This is from Mary Carman, who is in Portland,” said the mother of the Superior Woman, looking up from the reading of a letter, as her daughter came in from the garden.
“Indeed,” carelessly responded Miss Evebrook.
“Yes, it’s chiefly about Will.”
“Oh, is it? Well, read it then, dear. I’m interested in Will Carman, because of Alice Winthrop.”
“I had hoped, Ethel, at one time that you would have been interested in him for his own sake. However, this is what she writes:
“I came here chiefly to rid myself of a melancholy mood which has taken possession of me lately, and also because I cannot bear to see my boy so changed towards me, owing to his infatuation for Alice Winthrop. It is incomprehensible to me how a son of mine can find any pleasure whatever in the society of such a girl. I have traced her history, and find that she is not only uneducated in the ordinary sense, but her environment, from childhood up, has been the sordid and demoralizing oneof extreme poverty and ignorance. This girl, Alice, entered a law office at the age of fourteen, supposedly to do the work of an office boy. Now, after seven years in business, through the friendship and influence of men far above her socially, she holds the position of private secretary to the most influential man in Washington—a position which by rights belongs only to a well-educated young woman of good family. Many such applied. I myself sought to have Jane Walker appointed. Is it not disheartening to our woman’s cause to be compelled to realize that girls such as this one can win men over to be their friends and lovers, when there are so many splendid young women who have been carefully trained to be companions and comrades of educated men?”
“I came here chiefly to rid myself of a melancholy mood which has taken possession of me lately, and also because I cannot bear to see my boy so changed towards me, owing to his infatuation for Alice Winthrop. It is incomprehensible to me how a son of mine can find any pleasure whatever in the society of such a girl. I have traced her history, and find that she is not only uneducated in the ordinary sense, but her environment, from childhood up, has been the sordid and demoralizing oneof extreme poverty and ignorance. This girl, Alice, entered a law office at the age of fourteen, supposedly to do the work of an office boy. Now, after seven years in business, through the friendship and influence of men far above her socially, she holds the position of private secretary to the most influential man in Washington—a position which by rights belongs only to a well-educated young woman of good family. Many such applied. I myself sought to have Jane Walker appointed. Is it not disheartening to our woman’s cause to be compelled to realize that girls such as this one can win men over to be their friends and lovers, when there are so many splendid young women who have been carefully trained to be companions and comrades of educated men?”
“Pardon me, mother,” interrupted Miss Evebrook, “but I have heard enough. Mrs. Carman is your friend and a well-meaning woman sometimes; but a woman suffragist, in the true sense, she certainly is not. Mark my words: If any young man had accomplished for himself what Alice Winthrop has accomplished, Mrs. Carman could not have said enough in his praise. It is women such as Alice Winthrop who, in spite of every drawback, have raised themselves to the level of those who have had every advantage, who are the pride and glory of America. There are thousands of them, all over this land: women who have been of service to othersall their years and who have graduated from the university of life with honor. Women such as I, who are called the Superior Women of America, are after all nothing but schoolgirls incomparison.”comparison.”
Mrs. Evebrook eyed her daughter mutinously. “I don’t see why you should feel like that,” said she. “Alice is a dear bright child, and it is prejudice engendered by Mary Carman’s disappointment about you and Will which is the real cause of poor Mary’s bitterness towards her; but to my mind, Alice does not compare with my daughter. She would be frightened to death if she had to make a speech.”
“You foolish mother!” rallied Miss Evebrook. “To stand upon a platform at woman suffrage meetings and exploit myself is certainly a great recompense to you and father for all the sacrifices you have made in my behalf. But since it pleases you, I do it with pleasure even on the nights when my beau should ‘come a courting.’”
“There is many a one who would like to come, Ethel. You’re the handsomest girl in this Western town—and you know it.”
“Stop that, mother. You know very well I have set my mind upon having ten years’freedom; ten years in which to love, live, suffer, see the world, and learn about men (not schoolboys) before I choose one.”
“Alice Winthrop is the same age as you are, and looks like a child beside you.”
“Physically, maybe; but her heart and mind are better developed. She has been out in the world all her life, I only a few months.”
“Your lecture last week on ‘The Opposite Sex’ was splendid.”
“Of course. I have studied one hundred books on the subject and attended fifty lectures. All that was necessary was to repeat in an original manner what was not by any means original.”
