Part 10

This body professed to be a literary guild or brotherhood formed for the purpose of studying the Chinese poets, and transplanting some of the poetical flowers of the East into the garden of Western literature. All this sounded a trifle fantastic, and Paris, accustomed to the caprices of its youthful literary coteries, shrugged its shoulders and asked with a smile whether the guild possessed more than two members in all, or whether it were not a pure myth, and the _Company of the Joyous Peach Blossom_ a device of some budding poet, anxious to seek notoriety.

The announcement of the guild’s existence struck me in a different light. Having made a profound study for many years of secret societies, past and present, I had grasped the fact that China is the one land in which such societies are truly formidable, all the most famous secret societies of Europe being mere trifles compared with the terrible conspiracies which honeycomb the Heavenly Kingdom.

I had learned, moreover, that the most powerful and reckless of these Chinese societies assumed the most innocent and poetical names, as, for example, the dreaded brotherhood of the _Waterlily_, which deluged Southern China in blood forty years ago.

Therefore, while the French police, usually so shrewd in dealing with secret political organisations, did not deem the _Company of the Joyous Peach Blossom_ worth a moment’s consideration, I set to work to find out all I could about it.

I was not long in discovering that the guild was more than the eccentric imagination of a Quartier Latin poet. To begin with, I found that similar societies, bearing names of an equally fantastic nature, had simultaneously come into existence in London, Berlin, New York, and Chicago, and that all these bodies were in correspondence with one another.

I found, further, that the members of the Parisian society were in communication with a retired French diplomatist of singular character, a man who had returned from a ten years’ sojourn in Pekin, steeped to the lips in Chinese ideas, and a professed follower of Khung the Master, or Confucius, as he is called in the West.

I ascertained that the guild had its headquarters in the studio of a rising artist of the Mystic school, that it held meetings from time to time, of which minutes were kept, and in the record of its proceedings there appeared references to certain Chinese spirits of the underworld, and entries which, in veiled language, hinted at rites having been practised of a nature which could only be described as sorcery.

I had no very definite object in acquiring this information, but I was led on by a vague idea that it might be useful to me at some future time. During the storm of indignation aroused in Europe by the Boxer massacres, nothing more was heard of the _Company of the Joyous Peach Blossom_, which seemed to have sunk out of existence. I had ceased to think about it, when one day, shortly after the conclusion of the peace negotiations, my secretary came in to ask me if I would receive a gentleman whose card he handed to me.

I took the card, and read on it the name of M. Caramel-Bignaud. M. Bignaud was a young poet of distinction, whose verses, stamped with a delicate aloofness of their own, had attracted the attention of connoisseurs in the columns of _Gil Blas_. To me he possessed an interest of a different kind, for I had last read his name as president at the meetings of the _Company of the Joyous Peach Blossom_.

‘I will see this gentleman,’ I told my assistant.

Partly surprised, partly gratified, by this proof that I had rightly gauged the importance of the guild, I waited with keen curiosity to hear what M. Bignaud had come to say to me.

The poet entered and took the chair I pointed out to him without a word. Then, leaning back negligently and fixing his dark, sleepy eyes on mine, he began--

‘I have come to ask you, M. V----, if you are willing to undertake a long journey--a very long journey--without receiving any information as to the business which awaits you at the end.’

‘But that is easily answered,’ I said. ‘Provided I am sufficiently well paid for my time and trouble, it makes no difference to me where I go, or whether there is anything for me to do when I get there. It must be always understood that I am at liberty to refuse this business, if I choose, without assigning any reason, and that my refusal will make no difference to my charge for the journey itself.’

‘Your conditions are perfectly satisfactory,’ M. Bignaud declared. ‘Whatever sum you require shall be paid to you in advance. How soon will you be able to start?’

I reflected for an instant.

‘If you wanted me to go to any place in Europe or America I should have said immediately. As you are going to send me to China I must have six hours to get ready.’

The poet’s sleepy gaze changed into one of astonishment.

