Alas for the mournful desolation that met his eyes when he made a melancholy pilgrimage, as it were, to his old quarters! Nothing was left of the house but a few charred walls. Broken tiles lay scattered here and there, and he picked up the head of a pretty little Saxe shepherdess, of all things the most fragile and improbable to survive such a storm. The rest of his belongings had disappeared utterly—all the treasures of a lifetime had been burned or looted—priceless letters from Chinese Gordon and from Gladstone, the wonderful rainbow-silk scrolls for his Chinese patent of nobility, the photographs of all the famous men with whom he had been associated in the past—everything.
He was glad enough to get two rooms behind Kierulff's shop for temporary living quarters. What matter if his hall door was littered with packing-cases, or if his sitting-room windows fronted upon waste ground where a herd of mules scampered? He soon learned to pick his way among the former; the latter, with characteristic caution, always respected his panes, and anyway it was not the time for finicking over trifles.
For an office he hired a tiny little temple nestling under the walls of the Tartar City. It was but a small pied-à-terre, yet all he required, for the Customs Archives had been burnt, and the Deputy Inspector General, Sir Robert Bredon, with the Inspectorate Staff, left immediately for Shanghai to begin the difficult task of picking up the threads of Customs work there.
Meanwhile the Tajêns (heads of boards) wrote to the I.G. asking for a safe convoy through the foreign lines, and he sent one of his own men to bring them down, since, though poor enough in other things, they were so rich in fears. Five came this first time, but one acted as spokesman to voice the grief of all over what had occurred, and to exonerate the Emperor and the Empress-Dowager of blame. No doubt the two sovereigns were innocent of responsibility for what had happened—no one would believe it at the time, however—and were captured, as these ministers said, by "officials of another way of thinking, and made to appear as if approving what they disapproved and ordering what they really forbade."
Their position is not too difficult to understand when one remembers that, Oriental fashion, they were shut up in their palaces, where no breath of impartial advice could possibly reach them, and that they heard only what courtiers with their own fish to fry permitted them to hear.
The real culprits then, according to all accounts, were the officials who deliberately misled the Court. It was characteristic of the I.G., always too big for resentment, that he could find some excuse for them and, though the length of his service entitled him to more consideration than most of those who cried out bitterly for "vengeance," could write in his book ("These From the Land of Sinim"), "In the heat of the conflict, and under the agonizing strain of anxiety for imperilled loved ones, many hard things have been said and written about the officials who allied themselves with the Boxers. But these men were eminent in their own country for their learning and services, were animated by patriotism, were enraged by foreign dictation, and had the courage of their convictions. We must do them the justice of allowing that they were actuated by high motives and love of country—not that these necessarily mean political ability or highest wisdom," The truth is—and he realized it thoroughly—that the real deep feeling of the Chinese people has always been to be left alone in peace to pursue the even tenor of their way.
So enlightened a man as the great Minister Wen Hsiang—"one of the most intelligent and broad-minded Chinese I ever knew," as Sir Robert Hart sometimes said—frankly confessed this when speaking to the I.G. a few years after the inauguration of the Customs. "We would gladly pay you all the increased revenue you have brought us," were his exact words, "if you foreigners would go back to your own country and leave us in peace as we were before you came."
Of course neither the wishes of the Chinese nor the question of Imperial responsibility or non-responsibility mattered greatly in 1900. The nations of the world were not in a tolerant mood; they would, as he pointed out, care little for excuses and less for the Chinese anxiety about the Palace, "with its ancestral contents," or the Imperial Tombs. The only thing which might influence them was the consideration of the welfare of the Chinese people.
Plans for the future must turn upon this as upon an axle. Moreover, to effect anything some distinguished person of high position and importance must come forward, and the man whom the I.G. named when he was asked for his advice was Prince Ching. He was the one person with whom the Foreign Powers would be most likely to treat, as it was to his influence, rumour said, that the Legations owed the merciful truce during the Siege. Li Hung Chang, it is true, had also been given full powers to negotiate with the Nations, but they looked rather askance at him because of two telegrams he had sent. One stating that the Legations had reached Tientsin in safety was a most unfortunate falsehood and prejudiced the world against him, more's the pity, as he had hitherto been considered able and powerful abroad. The other was a foolish request that no foreign troops should pass Tungchow—a town on the Grand Canal about fifteen miles from the capital. It was quite right and proper that, being appointed, Li should share Prince Ching's labours and not allow everything, criticism included, to be thrown on the latter alone; but the more he was discredited, the more need for Prince Ching to return to Peking—and quickly.
[Illustration: SIR ROBERT HART AND MISS KATE CARL