The human cobweb : a romance of old Peking

Front matter

B.L. PUTNAM WEALE

CHARLES WILLIAM WASON COLLECTION

CHINA AND THE CHINESE

Chapter I

"La derniere chose qu'on trouve en faisant un ouvrage, est de savoir celle qu'il faut mettre la premiere." — ^Pascal.

It was almost exactly eight o'clock when the first guests reached Mrs. John West's hospitable house, and it was almost exactly a quarter past before the last person had arrived. It was significant, in Mrs. John West's eyes, that the first comers should have been Phyllis May and her mother, and that the very last man of all had been no other than Peter Kerr. Somehow, it at once attracted her attention. The significance, it is true, was of that special kind which means infinitely more to a woman than to a man; for Peter Kerr's lateness might have really been occasioned by a hundred different things having not the slightest connection with this particular dinner-party. Certainly, if his apologies meant anything, it was only his watch which had been at fault, which is another way of saying that he had been forgetful or careless.

But Mrs. John West was one of those women who cling to preconceived ideas, and who pay scant attention to masculine explanations. Also she had arrived at that puzzling age when one ponders over things and gives undue importance to the deductive method.

It was therefore a source of further satisfaction for her to be able to note that Peter Kerr deliberately delayed going up to Phyllis May until further delay had become impossible. Even when that last unfortunate moment had come, he made his greetings with his habitually easy manner curiously restrained and overcast by something difficult to explain. A faulty timepiece could not explain that, thought Mrs. John West a little triumphantly to herself, as she allowed a few more reflective minutes to go by before sending her guests into dinner. And whilst she talked a little vaguely to General Shaw, a somewhat taciturn veteran who had gained a great reputation in India principally by maintaining a gloomy and discretionary silence through a long term of years, she definitely made up her mind that Phyllis May's chances of marrying Peter Kerr had for some reason entirely vanished. Mrs. John West had not time enough to try to guess what had suddenly come over Peter Kerr; what mainly struck her was that for woman to dispose man must first propose. Man's position appeared to her just then singularly superior, and this unconsciously both piqued and interested her.

Peter Kerr, however, whatever his innermost thoughts and his particular motives may have been, was much too much a man of the world to allow it to be generally noticed that subtle changes in the mental attitudes of several people in the room had undoubtedly taken place since his appearance. For no sooner were they all seated at table than, as if conscious that he might be observed, he launched out into animated description of a new invention which, if it were as successful as was anticipated, might once again revolutionize the industrial world. As he talked, Phyllis May, who was on his right, took care to interject frequent remarks, to show that she was highly interested in a matter which of course greatly bored her. Her interest was so pronounced that Mrs. John West speedily assumed that she had reached the same conclusion as herself. Mrs. John West even began to wonder, when her duties as hostess allowed her attention to stray so far, whether Phyllis, as soon as dinner was over, might not show that acute concern which is expected in young girls when they are grievously disappointed. In other words, Mrs. John West — quite erroneously — credited Phyllis with a desire to weep a little — which made the situation all the more interesting to her.

For Phyllis May was not only relatively young but actually so, and nothing but circumstances over which she had exercised little control had been responsible for the assumption which had quite lately grown up that Peter Kerr would inevitably marry her. , The assumption, indeed, had been almost purely one made by her mother and by a few intimate friends like Mrs. John West, who having married early themselves were quite willing to believe that all other girls would certainly do likewise — that is, if they could. Yet Phyllis herself, since she was only eighteen, had been far too much satisfied with the comforts of life in London with her widowed mother to wish to fling impulsively away from home with a man whom a perfunctory marriage service would convert into her husband. Such an idea was naturally foreign to her; she did not belong to the class of women who are inevitably associated with perambulators and babies. But circumstances are generally the controlling factors in a rather lazy and drifting world; and the circumstances which had undoubtedly begun unduly to influence Phyllis May whilst she was at this plastic age had been that she was thrown a good deal into the society of men who were both free and frank, and who, finding her sympathetic and very easy to talk to, had confided in her so much that possibly too quickly she had believed that she must be an exceptional girl who would make her choice the very moment it might please her to do so. Between this and actual marriage there is no great gulf, as all those who are learned in the intricacies of matrimony must admit.

