A CHINESE STORY

It was my second visit to Shanghai after a long interval. I had only a vague idea of the old walled city, though the European settlement seemed fairly familiar. But now the old Chinese city drew me in spite of its gloomy, stinking streets and swarming verminous life. What lay on the other side? What was the soul of China, and that Chinese civilisation which speculated in transcendental philosophies and practised impressionist painting when Rome was still mistress of the world? Could I get any glimpse of the tantalising mystery in spite of the veil of language?

An English student-interpreter put me on the way: “There’s a Pole here named Shimonski,” he said, “who is called in in every difficulty; they say he knows more about China than the Chinks themselves: he’d be an ideal guide. I’ll send him to you to-morrow morning, if you’ll be in.”

I agreed gladly; but no Shimonski appeared next morning or the morning after, and the appointment was gradually blotted out of my memory by the rush of new and strange experiences.

One morning I had been accosted in front of the hotel by an old Chinaman, who talked to me with many genuflections in a tone and manner of profound humility. While I was trying to understand his expressive face and mimicry he suddenly flourished a large knife, evidently not with any evil purpose, for as soon as I turned away, the knife disappeared. I went about the hotel trying to get the matter explained to me, and about eleven o’clock returned to my room.

To my astonishment a man was seated in my particular arm-chair at the table, smoking my cigarettes. He did not get up as I entered, so I said to him: “Have you not made some mistake?”

“I think not,” he replied, in a quiet voice and excellent English. “I was told you wanted to see me.”

“And your name?” I asked.

“My name is Shimonski,” he replied, negligently knocking off the ash from his cigarette, and looking up at me.

“Oh!” I cried, “you are the guide whom Lawrence spoke of?”

He nodded merely. Rather interested by his casual way of taking the matter, I drew up a chair and sat down beside him.

Shimonski was tall, almost six feet in height, and spare of figure. He seemed about forty, but might have been five years more or less, for his whiskers and moustache and hair were all of that straw colour in which grey hairs scarcely show. His features were very irregular, almost like a Tartar’s—the forehead low, the straw-thatch growing down into it and making two bays, so to say; the eyes small and grey; the nose, the prominent feature, long and thin, pinched, indeed, on top, with very broad nostrils that vibrated with every emotion, and in anger grew quite white. The dominant expression of the face was sharp temper, inclined to suspicion. I was not pleasurably impressed.

“They tell me,” I began, “that you know more about China than any foreigner.”

“That would not be high praise,” he answered quietly. “Here, as in India, the natives speak of the whites as savages, and with good reason.”

“I wonder,” I went on, “whether I could learn anything about China without knowing the language. All that I hear is so strange to me. I am told that all of the great mandarins and governors are appointed according to their literary achievements. I wonder how that works.”

“Do you think it would be preferable,” he asked sneeringly, “to have them appointed by money, as in America, or by snobbery, as in England?”

“You’ve got me there,” I laughed. “I am prepared to admit that rulers everywhere are a poor lot, and I dare say they are no worse here than elsewhere.”

“Better here,” he retorted, “though not much; there is a good deal of human nature everywhere.”

The man’s way of talking interested me. He was evidently free of prejudice and used words scrupulously.

“You think I may learn something even without the language?”

He nodded.

“How much do you want to be my guide and teacher?” I asked.

“If I am to do you any good,” he said, “it ought to be forty or fifty dollars a week.”

“All right. Shall we begin from to-day or to-morrow?”

“As you like,” he answered; “but I think you ought to give me a cheque now; not that I have any claim on it, but I want it.” The remark was made in the air.

I could not associate cheating with this nonchalant, thoughtful person, so I wrote him a cheque for the larger amount and handed it to him. He put it in his pocket.

“How long are you going to stay in Shanghai?” he asked.

“Two or three months,” I replied; “but I am not limited to time if there is anything of value to learn.”

“That depends on you,” he said, and his little eyes bored into mine. “Well, so long!” He turned abruptly and went.

As soon as I was alone I began to reproach myself for not asking him to explain the old Chinaman, but I told myself that it would be time enough next day.

But next day there was no Shimonski, nor the day after, nor the day after that.

One evening I spoke to an American merchant who had been in Shanghai twenty odd years and asked him if he knew Shimonski.

“A queer fish,” he replied.

“Is he honest?” I asked.

“Oh yes,” said the merchant. “I say he is queer, because he lives like a Chink; his eyes are getting to look like a Chinaman’s, don’t you think? And you even see him in their dress.”

A day or two later I was told that someone wanted to see me.

“Send him up to my room,” I said. To my astonishment a little Chinese girl came in and gave me a slip of paper on which I read: “Please give bearer my week’s money; I shall see you soon. Shimonski.”

I hesitated. It seemed to me the height of insolence.

“Can you take me to Mr. Shimonski?” I said to the girl.

She shook her head: “He isn’t in Shanghai.”

“When did he give you this?” I asked.

“Before he went away, a week ago,” she answered.

It was curious, but the man’s personality was so impressive in its entire sincerity, in its absence of pose, that I wrote out a cheque and handed it to the girl. As she put out her hand to take it I noticed that her skin was lighter than the skin of the majority of Chinese women. “Maybe Shimonski’s daughter,” I said to myself.

