'Round the corner, you bloody fool,' cried Henderson, and to emphasize his meaning he gave the man a smart kick on the bottom.
XVIII
DAWN
IT is night still and the courtyard of the inn is rich with deep patches of darkness. Lanterns throw fitful lights on the coolies busily preparing their loads for the journey. They shout and laugh, angrily argue with one another, and vociferously quarrel. I go out into the street and walk along preceded by a boy with a lantern. Here and there behind closed doors cocks are crowing. But in many of the shops the shutters are down already and the indefatigable people are beginning their long day. Here an apprentice is sweeping the floor, and there a man is washing his hands and face. A wick burning in a cup of oil is all his light. I pass a tavern where half a dozen persons are seated at an early meal. The ward gate is closed, but a watchman lets me through a postern and I walk along a wall by a sluggish stream in which are reflected the bright stars. Then I reach the great gate of the city, and this time one half of it is open; I pass out, and there, awaiting me, all ghostly, is the dawn. The day and the long road and the open country he before me.
Put out the lantern. Behind me the darkness pales to a mist of purple and I know that soon this will kindle to a rosy flush. I can make out the causeway well enough and the water in the padi fields reflects already a wan and shadowy light. It is no longer night, but it is not yet day. This is the moment of most magical beauty, when the hills and the valleys, the trees and the water, have a mystery which is not of earth. For when once the sun has risen, for a time the world is very cheerless, the light is cold and grey like the light in a painter's studio, and there are no shadows to diaper the ground with a coloured pattern. Skirting the brow of a wooded hill I look down on the padi fields. But to call them fields is too grandiose. They are for the most part crescent shaped patches built on the slope of a hill, one below the other, so that they can be flooded. Firs and bamboos grow in the hollows as though placed there by a skilful gardener with a sense of ordered beauty to imitate formally the abandon of nature. In this moment of enchantment you do not look upon the scene of humble toil, but on the pleasure gardens of an emperor. Here throwing aside the cares of state, he might come in yellow silk embroidered with dragons, with jewelled bracelets on his wrists, to sport with a concubine so beautiful that men in after ages felt it natural if a dynasty was destroyed for her sake.
And now with the increasing day a mist arises from the padi fields and climbs half way up the gentle hills. You may see a hundred pictures of the sight before you, for it is one that the old masters of China loved exceedingly. The little hills, wooded to their summit, with a line of fir trees along the crest, a firm silhouette against the sky, the little hills rise behind one another, and the varying level of the mist, forming a pattern, gives the composition a completeness which yet allows the imagination ample scope. The bamboos grow right down to the causeway, their thin leaves shivering in the shadow of a breeze, and they grow with a high-bred grace so that they look like groups of ladies in the Great Ming dynasty resting languidly by the way-side. They have been to some temple, and their silken dresses are richly wrought with flowers and in their hair are precious ornaments of jade. They rest there for a while on their small feet, their golden lilies, gossiping elegantly, for do they not know that the best use of culture is to talk nonsense with distinction; and in a moment slipping back into their chairs they will be gone. But the road turns and my God, the bamboos, the Chinese bamboos, transformed by some magic of the mist, look just like the hops of a Kentish field. Do you remember the sweet smelling hop-fields and the fat green meadows, the railway line that runs along the sea and the long shining beach and the desolate greyness of the English Channel? The seagull flies over the wintry coldness and the melancholy of its cry is almost unbearable.
XIX
THE POINT OF HONOUR
NOTHING hinders friendly relations between different countries so much as the fantastic notions which they cherish about one another's characteristics, and perhaps no nation has suffered so much from the misconception of its neighbours as the French. They have been considered a frivolous race, incapable of profound thought, flippant, immoral, and unreliable. Even the virtues that have been allowed them, their brilliancy, their gaiety, have been allowed them (at least by the English) in a patronising way; for they were not virtues on which the Anglo-Saxon set great store. It was never realised that there is a deep seriousness at the bottom of the French character and that the predominant concern of the average Frenchman is the concern for his personal dignity. It is by no hazard that La Rochefoucauld, a keen judge of human nature in general and of his countrymen in particular, should have made Vhonneur the pivot of his system. The punctiliousness with which our neighbours regard it has often entertained the Briton who is accustomed to look upon himself with humour; but it is a living force, as the phrase goes, with the Frenchman, and you cannot hope to understand him unless you bear in mind always the susceptibility of his sense of honour.
These reflections were suggested to me whenever I saw the Vicomte de Steenvoorde driving in his sumptuous car or seated at the head of his own table. He represented certain important French interests in China and was said to have more power at the Quai d'Orsay than the minister himself. There was never a very cordial feeling between the pair, since the latter not unnaturally resented that one of his nationals should deal in diplomatic matters with the Chinese behind his back. The esteem in which M. de Steenvoorde was held at home was sufficiently proved by the red button that adorned the lappet of his frock coat.
The Vicomte had a fine head, somewhat bald, but not unbecomingly (wne legere calvitie, as the French novelists put it and thereby rob the cruel fact of half its sting) a nose like the great Duke of Wellington's, bright black eyes under heavy eyelids, and a small mouth hidden by an exceedingly handsome moustache the ends of which he twisted a great deal with white, richly jewelled fingers. His air of dignity was heightened by three massive chins. He had a big trunk and an imposing corpulence so that when he sat at table he sat a little away from it, as though he ate under protest and were just there for a snack; but nature had played a dirty, though not uncommon trick on him; for his legs were much too short for his body so that, though seated he had all the appearance of a tall man, you were taken aback to find when he stood up that he was hardly of average height. It was for this reason that he made his best effect at table or when he was driving through the city in his car. Then his presence was commanding. When he waved to you or with a broad gesture took off his hat, you felt that it was incredibly affable of him to take any notice of human beings. He had all the solid respectability of those statesmen of Louis Philippe, in sober black, with their long hair and clean-shaven faces, who look out at you with portentous solemnity from the canvases of Ingres.
One often hears of people who talk like a book. M. de Steenvoorde talked like a magazine, not of course a magazine devoted to light literature and the distraction of an idle hour, but a magazine of sound learning and influential opinion. M. de Steenvoorde talked like the Revue des Deux Mondes. It was a treat, though a little fatiguing, to listen to him. He had the fluency of those who have said the same thing over and over again. He never hesitated for a word. He put everything wdth lucidity, an admirable choice of language, and such an authority that in his lips the obvious had all the sparkle of an epigram. He was by no means without wit. He could be very amusing at the expense of his neighbours. And when, having said something peculiarly malicious, he turned to you with an observation 'Les absents ont toujours tort,' he managed to invest it with the freshness of an original aphorism. He was an ardent Catholic, but, he flattered himself, no reactionary; a man of standing, substance, and principle.
A poor man, but ambitious (fame, the last infirmity of noble mind) he had married for her enormous dot the daughter of a sugar broker, now a painted little lady with hennaed hair, in beautiful clothes; and it must have been a sore trial to him that when he gave her his honoured name he could not also endow her with the sense of personal pride which was so powerful a motive in all his actions. For, like many great men, M. de Steenvoorde was