Of all these men, Peter Kerr had quickly stepped far in advance, mainly because of certain mental qualities he seemed to possess. Phyllis May's very first impression of him had been that he was clever, though wayward and rather difEcult to understand. Perhaps it was that which attracted her. He was also handsome in a somewhat harsh way, his features being too strong for a formal, black-coated, silk-hatted age. They seemed to inform one continually that his remote forebears had been engaged in the rudest occupations; and that this, their far-off descendant, had in him the germs of their callous savagery and inconvenient resolution. It was even said at his club that it required no very great stretch of imagination to picture Peter Kerr cutting off heads and coolly counting them so as to make sure that he had not been defrauded of his just toll. They gilded this pill by adding that they meant that he would make an excellent executioner in an historic pageant. He would look the part, they meant. That explanation, however, was an afterthought. The first thought — ^like all first thoughts — was the instinctive one.

Not that it was meant thereby that Peter Kerr was necessarily cruel and merciless. Rather was it implied that his character was such that if he put his hand to a gruesome job he would probably carry it through inflexibly, with his reputed heredity materially assisting him in the task, and indeed showing him, in some subtle and inexplicable way, exactly what to do. Gossip of this sort is rather hard on a man, for it is generally not founded on those facts which satisfy a Mr. Francis Galton, and if faces alone told the whole truth it would be a very unfortunate day for a good many people in the world.

Nevertheless this reputed quality — and the fact that he was clever and rather difficult to understand — ^had probably singled him out more than anything else in Phyllis May's eyes; for one day some one had told her of the club saying, and it seemed to her so apposite that she could not help remembering it. Women, as they themselves admit, are curious beings at the best of times; and perhaps there is nothing in the world quite so hard to conciliate with men's rules of common sense as the very young woman with imagination. Desdemona's affection for the Moor appears in the present sophisticated age an endless puzzle. Yet it was, after all, nothing very strange. It was merely because Othello spoke of most disastrous chances of moving accidents by flood and field, of hairbreadth escapes in the imminentdeadly breach, that Desdemona saw his visage only in his mind and was willing to consecrate her soul and fortunes to his honours and valiant parts. This is the same as saying that he infected her with the germ of hero-worship (or battle-worship), which is a deadly germ, upsetting all laws and very dangerous indeed. To the ordinary masculine mind it is no doubt strange that such things should exist — especially when the hero is sooty- faced; yet doubtless these strange things assist to adjust the general balance in the world and should not be too much decried. Perhaps Phyllis May could not help believing that Peter Kerr embodied certain qualities which made him different from other men and essential to her happiness. Possibly again, idly pursuing this line of thought, she had sometimes built nimibers of those extravagant castles which have no more solidity than the morning vapours. It is never possible to know exactly what other people think.

Peter Kerr in the ordinary course of events should have surrendered to the inevitable ere now; that is, he should have proposed. But a week or two ago, as if suspecting the part he was called upon to play, he had suddenly become elusive, alleging that he was so busy that he had little or no time for his friends. It was exactly for this reason that Mrs. John West had pinned him down to this particular dinner-party. And now, in the space of relatively few minutes, it had been clearly demonstrated to the subtle feminine mind that he was strictly on the defensive and wished this to be clearly understood. It was cruel of him, perhaps, but these are the facts. ^

Everything seemed to favour him. The conversation at the pleasant dinner-table for no good reason had been suddenly swept into an excited political discussion, making the probability of that culminating tete-a-tete which Mrs. John West had pictured to herself more and more remote. The dinner, instead of bringing the two together, was somehow estranging them more and more, and a keen student of psychology would have realized at once that there was battle rather than love in the air.

It was, however, the fault of Fate, not of man. The Far East, though ten thousand miles away, had lately communicated to England a series of electrical shocks which seemed to herald the gravest events. After a period of delusive calm, following the months of the Japanese war with China, Russia had quite unexpectedly started the ball rolling again in far-off Asia; and then, when some rapid diplomacy had almost checkmated the designs which Muscovite statesmen showed they possessed, Germany had suddenly appeared on the scene, and by her promptitude in landing marines and seizing a strip of Chinese territory, as punishment for the inopportune massacre of some of her missionaries, had justified and made inevitable further Russian action. In those days it was not Germany who was the enemy ; it was Russia.

It was this latest development which everybody was now discussing. The evening papers had just announced that Russia, determined to have an ice-free port in the Far East, had already despatched a small squadron to the harbour of Port Arthur, and although it seemed doubtful how far St. Petersburg would actually go in the teeth of British opposition, there was every possibility that Port Arthur would be forcibly annexed at once by the Czar's officers.

General Shaw, the taciturn Indian veteran, whose substantial Eastern reputation had been so largely built up by his discretionary silence, had been suddenly roused to undiplomatic and emphatic speech by the old Russian spectre. Though what he said was mainly a "warming-up" of things familiar to ten million newspaper readers, it was of that stuff which will never cease being popular. General Shaw felt sure he would be applauded; for the English, as a nation, because of certain historical and geographical reasons, love to feel menaced and then to be superfluously reminded at all hours of the day and night that never, never wall they be slaves.