‘But have I said anything about China?’ he demanded, evidently in some dismay.

‘You have said nothing. I am accustomed to draw inferences in my work, and there is no time to lose if I am to start as soon as I have said.’

‘The affair is not so pressing,’ the poet remarked with a smile. ‘The hurry and flurry of the West are not known in that delightful country. It will be quite soon enough if you start to-morrow, or the day after.’

‘So much the better. Am I to go to Pekin or Sing-fu?’

‘To Sing-fu.’ M. Bignaud’s tone betrayed a mild surprise at my guess. ‘It is unnecessary, I suppose, to observe that the mission is confidential?’

That is the sort of remark which always irritates me.

‘I am a confidential agent,’ I retorted curtly. ‘To whom am I to report myself?’

M. Bignaud leant forward impressively.

‘To the Dowager Empress!’

I received this announcement without manifesting any emotion.

‘Am I to take any credentials?’

The president of the _Company of the Joyous Peach Blossom_ unbuttoned his coat, and drew from the breast-pocket a small parcel wrapped in yellow silk. Unwinding the silk, fold by fold, with reverent care, he displayed to view a square tablet of translucent stone, of a colour like that of an olive tree seen at a distance with the light upon it. It was a piece of jade, a stone whose beauty is not yet appreciated in Europe, but which the Chinese estimate far above onyx or mother-o’-pearl or chalcedony.

Taking the tablet from his hand, I perceived that it was engraved with the figure of a dragon, whose extended claws each showed five talons.

‘This is an Imperial talisman,’ I observed.

‘It is a passport,’ the other responded. ‘The sight of that tablet will gain you admittance to the presence of her Imperial Majesty.’ He sighed as he added: ‘You are to be envied, monsieur.’

‘That remains to be seen.’ I proceeded to fix the amount of my remuneration and expenses, which M. Bignaud paid without demur.

As he was rising to go he could not resist asking--

‘Have you any objection to tell me what it was that led you to guess that your journey would be to China?’

‘It was more than a guess, monsieur, since I knew I had the honour to receive the chief of the _Company of the Joyous Peach Blossom_.’

I almost regretted my openness when I saw the effect which this confession produced on the poet. He turned pale, stammered once or twice as though unable to speak, and finally turned his back without a word, and rushed from the room.

It would be tedious to recount the particulars of my journey across a hemisphere to interview the extraordinary woman who had revived in our own day the fabled majesty of Semiramis.

I reflected that it was not a little singular that, in an age when the women of the Western world were clamouring for opportunities to play a greater part in life, this almond-eyed daughter of the Manchus had cast ridicule upon their agitation by proving that it was possible for a woman, born in the most conservative society of the globe, to achieve the supreme direction of five hundred millions of human beings, and to make sport of the statesmen of Europe and America.

To reach Pekin was an easy matter, but my difficulties began when I embarked on the dangerous enterprise of travelling into the interior of the empire, through provinces seething with hatred of the foreign devil. In spite of the magic influence of my sacred tablet, I found it prudent to disguise my Western extraction under the official robes of a mandarin of the fourth class. Thus attired I travelled in security and comfort, everywhere received with the honours due to a high official honoured with a summons to the Court of Heaven.

As I approached Sing-fu I left the disturbed area behind me. The inhabitants of this inland region did not appear to have heard of the troubles in Pekin or the arrival of the German Michael with his mailed fist to exact redress for the murder of his Ambassador. They understood merely that the Son of Heaven had come among them for repose after the labour of chastising certain barbarian pirates who had been infesting the sea-coast.

It was given out by my attendants that I had come to report the successful execution of his Majesty’s sentence on the ruffians; and if I had really left the heads of the German Emperor, the Tsar of Russia, and President Roosevelt grinning on spikes over the gates of Pekin, my reception could not have been more cordial.

