SEQUEL TO THE STORY OF THE WHITE WOMANWHO MARRIED A CHINESE
SEQUEL TO THE STORY OF THE WHITE WOMANWHO MARRIED A CHINESE
SEQUEL TO THE STORY OF THE WHITE WOMAN
WHO MARRIED A CHINESE
Now that Liu Kanghi is no longer with me, I feel that it will ease my heart to record some memories of him—if I can. The task, though calling to me, is not an easy one, so throng to my mind the invincible proofs of his love for me, the things he has said and done. My memories of him are so vivid and pertinacious, my thoughts of him so tender.
To my Chinese husband I could go with all my little troubles and perplexities; to him I could talk as women love to do at times of the past and the future, the mysteries ofreligion, of life and death. He was not above discussing such things with me. With him I was never strange or embarrassed. My Chinese husband was simple in his tastes. He liked to hear a good story, and though unlearned in a sense, could discriminate between the good and bad in literature. This came of his Chinese education. He told me one day that he thought the stories in the Bible were more like Chinese than American stories, and added: “If you had not told me what you have about it, I should say that it was composed by the Chinese.” Music had a soothing though not a deep influence over him. It could not sway his mind, but he enjoyed it just as he did a beautiful picture. Because I was interested in fancy work, so also was he. I can see his face, looking so grave and concerned, because one day by accident I spilt some ink on a piece of embroidery I was working. If he came home in the evenings and found me tired and out of sorts, he would cook the dinner himself, and go about it in such a way that I felt that he rather enjoyed showing off his skill as a cook. The next evening, if he found everything ready, he would humorously declare himself much disappointed that I was so exceedingly well.
At such times a gray memory of James Carson would arise. How his cold anger and contempt, as exhibited on like occasions, had shrivelled me up in the long ago. And then—I would fall to musing on the difference between the two men as lovers and husbands.
James Carson had been much more of an ardent lover than ever had been Liu Kanghi. Indeed it was his passion, real or feigned, which had carried me off my feet. When wooing he had constantly reproached me with being cold, unfeeling, a marble statue, and so forth; and I, poor, ignorant little girl, would wonder how it was I appeared so when I felt so differently. For I had given James Carson my first love. Upon him my life had been concentrated as it has never been concentrated upon any other. Yet—!
There was nothing feigned about my Chinese husband. Simple and sincere as he was before marriage, so was he afterwards. As my union with James Carson had meant misery, bitterness, and narrowness, so my union with Liu Kanghi meant, on the whole, happiness, health, and development. Yet the former, according to American ideas, had been an educated broad-minded man; the other, just an ordinary Chinaman.
But the ordinary Chinaman that I would show to you was the sort of man that children, birds, animals, and some women love. Every morning he would go to the window and call to his pigeons, and they would flock around him, hearing and responding to his whistling and cooing. The rooms we lived in had been his rooms ever since he had come to America. They were above his store, and large and cool. The furniture had been brought from China, but there was nothing of tinsel about it. Dark wood, almost black, carved and antique, some of the pieces set with mother-of-pearl. On one side of the inner room stood a case of books and an ancestral tablet. I have seen Liu Kanghi touch the tablet with reverence, but the faith of his fathers was not strong enough to cause him to bow before it. The elegant simplicity of these rooms had surprised me much when I was first taken to them. I looked at him then, standing for a moment by the window, a solitary pigeon peeking in at him, perhaps wondering who had come to divert from her her friend’s attention. So had he lived since he had come to this country—quietly and undisturbed—from twenty years of age to twenty-five. I felt myself an intruder. A feeling of pity for the boy—for such he seemed in his enthusiasm—arosein my breast. Why had I come to confuse his calm? Was it ordained, as he declared?
My little girl loved him better than she loved me. He took great pleasure in playing with her, curling her hair over his fingers, tying her sash, and all the simple tasks from which so many men turn aside.
Once the baby got hold of a set rat trap, and was holding it in such a way that the slightest move would have released the spring and plunged the cruel steel into her tender arms. Kanghi’s eyes and mine beheld her thus at the same moment. I stood transfixed with horror. Kanghi quietly went up to the child and took from her the trap. Then he asked me to release his hand. I almost fainted when I saw it. “It was the only way,” said he. We had to send for the doctor, and even as it was, came very near having a case of blood poisoning.
