E-Book, Englisch, 404 Seiten
Shiel The Yellow Danger
1. Auflage 2018
ISBN: 978-83-8162-810-5
Verlag: Ktoczyta.pl
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark
E-Book, Englisch, 404 Seiten
ISBN: 978-83-8162-810-5
Verlag: Ktoczyta.pl
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark
Autoren/Hrsg.
Weitere Infos & Material
CHAPTER I. THE NATIONS AND A MAN As all the world knows, the Children’s Ball of the Lady Mayoress takes place yearly on the night of ‘Twelfth Day,’ 6th January. In the year ‘98 the function was even more successful than usual, owing to Sir Henry Burdett’s fine idea that the children should be photographed in support of the Prince of Wales’ Hospital Fund. The little Walter Raleighs, Amy Robsarts, flocked in throngs to the photographer’s studio adjoining the grand salon of the Mansion House; while all that space outside between the Mansion House, the Bank, and the Stock Exchange was a mere mass of waiting, arriving, and departing vehicles. If anything tended to take a little of their exuberance from this and other New Year jubilations, it was a certain cloudiness in the political sky; nothing very terrifying; yet something so real, that nearly every one felt it with disquiet. An Irish member, celebrated for his ‘bulls,’ was heard to say: ‘Take my word for it, there’s going to be a sunset in the East.’ Men strolled into their clubs, and, with or without a yawn, said: ‘Is there going to be a row, then?’ Some one might answer: ‘Not a bit of it; it’ll pass off presently, you’ll see.’ But another would be sure to add: ‘Things are looking black enough, all the same.’ It was just as when, on a clear day at sea, low and jagged edges of disconnected clouds appear inkily on the horizon-edge, and no one is quite certain whether or not they will meet, and whelm the sky, and sink the ship. But the horizon had hardly darkened, when, again, it cleared. The principal cause of fear had been what had looked uncommonly like a conspiracy of the three great Continental Powers to oust England from predominance in the East. First there was the seizure of Kiao-Chau, the bombastic farewells of the German Royal brothers; then immediately, the aggressive attitude of Russia at Port Arthur; then immediately, the rumour that France had seized Hainan, was sending an expedition to Yun-nan, and had ships in Hoi-How harbour. All this had the look of concert; for within the last few years it had got to be more and more recognised by the British public that centuries of neighbourhood had fostered among the Continental nations a certain spirit of kinship, in which the Island-Kingdom was no sharer. In the course of years the Straits of Dover had widened into an ocean. Europe had receded from Britain, and Britain, in her pride, had drawn back from Europe. From the curl of the moustache, to the colour and cut of the evening-dress, to the manner in which women held up their skirts, there was similarity between French and German, between German and Russian and Austrian, and dissimilarity between all these and English. It is true that the Russian hated the German, and the German the Russian and the French; but their hatred was the hatred of brothers, always ready to combine against the outsider. This had been begun to be suspected, then recognised, by the British nation. Alone and friendless must England tread the wine-press of modern history, solitary in her majesty; and if ever an attempt were made to stop her stately progress, she was prepared to find that her foe was the rest of Europe. But very soon after the unrest had arisen, it began to subside. France denied the annexation of Hainan; the semiofficial Norddeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, inspired by Wilhelm, painted Germany as the patron of commerce, with an amiable weakness for theatrical displays; Russia was defeated in the matter of the removal of Mr. MacLeavy Brown, and seemed sufficiently limp after it; while spirits were raised by the probable guarantee of a Chinese loan by the British Government. But meanwhile, at the children’s ball at the Mansion House, events were working in a quite different direction from that of peaceful settlement. Ada Seward was the presiding deity in the nursery of Mrs. Pattison of Fulham. On the night of the 6th, Dr. and Mrs. Pattison had to be present at a ball in the West End, and Ada on that night was busy; for it was necessary for her, first of all, to convey Master Johnnie Pattison, costumed as Francis I., to the Mansion House; and then to hurry homeward again to take Miss Nellie Pattison to a children’s evening with charades in South Kensington. The fact that it was wet when she reached the Mansion House may have had something to do with her troubles. The landing-place was occupied by some other carriages, and dismounting with her charge, an umbrella over him, she cried to the coachman in a hurried manner through the drizzle: ‘Wait till I come back.’ The man afterwards declared that he understood her to say: ‘Go away, and come back.’ At any rate, when Ada again came forth into the crush to look for the Pattison brougham, it was nowhere to be found. And now her lips went up in a pout of vexation. ‘What on earth is any one to do now?’ she said. She was pressed for time, and yet at a loss. The throng of private carriages seemed to have banished all cabs from the region of the Mansion House. She looked and saw none; then into her pocket, and found only sixpence. These two circumstances decided her against the cab. Instead, she ran a few yards, dodging among the carriages, and at the entrance to Poultry, skipped into a moving ‘bus. She sat in a corner for five minutes, with agonised glances out of the door at the slowly receding clocks. Then some one–a man sitting nearly opposite, whom she had not noticed–addressed her: ‘Why, Miss Ada, is that you?’ ‘Oh!’ she cried, ‘Mr. Brabant, is that you? It’s a long time since–how are you?’ ‘Well, I’m pretty fair, Miss Ada, as times go, you know. Hope you are the same.’ ‘Still in the army?’ ‘Oh yes–the Duke of Cambridge’s Own, you know. You living in London now?’ ‘Yes–at Fulham.’ Here conversation flagged; and in that minute’s interval, Brabant, with a sudden half-turn to his left, said: ‘Just allow me to introduce you to my friend here–Miss Seward–Dr. Yen How.’ In the light of the ‘bus lamp Ada Seward saw a very small man, dressed in European clothes, yet a man whom she at once took to be Chinese. With a wrinkled grin, he put out his hand and shook hers. He was a man of remarkable visage. When his hat was off, one saw that he was nearly bald, and that his expanse of brow was majestic. There was something brooding, meditative, in the meaning of his long eyes; and there was a brown, and dark, and specially dirty shade in the yellow tan of his skin. He was not really a Chinaman–or rather, he was that, and more. He was the son of a Japanese father by a Chinese woman. He combined these antagonistic races in one man. In Dr. Yen How was the East. He was of noble feudal descent, and at Tokio, but for his Chinese blood, would have been styled Count. Not that the admixture of blood was very visible in his appearance; in China he passed for a Chinese, and in Japan for a Jap. If ever man was cosmopolitan, that man was Dr. Yen How. No European could be more familiar with the minutiae of Western civilisation. His degree of doctor he had obtained at the University of Heidelberg; for years he had practised as a specialist in the diseases of women and children at San Francisco. He possessed an income of a thousand tael (about £300) from a tea-farm; but his life had been passed in the practice of the grinding industry of a slave. Nothing equalled his assiduity, his minuteness, his attention to detail. He had once written to the Royal Observatory at the Cape pointing out a trifling error in a long logarithmic calculation of the declension of one of the moons of Jupiter, originating from the observatory. In the East he could have climbed at once to the very top of the tree–even in the West, had he chosen. But he chose to lie low, remaining unnoticed, studying, observing, making of himself an epitome of the West, as he was an embodiment of the East. In whatever country he happened to be–and he was never for many years in any one–he was most often to be found in the company of people of the lower classes; and of these he had a very intimate knowledge. So great was his mental breadth, that he was unable to sympathise with either Eastern or Western distinctions of class and rank. He often struck up chance friendships with soldiers and sailors about the capitals of Europe; and these patronised and exhibited him here and there. Yen How knew that he was being patronised, and submitted to it–and smiled meekly. In reality, he cherished a secret and bitter aversion to the white race. He had two defects–his shortness of sight, which caused him to wear spectacles; and his inability, in speaking without effort, to pronounce the word ‘little.’ He still called it ‘lillee.’ On that date of 6th January, when he drove westward with Brabant and Ada Seward, he was perhaps forty years of age, but seemed anything between sixteen and sixty; a hard, omniscient, cosmopolitan little man, tough as oak, dry as chips. Yet in that head were leavening some big thoughts; and his heart was capable of tremendous passions. In reality, could one have known it, as he fared onward through the drizzle in the trundling ‘bus, smiling behind his spectacles, he was the most important personage in London, or perhaps in the world. Dr. Yen How was capable of anything. In him was the Stoic, and the cynic, and the tiger; with a...
