the Legation Guard, stood a little back, their solid boots heedlessly planted in Dickie’s flower-beds, gazing over the bristling glass into the tree-tops of the Soviet garden. A Lewis-gun was ensconced in the dug-out.
“What is happening?” Amber asked of Briggs, without the ceremony of a salutation. He swung round to her.
“Good morning, Miss Harrison,” he said, with a certain dignity.
“What are you doing?” she asked again.
“There’s something going on in there”—he nodded at the Soviet wall—“that’s all we know. So we’re just standing-to to see that no trouble comes our way.” He spoke paternally; then moved a step aside and lowered his voice. “We haven’t heard what they’re up to, but you never know with these chaps. We had it reported to us some time ago that the glass had been removed from the wall in one or two places to facilitate a crossing—there’s one here.” He nodded again towards the wall. Amber’s laugh pealed out. “But Dickie did that!” she said.
Briggs looked disconcerted. “Removed that glass? Are you certain, Miss Harrison?”
“I mocked ip off with a brick——” Dickie was beginning importantly, when a soldier came up and saluted. “If you please, sir, there’s something afire inside there—you can see if you come a bit further up.”
Briggs, followed by Amber and Dickie, set off in the wake of the soldier, scrambling along the dusty and neglected hinterland which lay under the wall, past the kitchen garden and the septic tank, through a thuja hedge, and into the Leroys’ garden, where there was a similar waste behind the shrubbery. From here, through a gap in the trees, they could see smoke pouring out of a low chimney, from some building that was hidden from view; here too they found Burbidge and Mrs. Hugo’s maid, in giggling conclave with another sergeant. While the sergeant saluted and Briggs put up his field-glasses to stare at the smoke, Amber turned to Burbidge. “Do you know what it’s all about, Burbidge?”
“Not much, Miss. That sergeant he’s a proper clam!” said Burbidge, in a hissing whisper. (Amber thought the sergeant was traduced by this statement, judging from the glimpse she had caught as they came up.) “But the boys say, some of them, that the Chinks are in there chasing these Communists.”
One of Amber’s impulses overtook her. This was fun; and it was a pity not to get one’s money’s worth out of fun. Glancing round to see that Dickie was out of earshot, she turned again to Burbidge. “I’m going round to the front of the Embassy to see,” she said. “Would you care to come, Burbidge?”
“Yes, Miss,” said Burbidge, with alacrity. With a comprehensive and discreet “So long!” to the military, she faded out through the bushes. Amber dragged the protesting Dickie back to the house, telling him that five minutes were “well up”—then she collected a hat and parasol and slipped out. She had forgotten entirely about Joanna, about Chang and the bazaar, about Rupert’s poems. Burbidge was waiting for her in the drive. At the gate they took a couple of rickshas. “Mei-kuo-Fu,” Amber directed—the American Legation was almost opposite the Soviet Embassy.<
br />
Chinese ricksha-coolies are well accustomed to hastening to the scene of any disturbance. In a country where all war is waged by mercenaries, who are liable to be purchased by their opponents at a moment’s notice, and where battles are often brought to a halt by a downpour of rain, the steady conviction which makes fighting a serious, and therefore a dangerous, matter is almost wholly lacking; in its place there is a volatile curiosity, a trivial desire to “look-see” when anything unusual is toward. The sound of firing anywhere at once sets a tide of rickshas flowing in that direction, some full of sightseers, others empty, but hopeful of picking up a fare, if only a frightened policeman or a corpse. So Amber’s and Burbidge’s coolies merely grinned and jabbered very contentedly to one another as they pattered up the Jade Canal Road and turned into the western end of Legation Street.
Some little distance along it a cordon of Chinese troops barred the roadway. “Mei-kuo-Fu,” cried the coolies to the soldiers. “Mei-kuo-Fu” said Amber, getting out and tendering a card—on which, after a little hesitation, they were allowed to pass through on foot. Within the cordon the crowd was considerable; they pushed forward, but could see nothing. “Let’s try to get up there, Miss,” said Burbidge, indicating the steps of the Asiatic Bank. They were pressing towards them, when Amber caught sight of Mulholland at a window. She waved to him, and a moment later the Bank door opened and the young man emerged, came down the steps, and drew them up and into the Bank, where he took them to a window which commanded a view of the entire proceedings.
