The Eternal Collection

Chapter One ~ 1900-1

“I cannot think why you are so apprehensive, Major Ware,” Sir Claude Macdonald said.

“The Prime Minister has heard many rumours that there is a great deal of unrest in the Provinces.”

“There is always unrest in China and I can readily assure you that, as British Minister, I am perfectly able to cope with any situation that may arise from it.”

Sir Claude Macdonald spoke almost sharply as if he fancied that his authority was being questioned.

Stanton Ware, looking at him, thought that the Prime Minister was surely correct to have insinuated that he was not the right man in the right place.

The Marquis of Salisbury had been too tactful to say very much, but then his advisors in the Foreign Office had been blunt and the Press more so.

The Correspondent of The Times had written,

The Times“Everyone denounced the appointment. Sir Claude was attacked as imperfectly educated, weak, flippant and garrulous, the type of Military Officer rolled out a mile at a time and then lopped off in six-foot lengths!”

Everyone denounced the appointment. Sir Claude was attacked as imperfectly educated, weak, flippant and garrulous, the type of Military Officer rolled out a mile at a time and then lopped off in six-foot lengthsStanton Ware had laughed when he read it, but now he looked at Sir Claude Macdonald speculatively, feeling that he would be quite unable to cope if things got out of hand, as was to be expected in China.

It was in point of fact a tragedy that at this moment the British should be represented by a Minister who had no previous experience of China except as a gunnery instructor in Hong Kong.

Sir Claude was, as one of his critics had described him, ‘a stringy, bleary-eyed beanpole with a exaggeratedly waxed moustache.’

There was no doubt about the moustache and Sir Claude twirled it conceitedly as he said,

“You can most certainly inform the Prime Minister, Major Ware, that everything is under control and that the few incidents that have occurred are really of little consequence.”

Stanton Ware paused before he replied,

“I think that the murder of Brooks might be considered important, particularly to him.”

“Brooks was a Missionary,” Sir Claude answered, “and the Missionaries have indeed been a cause of trouble in China ever since they were allowed into the country in 1860. The Chinese resent it that they undermine their traditional ancestor-worship, which to them is of the deepest importance.”

“I am well aware of that,” Stanton Ware replied, “but then unfortunately the Chinese Christians ignore local feelings in a number of different ways.”

He was thinking how the Missionaries had requisitioned Chinese Temples by declaring that they were formerly Church property and, having been given permission to build, chose conspicuous and hallowed sites on purpose.

The Franciscans even tried to collect arrears of rent for the last three hundred years!

“Again may I say that I think such things are of very little significance,” Sir Claude said. “What really concerns us is the Balance of Power, which was upset four years ago when the Russian warships sailed into Port Arthur on the coast of China.”

This, Stanton Ware knew, was certainly true.

The five great Powers were jostling for position in China and were, in the words of one of the caricaturists, ‘carving her up like a melon’.

It was only jealousy amongst the Westerners themselves and their incessant rivalry that prevented more of China being annexed than had been already.

Yet Stanton Ware indeed knew that in Peking, the great Northern Capital of the Celestial Empire, the Manchus fooled themselves into believing that they were strong and that Chinese ways could overcome foreign ways.

In fact, as one man in the Foreign Office had said,

“The Manchus are arrogant and weak, the Europeans are arrogant and strong. The result will be war!”

As if he knew that Stanton Ware was not convinced that there was no crisis, Sir Claude said,

“I am certain that we can trust the Dowager Empress to deal successfully with internal difficulties.”

“Trust the Dowager Empress?” Stanton Ware repeated in astonishment. “You cannot be serious! The reports arriving in London make it quite clear that the Empress is, although she does not admit it, violently anti-foreign.”

Sir Claude laughed and again twirled his moustache.

“My dear Major, the Dowager Empress invited my wife and other ladies of the Legation to tea in the f*******n City to celebrate her birthday and to cement good relations between East and West.”

He smiled, assuming that Stanton Ware was unaware of this and then went on,

“The Empress, or ‘the Old Buddha’, for that is how we usually refer to her, presented each of her guests with a huge pearl ring set in gold and offered them a jade cup of tea with both hands.”

“Very generous,” Stanton Ware muttered ironically.

“It was a symbolic gesture,” Sir Claude explained. “The Empress drank from it first, then passed it on, murmuring, ‘one family, all one family’.”

“And you believe her?”

Sir Claude shrugged his shoulders.

“I can see no reason to do otherwise.”

“Despite the fact that the Boxers are growing in size every day?’

Sir Claude laughed.

“The Society of the Righteous and Harmonious Fists, who we call for short ‘the Boxers’, is made up of youths none that much older than nineteen. They are centred in the Northern Provinces, particularly on the borders of Shantung and Chilihi.”

