by Ann Bridge
It was now nearly nine o’clock, and getting hot; they were hungry, and decided to breakfast. The donkey-boy produced the food, and squatted down at a little distance with his own “chow”; seated peaceably on two sleepers, Amber and Burbidge ate tomatoes, buttered biscuits and hard-boiled eggs. While they were thus employed a man on a bay pony came cantering along below the embankment and hailed them. “Say, you seen a grey pony loose anywheres?”
“No,” Amber called back.
The man rode up below them and halted. “Well, I guess he ain’t gone far. You taking a walk?”
“Yes—we’re going to Ch’ing-wang-tao,” Amber replied.
“You come all the way from there this morning?” the man asked in surprise.
“No—from Pei-t’ai-ho.”
The man whistled. “Gee! You girls are some walkers, ain’t you? How do you figure to get back from Ch’ing-wang-tao? Train?”
“No, we shall walk back,” said Amber, amused.
The man gaped at her. He was a tall, fair fellow, good-looking; his flat-brimmed pointed hat revealed him for an American soldier, but the rest of his dress was of an almost cinema picturesqueness, consisting of a khaki jumper much patched in odd colours, opening down the chest on a singlet, and a pair of loose blue twill trousers.
“Well, you must be pretty smart walkers,” he was beginning, when Amber interrupted him. “Look, there’s a grey pony, over by the trees!” She pointed.
“That’s the cuss!” said the man, and wheeling his horse round he went off in pursuit, disappearing among the scrub. Amber and Burbidge continued their breakfast—they had reached the coffee stage when their new acquaintance appeared again, a couple of hundred yards further up the line, leading the grey pony; he dragged it up on to the embankment, handed it over to a Chinese, and then rode slowly back towards them. On reaching them he dismounted, put his horse’s reins over his boot, and sitting down on the edge of the embankment pulled out a packet of Lucky Strike cigarettes, lit one, and proceeded with the conversation where he had left it off. His curiosity was insatiable, though quite inoffensive; to meet two women breakfasting on the permanent way of the Peking-Mukden Railway was apparently something of an event in his life, and he was determined to make the most of it. Time seemed no object to him; when Amber offered him a cup of coffee he drank it gratefully, and when the little caravan set off again on its way to Ch’ing-wang-tao he declared his intention of “coming a piece” with them.
After following the embankment for half a mile they turned down off it and took a track through the green scrub of the plain. Presently they reached a little river, and when Amber prepared to mount the donkey to ford it, at the donkey-boy’s request, the American observed, “If you kin ride, you’d better get on my hoss and cross both at once.” Nothing loth, Amber mounted and splashed through the ford, while Burbidge followed on the ass. The American waded. They were still close to the railway, and at this moment a goods train came rattling over the bridge above them; the “hoss,” startled, plunged wildly forward; Amber let him out along the track, steadied him, and wheeling in an open space, brought him to his master again. The Yankee grinned approvingly at her. “You surely can ride! I thought I’d lost two hosses this morning, when I saw him quit off.” He made Amber remain in the saddle, while Burbidge rode the donkey; strolling beside the pony, he discussed “hosses” with this startling young person who set out to walk twenty miles for pleasure, and rode a strange pony with perfect assurance in a summer frock and tennis shoes. And from this chance encounter something rather important emerged for Amber. Her new acquaintance proved to be a horse-master and vet, attached in those capacities to the American troops in China; every autumn he went up to Jensi, far beyond Kalgan, to buy ponies for the army. When, seizing this heaven-sent opportunity, she confided to him her secret ambition to buy and race a couple of griffins, he entered into the scheme with enthusiasm; promised to choose her out two of the likeliest he could find and bring them down for her to Peking. They might cost her, he said, as much as a hundred and sixty dollars apiece; Jensi was a long way off, but the ponies there were big, and the little ones “’re no use to our boys.” He and Amber exchanged addresses, scribbled on bits of sandwich-paper; his name was Johansen, she found, a Swedish-American, which accounted for his fairness and height. He was as charmed with Amber as she was with the prospect of getting two choice griffins chosen by an expert; when they came to the wide river outside Ch’ing-wang-tao he insisted on taking her camera and walking across the viaduct on the sleepers, in order to get a photograph of her riding through the water below. Beyond this river they took to the shore again, and Amber amused herself by jumping the pony over the small streams which cut the sand into shallow steep-sided channels, smacking him on the quarters with her soft felt hat to make him move; Johansen watched her, smiling, and observed, somewhat to Burbidge’s horror, that she was “a great kid.”
