Читать книгу A Woman In China - Mary Gaunt - Страница 4

When I was a child my father, warden of the goldfield where he was stationed, was also, by virtue of his office, protector of the Chinese; and Heaven knows the unfortunate Chinese, industrious, hardworking men of the coolie class from Amoy and Canton, badly needed a protector. Many a time have I seen an unfortunate Chinaman, cut and bleeding, come to my father's house to claim his protection. The larrikins, as we used to call the roughs, had stoned him for no reason that they or anyone else could understand but only because he was a Chinaman. Now I understand what puzzled and shocked me then, and what shocks me still. It is that racial animosity that is so difficult to explain to the home-staying Englishman: that animosity which is aroused because, subconsciously, the white man knows that the yellow man, in lowering the standard of living, will literally take away much of the bread and all chance of butter from the community in which he has a foothold.

Here I was going to see the land whence had come that subservient, patient, hard-working coolie of my childhood. And the wonder of that rush across the old world, the twelve days' railway journey that takes us from the most modern of civilisations to the most ancient—it grew upon me as we crossed the great northern plain—historic ground whereon the great battles of Europe have been fought. The people in the train were dining, supping, playing cards, sleeping, and the cities we passed in the darkness seemed mere clusters of dancing lights, such lights as I have seen after rain on many a hot and steamy night in West Africa. When morning dawned we had passed Berlin and were slowly leaving the packed civilisation behind us. A grey low sky was overhead and there were clumps of fir-trees. Dirty snow was in the hollows, and there were long, straight roads drawn with a ruler as they are in Australia, with little bare trees at regular intervals on either side, and then again dark fir woods and rain everywhere. Soon we had passed the frontier and were in Russia, and I felt I could not rush through without one glimpse of it, so I stayed one little week in Moscow, and I shall always be glad I did, though there, for the first time in my life, I was in a country where my nationality did not count, and it was not a pleasant feeling. But Moscow is the city of a dream. I arrived there at night to streets all covered with a mantle of snow. The many lights shone clear in the keen, cold, windless air and the sleighs drawn by sturdy little horses glided over the white snow as silently as if they had been moving shadows. And when morning came it was snowing. Softly, softly, fell the flakes and the city was a city of silence, white everywhere, and when the sun came out dazzling, sparkling white, only the cupolas of the many churches—Moscow in the heart of holy Russia has sixteen hundred—were golden or bright blue, or dark vivid green, for the snow that hid the brilliant roofs could not lie on their rounded surfaces. Above the cupolas are crosses, and from the crosses hang long chains, and ever and again on the silence rang out the musical clang of some deep-toned bell. But it is the silence that impresses. The bells were but incidental, trifling—the silence is eternal. The snow fell with a hush, there was no rush nor roar nor crash of storm, but every snowflake counted. The little sledges were half buried in it, the drivers in their fur-edged caps and blue coats girt in at the waist with a red sash or silver embroidered band, shook it out of their eyes and out of their great beards and brushed it from their shoulders; in every crevice of the old grey walls of the Kremlin it piled up.

A dream city! A city of silence!! The snow reigned, deadening all sound save the insistent bells that rang to the glory of God, and the cawing of the black and grey crows that were everywhere. What have scavenger crows to do in this beautiful city? They were there flying round the churches, darting down the spotless roads, gathering in little conclaves, raising their raucous voices as if in protest against the all-embracing silence. They were the discordant note that emphasised the harmony.

Cold, was there ever such cold? The air crackled with it. It cut like a knife, for all its clear purity. At every street corner I passed as I drove to the railway station were little piles of fir logs, and little braziers were burning, glowing red spots of brightness where the miserable for a moment might warm their hands.

They say one should leave Moscow in summer to cross the Siberian plain, because then there are the flowers—such flowers—and the green trees, and the sunshine, and you may see the road—the long and sorrowful road—along which for years the exiles have passed. I have heard many complaints about the weariness of the journey in winter. There is nothing to be seen say the grumblers. For these luckless ones I have the sincerest pity. They have missed something goodly. I suppose for most of us life, as it unfolds itself, is a disappointing thing, full of bitterness and—worse still—of unattainable desires, but of one thing I shall always be glad, that I crossed the Siberian plain in the heart of winter, and saw it beneath its mantle of spotless snow. Possibly I may never see it in summer, but its winter beauty is something to be remembered to my dying day.

