Guards have been ordered from the ships lying out at the Taku bar. The guards will soon be here, and when they have come the movement will cease. Thus have the eleven Legations spoken, each telegraphing a different tale to its government, and each more than annoyed by this joint action. Incidentally each one is secretly wondering what is going to happen, and whether there is really any danger.
It has been directly telegraphed from London by Her Majesty's Secretary of Foreign Affairs, Lord Salisbury, so gossip says, that as quite enough has been heard of this Boxer business it must cease at once. Is not the South African War still proceeding, and has England not enough troubles without this additional one? It is almost pathetic, this peremptory order from a vacillating Foreign Office that never knows its own mind—this Canute-like bidding of the angry waves of human men to stand still at once and be no more heard of. People in Europe will never quite understand the East, for the East is ruled by things which are impossible in a temperate climate.
Meanwhile, in the Palace, whose pink walls we see blinking at us in the sun just beyond Legation Street, all is also topsy-turvy, the Chinese reports say. The Empress Dowager, shrewdly listening to this person and that, must feel in her own bones that it is a bad business, and that it will not end well, for she understands dynastic disasters uncommonly well. She has sent again and again for P'i Hsiao-li, "Cobbler's-wax" Li, as he is called, the reputed false eunuch who is master of her inner counsels, if Chinese small talk is to be believed. The eunuch Li has been told earnestly to find out the truth and nothing but the truth. A passionate old woman, this Empress Dowager of China, a veritable Catherine of Russia in her younger days they say, with her hot Manchu blood and her lust for ruling men. "Cobbler's-wax" Li, son of a cobbler and falsely emasculated, they say, so that he might become an eunuch of the Palace, from which lowly estate he has blossomed into the real power behind the Throne, hastens off once more to the palace of Prince Tuan, the father of the titular heir-apparent. As Prince Tuan's discretion has long since been cast to the winds, and Lao t'uan-yeh, or spiritual Boxer chiefs, now sit at the princely banqueting tables discussing the terms on which they will rush the Tartar city with their flags unfurled and their yelling forces behind them, a foolish and irresolute government, made up of the most diverse elements, and a rouge-smirched Empress Dowager, will then have to side with them or be begulfed too. Anxiously listening, "Cobbler's-wax" Li weights the odds, for no fool is this false eunuch, who through his manly charms leads an Empress who in turn leads an empire. Half suspicious and wholly unconvinced, he questions and demands the exact number of invulnerables that can be placed in line; and is forthwith assured, with braggart Chinese choruses, that they are as locusts, that the whole earth swarms with them, that the movement is unconquerable. Still unconvinced, the false eunuch takes his departure, and then the Throne decrees and counter decrees in agonised Edicts. It is noticed, too, that the distributors of the official organ, the Peking Gazette, no longer staidly walk their rounds, pausing to gossip with their friends, but run with their wooden-block printed Edicts wet from the presses, and shout indiscreetly to the passers-by, "Aside, our business is important." In all faith there is something in this movement. It is also noticed that roughness and rudeness are growing in the streets; little things that are always the precursors of the coming storm in the East are freely indulged in, and "foreign devil" is now almost a chorus. The atmosphere is obviously unwholesome, but guards have been ordered and it will soon be well. All these other things of which I speak are merely native reports....
Meanwhile each Legation does not forget its dignity, but walks stolidly alone. Alone in front of the French Legation is there some commotion almost hourly. It is, however, only the arrival and departure of Catholic priests posting to and from the Pei-t'ang about that little business of forty or fifty marines pour protéger nos personnes et nos biens, that is all. A singularly importunate fellow this Monseigneur F——, our most reverend Vicar Apostolic of the Manchu capital.
IV
OUR GUARDS ARRIVE
31st May, 1900.
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