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

again and seized the Chinese Viceroy and sent him to India where he died in exile. France, Russia and America were invited to join with Great Britain in the new war, but only France accepted, using as her excuse the fact that a French missionary had recently been killed in the province of Kwangsi. The foreign troops marched upon Peking, and the Emperor and the Empress and their baby son fled to Jehol, a hundred miles away. There the Emperor suddenly died, and the young Western Empress was left alone with the heir.
    She had no time to mourn. At such a moment it was always possible that discontented men might snatch away the throne. While the dead Emperor’s brother, Prince Kung, still in Peking, persuaded the invaders to a treaty, although not until the beautiful Summer Palace outside the city had been burned down, the resolute Western Empress returned quickly to see that her little son, T’ung-chih, was set in his father’s place. From then on she never ceased to keep her firm hand upon the throne.
    She had need of firmness and she knew it. No one realized better than she that the times were dangerous. The Western powers were pressing hard upon China as still another colonial possession, and the Manchu dynasty was dying. Hsien-feng had been a weak Emperor, and the heir was a baby. She needed to be strong and to find strong men to help her. Prince Kung and the two Empresses were appointed regents, yet Prince Kung was too able a man, and the strong young Western Empress soon felt that it was he who was the real ruler. She deposed him and thereafter she and the gentle Eastern Empress were the regents until T’ung-chih was seventeen. Then she married him to a lovely Manchu girl named Alute.
    In these days, in this Western world in which I now live, the marriage of Elizabeth of England and Philip reproduces in modern terms that old and beautiful love story of T’ung-chih and Alute. A whole nation rejoiced then as now, and the Western Empress, who had become the Empress Dowager, planned to yield her regency to her son. She was eager for a grandson that the throne might be secure. Three years passed, however, without a child, and then suddenly the young Emperor was smitten with smallpox and died. The throne was empty again.
    Again there was no time for sorrow. Within the palace, the capital and the nation, there was a strong party that wished to displace the two Manchu Empresses and set a Chinese upon the throne. Once more the Empress Dowager had to act quickly. She sent for her great general, Li Hung-chang, then in the city of Tientsin eighty miles away, and ordered him to bring to The Forbidden City four thousand of his best men on horseback, with artillery. In thirty-six hours, exactly at the planned moment, they arrived without any one outside knowing yet that the Emperor was dead. The men had wooden bits in their mouths to prevent their talking and the metal strappings of the horses were wrapped in cloth for silence.
    As soon as she knew she had this military support, the Empress Dowager stole out of the palace to the house of her sister and lifted from his bed her eldest nephew, a little boy of three, and took him, asleep, back to the palace with her. When dawn came she proclaimed him her heir, the throne had an Emperor again, and the little boy became the Emperor Kwang-hsü.
    All this was only story to me, for it had happened before I was born. What I knew actually was the trouble that Kwang-hsü made now when he had become the Emperor. I suppose the Empress Dowager was already dreaming of something like retirement and enjoying herself, for she had many interests and amusements. She liked to paint, and had she been free to devote herself to art she could have become notable. She was a fine calligrapher, she loved flowers, she had a magnetic and enchanting way with birds and animals, so that she could coax wild birds to come to her at call, and cicadas to sit upon her wrist while she stroked them with her forefinger. She