They parted by the Japanese wireless station on the outskirts of the town. The day was clouding over, and soon a drizzling rain began to fall. Amber and Burbidge conscientiously examined the coal-stained harbour, the pier and the railway sidings, which were as dull and ugly as those of any other small seaport; then they took a couple of rickshas and drove round the rest of the place. It failed to please. The villas of the Kailan Mining Administration employees stood, commodious, neat and dull, along straight sandy roads among groves of acacias.
“It puts me in mind of Woking, Miss,” said Burbidge; and indeed, except for the prevailing tree being the acacia and not the Scots pine, the residential quarter of Ch’ing-wang-tao is exactly like the suburbs of Woking. They lunched in the only hotel they could find, a very “family” affair with a strong resemblance to a boarding-house at Margate; lay down for a couple of hours on two chaises-longues in the verandah, and then set out to find the donkey-boy and return home. The donkey and his attendant were to have met them by the pier at three o’clock, but there was no sign of them there. They waited for a quarter of an hour. “Well, we can’t hunt for him all over Ch’ing-wang-tao,” said Amber finally. “We’ll leave him to find his own way back.” They started homewards, but as they approached the wireless station they saw, lounging on the sand under the barbed-wire fence, first their new American friend, and then the donkey-boy and his charge. Whether the donkey-boy liked Johansen’s company, or whether he had decided that the American and his own patrons were now one unit, it was impossible to discover—anyhow there he was, and for the first four miles of the homeward road Amber, as before, rode the bay pony, and Burbidge the ass. At the sand-dunes they parted from the American for the second time. “Well, you’ll get me two really top-hole griffins, won’t you, Mr. Johansen?” said Amber, smiling up at him.
“Sure thing! I’ll get the hosses to match the girl!” said the American, wringing her by the hand. “S’long, Miss Harrison! S’long, Miss Burbidge!” He swung himself over the bay pony and disappeared in the direction of the camp.
“What sort of a man should you suppose he is, Miss?” Burbidge asked, as they plodded, a little stiffly, along the shore track. It was clearing from the west, and the sky in front of them was a flare of gold under the departing clouds, throwing a lurid metallic lustre on the green of the willows, and making the brackish pools dazzling.
“Well—apart from being very nice—he might be almost anything, Burbidge. I believe the Marines come from a very good class; schoolmasters and all sorts of people volunteer to come out here, just for the fun of it.”
“He was very free-like in his speech to you, Miss,” said Burbidge, a little dubiously.
“Americans are very democratic, you know, Burbidge,” said Amber sententiously; “I’m afraid you’re not.”
“Well, no, Miss. But then you see I’ve always been in very good service,” said Burbidge complacently. And Amber thought, for the twentieth time that day, that Burbidge was really better company than almost anyone at Pei-t’ai-ho. She was what Anna would call “zo genre.” Then her thoughts drifted
off to company not at Pei-t’ai-ho—to Rupert, away in Peking. But that afternoon her thoughts were peaceful ones. Mile after mile, along the shore, while the glory in the pools grew stronger and the green line of marsh vegetation turned to translucent enamel, she walked in a sort of dazed contentment, bred of nearly twelve hours of hard exercise in the open air, of lovely new sights, of one ambition realised, of another brought a step nearer. It was enough, during that long trudge home, to know that Rupert was alive in the same world—this world which held so much of serene beauty: the golden stretches of water, the black cattle grazing on the amber grass of the salt-meadows. She loved, and she could wait; for the moment this was enough; the heart sang a still song, clear and gentle as the flooding light on sea and land. And delicious when she got in was the cocktail on the verandah, solicitously administered by Joe; the hot tub in the sparrow-splash in the little tiled cabinet de toilette attached to her room; the coming out, lazy, cool, and ravenous, to dinner on the terrace, to be plied with food, with wine, and with questions. The story of Johansen went down well; when the Minister strolled up after dinner to enquire and to collect a fourth for bridge, he was greeted with a variety of accounts: “They got mixed up with the American Army, Sir.”—“My dear Sir James, she got off with a vet.!”—“We swopped addresses, Sir James!” But when Sir James, having made a suitable diplomatic joke about this new Anglo-American rapprochement, carried Mrs. Grant-Howard off to the ministerial bungalow for bridge, Amber told Joe about the griffins, which she had suppressed at dinner. “I wish I knew where to keep them,” she ended up. “If I have them at the Temple, they won’t be like my own horses.”