Miss Evebrook went over to a desk and took a paper therefrom.
“This,” said she, “is what Alice has written me in reply to my note suggesting that she attend next week the suffrage meeting, and give some of the experiences of her business career. The object I had in view when I requested the relation of her experiences was to use them as illustrations of the suppression and oppression of women by men. Strange to say, Alice and I have never conversed on this particular subject. If we had I would not have made this request of her, nor written her as I did. Listen:
“I should dearly love to please you, but I am afraid that my experiences, if related, would not help the cause. It may be, as you say, that men prevent women from rising to their level; but if there are such men, I have not met them. Ever since, when a little girl, I walked into a law office and asked for work, and the senior member kindly looked me over through his spectacles and inquired if I thought I could learn to index books, and the junior member glanced under my hat and said: “This is a pretty little girl and we must be pretty to her,” I have loved and respected the men amongst whom I have worked and wherever I have worked. I may have been exceptionally fortunate, but I know this: the men for whom I have worked and amongst whom I have spent my life, whether they have been business or professional men, students or great lawyers and politicians, all alike have upheld me, inspired me, advised me, taught me, given me a broad outlook upon life for a woman; interested me in themselves and in their work. As to corrupting my mind and my morals, as you say so many men do, when they have young and innocent girls to deal with: As a woman I look back over my years spent amongst business and professional men, and see myself, as I was at first, an impressionable, ignorant little girl, born a Bohemian, easy to lead and easy to win, but borne aloft and morally supported by the goodness of my brother men, the men amongst whom I worked. That is why, dear Ethel, you will have to forgive me, because I cannot carry out your design, and help your work, as otherwise I would like to do.”
“I should dearly love to please you, but I am afraid that my experiences, if related, would not help the cause. It may be, as you say, that men prevent women from rising to their level; but if there are such men, I have not met them. Ever since, when a little girl, I walked into a law office and asked for work, and the senior member kindly looked me over through his spectacles and inquired if I thought I could learn to index books, and the junior member glanced under my hat and said: “This is a pretty little girl and we must be pretty to her,” I have loved and respected the men amongst whom I have worked and wherever I have worked. I may have been exceptionally fortunate, but I know this: the men for whom I have worked and amongst whom I have spent my life, whether they have been business or professional men, students or great lawyers and politicians, all alike have upheld me, inspired me, advised me, taught me, given me a broad outlook upon life for a woman; interested me in themselves and in their work. As to corrupting my mind and my morals, as you say so many men do, when they have young and innocent girls to deal with: As a woman I look back over my years spent amongst business and professional men, and see myself, as I was at first, an impressionable, ignorant little girl, born a Bohemian, easy to lead and easy to win, but borne aloft and morally supported by the goodness of my brother men, the men amongst whom I worked. That is why, dear Ethel, you will have to forgive me, because I cannot carry out your design, and help your work, as otherwise I would like to do.”
“That, mother,” declared Miss Evebrook, “answers all Mrs. Carman’s insinuations, andshould make her ashamed of herself. Can any one know the sentiments which little Alice entertains toward men, and wonder at her winning out as she has?”
Mrs. Evebrook was about to make reply, when her glance happening to stray out of the window, she noticed a pink parasol.
“Mrs. Spring Fragrance!” she ejaculated, while her daughter went to the door and invited in the owner of the pink parasol, who was seated in a veranda rocker calmly writing in a note-book.
“I’m so sorry that we did not hear your ring, Mrs. Spring Fragrance,” said she.
“There is no necessity for you to sorrow,” replied the little Chinese woman. “I did not expect you to hear a ring which rang not. I failed to pull the bell.”
“You forgot, I suppose,” suggested Ethel Evebrook.
“Is it wise to tell secrets?” ingenuously inquired Mrs. Spring Fragrance.
“Yes, to your friends. Oh, Mrs. Spring Fragrance, you aresorefreshing.”
“I have pleasure, then, in confiding to you. I have an ambition to accomplish an immortal book about the Americans, and the conversation I heard through the window was so interesting to me that I thought I wouldtake some of it down for my book before I intruded myself. With your kind permission I will translate for your correction.”
“I shall be delighted—honored,” said Miss Evebrook, her cheeks glowing and her laugh rippling, “if you will promise me, that you will also translate for our friend, Mrs. Carman.”
“Ah, yes, poor Mrs. Carman! My heart is so sad for her,” murmured the little Chinese woman.
