The Chinese women friends of Wou Pau Lin gossiped among themselves, and their gossip reached the ears of the American woman friend of Pau Lin’s husband. Since the days of her widowhood Mrs. Dean had devoted herself earnestly and whole-heartedly to the betterment of the condition and the uplifting of the young workingmen of Chinese race who came to America. Their appeal and need, as she had told her niece, was for closer acquaintance with the knowledge of the Western people, and that she had undertaken to give them, as far as she was able. The rewards and satisfactions of her work had been rich in some cases. Witness Wou Sankwei.
But the gossip had reached and much perturbed her. What was it that they said Wou Sankwei’s wife had declared—that her little son should not go to an American school nor learn the American learning. Such bigotry and narrow-mindedness! How sad to think of! Here was a man who had benefited and profited by living in America, anxious to have his son receive the benefits of a Western education—and here was this man’s wife opposing him with her ignorance and hampering him with her unreasonable jealousy.
Yes, she had heard that too. That Wou Sankwei’s wife was jealous—jealous—and her husband the most moral of men, the kindest and the most generous.
“Of what is she jealous?” she questioned Adah Charlton. “Other Chinese men’s wives, I have known, have had cause to be jealous, for it is true some of them are dreadfully immoral and openly support two or more wives. But not Wou Sankwei. And this little Pau Lin. She has everything that a Chinese woman could wish for.”
A sudden flash of intuition came to the girl, rendering her for a moment speechless. When she did find words, she said:
“Everything that a Chinese woman could wish for, you say. Auntie, I do not believe there is any real difference between the feelings of a Chinese wife and an American wife. Sankwei is treating Pau Lin as he would treat her were he living in China. Yet it cannot be the same to her as if she were in their own country, where he would not come in contact with American women. A woman is a woman with intuitions and perceptions, whether Chinese or American, whether educated or uneducated, and Sankwei’s wife must have noticed, even on the day of her arrival, her husband’s manner towards us, and contrasted it with his manner towards her. I did not realize this before you told me that she was jealous. I only wish I had. Now, for all her ignorance, I can see that the poor little thing became more of an American in that one half hour on the steamer than Wou Sankwei, for all your pride in him, has become in seven years.”
Mrs. Dean rested her head on her hand. She was evidently much perplexed.
“What you say may be, Adah,” she replied after a while; “but even so, it is Sankwei whom I have known so long, who has my sympathies. He has much to put up with. They have drifted seven years of life apart. There is no bond of interest or sympathy between them, save the boy. Yet never the slightest hint of trouble has come to me from his own lips. Before the coming of Pau Lin, he would confide in me every little thing that worried him, as if he were my own son. Now he maintains absolute silence as to his private affairs.”
“Chinese principles,” observed Adah, resuming her work. “Yes, I admit Sankwei has some puzzles to solve. Naturally, when he tries to live two lives—that of a Chinese and that of an American.”
“He is compelled to that,” retorted Mrs. Dean. “Is it not what we teach these Chinese boys—to become Americans? And yet, they are Chinese, and must, in a sense, remain so.”
Adah did not answer.
Mrs. Dean sighed. “Poor, dear children, both of them,” mused she. “I feel very low-spirited over the matter. I suppose you wouldn’t care to come down town with me. I should like to have another chat with Mrs. Wing Sing.”
“I shall be glad of the change,” replied Adah, laying down her brushes.
Rows of lanterns suspended from many balconies shed a mellow, moonshiny radiance. On the walls and doors were splashes of red paper inscribed with hieroglyphics. In the narrow streets, booths decorated with flowers, and banners and screens painted with immense figures of josses diverted the eye; while bands of musicians in gaudy silks, shrilled and banged, piped and fluted.
Everybody seemed to be out of doors—men, women, and children—and nearly all were in holiday attire. A couple of priests, in vivid scarlet and yellow robes, were kotowing before an altar covered with a rich cloth, embroidered in white and silver. Some Chinese students from the University of California stood looking on with comprehending, half-scornful interest; three girls lavishly dressed in colored silks, with their black hair plastered back from their faces and heavily bejewelled behind, chirped and chattered in a gilded balcony above them like birds in a cage. Little children, their hands full of half-moon-shaped cakes, were pattering about, with eyes, for all the hour, as bright as stars.
