Concerning a state of necessity; the arisings engendered
thereby, and the turned-away face of those ruling the
literary quarter of the city towards one possessing a style.
This foreign manner of feigning representations, and
concerning my dignified portrayal of two.
Venerated Sire,--It is now more than three thousand years ago that the
sublime moralist Tcheng How, on being condemned by a resentful official
to a lengthy imprisonment in a very inadequate oil jar, imperturbably
replied, “As the snail fits his impliant shell, so can the wise adapt
themselves to any necessity,” and at once coiled himself up in the
restricted space with unsuspected agility. In times of adversity this
incomparable reply has often shone as a steadfast lantern before my
feet, but recently it struck my senses with a heavier force, for
upon presenting myself on the last occasion at the place of exchange
frequented by those who hitherto have carried out your spoken promise
with obliging exactitude, and at certain stated intervals freely granted
to this person a sufficiency of pieces of gold, merely requiring
in return an inscribed and signet-bearing record of the fact, I was
received with no diminution of sympathetic urbanity, indeed, but with
hands quite devoid of outstretched fulness.
In a small inner chamber, to which I was led upon uttering courteous
protests, one of solitary authority explained how the deficiency had
arisen, but owing to the skill with which he entwined the most intricate
terms in unbroken fluency, the only impression left upon my superficial
mind was, that the person before me was imputing the scheme for
my despoilment less to any mercenary instinct on the part of his
confederates, than to a want of timely precision maintained by one who
seemed to bear an agreeable-sounding name somewhat similar to your own,
and who, from the difficulty of reaching his immediate ear, might be
regarded as dwelling in a distant land. Encouraged by this conciliatory
profession (and seeing no likelihood of gaining my end otherwise), I
thereupon declared my willingness that the difference lying between us
should be submitted to the pronouncement of dispassionate omens, either
passing birds, flat and round sticks, the seeds of two oranges, wood and
fire, water poured out upon the ground or any equally reliable sign as
he himself might decide. However, in spite of his honourable assurances,
he was doubtless more deeply implicated in the adventure than he
would admit, for at this scrupulous proposal the benignant mask of his
expression receded abruptly, and, striking a hidden bell, he waved his
hands and stood up to signify that further justice was denied me.
In this manner a state of destitution calling for the fullest acceptance
of Tcheng How’s impassive philosophy was created, nor had many
hours faded before the first insidious temptation to depart from his
uncompromising acquiescence presented itself.
At that time there was no one in whom I reposed a larger-sized piece
of confidence (in no way involving sums of money,) than one officially
styled William Beveledge Greyson, although, profiting by our own custom,
it is unusual for those really intimate with his society to address him
fully, unless the occasion should be one of marked ceremony. Forming a
resolution, I now approached this obliging person, and revealing to him
the cause of the emergency, I prayed that he would advise me, as one
abandoned on a strange Island, by what handicraft or exercise of skill I
might the readiest secure for the time a frugal competence.
“Why, look here, aged man,” at once replied the lavish William Greyson,
“don’t worry yourself about that. I can easily let you have a few pounds
to tide you over. You will probably hear from the bank in the course
of a few days or weeks, and it’s hardly worth while doing anything
eccentric in the meantime.”
At this delicately-worded proposal I was about to shake hands with
myself in agreement, when the memory of Tcheng How’s resolute submission
again possessed me, and seeing that this would be an unworthy betrayal
of destiny I turned aside the action, and replying evasively that the
world was too small to hold himself and another equally magnanimous, I
again sought his advice.
“Now what silly upside-down idea is it that you’ve got into that Chinese
puzzle you call your head, Kong?” he replied; for this same William was
one who habitually gilded unpalatable truths into the semblance of
a flattering jest. “Whenever you turn off what you are saying into
a willow-pattern compliment and bow seventeen times like an animated
mandarin, I know that you are keeping something back. Be a man and
a brother, and out with it,” and he struck me heavily upon the left
shoulder, which among the barbarians is a proof of cordiality to be
esteemed much above the mere wagging of each other’s hands.
“In the matter of guidance,” I replied, “this person is ready to sit
unreservedly on your well-polished feet. But touching the borrowing of
money, obligations to restore with an added sum after a certain period,
initial-bearing papers of doubtful import, and the like, I have read too
deeply the pointed records of your own printed sheets not to prefer
an existence devoted to the scraping together of dust at the street
corners, rather than a momentary affluence which in the end would betray
me into the tiger-like voracity of a native money-lender.”