When the mother of Will Carman returned from Portland, the first person upon whom she called was Mrs. Spring Fragrance. Having lived in China while her late husband was in the customs service there, Mrs. Carman’s prejudices did not extend to the Chinese, and ever since the Spring Fragrances had become the occupants of the villa beside the Carmans, there had been social good feeling between the American and Chinese families. Indeed, Mrs. Carman was wont to declare that amongst all her acquaintances there was not one more congenial and interesting than little Mrs. Spring Fragrance. So after she had sipped a cup of delicious tea, tasted some piquantcandied limes, and told Mrs. Spring Fragrance all about her visit to the Oregon city and the Chinese people she had met there, she reverted to a personal trouble confided to Mrs. Spring Fragrance some months before and dwelt upon it for more than half an hour. Then she checked herself and gazed at Mrs. Spring Fragrance in surprise. Hitherto she had found the little Chinese woman sympathetic and consoling. Chinese ideas of filial duty chimed in with her own. But today Mrs. Spring Fragrance seemed strangely uninterested and unresponsive.
“Perhaps,” gently suggested the American woman, who was nothing if not sensitive, “you have some trouble yourself. If so, my dear, tell me all about it.”
“Oh, no!” answered Mrs. Spring Fragrance brightly. “I have no troubles to tell; but all the while I am thinking about the book I am writing.”
“A book!”
“Yes, a book about Americans, an immortal book.”
“My dear Mrs. Spring Fragrance!” exclaimed her visitor in amazement.
“The American woman writes books about the Chinese. Why not a Chinese woman write books about the Americans?”
“I see what you mean. Why, yes, of course. What an original idea!”
“Yes, I think that is what it is. My book I shall take from the words of others.”
“What do you mean, my dear?”
“I listen to what is said, I apprehend, I write it down. Let me illustrate by the ‘Inferior Woman’ subject. The Inferior Woman is most interesting to me because you have told me that your son is in much love with her. My husband advised me to learn about the Inferior Woman from the Superior Woman. I go to see the Superior Woman. I sit on the veranda of the Superior Woman’s house. I listen to her converse with her mother about the Inferior Woman. With the speed of flames I write down all I hear. When I enter the house the Superior Woman advises me that what I write is correct. May I read to you?”
“I shall be pleased to hear what you have written; but I do not think you were wise in your choice of subject,” returned Mrs. Carman somewhat primly.
“I am sorry I am not wise. Perhaps I had better not read?” said Mrs. Spring Fragrance with humility.
“Yes, yes, do, please.”
There was eagerness in Mrs. Carman’svoice. What could Ethel Evebrook have to say about that girl!
When Mrs. Spring Fragrance had finished reading, she looked up into the face of her American friend—a face in which there was nothing now but tenderness.
“Mrs. Mary Carman,” said she, “you are so good as to admire my husband because he is what the Americans call ‘a man who has made himself.’ Why then do you not admire the Inferior Woman who is a woman who has made herself?”
“I think I do,” said Mrs. Carman slowly.
It was an evening that invited to reverie. The far stretches of the sea were gray with mist, and the city itself, lying around the sweep of the Bay, seemed dusky and distant. From her cottage window Alice Winthrop looked silently at the open world around her. It seemed a long time since she had heard Will Carman’s whistle. She wondered if he were still angry with her. She was sorry that he had left her in anger, and yet not sorry. If she had not made him believe that she was proud and selfish, the parting would have been much harder; and perhapshad he known the truth and realized that it was for his sake, and not for her own, that she was sending him away from her, he might have refused to leave her at all. His was such an imperious nature. And then they would have married—right away. Alice caught her breath a little, and then she sighed. But they would not have been happy. No, that could not have been possible if his mother did not like her. When a gulf of prejudice lies between the wife and mother of a man, that man’s life is not what it should be. And even supposing she and Will could have lost themselves in each other, and been able to imagine themselves perfectly satisfied with life together, would it have been right? The question of right and wrong was a very real one to Alice Winthrop. She put herself in the place of the mother of her lover—a lonely elderly woman, a widow with an only son, upon whom she had expended all her love and care ever since, in her early youth, she had been bereaved of his father. What anguish of heart would be hers if that son deserted her for one whom she, his mother, deemed unworthy! Prejudices are prejudices. They are like diseases.
