Part 2

Events proved the accuracy of his forecast. The Russian fleet was bottled up, the Yalu crossed, Port Arthur was already beleaguered, and Stackelberg's attempt to relieve it had failed. Mr. Brown talked with some of the wounded who had been sent back from the Yalu to Moukden, and were now in hospital in a Buddhist monastery near the outer wall. They were not downcast: they spoke of being outnumbered and unprepared; when General Kuropatkin's army was complete the tide would turn, and then---- But he got them to talk of their actual experiences in battle. Some of them had been within arm's-length of their enemies in a bayonet charge; and what he learnt of the eager joy, the buoyant audacity, displayed by the Japanese, strengthened his belief that, given equal generalship, equal numbers, equal equipment, such a spirit could scarcely be matched, and was bound to lead them to victory.

Prudent but not alarmist, Mr. Brown considered how the war would affect him. The Japanese were pressing northward; should Port Arthur fall, the besieging army would be able to strengthen Marshal Oyama's forces in the field. If the Russians were compelled to withdraw from Manchuria, Mr. Brown could hardly hope to save his business, and it behoved him to set his house in order. Another consideration weighed with him. The development of the railway and the imminence of war had brought new men on the scene. The Russian officers whom he knew so well were withdrawn, and replaced by men of another stamp--men who were not all so clean-handed as their predecessors. He soon became aware that he was expected to grease their palms, and his uncompromising resistance to corruption in every shape and form made him disliked. Several contracts were given over his head; he found that in many cases the new-comer, Sowinski, of whose antecedents nothing was known, was favoured at his expense; and it was clear that these circumstances, together with the general Russian distrust of England and all things English, boded ill for his business. He was turned fifty years of age, and had amassed a comfortable fortune. It appeared the part of discretion to wind up his affairs before it was too late, and return to England, where a man of his wealth and energy might find occupation for his maturer years. When he had once made up his mind, Mr. Brown wasted no time. He proceeded to put his design into effect, and now expected in a few days to leave Moukden for home.

It was past midnight before he had finished sorting his papers. That done, he smoked a final cigarette at the door, then shot the bolt, turned out the lamp, and went to bed in the room next to Jack's.

Jack had found it somewhat difficult to get to sleep. He could not put Wang Shih's plight from his thoughts. He had seen something of Chinese methods; there came before his mind the vision of a poor wretch he had once met on his way to execution, emaciated to a skeleton, one of his legs blackened and withered, almost fleshless, and wanting its foot, which had dropped off as the result of his being chained by the ankle to a ring in his prison wall. Such evidence of inhumanity was horrible; it made him shudder to think of Wang Shih, so good a fellow, so fine a specimen of manhood, suffering and dying thus. And he admired the Chinaman's fortitude, his loyalty to his family, his refusal to avail himself of means of escape lest his people should suffer. Could not something even yet be done for him? Jack did not wish to complicate matters; but, after all, they were on the eve of departure, and he knew his father well enough to be sure that he would not refuse to lend a helping hand if required. But puzzle as he might, he could see no way of saving both Wang Shih and his family, and the problem was still unsolved when he at length fell into a troubled sleep.

Suddenly he awoke. The night was very close, and at the first moment he thought his waking was due to the heat. But then he heard a slight scratching at his left. He raised himself on his elbow to listen; he had never seen or heard mice in the house. The scratching continued; it was very close at hand. Surely at that time of night it could not be anyone scratching at the paper window? He got out of bed; it was too dark to see anything; he put his ear against the thin paper. The noise was certainly caused by the moving of a finger-nail.

"Who is there?" he asked softly in Chinese.

"Wang Shih, sir."

"Mr. Wang! You've escaped, then. All right! I'll come to the door."

On the way he went into his father's room, and touched him on the elbow.

"Hey! Who's that? What's the matter, Jack?"

"Wang Shih is outside, Father."

"By Jove! What does he want?"

"I don't know. He has evidently escaped."