Then Mr. Hawtrey had an inspiration. “Why shouldn’t we run a joint stable, together?” he said. “I could definitely lease half his stabling from Harry, and we could keep two or three mafoos out at the Insects, to run the race-ponies; quite separate from my string at the Legation.” He expounded the scheme in detail, thinking it out as he went along, and Amber, tired as she was, caught his enthusiasm. “But what shall we call it?” she asked. “We’ll give it some fancy name, like The Press,” said Joe. “I’ve got it!” he exclaimed a moment later.
“What?” Amber asked.
“The Portfolio Stable!” said Joe triumphantly. “And all the ponies Ministers! Minister for War, Minister of Marine, Minister without Portfolio! Ha-ha-ha!” Laughing, Amber agreed. She could think of no better plan, and there were lots of things she would find it hard to manage alone; Joe would be a great help. “Do you think we could keep it a secret?—for a bit, anyhow?” she asked rather wistfully. “It would be so much more fun.”
“We damn well will, if you want to,” said Joe.
Chapter Twenty
“HULLO, Amber, my dear! Marvellous to have you back! Let’s look at you! You haven’t half browned your funny phiz!”
This greeting of Rupert’s, in the full publicity of the station platform at Peking, caused Joanna to turn her head towards the pair with a slight question-mark about her eyebrows. But Amber was too happy to notice anything. Actually she turned a little pale under her tan when she first saw Rupert—after weeks of dreaming, the solidity of his actual presence was literally a shock. But how much more satisfying than any dream! As they walked along the cinder-path under the City Wall towards the Watergate, exchanging news, comparing notes, with all the zest of two people whose life holds much in common, Amber remembered how she had first walked there beside Rupert, shy and silent, last February, when he asked her if she had feelings about the Flag, and she wondered if he was the poet or not. For a moment she saw him again as she had seen him then, untidy (his coat collar was half turned-up again today!), with his queer mouth and light-brown hair and light eyes—a rather odd, strange man; and—so timid and perverse is the human heart—she had an instant’s regret for that day, when he was only a stranger, whom she could meet on equal terms, free and independent, and not the person who had put her peace of mind in his pocket. But it was only for an instant; the next minute, with a happy laugh, she put up her hand and turned down his collar—“You are untidy, Rupert!” And when he replied, “Well, damn it, we can’t all dress like Joe!” she laughed again with full content.
There is no better test of how well we like a new place of abode than to return to it after an absence. And judged by this test, the Grant-Howards found Peking to come out very well when they returned there in the middle of September. Nugent had gone down to Pei-t’ai-ho for the last three weeks, when the Minister and Hawtrey returned, and came back with the others. And when, approaching the east wall of the city, he caught a glimpse from the train of the Temple of Heaven, a solitary jewel on the skyline, he felt—rather to his surprise—that little stir of warmth which a man feels when he nears his home. He, too, remembered his first arrival, as he sat later that evening in his study, going through the telegrams—remembered his thoughts and doubts in this very room—and contrasted with his frame of mind then this jolly familiarity, this sense of belonging to the place and in a way owning it; of knowing your way round, of being established and secure. He had been up to the stables to see the ponies, who whickered at him from their dark stalls with delighted recognition—what a noisy fellow Buick always was!—while Wang and Shang kowtowed and grinned with an unmistakeable pleasure; he had gone on to see the Minister, who greeted him with unusual effusion as “My dear felloh”—an effusion which lost none of its value in Nugent’s eyes when he found that it arose mainly from the fact that His Excellency was extremely bothered about “this felloh Li’s goings-on about the Customs.” Here was a job of work, a problem to consider; he had gone over to have a drink with Leroy and discuss with him whether the Marshal’s tendency to raid funds to which he was not entitled could best be restrained by a show of firmness or by giving him more “face.” “He’s still harping on those aeroplanes, that’s really the trouble,” Leroy said. “Nothing will persuade him that we aren’t, sub rosa, backing Wang.” “I thought that was all settled ages ago,” said Nugent. “We told him we couldn’t do it.”
