CHAPTER XXIX
Sên Jo Hiêsen was yet for Ruben’s winning; and Ruben did not win Sên Jo Hiêsen so quickly or so simply.
They both saw—as the old man limped to them—that he was troubled and agitated.
He took no notice of Sên Ruben, unless an added frown of displeasure at not having instant speech alone with C’hian Fan, and he returned C’hian’s greeting as quickly and curtly as might one who, though older, was but of a collateral branch of the family of which C’hian Fan was the head.
“It has come!”
“The new dwarf-tree?” C’hian asked lazily.
“War has come!”
Sên C’hian Fan took Jo Hiêsen’s news lightly. “There always is war in China somewhere. Which of the brigand tuchuns are beating their drums now, venerable Old-one? Sit and share our smoking. The night is exquisite, and the perfumes from the gardens are intoxicating.”
Jo Hiêsen huddled down on to the ground with great dignity, but he would not smoke.
“This is the great war—the great war that has been bound to come ever since the Son of Heaven was made unable to do the Spring-time Worship at the Temple of Heaven. A sea of blood rises from Pechilli to beyond the Jade Gate and down to Shanghai harbor, from Shangtung Promontory to Yunan. Fire kindles in every province, a conflagration that threatens to burn up all China.”
Sên C’hian Fan laughed—but Sên Ruben was listening eagerly and his young blood pounded in its veins, jumping angrily through his heart.
“They but dice, Old-one,” C’hian murmured across his long pipe-stem. “Sun Yat-sen is a warrior on paper. Trickery is his artillery. Feng Yu-hsieng, Wu Pei-fu, Chang Tsolin, Tsao Kun, Li Ching-lin and all the rest of them will cancel out in battles—mock warfare, much of it—and then shake their hands at each other in salutation, each claim the victory, share the spoils, and get back to their yamêns to fatten and scheme afresh till the next war is ripe. Let war come; it will go. And China would lack a pastime, the markets and street corners lack for gossip if strolling-player warriors did not pitch their tinseled booths here and there and give their usual dramatic performance at due and convenient times. They have a saying in England, our cousin here has told me, a saying of political astuteness and social precaution—‘Do not rob the working man of his beer drink.’ Who would rob our ‘babies’ of their raree-shows? Not I.”
“You speak the folly of earless and sightless indifference,” Jo Hiêsen wailed bitterly. “I tell you, Sên C’hian Fan, this is no dice-throwing between two or three yên grabster mandarins. This is war! Such war as the West counts war. China is in flame, and every country in the West, anxious to filch our land and undeveloped resources, is pouring petrol on to the flaring burning. Shall the Sons of Han pass from history worms discredited, because the girdle-wearers sit dreaming in the moonlight, lute-playing in their courtyards while the Son of Heaven’s kingdom perishes, and is divided among barbarian peoples? I go to the war, Sên C’hian Fan! Keep you with your women?”
“I will keep me with my senses—and keep them in me,” C’hian answered pleasantly. He had heard Jo Hiêsen rave and splutter before.
But the younger listener was well fired by Jo’s vivid words.
“What hast thou heard, what message has reached our gates? May I know, venerable, eminent Sên Jo Hiêsen?” Ruben begged.
“Enough to make a tame-tit show fight! Shantung is arming, Kiangsu has armed. Wu Pei-fu has flung his challenge in the face of Feng Yu-hsieng. Peking is threatened.”
“It often is,” C’hian Fan chuckled. “The shopkeepers of Peking have a great deal to put up with. If Peking’s walls are broached—more like by coin-bribery than by guns or arrows—the Sacred prisoner will not be molested, nor will the foreign Consulates. The Boxers gave us taste enough of what that consequented. A few shop-streets will be looted, a few merchants impoverished. It is not enough to draw me from the pleasant moonlight, Jo Hiêsen; nothing to mute the lutes in Ho-nan. Since when have Sêns fallen to the low caste of soldiers? Thou always wast warlike: a splendid spirit, Jo, but a low trade only fit for coolies. By-the-passing, which faction join you, my General; Feng’s or Wu’s, or go you to soldier in the cohorts of Sun Yat-sen?”
Jo Hiêsen let that last insult pass. Sên C’hian Fan knew that none of Sên blood would fight under the banner of Sun the regicide.
