This done, the night fell, and the Empress inquired of Li Lien-ying whether Jung Lu had yet arrived. If so, she would summon him to make report.
“I go, Majesty,” the eunuch said, and soon returned to say that Jung Lu had reached the imperial city a short time ago and even now approached.
In her private throne room she waited, and soon the curtains were put aside by Li Lien-ying and Jung Lu was there. He leaned heavily upon two tall young eunuchs, and between these youths he looked so aged, so infirm, that the joy of her return drained from the heart of the Empress.
“Enter, kinsman,” she said, and to the eunuchs she said, “Lead him here to this cushioned seat. He is not to make obeisance or tire himself. And you, Li Lien-ying, bring a bowl of strong hot broth and a jug of hot wine and some steamed bread. My kinsman is too weary in my service.”
The eunuchs ran to obey and when they were alone the Empress rose and went to Jung Lu and stood at his side, and seeing no one near she felt his brow and smoothed his hands. Oh, how thin his hands were, and his cheeks how fleshless, and the skin hot to her touch!
“I pray you,” he whispered, “I pray you stand away from me. The curtains have eyes, the walls have ears.”
“Shall I never be able to minister to you?” she pleaded.
But he was so uneasy, that she saw, and so troubled lest her honor be soiled, that she sighed and went back to her throne and sat there. Then he drew from his bosom a scroll and reading from it slowly and with difficulty, for his eyes seemed dim, he gave report that after she had gone from the train, he had supervised the ladies of the Court as they came down from the train. First of these were the Consort and the Princess Imperial, and these he had escorted to two yellow-curtained sedans. Next had come the four imperial concubines and these he had led to four sedans, whose curtains were green and only bordered with yellow satin. These were borne away by their bearers to the imperial city. After them the ladies of the Court descended and he led them to the official carts, each cart for two ladies.
“As usual,” he said, looking up from the scroll, “the elder ladies made much complaint and talk, each had to tell the other of the fearful journey on the train, the filth of smoke, and how they vomited. But talk was ended at last and I myself supervised the removal of the boxes of bullion, each marked with the name of the province and the city that had sent tribute—no small task, Majesty, since you will remember that before we entrained the baggage alone filled three thousand carts. Yet this is all nothing. I fear the anger of the people when they learn the cost of this long journey home. The Imperial Highway, Majesty, and the splendid resthouses, every ten miles, will make many taxes—”
Here the Empress stopped him with tender kindness. “You are too weary. Rest yourself now. We are home again.”
“Alas, a thousand burdens remain to be carried,” he murmured.
“But not by you,” she declared. “Others must bear them.”
She scanned his aging handsome face with careful love and he submitted to her searching eyes. They were closer now, these two, than marriage itself could have made them. Flesh denied, their minds had interwoven in every thought, their hearts had mingled in every mood, and knowledge was complete. She put out her right hand and stroked his right hand gently, and felt it cool beneath her palm. In such communion a moment passed. Then, speechless, they interchanged a long deep look and he left her.
How could she know that it was the last time that she was to touch his living flesh? He fell ill in that same night of his old illness. Again he lay upon his bed unconscious for many days. The Empress sent her Court physicians to him and when none could heal she sent a physician, partly soothsayer, whom her brother Kuei Hsiang proclaimed magic in his cures. But fate forbade, and Jung Lu’s life was come to its end. He died, still silent and unknowing, before dawn in the third moon month, the fourth sun month, of the next new year. The Empress decreed full mourning for the Court and she herself wore no bright colors for a year, and she put aside her jewels for that time.
But none could light the inner darkness of her heart. Had she been only woman, she could have stood beside his coffin and herself laid the purple satin coverlet upon his shoulders. She could have sat the night out in his dead presence and worn white mourning to signify her loss. She could have wept and wailed aloud to ease her heart. But she was imperial woman, and she could not leave her palace nor weep aloud nor show herself moved beyond the point of lofty grief for a dead loyal servant of the Throne. Her one comfort was to be alone, and she coveted such hours as she could steal from her heavy daily tasks of new government of a troubled land.
One night when she had bade her women draw the curtains so that she could weep unseen, she lay sleepless, the silent tears draining from her heart, until the watchman beat his midnight drum. And still she lay sleepless, and was so desperate with the weary weight of sorrow that she fell into a dream, a trance, and felt her soul taken from her body. She dreamed she saw Jung Lu somewhere, but young again, except that he spoke with old wisdom. She dreamed he took her in his arms and held her and for so long that her sorrow lifted and she felt light and free, her burden gone. And then she seemed to hear him speak.
“I am with you always.” This was his voice. “And when you are most gentle and most wise, I am with you, my mind in yours, my being in your being.”
Memory—memory! Yet was it not more than memory? The warmth of certainty welled through her soul and into her body. When she awoke, the weariness was gone from limbs and flesh. She who had been loved could never be alone. This was the meaning of the dream.
There came such a change in the life of the Empress thereafter that none could comprehend it, and only she knew and she kept it secret. She was possessed by ancient wisdom and she made defeat a victory. She fought no more but yielded, with grace, her lively mind. Thus, to the amazement of all, she even encouraged young Chinese men to go abroad and learn the skills and knowledge of the West.