I have heard people say that he was a keen business man, this Liu Kanghi, and I imagine that he was. I did not, however, discuss his business with him. All I was interested in were the pretty things and the women who would come in and jest with him. He could jest too. Of course, the women did not know that I was his wife. Once a woman in richclothes gave him her card and asked him to call upon her. After she had left he passed the card to me. I tore it up. He took those things as a matter of course, and was not affected by them. “They are a part of Chinatown life,” he explained.
He was a member of the Reform Club, a Chinese social club, and the Chinese Board of Trade. He liked to discuss business affairs and Chinese and American politics with his countrymen, and occasionally enjoyed an evening away from me. But I never needed to worry over him.
He had his littlenesses as well as his bignesses, had Liu Kanghi. For instance, he thought he knew better about what was good for my health and other things, purely personal, than I did myself, and if my ideas opposed or did not tally with his, he would very vigorously denounce what he called “the foolishness of women.” If he admired a certain dress, he would have me wear it on every occasion possible, and did not seem to be able to understand that it was not always suitable.
“Wear the dress with the silver lines,” he said to me one day somewhat authoritatively. I was attired for going out, but not as he wished to see me. I answered that the dress with thesilver lines was unsuitable for a long and dusty ride on an open car.
“Never mind,” said he, “whether it is unsuitable or not. I wish you to wear it.”
“All right,” I said. “I will wear it, but I will stay at home.”
I stayed at home, and so did he.
At another time, he reproved me for certain opinions I had expressed in the presence of some of his countrymen. “You should not talk like that,” said he. “They will think you are a bad woman.”
My white blood rose at that, and I answered him in a way which grieves me to remember. For Kanghi had never meant to insult or hurt me. Imperious by nature, he often spoke before he thought—and he was so boyishly anxious for me to appear in the best light possible before his own people.
There were other things too: a sort of childish jealousy and suspicion which it was difficult to allay. But a woman can forgive much to a man, the sincerity and strength of whose love makes her own, though true, seem slight and mean.
Yes, life with Liu Kanghi was not without its trials and tribulations. There was the continual uncertainty about his own life here in America, the constant irritation caused bythe assumption of the white men that a white woman does not love her Chinese husband, and their actions accordingly; also sneers and offensive remarks. There was also on Liu Kanghi’s side an acute consciousness that, though belonging to him as his wife, yet in a sense I was not his, but of the dominant race, which claimed, even while it professed to despise me. This consciousness betrayed itself in words and ways which filled me with a passion of pain and humiliation. “Kanghi,” I would sharply say, for I had to cloak my tenderness, “do not talk to me like that. Youaremy superior.... I would not love you if you were not.”
But in spite of all I could do or say, it was there between us: that strange, invisible—what? Was it the barrier of race—that consciousness?
Sometimes he would talk about returning to China. The thought filled me with horror. I had heard rumors of secondary wives. One afternoon the cousin of Liu Kanghi, with whom I had lived, came to see me, and showed me a letter which she had received from a little Chinese girl who had been born and brought up in America until the age of ten. The last paragraph in the letter read: “Emma and I are very sad and wish we were back inAmerica.” Kanghi’s cousin explained that the father of the little girls, having no sons, had taken to himself another wife, and the new wife lived with the little girls and their mother.
That was before my little boy was born. That evening I told Kanghi that he need never expect me to go to China with him.
“You see,” I began, “I look upon you as belonging to me.”
He would not let me say more. After a while he said: “It is true that in China a man may and occasionally does take a secondary wife, but that custom is custom, not only because sons are denied to the first wife, but because the first wife is selected by parents and guardians before a man is hardly a man. If a Chinese marries for love, his life is a filled-up cup, and he wants no secondary wife. No, not even for sake of a son. Take, for example, me, your great husband.”
I sometimes commented upon his boyish ways and appearance, which was the reason why, when he was in high spirits, he would call himself my “great husband.” He was not boyish always. I have seen him, when shouldering the troubles of kinfolk, the quarrels of his clan, and other responsibilities, acting and looking like a man of twice his years.
But for all the strange marriage customs ofmy husband’s people I considered them far more moral in their lives than the majority of Americans. I expressed myself thus to Liu Kanghi, and he replied: “The American people think higher. If only more of them lived up to what they thought, the Chinese would not be so confused in trying to follow their leadership.”