Chinatown was celebrating the Harvest Moon Festival, and Adah Charlton was glad that she had an opportunity to see something of the celebration before she returned East. Mrs. Dean, familiar with the Chinese people and the mazes of Chinatown, led her around fearlessly, pointing out this and that object of interest and explaining to her its meaning. Seeing that it was a gala night, she had abandoned her idea of calling upon the Chinese friend.
Just as they turned a corner leading up to the street where Wou Sankwei’s place of business and residence was situated, a pair of little hands grasped Mrs. Dean’s skirt and a delighted little voice piped: “See me! See me!” It was little Yen, resplendent in mauve-colored pantaloons and embroidered vest and cap. Behind him was a tall man whom both women recognized.
“How do you happen to have Yen with you?” Adah asked.
“His father handed him over to me as a sort of guide, counsellor, and friend. The little fellow is very amusing.”
“See over here,” interrupted Yen. He hopped over the alley to where the priests stood by the altar. The grown people followed him.
“What is that man chanting?” asked Adah. One of the priests had mounted a table, and with arms outstretched towards the moon sailing high in the heavens, seemed to be making some sort of an invocation.
Her friend listened for some moments before replying:
“It is a sort of apotheosis of the moon. I have heard it on a like occasion in Hankow, and the Chinese bonze who officiated gave me a translation. I almost know it by heart. May I repeat it to you?”
Mrs. Dean and Yen were examining the screen with the big josses.
“Yes, I should like to hear it,” said Adah.
“Then fix your eyes upon Diana.”
“Dear and lovely moon, as I watch thee pursuing thy solitary course o’er the silent heavens, heart-easing thoughts steal o’er me and calm my passionate soul. Thou art so sweet, so serious, so serene, that thou causest me to forget the stormy emotions which crash like jarring discords across the harmony of life, and bringest to my memory a voice scarce ever heard amidst the warring of the world—love’s low voice.
“Thou art so peaceful and so pure that it seemeth as if naught false or ignoble could dwell beneath thy gentle radiance, and that earnestness—even the earnestness of genius—must glow within the bosom of him on whose head thy beams fall like blessings.
“The magic of thy sympathy disburtheneth me of many sorrows, and thoughts, which, like the songs of the sweetest sylvan singer, are too dear and sacred for the careless ears of day, gush forth with unconscious eloquence when thou art the only listener.
“Dear and lovely moon, there are some who say that those who dwell in the sunlit fields of reason should fear to wander through the moonlit valleys of imagination; but I, who have ever been a pilgrim and a stranger in the realm of the wise, offer to thee the homage of a heart which appreciates that thou graciously shinest—even on the fool.”
“Is that really Chinese?” queried Adah.
“No doubt about it—in the main. Of course, I cannot swear to it word for word.”
“I should think that there would be some reference to the fruits of the earth—the harvest. I always understood that the Chinese religion was so practical.”
“Confucianism is. But the Chinese mind requires two religions. Even the most commonplace Chinese has yearnings for something above everyday life. Therefore, he combines with his Confucianism, Buddhism—or, in this country, Christianity.”
“Thank you for the information. It has given me a key to the mind of a certain Chinese in whom Auntie and I are interested.”
“And who is this particular Chinese in whom you are interested.”
“The father of the little boy who is with us tonight.”
“Wou Sankwei! Why, here he comes with Lee Tong Hay. Are you acquainted with Lee Tong Hay?”
“No, but I believe Aunt is. Plays and sings in vaudeville, doesn’t he?”
“Yes; he can turn himself into a German, a Scotchman, an Irishman, or an American, with the greatest ease, and is as natural in each character as he is as a Chinaman. Hello, Lee Tong Hay.”
“Hello, Mr. Stimson.”
While her friend was talking to the lively young Chinese who had answered his greeting, Adah went over to where Wou Sankwei stood speaking to Mrs. Dean.
“Yen begins school next week,” said her aunt, drawing her arm within her own. It was time to go home.
Adah made no reply. She was settling her mind to do something quite out of the ordinary. Her aunt often called her romantic and impractical. Perhaps she was.
VI
Auntie went out of town this morning,” said Adah Charlton. “I, ’phoned for you to come up, Sankwei because I wished to have a personal and private talk with you.”
“Any trouble, Miss Adah,” inquired the young merchant. “Anything I can do for you?”
Mrs. Dean often called upon him to transact little business matters for her or to consult with him on various phases of her social and family life.
