CHAPTER XV
The Meeting of the Mothers
BASIL GREGORY had written his formally couched note of warning in a fidget. Nang Ping had no experience of masculine fidgets. She had seen her countrywomen fidget, but never her countrymen.
And Basil was in a fidget still when he came to her presently, not by stealth this time, no whistle heralding him, but walking swiftly from beyond the bridge.
She greeted him placidly, too proud to show the hauteur she felt now; but Low Soong knew that Nang Ping’s heart was fluttering sickly under her jade and coral girdle.
Low returned his greeting with a placid face, but her narrow eyes were yellow with hate, and she turned at once and went to her old place of watch on the bridge.
“They will come soon?” Nang asked.
“Yes, they are lingering by the big lake, in the outer garden, and that gave me the chance to speak to you a moment. Oh! my darling.” He had been near to hating her as he had been coming to her across the rippling water—hating her because he had wronged her, and now feared that he might not escape quite all share in her punishment; but now, as she stood there in all her pretty feminine trappings among her flowers, he longed to take her into his arms. She had never looked so altogether desirable to him before—probably because he had made up his mind to leave her, to snap his life and his years from hers. “Have you missed me? Why did you leave me so? How are you, dear?”
Nang Ping smiled oddly. She said nothing.
And Low Soong called from the bridge, “Chillee! Chillee!”
Women’s voices, deeper throated than Nang’s and Low’s, European voices, could be heard coming that way, and Basil said nervously, “Yes,” adding in English what Low had just said, “They are coming. I shall leave them when they are going—make some excuse, and I shall go and hide in the pagoda by the lake——”
“Oh, that pagoda—by the lake!” Nang Ping interjected softly, but her voice was grim.
“I shall see them pass, and when they have quite gone I will come back. Wait for me when they are gone. I must speak to you. Remember!” He moved away from her, and went and stood beside an old stone lantern, as if examining and admiring it for the first time.
“Low Soong!” Nang Ping said breathlessly, and Low hurried to her from the bridge and put her arms about her. And they stood so for a moment.
But the voices and the footsteps were close now, and Nang Ping released herself from Low’s comforting arms, and stood gracious and alone.
This was one of Florence Gregory’s young days—one of her very youngest. Still in her early forties, she looked a radiant twenty-five as she stood an instant on the bridge, and then came gayly down it. And her radiant English beauty—blue eyes, golden hair, cream and rose face—looked all the more radiant because of the delicate gray of her gown—a dress of artificial simplicity, Paris-made. It had not cost as much as Chinese Nang’s fantastic clothes had, but it had cost a great deal, and it was the more perishable.
Hilda Gregory, walking beside her mother, quite a pretty girl seen by herself, seemed in the mother’s wake rather than side by side, though far the more brightly clad, and was a dim afterglow of the matron’s glory—as Low Soong, for all her gay apparel and own high coloring, standing a little apart, seemed too of Nang Ping’s. And Florence Gregory looked as much Basil’s sister as Hilda, who was a few years his junior.
A Chinese serving woman followed the Gregory ladies. She was palpably Mrs. Gregory’s maid, and not Hilda’s; why, it is impossible to say, unless because the mother was unmistakably of the woman-type to which servants and dogs attach themselves, that claims them, and to which they belong. Hilda Gregory probably played tennis and golf better than her mother, and plied a more useful needle; but she buttoned her own boots as naturally as it came to the mother to lean well back at ease against down cushions and have her hair brushed by a servant. Ah Wong, the amah, carried a closed parasol, a costly European thing of lace and mother-o’-pearl, that would have suited Miss Gregory’s rose crêpe quite as well as it did Mrs. Gregory’s silver ninon; but the sturdy Chinese figure, plainly clad in dark blue cotton, was unmistakably in attendance on the mother.
There were six here now, not counting the Wu servants moving on the outskirts of the group, silent and busied. But Mrs. Gregory and Wu Nang Ping held the stage: English womanhood and Chinese something at their best.
They made a great contrast than which the old beauty-packed garden had seen nothing prettier: two living, sentient expressions of womanhood, greatly different, greatly alike.