"Although I do not wish it to be supposed that I believe wholly these newspaper reports," the General was now announcing in an oracular manner, "I think it absolutely essential that we should do something at the present juncture. In India we know very well how these things are worked. First there is a small and innocent-looking forward movement. Then, if no suspicions have been openly aroused, the Russians do a little more ; then again a little more ; until in the end it does not matter to them very much whether there is opposition from us or not. That has happened for half a century in Central Asia and on the Persian frontier, and to my mind we are beginning to skate on very thin ice. Fortunately, in this case, it is purely a question of sea-power, and we can undoubtedly act as we please."

General Shaw ended his monologue in some satisfaction. He was indeed so satisfied both with his logic and the ease with which he had spoken, that he sent a challenging glance round the dinner-table, as if it were impossible either to controvert his opinion or to add anything further. Although the hum of approval which he had expected now sounded pleasantly in his ears, the General had reckoned without Peter Kerr.

"I disagree with you absolutely, General," he began, so deliberately that Mrs. John West, more certain than ever that he was in a combative mood, nodded her head pointedly at Phyllis May. Phyllis herself was suddenly impressed with the idea that in some way this distant political turmoil specially interested Peter Kerr: otherwise she felt sure he would not have shown himself so concerned. In spite of herself she also became interested; and also, in spite of her resolve not to do so, she kept glancing at his face as he spoke. What was it? she wondered.

"In the first place," Kerr said, "it is all very well to talk about our sea-power; but is it merely a question of sea-power? I think not, for this reason. I am going to bore you all horribly, but to demolish the General's arguments I must be long-winded. After the Japanese war with China was concluded two or three years ago', you will all remember that three Powers came to China's help, and forced the Japanese to give back that southern portion of Manchuria on the coast of which Port Arthur lies. These Powers were Russia, Germany, and France. They acted strictly in concert three years ago, and it is morally certain that what is now going on is privately considered by them as a mere liquidation of a just debt. That is, payment is being enforced for past services in the manner that is most pleasing to these Powers, whether China happens to like it or not. Germany and Russia have begun ; France must follow. The question for us merely is whether we consider ourselves justified in risking a rebuff in a matter from which we stood quite aloof three years ago. Can we afford it? — that is the main question. Diplomatically and financially can we afford it? And supposing we can afford it, is the game really worth the candle? In any case there are other means available than those suggested by General Shaw. I could say a lot more, but I only want to put my finger on the weak spot in the General's argument that it is simply and purely a Russian question."

"I agree with you, Kerr," said a very serious-looking banker. Sir James Barker. "With us it should always be a question of money — a careful reckoning as to whether the game is worth the candle. In Europe our sea-power must be exerted from ■ time to time, at all costs, but in Asiatic waters of no particular value I am utterly against taking adventurous risks. I am afraid. General, you have taken too much for granted."

Sir James Barker turned his solemn face slowly round from one end of the table to the other, much as a search-light is turned, and the immediate effect was to make the General's allies wonder why they had been so easily convinced. Usually this sort of conversation, excepting at the first blush, is not enlivening. The men become either so combative that they create alarm, or else, because the subject is dull and intricate, two or three constitute themselves spokesmen and all others become unwilling listeners. To-night it was different. There was undoubtedly electricity in the air, and people wanted to hear more of the subject.

"My dear General," said some one who loved to bait him, "your arguments seem more than a bit shaky."

General Shaw snorted his contempt. Thoroughly aroused, he was now busy demonstrating to his end of the table, with the aid of salt-cellars and knives and forks, just what would happen if England were foolish enough to be guided by such opinions as those just expressed. It was a question concerning all Asia and not merely the Far East.

"It is all very well for them to talk," he grumbled, "but Kerr is an engineer and looks at things mathematically — that is, without political instinct. Barker is a banker, and we all understand what that means. I insist that I am right. Why, my dear' madam," he concluded, turning to his hostess, "I have been in India for forty years. Am I not to be believed?"

Mrs. John West nodded sympathetically and allowed the General to mount his favourite hobby-horse, whilst secretly she listened to what was going on at the other end of the table. Her husband was trying to effect a compromise between the two extreme parties of peace and war which had suddenly arisen, but he was not very successful. Even the ladies had taken sides, and Phyllis, in a sudden spirit of opposition, added fuel to the flames by declaring aloud that she thought Peter Kerr was so thoroughly unpatriotic that he deserved summary treatment. Kerr, though he affected to laugh with everybody else, soon appeared openly annoyed at the attention he had drawn on himself. Making an effort, he now attempted to pass it all off as a matter of small importance.

