I had been threatened with robbers before, but not by an important General, and this time I felt I had better take heed, besides there was always the consolatory thought that, if I did not go, I need not ride any more in a Peking cart. Then I asked permission to visit the Palace and Park.
“No can do one time,” said the interpreter. “How many day you want go?”
Somehow, though I had come all this way to see it, I have a rooted objection to sightseeing. To get a ticket to go into a place takes away the charm; still as I was about it, I thought I would go as often as I could, so I said I would like to go on five days. The missionaries, though they had been here for six years, had never yet set foot inside that Park; to go required a permit from the authorities, and it was their idea to ask nothing from those authorities that they could possibly avoid. They would certainly have thought it wicked to ask for anything for their own pleasure. I did not suffer from any such ideas. As the General was bent on being civil to me I thought I might as well say I would like to take my friends in, and as we could not go without proper attendants—I who come from a country where I have blacked my own boots, cooked the family dinner, and ironed my husband's shirts many a time—I asked for and got about thirty tickets. I've got some of them still. Then I drank a cup of very excellent tea, and before five minutes were up rose and made my adieux. Brevity, I had been instructed, was the soul of courtesy in a Chinese interview.
The Tartar General saw me through two doors, which I believe was a high honour, and due to my having been introduced as a learned doctor. The correct thing is to protest all the while and beg your host not to come any farther, but I am really too Western in my ideas and it seems silly. Either he wants to come, or he doesn't, in any case what does it matter, and so I fear me, I was not vehement enough in my protestations of unworthiness. The secretary conducted me to my cart, where a subdued and awed servant awaited my arrival with a new and exalted idea of his Missie's importance. Tuan had magnified my importance, I fancy, for his own sake. He was serving a woman—yes, but she was a rich, generous, and important woman, but he had never, at the bottom of his heart, really dreamt that she could go through the yamen gate in a cart, that she could sit down beside the Tartar General, that she could get many tickets to go inside grounds forbidden to all the Chinese round about. I have not the slightest doubt all the details of the interview reached him before I came out, brief as my visit had been, and he helped me into my cart with, I felt, more deference and less make-believe than was usual. It made me smile a little to myself, but I think it was Tuan who really got most satisfaction out of that visit, though he had not seen the great man.
I had been comparing China to Babylon. I came away from the General's presence with the feeling that a Babylonish gentleman was truly charming—just like a finished product of my own time. Probably he was. But there were other sides to Babylon, as I was reminded that night. It is well to know all sides. When I had said good night and gone to bed, there burst on my ears a loud beating of gongs, and the weird war-song I had found so haunting the night before. The soldiers were stimulating their courage for the fighting in Mongolia. I wonder if the Babylonish soldiery sang so before they marched down upon Jerusalem. Then there came the watchman's gong, and the howl of the wonks that prowled about the town. I was back in past ages, and as I lay there in the darkness I wondered how I had ever had the temerity even to contemplate a visit to Lamamiao, and whether I would ever have the courage necessary to get back to Peking by myself. Luckily the fears of the dark are generally dispersed by the morning sunlight. At least they are with me, or I should never dare go travelling in remote places at all.