A couple of days passed and I heard no more of the matter, but I was again accosted by the old Chinaman with the knife.

Then one afternoon the door opened and Shimonski came in.

“Good-day!” he said.

“So you have turned up at last,” I replied.

“Yes. I had something to finish that took me out of town, but now I am at your service, and from to-morrow I think you will find me fairly punctual. I suppose you will be up about nine o’clock?”

I said I would, and the next moment, without a word of excuse or explanation, he had left the room.

The next morning at nine o’clock I was up and dressed. Again he came in without knocking. “Shall we go out?” he said.

I took up my stick and hat and went with him. At the door I was once more approached by the old Chinaman.

“What does he want?” I asked Shimonski. “He has bothered me three or four times.”

Shimonski spoke to him and then turned to me.

“His proposal,” he said, “is to kill himself any way you like for ten dollars!”

“Why should I want him to kill himself?” I asked.

Shimonski shrugged his shoulders. “He says he will do it according to the Japanese way, which is the most painful, or he will go across the street and cut his throat there, or do anything you please.”

“What good would that do me?” I asked.

“Good?” said Shimonski carelessly. “I don’t know; it would be an experience.”

“One that I won’t buy,” I said. “What does he want ten dollars for?”

“He has an only daughter,” said Shimonski, “and he can get her well married for that dowry.”

The old Chinaman had stood listening to us with his head on one side, looking from face to face. He seemed so eager that I took out ten dollars and gave him the bill. He pressed it against his heart and then again took out the great knife and made remarks.

“Tell him to put that knife up,” I said, “and go off to his daughter.”

Shimonski said a few words and the Chinaman disappeared.

“What an extraordinary creature,” I remarked, “to be willing to kill himself for so little.”

“Life is cheap in China,” said Shimonski; “they all recognise that life to the poor is worthless.”

“Does that explain, I wonder, our shootings in Western America?”

“Sure,” replied Shimonski. “Where life is easy and pleasant it becomes precious.”

“But men in Western America are free,” I went on.

“Nothing like so free as they are in China,” snapped Shimonski.

“What do you mean?” I asked, in surprise.

“That old Chinaman could have killed himself in the street and no one would have interfered with him; some days would probably have elapsed before the corpse would have been taken away. No country in the world is so free as China.”

“Really!” I cried.

He looked at me, smiling. “What countries did you think freest?” he asked.

“I have always thought England and America,” I replied.

“Surely,” he retorted, “you know that the Greeks and Dalmatians are infinitely freer. In England, it is true, there is a little sense of personal liberty; in America there is none: it has been completely lost. America has a small sense of equality; here there is no sense of equality; no sense at all, but an extraordinary sense of liberty. Freedom is a religion in China.

“I am taking you now to the execution of some pirates who were caught the other day at the mouth of the river,” he went on, “that will teach you what we mean here by freedom,” and he led the way over one of the bridges. In ten minutes we came to a sort of yard, at the other side of which was a poor-looking temple structure. We had been there only a few moments when there filed into the yard eighteen men, all with their arms tied tightly behind their backs; their legs were tied too—in fact so closely haltered that they could only totter with short steps.

In a little while the executioner appeared—a gigantic man from North China—the biggest Chinaman I had seen up to that time, six feet three or four inches in height, of superb breadth and strength. He was flourishing an enormous sword as he came to us; it was scimitar-shaped and fully an inch thick at the back: it must have weighed thirty pounds. When he spoke the pirates all knelt down and he stood in front of them and made a short speech, which Shimonski translated.

“He says that he is the greatest executioner in the world, and that if they will only keep quiet and push their heads well back and their chins up they will never know that death came to them nor feel the stroke. See, he is shaving hairs off his arm to show them how razor-sharp the sword is.”

As the executioner stepped smiling towards the first man in the line I stared round me and noticed that half the wall looking on to the street had been broken down, but of the people who were passing not one even paused to look at the tragedy.

The executioner said a word or two to the first man and lifted his chin in the air with his hand. Then stepping to the side, with one slice, he cut off his head, that rolled in the mud. I was horrified; but again the executioner stepped in front and said a few words.

“What is he saying?” I gasped, with dry mouth.

“Simply asking them to notice how perfect the stroke was; that the man has gone into the other world without knowing it. Look at his head; you will see the features are quite composed,” Shimonski replied coolly.

Again and again and again the tragedy took place, accompanied each time by the boasting of the executioner. It was the fourth or fifth body that remained upright after the head had been sliced off, the poor torso spouting blood two feet high in a stream.

The executioner pointed with his sword to the body and said: “That’s the way I do my work; all you have to do is to keep quiet, chin up, head back.”

To my astonishment the remaining pirates nudged each other to look at the headless trunk, and laughed.

“I must go,” I said to Shimonski. “I cannot stand this; that laughter and the cold cruelty are too horrible.”

“It may be interesting,” he said. “Wait.”

But I could not wait, and hurried outside to get the wall between me and the ghastly spectacle. It was ten minutes before Shimonski rejoined me. “You might as well have waited,” he said; “nothing happened.”