If ever a man rejoiced over the birth of his child, it was Liu Kanghi. The boy was born with a veil over his face. “A prophet!” cried the old mulatto Jewess who nursed me. “A prophet has come into the world.”
She told this to his father when he came to look upon him, and he replied: “He is my son; that is all I care about.” But he was so glad, and there was feasting and rejoicing with his Chinese friends for over two weeks. He came in one evening and found me weeping over my poor little boy. I shall never forget the expression on his face.
“Oh, shame!” he murmured, drawing my head down to his shoulder. “What is there to weep about? The child is beautiful! The feeling heart, the understanding mind is his. And we will bring him up to be proud that he is of Chinese blood; he will fear none and, after him, the name of half-breed will no longer be one of contempt.”
Kanghi as a youth had attended a school in Hong Kong, and while there had made the acquaintance of several half Chinese half English lads. “They were the brightest of all,” he told me, “but they lowered themselves in the eyes of the Chinese by being ashamed of their Chinese blood and ignoring it.”
His theory, therefore, was that if his own son was brought up to be proud instead of ashamed of his Chinese half, the boy would become a great man.
Perhaps he was right, but he could not see as could I, an American woman, the conflict before our boy.
After the little Kanghi had passed his first month, and we had found a reliable woman to look after him, his father began to take me around with him much more than formerly, and life became very enjoyable. We dined often at a Chinese restaurant kept by a friend of his, and afterwards attended theatres, concerts, and other places of entertainment. We frequently met Americans with whom he had become acquainted through business, and he would introduce them with great pride in me shining in his eyes. The little jealousies and suspicions of the first year seemed no longer to irritate him, and though I had still cause to shrink from the gaze of strangers,I know that my Chinese husband was for several years a very happy man.
Now, I have come to the end. He left home one morning, followed to the gate by the little girl and boy (we had moved to a cottage in the suburbs).
“Bring me a red ball,” pleaded the little girl.
“And me too,” cried the boy.
“All right, chickens,” he responded, waving his hand to them.
He was brought home at night, shot through the head. There are some Chinese, just as there are some Americans, who are opposed to all progress, and who hate with a bitter hatred all who would enlighten or be enlightened.
But that I have not the heart to dwell upon. I can only remember that when they brought my Chinese husband home there were two red balls in his pocket. Such was Liu Kanghi—a man.
THE AMERICANIZING OF PAU TSU
When Wan Hom Hing came to Seattle to start a branch of the merchant business which his firm carried on so successfully in the different ports of China, he brought with him his nephew, Wan Lin Fo, then eighteen years of age. Wan Lin Fo was a well-educated Chinese youth, with bright eyes and keen ears. In a few years’ time he knew as much about the business as did any of the senior partners. Moreover, he learned to speak and write the American language with such fluency that he was never at a loss for an answer, when the white man, as was sometimes the case, sought to pose him. “All work and no play,” however, is as much against the principles of a Chinese youth as it is against those of a young American, and now and again Lin Fo would while away an evening at the Chinese Literary Club, above the Chinese restaurant, discussing with some chosen companions the works and merits of Chinese sages—and some other things. New Year’s Day, or rather, Week, would also see him, business forgotten, arrayed in national costume of finest silk, and color “the blue ofthe sky after rain,” visiting with his friends, both Chinese and American, and scattering silver and gold coin amongst the youngsters of the families visited.
It was on the occasion of one of these New Year’s visits that Wan Lin Fo first made known to the family of his firm’s silent American partner, Thomas Raymond, that he was betrothed. It came about in this wise: One of the young ladies of the house, who was fair and frank of face and friendly and cheery in manner, observing as she handed him a cup of tea that Lin Fo’s eyes wore a rather wistful expression, questioned him as to the wherefore:
“Miss Adah,” replied Lin Fo, “may I tell you something?”
“Certainly, Mr. Wan,” replied the girl. “You know how I enjoy hearing your tales.”
“But this is no tale. Miss Adah, you have inspired in me a love—”
Adah Raymond started. Wan Lin Fo spake slowly.
“For the little girl in China to whom I am betrothed.”
“Oh, Mr. Wan! That is good news. But what have I to do with it?”
“This, Miss Adah! Every time I come to this house, I see you, so good and so beautiful, dispensing tea and happiness to all around, and I think, could I have in my home and ever bymy side one who is also both good and beautiful, what a felicitious life mine would be!”
“You must not flatter me, Mr. Wan!”
