ported to be in immediate peril crat who had ruled the Empire of death, that the political significance of his end was practically nil. But next day, hot-foot upon the news of his decease, the city was filled with rumours of an impending catastrophe that might well give the coup-de-grâce to the shattered fortunes of the Dragon Throne. The Old Buddha herself, they said, had been seized of a mortal sickness, and was likely to follow her nephew to the Halls of Hades before the day was done. Others denied the story, pointing out that only the day before her Sacred Majesty had presided at a meeting of the Grand Council, and issued her orders with all the wonted vigour of her indomitable spirit. She had been unwell, it was true, but the Dalai Lama had cured her by means of a miracleworking image of Buddha. This report gained credence from the fact that the Grand Council had been convened at daybreak in the palace, and that an edict had been issued that very morning in the name of the Empress. But at midday came a fresh crop of rumours, and the city heard that Tzu Hsi had been smitten with a sudden fainting fit, and lay at the very point of death. Faint at first, as if terrified of their own tidings, all the whisperings of flurried eunuchs, nervous officials, and anxious money-changers gradually took on form and substance of authority. By sunset, as rumour gave place to the certainty that the formidable old auto for over forty years was nearing her end, many idle tongues were loosened, and those who had cause to hate or fear the Yehonala Clan told grim tales of a dark deed done at midnight in the pavilion of Ocean Terrace Palace. The wretched Emperor, they declared, had been despatched in advance to the Nine Springs by order of the old Dowager, so soon as she realised that her own sickness was mortal. This was one story. Another, equally widespread, said that the Emperor had been done to death by Li, the Chief Eunuch, but that his death had been avenged by means of poison put by his favourite concubine into a dish of crabapples and cream, prepared for the Dowager's midday meal. Swiftly to every quarter of the city these rumours spread, growing with every hour-dark tales of plottings, stratagems, and treasons in high places, whereat timid citizens made haste to fasten their doors and shutters and hide their valuables in secret places. On all sides were portents and forebodings of the truth that, with the great Tzu Hsi, the glory of the Dragon Throne must surely pass and the mandate of Heaven be taken from the Manchu dynasty. M'Quigg and I had been out that morning duck-shooting in the marshes of the Nan Hai Tzu, so that when we returned towards sunset we knew nothing of these critical events, the news of which was already "I wonder what's up," he said. "By the pricking of my thumbs, something unpleasant has either happened or is going to happen. Except that they pay no attention to us, there is something in the air, something in the way these people are behaving, which reminds me of the day when Von Ketteler was killed by the Boxers and the siege of the Legations began." May be," I suggested, "it is because of the Emperor's death." blocking the telegraph wires M'Quigg, ever alert to the with official messages and carry- moods and tenses of the Chiing consternation to the far- nese, drew my attention to thest frontiers of the Empire. these things. That the Emperor was dead we knew, of course, but saw no reason to expect that his passing from the scene of his humiliation would disturb the established order. It would merely mean a new Regency controlled, as of old, by the Old Buddha. But as we made our way through the dense traffic of the Chien Men (the great gate used by China's rulers in passing from the Imperial City to the Temple of Heaven), we became gradually aware of something ominous afoot, of an unusual undercurrent of haste and silence in the streams of people making their way through the battlemented gate to and from the Chinese city. There was a vague yet unmistakable expression of a common emotion in the faces and gestures of the crowd, the exposition of a race - mind accustomed to associate dark deeds in palaces with disaster for the "stupid people." Amidst the hurrying pedestrians there were the usual droves of coal-laden camels from the western hills, the usual creaking water-carts and ramshackle jinrickshas, but the familiar raucous cries of their drivers and coolies were hushed as if in recognition of a common calamity. Even the shrill clamour of the fruit-vendors and fortune-tellers, which generally rises above the turmoil of traffic in the enceinte of the gate, was noticeably less. "Not a pawnshop-keeper will sleep any the less soundly for that. Since the old lady stepped up on to the dais in '98 and relegated him to the back premises, the poor devil of an Emperor has never been more than an empty name-a defenceless pawn in the Old Buddha's masterful and ruthless game. His death will not disturb either the Viceroy of Chihli or the hawker of persimmons at the Yamen Gate. No, I suspect that something much more serious has happened. You know, Prince Ch'ing came back from the Eastern tombs last night in a devil of a hurry. Anyhow, whatever it is, old Kuan will surely know something about it." Shall I look in at the American Legation and ask Colts whether they've heard anything startling from the Waiwupu? "No, don't bother. Colts is at the Club by this time, playing his everlasting bridge. Come in and dine to-night and you'll hear all the news, and more besides. I've got a rare bird coming - Penting, the American Senator, an earnest globe-trotting uplifter, determined to discover and proclaim the whole truth about the East, so long as it agrees with his own ideas and the current doctrines of the Y.M.C.A. As a counter-irritant, we'll have friend Cantegril, who by this time has probably wired everything that's worth wiring to Paris. Trust a banker to ferret out anything that may affect the Bourse. You know his comprador is in with Chang Chihtung's hungry crowd, besides being pretty thick with the Yokohama Bank people, who probably know more about Peking politics than any one else. We ought to have quite a nice little symposium and do the Senator a lot of good. But come in now and have a cup of tea. We'll hear what old Kuan has to say." As we passed into M'Quigg's compound, Kuan emerged from the gateman's lodge. In the dim light of that narrow den I caught a glimpse of several elderly men, all