Each was natural, each was artificial—sweet, elaborate, decorated, highly bred.
Nang Ping’s face and lips were painted; Mrs. Gregory’s were not. But her nails were slightly, beneath her gloves, and so were Nang’s that had never worn a glove. Mrs. Gregory’s eyebrows were lightly penciled. Nang Ping’s were not. Nang Ping’s hair had taken the longer to dress, but the dressing of the other’s had cost an hour. The black hair was stiffened into shape with thick scented gum; the blonde hair was marcelled into shape by hot tongs. And Mrs. Gregory had the slightly smaller feet, and far less comfortably shod. For Wu had set his face against one custom of his country, and braved the anger of his ancestors. Nang smoked a pipe—Basil Gregory could not insert his smallest finger-tip into its tiny bowl—Florence Gregory smoked cigarettes; and they both inhaled sometimes. And each considered the other of inferior race.
They looked at each other curiously—Mrs. Gregory frankly so. Nang veiled her keen interest. But her interest was the more. The English woman was keenly interested in China and in things Chinese. The country had fascinated her powerfully, its odd people considerably. But she did not take Chinese womanhood very seriously. Every one of intelligence knew by now that many Chinese men were clever, almost hideously so, but equally every one knew that Chinese women were limited—very. Of course, the terrible old woman who ruled at Pekin was shrewd, unless her ministers, Li Hung Chang and the rest, did it all for her, which was probable; and then, too, she wasn’t Chinese really, Tartar not Mongol. And Mrs. Gregory had no suspicion of what must have interested her in Nang Ping indeed. She was keener to see the garden, and, if possible, the house—it was said to be very wonderful—than to exploit little Miss Wu. But she thought the girl pretty after a grotesque Chinese fashion, “cute” and not unattractive, and she looked at her with sincerely friendly eyes.
The young eyes that looked back at her were mingled adoration and resentment. This was Basil’s mother, and she was like him. This was the honorable mother who had given him life and nursed him at her breast. And this was the woman because of whom he was going to forsake her, and shut her out forever from peace, honor and paradise. Because of this woman standing smiling at her here he forbade her Europe and joyful motherhood. And he had shut her forever out of China! Why? Oh! why?
There are three supreme moments in the life of every Chinese girl to whom the gods are not hideously unkind: the moment when her unknown bridegroom lifts up her red veil and looks upon her face—perhaps to love and cherish, perhaps to loathe and punish; the moment when the midwife says, “Hail, Lady, it is an honorable son,” and lays the funny little red, squirming firstborn on her breast to be adored, and always to adore her; and the moment when she meets eyes with her husband’s mother, and they look a little into each other’s souls. And this last is the supreme moment of her fate. In all the small ways that make up the most of every woman’s life, her comfort and happiness will depend upon this mother-in-law even more than upon her husband—and mothers-in-law live long in China. Women are the pampered class in China, as they are almost everywhere, and will be until “new” hermaphrodite “movements” have pulled nature from her throne. And in the quiet ways, the ways that count, the supremacy of the Chinese mother is even greater than the autocratic supremacy of the Chinese father. Occidental readers may believe this or disbelieve it as they like; superficial travelers, ill-equipped for Asian sojourn, may see or miss it, but the fact remains. Motherhood has ruled China for thousands of years. It is not the fair young wife or the favorite daughter who rules a Chinese, but his mother, old, wrinkled, toothless, bent. From the thraldom of his father, from the thraldom of his gods, he may escape; from the thraldom of his mother, never! Nang Ping knew now that she would never wear the soft red veil. That great moment had been, and passed, for her when Basil had kissed her first in the pagoda. The child that even now just fluttered beneath her breast—a son, she thought, and surely blue-eyed—must die unborn; she knew that now. He would never purl and pull and purr at her exultant breast. But this was Basil’s mother, the honorable grandmother to whom she had given a first grandson! What this moment might have been! Something of the agony of the disappointment gnawing at her baffled heart crept into her narrow eyes, and turned her faint and sick, and almost she swayed an instant standing proud and gracious among her flowers—and the child leapt.
Basil Gregory stood irresolute, embarrassed, looking from his mother to Nang Ping, from Nang Ping to his mother.
