We all knelt down upon the grass, and after that I heard father and mother talking far on into the night, and, looking up, I saw God's stars in His sky, and felt how very near He was, and then I went to sleep, and the next day, towards evening, we met some English soldiers and arrived at Wei-hai-wei.
CHAPTER VI.
NINA'S STORY.
I promised my cousin Cicely St. John that I would write a little history of what took place after we were separated from one another. She is going to do the same; and then some day when we go back to England we shall get it all put together and have it published in one big book. It has always been my ambition to write a book, and I am quite sure that I can write. People all have their particular gifts—writing is one of mine. I was not very good when I was at school, but I never found the essays any trouble at all. And when I was fourteen I got a five-shilling prize in a magazine, and my story was published in the Christmas number. It was illustrated, and the picture in the place of honour on the cover. I was so delighted about it and so was father, but then he always does love everything I do. People say he spoils me, and perhaps he does; all I can say is, it is very nice being spoilt! I am always happier when I am with father and his friends than with girls of my own age.
I never cared much for girls; the little ones talk about their dolls and the big ones about their clothes. I like hearing father and his brother officers talk and tell tales of sport and adventure. Of course I know father would have liked me to have been a boy. He must have been disappointed, though he never said so, because then I should have been a soldier like he is, and gone to the war in South Africa, or perhaps have been here in Pekin, just as we are now.
It is a month since we came to the Celestial City, and such a long time since I stayed with Uncle Paul and Aunt Christine. We went to them when we first came out to China. I had never seen them in my life before.
The Pagoda at Pekin.
Cicely is different from other girls, and I love her dearly. She is much younger than I am, two years younger, but she seems almost as old. She is so grave and a little old-fashioned; somehow I feel better when I am with her and Uncle Paul—they make me want to be good. I often wonder where they are, and hope things are not as bad for them as they are with us, for here in the Celestial City things look very black indeed. Father wishes he had left me behind in Wei-hai-wei, but I would much rather be with him, even though the worst comes and he has to kill me himself. Uncle Paul thinks one ought not to do this, but then Uncle Paul is an angel. When I am with him I feel all the time a longing after something better. I told Mrs. Ross about him. Mrs. Ross is my great friend here. She is young and very pretty, and she met Uncle Paul once. When I told her what he made me feel like, she said, "Yes, I know, dear, he makes you feel as if you didn't care how your frock fitted, but when you get away you think to yourself you may as well look as nice as you can." Mrs. Ross has only been married a few months. She came here just after her honeymoon. She has the most wonderful eyes I have ever seen, like the stars in the soft, dark sky. She and I and nearly always together, though she is years older than I am. Still she says she is very glad to have me for her friend, as there are so few girls out here. Captain Ross looks stern and troubled, and very careworn, but all the men have that expression now, and if only you saw the faces of the Chinese you would not wonder much; they are so dreadfully cruel and revengeful, and they look at us as if they hate us and would like to murder us all. If they killed people outright it would not be so dreadful; but they torture a person for days first; they do this to their own people, how much more then to us, if they had us in their power?
It is the cruel Empress who hates the foreigners, and it is her emissaries who have stirred up the people against us. The Boxers are her tools really, and the ignorant people are told all kinds of things which they believe, that the Europeans take their little children and kill them, and that it is our presence here which causes the lack of rain, and then they pretend to see most wonderful apparitions, those who appear always bearing the same message, "Kill! kill!" The other day they declared that a marvellous vision appeared in the sky; it was a spirit girl, they said, with a lamp in her hand. Father and I went out to see it, but of course we did not see the girl, but only a brilliant light in the sky, and the Chinese, who are very superstitious, imagined the rest. But what caused more stir and alarm than anything else was the mysterious Red Hand which suddenly appeared in Pekin. Mrs. Ross and I saw it on a house one day, and then again on another, and as the people caught sight of these dreadful Red Hands they gesticulated wildly, and seemed terribly excited. Mrs. Ross was very frightened, as she thought it meant that the Boxers were going to kill all the inmates of the houses on which the Red Hand appeared, but Captain Ross said he had been told by someone who knew that we, the foreign devils, were accused of marking the houses, and wherever this dreadful mark appeared a curse was sure to follow; in seven days one of the inmates would go mad, or in fourteen days they would die. This was just before a most dreadful event occurred.