inviolate, and a dinner at M'Quigg's was a thing to be treated with respect, regardless of all political crises. His epicurean soul was sorely vexed, not so much by the Senator's opinions, as by his inability to subordinate them to grateful appreciation of a menu in which Kuan had certainly surpassed himself. At his own table, Cantegril insisted on the Lucullan principle that, in the earlier stages at least of a good dinner, conversation should be general and cheerful a lively thing of gossip, quips and Rabelaisian persiflage, -avoiding politics, religion, and everything that might tend to secrete bile and thus disturb the delectable process of digestion. And this dinner of M'Quigg's, both in its mise-en-scène and ingredients, was of a kind to deserve the undivided attention of a connoisseur. The room itself was a rich symphony in carved redwood, sang-debœuf, and curtains of old gold brocade, softly lighted with lanterns of red lacquer. Kuan and his "No. 2," in long robes of plum-coloured silk with silver girdles and tasselled official hats, moved softly and with dignified precision; and the dinner was a triumph of the majordomo's inventive faculty of nice selection. I am sure that a recherché meal, served à point, afforded just as much satisfaction to him as it did to those who ate it, and to épater le bourgeois the old fellow would take as much trouble as Cantegril himself. For the edification of that barbarian mandarin, the Senator (Cantegril and I being of the elect), he had composed a menu calculated to convince any intelligent stranger of the superior civilisation of China, and the magnificence of M'Quigg. Rare and delicate were his dishes-caviare and sturgeon from the Sungari, a riz de veau aux cèpes, sandgrouse from Mongolia, and a sweetmeat of his own invention, made of honied dates, walnuts, and cream, together with Berncastler chilled, and Clos Vougeot warmed, to perfection. But it was chiefly in the little details that one perceived the hand and mind of one who knew that for wise men a dinner means something more than food and drink. On the table, glorious chrysanthemums of tawny gold in a silver bowl; on the sideboard a pyramid of quinces and Buddha's fingers, filling the room with the subtle fragrance beloved of Chinese scholars and poets; at dessert, in each filagree finger-bowl, a tiny waterlily, and goldfish with filmy tails that waved like pale flames. All of which Orient display was of Kuan's own devising, for the greater glory of M'Quigg and the preservation of his own face. But as far as the Senator was concerned, it was all love's labour lost; Kuan might just as well have given us pork and beans on tin plates. From soup to cigar he took everything just as it came, entirely unimpressed, and wholly absorbed in expounding his views a Once roused, Cantegril was out for blood. With Gallic élan, he carried the war straight way into the enemy's camp, giving it as his deliberate opinion that, as regards public and private morality and intellectual culture, China's civilisation had produced a type of human being, and a state of society, infinitely preferable to anything that America could ever hope to produce. He denounced American civilisation as the result of a system of democracy which despises, when it does not ignore, philosophy. on the political and moral of the Senator's premises and regeneration of China, to be to deny all his conclusions. achieved by the infusion of At this point I perceived American ideas. For a while the dawn of twinkle in we endeavoured to divert the M'Quigg's eye. Until now he conversation to lighter topics; had paid his eloquent guest the but Penting, accustomed to courteous tribute of an appahold the floor by stonewall rently rapt attention. persistence, stuck to his theme like a poultice; and eventually Cantegril, inwardly fuming, was stirred to contentious argument. An astute exponent of international finance, with wide ex-, perience of Chinese affairs, his political opinions were always of a shrewdly practical order. A typical méridional was Cantegril, addicted in his hours of ease to genial gasconade and Gargantuan laughter, a bonvivant with a keen palate for good wine and a quick eye for a pretty woman; but in his serious moments hard-headed, rigidly logical, and keenly alive to the main chance. His interest in the fortunes of the Manchu dynasty and the Chinese people was based not on sentiment, but on the facts of the situation, fairly faced: and transcending all these facts were the interests of the Alsatian Bank and those of its worthy representative. At any other time and place, the Senator's preposterous schemes for creating a new heaven and a new earth in the East would have been dismissed with a laugh and a shrug. But as that turgid tide of eloquence flowed on, the feeling that there was no escape finally produced in him a secretion of wrathmatter which, as I have said, prompted him to dispute many The Senator had suspended his sonorous periods, and was roughly dismembering his sandgrouse, when Cantegril's whirlwind onslaught came upon him out of the silent void. It caught him one, so to say, in the solar plexus, and left him silent while men might count a score. He gave Cantegril a look of pained surprise, such as one sees upon the face of a wayfarer whose unsuspecting foot has met a fragment of banana peel. Then he looked at M'Quigg, but found no guidance in his unspeculative eye. So he turned to the foe. "I'm afraid I don't quite get you," he said. "Do you mean to say that you, a bank manager, really believe we ought not to try and bring these people into line with Mr M'Quigg," he said, "that Western civilisation, and give them the benefits of our scientific knowledge and progressive institutions?" "What I believe as a bank manager," replied Cantegril, "has nothing to do with moral philosophy nor with my private opinion as to China's best means of seeking the ultimate happiness of her people. As a banker I happen to be identified with a phase of Western progress which consists in selling Chinese bonds to the foreign investor, but I do not pretend that in the long-run these transactions are likely to prove either profitable or beneficial to China. I console my philosophic soul with the reflection that, like missionaries and machine-guns and other adjuncts of your "Open Door," they are inevitable. But I do not attempt to delude myself or others with the absurd belief that these things mean progress." The Senator's expression suggested the feelings of one who, jauntily moving through pleasant pastures, suddenly finds himself floundering in a treacherous morass. His mental equip ment obviously contained nothing calculated to serve him in debate with an adversary armed at all points with arguments based on local knowledge. Avoiding the encounter, he professed to cover his retreat by a dignified flank movement in a