“All that I say is founded on my heart. But I will speak not of you. I will speak of Pau Tsu.”
“Pau Tsu?”
“Yes. That is the name of my future wife. It means a pearl.”
“How pretty! Tell me all about her!”
“I was betrothed to Pau Tsu before leaving China. My parents adopted her to be my wife. As I remember, she had shining eyes and the good-luck color was on her cheek. Her mouth was like a red vine leaf, and her eyebrows most exquisitely arched. As slender as a willow was her form, and when she spoke, her voice lilted from note to note in the sweetest melody.”
Adah Raymond softly clapped her hands.
“Ah! You were even then in love with her.”
“No,” replied Lin Fo thoughtfully. “I was too young to be in love—sixteen years of age. Pau Tsu was thirteen. But, as I have confessed, you have caused me to remember and love her.”
Adah Raymond was not a self-conscious girl, but for the life of her she could think of no reply to LinFo’sFo’sspeech.
“I am twenty-two years old now,” he continued.“Pau Tsu is eighteen. Tomorrow I will write to my parents and persuade them to send her to me at the time of the spring festival. My elder brother was married last year, and his wife is now under my parents’ roof, so that Pau Tsu, who has been the daughter of the house for so many years, can now be spared to me.”
“What a sweet little thing she must be,” commented Adah Raymond.
“You will say that when you see her,” proudly responded Lin Fo. “My parents say she is always happy. There is not a bird or flower or dewdrop in which she does not find some glad meaning.”
“I shall be so glad to know her. Can she speak English?”
Lin Fo’s face fell.
“No,” he replied, “but,”—brightening—“when she comes I will have her learn to speak like you—and be like you.”
Pau Tsu came with the spring, and Wan Lin Fo was one of the happiest and proudest of bridegrooms. The tiny bride was really very pretty—even to American eyes. In her peach and plum colored robes,her little arms and hands sparkling with jewels, and her shiny black head decorated with wonderful combs and pins, she appeared a bit of Eastern coloring amidst the Western lights and shades.
Lin Fo had not been forgotten, and her eyes under their downcast lids discovered him at once, as he stood awaiting her amongst a group of young Chinese merchants on the deck of the vessel.
The apartments he had prepared for her were furnished in American style, and her birdlike little figure in Oriental dress seemed rather out of place at first. It was not long, however, before she brought forth from the great box, which she had brought over seas, screens and fans, vases, panels, Chinese matting, artificial flowers and birds, and a number of exquisite carvings and pieces of antique porcelain. With these she transformed the American flat into an Oriental bower, even setting up in her sleeping-room a little chapel, enshrined in which was an image of the Goddess of Mercy, two ancestral tablets, and other emblems of her faith in the Gods of her fathers.
The Misses Raymond called upon her soon after arrival, and she smiled and looked pleased. She shyly presented each girl witha Chinese cup and saucer, also a couple of antique vases, covered with whimsical pictures, which Lin Fo tried his best to explain.
The girls were delighted with the gifts, and having fallen, as they expressed themselves, in love with the little bride, invited her through her husband to attend a launch party, which they intended giving the following Wednesday on Lake Washington.
Lin Fo accepted the invitation in behalf of himself and wife. He was quite at home with the Americans and, being a young man, enjoyed their rather effusive appreciation of him as an educated Chinaman. Moreover, he was of the opinion that the society of the American young ladies would benefit Pau Tsu in helping her to acquire the ways and language of the land in which he hoped to make a fortune.
Wan Lin Fo was a true son of the Middle Kingdom and secretly pitied all those who were born far away from its influences; but there was much about the Americans that he admired. He also entertained sentiments of respect for a motto which hung in his room which bore the legend: “When in Rome, do as the Romans do.”
“What is best for men is also best for women in this country,” he told Pau Tsuwhen she wept over his suggestion that she should take some lessons in English from a white woman.
“It may be best for a man who goes out in the street,” she sobbed, “to learn the new language, but of what importance is it to a woman who lives only within the house and her husband’s heart?”
It was seldom, however, that she protested against the wishes of Lin Fo. As her mother-in-law had said, she was a docile, happy little creature. Moreover, she loved her husband.