“They are, I hear, on the move.”

“To where?” Sir Claude asked with a gesture of his large hand. “Because they pretend to have magic powers, the ignorant Chinese follow them, but to anyone of intelligence they can be little but a joke.”

“I think it is a joke that we shall not find at all funny,” Stanton Ware said sternly. “To get down to brass tacks, do you, Minister, require extra troops to be sent out here to protect, if nothing else, the British Legation?”

Sir Claude laughed.

“Extra troops? The ones we have have little enough to do. All I can say, Major Ware, is that you are making mountains out of molehills or seeing real Dragons when they are nothing but paper ones.”

He laughed heartily at his own joke.

Stanton Ware then rose to his feet.

“Thank you for giving me so much of your time, Minister. I shall report what you have said to the Prime Minister. I am very sure he will be interested.”

“You are returning home?” Sir Claude asked.

“Not immediately,” he replied vaguely. “I have some friends who I wish to see and then I might go to Tientsin and take a ship from there to Hong Kong.”

“Then bon voyage,” Sir Claude said. “It is very nice to have met you, Major Ware. I hope you enjoy your visit to Peking.”

bon voyageStanton Ware bowed and left the Legation.

He had expected to find the British Minister obtuse, obstinate and pig-headed, but he had not imagined him to be quite such a fool as he had proved himself to be in their conversation.

That same evening a telegram in strict code was sent to the Foreign Office requesting the urgent despatch of ‘new parts for the machine’.

Stanton Ware went back to where he was staying and sat down for a short while to think over what he had just heard together with what he already knew about the situation in China before he had arrived.

He was very experienced in the affairs of the East and so when the Prime Minister, the Marquis of Salisbury, had become perturbed at what he had learnt from other sources, it was inevitable that someone would say,

“Send for Major Stanton Ware!”

It had not been convenient for Stanton Ware and he had obeyed the summons somewhat grudgingly.

But when the Prime Minister had spoken frankly and Stanton Ware saw the reports from British Agents all over China, he then realised that this was exactly the sort of assignment that really interested him.

Also he saw that he could not have been paid a bigger compliment than being asked to undertake it.

At thirty-three he had made himself an expert on the affairs of the Far East and spoke fluently almost every major language and dialect that might be required of him.

He had made many expeditions into unknown and dangerous places and had emerged successful and alive from so many situations that would have undoubtedly defeated or killed another man that his luck had already become a legend amongst his contemporaries.

“We are all extremely grateful to you, Major Ware, for all that you have achieved in Afghanistan,” the Prime Minister had said on parting. “I will perhaps be forgiven for letting you into the secret when I tell you that your name has been put forward in the New Year’s Honours List for a K.C.M.G. from Queen Victoria.”

He could not tell by the expression on Stanton Ware’s face whether he was pleased or not by the information that he was to be a Knight Commander of St. Michael and St. George, an ancient Order of Chivalry.

He merely bowed, murmured some words of thanks, then left before the Prime Minister could say anything more.

‘Strange chap!’ the Marquis of Salisbury had said to himself when he was alone. ‘But undoubtedly an extremely efficient one.’

It was typical of Stanton Ware that, faced with a problem of which only he realised the magnitude, he should sit relaxed so that he could think before he took any form of action.

Only a few people were aware that he had spent two years of his life studying Yoga and being taught the secrets of Oriental Meditation by a Lama in one of the great Lamaseries in the East.

It was this training which not only kept him physically in the peak of condition, but also gave him an acute perception and a mind which the Chinese described as ‘seeing the world behind the world’.

Stanton Ware did not pretend to magic or even clairvoyant powers, but he undoubtedly used what the Tibetans called ‘The Third Eye’.

It was a sense which all human beings used to have until they lost it by grasping after materialistic things and putting the physical before the spiritual.

Like a man considering one of the Chinese puzzles carved in ivory that might take a lifetime to solve, Stanton Ware sat now thinking over what he knew and what he sensed. He found it far more disturbing than he had even imagined because the Officials on the spot, like the British Minister, were blind to the potential dangers ahead.

*

In the growing darkness a sedan chair was being carried through the streets of the City. Peking rose amongst groves of white pines on a level plain less than one hundred miles South of the Great Wall where it runs from West to East in Northern China.

It was built against grassy banks of hills that climbed in waves to the North and to the West and in the fertile and misty hollows nestled Temples and Palaces.

When travellers first entered Peking through the South gate of the outer or Chinese City, they found it very different from the beauty of the exterior.

All along the broad street that led to the Imperial City there were mat-shed booths and shops huddled three rows deep. Flags announcing their wares streamed out in the breeze and beggars in organised gangs accosted passers-by.