“Well, you do me proud, Kong,” said William Beveledge, after regarding
me fixedly for a moment. “If I didn’t remember that you are a
flat-faced, slant-eyed, top-side-under, pig-tailed old heathen, I should
be really annoyed at your unwarrantable personalities. Do you take ME
for what you call a ‘native money-lender’?”
“The pronouncements of destiny are written in iron,” I replied
inoffensively, “and it is as truly said that one fated to end his life
in a cave cannot live for ever on the top of a pagoda. Undoubtedly as
one born and residing here you are native, and as inexorably it succeeds
that if you lend me pieces of gold you become a money-lender. Therefore,
though honourably inspired at the first, you would equally be drawn into
the entanglement of circumstance, and the unevadible end must inevitably
be that against which your printed papers consistently warn one.”
“And what is that?” asked Beveledge Greyson, still regarding me closely,
as though I were a creature of another part.
“At first,” I replied, “there would be an alluring snare of graceful
words, tea, and the consuming of paper-rolled herbs, and the matter
would be lightly spoken of as capable of an easy adjustment; which,
indeed, it cannot be denied, is how the detail stands at present. The
next position would be that this person, finding himself unable to
gather together the equivalent of return within the stated time, would
greet you with a very supple neck and pray for a further extension,
which would be permitted on the understanding that in the event of
failure his garments and personal charms should be held in bondage. To
escape so humiliating a necessity, as the time drew near I would address
myself to another, one calling himself William, perchance, and dwelling
in a northern province, to whom I would be compelled to assign my
peach-orchard at Yuen-ping. Then by varying degrees of infamy I would
in turn be driven to visit a certain Bevel of the Middle Lands, a person
Edge carrying on his insatiable traffic on the southern coast, one Grey
elsewhere, and a Mr. Son, of the west, who might make an honourable
profession of lending money without any security whatever, but who in
the end would possess himself of my ancestral tablets, wives, and inlaid
coffin, and probably also obtain a lien upon my services and prosperity
in the Upper Air. Then, when I had parted from all comfort in this
life, and every hope of affluence in the Beyond, it would presently
be disclosed that all these were in reality as one person who had
unceasingly plotted to my destruction, and William Beveledge Greyson
would stand revealed in the guise of a malevolent vampire. Truly that
development has at this moment an appearance of unreality, and worthy
even of pooh-pooh, but thus is the warning spread by your own printed
papers and the records of your Halls of Justice, and it would be an
unseemly presumption for one of my immature experience to ignore the
outstretched and warning finger of authority.”
“Well, Kong,” he said at length, after considering my words attentively,
“I always thought that your mental outlook was a hash of Black Art,
paper lanterns, blank verse, twilight, and delirium tremens, but hang me
if you aren’t sound on finance, and I only wish that you’d get some of
my friends to look at the matter of borrowing in your own reasonable,
broad-minded light. The question is, what next?”
I replied that I leaned heavily against his sagacious insight, adding,
however, that even among a nation of barbarians one who could repeat
the three hundred and eleven poems comprising the Book of Odes from
beginning to end, and claim the degree “Assured Genius” would ever be
certain of a place.
“Yes,” replied William Greyson,--“in the workhouse. Put your degree in
your inside pocket, Kong, and don’t mention it. You’ll have far more
chance as a distressed mariner. The casual wards are full of B.A.’s,
but the navy can’t get enough A.B.’s at any price. What do you say to
an organ, by the way? Mysterious musicians generally go down well, and
I dare say there’s room for a change from veiled ladies, persecuted
captains and indigent earls. You ought to make a sensation.”
“Is it in the nature of melodious sounds upon winding a handle?” I
asked, not at the moment grasping with certainty to what organ he
referred.
“Well, some call them that,” he admitted, “others don’t. I suppose, now,
you wouldn’t care to walk to Brighton with your feet tied together,
or your hair in curl papers, and then get on at a music hall? Or would
there be any chance of your Legation kidnapping you if it was properly
worked? ‘Kong Ho, the great Chinese Reformer, tells the Story of his
Life,’--there ought to be money in it. Are you a reformer or the leader
of a secret society, Kong?”
“On the contrary,” I replied, “we of our Line have ever been unflinching
in our loyalty to the dynasty of Tsing.”
“You ought to have known better, then. It’s a poor business being that
in your country nowadays. Pity there are no bye-elections on the African
Labour Question, or you’d be snapped up for a procession.”