“Do you call the murder of eighteen people nothing?”

“Nothing,” repeated Shimonski, shrugging his shoulders. “Thousands die every day in China that no one cares about.”

“Fancy,” I said, “not one person outside even turned to look; in America there would have been a crowd.”

“Yes,” replied Shimonski, “you are interested in your neighbour; in China we mind our own business; that’s all.”

Chinese contempt for human life was made plain to me by this execution, but Shimonski seemed determined that I should learn something more about the judicial system in China, for the next time we went out he took me to a court.

One or two cases were decided, not by argument of any sort or an appeal to law, but simply by the sense of justice of the judge, a peculiar-looking little Chinaman, with eyes that were mere slits and a low monotonous voice that was, somehow or other, impressive.

The first few cases were decided with a sort of rough justice, I thought, and then came a more important case. A merchant, it seemed, was complaining of his manager or chief assistant. He was a stout, rather large man, very voluble. He declared that his assistant had recently married and was living in a better way than his salary justified. This excited his suspicion. He took a sort of inventory and found that certain silken garments were missing. He believed that his assistant had stolen and sold them and made use of the proceeds; how, otherwise, could he have got the money to live as he was living?

The complaint seemed to me absurd and unfounded, but the little mandarin on the bench said a word or two, which Shimonski translated: “The judge says he wants to hear the assistant.”

So the assistant came forward, one of the finest-looking young Chinamen I had ever seen. His face was almost Caucasian, the eyes large and frank, and the expression honest and intelligent; he was, besides, a fine figure of a man, taller even than the merchant and broader, but carrying no fat. He showed no fear or anger, and told his tale quite simply. Shimonski translated for me as he went on:

“He says the accusation is absurd: if the merchant will take an inventory he will find that nothing has disappeared that has not been paid for; he has never taken any garment outside the shop; he makes much extra money by going to the European Hotel in the evening and carrying baggage to the steamer or doing anything they want him to do, and his wife, too, works.”

Again and again he was interrupted by the merchant. When he had finished the judge said a few quiet words and Shimonski chuckled.

“What is it?” I asked; “surely he will dismiss the case.”

“The judge asks him what became of the silken garments that the merchant says were in the shop. The judge is in favour of the merchant. The employé is too bold. We shall see some fun.”

The young man answered the judge at somewhat greater length now and with much greater emphasis, and when interrupted by the merchant he turned on him and spoke indignantly. Again the judge peered through his slits of eyes and said something and there was a commotion in the court; two or three Chinese police went out by a side door.

“Now you will see something,” whispered Shimonski excitedly. “This is getting interesting.”

“What is it?” I asked.

“The judge is going to make him confess,” said Shimonski. “You’ll see.”

A moment more and two policemen came back with the most curious-looking affair I had ever seen. It was a high pole, as thick as one’s leg, with a very large basin-looking thing at the base, a bar stuck out horizontally at the top, with a pulley attached. In the basin was a huge cannon-ball of stone that must have weighed two or three hundredweight.

“What on earth is that thing for?” I asked.

“You’ll see,” replied Shimonski curtly, with gleaming eyes.

Again the mandarin on the bench said something in his slow, monotonous, quiet voice. Two policemen took hold of the young man and dragged him to the machine. Two or three others pulled the cannon-ball about six feet high by the rope. A policeman shoved the right foot of the young man into the basin and held it there. A word from the judge and the ball fell with a thud on the young man’s foot and turned it into mere blood and pulp. I never heard such a cry as he uttered. I was fascinated with horror. “Good God!” I kept repeating. “Good God!”

I turned to Shimonski. He was smiling, with his eyes fixed on the mandarin, who was speaking again, evidently addressing the young man, who was being held up by the policeman.

“What is he saying?” I asked.

“The judge is asking him if he remembers the silk robes now, and he says ‘No. He can only repeat what he has said already.’”

The merchant came forward and even his face was white. He made some remark and Shimonski translated: “He says now he may be mistaken. Won’t the honourable judge please let the young man go?”

For the first time the judge used a few short sentences: Shimonski translated: “He says that as the merchant had pleaded for the young man’s life he may go, but he hopes the punishment will be a lesson to him to keep from stealing in the future.”

The little old mandarin then got up and disappeared through a door at the back. The policemen took their hands off the young man, who pulled himself together and limped to the door, a long stream of blood pouring from his right leg to the floor.

“Good God!” I cried to Shimonski, “give the poor fellow some money and see if he cannot be carried home and his leg attended to.”

“Why give him money?” asked Shimonski. “In a couple of hours he’ll be dead. Why waste money on a corpse?”

“But can’t they put a tourniquet on his leg,” I said, “and stop the bleeding? He will be a cripple, but he may live.”

“What good is life to a cripple?” replied Shimonski. “Give your money to people who are sound, if you want to give it.”

“Let us get out of this,” I cried, appalled. “I cannot stand your Chinese justice.”

A day or two afterwards I cross-examined Shimonski about the matter. “Is there no appeal in such a case?” I asked. “The merchant evidently lied and the young man was murdered for nothing at all.”