“Those who are between fifteen and twenty-five,” she decreed, “those who have good intelligence and good health may cross the Four Seas, if they wish. We will defray the cost.”
And she summoned to her the minister Yuan Shih-k’ai and the rebel Chinese scholar Chang Chih-tung and after many days of hearing them face to face, she decreed that the old imperial examinations belonged to the past, and she sent out an edict saying that two thousand five hundred years ago, in the time of that good and enlightened ruler the Regent Duke Chou, doubtless universities were not unlike the present seats of learning in the West, and she proved by history books that the eight-legged classical essay was not sent down from ancient times, but was a device of Ming scholars only some five hundred years ago, and therefore that present youth should go not only to Japan, but also to Europe and America, since under Heaven and around the Four Seas, all peoples were one family.
This she did one year after the death of Jung Lu, in body.
Before another year had passed, she decreed against the use of opium, not suddenly, for she was tenderly mindful of the aged men and women who were used to a pipe or two at night to waft them to sleep. No, she said, within ten years, year by year, the importation and the manufacture of opium must be stopped.
And in that same year, while she meditated much, she saw that the foreigners, whom she would not call enemies and yet could not call friends, for they were still strange to her, would never agree to yield those evil special rights and privileges which gave to all white men, good and evil alike, the same protection, unless she decreed that tortures must end for any crimes committed, and she decreed that law and not force and agony must judge the crime. Dismemberment and slicing, she commanded, must be no more, and branding and flogging and the punishment of innocent relatives must cease. Once, long ago, Jung Lu had so adjured her, but she had not heeded him then. Now she remembered.
And who, she asked herself, would take her place when she died? Never would she leave the realm to the weak young Emperor who was her eternal prisoner. No, strong you
ng hands must be raised up, but where was the child? And who, indeed, was strong enough for the centuries ahead? She felt the magic of the future. Mankind, she told her princes, might yet increase to the stature of the gods. And she grew curious about the West whence new power streamed and she said often that, were she younger, she might herself travel westward and see the sights beyond.
“Alas,” she said with plaintive grace, “I am very old. My end is near.”
When she spoke thus her ladies protested much, saying that she was more beautiful than any woman, her skin still fresh and fair, her long eyes black and bright, her lips unwithered. All this was true, she granted with a modesty enlivened by the ghost of her old gaiety, and yet she, even she, could not live forever.
“Ten thousand thousand years, Old Buddha,” they replied. “Ten thousand thousand years!”
But she was not deceived and her next decree was to send the best of her ministers, in imperial commission, led by the Duke Tsai Tse, to the countries of the West and this was her instruction.
“Go to all countries and see which are the most fortunate, the most prosperous, the people most happy and at peace and content with their rulers. Sift them down to the four best, and stay a year in each. In each study how their rulers govern and what is meant by constitutions and people’s rule, and bring back to Us a full understanding of these matters.”
She had her enemies and they were among her own subjects. They said that she was bowing down before the foreign conquerors, that she had lost her pride, that the nation was humiliated by her humility.
“We Chinese,” a certain Chinese scholar thus memorialized, “are despised like rustics when we are servile to foreigners, but what shall we say when our Empress Herself demeans Herself by Her too-open friendship with the wives of foreign ministers. Her smiles, the waves of Her kerchief when She sees a foreign woman on the street while riding in Her palanquin to worship at the Altar of Heaven? We hear there is even foreign food in the palaces and dining halls furnished with foreign chairs and tables. And this goes on while the Legations rage against us at the Foreign Office!”
And yet another wrote, “At Her age, the Empress cannot change Her habits or Her hatreds. Doubtless the foreigners themselves are asking what deep plans She has against them.”
And still another said, “Doubtless in this strange new mood the Empress seeks only peace for Her old age.”
To all her judges the Empress smiled.
“I know what I do,” she said from her heart possessed. “I know well what I do, and nothing now is strange to me. I heard of such things long ago but only now I heed them. I was told—but only now I believe.”
Those who listened to her did not understand but this, too, she knew, and she did not change.
When the days of mourning for Jung Lu were finished, the Empress sent out edicts of invitation to all foreign envoys and their ladies and their children for a great feast on the first day of the New Year. The envoys themselves were to feast in the great banquet hall, the ladies in her own private banquet hall, and the imperial concubines were to receive the children in their apartments, with such serving women and eunuchs as were needed to care for them.
Never before had the Empress prepared so vast a feast. The Emperor was to remain with the envoys and she would appear after the feast. The dishes were to be both Eastern and Western. Three hundred cooks were employed, the Court musicians were instructed and the Imperial Players prepared a program of four plays, each three hours long.
The Empress herself planned an effort. She commanded the daughter of her plenipotentiary to Europe, a lady both young and beautiful, whose attendance at the Court was compulsory for two years, to teach her to give greetings in English to the foreign envoys. France, the Empress declared after studying maps, was too small a country for her to heed its language. America was too new and uncouth. But England, she declared, was ruled also by a great woman, for whom she had always a fondness. Therefore she chose the language of the English Queen. Indeed, she had commanded a portrait of Queen Victoria to be hung in her own chamber and she studied it and declared that upon the face she discerned the same lines of longevity that were carved upon her own.