To this I replied that although the idea of moving in a processional
triumph would readily ensnare the minds of the light and fantastic, I
should prefer some more literary occupation, submissively adding that in
such a case I would not stiffen my joints against the most menial lot,
even that of blending my voice in a laudatory chorus, or of carrying
official pronouncements about the walls of the city, for it is said with
justice, “The starving man does not peel his melon, nor do the parched
first wipe round the edges of the proffered cup.”
“If you’ve set your mind on something literary,” said Beveledge
confidently, “you have every chance of finishing up in a chorus or
carrying printed placards about the streets, certainly. When it comes
to that, look me up in Eastcheap.” With this encouraging assurance of
my ultimate success he left me, and rejoicing that I had not fallen into
the snare of opposing a written destiny, I sought the literary quarters
of the city.
When this person has been able to write of any custom or facet of
existence here in a strain of conscientious esteem, he has not hesitated
to dip his brush deeply into the inkpot. Reverting backwards, this
barbarian enactment of not permitting those who from any cause have
decided upon spending the night in a philosophical abstraction to repose
upon the public seats about the swards and open spaces is not conceived
in a mood of affable toleration. Nevertheless there are deserted places
beyond the furthest limits of the city where a more amiable full-face
is shown. On the eleventh day of this one’s determination to sustain
himself by the exercise of his literary style, he was journeying about
sunset towards one of these spots, subduing the grosser instincts of
mankind by reviewing the wisdom of the sublime Lao Ch’un, who decided
that heat and cold, pain and fatigue, and mental distress, have no real
existence, and are therefore amenable to logical disproof, while the
cravings of hunger and thirst are merely the superfluous attributes of
a former and lower state of existence, when a passer-by, who for some
distance had been alternately advancing before and remaining behind,
matched his footsteps into mine.
“Whichee way walk-go, John, eh?” said this unfortunate being, who
appeared to be suffering from a laborious deformity of speech. “Allee
samee load me. Chin-chin.”
Filled with compassion for one who evidently found himself alone in a
strange land, in the absence of his more highly-accomplished companion,
unable to indicate his wants and requirements to those about him, I
regretfully admitted that I had not chanced to encounter that John
whose wandering footsteps he sought; and to indicate, by not leaving him
abruptly, that I maintained a sympathetic concern over his welfare, I
pointed out to him the exceptional brilliance of the approaching night,
adding that I myself was then directing a course towards a certain
spacious Heath, a few li distant in the north.
“Sing-dance tomollow, then?” he said, with a condensed air of general
disappointment. “Chop-chop in a pay look-see show on Ham--Hamstl--oh
damme! on ‘Ampstead ‘Eath? Booked up, eh, John?”
Gradually convinced that it was becoming necessary to readjust the
significance of the incident, I replied that I had no intention of
partaking of chops or food of any variety in an erected tent, but merely
of passing the night in an intellectual seclusion.
“Oh,” said the one who was walking by my side, regarding my garments
with engaging attention, and at the same time appearing to regain an
unruffled speech as though the other had been an assumed device, “I
understand--the Blue Sky Hotel. Well, I’ve stayed there once or twice
myself. A bit down on your uppers, eh?”
“Assuredly this person may perchance lay his upper parts down for a
short space of time,” I admitted, when I had traced out the symbolism of
the words. “As it is humanely written in The Books, ‘Sleep and suicide
are the free refuges equally of the innocent and the guilty.’”
“Oh, come now, don’t,” exclaimed the energetic person, striking himself
together by means of his two hands. “It’s sinful to talk about suicide
the day before bank holiday. Why, my only Somali warrior has vamoosed
with his full make-up, and the Magnetic Girl too, and I never thought of
suicide--only whether to turn my old woman into a Veiled Beauty of the
Harem or a Hairy Lama from Tibet.”
Not absolutely grasping the emergency, yet in a spirit of inoffensive
cordiality I remarked that the alternative was insufferably perplexing,
while he continued.
“Then I spotted you, and in a flash I got an idea that ought to take and
turn out really great if you’ll come in. Now follow this: Missionary’s
tent in the wilds of Pekin. Domestic interior by lamp-light. Missionary
(me) reading evening paper; missionary’s wife (the missus) making tea,
and between times singing to keep the small pet goat quiet (small goat,
a pillow, horsecloth, and pocket-handkerchief). Breaks down singing,
sobs, and says she feels a strange all-over presentiment. Missionary
admits being a bit fluffed himself, and lets out about a notice signed
in blood that he’s seen in the city.”