Mrs. Gregory turned to him with a happy smile. “Ah! Basil, there you are.”
“Yes, Mother, I missed you,” he said as lightly as he could, “and found my way here to make the acquaintance of Miss Wu.”
He gestured courteously toward Nang as he spoke, and Mrs. Gregory moved to the girl and held out her hand. Nang Ping moved too, a little towards her guest, and made the elaborate gesture, hands clasped, of Eastern greeting. Mrs. Gregory still held out her hand, and wondered, when she gained the girl’s, which was the softer or the better kept, Nang’s or her own. Basil had wondered it often.
“This visit to your beautiful garden is the greatest treat I’ve had since I arrived in China, Miss Wu,” she began.
Wu Nang Ping bowed. “I am pleased to receive you in my honorable father’s absence. He has had much kindness in England. It is his command that always English friends have most honorable welcome here, and it gives me happiness. My cousin, Low Soong.”
“How do you do?” Mrs. Gregory said cordially. “And this is my daughter.” The three girls bowed, the two Chinese with grave formality, a gesture of the arms more than a bending.
“Such a perfectly beautiful place!” Mrs. Gregory said it sincerely, her beauty-loving eyes here, there and everywhere gloating.
“This is my own garden, where I walk with my women,” Nang Ping told her.
“It beats our poor little garden, Hilda,” the mother said gayly.
“Into fits.” Just a trifle of the surface vulgarity which, with its hard coating of adamant varnish, covered and hid Robert Gregory’s soul side—even from his wife—and wronged him, had caught and scorched, slightly, the delicacy of Hilda’s breeding. Even Florence Gregory, some rare times, used a slight word of slang: “As the husband is, the wife is.”
Low Soong listened to Hilda with polite indifference. Low Soong had no English. But Nang Ping wondered dully how a garden could have a fit; she thought an epileptic garden must be very horrid. But she said smoothly, “Ah! in London you have only walls and roofs, I think.”
“You have been there, Miss Wu, of course?” Mrs. Gregory asked.
“I have never been to any country.”
“Really? But—you must excuse me—but your excellent English.”
“My honorable teacher was English. My honorable father knows it like you; he has been there—to Oxford.”
“Really! I was born at Oxford. And my son”—she turned to him a little, meaning to coax him into the talk, and wondering to see him stand so awkwardly and wordless—he was not often so socially inept, and never gauche—“my son was there.”
“And my honorable father has taught me to esteem English people because they are all”—she paused an instant, but she did not glance towards Basil, and added with a grave, deferential smile—“all honorable men.”
“Well”—Basil’s mother smiled too, a prettily pathetic smile which was half good manners and half sincere—“I am afraid there are a few exceptions, sometimes.” She went up to her boy and laid her hand fondly on his arm. “But”—not speaking to him, but still to Nang—“it is the duty of all Englishmen to live up to such a high reputation.”
“I must be off, Mother,” the man said hurriedly, releasing himself gently, “if Miss Wu will excuse me. I thought Father was coming.”
“He has. We left them down by the fish-pond, him and Tom, talking to a quaint old gardener.”
“Oh! Well, I’m afraid I ought to be off—to the office. I’ll go straight to the hotel afterwards—dinner usual time?”
“Of course, dear, unless you’d like it earlier or later. Do you know, Basil, you haven’t dined with us for days?”—Nang Ping knew it. “I’m getting quite anxious about your health, dear. Bother that fusty office! You don’t seem a bit yourself.”
Her boy laughed at her and put his hand under her chin. (And Nang Ping watched them curiously.) “You dear—why—I—I’m as right as rain.”
“Then prove it, my son—a big man’s dinner at eight. Now, if Miss Wu will excuse you”—for evidently he was uncomfortable here—and why not, the dear English child? How should he be anything else in this funny Chinese nook with these Chinese girls? Probably he could not even see how pretty this smaller one was, for all her narrow eyes and absurd, grotesque clothes and paint, and it was plain that he could not find a word to say to either of them, not even to this one who was playing hostess so nicely, and who understood English and spoke it surprisingly. His silence towards the plump dumpling of a cousin, who was showing Hilda about the garden with quaint bobbings and solemn pantomime, was excusable enough. She didn’t know a word of English, it seemed; though you never could tell what a Chinese did or didn’t know, John Bradley said, and Ah Wong said so too. But really, Basil might have made an effort, and said a little something civil to the English-knowing hostess; he was not often so shy—he had been at Oxford, and he was her son. Robert had no savoir faire, but, as a rule, the boy had some.