How astonished, then, were the foreign envoys when the Empress welcomed them in the English tongue! She was borne into the great hall in her imperial sedan, carried by twelve bearers in yellow uniform, and the Emperor stepped forward to assist her. She came down, her jeweled hand upon his forearm, and, glittering from head to foot in a robe of gold, embroidered with bright blue dragons and wearing her great collar of matched pearls, her headdress set with flowers of rubies and jade, she inclined her head to right and to left as she walked to the Throne with her old youthful grace. What was she saying? One envoy after another, bowing before her but never to the floor, heard words which his ear could not at first recognize, but which repeated again and again became clear.
“Hao ti diu—” she said, “Ha-p’i niu yerh! Te’-rin-ko t’i!”
They comprehended, one after the other, that the Empress asked how they did, she wished them happy new year, she invited them to drink tea. These foreign envoys, tall stiff men in stiff garments, were now so moved that they burst into applause, which at first surprised and even bewildered the Empress, who had not in her life before seen men clapping their hands palm to palm. But gazing at the angular foreign faces, she saw only approval of her effort and she laughed gently, much pleased, and when she had sat on her throne, she remarked left and right to her ministers and princes, in her own tongue:
“You see how easy it is to be friends even with barbarians! It requires only a little effort on the part of civilized persons.”
In such mood the feast day ended, and when gifts had been bestowed upon the foreign ladies and upon their children and money wrapped in red paper distributed to their servants, the Empress retired to her own chamber. As was her habit now, she reviewed her days and years, thinking over her long life and planning for the future of her people. She had done well this day, she mused. She had laid foundations of accord and friendship with foreign powers who could be friends or enemies. And she thought of Victoria, the Western Queen, and she wished that they two could meet and talk together of how to shape their two worlds to one.
All under Heaven are one family, she would tell Victoria—
Alas, before such dreams could grow the news was cried across the seas that Victoria was dead. The Empress was aghast.
“How did my sister die?” she cried.
When she heard that Victoria, though beloved of her own people, had died of old age as any common mortal does, the knowledge struck like a sword into the imperial heart.
“Die we all must,” the Empress murmured, and looked from one face to another.
But they saw that she had not until now felt death near her. And to herself she murmured that she must find an heir, a true heir, for if Victoria was dead, then anyone could die, though she herself was strong, and still able to live for another brace of years, long enough to see a child grow to a youth, or if Heaven’s will was good, to manhood itself, before she descended into her imperial coffin. It was indeed her duty once again to find an heir, a child, for whom she must rule while she trained him to be Emperor. But this time she would let the Heir be taught what the world was. She would summon teachers from the West to teach him. Yes, she would let him have iron trains and ships of war and guns and cannon. He must learn to make Western war and then in his time, when she was gone, even as Victoria was gone, he in his age would do what she had failed to do. He would drive the enemy into the sea.
What child, what child? The question was a torment until suddenly, an hour later, she remembered that a child had been born in Jung Lu’s palace. His daughter, wed to Prince Ch’un, had given birth to a son but a few days before. This child, this boy, was Jung Lu’s grandson. She bent her head to hide her smile from Heaven. This would lift her beloved even to the Dragon Throne! It was her will and Heaven must approve.
Yet she would
not announce her choice too soon. She would placate the gods and preserve the child’s life by keeping her plan secret until the Emperor lay upon his deathbed—not far off, surely, for pains and ills consumed his flesh. He had not been well enough to offer the autumn sacrifices in person, complaining that the many times he must kneel, the genuflections he must make, were far beyond his strength, and she had made them in his place. It was an ancient law that the Heir must not be proclaimed until the Emperor’s face was turned toward the Yellow Springs and death near. Or, if not near enough, her eunuch could most delicately poison—
She heard a sound of rushing wind and lifted up her head.
“Hark,” she cried to her ladies, standing at their usual distance from her throne. “Does the wind bring rain?”
For in the last two months the country had been cursed by a dry cold that reached the very roots of trees and winter wheat. No snow fell, and in the last seventeen days a most unseasonable warmth had crept up from the south. Even the peonies, bewildered, had sent up shoots. The people had flocked to temples to reproach the gods, and seven days ago she had commanded the Buddhist priests to take the gods out daily in procession and compel those gods to see for themselves what damage was abroad.
“What wind is this,” she now inquired, “and from what corner of the earth does it arise?”
Her ladies asked the eunuchs who ran into the courts and held up their hands and turned their faces this way and that and they came back crying that the wind was from the eastern seas and that it was full of moisture. Even as they spoke all heard a clap of thunder, unseasonable and unexpected, yet clear enough. A roar came from the streets, the people running out from every house to look at the skies.
The wind rose higher. It shrieked through the palaces, and great gusts tore at the doors and windows. But this wind was clean, a clean wind from the sea, dustless and pure. The Empress rose from her throne and she walked into the court beyond and she too lifted up her face toward the swirling sky and she smelled in the wind. At this same instant the skies opened and rain came down, a cool strong rain, strange in winter but how welcome!