It happened during the days immediately following the Relief, when the prostrate city was given up to plunderers.  A company of soldiers chose to break into a big dwelling-house, and the Chinese inhabitants scampered—­men and women—­in wild terror.  Then suddenly, in the midst of the confusion, a bugle call rang loud and clear on the air.  The European soldiers, recognizing the “Retreat” and fearing a superior force was about to descend on them, stood not on the order of their going, but left at once.  Yet it was no superior force after all.  A single man by his presence of mind saved the situation—­and that man was the I.G.’s best cornet player.  Afterwards, I remember, he used to be pointed out to strangers at garden parties, and he had quite a deal of notoriety before he and his gallantry were forgotten in the daily round of commonplace happenings.

Taking into consideration the great shock of 1900, it is wonderful how the I.G. could remain unaltered in all his habits, could be so unmoved by the changes taking place around him.  The Chinese officials, for instance—­who suddenly became as anxious for Western comforts as they had hitherto detested them—­drove over modernized roads in carriages; he clung to his old-fashioned sedan chair.  The majority of the besieged bought—­or otherwise acquired loot; he never spent a penny on it, and never entered what the looters euphemistically liked to call “deserted houses.”

[Illustration:  ANOTHER WINTER VIEW OF SIR ROBERT HART’S GARDEN, PEKING.]

The whole community took advantage of the opening of the Temple of Heaven and the Temple of Agriculture, fine parks free from dust and the noise of the city; he never entered either.  Nor at a time when the whole world was discussing the Winter Palace and the Forbidden City, did he consider that the dictates of good breeding permitted him to go where the rightful owners would have refused him entrance.  He took his outings as usual either in his own garden or on the city wall, from which he could watch the slow rebuilding of the Legation Quarter, a perfect salade Russe of architecture, with German gables, classic Venetian gateways and Flemish turrets jostling one another.

This calm life continued for four peaceful years.  Then he was startled again by a bolt from the blue.  The Inspectorate of Customs was transferred by Imperial Edict from the Wai-Wu-Pu to the Shui-Wu-Ch’u, a Board specially created to control it.

The real meaning of the change was not easy to fathom, but everybody seized the opportunity to talk at once—­all the newspapers and the correspondents and the political experts; to criticize, to prophesy, to predict, to shake their heads—­all but one man, the man most concerned.  And he said nothing; he listened while the others authoritatively stated what he must think, what he did think, and what he would think later.  To tell the truth he thought less of his own position, the prestige of which was undoubtedly affected by a move that turned him from a semi-political agent into a simple departmental head, than he did of the future of his service.  Consequently, at a juncture when he had the best excuse for deserting a post which had partially deserted him, he remained to reassure outsiders as well as employees and to prove that radical as the Edict seemed, its real meaning was not half so disturbing as it appeared.