When he was free from his mother, Basil moved to Nang Ping to take leave of her. She received him with a quiet dignity that seemed perfectly natural. “Chinese, but quite the grande dame,” the mother thought.
He uncovered and looked down at Nang. “Good-day, Miss Wu.” She shook her hands at him in Chinese-salutation way, and straightening up looked at him with just the edge of a courteous smile—not an eyelash quivered. He turned and looked towards the other girls, but Low Soong had turned her back and was bending and gesticulating over a peony bed.
“By the way, Basil,” his mother said as he passed her, but paused to give her one more smile, “the gardener was telling your father that he knew you.” She wished him to go, and yet she stayed him.
Basil shot Nang a look—of consternation—taken aback and off his guard. Mrs. Gregory did not catch it, but both Hilda and Low Soong did. Nang Ping held herself impassive, but distress flickered for a moment in her eyes. Then he turned back to his mother, trying to seem unconcerned.
“Knew me? Why, I—he’s never seen me here in his life.”
“He didn’t say he had, silly,” Hilda Gregory said, strolling towards them, Low Soong tottering deftly beside her—Low’s feet were bound—“he said he’d seen you in Hong Kong.”
“Oh!” her brother laughed feebly, “in Hong Kong—that’s quite possible. Well, now, I really am off. Good-by, Miss Wu.” And Nang Ping bowed to him once more, in the prescribed ceremonial way, her face perfectly emotionless, dismissing him suavely, turning from him before he had quite gone.
“Will you not be seated?” she asked Mrs. Gregory, with a deferential gesture pointing to the old stone seat.
Hilda and Low Soong still strolled about among the treasures of the garden.
Ah Sing and perhaps half a dozen other servants moved about on padded, noiseless feet, preparing Miss Wu’s tea-table with all its picturesque paraphernalia of elaborate teakwood stools and benches, lacquer sweetmeat-cabinets, glazed porcelain tea-bowls as thin as gauze and painted by master craftsmen, trays of candied fruit, and several delicacies of which Florence Gregory did not know the name and could not guess the nature.
“So,” she said, surprised to find how comfortable a stone bench could be, “Mr. Wu was at Oxford. How interesting! I wonder when. I knew a Chinese gentleman—a student there—when I was quite a girl. We lived at Oxford, my father and I. I forget his name. I have the saddest memory, especially for names, and it could not have been your father whom I knew, for I distinctly remember hearing, the year after I was married—or some time about then—that my friend was dead, killed in a climbing accident somewhere on the Alps. He was a fine sportsman.”
“Many Chinese gentlemen are sent to Oxford, I have heard my honorable father say,” Nang Ping rejoined. “The Japanese go more to Cambridge.”
“Yes—and yet,” Mrs. Gregory said musingly, but more interested in watching the servants than she was in her talk with this rather wooden and very painted-faced child of the East, “your name—‘Wu,’ I mean—has seemed familiar to me from the first, and now I seem to remember that the man I knew at Oxford had a surname rather like that—or even that. How odd!”
“There are many Wus in China,” the girl said. “It is a most large clan. All our clans are very large. We are, you know, so old.”
“Wu.” The English woman said it slowly, as if trying to send, on the sound of it, her peccant memory back to some forgotten hour.