But as the days and weeks went by the girl bride whose life hitherto had been spent in the quiet retirement of a Chinese home in the performance of filial duties, in embroidery work and lute playing, in sipping tea and chatting with gentle girl companions, felt very much bewildered by the novelty and stir of the new world into which she had been suddenly thrown. She could not understand, for all Lin Fo’s explanations, why it was required of her to learn the strangers’ language and adopt their ways. Her husband’s tongue was the same as her own. So also her little maid’s. It puzzled her to be always seeing this and hearing that—sights and sounds which as yet had no meaning for her. Why also was it necessary to receive visitorsnearly every evening?—visitors who could neither understand nor make themselves understood by her, for all their curious smiles and stares, which she bore like a second Vashti—or rather, Esther. And why, oh! why should she be constrained to eat her food with clumsy, murderous looking American implements instead of with her own elegant and easily manipulated ivory chopsticks?
Adah Raymond, who at Lin Fo’s request was a frequent visitor to the house, could not fail to observe that Pau Tsu’s small face grew daily smaller and thinner, and that the smile with which she invariably greeted her, though sweet, was tinged with melancholy. Her woman’s instinct told her that something was wrong, but what it was the light within her failed to discover. She would reach over to Pau Tsu and take within her own firm, white hand the small, trembling fingers, pressing them lovingly and sympathetically; and the little Chinese woman would look up into the beautiful face bent above hers and think to herself: “No wonder he wishes me to be like her!”
If Lin Fo happened to come in before Adah Raymond left he would engage the visitor in bright and animated conversation. They had so much of common interest to discuss, as is always the way with young people who havelived any length of time in a growing city of the West. But to Pau Tsu, pouring tea and dispensing sweetmeats, it was all Greek, or rather, all American.
“Look, my pearl, what I have brought you,” said Lin Fo one afternoon as he entered his wife’s apartments, followed by a messenger-boy, who deposited in the middle of the room a large cardboard box.
With murmurs of wonder Pau Tsu drew near, and the messenger-boy having withdrawn Lin Fo cut the string, and drew forth a beautiful lace evening dress and dark blue walking costume, both made in American style.
For a moment there was silence in the room. Lin Fo looked at his wife in surprise. Her face was pale and her little body was trembling, while her hands were drawn up into her sleeves.
“Why, Pau Tsu!” he exclaimed, “I thought to make you glad.”
At thesewordswordsthe girl bent over the dress of filmy lace, and gathering the flounce in her hand smoothed it over her knee; then lifting a smiling face to her husband, replied: “Oh, you are too good, too kind to your unworthy Pau Tsu. My speech is slow, because I am overcome with happiness.”
Then with exclamations of delight andadmiration she lifted the dresses out of the box and laid them carefully over the couch.
“I wish you to dress like an American woman when we go out or receive,” said her husband. “It is the proper thing in America to do as the Americans do. You will notice, light of my eyes, that it is only on New Year and our national holidays that I wear the costume of our country and attach a queue. The wife should follow the husband in all things.”
A ripple of laughter escaped Pau Tsu’s lips.
“When I wear that dress,” said she, touching the walking costume, “I will look like your friend, Miss Raymond.”
She struck her hands together gleefully, but when her husband had gone to his business she bowed upon the floor and wept pitifully.
During the rainy season Pau Tsu was attacked with a very bad cough. A daughter of Southern China, the chill, moist climate of the Puget Sound winter was very hard on her delicate lungs. Lin Fo worried much over the state of her health, and meeting Adah Raymond on the street one afternoon told her of his anxiety. Thekind-hearted girl immediately returned with him to the house. Pau Tsu was lying on her couch, feverish and breathing hard. The American girl felt her hands and head.
“She must have a doctor,” said she, mentioning the name of her family’s physician.
Pau Tsu shuddered. She understood a little English by this time.
“No! No! Not a man,nota man!” she cried.
Adah Raymond looked up at Lin Fo.
“I understand,” said she. “There are several women doctors in this town. Let us send for one.”
But Lin Fo’s face was set.
“No!” he declared. “We are in America. Pau Tsu shall be attended to by your physician.”
Adah Raymond was about to protest against this dictum when the sick wife, who had also heard it, touched her hand and whispered: “I not mind now. Man all right.”
So the other girl closed her lips, feeling that if the wife would not dispute her husband’s will it was not her place to do so; but her heart ached with compassion as she bared Pau Tsu’s chest for the stethoscope.
