CHAPTER XXI—FROM THE SAN SHAN AN
An old temple—Haunted—Wolf with green eyes—Loneliness—Death of missionaries—Fear—Sanctuaries—“James Buchanan”—Valiant farmers—Autumn tints—Famous priest—Sacrifice of disciples—Tree conserving—Camels at my gate—Servants—“Cook book”—Enchanted hills—Cricket cages—Kindly people—The fall of Belshazzar—Hope for the future.
And with two servants and the temple coolies to wait upon me I settled down in the San Shan An, the Temple of the Three Mountains, the oldest temple in this valley of temples, built long ago in the Sung Dynasty. They said it was haunted, haunted by the ghost of a big snake, and when the mud from the roof fell as so much dust on the stone floor, and over me, my tables and chairs and bed, my boy stretched out his arms and explained that the snake had done it. The snake, I found, always accounted for dust. When my jam and butter disappeared, and I suspected human agency, he said in his pidgin-English, “I tink—I tink——” and then words failed him, and he broke out into spelling, “I tink it R—A—T.” Why he could spell that word and not pronounce it I do not know, but until I left I did not know that the snake that lived in my roof was supernatural. I don't think even I could be afraid of the ghost of a snake. The temple up above, the Language Officer's temple, was haunted by a wolf with green eyes, and that would have been a different matter. I am glad I did not dare the wolf with green eyes. For I was all by myself. The Language Officer, the Good Samaritan, went back to Peking, and, except at week-ends, when I persuaded a friend or two to dissipate my loneliness, I was the only foreigner in the valley. Go back to Peking until the work I had set myself to do was done, I determined I would not. It has been a curious and lonely existence away in the hills, in the little temple embosomed in trees, among a people who speak not a word of my language; but it had its charm. I had my camp-bed set up on the little platform looking out over the place of tombs, with the great Peking plain beyond, and there, while the weather was warm, I had all my meals, and there, warm or cold, I always slept. When the evening shadows fell I was lonely, I was worse than lonely, all that I had missed in life came crowding before my eyes, all the years seemed empty, wasted, all the future hopeless, and I went to bed and tried to sleep, if only to forget.
And China is not a good place in which to try the lonely life. There are too many tragic histories associated with it, and one is apt to remember them at the wrong times. Was I afraid at night? I was, I think, a little, but then I am so often afraid, and so often my fears are false, that I have learned not to pay much attention to them. I knew very well that the Legations would not have allowed me, without a word of warning, to take a temple in the hills, had there been any likelihood of danger, but still, when the evening shadows fell, I could not but remember once again, Sir Robert Hart's dictum, and that if anything did happen, I was cut off here from all my kind. It was just Fear, the Fear that one personifies, but another time, if I elect to live by myself among an alien people, I do not think I will improve my mind by reading first any account of the atrocities those people have perpetrated at no very remote period. As the darkness fell I was apt to start and look over my shoulder at any unexplainable sound, to remember these things and to hope they would not happen again, which is first cousin to fearing they would. At Pao Ting Fu, not far from here as distances in China go, during the Boxer trouble, the Boxers attacked the missionaries, both in the north and the south suburb, just outside the walls of the town. In the north suburb the Boxers and their following burned those missionaries to death in their houses, because they would not come out. They dared not. Think how they must have feared, those men and women in the prime of their life, when they stayed and faced a cruel death from which there was no escape, rather than chance the mercies of the mob outside. One woman prayed them to save her baby girl, her little, tender Margaret, not a year old, her they might kill, and her husband, and her two little boys, but would no one take pity on the baby, the baby that as yet could not speak. But though many of those who heard her prayer and repeated it, pitied, they did not dare help. It is a notable Chinese characteristic—obedience to orders—and the lookers-on thought that those in authority having ordered the slaughter of the missionaries it was not their part to interfere. They told afterwards how, as a brute rushed up the stairs, the mother, desperate, seized a pistol that lay to her hand and shot him. I am always glad she did that. And others told, how, through the mounting flames, they could see her husband walking up and down, leading his two little boys by the hand, telling them—ah, what could any man say under such terrible circumstances as that.
And in the south suburb the missionary doctor was true almost to the letter of the faith he preached. As the mob surrounded him, he took a revolver, showed them how perfect was his command over the weapon, how he could have dealt death right and left, and then he tossed it aside and submitted to their wicked will, and they took him and cut off his head. But the fate of the women always horrified me most. It was that that seemed most terrible in the dusk of the evening. They took two of the unmarried women, and one was too terrified to walk—having once seen a Chinese crowd, filthy, horrible and always filthy and horrible even when they are friendly, one realises what it must be to be in their power, one understands that girl's shrinking terror. Her they tied, hands and feet together, and slung her from a pole, exactly as they carry pigs to market. Is this too terrible a thing to write down for everyone to read? It almost seems to me it is. If so forgive me. I used to think about it those evenings alone in the San Shan An. And one of those women, they say, was always brave, and gave to a little child her last little bit of money as she walked to her death, and the other, who was so terrified at first, recovered herself, and walked courageously as they led her to execution outside the city walls.
When I thought of those women I was ashamed of the Fear that made me afraid to look behind me in the dark, made me listen intently for unusual sounds, and hear a thousand unexplainable ones. I, in the broad daylight, went and looked in the two sanctuaries that were at each end of my courtyard, each with an image and altar in it. In both were stored great matting bundles of Spanish chestnuts, and in the larger, oh sacrilege! oh bathos! was my larder, and I saw eggs, and meat, and cabbage, and onions, coming out of it, but I do not think anything could have induced me to go into those places after nightfall. I ask myself why—I wonder—but I find no answer. The gods were only images, the dust and dirt of long years was upon them, they were dead, dead, and yet I, the most modern of women was afraid—at night I was afraid, the fear that seems to grow up with us all was upon me. By and by a friend sent me out “James Buchanan”—a small black and white k'ang dog, about six inches high, but his importance must by no means be measured by his size. I owe much gratitude to James Buchanan for he is a most cheerful and intelligent companion. I intended to part with him when I left the hills, but I made him love me, and then to my surprise, I found I loved him, and he must share my varying fortunes. But what is a wandering woman, like I am, to do with a little dog?