"After all," he said, turning to Phyllis, "we are only theorizing, and none of our forecasts will come true. The unexpected will most certainly happen — what does it matter? Let us keep our ammunition for a better cause — don't you agree?"

Phyllis considered him carefully for a moment. Phyllis had remarkably intelligent eyes, which could see through most things, and just then she was determined to see through Peter Kerr.

"No," she replied very soon, "I do not agree. You are very much in earnest — that is quite clear. And I also lo THE HUMAN COBWEB

believe," she added in a lower tone, "that you have some special reason for being so interested. You see how far I have got already."

"And why should you believe that?"

Peter Kerr spoke almost defiantly; he seemed to wish to provoke her. Phyllis, however, only laughed; she had no intention of obliging him in any way, since she only wished to satisfy her own curiosity.

"How stupid men must be," she remarked. "I am quite sure about your special reason now. I wonder what it is?"

"I wonder you don't ask," rejoined Peter Kerr.

"Ask!" echoed Phyllis. "You must know that I never ask questions of that sort."

Foiled again, Peter Kerr toyed irritably with a knife on the table. He was not successful in his new role, he thought, and he was wondering how it was that he had lost his first advantage. It was foolish of him to have shown the slightest interest in the General's remarks. Yet when a man is interested how can he remain silent?

"I wonder," resumed Phyllis reflectively, "how far a man who is really pushed would go nowadays. Do you think men would do to-day the things they did a few hundred years ago?" /

"Why not?" said Peter Kerr coolly. "That is, when they are not afraid of a policeman."

"That is what I think," replied Phyllis. "The subject has always interested me. You know," she continued a little maliciously, "you have a reputation to live up to. You know what they say about you?"

He listened in sudden amusement as Phyllis told him the club story which had been retailed to her.

"I am very much flattered," he replied, when she had ended. "I never knew I had so much to live up to. I must try and act my part better, or else you won't believe at all in me. What shall I do now, for instance? Speak, and I shall attempt to gratify you."

Phyllis looked at him suddenly and then looked away.

THE HUMAN COBWEB ii

"I might ask something impossible," she suggested.

"That alone is impossible," replied Peter Kerr in a way which flattered her.

To her annoyance their conversation was interrupted before she could answer. A growing clamour in the street had at last been translated into the hoarse cries of a number of newspaper-boys who were evidently invading this residential quarter with a set purpose. Their calls, bellowed now in unison, now in single shouts, soon arrested general attention. There was a buzz of comments at the dinner-table. It was clear that there was news of importance. Kerr suddenly sat up in an attitude of expectancy, and Phyllis saw that she was again forgotten.

"Throw open a window and find out what it is," said John West to the butler, to gratify every one's growing curiosity. General Shaw, who was still busy insisting on the accuracy of his views, for some reason suddenly turned the colour of a turkey-cock, as if in apprehension of his coming confusion. Sir James Barker, catching sight of him, chuckled to himself and tried to attract Kerr's attention. The others showed their interest in various mannerisms.

The butler had discreetly unbolted a window at the far end of the room, and now thrust out his head. Everybody waited to hear what it was.

"Beg pardon, sir," said the man finally, somewhat confusedly, conscious that all eyes were fixed on him. "I can't catch it, sir. It is hard to hear, sir. . . ."

He was continuing to murmur vague excuses, when Peter Kerr suddenly got up, and with a look at Mrs. John West and a word of explanation to West himself went to the window. His head had been outside only a few seconds when he withdrew it. With a motion to the butler to close the glass he came slowly back to the table. Phyllis noticed that his face had a singular expression.

"Ladies and gentlemen," he said with a satirical little bow, as if this victory amused him, "I have the honour to announce that according to the newsboys the British squadron has definitely withdrawn from Port Arthur, and the Russian occupation is now accepted as a fait accompli."

A storm of exclamations and comments greeted this startling piece of news. Whilst West was instructing the butler at once to buy copies of. the newspapers, General Shaw, more purple in the face than ever, was showering adjectives round the table.

"Monstrous, unheard-of, idiotic!" he proclaimed. "There will be trouble, never fear, never fear." He continued to talk in indignant snatches, as if the question had become a personal matter, as if he had been insulted; but the others were too busy with their own remarks t6 notice much what he was saying. Peter Kerr had quietly taken his seat at table.

"It is kismet" he said very calmly to Phyllis May, breathing deeply. "I was almost certain it was coming. It has come. I am abnormally glad."

"I suppose you will tell us the real reason by and by," Phyllis replied, feeling that her advantage had gone.