“It was like preparing a lamb for slaughter,” she told her sister afterwards. “Pau Tsuwas motionless, her eyes closed and her lips sealed, while the doctor remained; but after he had left and we two were alone she shuddered and moaned like one bereft of reason. I honestly believe that the examination was worse than death to that little Chinese woman. The modesty of generations of maternal ancestors was crucified as I rolled down the neck of her silk tunic.”
It was a week after the doctor’s visit, and Pau Tsu, whose cough had yielded to treatment, though she was still far from well, was playing on her lute, and whisperingly singing this little song, said to have been written on a fan which was presented to an ancient Chinese emperor by one of his wives:
“Of fresh new silk,All snowy white,And round as a harvest moon,A pledge of purity and love,A small but welcome boon.While summer lasts,When borne in hand,Or folded on thy breast,’Twill gently soothe thy burning brow,And charm thee to thy rest.But, oh, when Autumn winds blow chill,And days are bleak and cold,No longer sought, no longer loved,’Twill lie in dust and mould.This silken fan then deign accept,Sad emblem of my lot,Caressed and cherished for an hour,Then speedily forgot.”
“Of fresh new silk,All snowy white,And round as a harvest moon,A pledge of purity and love,A small but welcome boon.While summer lasts,When borne in hand,Or folded on thy breast,’Twill gently soothe thy burning brow,And charm thee to thy rest.But, oh, when Autumn winds blow chill,And days are bleak and cold,No longer sought, no longer loved,’Twill lie in dust and mould.This silken fan then deign accept,Sad emblem of my lot,Caressed and cherished for an hour,Then speedily forgot.”
“Of fresh new silk,All snowy white,And round as a harvest moon,A pledge of purity and love,A small but welcome boon.
“Of fresh new silk,
All snowy white,
And round as a harvest moon,
A pledge of purity and love,
A small but welcome boon.
While summer lasts,When borne in hand,Or folded on thy breast,’Twill gently soothe thy burning brow,And charm thee to thy rest.
While summer lasts,
When borne in hand,
Or folded on thy breast,
’Twill gently soothe thy burning brow,
And charm thee to thy rest.
But, oh, when Autumn winds blow chill,And days are bleak and cold,No longer sought, no longer loved,’Twill lie in dust and mould.
But, oh, when Autumn winds blow chill,
And days are bleak and cold,
No longer sought, no longer loved,
’Twill lie in dust and mould.
This silken fan then deign accept,Sad emblem of my lot,Caressed and cherished for an hour,Then speedily forgot.”
This silken fan then deign accept,
Sad emblem of my lot,
Caressed and cherished for an hour,
Then speedily forgot.”
“Why so melancholy, my pearl?” asked Lin Fo, entering from the street.
“When a bird is about to die, its notes are sad,” returned Pau Tsu.
“But thou art not for death—thou art for life,” declared Lin Fo, drawing her towards him and gazing into a face which day by day seemed to grow finer and more transparent.
A Chinese messenger-boy ran up the street, entered the store of Wan Hom Hing & Co. and asked for the junior partner. When Lin Fo came forward he handed him a dainty, flowered missive, neatly folded and addressed. The receiver opened it and read:
Dear and Honored Husband,—Your unworthy Pau Tsu lacks the courage to face the ordeal before her. She has, therefore, left you and prays you to obtain a divorce, as is the custom in America, so that you may be happy with the Beautiful One, who is so much your Pau Tsu’s superior. This, she acknowledges, for she sees with your eyes, in which, like a star, the BeautifulOne shineth. Else, why should you have your Pau Tsu follow in her footsteps? She has tried to obey your will and to be as an American woman; but now she is very weary, and the terror of what is before her has overcome.Your stupid thorn,Pau Tsu
Dear and Honored Husband,—Your unworthy Pau Tsu lacks the courage to face the ordeal before her. She has, therefore, left you and prays you to obtain a divorce, as is the custom in America, so that you may be happy with the Beautiful One, who is so much your Pau Tsu’s superior. This, she acknowledges, for she sees with your eyes, in which, like a star, the BeautifulOne shineth. Else, why should you have your Pau Tsu follow in her footsteps? She has tried to obey your will and to be as an American woman; but now she is very weary, and the terror of what is before her has overcome.