“No, no,” said Shimonski; “he was impudent.”

“Innocence,” I retorted, “is always impudent.”

“Wealth is the only thing in China that dares to be impudent,” said Shimonski. “If you are independent you can be impudent; if you are not, you had better be respectful.”

“So,” I said, “this is the way your boasted liberty is bounded: freedom for the well-to-do; torture and untimely death for the poor.”

Shimonski shrugged his shoulders. “As long as I am one of the well-to-do,” he said, “I do not bother.”

There was no doubt he took pleasure in cruelty, and when I asked him he admitted it quite coolly.

“You have a childish idea,” he said, “that pleasure in life is only to be got from love and liking and such roots, but I think as much joy in life comes from gratified hatred, and there is keen pleasure in punishment that falls on another.”

“Justice has nothing to do with it, then?” I asked.

“Nothing,” he said. “You do not ask whether you deserve to be kissed or not; you take pleasure in the kiss. The wise man gets all the pleasure he can out of life.”

“But can there be any pleasure in cruelty?” I asked.

“Of course,” he replied with a sigh, as if tired of such foolish questions, “the very sharpest.”

A little later he took me to another Chinese execution, but before I tell of it I want to say that his cruelty had begun to interest me. I wanted to find the reason for it, the explanation of it. After all, he couldn’t have been born with that fiend’s nature.

The second execution which Shimonski brought me to see is certainly an institution peculiar to China and throws a grim light on Chinese judicial proceedings. It, too, was in public, but this time a crowd had collected in the half-paved yard, where bloodstains could still be seen from the execution of the pirates.

Against the wall, underneath the temple, a wooden staging had been built, and the back of the staging was planked right up to the top of the wall. The executioner was a man of ordinary size, but of considerable muscular development, and he was stripped to the waist. He was abrupt in movement and vibrant with energy.

A large basket was at his feet and he had two assistants. It took them perhaps a quarter of an hour to tie up the criminal to big nails let in on the wooden hoarding at the back. When they had finished the victim was spread-eagled against this wooden background, but standing more or less at ease on his own feet, though he could not move his hands or head or limbs, because he was trussed like a fowl and tied everywhere to the hoarding like an advertisement. The victim was a man of perhaps forty years of age, but of an extraordinary emaciation; he looked more like a skeleton than a man. It appeared he had entered the house of a rich man to steal, and had been arrested after killing one of the policemen.

“Want drove him to it?” I remarked to Shimonski.

“Probably poverty,” he replied; “he looks like it.”

Shimonski was not as interested as usual. “They are not going through with it,” he said disconsolately. “The man has some girl children and they have curried favour with a rich mandarin and I hear the executioner has been bought; if so, we shan’t have much fun.”

“Justice, then, can be bought in China?” I said.

Shimonski looked at me. “Justice is bought everywhere; sometimes with popular applause, as in America, sometimes with money, as in France, and sometimes with titles and snobbery, as in Great Britain; but everywhere justice is bought. In China money is the purchasing power. The Chinese are a matter-of-fact, realistic, sensible people.”

Scarcely had he finished speaking when the executioner turned round and made a speech. Shimonski translated it for me. He began by saying: “In this basket at my feet are fifty knives. I do not know what is written on the handles. I pick them up and read, and act according to the instructions. It is all a lottery and our lives are at the mercy of our masters.”

“Fifty knives!” I cried. “What on earth does he want fifty knives for?”

“You will see,” said Shimonski. “Wait and see.”

Suddenly one of the aides drew the cloth away from the basket with a flourish and immediately the executioner stooped down and picked a knife out of the basket: there was a label on the haft. He read it out: “Through the arm,” and whirling round at once he pinned the man’s left arm to the wood by driving the knife through it.

The victim did not utter a sound nor move, but his head bent further forward on his chest and his yellow face became grey; he appeared to be on the point of fainting. Another knife was taken out and read: “Through the shoulder,” and it was thrown in the most marvellous way, just catching the skin on the shoulder. The grey face became livid, but not a sound.

The executioner lifted up the third knife and read: “Through the heart,” and whirling round drove it through the heart of his victim. There was a roar of hatred and rage from the crowd, who evidently expected that the pleasant performance would be prolonged.

“I told you so,” said Shimonski. “I heard the executioner had been paid; that is the proof; otherwise he would have shown off his skill, using every knife to the end, and the man would have been squealing before the tenth, like a rat whose legs have been cut off.”

I left the ground while the executioner was still trying to tell the mob that he had simply to take the knife that came first; that he could not say what was on the label: in fact he was trying to justify himself as if he had been an Anglo-Saxon politician or profiteer.

“And can judges also be bought in China?” I asked Shimonski.

“Of course,” he said; “but the price for judges is higher, and they are usually bought from above by the governors or the State.”

“And for the three hundred and fifty millions of Chinamen,” I said, “there is no justice and no law?”

“None,” Shimonski answered. “But for the hundred and fifty thousand or so who can make some money and live independently China is the best country in the world. You can buy whatever you want in it and everything is very cheap. Did you ever get such good service before? Isn’t the food excellent? the fish and chickens wonderful? the climate healthy? perfect freedom? What more can a man want?”