The poor, pale, elderly woman, who cherished bitter and resentful feelings towards the girlwhom her son loved, was more an object of pity than condemnation to the girl herself.
She lifted her eyes to the undulating line of hills beyond the water. From behind them came a silver light. “Yes,” said she aloud to herself—and, though she knew it not, there was an infinite pathos in such philosophy from one so young—“if life cannot be bright and beautiful for me, at least it can be peaceful and contented.”
The light behind the hills died away; darkness crept over the sea. Alice withdrew from the window and went and knelt before the open fire in her sitting-room. Her cottage companion, the young woman who rented the place with her, had not yet returned from town.
Alice did not turn on the light. She was seeing pictures in the fire, and in every picture was the same face and form—the face and form of a fine, handsome young man with love and hope in his eyes. No, not always love and hope. In the last picture of all there was an expression which she wished she could forget. And yet she would remember—ever—always—and with it, these words: “Is it nothing to you—nothing—to tell a man that you love him, and then to bid him go?”
Yes, but when she had told him she loved him she had not dreamed that her love forhim and his for her would estrange him from one who, before ever she had come to this world, had pillowed his head on her breast.
Suddenly this girl, so practical, so humorous, so clever in every-day life, covered her face with her hands and sobbed like a child. Two roads of life had lain before her and she had chosen the hardest.
The warning bell of an automobile passing the cross-roads checked her tears. That reminded her that Nellie Blake would soon be home. She turned on the light and went to the bedroom and bathed her eyes. Nellie must have forgotten her key. There she was knocking.
The chill sea air was sweet with the scent of roses as Mary Carman stood upon the threshold of the little cottage, and beheld in the illumination from within the young girl whom she had called “the Inferior Woman.”
“I have come, Miss Winthrop,” said she, “to beg of you to return home with me. Will, reckless boy, met with a slight accident while out shooting, so could not come for you himself. He has told me that he loves you, and if you love him, I want to arrange for the prettiest wedding of the season. Come, dear!”
“I am so glad,” said Mrs. Spring Fragrance, “that Will Carman’s bird is in his nest and his felicity is assured.”
“What about the Superior Woman?” asked Mr. Spring Fragrance.
“Ah, the Superior Woman! Radiantly beautiful, and gifted with the divine right of learning! I love well the Inferior Woman; but, O Great Man, when we have a daughter, may Heaven ordain that she walk in the groove of the Superior Woman.”
Old Li Wang, the peddler, who had lived in the land beyond the sea, was wont to declare: “For every cent that a man makes here, he can make one hundred there.”
“Then, why,” would ask Sankwei, “do you now have to move from door to door to fill your bowl with rice?”
And the old man would sigh and answer:
“Because where one learns how to make gold, one also learns how to lose it.”
“How to lose it!” echoed Wou Sankwei. “Tell me all about it.”
So the old man would tell stories about the winning and the losing, and the stories of the losing were even more fascinating than the stories of the winning.
“Yes, that was life,” he would conclude. “Life, life.”
At such times the boy would gaze across the water with wistful eyes. The land beyond the sea was calling to him.
The place was a sleepy little south coast town where the years slipped by monotonously. The boy was the only son of the man who had been the town magistrate.
Had his father lived, Wou Sankwei would have been sent to complete his schooling in another province. As it was he did nothing but sleep, dream, and occasionally get into mischief. What else was there to do? His mother and sister waited upon him hand and foot. Was he not the son of the house? The family income was small, scarcely sufficient for their needs; but there was no way by which he could add to it, unless, indeed, he disgraced the name of Wou by becoming a common fisherman. The great green waves lifted white arms of foam to him, and the fishes gleaming and lurking in the waters seemed to beseech him to draw them from the deep; but his mother shook her head.
“Should you become a fisherman,” said she, “your family would lose face. Remember that your father was a magistrate.”
When he was about nineteen there returned to the town one who had been absent for many years. Ching Kee, like old Li Wang, had also lived in the land beyond the sea; but unlike old Li Wang he had accumulated a small fortune.
“’Tis a hard life over there,” said he, “but ’tis worth while. At least one can be a man, and can work at what work comes his way without losing face.” Then he laughed at Wou Sankwei’s flabby muscles, at his soft, dark eyes, and plump, white hands.
“If you lived in America,” said he, “you would learn to be ashamed of such beauty.”
Whereupon Wou Sankwei made up his mind that he would go to America, the land beyond the sea. Better any life than that of a woman man.