Your stupid thorn,Pau Tsu
Your stupid thorn,Pau Tsu
Your stupid thorn,Pau Tsu
Your stupid thorn,
Pau Tsu
Mechanically Lin Fo folded the letter and thrust it within his breast pocket. A customer inquired of him the price of a lacquered tray. “I wish you good morning,” he replied, reaching for his hat. The customer and clerks gaped after him as he left the store.
Out in the street, as fate would have it, he met Adah Raymond. He would have turned aside had she not spoken to him.
“Whatever is the matter with you, Mr. Wan?” she inquired. “You don’t look yourself at all.”
“The density of my difficulties you cannot understand,” he replied, striding past her.
But Adah Raymond was persistent. She had worried lately over Pau Tsu.
“Something is wrong with your wife,” she declared.
Lin Fo wheeled around.
“Do you know where she is?” he asked with quick suspicion.
“Why, no!” exclaimed the girl in surprise.
“Well, she has left me.”
Adah Raymond stood incredulous for a moment, then with indignant eyes she turned upon the deserted husband.
“You deserve it!” she cried, “I have seen it for some time: your cruel, arbitrary treatment of the dearest, sweetest little soul in the world.”
“I beg your pardon, Miss Adah,” returned Lin Fo, “but I do not understand. Pau Tsu is heart of my heart. How then could I be cruel to her?”
“Oh, you stupid!” exclaimed the girl. “You’re a Chinaman, but you’re almost as stupid as an American. Your cruelty consisted in forcing Pau Tsu to be—what nature never intended her to be—an American woman; to adapt and adopt in a few months’ time all our ways and customs. I saw it long ago, but as Pau Tsu was too sweet and meek to see any faults in her man I had not the heart to open her eyes—or yours. Is it not true that she has left you for this reason?”
“Yes,” murmured Lin Fo. He was completely crushed. “And some other things.”
“What other things?”
“She—is—afraid—of—the—doctor.”
“She is!”—fiercely—“Shame upon you!”
Lin Fo began to walk on, but the girl kept by his side and continued:
“You wanted your wife to be an American woman while you remained a Chinaman. For all your clever adaptation of our American ways you are a thorough Chinaman. Do you think an American would dare treat his wife as you have treated yours?”
Wan Lin Fo made no response. He was wondering how he could ever have wished his gentle Pau Tsu to be like this angry woman. Now his Pau Tsu was gone. His anguish for the moment made him oblivious to the presence of his companion and the words she was saying. His silence softened the American girl. After all, men, even Chinamen, were nothing but big, clumsy boys, and she didn’t believe in kicking a man after he was down.
“But, cheer up, you’re sure to find her,” said she, suddenly changing her tone. “Probably her maid has friends in Chinatown who have taken them in.”
“If I find her,” said Lin Fo fervently, “I will not care if she never speaks an American word, and I will take her for a trip to China, so that our son may be born in the country that Heaven loves.”
“You cannot make too much amends for all she has suffered. As to AmericanizingPau Tsu—that will come in time. I am quite sure that were I transferred to your country and commanded to turn myself into a Chinese woman in the space of two or three months I would prove a sorry disappointment to whomever built their hopes upon me.”
Many hours elapsed before any trace could be found of the missing one. All the known friends and acquaintances of little Pau Tsu were called upon and questioned; but if they had knowledge of the young wife’s hiding place they refused to divulge it. Though Lin Fo’s face was grave with an unexpressed fear, their sympathies were certainly not with him.
The seekers were about giving up the search in despair when a little boy, dangling in his hands a string of blue beads, arrested the attention of the young husband. He knew the necklace to be a gift from Pau Tsu to the maid, A-Toy. He had bought it himself. Stopping and questioning the little fellow he learned to his great joy that his wife and her maid were at the boy’s home, under the care of his grandmother, who was a woman learned in herb lore.
Adah Raymond smiled in sympathy with her companion’s evident great relief.
“Everything will now be all right,” said she, following Lin Fo as he proceeded to thehouse pointed out by the lad. Arrived there, she suggested that the husband enter first and alone. She would wait a few moments.
“Miss Adah,” said Lin Fo, “ten thousand times I beg your pardon, but perhaps you will come to see my wife some other time—not today?”
He hesitated, embarrassed and humiliated.
In one silent moment Adah Raymond grasped the meaning of all the morning’s trouble—of all Pau Tsu’s sadness.
“Lord, what fools we mortals be!” she soliloquized as she walked home alone. “I ought to have known. What else could Pau Tsu have thought?—coming from a land where women have no men friends save their husbands. How she must have suffered under her smiles! Poor, brave little soul!”