“The whole thing is a horror to me,” I said. “What is there for the soul here?”

“Ah!” said Shimonski, “that is another question. You will find greater paintings in China than anywhere in the world—an art that grew and blossomed through two thousand years. Every school of painting imaginable can be found in China. Have you heard of the painter who said that it was no object of the artist to represent life or even to give you the effect life produced on you, which is the object of the modern European schools, but that the true aim of the great artist should be to represent the rhythm of life itself—not progress, that doesn’t exist; but the ebb and flow, the movement and rhythm of life?

“In the same way our poets always try to give us new emotions, and the moderns want to catch the most evanescent feelings, the fancies that break through language and escape.

“Our vases and cups are the finest in the world: common household things with a glaze on them of priceless beauty. Carpets, too, we have which make all other carpets look like rags.”

“I know,” I cried. “I have admired turquoise blues and camel-hair effects. I think them wonderful.”

“You will never know what a carpet is till you see an old Chinese carpet two or three hundred years old, for, unlike all other carpets, its beauty increases with age; as it gets worn down a gloss comes upon it that can only be compared to the bloom on a peach or grape. I could show you carpets three hundred years old that are as lovely as any picture—beautified, indeed, by the patine of the years, the unimaginable touch of Time.”

“But the religion?” I asked. “Can there be any religion in a people where justice is bought and sold and cruelty is a passion?”

“Oh yes,” replied Shimonski. “Man is a complex animal; he unites in myself many contradictions. The religion of China is the highest and most abstract in the world.”

My memories of Shimonski are becoming unduly voluminous; I must bring them to an end.

I have dwelt on his delight in cruelty and on his originality of thought, for those were the qualities in him which excited my curiosity and admiration; naturally he possessed dozens of other virtues and vices, but these two in eminent degree. It was especially his epicurean pleasure in cruelty, his savouring it as a titbit and dainty, that intrigued me, for after some months of acquaintanceship I found that the Chinese girl whom he sent to me as a messenger was an orphan whom he had picked up, educated and cared for. He had another girl in his house who looked after his clothes and books, though she was blind of one eye, and an old woman who cooked for them, and all three he had rescued out of pure pity, and they all adored him as a sort of god.

As I got to know and like him he grew more communicative. We went up country together that summer to see some old porcelain and on the journey he gave me the key of his strange nature. I’ll try to tell the story as he told it, but without the interruptions and wanderings of his narrative.

One thing was peculiar in his confession. He never tried to justify himself or to moralise his conduct in any degree. He was certainly above good and evil, in his own opinion at least.

We had been away about a fortnight and had stopped for the night in a walled town, three hundred miles from Shanghai. He had been explaining to me how curiously free and independent these towns are in China. The Imperial Government, it appeared, sent down annually a requisition setting forth what amount the town would have to contribute in taxes to the Imperial revenue; but the method of taxation was left to the town itself.

I told him that the same municipal power existed all over Germany, and was one of the chief reasons why Germans could stand an extreme Imperial despotism, because in their village and town affairs they were their own masters.

He shrugged his shoulders indifferently. He had no great liking for the Teutonic races, he said; the Germans and English, and even the Americans, were all tarred with the same brush—a self-sufficient greed varnished with hypocritical righteousness or sentimentality which he thought ridiculous. He preferred the Latins to the Teutons, but reserved his special admiration for the Slavs and the Chinese. In China, he said, we have had the “general strike” for a thousand years now which you are only beginning to think of as a protest. If the Government does something we don’t like, we all strike and the Government soon gives in. Despotism, like democracy, is only a word....

It was a beautiful morning in early summer and a beautiful scene. The river ran through an ever-narrowing valley; the banks were thickly wooded and the trees were all blushing in the light, warm air of May.

Rounding one turn we came upon a strange procession—coolies in front carrying clothes and provisions, two or three palanquins, and more servants bringing up the rear. We asked what it was, or rather Shimonski asked, and was told that it was a girl being brought down to be wedded to a Chinese general in the town we had just left.

“My fate came to me like that,” Shimonski remarked.

“Tell me about it,” I said.

“It is ten years ago now,” he began. “It was far up country I met just such a procession. A handsome youth was in charge of the bride, his sister; he told me he was taking her, as the loveliest girl in the whole province, to be wedded to the Governor of Szechuan, then the most powerful of provincial rulers. I was mildly interested and a little curious, so I told him where he ought to stop next and gave him various pieces of information he wanted; then I praised his looks and bearing just to get his confidence, so that when I said I’d like to see his sister, he took me to the palanquin at once and drew the curtain. Never have I seen anything so wonderful! Her eyes held me and fascinated me, and it was some time before I could throw off the enchantment enough to realise the different traits that constituted her exquisite loveliness.