"Send him about his business. I can't be mixed up in this sort of thing."

"You might see him, Father. He wouldn't have come unless he saw some way of getting off without harming anyone."

"Well, well! Light the lamp, and let him in. I'll slip on my dressing-gown and follow you."

Jack went to the door, opened it, and was confronted, not by one big form, as he expected, but by two.

"Who is with you, Mr. Wang?"

"Mr. Hu."

"Who is Mr. Hu? Come inside both of you, and let me lock the door."

The two Chinamen entered, blinking in the light of the little oil lamp Jack had lit.

"Now, Mr. Wang, explain. Who is Mr. Hu?"

"He is Hu Hang, the constable, sir."

"The constable!" exclaimed Jack, now recognizing the low brow and shifty eyes.

"Yes; I had to bring him."

"What's this, what's this?" said Mr. Brown, coming from his bedroom. "What you two piecee man makee this-side?"

Like almost all English merchants, he had found Chinese too much for him, and in his intercourse with the natives made use of pidgin English, the lingua franca of the Chinese coast.

There was a world of humility and apology in Wang Shih's kowtow.

"My lun wailo," he said. "My no wantchee catchee killum. Muchee bobbely yamen-side. Allo piecee fightey-man bimeby look-see Wang Shih; no can wailo outside that-time."

His exceptional size was certainly against him. It was clear that without some disguise the man could not hope to escape from the city.

"Yes, that's all very well," said Mr. Brown reflectively. Then turning suddenly to the second man: "But what this piecee man makee this-side?"

"He Hu Hang; muchee bad policeyman, galaw!"

"Policeyman! Yes, but what-for policeyman he come this-side too?"

"Hu Hang he my policeyman. He watchee my. My hittee Hu Hang velly muchee plenty hard, hai-yah! Hu Hang plenty silly top-side; my tinkee lun wailo chop-chop. 'Stoppee, stoppee!' say Hu Hang; 'what-for you makee leavee my this-side?' Ch'hoy! My tinkee Hu Hang belongey muchee leason. Hu Hang lun wailo all-same."

Mr. Brown still looked puzzled.

"Don't you see, Father," broke in Jack, "Mr. Wang couldn't leave the poor wretch to bear the brunt of his escape. They would have cut his head off as sure as a gun."

"Not much loss to his fellow-citizens, by the look of him," said Mr. Brown, glancing critically at the scowling, sullen countenance of the truant constable. "Still, it was uncommonly decent of Mr. Wang. We must really do what we can to get him away. What you tinkee makee, Mr. Wang?"

The man turned to Jack and addressed him in Chinese with much movement of the hands and frequent glances at Hu Hang.

"He says that after I left him," explained Jack, "he heard that the yamen runners were already ill-treating his people. That means, of course, that they'll be stripped of all they have. His only chance was to get away and join the Chunchuses. If he can only join Ah Lum, no mandarin will be rash enough to interfere with them. Even the Viceroy of Moukden is afraid of the brigands. Mr. Wang's only difficulty is to get out of the city."

"A rather serious one. No doubt by this time they're keeping a pretty sharp look-out for him, and"--glancing at the man's huge bulk and muscular development--"he's not the kind of man to pass in a crowd."

The Chinaman, though unable to follow Mr. Brown's English, had gathered the gist of what he said. He spoke again to Jack.

"If only we can lend him a cart, he says, and a new tunic and pantaloons, he hasn't much doubt of being able to get through. We can surely manage that, Father."

"Well, it's risky; but I can't see the man come to grief if it can be helped."

That Wang Shih understood this was clear, for his face beamed, and he kowtowed with every mark of gratitude.

"But what about the constable?" said Mr. Brown to Jack. "Suppose he cuts up rough?" Turning to Wang Shih, he said: "Supposey policeyman makee bobbely; what you do that-time?"

Mr. Wang grinned. He took the constable by the scruff of the neck and held him half-throttled at arm's-length.