“Come then, give it,” C’hian continued genially, more to humor the ardent old graybeard bursting to tell, than because he cared to hear, “what hast thou gathered? How came it? Who brought it?”
“Lo Mian-go has sent a runner to his kinsman, Lo Fing Nee, at Nan Yang, sent a runner from Hwai-king Fu, and by Mian-go’s command the tingchai flung a letter-packet to me as he passed. This it said, the letter-packet of our pure and rich friend Lo Mian-go:—” And Sên Hiêsen plunged into such a spluttered jumble of scrappy and contradictory “war” news, and of names new to Ruben that Sên Ruben could make but little out of it. According to Jo Hiêsen they all were cut-throats but not anxious to risk the slitting of their own throats—out to fill their own pouches rather than to do any service of patriotism. And C’hian Fan’s indolent comment, when at last Jo Hiêsen paused for breath, rather echoed Ruben’s thought.
“Patchwork!” C’hian Fan said scornfully. “No clear outline, little substance, twenty heads, flabby following; no definite plan, no true cause, no motive fine or great; more drums than bannermen! War! Nay, Jo Hiêsen; not war—bonfires, scattered bonfires.”
Sên Jo Hiêsen was too angry to speak at once, and before he could, C’hian Fan went on, more gravely, turning on his stool squarely towards Jo Hiêsen. The moonlight showed C’hian’s fine face like a lemon-tinted cameo, and something of the sharp starlight sparkled in his handsome eyes.
“Which of these mushroom generals would you join, which of them could your conscience support, which your taste belly? Who are they? What are they? We know what several of them are. China cries out for her ‘strong man’—needs him sorely. I grant that. When he comes I will serve him. No moonlight shall hold me back then, nor hold my son-ones, nor any music in the courtyard, nor our women. And in all our kuei there is not a Sên woman who would seek to. Soldiering is a low base trade—and so will I have none of it, but when it is indeed a patriotism, selfless and sacrificial, then is it work for nobles; and then will I soldier until I fall in the battle, wash the spear of a foe with the heart’s blood of a Sên. When China’s strong man comes will I follow him. Has he come? Will he come? It is written on the parchments of the gods—but we cannot read it yet. Which is he, can you tell me? Not Wu Pei-fu. Not Chang Tso-lin. Not the traitor mountebank that has boasted ‘I dethroned the Manchu with my sword.’ Perhaps Feng Yu-hsiang. Time and Feng will show. It may be he. But he must prove it. Let him prove it. Much points him the strongest in manhood, character and ability since Yuan Shih Kai. But is he fighting to make himself Tuchun of Pechilli, and after Emperor of China if he can compass and steer it? And better that than what we have! Or fights he to restore the rightful Son of Heaven on the Dragon Throne? Prove he so, and Sên C’hian Fan will be his humblest squire, be his servant.”
C’hian had shaken Sên Jo Hiêsen, damped his fire. But Jo Hiêsen was warlike, and rarely in all his long life had gray-bearded Sên Jo Hiêsen eaten any word he once had spoken.
“I go to the war,” he repeated almost sulkily.
“I will go with you, estimable Sên Jo Hiêsen.”
“Why?” Jo Hiêsen and C’hian Fan exclaimed in a breath.
“I have lived too long where soldiering is thought not ill of, but highly honored and ranked, to be able to feel that the soldier’s is not a splendid life. And I cannot idle at home when aged Sên Jo Hiêsen my venerable kinsman goes him to the wars. I must serve my country even with my life!”
“As a man should—a Sên man above others,” C’hian Fan told him, “serve his country with his life. That is the service that counts; is a sweetness in the nostrils of the gods. But you propose to serve it with your death. That is no service for a noble to render, except at great and sure necessity, Sên Ruben. Leave bonfires to peasant mercenaries.”
Death is not often mentioned in China. The fact is—for how can talk of life avoid it?—but not the word. The word itself is taboo or circumambulated. But Sên C’hian Fan was stirred—and he spoke to stir. He did not intend that Sên Ruben should perish in unworthy bandit warfare; sooner than that he would spoil the law of hospitality and would bar Sên Ruben fast in their house and courtyards. He would chain Sên Ruben before he should follow mad Jo Hiêsen into death-trap ambush.
For C’hian had little doubt that the decrepit dotard would hobble off to the fray, and reach it, if he could. And probably Jo Hiêsen could—in a palanquin.