“Oh, the flower face! Well was she named the Morning Glory. Her face had only enough of the Chinese type to give it a strangeness that enthralled. At first glance she might have passed for a Russian, only no Russian was ever so beautiful. How shall I describe her? When I have said her eyes were very large, a dark hazel in colour, lit and warmed by golden points; when I’ve told of a straight nose and perfect oval of face and rose-leaf skin, and lips a little too full and ripe, I’ve said nothing. Other girls have these. But her eyes, besides being beautiful, were nobly serious, with a brooding expression that came from depth of feeling; there was a question in them and an appeal and trust that enlightened the face to a smile; and then I saw the slender arm and the dimples at the elbow and the budding breasts, and my mouth grew dry as in a parching wind.

“Do you realise at length that in China we know more about beauty than any other people; we have studied it more curiously, more intimately than any other race. Have you ever noticed that our hawthorn jars are moulded after the curves of a woman’s hips, and that the magical powder-blue vases are copies of the lines of some slight girl’s body? The glaze itself has the smooth gloss of a child’s flesh and the radiance on it is of our wonderment. I have shown you marvels in material things; you must just trust me when I tell you that this girl was perfection perfected, her body a rhythm, her face a flower....

“I turned and went with them—made myself a guide and protector. Both the brother and sister trusted and liked me, and I did all I knew to increase their liking. I told them all sorts of strange stories: tales of heroes and fightings for the youth and of romantic love and despair for the girl. I ransacked my memories of Russian and Polish and German and French history, and I used to love to have their eyes fixed on me and feel her breath catch....

“The halts for the midday meal grew longer and longer and our daily journeyings shorter, while they listened enthralled to my stories. I told of sinner and saint, of St. Elizabeth of Hungary and of Ninon d’Enclos of Paris, and she drank in everything I said.

“And always the youth wanted to learn and the girl to feel; but I think she grew even more quickly than he did. I remember telling him once of the great Chinese Emperor Shi Hwang-ti. Do you know the story? He came to the throne at thirteen and while still young abolished the feudal system, divided China into provinces, built roads, canals, and at length the Great Wall. The feudal princes revolted; writers and pedants held up to the admiration of the people the heroes of feudal times, and the advantages of the old, worn-out system. To break once and for all with the past, the great emperor ordered the destruction of all books having reference to the past history of the empire, and many scholars were put to death for disobedience to the ‘edict.’

“I can still hear her sighing: ‘What a pity a great man could kill innocent people! Is no great man at once strong and wise and gentle?’ The divine sweet spirit of her!

“You don’t know how wonderful our Chinese girls can be,” Shimonski went on, “but at least you realise now that Chinese art is the finest in the world, and soon you will be able to see that our old Chinese religion, too, is the highest at once and most rational ever held by man. And when you acknowledge this you may be ready to understand that Chinese men and women are the noblest human creatures of whom Time holds any record.

“At any rate I would like you to believe that it is not the blindness of passion makes me put this simple Manchu girl higher than any other human being I have ever met. If I am not utterly depraved it is because of her; whatever good there is in me comes from her; my soul is merely an emanation of her divine passion and pity....

“But I must get on with my story. I had been with them nearly a fortnight when one day the brother went away to see a famous temple and I told the sister the story of Jeanne d’Arc. It had a tremendous effect on her, an effect I never anticipated. She grew paler and paler, and tears fell from her eyes. When I told her of Jeanne’s martyrdom I expected her to break down weeping, but it had the contrary effect on her; her whole face was transfigured; and when I told how Jeanne acknowledged that she had lost her ‘voices’ through her own selfishness and her woman’s wish to do what her king desired, my girl’s eyes glowed with enthusiasm and she exclaimed: ‘What a great end! What a noble girl!’

“She fell silent while I told how the Catholic Church, centuries later, canonised Jeanne as a saint, and how she was loved and revered now wherever her story was known.

“Glory, as I called her always, got up from her couch and suddenly leaning forward took my head in her hands and kissed me on the lips.

“‘Thank you, thank you,’ she cried, ‘for the great story; it will be a part of my soul for ever.’

“It was not passion with which I kissed her, for a great reverence was upon me and I was enthralled by her emotion; but afterwards passion woke in me, for I had held the round firm figure against my body, and the supple grace and litheness of it got into my blood and the desire of her shook me like a fever.

“What a day of days it was! Fate is sometimes good to us. The brother did not return and we spent the evening together, and when she rose to retire I kissed her hands, one after the other, for she was sacred to me; but she drew me to her and offered her lips and I put my arms around her. I kissed her and kissed till she pushed my head back gently, saying: ‘Dear, you take my breath’; but really she had flushed crimson for the first time, I think. Conscious of her body, she had yielded for a moment to a man’s passion.

“The days after went by on wings; her brother liked me so much that for a fortnight he did not notice the intimate terms we were on. But one evening he had said ‘Good-night,’ and gone, but returned quickly and found me kissing her. She said simply: ‘I love Shi,’ and put her hand on his shoulder with a caress and left us.

“‘How will it end?’ was all he said after a pause, and then: ‘I must leave it to you both. You,’ he went on to me, ‘will, I’m sure, think of her safety.’

“And I answered him that I would and told him the truth, that our caressings had all been innocent and I would not engage the future lightly; but even while reassuring him I knew that I had come to the extreme verge and uttermost limit of control, and was ripe for anything, with no more self-mastery than a child.