It was characteristic of Peter Kerr that he had ceased to listen to her. He murmured soniething vague in reply, whilst he looked inquiringly across the table in Sir James Barker's direction. Barker just then raised his head, and Phyllis noticed that the two men smiled at each other significantly.

"Ah!" said Phyllis involuntarily, loud enough for Peter Kerr to hear. He turned at once.

"I beg your pardon," he said.

"Nothing," she answered. "I was merely following up my trail. I will soon catch you."

Peter Kerr remained silent. He was very busy thinking. Phyllis rapidly ran through everything she remembered his having said during the evening. There must be some connection between these two undoubted clues — Sir James Barker and the retirement of a British squadron. What could it be? But Mrs. John West was now anxiously signalling to her, and her thread of thought was once again snapped as she got up to go.

Left to themselves the men hastily ran over the telegraphic columns of the special editions which had been so dramatically announced. There was evidently no doubt about the news being true; the Russians had accomplished their coup, and the small British squadron which had followed them into Port Arthur fully cleared for action, had steamed away to another Chinese harbour in obedience to direct instructions from London. So said the cables. This much was clear, but as to what was going to follow even the sapient editors of the evening newspapers confessed themselves in doubt. However, to help people to understand something of it all for themselves, roughly-drawn maps of the Far East, with strategic points clearly marked, had been printed beneath the tell-tale telegrams, and the intelligent reader, with this scrap of geography thrown at him, was evidently expected to construct his own theory without further editorial help.

Peter Kerr, with a newspaper in his hand, had soon withdrawn into a corner with Sir James Barker, and was now talking rapidly and earnestly whilst the banker blew clouds of cigar-smoke thoughtfully into the air. General Shaw, still nettled at the manner in which his theories and arguments had been demolished by stern fact, had moved up beside John West and was consoling himself liberally with port. At the same time he watched the two men in the corner with a grim smile. He was really much put out, and did not trouble to conceal it.

"I had no idea. West," he said finally, "that Kerr and Barker knew each other so well. As a matter of fact, when one thinks of it, their theories are so much of a piece that they must have discussed this question a good deal by themselves and formed their own conclusions. Look at the way Kerr is laying down the law."

Peter Kerr, in his earnestness, had seized hold of Sir James Barker's arm and was literally pulling him along in his arguments. The banker, accustomed to caution and yet now openly elated, was nodding his head approvingly and at the same time hushing Kerr. A couple of other men, who had pushed their chairs back and were smoking thoughtfully in silence, looked up surprised as Peter Kerr, to clinch his argument, struck his hand heavily against the wall.

"That is the only way, and the road we must follow," every one heard him say. Then, as if suddenly conscious that his forgetfulness in a room full of listening men was indiscreet, he suddenly laughed and slowly came back to the table.

In the drawing-room Mrs. John West had seated herself beside Phyllis May, and was holding her hand as she gossiped to her.

"Our friend seems in a droll humour to-night," she said tentatively, after they had talked a little of other things, as she, examined a pretty chain which hung round Phyllis's neck. "I have come to the conclusion," she went on, "that he is rather curious — in fact, a good deal of an unknown quantity. Don't you think so, Phyllis dear?"

Mrs. John West's hope that a confession might be forthcoming disappeared as she glanced at the girl's face.

"Perhaps," rejoined Phyllis laconically. Phyllis leaned back in her chair and gazed lazily at her hostess through half-closed eyelids. She disliked the interrogative form of conversation very cordially just now, and she was annoyed with Mrs. John West's attitude. Undoubtedly she had been nettled at Peter Kerr's general attitude, but then that was her business. Phyllis had a mind of her own, which her mother was never tired of warning her would sooner or later bring her to a special kind of perdition. So, determined not to give the slightest encouragement, she now began talking on indiiferent subjects.

Mrs. John West, foiled in her object, hardly listened as she looked round the room. She too was thinking about Peter Kerr. She wondered whether she had made a mistake in thinking Phyllis suitable for him. Perhaps he was not a marrying man. He had certainly reached an age when he might be counted on to know his own mind. She hoped that he would not be irritated with her — she would not like that. Mrs. John West looked critically at Phyllis as if she were measuring her for a new gown. Yes — she had evidently made a mistake. She was rather sorry she had shown so much concern, after all.

"I wonder what has happened to the men," ventured Phyllis at length, after nearly half an hour had elapsed. She had exhausted nearly every neutral subject and was beginning to feel rather dismal.

"There was such a warlike feeling that I should not be surprised if they began fighting. Perhaps the General is leading them against one another." Mrs. John West suppressed a yawn as she glanced at the clock. "If they do not come soon, I shall have to send," she concluded.