“Carried upon a pole?” this person demanded, feeling that something of a
literary nature might yet be wrested into the incident.
“On a flagstaff if you like,” conceded the other one magnanimously. “A
notice to the effect that it is the duty of every jack mother’s son of
them to douse the foreign devils, man, woman, and child, and especially
the talk-book pass-hat-round men. Also that he has had several
brick-ends heaved at him on his way back. Then stops suddenly, hits
his upper crust, and says that it’s like his blamed fat-headedness
to frighten her; while she clutches at herself three times and faints
away.”
“Amid the voluminous burning of blue lights?” suggested this person
resourcefully.
“By rights there should be,” admitted the one who was devising the
representation; “but it will hardly run to it. Anyway, it costs nothing
to turn the lamp down--saves a bit in fact, and gives an effect. Then
outside, in the distance at first you understand, you begin to work up
the sound of the advancing mob--rattles, shouts, tum-tums, groans, tin
plates and all that one mortal man can do with hands, feet and mouth.”
“With the interspersal of an occasional cracker and the stirring notes
produced by striking a hollow wooden fish repeatedly?” I cried; for let
it be confessed that amid the portrayal of the scene my imagination had
taken an allotted part.
“If you like to provide them, and don’t set the bally show on fire,” he
replied. “Anyhow, these two aren’t supposed to notice anything even when
the row gets louder. Then it drops and you are heard outside talking in
whispers to the others--words of command and telling them to keep back
half-a-mo, and so on. See?”
“Doubtless introducing a spoken charm and repeating the words of an
incantation against omens, treachery, and other matters.”
“Next a flap of the tent down on the floor is raised, and you
reconnoitre, looking your very worst and holding a knife between your
teeth and another in each hand. Wave a hand to your followers to keep
back--or come on: it makes no difference. Then you crawl in on your
stomach, give a terrific howl, and stab me in the back. That rolls
me under the curtain, and so lets me out. The missus ups with the
wood-chopper and stands before the cradle, while you yell and dance
round with the knives. That ought to be made ‘the moment’ of the whole
piece. The great thing is to make enough noise. If you can yell louder
than the talking-machine outfit on the next pitch we ought to turn money
away. While you are at it I start a fresh row outside--shouts, cheers,
groans, words of command and a paper bag or two. Seeing that the game
is up you make a rush at the old woman; she downs you with the chopper,
turns the lamp up full, shakes out a Union Jack over the sleeping
infant, and finally stands in her finest attitude with one hand pointing
impressively upwards and the other contemptuously downwards just as Rule
Britannia is played on the cornet outside and I appear at the door in a
general’s full uniform and let down the curtain.”
For acting in the manner designated--as touching the noises both inside
and out, the set dance with upraised knives, the casting to earth of
himself, and being myself in turn vanquished by the aged female, with
an added compact that from time to time I should be led by a chain
and shown to the people from a raised platform--we agreed upon a daily
reward of two pieces of silver, an adequacy of food, and a certain
ambiguously-referred-to share of the gain. It need not be denied that
with so favourable an opportunity of introducing passages from the
Classics a much less sum would have been accepted, but having obtained
this without a struggle, the one now recounting the facts raised the
opportune suggestion of an inscribed placard, in order to fulfil the
portent foreshadowed by William Greyson.
“Oh, we’ll star you, never fear,” assented the accommodating personage,
and having by this time reached that spot upon the Heath where his
Domestic Altar had been raised, we entered.
“All the most distinguished actors in this country take another
name,” he said reflectively, when he had drawn forth a parchment of
praiseworthy dimensions and ink of three colours, “and though I have
nothing to say against Kong Ho Tsin Cheng Quank Paik T’chun Li Yuen
Nung for quiet unostentatious dignity, it doesn’t have just the grip
and shudder that we want. Now how does ‘Fang’ strike you?” and upon my
courteous acquiescence that this indeed united within it those qualities
which he required, he traced its characters in red ink upon a lavish
scale.
“‘Fang Hung Sin’ about fits the idea of snap and bloodthirstiness, I
should say,” he continued, and using the brush and all the colours
with an expert proficiency which would infallibly gain him an early
recognition at any of our competitive examinations, he presently laid
before me the following gracefully-composed notice, which was suspended
from a conspicuous pole about the door of the tent on the following day.
FANG HUNG SIN
The Captured Boxer Chieftain.
Under a strong guard, and by arrangement with the British and
Chinese authorities concerned,