“What is it all about?” Amber asked—for the fourth time that morning—as they stood with Mulholland, staring out over the crowd in the street. More Chinese soldiers were grouped in force both at the main entrance to the Soviet Embassy and at a smaller gate which pierced its wall some distance further along. Hampers stood in piles outside the smaller gate; some stuffed with papers, from others the soldiers were pulling small red flags and waving them with contemptuous amusement.
“They’re howking out the Communists, I’m told,” said Mulholland.
“But the Chinese troops aren’t allowed in the Quarter!” said Amber, in surprise.
“Well, there they are!” said the young man cheerfully. “And that’s not the Embassy; all that further gate is the Chinese Eastern Railway buildings; there’s a drive and a wall between it and the Embassy proper. It used to be the barracks, you know, when they had a guard; then they leased it to the Railway people. They say,” he went on in a lower tone, “that all these Communist doings lately have originated in there, and the Chinese are fed-up. Don’t blame them.”
Amber, as she listened, began to remember things. At the time of the Minister’s illness, before anxiety about Dickie swallowed up everything else, there had been—yes!—quite a lot of talk about Communist activity in connection with the Soviet Embassy. Those dead students! She was about to ask Mulholland some further question, when a fresh disturbance became evident in the crowd outside—cries of “Hai-yo ikö!” and “Here come some more!” arose, the latter in richly American accents. The gate was opened, and out through it came a file of soldiers dragging three prisoners, two men and a woman, all Chinese. Their clothes were torn and dishevelled, the woman’s hair hung loose; but most horrible of all to Amber were their faces. They were contorted and green with terror; the woman and one of the men were giving low appealing screams; their captors were laughing. While they were being handcuffed, Amber suddenly noticed a new sound, which she was conscious of having heard for some moments without giving it her attention; she craned her head out, and spying about, identified it with the ticking of a cinematograph camera, worked by a man in horn-rimmed spectacles perched upon a wall to her right. The idea of perpetuating those agonised faces appalled her. “Who in the world is doing that cinema-thing?” she asked Mulholland.
“Oh, that’s the movie-man from the Dollar Princess, the American cruising-ship,” he replied. “Most of this crowd down there belong to her too. They’re up here for three days—changed their date so as not to miss the executions of those bandits tomorrow; they ought to have gone to Shanghai first. They’re getting double value! They sent in here and telephoned round to the Wagons-Lits for him as soon as this show started.”
Amber felt suddenly sickened. It had seemed exciting enough at a distance, but the “fun” was not so funny when there were living prisoners screaming with terror within a few yards of her, and other people photographing them. “I should like to go away now,” she said to Mulholland, even while she could not help watching the three prisoners being thrust into a car and driven off.
“I say, I’m not sure that you’d better,” said the young man. “There’s the deuce of a crowd down there. Wait just a bit. They’ve got twenty-five out now—there can’t be many more to come. It’ll be clearer presently.”
Even as he spoke, a fresh sound of screaming, appallingly clear, rose above the wall across the street; next moment the gate opened again and four more prisoners were brought out. The crowd shouted; the cinema clicked; Amber turned away her eyes. She must go! She remembered now that Joanna was waiting for her, remembered Chang and his sorrow and silence, remembered that she had read Rupert’s poems and something had frightened her—she couldn’t for the moment recall what. “I’m going,” she said briefly. “Mrs. Grant-Howard is waiting for me. Thank you so much for bringing us in. Come on, Burbidge.”
“Yes, Miss,” said Burbidge.