direction where he might hope to find support. "Don't you agree with me, VOL. CCXV. NO. MCCХСІХ. it would be a good thing for this great country to scrap all its old Manchu junk and get into line with the spirit of democracy? And don't you think we ought to help them to do it?" "It's a big problem," replied M'Quigg, "with several sides to it, and none of them easy to deal with on textbook lines. It would be best, I think, if the Chinese could work out their own salvation in their own way, without interference. Now that the old Empress is gone, I admit that it looks like trouble ahead; but, after all, a good many dynasties have disappeared without disturbing China's social system." re But Cantegril, not to be diverted from his prey, turned to the attack. "Yes, Monsieur le Sénateur," he exclaimed, "it is a big problem; but permit me to observe that the welfare of the Chinese people is not a question of monarchy or republic, but simply a matter of economics and justice. Give them a strong government which can keep order and administer the law, and they will be satisfied, no matter where it comes from, or by what name you call it. I am speaking, bien entendu, of the Chinese nation, not of the handful of bois-brulés, the intellectual nondescripts whose stock-in-trade is a potpourri of foreign ideas and catchwords. I, like yourself, monsieur, am the citizen of a republic; but surely you have only to look A2 Sun Yat-sen was Cantegril's bête noire; his very name was enough to provoke the whips and scorpions of the banker's wrath. So, feeling it in my bones that he would seize upon the Senator's reference to that grandiloquent gas-bag as ground for another fierce assault upon the base uses of sham democracy, I thought it best to inter across your borders to Mexico nothing to do with this story, and South America to perceive that many republics would smell as sweet by any other name. I agree with M'Quigg that China is in for trouble, but it seems to me that the blame for most of it must lie with the Western nations, who have dislocated the country's finances and filled the heads of the rising generation with a lot of poisonous nonsense. Franchement, all this talk about the magic virtue of democracy and the spirit of progress, what is it but a smoke-screen of words to cover our several policies of encroachment and exploitation?" What with the disturbance of his gastronomic sense of fitness and his Gascon impetuosity in argument, our friend was evidently near to forgetting his manners, and M'Quigg began to look uncomfortable. Fortunately the Senator, despite his Middle Western rush of righteousness to the head, possessed certain saving graces of good temper and dry humour. "Wal," he observed to the table in general, "assuming that all they need is a government that'll handle things as they've been handled since the days of Noah, and give them the sort of justice they're used to, what are their chances of getting from these old Manchus anything that will hold together now that the old Empress is gone? I gather they're a pretty poor bunch, and if that's so, why not let Sun and his friends take a hand?” Now, for reasons that have vene. "Who knows?" I said; "the Regency may turn out better than we think. After all, it isn't so much Peking and the Court that matter nowadays as the quality of the mandarins they put into the chief Viceroy jobs-Tientsin, Hankow, and Canton. If Li Hung-chang and Liu K'un-yi were alive, China might have an easier time of it. Unfortunately, of all the old great men there's only Chang Chih-tung left, and there don't seem to be any big new ones coming on. If the Emperor had not died...” "Things wouldn't have been any better," said M'Quigg. "Ten years ago it was different; he had a soul of his own then, some honestly patriotic ideas of reform, and a fair amount of courage. If the coup had succeeded which he planned, and which Yuan betrayed, in the autumn of '98, I believe that China might have got a fairly decent Government under the constitutional system he had devised. But the ten years which he lived at the Old Buddha's mercy, a prisoner in the "Ocean Terrace" pavilion, took all the heart out of him, and reduced him to a miserable nervous wreck, afraid of his own shadow." He paused for a moment, with a deprecating eye on Cantegril, who was lighting a cigarette. "And that reminds me, Senator," he went on, " of a rather interesting incident connected with the Emperor's plot, a story that has never been told, because it was safer to forget it as long as the Old Buddha was alive-she was inclined to be rather vindictive about everything connected with Kang Yu-wei's conspiracy against her sacred person. It has no particular bearing upon the present situation, but if you would care to hear it..." Why, sure," said Penting; "go right along." "So far as I was concerned, the story began at one of Hart's Wednesday garden-parties at the end of August '98. I had come up from Tientsin on business, and was stopping at Chamot's Hotel. I remember that garden-party as distinctly as if it were yesterday. It was a broiling hot day, but in spite of the weather the number of guests gathered about the teatable on the dusty lawn, or strolling round the grounds, was larger than usual in the dog-days. It was a moment when such society as remained in the Legations was glad of any and every opportunity to hear and discuss the latest news. Since June the air had been filled with rumours of plots and counter-plots in the palace, vaguely heavy under the shadow of coming events. Also, from the social point of view, there were special attractions that afternoon, very welcome in our little world, where new faces and new ideas are rare-a party of ladies, guests of the American Legation, and a full-blown British Admiral of the jolly old sea-dog type, globe-trotting in order to acquire first-hand knowledge of the Far Eastern problem. "I was there that afternoon," said Cantegril. "I remember the band played 'Pinafore' and the 'Death of Nelson'in honour of the Admiral." "Quite so," said M'Quigg, "and I remember talking to several more or less eminent diplomats and thinking to myself that some of us in Tientsin (old Gustav, for instance) were in closer touch with the realities of the situation than the beauty and fashion of Peking-the 'I. G.' always excepted, and he kept his ideas to himself. It was just the same, you know, before the Boxer trouble began: the Chanceries talked airily of domestic squabbles in the palace, and scoffed at the idea of any trouble likely to affect foreigners. However, to return to the Admiral. I was introduced to him by the private secretary, and he began chatting at once, in his breezy way, about the Emperor's progressive ideas, and especially about the great review of troops to be held at Tientsin in October, when, for the first time in history, the Court was to leave |