“Women, I often think, are far braver in such matters than men. Next day Glory wanted to know what we had decided, and walking beside her palanquin I told her we had arranged nothing; but he had left it to us. She nodded and said nothing.

“That day her brother did not stay with us after the midday meal, but made some excuse and went out, leaving us together, and at once, I don’t know why, I took her in my arms and began kissing and caressing her. And she yielded to me; but in a moment her lips grew hot and she drew away.

“‘Have you really decided—at last?’ she asked, and there was a challenge in that added ‘at last’ which stung me.

“‘For myself—yes,’ I replied; ‘but for you—how can I decide to bring you and him into danger?’

“The deep eyes held me, and without a word she put both her hands on my shoulders and studied me.

“‘Your Jeanne d’Arc,’ she said after a moment, ‘gave her life for her king. Do you think I am afraid? To lose you would make me afraid; with you I fear nothing in the world. I am proud you want me, happy you have chosen me, my man of men; with you I am content and my heart’s at peace,’ she added like a child, and gave her mouth.

“‘I want to have a talk with your brother first,’ I said. ‘We must get rid of all the servants and I must arrange to get you and myself to one of the treaty towns, where we shall be safe. But the risk is appalling and the chances of success small, for the Governor is as powerful as a god and the news of your beauty will have reached him.’

“‘Do men want beauty so much?’ she asked. ‘You know he has never seen me; he can’t care much if he loses what he doesn’t know.’

“‘You are wrong, you dear,’ I cried. ‘Men desire beauty more than anything, and you are so wonderful that he will have heard about you and be inordinately curious to see and possess you. Then for a strong man with power to miss something he desires, to lose it to an inferior is very bitter, and I’m afraid he’ll do his uttermost against us.’

“‘Then take me,’ she said, ‘as long as I am yours and you are mine—me I mean,’ she corrected, nestling to me; ‘I am content, happy.’

“Ah! the sacred boldness of her whose law was love.

“There’s one verse of your English poetry comes into my head when I think of her, and only one:

“It was Glory who showed me the heights of Chinese thought. Till I met her I believed that the practical teachings of Confucius and his rules of conduct constituted the religion of China. She introduced me to his master, Lao-tse, whom he called ‘the old philosopher.’ Confucius was a mere moralist, but Lao-tse was the deepest thinker who has yet arisen among men, and his religion is the earliest known to the Chinese as Buddhism is the latest.

“Lao-tse wrote his Tâo-Teh-King in the sixth century B.C. The title even is almost untranslatable, but may be called the Way of Virtue. No foreigner has ever yet grasped what the Tâo means, and even students are put off by apparent differences. Glory, however, was the daughter of a great thinker and she made the Tâo clear to me.

“Lao-tse went far beyond a belief in God or in man; the childish dualism of body and spirit, this world and the next, the Devil and God were ridiculous to him; both flesh and spirit seemed to him equally unimportant. What he saw was the unfolding of life, the mingling of life and death; the Becoming; and this perpetual Becoming is the rhythm of Life itself—the rhythm, mark you, and not the progress or development, the world of thought and deed and Being as it is in constant unfolding. That is the Tâo, and a study of it shows how to live in harmony with it. Glory had all the master’s best sayings by heart and she taught me many of them.

“‘Those who are skilled in the Tâo do not dispute,’ she said; ‘but they know some things. They know “there is nothing softer than water,” as Lao-tse said, “and yet nothing can resist it.” They know that “he who inflicts death is as one who cuts wood; soon or late he cuts his own hands.” They know that “trees and plants and men at birth are soft and easily bent, and at death hard and firm, and the sage therefore keeps the innocent softness of the child.” They know that “when a people does not fear what it ought to fear, its great dread shall come upon it.” They know that “the Sacred Way I call the Tâo, unlike the way of foolish men, diminishes where there is abundance and increases where there is deficiency.’”

“Somehow or other her spirituality intensified my passion and gave me the sense that what was so far above ordinary life or ordinary thought must be enduring. But every now and then facts broke in and disturbed my dreaming.

“One day her brother said to me: ‘We are within a fortnight’s journey of the capital, you know, and though we may take a month over it, still—the Viceroy may send to meet us. And your passion is being talked of by the coolies. Even the Tâo prescribes foresight....’ and he smiled.

“I was struck to the heart. Should we try to escape at once: there was no sense in drifting. I was like an opium-smoker, lost to everything but my exquisite dream-life. And how wonderful it was can never be told, for Glory was all sorts of women in one. At first a child, afraid that this or that might not please me; then so filled with joy when she found that whatever she did delighted me; shy now and now curious; frank as a boy, and wise as only a woman’s love is wise.

“I went to her. ‘What are we to do?’ I cried. ‘I am yours. Decide!’

“‘Is there a chance of escape?’ she asked.

“‘Yes,’ I replied; ‘just a chance.’

“‘One week, one day with you is life to me,’ she said; ‘do you feel that too?’

“‘Sure,’ I replied.

“‘Then let us try at once to escape,’ she said. ‘First of all let the coolies return to-day; pay them in full; content them without overdoing it: my brother will see to that. He will probably prefer to return himself and take up my father’s business. Then you and I will go into the—appointed—whither you will.’