I found the Chinese court encamped in a sort of military fashion, in charming scenery, at the foot of a ridge of low hills, amid groves of fruit trees watered by a delightful stream. The tents of ten thousand guards and attendants clustered round the stately pavilions of the great mandarins, adorned with flags emblematic of their rank; and in the centre the great Imperial Dragon Standard floated over a fairy-like palace whose lacquered wood and silken curtains concealed the sacred person of the Mother of the Sun and Moon.

The disgraced Emperor, whose fate was still a mystery to his subjects, was closely imprisoned in one wing of the Imperial quarters.

It was now that I realised the full significance of the jade tablet sent to me by the hands of the student of Chinese literature. The nearer I penetrated to my august client, the more awe this symbol seemed to excite, till the attendants who guarded the antechamber actually fell on their knees at the sight of it, and refused to rise till I had replaced it in its silken veils.

Impressed, in spite of myself, by this ceremonial homage to a mere token, I felt a real sentiment of awe as I stood at last in the presence of the being whom countless millions of men worship as divine.

Slight, dark-haired, and ivory-pale, the Emperor-maker received me seated in a simple chair of bamboo. I was not required to perform the _kowtow_, my audience being a strictly private one. I learned afterwards, moreover, that a hurried decree of the Board of Rites had raised my grandfather to the rank of a marquis, in order to qualify me for a personal interview with her Majesty.

The conversation was carried on in French, through an interpreter, himself of such high rank that he could not have spoken to me directly but for the recent ennobling of my ancestry.

‘Her Imperial Majesty has deigned to express a hope that you are not fatigued by your journey.’

‘It is impossible to be conscious of fatigue in her Majesty’s presence,’ I returned with a deep bow.

By the slight smile that parted the thin, terrible lips of the Empress, I acquired the certainty that her Majesty perfectly understood everything that was being said.

No doubt the interpreter was equally aware of this circumstance, for he assumed an expression of courtly dismay.

‘I dare not let the Mother of the Emperor know that you have presumed to offer her a compliment,’ he said rebukingly. ‘I will tell her Majesty that you await her Imperial commands.’

After a short interchange in Chinese, he turned to me again.

‘I am commanded to tell you that one of the barbarian chiefs who have made a disturbance in the capital of the Empire has made a demand, as the price of his departure, which is too insolent to be treated as anything but a display of the ignorant vanity of a savage. The chief I speak of exercises some authority among those of the Western devils who call themselves Dutch or Teutons.’

‘You mean the German Emperor?’ I said incautiously.

The interpreter put on a look of horror, as at some unheard-of blasphemy.

‘Hush, I implore you. You forget the Sacred Presence. There is only one Emperor--he whom her Majesty permits to execute her will over the black-haired people. The vain assumption of Imperial titles by these foreign bandits is deeply offensive to the Court of Heaven. You understand? All such upstarts exist merely by the tolerance of her Majesty. We will speak of this person as the Viceroy of the German Province.’

I could scarcely resist a smile as I bowed apologetically. I imagined myself repeating this conversation to Wilhelm II., a ruler not inclined to take too low an estimate of his own consequence.

‘This rebellious Viceroy,’ the Chinese courtier proceeded, ‘has had the unheard-of arrogance to require that a Prince of the Manchu dynasty shall travel to his unknown province to express regret for the death of its envoy at the Imperial Court.’

This announcement did not come to me as news. In passing through Pekin I had learned that one of the conditions of peace was that a Chinese Prince should go to Berlin to tender the Imperial apologies to the Kaiser for the murder of the German Ambassador during the Boxer rising.

The interpreter went on--

‘You may be able to understand faintly how such a proposal must strike the Imperial ears, by imagining the case of a negro king in the heart of Africa requiring Queen Victoria to send one of her sons to prostrate himself in his kraal, because some accident had happened to one of his slaves in London.’

I listened in silence to this illustration, which showed me that the Dowager Empress was pretty well acquainted with the political distinctions prevailing among those whom she professed to regard as savages beneath her notice.