See, Little One—the hills in the morning sun. There is thy home for years to come. It is very beautiful and thou wilt be very happy there.”
The Little One looked up into his mother’s face in perfect faith. He was engaged in thepleasant occupation of sucking a sweetmeat; but that did not prevent him from gurgling responsively.
“Yes, my olive bud; there is where thy father is making a fortune for thee. Thy father! Oh, wilt thou not be glad to behold his dear face. ’Twas for thee I left him.”
The Little One ducked his chin sympathetically against his mother’s knee. She lifted him on to her lap. He was two years old, a round, dimple-cheeked boy with bright brown eyes and a sturdy little frame.
“Ah! Ah! Ah! Ooh! Ooh! Ooh!” puffed he, mocking a tugboat steaming by.
San Francisco’s waterfront was lined with ships and steamers, while other craft, large and small, including a couple of white transports from the Philippines, lay at anchor here and there off shore. It was some time before theEastern Queencould get docked, and even after that was accomplished, a lone Chinaman who had been waiting on the wharf for an hour was detained that much longer by men with the initials U. S. C. on their caps, before he could board the steamer and welcome his wife and child.
“This is thy son,” announced the happy Lae Choo.
Hom Hing lifted the child, felt of his littlebody and limbs, gazed into his face with proud and joyous eyes; then turned inquiringly to a customs officer at his elbow.
“That’s a fine boy you have there,” said the man. “Where was he born?”
“In China,” answered Hom Hing, swinging the Little One on his right shoulder, preparatory to leading his wife off the steamer.
“Ever been to America before?”
“No, not he,” answered the father with a happy laugh.
The customs officer beckoned to another.
“This little fellow,” said he, “is visiting America for the first time.”
The other customs officer stroked his chin reflectively.
“Good day,” said Hom Hing.
“Wait!” commanded one of the officers. “You cannot go just yet.”
“What more now?” asked Hom Hing.
“I’m afraid,” said the first customs officer, “that we cannot allow the boy to go ashore. There is nothing in the papers that you have shown us—your wife’s papers and your own—having any bearing upon the child.”
“There was no child when the papers were made out,” returned Hom Hing. He spoke calmly; but there was apprehension in his eyes and in his tightening grip on his son.
“What is it? What is it?” quavered Lae Choo, who understood a little English.
The second customs officer regarded her pityingly.
“I don’t like this part of the business,” he muttered.
The first officer turned to Hom Hing and in an official tone of voice, said:
“Seeing that the boy has no certificate entitling him to admission to this country you will have to leave him with us.”
“Leave my boy!” exclaimed Hom Hing.
“Yes; he will be well taken care of, and just as soon as we can hear from Washington he will be handed over to you.”
“But,” protested Hom Hing, “he is my son.”
“We have no proof,” answered the man with a shrug of his shoulders; “and even if so we cannot let him pass without orders from the Government.”
“He is my son,” reiterated Hom Hing, slowly and solemnly. “I am a Chinese merchant and have been in business in San Francisco for many years. When my wife told to me one morning that she dreamed of a green tree with spreading branches and one beautiful red flower growing thereon, I answered her that I wished my son to be born in ourcountry, and for her to prepare to go to China. My wife complied with my wish. After my son was born my mother fell sick and my wife nursed and cared for her; then my father, too, fell sick, and my wife also nursed and cared for him. For twenty moons my wife care for and nurse the old people, and when they die they bless her and my son, and I send for her to return to me. I had no fear of trouble. I was a Chinese merchant and my son was my son.”
“Very good, Hom Hing,” replied the first officer. “Nevertheless, we take your son.”
“No, you not take him; he my son too.”
It was Lae Choo. Snatching the child from his father’s arms she held and covered him with her own.
The officers conferred together for a few moments; then one drew Hom Hing aside and spoke in his ear.
Resignedly Hom Hing bowed his head, then approached his wife. “’Tis the law,” said he, speaking in Chinese, “and ’twill be but for a little while—until tomorrow’s sun arises.”
“You, too,” reproached Lae Choo in a voice eloquent with pain. But accustomed to obedience she yielded the boy to her husband, who in turn delivered him to the first officer. The Little One protested lustily against thetransfer; but his mother covered her face with her sleeve and his father silently led her away. Thus was the law of the land complied with.