“‘Are you afraid?’ I asked with shrinking heart.

“‘No, indeed,’ she replied, smiling; ‘but it is impossible, says Lao, to live long on the heights. Yet such life, even for a day, is better than years on low levels.’

“All was done as she had outlined.

“I planned to break to the west, for the frontier tribes there were in partial revolt, and it would take an army to get us; but this was only a blind. I intended to double back and get to the river, which leaves no trace, and if possible reach the sea before the chase grew close. Any foreign steamer, English or German, would then bring us easily to safety and a new life. After forty-eight hours of forced marching west and back we were on board a sampan on our way to happiness.

“But happiness was with us on the boat.”

Shimonski paused: “Often I tell over to myself those golden hours, each one filled with its own joy, a delight in living and in memory. In that week I learned all a woman could give in passionate tenderness, and with what treasures of gaiety and courage she could crown her love.

“The moment we went on board, Glory took up her new part. European girls often make good wives and mothers; but she was an incomparable lover first and at the same time a companion of infinite variety. It was impossible to be dull or depressed in her company; she drew the best out of me and then declared that the wisest or wittiest sayings were all mine. She flattered me outrageously; but then who does not love to be praised by the woman he loves? The more I studied her body and face the more beautiful I thought her. She had no need to bind her feet, whether to make them look smaller or to increase the obsession of love by sedentary living; and the more I learned of her mind and spirit the more I had to admire her. She never pretended to be well-read, but she had been brought up by a wise father, who encouraged her to think for herself. She was astonishingly original in thought and ingenuous in feeling—a girl’s body and a woman’s soul. While loving me and telling me all sorts of things about China and her own bringing up, she managed all the time to watch the boatmen and make them her friends and protectors.

“Thanks to her mainly we hadn’t a single hitch—no trouble with any of the towns or villages we passed through, no sign of any pursuit. As we neared the great harbour I allowed myself to hope, for I had planned to reach the port in the small hours of night, and knowing the Chinese ways I felt sure we should be able to evade even watchful eyes.

“Everything happened as I had foreseen; it was black night when we ran alongside the German mail steamer. I had already promised the men a large reward, so taking Glory in my arms for a long kiss I begged her to cry out if she saw anything suspicious, then ran up the ladder to see the German captain. He received me in bed, told me he would be glad to take my wife and myself as passengers, and I returned, knowing that Glory’s beauty, if there was any difficulty, would be my best advocate.

“As I sprang on the deck of the sampan I was surprised not to see my love; but before I had time to think, I was struck down from behind, and remember nothing more till I awoke in a Chinese house, with Chinamen about me and a pair of Chinese eyes boring into my dull consciousness. In a moment or two I found I was cold and wet; they had probably thrown cold water over me to bring me to. And Glory! My hand and feet were bound. I was caught—but Glory? Glory! Could she possibly have escaped? If so, I’d pay for both gladly.

“I can hardly describe what followed. I soon realised that the mandarin watching me was the Governor. I lay on a sort of couch in the middle of a room, two men on each side, while he questioned me. He wanted to know whether the brother was in the plot. I said ‘No. I had persuaded him I was coming straight through.’

“The Governor told me that if I lied he would torture me so that I should beg for death as a release. No bodily pain could have added to my misery and remorse.

“I grew to fear and hate his cold eyes. I thought we had only one chance and I took it. I told him if he would give me Glory I’d serve him all my life as no man yet was ever served. I begged with all my soul. He told me he would give Glory to his servants before my eyes....

“I don’t remember much afterwards; it is like a dream in fever, half-reality, half-mists of pain. But one moment is clear; when she fainted I heard someone laugh. It was I. From that moment I lived for revenge.

“They tortured me too—did something to me they thought would give me a lingering death in agony, and threw me into the street. I crawled to a coolie’s hut and got a girl to fetch me a German surgeon. A timely operation saved my life, and that same night I learned that Glory was dead.

“The rest’s a long tale, but I can cut it short. I went to Peking and got a place in the household of the empress; in time she took a liking to me, and I thought and plotted and planned till at length she sent for the Governor and told him to come without a retinue.

“I had made my arrangements. He was taken outside the town, brought in by my servants, and bound in the cellar of a house I had bought....

“He was a month dying.

“Every day I went to my duties at the palace; every evening and morning I spent an hour with those cold eyes. He used to beg me to kill him; that made me laugh....

“In that month I learned the keen delight there is in torture.

“Do you know,” Shimonski broke off, “I never see a punishment now or an execution without seeing that man in the place of the victim. His pain thrills me. What a month it was! I soon found out what parts of the body hurt the most when you tweaked off pieces with red-hot pincers. You’d never guess.

“He grew old in a week.... As I pulled his nails off, his hairs fell out.... With his tongue and teeth gone, his beard turned white and the yellow skin of him shrivelled as I ...”

I put up my hand to ward off more, and Shimonski turned and went across the room muttering to himself. “Glory, Glory!”

Had suffering turned his brain—or passion?

ST. PETER’S DIFFICULTY