He talked long and earnestly with his mother. “Give me your blessing,” said he. “I will work and save money. What I send home will bring you many a comfort, and when I come back to China, it may be that I shall be able to complete my studies and obtain a degree. If not, my knowledge of the foreign language which I shall acquire,will enable me to take a position which will not disgrace the name of Wou.”
His mother listened and thought. She was ambitious for her son whom she loved beyond all things on earth. Moreover, had not Sik Ping, a Canton merchant, who had visited the little town two moons ago, declared to Hum Wah, who traded in palm leaves, that the signs of the times were that the son of a cobbler, returned from America with the foreign language, could easier command a position of consequence than the son of a school-teacher unacquainted with any tongue but that of his motherland?
“Very well,” she acquiesced; “but before you go I must find you a wife. Only your son, my son, can comfort me for your loss.”
Wou Sankwei stood behind his desk, busily entering figures in a long yellowbook.book.Now and then he would thrust the hair pencil with which he worked behind his ears and manipulate with deft fingers a Chinese counting machine. Wou Sankwei was the junior partner and bookkeeper of the firm of Leung Tang Wou & Co. of San Francisco. He had been inAmerica seven years and had made good use of his time. Self-improvement had been his object and ambition, even more than the acquirement of a fortune, and who, looking at his fine, intelligent face and listening to his careful English, could say that he had failed?
One of his partners called his name. Some ladies wished to speak to him. Wou Sankwei hastened to the front of the store. One of his callers, a motherly looking woman, was the friend who had taken him under her wing shortly after his arrival in America. She had come to invite him to spend the evening with her and her niece, the young girl who accompanied her.
After his callers had left, Sankwei returned to his desk and worked steadily until the hour for his evening meal, which he took in the Chinese restaurant across the street from the bazaar. He hurried through with this, as before going to his friend’s house, he had a somewhat important letter to write and mail. His mother had died a year before, and the uncle, to whom he was writing, had taken his wife and son into his home until such time as his nephew could send for them. Now the time had come.
Wou Sankwei’s memory of the woman who was his wife was very faint. How could itbe otherwise? She had come to him but three weeks before the sailing of the vessel which had brought him to America, and until then he had not seen her face. But she was his wife and the mother of his son. Ever since he had worked in America he had sent money for her support, and she had proved a good daughter to his mother.
As he sat down to write he decided that he would welcome her with a big dinner to his countrymen.
“Yes,” he replied to Mrs. Dean, later on in the evening, “I have sent for my wife.”
“I am so glad,” said the lady. “Mr. Wou”—turning to her niece—“has not seen his wife for seven years.”
“Deary me!” exclaimed the young girl. “What a lot of letters you must have written!”
“I have not written her one,” returned the young man somewhat stiffly.
Adah Charlton looked up in surprise. “Why—” she began.
“Mr. Wou used to be such a studious boy when I first knew him,” interrupted Mrs. Dean, laying her hand affectionately upon the young man’s shoulder. “Now, it is all business. But you won’t forget the concert on Saturday evening.”
“No, I will not forget,” answered Wou Sankwei.
“He has never written to his wife,” explained Mrs. Dean when she and her niece were alone, “because his wife can neither read nor write.”
“Oh, isn’t that sad!” murmured Adah Charlton, her own winsome face becoming pensive.
“They don’t seem to think so. It is the Chinese custom to educate only the boys. At least it has been so in the past. Sankwei himself is unusually bright. Poor boy! He began life here as a laundryman, and you may be sure that it must have been hard on him, for, as the son of a petty Chinese Government official, he had not been accustomed to manual labor. But Chinese character is wonderful; and now after seven years in this country, he enjoys a reputation as a business man amongst his countrymen, and is as up to date as any young American.”
“But, Auntie, isn’t it dreadful to think that a man should live away from his wife for so many years without any communication between them whatsoever except through others.”
“It is dreadful to our minds, but not to theirs. Everything with them is a matter of duty. Sankwei married his wife as amatter of duty. He sends for her as a matter of duty.”
“I wonder if it is all duty on her side,” mused the girl.
Mrs. Dean smiled. “You are too romantic, Adah,” said she. “I hope, however, that when she does come, they will be happy together. I think almost as much of Sankwei as I do of my own boy.”
