"Good God!" cries he. "Apples?" He stared at me. "In play, you mean?"
"I believe it was in a spirit of mischief, my lord. They were quite small apples."
"Small apples? I'll be damned," he muttered, and thought hard for a moment, frowning at the scenery and then at me.
"Did you obtain any inkling of the … purpose for which you were … kept at the house of this … Yi Concubine, did you say?"
"I gathered she had never seen a barbarian before," says I gravely. "She seemed to regard me as a curiosity."
"Damned impertinence!" says he, but I noticed his pate had gone slightly pink. "What sort of a woman is she? In her person, I mean."
I reflected judiciously. "Ravishing is the word that best de-scribes her, my lord. Quite ravishing … in the oriental style."
"Oh! I see." He digested this. "And her character? Strong? Retiring? Amiable, perhaps? I take it she's an educated woman?"
"Not amiable, precisely." I shook my head. "Strong-willed, certainly. Exacting, purposeful … immensely energetic. I should say she was extremely well-educated, my lord."
At this point he noticed that his young secretary, who'd been recording my report, was agog with hopeful interest, so he concluded rather abruptly by saying I'd done extremely well, congratulated me on my safe return, told the secretary to make a fair copy for me to sign, and dismissed me, shooting me a last perplexed look; that business about being pelted with apples by harem beauties had unsettled him, I could see. He wasn't alone, either; outside I found the young pen-pusher blinking at me enviously, obviously wishing that he, too, could be regarded as a curiosity by ravishing orientals.
"I say!" says he. "The Summer Palace must be a jolly place!"
"Damned jolly," says I. "Did you get it all down?"
"I say! Oh, yes, every word! It was frightfully interesting, you know—not at all like most reports." He peered at his notes through steamy spectacles. "Ah, yes … what's a concubine?"
"Harlequin's lady-love in the pantomime … no, don't put that down, you young juggins! A concubine is a Chinese noble-man's personal whore."
"I say! How d'you spell it?"
I told him—and what he told others in his turn I don't care to think, but just to show you how rumours run and reputations are made, Desborough of the Artillery swore to me later that he'd heard one of his gunners telling his chum that there was no daht abaht it, Flash 'Arry 'ad got isself took prisoner a-purpose, see, 'cos 'e was beloved by this yeller bint, the Empress o' China, an' 'im an' Sam Collinson, wot was jealous, 'ad fought a bloody duel over 'er, an' Flash 'Arry touched the barstid in five places, strite up, an' then cut 'is bleedin' 'ead orf, see?
Strange how close fiction can come to truth, ain't it? The oddest thing of all was that the part of the yarn which did gain some acceptance, among quite sensible people, too, was that I'd deliberately allowed myself to be captured, as a clever way of getting into the enemy's head-quarters. Folk'll believe anything, especially if they've invented it themselves. Anyway, you can see why I don't count my report to Elgin entirely wasted.
Later that day he and Grant and our senior commanders went to the Ewen-ming-ewen, officially to view the splendours, but in fact to make sure that the Frogs didn't pick it clean before our army got its share. I was on hand, and absolutely heard Montauban protesting volubly that no looting whatever had taken place—this with his rascals still streaming out of the Hall of Audience with everything but the floor-tiles, and the piles of spoil filling the great courtyard. Some of our early-comers, I noticed, were already among the plunderers; a party of Sikh cavalry were offering magnificent bolts of coloured silk to the later arrivals at two dollars a time, and the Frogs, who'd had the best of it, were doing a fine trade in jade tablets, watches, jewelled masks, furs, ornamental weapons, enamels, toys, and robes, and finding no lack of takers. The yard was like a tremendous gaudy market, for loot from the other buildings near at hand was being brought in as well, and fellows were bargaining away what they couldn't carry.
Elgin watched in bleak disgust, with Montauban hopping at his elbow crying, ah, but this is merely to make the inventory, is it not, so that all can be divided fairly among the allies; milor' might rest assured that every item would be accounted for, so that all should benefit.
"What a splendid place it has been," says Elgin sadly, standing in the entrance to the great golden hall. "And now, desolation." The floor was covered with broken shards of glass and jade and porcelain, broken cabinetwork and torn hangings, and gangs of Frogs and Chink villagers and our own early birds were swarming everywhere after the last pickings, the vast hollow chamber echoing to their yells of triumph and disappointment, the smashing of furniture and pottery that was too big to carry, the oaths and laughter and quarrelling. "No credit to our vaunted civilisation, gentlemen," says Elgin, and everyone looked sober, except Montauban, who sulked.
"Can't stop it," says Hope Grant, casting a bright professional eye and tugging his whisker. "Soldier's privilege. Time immemorial." He glanced at me. "Remember Lucknow?"
"It is the waste that offends!" cries Elgin. "I daresay this place contained a million yesterday; how much would it fetch now? Fifty thousand? Bah! Plunder is one thing, but sheer wanton destruction …" He shook his head angrily.
Wolseley, consulting a notebook, said that of course this was only a fraction of the Summer Palace, which was of vast extent, no doubt packed with stuff … Flashman probably knew it best of anybody, at which they all fell silent and looked to me; you never in your life saw so many beady eyes. Just for a second I had a vision of that pretty pavilion by the lake, and Yehonala's white hand placing a delicate ivory fairy-piece on the game board just so, the silver nails reflected in the polished jade, her ladies' silken sleeves rustling—and felt a sudden anger and revulsion—but what was the odds, when they'd find it anyway? And why not, after all? We'd won. The irony was that if the Manchoos had kept their word on the treaty to begin with, or even compromised a fortnight ago, we'd never have been near the place.
I said there were hundreds of buildings, palaces and temples and so forth, spread over many miles of parkland; that the Ewen, where we stood, was probably the biggest, since it contained the Imperial apartments, but that the rest was pretty fine, too.
"Good spot o' boodle, though, what?" says someone; I said I supposed there'd be enough to go round.
At this there was great debate about the need for prize agents who would select prime pieces for each army, the rest going for individual spoil. Grant said he would have all the British share sold and paid out to the troops as prize money on the spot, rather than wait for government adjudication which (although he didn't say so) would have meant cut shares at the end of the day. Some ass said that was unauthorised; Grant said he didn't give a dam, he was doing it anyway.
"Who took Pekin?" says he. "Commons committee? No such thing. Our fellows. Very good. Wrath o' the gods? I'll stand bail." He did it, too.
Wolseley, who was a dab artist, was in a fidget to be exercising his pencil, so after the seniors had departed I strolled with him among the buildings, and we watched the looters gutting the place—as Elgin had observed, and I knew from India, they destroyed fifty times what they took away. "See how they enjoy destruction!" says Joe, sketching for dear life while I smoked and studied. "It's a marvellous thing, the effect of plunder on soldiers. I suppose they feel real power for once in their wretched lives—not the power to kill, they know all about that, it's just brute force against a body—but the greater power to destroy a creation of the mind, something they know they could never make. Look at that! Just look at 'em, will you?"
He was pointing up at a gallery where a mob of Whitechapel scruff had found huge boxes of the most delicate yellow eggshell porcelain, priceless pieces varying in size from vases four feet high to the tiniest tea-cups, each wrapped carefully in fine tissue. They were throwing 'em down from the balcony in a golden shower, to smash on the floor in explosions of a million glittering fragments so light that they drifted like a snow-mist through the hall. Those below ran laughing among them, scattering them and making them swirl like golden smoke, yelling to the chaps above to throw down more, which they did until the whole place seemed to be filled with it.