And yet it is a land of exile. Even in childhood I had read of the sufferings of those who have been sent there; and my conception of the land and the reality before my eyes as I rushed through it in an express train were always starting up in comparison with each other. A land of exile, and yet from the plains of Eastern Russia in the west to the frozen hills round Kharbin in the east it is a lovely land. It is a plain, of course—a plain thousands of miles in extent, and the vastness and the beauty of the snow-clad solitudes cry aloud in praise to the God Who made them. Overhead, far, far away, is the great arch of the deep blue sky, clear, bright, enticing, delightful, with no threat in its translucent depths such as one knows is latent in tropical lands, and below is the snow-clad plain, stretching far as the eye can see, bathed in the brilliant sunshine. From the desert and the mountains in the south it stretches away north to the frozen sea; and from the busy towns of the Baltic in the west, in close touch with modern civilisation, to the busy toiling millions of the East with their own civilisation that comes from a dateless antiquity; and in all those thousands of miles it changes its character but little.

But first there were the Urals. I had looked upon them as mountains all my life; and I saw one evening only some very minor hills, deep in snow, with steep sides covered with a forest of fir and leafless larch, dark against the white background; next morning all trace of them was gone, and we were in Asia. On the station platforms were men and women, Cossacks of the west, Buriats of the centre, Tartars of the east, Christians, Buddhists, Mohammedans; there was little difference in outward appearance, muffled as they were against the cold which was often thirty degrees below freezing-point. The men were in long-skirted coats, and the women in short petticoats and high boots, so that it would have been difficult to tell one from the other save that on their heads the men wore fur caps, ragged, dirty, but still fur, while the women muffled themselves in shawls still dirtier. Though they looked as if they had not given water a thought from the day they were born, I, the daughter of a subtropical land, could forgive them. Who could face water in such a biting atmosphere? I sympathised but I did not desire to go too close when we passengers bundled out for exercise on the station platforms, at least most of us did. Some preferred bridge.

“My God! my God!” said an old military man with unnecessary fervour. “What are the idiots getting out for. I go one no trump, partner. Where is my partner? The donkey 'll be slipping and hurting himself on those slippery steps next and then our four 'll be spoilt,” and he looked round for sympathy.

Someone murmured something about seeing the country, but he shrivelled him with his scorn.

“Seeing the country! This is the eleventh time I've been across and I never even look out if I can help myself. Know better. Oh, here you are, partner,” slightly mollified. “I've gone one no trump, and there are two hearts against you.”

It was a curious thing to me that most of the passengers in that luxuriously equipped train, with every comfort for the asking save fresh air, grumbled so continuously. It seems to be the accepted thing that the traveller who travels luxuriously should grumble. Our old soldier considered himself a much-injured individual when the attendants did not know by instinct when he required lemon and tea and when whisky-and-soda; and the breaking up of a game of auction bridge because the tables were wanted for dinner reduced him to blackest despair. The hordes which through the ages have swept, conquering, westwards probably never complained, their lives were too strenuous, either they fought and died and were at peace, or they fought and conquered, and small discomforts were swallowed up in the joy of victory. It is left to these modern travellers flying eastward at a rate that would have made the old-time nomads think of witchcraft and sorcery to make a fuss about trifles, to complain of the discomforts and hardships of the long journey across the old world.

I knew the country. In the days when I was a little girl studying my map with diligence I should have counted it a joy unspeakable if I had thought that ever I should be crossing Siberia; crossing the great rivers, the Obi, the Yenesei and the Angara that were then as far away and distant to me as the river that Christian crossed to gain high Heaven; that I should watch the sledges travelling in the sunlight along their hard, frozen surfaces, I to whom a small piece of ice on a saucer of water, which by luck we might get if there happened to be an exceptionally cold night in the winter, was a wonder and a delight. I suppose my joy would have' been tempered could I have known how many years must pass over my head before this wonderful thing would happen, for in those days five-and-twenty seemed extraordinarily old, and I was very sure that at thirty life would not be worth living. And I have passed that terrible age limit and have missed most things I have set my heart upon, but still there are moments when life is well worth living. Strange and bitter is the teaching of the years—bitter but kindly, too.

We passed Irkutsk where East and West meet, a great city with church spires and cupolas and buildings overlooking the broad and frozen Angara. We raced along by leafless woods, by barren stretches of spotless snow, and sometimes the swiftly running river was piling up the ice in great slabs and blocks and girding and fretting at its chains, and sometimes it was flowing free for a few miles, the only flowing river in all the long, long journey from the old Russian capital. The water was black, and dark, and cold, looking far colder than the ice. The duck rose, leaving long wakes on the water; then there was a little steam, and then a greater steam in the clear sunlight, but by the time we reached Lake Baikal, the Fortunate Sea, the Holy Sea, the frost had gripped the water again, the lake was a sheet of white, and the afternoon sun shone on hills snow-clad on the eastern side. The hills, hardly worth mentioning when one thinks of the great plain across which we had come, are down to the very ice edge. The great lake, the eighth in the world, is but a cleft in them, and the railway track runs on a ledge cut out of the steep hill-side overhanging its waters, waters that were now smooth and white and hard as marble. Here and there little jetties run out; here and there were boats, useless now, close against them; here and there were piles of wood that would be burned up before the thaw. It had been Siberia for days but Baikal struck the true Siberian note.