Pau Lin, the wife of Wou Sankwei, sat in a corner of the deck of the big steamer, awaiting the coming of her husband. Beside her, leaning his little queued head against her shoulder, stood her six-year-old son. He had been ailing throughout the voyage, and his small face was pinched with pain. His mother, who had been nursing him every night since the ship had left port, appeared very worn and tired. This, despite the fact that with a feminine desire to make herself fair to see in the eyes of her husband, she had arrayed herself in a heavily embroidered purple costume, whitened her forehead and cheeks with powder, and tinted her lips with carmine.
He came at last, looking over and beyondher; There were two others of her countrywomen awaiting the men who had sent for them, and each had a child, so that for a moment he seemed somewhat bewildered. Only when the ship’s officer pointed out and named her, did he know her as his. Then he came forward, spoke a few words of formal welcome, and, lifting the child in his arms, began questioning her as to its health.
She answered in low monosyllables. At his greeting she had raised her patient eyes to his face—the face of the husband whom she had not seen for seven long years—then the eager look of expectancy which had crossed her own faded away, her eyelids drooped, and her countenance assumed an almost sullen expression.
“Ah, poor Sankwei!” exclaimed Mrs. Dean, who with Adah Charlton stood some little distance apart from the family group.
“Poor wife!” murmured the young girl. She moved forward and would have taken in her own white hands the ringed ones of the Chinese woman, but the young man gently restrained her. “She cannot understand you,” said he. As the young girl fell back, he explained to his wife the presence of the stranger women. They were there to bid her welcome; they were kind and good and wished to be her friends as well as his.
Pau Lin looked away. Adah Charlton’s bright face, and the tone in her husband’s voice when he spoke to the young girl, aroused a suspicion in her mind—a suspicion natural to one who had come from a land where friendship between a man and woman is almost unknown.
“Poor little thing! How shy she is!” exclaimed Mrs. Dean.
Sankwei was glad that neither she nor the young girl understood the meaning of the averted face.
Thus began Wou Sankwei’s life in America as a family man. He soon became accustomed to the change, which was not such a great one after all. Pau Lin was more of an accessory than a part of his life. She interfered not at all with his studies, his business, or his friends, and when not engaged in housework or sewing, spent most of her time in the society of one or the other of the merchants’ wives who lived in the flats and apartments around her own. She kept up the Chinese custom of taking her meals after her husband or at a separate table, and observed faithfully the rule laid down for her by her late mother-in-law: to keep a quiet tongue in the presence of her man. Sankwei, on his part, was always kind and indulgent. He bought her silkdresses, hair ornaments, fans, and sweetmeats. He ordered her favorite dishes from the Chinese restaurant. When she wished to go out with her women friends, he hired a carriage, and shortly after her advent erected behind her sleeping room a chapel for the ancestral tablet and gorgeous goddess which she had brought over seas with her.
Upon the child both parents lavished affection. He was a quaint, serious little fellow, small for his age and requiring much care. Although naturally much attached to his mother, he became also very fond of his father who, more like an elder brother than a parent, delighted in playing all kinds of games with him, and whom he followed about like a little dog. Adah Charlton took a great fancy to him and sketched him in many different poses for a book on Chinese children which she was illustrating.
“He will be strong enough to go to school next year,” said Sankwei to her one day. “Later on I intend to put him through an American college.”
“What does your wife think of a Western training for him?” inquired the young girl.
“I have not consulted her about the matter,” he answered. “A woman does not understand such things.”
“A woman, Mr. Wou,” declared Adah, “understands such things as well as and sometimes better than a man.”
“An, American woman, maybe,” amended Sankwei; “but not a Chinese.”
From the first Pau Lin had shown no disposition to become Americanized, and Sankwei himself had not urged it.
“I do appreciate the advantages of becoming westernized,” said he to Mrs. Dean whose influence and interest in his studies in America had helped him to become what he was, “but it is not as if she had come here as I came, in her learning days. The time for learning with her is over.”
One evening, upon returning from his store, he found the little Yen sobbing pitifully.
“What!” he teased, “A man—and weeping.”
The boy tried to hide his face, and as he did so, the father noticed that his little hand was red and swollen. He strode into the kitchen where Pau Lin was preparing the evening meal.
“The little child who is not strong—is there anything he could do to merit the infliction of pain?” he questioned.
Pau Lin faced her husband. “Yes, I think so,” said she.
“What?”