"Ch'hoy! My keepee Mr. Hu allo-time long-side: he plenty muchee 'flaid, savvy my belongey plenty stlong, galaw!"

He gave the gasping wretch a final shake. Mr. Brown was satisfied. The demonstration was complete.

*CHAPTER III*

*Deported*

Mesalliance--An Outing--Bonbons--"Mr. Blown"--A Northern Frontier--Bandit and Patriot--Hi Lo--Arrested--Monsieur Brin offers Condolences--Old Scores--General Bekovitch--Short Notice--The General loses Patience

"Ah! I disturb you, Mr. Brown. I always disturb somebody. I disturb myself! Therefore I go; another time, another time."

"Not a bit of it, Monsieur. Sit down; I shall be through with these papers in five minutes. What will you drink? We have a fair selection."

"Lemonade, my dear Mr. Brown, nothing but lemonade. It is the cool drink."

"Hi Lo, wailo fetchee lemonade for Monsieur."

"Allo lightee, sah," said a little fellow of some thirteen years, bright-eyed, rosy-cheeked, a smiling Chinese boy.

Monsieur Anatole Brin, correspondent of the _Soleil_, sat down in a cane chair and wiped his perspiring bald pate with a yellow silk handkerchief. Mr. Brown continued to sort his papers. It was not possible for Monsieur Brin to sit speechless.

"Ah! Mr. Brown, you have things to do. You do not suffer, as we others, from nostalgia--the home-sickness, you understand? I sigh for Paris, for the boulevards, the cafes, the Opera, for anything, anything, but this Moukden. It is five weeks that I am here; I have my paper, my pencils, my authorization; I have presented to the Viceroy my letter of credit, my photograph, as it is ordained. I have the red band on my arm; you see it: the letters B.K., correspondent of war; also Chinese arabesques, one says they mean 'Him who spies out the military things!' and here I am still in Moukden. I spy out no military things; I broil myself with sun, choke myself with dust; it is not possible to go to the south, where the war is made; no, it is permitted to do anything but what I am sent for; I become meagre with disappointment."

"Cheer up! Yours is a hard lot, no doubt. The modern general has no liking for you correspondents. But you will get your chance, no doubt, in time. The Japanese are coming north. There has been a fight at Wa-fang-ho, I hear."

"What!" cried the Frenchman, starting up. "A battle and I not there! I hear of no battle. Colonel Pestitch hear of none. I ask him just now. Does he tell me lie--prevaricate?"

"He probably knows nothing about it. I knew it through a Chinaman yesterday. The natives outdo the telegraph, Monsieur, especially the telegraph with a censor at one end. But, in fact, I have more than once heard the result of an engagement before even the military authorities."

Monsieur Brin walked up and down the little office impatiently twisting his moustache.

"Ah! It is abominable--but yes, abominable. Of what good that France is the ally of Russia? I might be Japanese, or Englishman, with no alliance at all. Why did I quit Paris? To put on this odious red badge, like a convict. For what? To promenade myself about Moukden, from day to day, from week to week, in prey to hundred Chinese diseases, subject to thousand Chinese odours! Ah, quelle malaise, quel desappointement, quel spleen!"

"You're in low spirits to-day, Monsieur. Why don't you go about the country and see the sights?"

"The sights! I have seen them. I have seen the tombs. They do not equal the Louvre, the Arc de Triomphe, Notre Dame. Pouah! My throat fills itself with dust, or my feet stick fast in the mud. For the rest, if I go farther I fall into the hands of the Koungouzes, the brigands; they have asperity; I have respect for my skin."

"Look here, Monsieur, this won't do. You'll make yourself ill if you take things so hardly. What do you say to this, now? My boy is going some fifteen miles out to a farm, to see some friends of ours--Chinese, you understand. Why not go with him and see something of the Chinese at home? Our friend Mr. Wang has an interesting family; you'll enjoy it, and get material for one article at least for the _Soleil_."

"Ah! it is an idea. We go--how?"

