Once more the great outside tide of life has beaten down the little
barricades that one erects against it, and has come thundering in over
them in an avalanche, tossing them to right and left, as though they
were so many straws in its path! This week that has just ended has been
for millions--for all Europe, for the whole world in fact--stamped with
the impress of what one would fain still hope to be an incredible
horror. Personally this Pekin nightmare has centred itself for me in the
fact that E. B. was reported to be still there. Recently she was known
to have been there, and whether she had, or had not left seemed at first
impossible to ascertain. At last, though not until after days of
suspense, of uncertainty, of growing hopelessness, came the
telegram--“Safe at Hong Kong,” and the relief is greater than it is
easy, without exaggeration, to put into words.
So great has been that relief that for me it has perceptibly altered the
whole situation, as I suppose it was inevitable that it should do.
Nevertheless, the tragedy as a tragedy remains, and if anything seems to
be deepening daily. The newspapers certainly do nothing to minimise it;
perhaps they would say that it was hardly their province to do so! Such
headings, however, as “The Chinese Cawnpore!” “Last shots reserved for
the women!” “White children carried on spears!” seem to be rather more
than it is their absolute duty to offer to their readers! As regards
hope, no one appears to have any left, so that it seems mere optimism to
cherish any. A ray reached us two days ago from our neighbour S. B., who
had heard of a reassuring telegram from someone in Sir R. Hart’s
employment in Pekin. No such gleam, however, seems to have travelled
down to the murky depths of our newspapers, so that one can only fear
that there must be some mistake.
It is with a sort of angry helplessness, mixed with an instinctive
feeling of self-defence, that one turns from such accumulated, such
carefully elaborated horrors, and tries to forget them in whatever
little pursuit happens to lie nearest to one’s hand. It is not
particularly creditable to one’s humanity that one should succeed in
doing so, and there is no denying that one’s attitude is essentially
that of a kitten, or other small Unreasonable, which runs after its
ball, though disaster may be hovering, or conflagration about to
involve, it and everyone else. Happily, we are made so, just as surely
as the kitten is so made. We catch at straws, and in nine cases out of
ten the straw saves us. Were it not for this same blessed prerogative of
being interested in trifles, what, one sometimes asks oneself, would
become of all our poor wits? or where on a journey so full of loss and
sorrow, shock and trouble, would they have got to before the final goal
is reached?