“I forbade him to speak the language of the white women, and he disobeyed me. He had words in that tongue with the white boy from the next street.”
Sankwei was astounded.
“We are living in the white man’s country,” said he. “The child will have to learn the white man’s language.”
“Not my child,” answered Pau Lin.
Sankwei turned away from her. “Come, little one,” said he to his son, “we will take supper tonight at the restaurant, and afterwards Yen shall see a show.”
Pau Lin laid down the dish of vegetables which she was straining and took from a hook as small wrap which she adjusted around the boy.
“Now go with thy father,” said she sternly.
But the boy clung to her—to the hand which had punished him. “I will sup with you,” he cried, “I will sup with you.”
“Go,” repeated his mother, pushing him from her. And as the two passed over the threshold, she called to the father: “Keep the wrap around the child. The night air is chill.”
Late that night, while father and son were peacefully sleeping, the wife and mother arose,and lifting gently the unconscious boy, bore him into the next room where she sat down with him in a rocker. Waking, he clasped his arms around her neck. Backwards and forwards she rocked him, passionately caressing the wounded hand and crooning and crying until he fell asleep again.
The first chastisement that the son of Wou Sankwei had received from his mother, was because he had striven to follow in the footsteps of his father and use the language of the stranger.
“You did perfectly right,” said old Sien Tau the following morning, as she leaned over her balcony to speak to the wife of Wou Sankwei. “Had I again a son to rear, I should see to it that he followed not after the white people.”
Sien Tau’s son had married a white woman, and his children passed their grandame on the street without recognition.
“In this country, she is most happy who has no child,” said Lae Choo, resting her elbow upon the shoulder of Sien Tau. “A Toy, the young daughter of Lew Wing, is as bold and free in her ways as are the white women, and her name is on all the men’s tongues. What prudent man of our race would take her as wife?”
“One needs not to be born here to be made a fool of,” joined in Pau Lin, appearing at another balcony door. “Think of Hum Wah. From sunrise till midnight he worked for fourteen years, then a white man came along and persuaded from him every dollar, promising to return doublefold within the moon. Many moons have risen and waned, and Hum Wah still waits on this side of the sea for the white man and his money. Meanwhile, his father and mother, who looked long for his coming, have passed beyond returning.”
“The new religion—what trouble it brings!” exclaimed Lae Choo. “My man received word yestereve that the good old mother of Chee Ping—he who was baptized a Christian at the last baptizing in the Mission around the corner—had her head secretly severed from her body by the steadfast people of the village, as soon as the news reached there. ’Twas the first violent death in the records of the place. This happened to the mother of one of the boys attending the Mission corner of my street.”
“No doubt, the poor old mother, having lost face, minded not so much the losing of her head,” sighed Pau Lin. She gazed below her curiously. The American Chinatown held a strange fascination for the girl from theseacoast village. Streaming along the street was a motley throng made up of all nationalities. The sing-song voices of girls whom respectable merchants’ wives shudder to name, were calling to one another from high balconies up shadowy alleys. A fat barber was laughing hilariously at a drunken white man who had fallen into a gutter; a withered old fellow, carrying a bird in a cage, stood at the corner entreating passersby to have a good fortune told; some children were burning punk on the curbstone. There went by a stalwart Chief of the Six Companies engaged in earnest confab with a yellow-robed priest from the joss house. A Chinese dressed in the latest American style and a very blonde woman, laughing immoderately, were entering a Chinese restaurant together. Above all the hubbub of voices was heard the clang of electric cars and the jarring of heavy wheels over cobblestones.
Pau Lin raised her head and looked her thoughts at the old woman, Sien Tau.
“Yes,” nodded the dame, “’tis a mad place in which to bring up a child.”
Pau Lin went back into the house, gave little Yen his noonday meal, and dressed him with care. His father was to take him out that afternoon. She questioned the boy, asshe braided his queue, concerning the white women whom he visited with his father.
It was evening when they returned—Wou Sankwei and his boy. The little fellow ran up to her in high glee. “See, mother,” said he, pulling off his cap, “I am like father now. I wear no queue.”
The mother looked down upon him—at the little round head from which the queue, which had been her pride, no longer dangled.
“Ah!” she cried. “I am ashamed of you; I am ashamed!”
The boy stared at her, hurt and disappointed.
“Never mind, son,” comforted his father. “It is all right.”