They pushed their way out, down the steps and through the crowd, on whose fringe they found abundant rickshas. “What a morning, Miss!” said Burbidge cheerfully, as they bowled again down the Jade Canal Road; “those poor creatures, they did look green!” Amber shivered and made some brief sound of assent. She was trying to remember what it was that had flung her into such a panic when she read Rupert’s poems—the heat, the sun, the excitement, the varied emotions of the last two hours had given her a violent headache, thrown her mind into an extreme confusion. Before Chang, before Dickie and the soldiers, before those terrible green faces, before those Americans and their cinema—why couldn’t she keep her head clear? A fright—and it had been silly. What had she been afraid of? Oh, she remembered—she had been somehow afraid of Rupert. But the potency of the fear was gone—these other things, that living panic, had obscured it. What a morning, indeed!
Chapter Eighteen
THE raid on the Communist Headquarters was a perfect god-send to the dinner-tables of Peking. Though in public Ministers might think well to assume visages de circonstance when speaking of it, in private they found it an endless source of good stories. Every day fresh titbits emerged. There was the matter of the fire in the Military Attache’s office. The Chinese raiding party had kept rigidly to the premises of the Chinese Eastern Railway, which were, strictly speaking, no longer diplomatic territory, till the officer in charge saw, as Briggs and Amber had seen, smoke pouring out of some building in the Embassy proper. He saw it with dismay; for he was afraid that some zealots among his troops had exceeded their instructions, trespassed, and committed arson. Fearing complications, he sent a water-party across the road and over the Embassy wall to quench it. The officer in charge of the water-party found, to his extreme surprise, the Russian Military Attaché in his shirtsleeves, armed with a petrol-can and a pitch-fork, burning papers in his office as hard as he could go. The water-party quenched the flames and carried off the papers to the Yamen, where their subsequent examination produced some interesting results which immediately became common property. It was alleged, for instance, that most of the T’ing-ch’ais (messengers attached to the various Chanceries, whose duties include the distribution of the mail and of visiting cards) had made a practice of selling the contents of the waste-paper baskets of their respective employers to the Bolsheviks. This caused a great sensation among the uninitiated at the Club.
Then there were some accounts of expenditure, which revealed that the unfortunate students who were shot down during the demonstration outside the Prime Minister’s house
had been paid fifty cents (some said as much as seventy-five cents) apiece to walk in the procession which ended so fatally for many of them. “Yes, but what you don’t realise,” Uncle Bill said in loud judgematic tones to Amber, when she expressed her astonishment at anyone’s being willing to run the risk of being shot for about is. 5|d., “is that money here is the basis of life.” (Uncle Bill had a way of making many of his remarks sound like the text of a sermon.) “Money here is the basis of life,” he repeated. “Everything in China has a money value, even a display of patriotism—if you can call it patriotism,” he added gloomily. “I don’t suppose half of them knew what they were demonstrating about.” Quite a flutter was produced, too, by the widespread rumour that among the Military Attache’s extraordinarily miscellaneous collection of documents were plans of the dinner-tables at most of the larger diplomatic parties in Peking, showing who had sat next to whom, with notes of the conversation! Nothing had given Mr. George Hawtrey so much pleasure for a long time as to be taxed, as he now was, with being among the notables whose hospitality was of so much account. He ragged Mimi de Bulle, who was considerably piqued that her table apparently went unmapped. “Les Bolcheviks ne s’intéressent pas aux chevaux, ma chére!” “Évidemment, mon cher Joe, chez toi on ne fait que la politique!” replied Mimi scornfully. “A moins qu’on ne fait un peu l’ amour!” retorted Joe, undaunted, whereupon she screamed at him delightedly.
Sir James, however, was, as usual, worried by all this. He had conscientious scruples (not shared by all his colleagues) about sending off hasty telegrams on partial or inaccurate information, which might call for a subsequent contradiction. You couldn’t send rumours to the Foreign Office, and at first there was very little else to send. “Poor old James,” said Rupert to Joanna, over a cocktail, two or three days after the raid, “he got a nasty jar today. They sent him a stinker of a telegram”—(“they” is the official description of Downing Street abroad)—“this morning, asking him why the devil he’d allowed forty-eight hours to elapse without forwarding full information.”