The wind, which was getting higher and colder every moment, soon drove all but the most ardent enthusiasts indoors. We mounted to the upper story of the club-house, and looked out over the course from the windows of the big dining-room, which occupies the entire upper floor. Before us stretched the same bleak, arid plains that we had crossed on our way from the station: only the railing marking the outer boundaries of the track divided it from the barren stretches of earth which extended northward to the uttermost confines of China. Not a blade of grass was anywhere in sight. And over all, the dust—not the ordinary dust of a windy March day at home, but great, thick, solid clouds of dust, reaching upward, and covering the entire sky. The noon sun gleamed down in a circle of hazy red.
There were two races before lunch. One couldn't see the ponies till they were within a hundred yards of the winning-post. S——, who has great courage, and moreover felt his responsibility as host, would remain outside on the upper veranda, straining his eyes in the biting gale, and then signal to us when they came in sight. Whereupon we would rush outdoors for a brief moment, clinging to our hats and groping for the veranda rail, and stand there for an agonizing minute till he told us it was over.
Now and then, in brief pauses in the wind, the horizon would clear for a moment and we could see beyond the outer boundaries of the course. We caught occasional glimpses of long caravans of camels, two or three hundred of them, bound for the coal-mines up north. Once, in a short interval, we saw a funeral procession stretching away over the plains—a straggling procession on foot, in dingy white dresses, carrying banners and flags and parasols. The coffin was slung on a pole between bearers, and the wailing drone of a horn, and the thud of a big drum came down the wind. Then the dust rose again, and the melancholy sight was shut out. How curious was this little pleasure spot of the Europeans, in the midst of this barbaric setting, in the heart of old, old Asia!
Tiffin time. Every one who had not already taken refuge in the dining-room now trooped up-stairs, hungry and laughing. I must tell you of the dining-room. It was just a huge, square, bare room, with whitewashed walls, with not a picture, with not an attempt at decoration. A dozen trestle tables ran across it, with narrow, backless benches on each side,—benches which had to be stepped over before one could sit down. Every one stepped over them, however—ministers and first-secretaries and Russian princesses and smart American women; and you had to step over them again when the meal was finished, too, unless by some preconcerted agreement every one rose at the same time. There was not a chair in the place. Every one was dust-grimed, wind-blown and bedraggled, and it was a gay, noisy meal, with laughter and cigarette smoke and dust all through it.
In spite of the noise, however, there seemed little real merriment. One became conscious of the atmosphere,—of the forced, rather strained, I was going to say hostile, atmosphere. Every nation, as if by prearrangement, withdrew to itself. The English sat together, the French sat together; the Russians were apart; and the Americans in still another section. There was no real intermingling, no real camaraderie, except among the individual groups. There was much hand-shaking of course, and greetings and perfunctory politeness, but no genuine friendliness. The various ministers, for instance, did not sit together as ministers, off on a holiday. On the contrary, each one sat at the table with his countrymen. Over all there was a feeling of constraint, distrust, national antipathies but thinly veiled, with but the merest superficial pretense of disguising intense dislikes and jealousies.
In Peking there is great freedom of speech, and much outspoken criticism of one nation by another; for there hatred and suspicions run high. Therefore, of course, such feelings could not be submerged on an occasion of this kind. Perhaps the war has intensified them; perhaps they are always there; perhaps this is the chronic atmosphere of Peking, where each power is trying to outdo the other, to overreach the other, in their dealings with China. Anyway, E—— and I were intensely aware of it in this "scrambling together" of all diplomatic Peking.
No Japanese was present, although a few Japanese are members of the club. And it is significant that no Chinese, no matter how high in rank, is admitted to membership. The impression we derived of this European playground is that the attempt to play is a farce. You look over your shoulder to behold a knife at your back.
After tiffin two more invisible races took place, but no one made an attempt to see them. The dust sifted in through the windows and lay thick on the tables, and one made footprints in it on the floor. Then we were all cheered by the announcement that the special train was returning an hour earlier than the time scheduled, and there was a general move to go. The walk back across the plains was even worse, if possible, than that from the station to the club-house, for the wind was stronger, the dust more blinding. Yet the whole procession was light-hearted, somehow: there were prospects of a bath at the journey's end. As we reached the station the train was pulling in. E—— was walking just ahead of me, talking to the Russian minister, Prince K——. A gust more violent than usual struck us, and I saw her suddenly leap aboard while the train was moving. When I joined her a moment later she seemed rather dubious.
"I don't know that that's exactly the way to take leave of a prince," she said doubtfully, "to jump on a moving train in the middle of a sentence."