THE END
November, 1900.
...
Another month, and I have made up my mind quite suddenly. I have finished with it—at least, in outward form. After waiting a couple of weeks and wondering what I should do, a last argument brought it about—an argument with a German which ended by enraging me to an impossible point and making me challenge him to anything he liked. That showed me that my last safe moment had arrived.
He was a youngish officer sent from the Field-Marshal's staff to discuss some diplomatic-military details with my chief. The business part was soon over, for there was really little to decide, and then the man fell to talking about what should be done. He said that were there not so much rivalry and jealousy, and could Waldersee only act as he wished, they would have proper punitive expeditions which would shoot all the headmen of every village for hundreds of miles, and make such an example of everybody that the memory would endure for generations in every district where there had been Boxers. The officer was eloquent because he had only just arrived, and understood nothing—absolutely nothing. For some reason our stars crossed and I hated him immediately. So I waited until he had finished so that I could begin. Then I began.
I cannot even remember all I said, for I was greatly enraged by the brutality of the man's ideas, but I treated him as he had never been treated before. As I poured out my lava stream and he slowly understood what I meant, he first became very red, and then very pale, and finally he stood up. I took advantage of that action, and since we all still are armed, I told him he could have satisfaction, at once if he wished, and at any number of paces he chose to name.
My chief then suddenly intervened, and, trembling violently, said that it could not go on—that it was a mistake. He took the blame on his shoulders, he said, and would apologise himself later on. For many minutes he harangued, and in the end the officer went away with his eyes glittering, but not too reluctantly. He knew that I could have killed him with my second chamber unless his first shot hit my vitals....
After that there was a second scene—but one which was much more brief. My chief attempted to deal with me, and to him I spoke my mind. I am afraid I said many things which were so brusque that modern society would have reproved me. I told him that it was well known that he and every other man of position had been tremulously fearing death at every turn for weeks, and had been unwilling to do anything when they might have really saved the situation; merely because they were so afraid; that everything had been misstated in the reports, and that although the full truth might not be known for years, eventually it would be known and people would understand. I said that this petty life created by men without stomachs had ended by disgusting me, and that I had finished with it for good and for ever. Then I went out in silence, slamming the door behind me with all the strength of my arms. It was a most enormous slam. It had to be so; it was my last word. In my commandeered residence I found that the breath of misfortune had also come. The rightful owners had managed to steal into Peking in the train of some big official who had had an escort of foreign soldiery provided him, and now smilingly and cringingly greeted me, and thanked me for my guardianship during their unavoidable absence. The Manchu women were grouped round in great excitement. They did not relish the change—they did not want it. The tall and stately one who had first touched my knee on that dark night during the sack was not there.
The rightful owners irritated me intensely with their obsequiousness. I was irritated because they lived: they should have ceased to exist long ago. They were still very much afraid, although they had reached Peking in safety, for they half thought that I would hand them over to some provost-marshal as Boxer partisans in order to get rid of them. They were very afraid. The Manchu women were all talking and praising me, and telling wonderful stories of all I had done. But the most important one of them was absent. I became vaguely conscious that this also meant something, that perhaps there was to be another tragedy. I found her later wishing to kill herself, to commit suicide, so that she, too, need never return to her other life.... That was more terrible than the other scenes. I could do nothing, yet my responsibility had been great. In the end something was arranged. I hardly remember what.
I was soon ready to go; on the same afternoon I had completed all my preparations. I had so little to prepare. Then I rode out for the last time with all my men behind me, and not a single other person. We passed down the streets out from the Tartar City, through the ruins of the great Ch'ien Men Gate, and then followed straight along the vast main street, still covered with débris and dirt, and skulls and broken weapons, as if the weeks and months which had gone by since the fighting had been quite unheeded. Near the outer gates of the city I met my three cavalrymen of the Indian regiment waiting to bid good-bye. They joined me with some attempt at gaiety, but that soon fizzled out. I had so plainly collapsed.
We passed into the country with the tall crops still rotting as they stood, because everyone had fled and no one dared to return. We went on faster and faster as the roads broadened, and as we galloped we met new troops marching in on Peking. They were Germans driving captives of many kinds in front of them. "Damned Germans," said the smaller officer, who was the senior, and who had been quite silent for some time. "Damned Germans," repeated the two others mechanically, as if this was a new creed, and I, approving, faintly smiled. That stirred them to talk again, and they told me that the expeditions had been settled on, and that they would have to go, too. Orders had come from home that they must not fall out with Waldersee. It was highly important to placate the Germans because of South Africa. But the Americans would not go, neither would the Russians, nor yet the Japanese. It was to be a new arrangement. They went on talking in this wise for a long time, and I heard these scraps of conversation vaguely as in a dream. Cynically I thought that, although I was leaving it all behind me in company of men who were strangers to Peking, the last words would still be concerned with our tortuous diplomacy. Yet my gallant friends were only trying to console me—to make me forget. Such things they understood far better than others. They were from India, where men think a good deal, and sometimes act. They were treating me as best they could. Then when we came to a sharp rise over which the road curled and crawled, they halted suddenly, stretched out their hands, and bade me good-bye. They meant it to be a sharp wrench—to be over quickly. Just on the rim of the horizon stretched the grey of the fading Tartar Walls with their high-pitched towers. The sun sinking behind the western hills threw some last flames of golden fire, but the air remained chill. It was becoming cold, and even the dust no longer rose in clouds. Everything was pinned to the soil—tired—finished....
I rode on abruptly. Then, for the last time, my cavalrymen turned round and shouted faintly back to me. It was a word which carried well. "Chubb, Chubb, Chubb," they were shouting, to give my thoughts a turn. They knew what I must be thinking. They knew; they had been in India. I quickened my horse into a gallop, rode faster and faster, and before night had fallen I had gained the river-boats. It was over....
BOOKS BY PUTNAM WEALE
Political
Manchu and Muscovite
The Re-shaping of the Far East
(2 volumes)
The Truce in the East and its After-math
The Coming Struggle in Eastern Asia
The Conflict of Colour
The Truth about China and Japan
The Pageant of Peking
(In collaboration with Donald Mennie)
Romantic
Indiscreet Letters from Peking
The Forbidden Boundary
The Human Cobweb
The Unknown God
The Romance of A Few Days
The Revolt
The Eternal Priestess
The Altar Fire
Wang, The Ninth