"On ponies. They will put you up for the night. You can return in the cool to-morrow morning."

"It is an idea. It please me. There is no risk?"

"None, I should think. You can take a revolver, but Jack is pretty well known. Hi Lo, tell Mr. Jack I want him."

In a few seconds Jack entered. He shook hands cordially with Monsieur Brin, whom he had seen once or twice since his arrival with a letter of introduction to Mr. Brown.

"Jack, Monsieur Brin is making himself ill for want of something to do. Take him with you and introduce him to Wang Shih's people. I think he'll like them."

"I'll be glad, I'm sure. Will you come, Monsieur?"

"With pleasure, to pass the time."

"I am starting immediately. Hi Lo, saddle a pony for Monsieur, quick."

The little fellow, son of Mr. Brown's compradore, ran off, and returned in five minutes.

"Pony allo lightee, sah."

"Good boy! Now, Monsieur, shall we start?"

"Hope you'll have a pleasant day, Monsieur," said Mr. Brown. "Look me up in the morning, and tell me how you got on."

"Good-bye! Thanks! I have not disturb you--busy man like you?"

"Not a bit. Good-bye!"

Mounted on neat little ponies, Monsieur Brin and Jack set off through the city. To the Frenchman's surprise, Jack did not choose the main thoroughfare direct to one of the eastern gates, but turned first into one side street, then into another. They were dusty, dirty, crowded with people, pigs, and poultry, and Monsieur Brin held his nose and began to expostulate.

"Wait a little, Monsieur," said Jack. "We are coming to my street. I never miss it when I come in this direction."

They came by and by to a street differing in no wise from the rest, except that in one of the paper-windowed houses a school was held. No sooner had Jack appeared at the end of the street than the sing-song of children at lessons ceased as by magic, and out of the school flocked a score of little ones, who rushed towards him with loud and happy cries of greeting, scattering the fowls and pigs and kicking up clouds of dust as they ran.

"Mon Dieu!" exclaimed Monsieur Brin, reining up his pony to avoid trampling them.

"Don't be alarmed," said Jack, laughing. "They are my little pensioners."

The biggest of the children were already swarming round the pony. Jack put his hand into his pocket. Instantly there was a yell of delight. Then suddenly a shower of sweetmeats fell on the outskirts of the crowd, among the smallest of the children. There was a merry scramble; before the first handful was picked up a second was scattered in the opposite direction, and soon every child was on all-fours, hunting for treasure in the thick brown dust. Meanwhile every door in the street had become blocked with smiling elders,--toothless old grandames, brawny workmen, women, girls, all enjoying the scene, chattering among themselves, some of them giving pleasant salutation to Jack. His pockets at last were empty; his pony was becoming impatient; and, laughingly threatening to run the youngsters down, he moved on amid high-pitched cries of "Come again soon, Mr. Blown!"

Monsieur Brin was vastly entertained. The children's antics were very droll, and Monsieur was a man of sentiment.

"My word!" he said. "Here is something at last for the readers of the _Soleil_. I have no victories of war to write; I write of a victory of peace; how a young Englishman has won the hearts of all a street of Chinese; how to them he is no longer foreign devil but sweet-stuff saint. Eh? How became you so great a friend?"

"Oh, it is very simple. I took a fancy one day to a little toddler; picked him up out of the way of a boisterous pig, and gave him a sweet to comfort him. Other children were looking on; next time I came this way a group of them stood with their fingers in their mouths and their eyes on my pockets. I flung them a sweet or two; they picked them up and scampered away as though half-scared; but they were on the watch for me after that, and now, as you see, it has become an institution. They have very easy-going schoolmasters here; as soon as my nose is seen at the street end the word is given and out they troop, and the elders know the sounds and come to see the fun. They are all very good friends of mine."

Leaving the narrow streets, they came at length to the outer gate, guarded jointly by several sleepy Chinese soldiers and a Russian sentry. Jack was well known, and the two riders passed through without difficulty.