“My dear G.-H., nothing is ever settled in this country,” Leroy boomed at him. “The great mistake Europeans make in China is to suppose that you can get a solution of any question, or that anyone wants it! There’s nothing the Chinese like better than a good unsettled dispute, hanging on for years—unless it’s a good grievance! It’s the breath of life to them—like sermons to a Scotsman, or making money to a Yankee. Talking of Yankees, did you hear what old Schuyler said to the Minister?” He told a funny story, and Nugent presently went home, chuckling to think how like itself Peking still was.
Joanna, after her own fashion and in her own sphere, experienced the same sense of familiarity and assurance. She had learned by now that devotion such as Chang’s, on the servants’ part, was by no means incompatible with the utmost pertinacity and ingenuity in the matter of squeezing her. No doubt to make up for the lean weeks, almost devoid of entertaining, at Pei-t’ai-ho, on her return to Peking she found the ch’u-tzu’s weekly totals suddenly mounting sky-high. But now Joanna knew how to deal with him. To complain, to scold, was worse than useless; “face” was the one adequate weapon with which to quell him, and she used it. She invited a small company of intimates—Rupert, Joe, Amber, Mulholland—to lunch. When the second course arrived, she tasted it, put down her fork, and, exclaiming “But this is horrible!” called to the servants to remove it instantly. “Tell cook to make an omelette instead—at once.” She apologised to her startled guests—“I am so sorry.” The ch’u-tzu, who according to his custom was peeping through the crack of the hatch to see how the meats of his preparing were received, departed, chittering with distress, to make an omelette, which shortly afterwards appeared. Next morning, on her progress through the back regions, Joanna in due course reached the kitchen, and received with chilly hauteur the kow-tows of the cook, Leeti Cook and the three kitchen-boys. She examined the cook’s account, neatly written out in English of a sort by Liu; then, turning to her Number One, she said in
Chinese—“Considering how the ch’u-tzu squeezes me, I think he might at least not send in not-good food when I receive guests. Yesterday I must send rice from the table—I have no face left.”
The cook, clasping his hands, pressed forward, wailing out—“T’ai-t’ai, the food in what fashion not good?” Coldly Joanna turned to him. “I with this man speak”—she indicated the Number One. “Are you here to speak or to listen? In my opinion, I am here to speak, and you to listen.” Having thus crushed the cook, who stood back abashed, she continued, in cold impersonal tones, her complaint to the Number One. The food was bad; she said so; had it been good, she would not have sent it away and thus lost face before guests. She tapped the account-book; give sight here—how immense was the squeeze! Great squeeze and exceedingly not-good food, and face lost, was an exceedingly not-good plan. Liu was too intimidated to make his customary defence of the cook, and after scanning the menu for the day, crossing out an item here and inserting a different salad there, Joanna left the kitchen. She knew, the cook knew, and the Number One knew that the dish in question had been, as always, perfect; all three knew that the others knew it too; but the T’ai-t’ai had inflicted a great loss of face on the cook. In fact, it was recognised that she meant business. That week the cook’s accounts dropped like a stone, by over fifty per cent; in a month or so, Joanna knew, they would begin to creep up again—then she would repeat the farce. Writing up her own accounts, later, from Liu’s book, she laughed to herself. What fun it was! She glanced out through the open window—all along the edge of the loggia, and up both sides of the steps from the garden, stood pots of chrysanthemums in full bloom. But not chrysanthemums as we understand them—Chinese ingenuity could never be content to leave a flower with the decorative possibilities of the chrysanthemum to bloom as it chooses. Each pot held a stout upright stalk, like a standard rose-tree, at the top of which bloomed a round bush of flowers. Not all of one sort—grafted on to the branches of the parent plant, a strong-growing artemisia, were bronze, crimson, white, yellow and pink blossoms, in every sort of combination of colour—sometimes two shades, sometimes three or five. Like immense nosegays they trimmed the loggia, with taller ones, three feet high, standing on the steps and in the middle of each archway. The house was full of them too, only for indoors the colours were not mixed—great drifts of white or mauve or orange filled the corners of every room, stood sentinel by the doors, washed round the foot of the staircase. She could smell them as she sat. Heavenly to have these millionaire-like masses of flowers everywhere, Joanna thought, without even having to order them; to enjoy this incomparable service, this perfect food, a whole string of jolly ponies. Peking was really rather good value.