‘It is, of course, impossible,’ the courtly interpreter went on, ‘for the Brother of the Sun and Moon to submit to this degradation, even if it were safe to expose one of the Imperial House to the dangerous magical arts of the West. It is rumoured that you have diabolical contrivances called kodaks; now it is evident that if one of the Race of Heaven were kodaked, the Sun himself might avenge such an insult by refusing to shine upon the earth.’

He said all this with a perfectly serious air. But from the expression on the face of the Empress I fancied her Majesty was a little wearied of this fulsome strain.

I ventured to bring him to the point.

‘Will you tell me what her Imperial Majesty desires me to do?’

‘Her Majesty graciously condescends to confide in you. Her slaves who reside among the Western viceroys have assured her that you respect the precept of the great Khung--“The counsellor who betrays his lord’s secret and the child who bites his mother, these are too base to be pardoned.”’

‘Go on,’ I said, becoming slightly impatient.

‘It being impossible to do what the German Viceroy asks, and her Majesty being benevolently anxious to spare him the humiliation of a refusal, there has been sought out a man of the people, a barber in the Tartar city of Pekin, whose features Heaven has permitted to bear a certain resemblance to those of his Imperial Highness, Prince Chung.

‘This respectable person, whose intelligence is remarkable for his station in life, has been provided with a dress sufficiently like that worn by the Imperial Family to deceive the barbarians. He has further received some lessons in etiquette and deportment during the last few weeks. He will now proceed to the regions of the West, and gratify the absurd pride of the Viceroy in the manner agreed upon.’

‘He will pass himself off as the Prince?’

‘It is necessary that he should do so, in order to soothe the Viceroy. It is better that the Prince’s name should incur this obloquy, than that the barbarian soldiery should continue their ravages in the Heavenly Kingdom.’

The scheme sounded daring, and yet it seemed to have a very good chance of success. To a European eye one Chinaman is very like another. And there were not likely to be many people in Berlin capable of distinguishing between the manners of a prince and a barber, apart from their surroundings.

‘I don’t see why the plan shouldn’t succeed,’ I said aloud. ‘Its very boldness ought to carry it through.’

I observed a distinct look of satisfaction on the face of the formidable Empress as I made this comment. The interpreter hastened to respond--

‘Your words are those of a prudent man. Her Imperial Majesty offers you the honour of accompanying the Prince’s substitute, nominally as his courier, but really as his protector. You will be on the watch against any chance of detection, and will warn him against imprudent conduct.’

‘I accept her Majesty’s commission,’ was my answer.

Before the courtier could go through the form of interpreting the words, the Empress said something to him in Chinese, which caused him to start like a man who can hardly believe what he has heard.

Her Majesty made an impatient gesture at this piece of pantomime. Instantly he turned towards me.

‘Will your Excellency permit me to offer you my most respectful congratulations? The Queen of Heaven has ordered you a cup of tea!’

I realised that I was as much exalted as if a mere barbarian empress had bestowed on me an embrace. The tea was brought; a whisper from my adviser warned me that I must merely touch the cup with my finger and retire.

The interpreter, whose name I learned was Wu Tang, accompanied me from the presence to make the necessary preparations. Once away from the dreaded eye of his Imperial mistress, he proved to be a very agreeable, well-informed man, and I regretted that he was not coming on the mission to Europe.

He introduced me to the pretended Prince, who had already got quite used to his part, and received me with all the airs of a Cousin of the Sun and Moon, and Brother-in-Law of the whole Milky Way.

Of our journey westward it is needless for me to write, since our progress was fully reported in the barbarian press. The barber was kodaked more than once, the apprehensions of the Chinese Court on this head being fully justified.

The principal incident which marked the progress of the Embassy must also be fresh in the public mind--namely, the demand of the German Court that the Prince should perform the _kowtow_, and his refusal.