“Oh! it is a most general name. It means Military. I do not know why, for,” she added almost hastily, “we have had no soldiers in our family—everything almost but that. All Chinese names mean something, but of most of them—they are so old—the meaning is lost in the mists of far, far back, uncounted years before history was written or kept in record. And perhaps I ought to have remembered that one Wu was a soldier once. Wu Sankwei defended Ningyuan against T’ientsung when the Manchus first overran China. But that was, oh! so many years ago, and since then none of my honorable ancestors have been soldiers—or at least very few,” she added, with a sudden blush beneath her paint, too honest to conceal from Basil’s mother, who was also her guest, her military forbears, descent from whom she felt to be a bitter disgrace, though she knew, as every educated Chinese must, that in all China’s long history there are few greater names than that of Wu Sankwei, the defender of Ningyuan. “‘Li’ is the name in China the most common and perhaps the most proud. It is our ‘Smith’ name. And we are very proud of it, because many of its men have been great and noble, and because their honorable wives have borne them many children. Scarcely the census-takers can count the Lis. My honorable mother was a Li before my honorable father married her to be Mrs. Wu. They were cousins, but more than a century away—‘twenty times removed,’ as you would call it in your English. The honorable Li Hung Chang’s our distant kinsman, my honorable kinsman on both sides. My own honorable father has ‘Li’ blood on the side of distaff; his honorable name is Wu Li Chang. We are Chinese, we of our house, but now in some of our blood we are Manchu too.”
Mrs. Gregory smiled up at the girl. “Will you not sit here too?” And Nang Ping bowed and curled up on the other end of the big seat.
Ah Wong opened her mistress’s parasol and brought it, and Mrs. Gregory took it with a grateful “Ah!” “We have enjoyed ourselves so much in your wonderful country, Miss Wu,” she went on; “we are quite sorry our time here is drawing to a close. You know—but I forgot, you know nothing of us, of course—well, we are going soon, going home.”
“All of you go?” Nang Ping knew that they all were to go, but she could not resist the self-inflicted pain of hearing it again.
“Yes, all four of us—we are just the four—and I think my son will be glad to get home again, after a year in the East.”
“I doubt that not,” the girl replied, in an odd, quiet voice. “But,” she added, reaching up one ring-heavy hand to pull down a flower, only to pitch it aside when she had smelt it once—the Chinese rarely do that—“but he said he liked the East.”
“Oh! yes, indeed he does. We all do. Who could help it? But, after all, it is not quite the same thing as home, you know, especially to a man; and, besides, Basil has many friends whom he longs to see again. And”—adding this good-naturedly, anxious to interest the girl and smiling significantly—“we don’t want an old bachelor in our family, you know; we have but the one son.”
“‘Bachelor’—that is one English word I do not know.”
“Well, what I mean is that Basil must return home before all the eligible young ladies of his acquaintance forget him.”
“That means”—the girl’s voice hurt her throat—“he is going home to marry?”
“Well,” his mother admitted, “there is a young lady at home, I believe, who will be very glad to see him again, so I hope it will eventually come to that.”
Nang Ping laughed. And Mrs. Gregory thought, “How very oddly the Chinese laugh! It’s anything but gay.”
“And he will never come back?”—the strange creature said it with a smile.
“Oh, yes!” Hilda said, joining them, “some day, perhaps, when he has settled down, to take charge of this branch.”
“I’m afraid Basil is the sort of son who never settles down,” his mother said lightly. Nang Ping thought it most strange, and not nice, that the mother should say it at all, but she quite believed—now—that it was true. She rose, and clapped her hands for Ah Sing.
“If you will honor me by taking tea,” she said, and led the way to the highly decorated table where the ornate meal was elaborately laid, the blue-clad servants standing about it in a circle, as still as stones. At their young mistress’s approach they bowed almost to the ground—so low that their cues swept the grass, and one caught and tangled in a verbena bed. Mrs. Gregory suppressed a smile, but Hilda could not suppress a low giggle. But she tried to, and that much is to her credit.
“How jolly!” she cried, as they sat down to an accompaniment of many bows from the cousins. “How perfectly jolly!”
“Delightful!” agreed her mother. And Nang Ping, in spite of the choking misery in her throat and smarting in her breast, was pleased at their pleasure. She thought it sincere, and both Low Soong and Ah Wong, watching lynx-eyed and imperturbable, knew that it was. Low Soong was but an obliging mannequin this afternoon, Ah Wong but a lay figure, expressionless and almost motionless, but neither had missed a word, a look, or a meaning from the first, although Ah Wong had little English and Low Soong had none.