grave of mien and earnestly engaged in talk, one of whom I recognised as Kuan's relative, the gateman of the Japanese Legation. Kuan's presence in the gatehouse meant that something out of the common must have happened, he being a stickler for the proprieties and little given to familiarity with the outdoor staff. "Well, Kuan," said M'Quigg, speaking in Chinese, what news to-day? As we passed through the Chien Men there was much coming and going, but very little talk." Before answering, Kuan called to the house coolie to come and take his master's cartridgebag and the game. Then, standing to attention in the Chinese manner, his hands covered by long sleeves hanging loose, he looked at us and smiled. It was the smile which Chinese traditions of stoicism prescribe as becoming to the Superior Man struggling with adversity, a mask of cheerfulness, assumed in deference to the principle that our misfortunes are Our own affair. Your humblest coolie knows that it is his duty to smile even when asking for leave to bury his father. Kuan's smile was obviously of this order. "The news since this morning is bad, tajen," he said. 66 They say that before the day is done the Old Buddha will have put on her robes of State and been borne by the Dragon on high. A cloud of misfortune has darkened the sun. It is a day of evil omen for Peking, and for the people of the Middle Kingdom." I realised as he spoke something of the depth of reverence, combined with personal affection, which the people of North China felt for the imperious but kind-hearted old woman who had ruled them so firmly, "There is great fear among those eunuchs who are the Old Buddha's eyes and ears in the palace-the 'rats and foxes,' whom So many have good cause to envy and to hate. I have a cousin who manages one of the Chief Eunuch's many pawnshops: he tells us that old Cobbler's Wax 1 has had men out all day collecting his squeezes, and that he is sending a lot of pearls and gold bars for safe custody to the Russian Bank at Tientsin. Also I know that two of the physicians specially summoned to attend on her Majesty came from the palace in haste shortly after noon, and have already train for the South. The porter of the Wagons-lits saw their luggage on the platform. Tajen, the great tree has fallen, and the birds are seeking shelter elsewhere." "It certainly looks like it," said M'Quigg. "Well, every tree must fall; even Old Buddhas must die. It would be a good thing for Peking if the Regent were to make a clean sweep of these eunuchs. Meanwhile, let us have tea." With a whispered word to the gateman, old Kuan passed to his pantry. As we went through the courtyard there met us a savour of sandalwood and myrrh, and I observed, in front of the Goddess of Mercy which stood by the study door, one of M'Quigg's sacrificial bronzes in which three sticks of the Dalai Lama's special Tibetan incense were slowly burning. When next, at dinner-time, I passed M'Quigg's gate lodge, all Peking had learned that the Empress Dowager was dead. I had looked in at the Club, where the news had created a flutter of excitement sufficient to suspend for nearly half an hour the inevitable game of bridge, at which their Excellencies were wont to mix with the vulgar, and pontifically trump each others' best cards amidst a babel of polyglot and superheated argument. Amongst the journalists and the working bees (as distinct from the butterflies) of the Diplomatic Body, the political effect of the Regency was being discussed over cocktails in a manner calculated to impress the uninitiated with a sense of profound mysteries discreetly revealed and cautiously received. Mudlam of the Daily Mega 1 The common nickname of Li Lien-Ying, Tzu Hsi's Chief Eunuch and confidential retainer. phone' was giving to an admiring audience at the bar his exclusive description of the deathbed scenes in the palace, which he had just cabled, a vivid mixture of local colour and fertile imagination, particularly effective as a "scoop,' inasmuch as Morton of the 'Thunderer' happened to be away in Tientsin. On the whole, the effects produced upon this cosmopolitan gathering by the death of the great ruler, whose existence we had so long taken for granted, seemed curiously irrelevant. Cathcart of the Customs, who walked home with me, expressed something of this feeling in one sentence. "Why should we argue," he said, as to how or when they died, or whether either of them killed the other? What matters to us now, and to China, is whether the Manchus can produce a ruler strong enough to hold the monarchy together, and if not, what next? At M'Quigg's dinner, conversation turned naturally to the momentous events of the day. At the outset it was less a feast of reason than a flow of soul, for our friend the Senator, a very prosperous word-merchant, was determined to improve the occasion. by holding forth on the effeteness of monarchies, the impropriety of polygamy and eunuchs, and the mediæval foolishness of China's religious superstitions. As the result of interviews with Wu Ting-fang and Tang Shao-yi, and rapid visits to several Y.M.C.A. centres at the Treaty Ports, he was convinced that the time had come to persuade the Chinese to adopt the Republican form of government, with Christianity as its State religion. His was the not uncommon type of mind which, having achieved success by native audacity and astuteness in its own narrow field, emerges to confront a world wherein all its most sacred symbols and values, even all its sonorous eloquence, are nothing worth, and therefore resolves that the said world must be remoulded in accordance with the standards of Zenith City or Little Bethel. To make China like America-happy, virtuous, and free-nothing more was required, from his point of view, than the application of American ideas to the improvement of China's morals, and of American machinery to the development of her material needs. Why not pension off the Manchus at once, and let Sun Yat-sen and his friends carry out their programme of making China a Christian Republic? He had seen Sun at Canton, and thought him a mighty smart man. Under the Senator's flow of eloquence, Cantegril showed signs of impatience. Like most of his countrymen, the genial agent of the Alsatian Bank possessed a sound native taste, and a good deal of acquired knowledge, in the science and art of gastronomy. In his philosophy, Emperors might perish and dynasties totter to their doom, but the serious business of dining should be |