“I dare say,” said my host sarcastically. “I don't want to take away anybody's character, but I'll venture to say there are at least ten men within hail”—there was a crowd round—“who would joyfully cut your throat for ten roubles.”
He enlarged upon that theme later. We used to sit out on the balcony of his house looking out, not over the river, but over the town of Sakalin, and there used to come in the men from the B.A.T. Factory, a Russian in top-boots who spoke excellent English and a young American named Hyde. They told me tales, well, something like the stories I used to listen to in my childhood's days when we talked about “the breaking out of the gold” in Australia, tales of men who had washed much gold and then were lured away and murdered for their riches. Certainly they did not consider Blagoveschensk or Sakalin towns in which a woman could safely wander. In fact all the Siberian towns that they knew came under the ban.
But of course mostly we talked about the war and how maddening it was only to get scraps of news through the telegraph. The young American was keen, I remember. I wonder if he really had patience to wait till his country came in. He talked then in the first week of the war of making his way back to Canada and seeing if he could enlist there, for even then we felt sure that the Outer Dominions would want to help the Motherland. And the Germans were round Liège—would they take it? Association is a curious thing. Whenever I hear of Liège I cannot help thinking, not of the Belgian city, but of a comfortable seat on a balcony with the shadows falling and the lights coming out one by one on the bath-houses that are dotted about a little town on the very outskirts of the Chinese Empire—the lights of the town. There are the sounds and the smells of the Chinese town mingling with the voices of the talkers and the fragrance of the coffee, and the air is close with the warmth of August. There comes back to me the remembrance of the keen young American who wanted to fight Germany and the young Russian in top-boots who was very much afraid he would only be used to guard German prisoners.
Sakalin was cosmopolitan, but it had a leaning toward Russia, hence the bath-houses, an idea foreign to Chinese civilisation; and when I got a piece of grit in my eye which refused to come out it was to a Japanese doctor I went, accompanied by my host's Chinese servant, who, having had the trouble stated by me in English, explained it to another man in Chinese, who in his turn told the doctor what was the matter in Russian. Luckily that man of medicine was very deft and I expect he could have managed very well without any explanation at all. I have the greatest respect for the Japanese leech I visited in Sakalin.
On the Sunday we had a big picnic. The Russian Boundary Commissioner came across with his wife and little girls, Mrs Barentzen took her little girl and the Chinese Tao Tai lent us the light of his countenance. He was the feature of the entertainment, for he was a very big man, both literally and socially, and could not move without a large following, so that an escort of mounted police took charge of us. The proper portly Chinaman of whom this retinue was in honour spoke no English, but smiled at me benevolently, and wore a petticoat and a Russian military cap! The picnic was by a little brook about seven miles from the town and I shall always remember it because of the lush grass, waist-high, and the lovely flowers. I had looked at the Siberian flowers from the steamer when they were ungetatable, I had gathered them with joy in Saghalien, and now here they were again just to my hand. In June they told me there were abundant lilies of the valley, and I regretted I had not been there in June. Truly I feel it would be a delight to see lilies of the valley growing wild, but as it was, the flowers were beautiful enough, and there were heaps of them. There were very fine Canterbury bells, a glorious violet flower and magnificent white poppies. Never have I gathered more lovely flowers, never before have I seen them growing wild in such amazing abundance. No one is more truly artistic than the average Chinese, and I think the Tao Tai must have enjoyed himself, though it is against the canons of good taste in China to look about you.
Presently I was asking the chief magistrate's good offices for Buchanan, for he, my treasured Buchanan, was lost. In the Barentzens' house there was, of course, as in all well-regulated Chinese houses run by foreigners, a bathroom attached to every bedroom, and when I wanted a bath the servants filled with warm water the half of a large barrel, which made a very excellent bath-tub. And having bathed myself, I bathed Buchanan, whose white coat got very dirty in the dusty Chinese streets. He ran away downstairs and I lingered for a moment to put on my dress, and when I came down he was gone. High and low I hunted; I went up and down the street calling his name, and I knew he would have answered, he always did, had he been within hearing. All the Customs men were turned out and I went to the Chinese Tao Tai, who promptly put on all the police. But Buchanan was gone for a night and I was in despair. Mr Barentzen's head boy shook his head.
“Master saying,” said he, “mus' get back that dog.” So I realised I was making a fuss, but for the moment I did not care. The Tao Tai gave it as his opinion that he had not been stolen. There were many little dogs like him in the town, said he, no one would steal one, which only shows a Chinese magistrate may not be infallible, for I was sure Buchanan would not stay away from me of his own free will.
And then at last the servants turned up triumphant, Buchanan, in the arms of the head boy, wild with delight at seeing his mistress again. The police had searched everywhere, but the servants, with their master's injunction in mind and my reward to be earned, had made further inquiries and found that a little boy had been seen taking the dog into a certain house occupied by an official, the man who was responsible for the cleaning of the streets. This was the first intimation I ever had that the Chinese did clean their streets: I had thought that they left that job to the “wonks” and the scavenger crows. The police made inquiries. No, there was no little dog there. But the servants—wise Chinese servants—made friends with the people round, and they said: “Watch. There is a dog.” So a junior servant was put to watch, and when the gate of the compound was opened he stole in, and there was poor little James Buchanan tied up to a post. That servant seized the dog and fled home in triumph.
The T'ai T'ai (the official's wife), said the people round, had wanted the pretty little dog.
I was so delighted to get my little friend back that I should have been content to leave things there. Not so Mr Barentzen. He sent for that official, and there in his drawing-room he and I interviewed a portly Chinese gentleman in grey petticoats, a long pigtail, a little black silk cap and the tips of the silver shields that encased the long nails of his little fingers just showing beyond his voluminous sleeves.