It was at this stage that I first felt myself to be doing something to earn the lavish rewards of the Dowager Empress. Left to himself, I believe the barber would have given way, and performed the degrading obeisance, thereby lowering the honour of the Imperial House beyond redemption. The wretched man was thoroughly frightened at finding himself so far from home; and, in his ignorance of Western manners, he really thought that the Kaiser might have him imprisoned and beheaded if he provoked his Majesty.

Fortunately we were on Swiss territory at the time, and by means of my secret agency I was able to procure a written despatch from the Chinese Ambassador at another Court, in the name of the Empress, positively forbidding Prince Chung’s substitute to comply with the offensive demand.

The circumstances of our public audience in the Palace of Berlin were sufficient to daunt any impostor. I confess to some slight nervousness on my own part, though I was, of course, disguised beyond the possibility of recognition, as I stood before the monarch who had so often trusted me in his most confidential affairs, and listened to the faltering speech of the false Prince.

The Kaiser was attired in his most magnificent costume, wearing the famous winged helmet on his head, and surrounded by a galaxy of ministers and great officers, all arrayed in the utmost military splendour. It was a sight calculated to strike terror into an Oriental mind, and I admired the theatrical completeness of the spectacle, almost regretting that it should be wasted on an obscure underling. Had the real Prince been there he might have learned a valuable lesson, and given some good advice to the Empress of China on his return.

On the evening after the ceremony the Prince’s substitute was compelled to attend a banquet, given in order to mark the termination of strife, and the restoration of good feeling between the two empires.

At this banquet I was unable to be present, my position being too low for me to receive an invitation, and too high for me to appear as an attendant on the Prince. What incident it was that occurred to rouse the Kaiser’s suspicion, I have never been able to learn--the luckless barber himself could not tell me. But late that night a wire reached me from my office in Paris, to this effect--

‘_Urgent wire received from German Emperor requiring you immediately in Berlin. What reply?_’

With the reception of that telegram a light burst upon my mind. A doubt which I had tried in vain to stifle had vexed me all along as to the sufficiency of the Empress’s motive for retaining my services, at a high cost, to do practically nothing.

Now at last it seemed to me that I understood. This extraordinary woman had doubtless consulted her representatives in Europe as to the dangers of detection, and they had informed her that I was Wilhelm II.’s favourite confidential agent, who would almost certainly be called in if any suspicion arose. Thereupon she had adopted the artful device of retaining me on her own side in advance, placing me in the extremely delicate position of being bound by loyalty to her to hoodwink my other patron.

What was I to do? A bare refusal or neglect to answer the Kaiser’s summons would leave him free to employ another agent, whom I might find it hard to outwit. On the other hand, I should violate my lifelong rule, if I accepted a commission which I could not loyally discharge.

After much painful thought, I decided on what seemed to me the only wise and honourable course. Disguised as I was, I went straight round to the palace, and asked to see the Kaiser.

‘Impossible!’ declared the private secretary on duty, to whom I was first shown in. ‘His Majesty is retiring. Who are you?’

‘Go and tell the Emperor that the man whom he has just telegraphed to Paris for is here.’

The secretary gave me an astonished look, as he well might, and left the room.

In a minute he was back with instructions to conduct me to the Kaiser’s presence.

I found his Majesty in his dressing-room alone.

‘Monsieur V----! Is this really you?’ he exclaimed.

‘My voice may be more familiar to you than my face, sire,’ I responded.

‘I am delighted. Sit down. I have a most extraordinary thing to consult you about. This----’

I ventured to hold up my hand. For the first time in my life I presumed to interrupt royalty.

‘A thousand pardons, sire! I beg of you to let me speak first.’

‘Why, what does this mean, sir,’ Wilhelm II. inquired sternly.

‘It means, sire, that I am compelled to presume on the many faithful services I have rendered to your Majesty to ask you for a favour which alone can extricate me from a position of cruel embarrassment.’

‘Proceed, sir.’

The Kaiser’s tone was still reserved, but I fancied I observed a slight softening in the glance.

‘I already know the business in which you desire my aid.’

‘You know it!’ cried the Emperor, fairly confounded.