My Several Worlds by Pearl S. Buck Read Free Book Online Page A

Country, ʼTis of Thee,” and after it tea was served, a very English repast of buttered buns and jam and hot Indian tea and sweet biscuits, and the children, half a dozen or so of them, ran races and received prizes. My memory of those white children is that they were always wan and pale and ran so listlessly that it was easy to win, and win I did, being brown and strong, until my parents were ashamed because I took so many prizes.
    “On the Queen’s Birthday, too!” my mother whispered to me reproachfully. “You should let an English child win.” But I was not able to do less than my best, even for the Queen.
    That early world seemed as stable as the sun and moon and all its ways were peace. And yet, before I was eight years old, even I could discern that it might come to an end. In Peking the Empress Dowager was having trouble with her heir, her adopted son, the young Emperor Kwang-hsü. Parents of only sons sympathized with her, especially if such sons were wilful, handsome, intelligent, rebellious youths. I heard the young Emperor discussed in my own family and thought of my brother, eleven years older than I, whom I scarcely knew because he had been sent away to college when I was but three. He was sometimes a trouble, too, and I knew that my mother was often sleepless when he did not write and she could not know what was happening to him in faraway America.
    We all knew about the young Emperor, for his life had been dramatic from the first. When the Empress Dowager had entered the Imperial Palace, she soon became the favorite concubine of the Emperor Hsien-feng. Yet so tactful and graceful was she in his house that even his consort, the First Empress, had not been jealous of the beautiful courteous girl. When she bore a son she was raised to the rank of Western Empress, the First Empress being given the title Eastern. The two Empresses continued as friends, twenty-five years in all, and it was a legend in our countryside that these two ladies, the wives of one man, had never quarreled throughout that long time. They were very different, for the Eastern Empress was quiet and retiring, a fine scholar and a real connoisseur of art and music and literature, while the Western Empress, who became the regent after the Emperor’s death, was a good executive, active in many ways, and interested in political life.
    The Emperor had died in a very strange and tragic way during the Arrow War, but long before I was born, so that I knew about it almost as a legend from my Confucian tutor, Mr. Kung, who was supposed only to teach me to read and write Chinese. Since he loved to talk and I loved to listen to the melodious flow of his beautiful Peking language, I knew all about the Arrow War. It was a little war and I doubt that many westerners have even heard of it, yet it was one of those incidents, seemingly slight, upon which turn mighty events. Some time between the years 1850 and 1860 a few enterprising Chinese merchants bought a small ship, named it The Arrow and had it registered under the English flag in Hong Kong. They then plied a trade in the southern waters which was called honest trade but certainly smelled of piracy, and since the Viceroy of one of the southern provinces wanted to rid the coast of the pest of pirates, he seized The Arrow among other ships and pulled down the English flag and put the Chinese crew in jail.
    The British heard of the insult to their flag and were immediately angry, whereupon the Viceroy, terrified because of the previous Opium Wars with Great Britain, sent the prisoners in their chains to the British Consulate, but neglected to apologize for the flag, which doubtless he considered merely a bit of cloth. The Chinese had no sacred associations with flags, and looked upon them as no more than decorative banners. The British Consul flew into a rage, however, and sent the men back, whereupon the harassed Viceroy had them all beheaded for making so much trouble.
    At this Britain declared war