Pau Lin placed the bowls of seaweed and chickens’ liver before them and went back to the kitchen where her own meal was waiting. But she did not eat. She was saying within herself: “It is for the white woman he has done this; it is for the white woman!”
Later, as she laid the queue of her son within the trunk wherein lay that of his father, long since cast aside, she discovered a picture of Mrs. Dean, taken when the American woman had first become the teacher and benefactress of the youthful laundryman. She ran over with it to her husband. “Here,” said she;“it is a picture of one of your white friends.” Sankwei took it from her almost reverently, “That woman,” he explained, “has been to me as a mother.”
“And the young woman—the one with eyes the color of blue china—is she also as a mother?” inquired Pau Lin gently.
But for all her gentleness, Wou Sankwei flushed angrily.
“Never speak of her,” he cried. “Never speak of her!”
“Ha, ha, ha! Ha, ha, ha!” laughed Pau Lin. It was a soft and not unmelodious laugh, but to Wou Sankwei it sounded almost sacrilegious.
Nevertheless, he soon calmed down. Pau Lin was his wife, and to be kind to her was not only his duty but his nature. So when his little boy climbed into his lap and besought his father to pipe him a tune, he reached for his flute and called to Pau Lin to put aside work for that night. He would play her some Chinese music. And Pau Lin, whose heart and mind, undiverted by change, had been concentrated upon Wou Sankwei ever since the day she had become his wife, smothered, for the time being, the bitterness in her heart, and succumbed to the magic of her husband’s playing—a magic which transportedher in thought to the old Chinese days, the old Chinese days whose impression and influence ever remain with the exiled sons and daughters of China.
That a man should take to himself two wives, or even three, if he thought proper, seemed natural and right in the eyes of Wou Pau Lin. She herself had come from a home where there were two broods of children and where her mother and her father’s other wife had eaten their meals together as sisters. In that home there had not always been peace; but each woman, at least, had the satisfaction of knowing that her man did not regard or treat the other woman as her superior. To each had fallen the common lot—to bear children to the man, and the man was master of all.
But, oh! the humiliation and shame of bearing children to a man who looked up to another woman—and a woman of another race—as a being above the common uses of women. There is a jealousy of the mind more poignant than any mere animal jealousy.
When Wou Sankwei’s second child was two weeks old, Adah Charlton and her auntcalled to see the little one, and the young girl chatted brightly with the father and played merrily with Yen, who was growing strong and merry. The American women could not, of course, converse with the Chinese; but Adah placed beside her a bunch of beautiful flowers, pressed her hand, and looked down upon her with radiant eyes. Secure in the difference of race, in the love of many friends, and in the happiness of her chosen work, no suspicion whatever crossed her mind that the woman whose husband was her aunt’s protégé tasted everything bitter because of her.
After the visitors had gone, Pau Lin, who had been watching her husband’s face while the young artist was in the room, said to him:
“She can be happy who takes all and gives nothing.”
“Takes all and gives nothing,” echoed her husband. “What do you mean?”
“She has taken all your heart,” answered Pau Lin, “but she has not given you a son. It is I who have had that task.”
“You are my wife,” answered Wou Sankwei. “And she—oh! how can you speak of her so? She, who is as a pure water-flower—a lily!”
He went out of the room, carrying with him a little painting of their boy, which AdahCharlton had given to him as she bade him goodbye and which he had intended showing with pride to the mother.
It was on the day that the baby died that Pau Lin first saw the little picture. It had fallen out of her husband’s coat pocket when he lifted the tiny form in his arms and declared it lifeless. Even in that first moment of loss Pau Lin, stooping to pick up the portrait, had shrunk back in horror, crying: “She would cast a spell! She would cast a spell!”
She set her heel upon the face of the picture and destroyed it beyond restoration.
“You know not what you say and do,” sternly rebuked Sankwei. He would have added more, but the mystery of the dead child’s look forbade him.
“The loss of a son is as the loss of a limb,” said he to his childless partner, as under the red glare of the lanterns they sat discussing the sad event.
“But you are not without consolation,” returned Leung Tsao. “Your firstborn grows in strength and beauty.”
“True,” assented Wou Sankwei, his heavy thoughts becoming lighter.
And Pau Lin, in her curtained balcony overhead, drew closer her child and passionately cried:
“Sooner would I, O heart of my heart, that the light of thine eyes were also quenched, than that thou shouldst be contaminated with the wisdom of the new.”