CHAPTER VI.
NINA'S STORY.
I promised my cousin Cicely St. John that I would write a little historyof what took place after we were separated from one another. She isgoing to do the same; and then some day when we go back to England weshall get it all put together and have it published in one big book. Ithas always been my ambition to write a book, and I am quite sure that Ican write. People all have their particular gifts--writing is one ofmine. I was not very good when I was at school, but I never found theessays any trouble at all. And when I was fourteen I got afive-shilling prize in a magazine, and my story was published in theChristmas number. It was illustrated, and the picture in the place ofhonour on the cover. I was so delighted about it and so was father, butthen he always does love everything I do. People say he spoils me, andperhaps he does; all I can say is, it is very nice being spoilt! I amalways happier when I am with father and his friends than with girls ofmy own age.
I never cared much for girls; the little ones talk about their dolls andthe big ones about their clothes. I like hearing father and his brotherofficers talk and tell tales of sport and adventure. Of course I knowfather would have liked me to have been a boy. He must have beendisappointed, though he never said so, because then I should have been asoldier like he is, and gone to the war in South Africa, or perhaps havebeen here in Pekin, just as we are now.
It is a month since we came to the Celestial City, and such a long timesince I stayed with Uncle Paul and Aunt Christine. We went to them whenwe first came out to China. I had never seen them in my life before.
The Pagoda at Pekin.]
Cicely is different from other girls, and I love her dearly. She ismuch younger than I am, two years younger, but she seems almost as old.She is so grave and a little old-fashioned; somehow I feel better when Iam with her and Uncle Paul--they make me want to be good. I oftenwonder where they are, and hope things are not as bad for them as theyare with us, for here in the Celestial City things look very blackindeed. Father wishes he had left me behind in Wei-hai-wei, but I wouldmuch rather be with him, even though the worst comes and he has to killme himself. Uncle Paul thinks one ought not to do this, but then UnclePaul is an angel. When I am with him I feel all the time a longingafter something better. I told Mrs. Ross about him. Mrs. Ross is mygreat friend here. She is young and very pretty, and she met Uncle Paulonce. When I told her what he made me feel like, she said, "Yes, Iknow, dear, he makes you feel as if you didn't care how your frockfitted, but when you get away you think to yourself you may as well lookas nice as you can." Mrs. Ross has only been married a few months. Shecame here just after her honeymoon. She has the most wonderful eyes Ihave ever seen, like the stars in the soft, dark sky. She and I andnearly always together, though she is years older than I am. Still shesays she is very glad to have me for her friend, as there are so fewgirls out here. Captain Ross looks stern and troubled, and verycareworn, but all the men have that expression now, and if only you sawthe faces of the Chinese you would not wonder much; they are sodreadfully cruel and revengeful, and they look at us as if they hate usand would like to murder us all. If they killed people outright it wouldnot be so dreadful; but they torture a person for days first; they dothis to their own people, how much more then to us, if they had us intheir power?
It is the cruel Empress who hates the foreigners, and it is heremissaries who have stirred up the people against us. The Boxers areher tools really, and the ignorant people are told all kinds of thingswhich they believe, that the Europeans take their little children andkill them, and that it is our presence here which causes the lack ofrain, and then they pretend to see most wonderful apparitions, those whoappear always bearing the same message, "Kill! kill!" The other daythey declared that a marvellous vision appeared in the sky; it was aspirit girl, they said, with a lamp in her hand. Father and I went outto see it, but of course we did not see the girl, but only a brilliantlight in the sky, and the Chinese, who are very superstitious, imaginedthe rest. But what caused more stir and alarm than anything else wasthe mysterious Red Hand which suddenly appeared in Pekin. Mrs. Ross andI saw it on a house one day, and then again on another, and as thepeople caught sight of these dreadful Red Hands they gesticulatedwildly, and seemed terribly excited. Mrs. Ross was very frightened, asshe thought it meant that the Boxers were going to kill all the inmatesof the houses on which the Red Hand appeared, but Captain Ross said hehad been told by someone who knew that we, the foreign devils, wereaccused of marking the houses, and wherever this dreadful mark appeareda curse was sure to follow; in seven days one of the inmates would gomad, or in fourteen days they would die. This was just before a mostdreadful event occurred.