Here there were convicts too. Some alterations or repairs were being carried out on the line, and drab-coloured convicts were working at them, guarded by soldiers with fixed bayonets. Siberia! Siberia of the story-teller! On every little point of vantage stood a soldier with high fur cap, looking out over the men working below him, and they, splitting wood, digging holes in the iron-bound ground, paused in their labours and lifted their faces to the passing train. Did it speak to them of home and culture and love and happiness and freedom, or were they merely the brutal criminal justly punished, and the peasant, poor and simple, here because the Government want workers, and that he cannot pay his taxes is excuse enough.

The sun was brilliant but it was cold, bitter cold, such cold as I had never dreamed of. Men's breath came like solid steam, and the hair on their faces was fringed with white hoar-frost. The earth was so hard frozen that they were building great fires to thaw it before working; and as the darkness fell the flames leapt yellow and red and blue, glowing spots of colour against the whiteness and the night. And with the night came the full moon high in the clear sky, a disc of dazzling silver. The Providence that has guided my wandering footsteps surely gives sometimes with a lavish hand; that which I have sought earnestly with many tears is not for me, but this still moonlight winter's night in Siberia was mine, and all the world that we were rushing past was fairyland. There was in it nothing sordid, nothing unclean, nothing sorrowful.

And it was still fairyland when I awoke in the morning to a brilliant sun shining upon a forest of dainty, delicate, graceful birches with every branch, every little twig, clothed in sparkling white, for the sunbeams were caught and reflected a million times on the frost flowers, and the whole forest was a thing of beauty and wonder that to see once is to remember for a lifetime. It is worth living to have seen it. I have seen great rivers and mountains and been awed by mighty forests, I have watched the thundering surf and listened to the roar of the tornado; but this was something quite different. Awe was not the predominant feeling, but joy—joy that such beauty exists, that I was alive to look upon it. Behind us lay a long, long trail. We in the rushing train represented the onward march of a mighty civilisation, but all around us in the brilliant winter sunshine lay the limitless plains of Siberia, and the birch forest, and the snow, and the frost, and the beauty that is not made with hands, that defies civilisation, that was before civilisation, and we were moved to raise our eyes with the psalmist and cry aloud: “How wonderful are thy works, O Lord!”

But I did not appreciate the beauty of the winter or the moonlight when they roused me at three o'clock in the morning at Manchuria because my luggage had to be examined at the Chinese Customs. The scanty lights on the station, the silver moon in the heaven above lit up the platform as we passengers of the train de luxe made our way to the baggage-room along a path between heaped-up frozen snow and ice, and the difference in temperature between that station platform and the carriages from which the hot air gushed was perhaps one hundred degrees. The reek from those carriages went up to heaven, but the sudden change was cruel.

Our pessimistic old soldier wailed loudest. “My God! My God! this is unbearable!” and I wondered why, because on his way through the world he must have encountered worse things than bitter cold that has only to be borne for a few minutes. Probably that was the reason. If he had had something really hard to bear he would very likely have said nothing about it. The baggage-room was confusion, worse confounded, and nobody seemed to know what was being looked for, opium, or arms or both. This place is the Port Said of the East, and people from all corners of the earth were gathered round their belongings. There were groups of Chinese with women and children and weird bundles; there were the very latest dressing-cases and despatch-boxes from Bond Street and Piccadilly; there was a babel of tongues, Russian and French and German and English and the unknown tongues of Asia. China, China at last, and I was within two days of my destination.

And when the day dawned we had left beautiful Siberia behind, and instead there were flat lands, deserts of stones and dry earth, with but little snow to veil the apparent barrenness, and hills first with scanty trees, but growing more and more barren as we approached Kharbin. It looked desolate, cold, uninviting. The land may be rich, it is I am told, but when I passed there was no outward sign of that richness; the covering of beautiful white was gone, there was only a patch or two of snow here and there in the hollows, and the brilliant sunshine was like gleams of light on steel. At Kharbin they examined our baggage again—why I know not—and again it was chaos, chaos in the bitter cold with the mercury many degrees below freezing-point and screeching demons with a Mongolian type of countenance, muffled in furs and rags that seemed the cast-off clothes of all the nations of the earth, hauled the luggage about, pored over tickets and made entries in books with all the elaborate effort of the unlearned, and finally marked the unhappy boxes with great sprawling figures in tar or some such compound.