Having a little business to settle with Mr. Wang senior, Jack had offered, before Wang Shih left Mr. Brown's house in the small hours of that morning, to ride out and inform the family of his escape. A ride of some fifteen miles brought the two within sight of the farm. It was a brick building of one story, like all Manchurian houses, with cow-byres, pig-sties, and poultry-houses clinging to the wall. The farmstead was surrounded by lofty wooden palings, and Monsieur Brin's attention was attracted by two fantastic warlike figures roughly daubed in red and green on either side of the great gate.

"Oh!" said Jack, in reply to his question, "they're supposed to scare away evil spirits."

"He! Are not the dogs enough?"

The appearance of the two strangers was hailed by a rush of dogs, large and small, yelping and barking fiercely, but without malice. The noise brought the inmates to the door: an old Chinaman and his wife, and two girls of eighteen or thereabouts, whose regular features, soft brown eyes, and delicately ruddy complexion made an instant impression upon the Frenchman. He doffed his hat with the most elegant and graceful ease, and was not disconcerted when this unaccustomed mode of salutation set the girls giggling. The mistress led the visitors into the best room, lofty, airy, clean, with paper windows; along one side a broad platform some thirty inches from the floor. This was the k'ang, a hollow structure containing a flue warmed by the smoke and hot air from the kitchen-fire; it served as a table by day and a bed by night. A little graven image occupied a tinselled niche; and, the kitchen-fire not being required in hot weather, a kettle stood on a small brazier, boiling water for the indispensable tea.

The old people were greatly distressed at the disgrace that had befallen their only son; still more at his approaching fate, for to die without a male child to honour one's ashes is the worst of ills to a Chinaman. They were not aware of his escape; but when Jack told them that he was now at large, and had gone to join the great Chunchuse chief Ah Lum, they all, parents and girls, clapped their hands, feeling now secure against ill-treatment by the Chinese officials. The chief would send word from his head-quarters to his agent in Moukden that Wang Shih was under his protection, and the terror in which the brigand was held was so great that the farmer's family would remain unmolested.

Jack asked where was the encampment of the Chunchuse band. It varied, said the old man. To avoid capture by the Russians, the chief frequently shifted his quarters. His band was constantly on the move between Kirin and the Shan-yan-alin mountains, going so swiftly and secretly that no one knew where it would turn up next. One day it would be on the Hun-ho; a detachment of Cossacks would be sent to cut it off, only to find that it had disappeared. Two or three days later it might be heard of several hundred li away, on the Sungari.

"Yes," said the old man. "Ah Lum is a great leader, and a great hater of the Russians; but he hates the Japanese nearly as much. He would drive all foreigners out of the country. I am glad my son is with him, though I fear he will not be able to return home until the war is over."

Jack and Monsieur Brin spent some time in rambling about the farm, the latter smoking innumerable cigarettes, making copious notes, and every now and then breaking forth into enthusiastic praise of the eldest daughter, who he declared reminded him of his fiancee in the boulevard Raspail. He watched with absorbed interest the Chinese way of making tea: the green leaves placed in a broad saucer and covered with boiling water; another saucer inverted over the first, and pushed back a little way after the tea had "drawn", the beverage being sipped through the interstice. The old farmer insisted on his guests going to see his coffin, a very handsome box thoughtfully provided by his son and kept in an outhouse, where Mr. Wang frequently spent an hour in meditation on mortality. Afterwards Brin was initiated into the complexities of fan-tan--a guessing game that was prolonged far into the night. They slept comfortably on the k'ang, and left about eight next morning very well pleased with their visit.

The sun was already hot, and they rode at a walking pace, partly to avoid the clouds of choking dust which trotting would have raised. They were still several miles from the city when Jack saw a small Chinese boy hastening in their direction.

"That's young Hi Lo," he said, as the figure came more clearly into view. "I wonder what he is coming this way for! Surely Wang Shih has not been caught after all?"