NINA'S STORY.
I promised my cousin Cicely St. John that I would write a little history
of what took place after we were separated from one another. She is
going to do the same; and then some day when we go back to England we
shall get it all put together and have it published in one big book. It
has always been my ambition to write a book, and I am quite sure that I
can write. People all have their particular gifts--writing is one of
mine. I was not very good when I was at school, but I never found the
essays any trouble at all. And when I was fourteen I got a
five-shilling prize in a magazine, and my story was published in the
Christmas number. It was illustrated, and the picture in the place of
honour on the cover. I was so delighted about it and so was father, but
then he always does love everything I do. People say he spoils me, and
perhaps he does; all I can say is, it is very nice being spoilt! I am
always happier when I am with father and his friends than with girls of
my own age.
I never cared much for girls; the little ones talk about their dolls and
the big ones about their clothes. I like hearing father and his brother
officers talk and tell tales of sport and adventure. Of course I know
father would have liked me to have been a boy. He must have been
disappointed, though he never said so, because then I should have been a
soldier like he is, and gone to the war in South Africa, or perhaps have
been here in Pekin, just as we are now.
It is a month since we came to the Celestial City, and such a long time
since I stayed with Uncle Paul and Aunt Christine. We went to them when
we first came out to China. I had never seen them in my life before.
[Illustration: The Pagoda at Pekin.]
Cicely is different from other girls, and I love her dearly. She is
much younger than I am, two years younger, but she seems almost as old.
She is so grave and a little old-fashioned; somehow I feel better when I
am with her and Uncle Paul--they make me want to be good. I often
wonder where they are, and hope things are not as bad for them as they
are with us, for here in the Celestial City things look very black
indeed. Father wishes he had left me behind in Wei-hai-wei, but I would
much rather be with him, even though the worst comes and he has to kill
me himself. Uncle Paul thinks one ought not to do this, but then Uncle
Paul is an angel. When I am with him I feel all the time a longing
after something better. I told Mrs. Ross about him. Mrs. Ross is my
great friend here. She is young and very pretty, and she met Uncle Paul
once. When I told her what he made me feel like, she said, "Yes, I
know, dear, he makes you feel as if you didn't care how your frock
fitted, but when you get away you think to yourself you may as well look
as nice as you can." Mrs. Ross has only been married a few months. She
came here just after her honeymoon. She has the most wonderful eyes I
have ever seen, like the stars in the soft, dark sky. She and I and
nearly always together, though she is years older than I am. Still she
says she is very glad to have me for her friend, as there are so few
girls out here. Captain Ross looks stern and troubled, and very
careworn, but all the men have that expression now, and if only you saw
the faces of the Chinese you would not wonder much; they are so
dreadfully cruel and revengeful, and they look at us as if they hate us
and would like to murder us all. If they killed people outright it would
not be so dreadful; but they torture a person for days first; they do
this to their own people, how much more then to us, if they had us in
their power?
It is the cruel Empress who hates the foreigners, and it is her
emissaries who have stirred up the people against us. The Boxers are
her tools really, and the ignorant people are told all kinds of things
which they believe, that the Europeans take their little children and
kill them, and that it is our presence here which causes the lack of
rain, and then they pretend to see most wonderful apparitions, those who
appear always bearing the same message, "Kill! kill!" The other day
they declared that a marvellous vision appeared in the sky; it was a
spirit girl, they said, with a lamp in her hand. Father and I went out
to see it, but of course we did not see the girl, but only a brilliant
light in the sky, and the Chinese, who are very superstitious, imagined
the rest. But what caused more stir and alarm than anything else was
the mysterious Red Hand which suddenly appeared in Pekin. Mrs. Ross and
I saw it on a house one day, and then again on another, and as the
people caught sight of these dreadful Red Hands they gesticulated
wildly, and seemed terribly excited. Mrs. Ross was very frightened, as
she thought it meant that the Boxers were going to kill all the inmates
of the houses on which the Red Hand appeared, but Captain Ross said he
had been told by someone who knew that we, the foreign devils, were
accused of marking the houses, and wherever this dreadful mark appeared
a curse was sure to follow; in seven days one of the inmates would go
mad, or in fourteen days they would die. This was just before a most
dreadful event occurred.