“I don’t know what I would do without Sankwei’s head to manage for me,” she often said to her niece.
“No,” replied the girl, “you do too much for us. You always have, ever since I’ve known you. It’s a shame for us to have allowed you.”
“What are you talking about, Miss Adah? Since I came to America your aunt has made this house like a home to me, and, of course, I take an interest in it and like to do anything for it that a man can. I am always happy when I come here.”
“Yes, I know you are, poor old boy,” said Adah to herself.
Aloud she said: “I have something to say to you which I would like you to hear. Will you listen, Sankwei?”
“Of course I will,” he answered.
“Well then,” went on Adah, “I asked you to come here today because I have heard that there is trouble at your house and that your wife is jealous of you.”
“Would you please not talk about that, Miss Adah. It is a matter which you cannot understand.”
“You promised to listen and heed. I do understand, even though I cannot speak to your wife nor find out what she feels and thinks. I know you, Sankwei, and I can see just how the trouble has arisen. As soon as I heard that your wife was jealous I knew why she was jealous.”
“Why?” he queried.
“Because,” she answered unflinchingly, “you are thinking far too much of other women.”
“Too much of other women?” echoed Sankwei dazedly. “I did not know that.”
“No, you didn’t. That is why I am telling you. But you are, Sankwei. And you are becoming too Americanized. My aunt encourages you to become so, and she is a good woman, with the best and highest of motives; but we are all liable to make mistakes, and it is a mistake to try and make a Chinese man into an American—if he has a wife who is to remain as she always has been. It would be different if you were not married and were a man free to advance. But you are not.”
“What am I to do then, Miss Adah? You say that I think too much of other women besides her, and that I am too much Americanized. What can I do about it now that it is so?”
“First of all you must think of your wife. She has done for you what no American woman would do—came to you to be your wife, love you and serve you without even knowing you—took you on trust altogether. You must remember that for many years she was chained in a little cottage to care for your ailing and aged mother—a hard task indeed for a young girl. You must remember that you are the only man in the world to her, and that you have always been the only one that she has ever cared for. Think of her during all the years you are here, living a lonely hard-working life—a baby and an old woman her only companions. For this, she had left all her own relations. No American woman would have sacrificed herself so.
“And, now, what has she? Only you and her housework. The white woman reads, plays, paints, attends concerts, entertainments, lectures, absorbs herself in the work she likes, and in the course of her life thinks of and cares for a great many people. She has much to make her happy besides her husband. The Chinese woman has him only.”
“And her boy.”
“Yes, her boy,” repeated Adah Charlton, smiling in spite of herself, but lapsing into seriousness the moment after. “There’s another reason for you to drop the American for a time and go back to being a Chinese. For sake of your darling little boy, you and your wife should live together kindly and cheerfully. That is much more important for his welfare than that he should go to the American school and become Americanized.”
“It is my ambition to put him through both American and Chinese schools.”
“But what he needs most of all is a loving mother.”
“She loves him all right.”
“Then why do you not love her as you should? If I were married I would not think my husband loved me very much if he preferred spending his evenings in the society of other women than in mine, and was so much more polite and deferential to other women than he was to me. Can’t you understand now why your wife is jealous?”
Wou Sankwei stood up.
“Goodbye,” said Adah Charlton, giving him her hand.
“Goodbye,” said Wou Sankwei.
Had he been a white man, there is no doubt that Adah Charlton’s little lecture would have had a contrary effect from what she meant it to have. At least, the lectured would have been somewhat cynical as to her sincerity. But Wou Sankwei was not a white man. He was a Chinese, and did not see any reason for insincerity in a matter as important as that which Adah Charlton had brought before him. He felt himself exiled from Paradise, yet it did not occur to him to question, as a white man would have done, whether the angel with the flaming sword had authority for her action. Neither did he lay the blame for things gone wrong upon any woman. He simply made up his mind to make the best of what was.
VII
It had been a peaceful week in the Wou household—the week before little Yen was to enter the American school. So peaceful indeed that Wou Sankwei had begun to think that his wife was reconciled to his wishes with regard to the boy. He whistled softly as he whittled away at a little ship he was making for him. Adah Charlton’s suggestions had set coursing a train of thought which had curved around Pau Lin so closely that he had decided that, should she offer any further opposition to the boy’s attending the American school, he would not insist upon it. After all, though the American language might be useful during this century, the wheel of the world would turn again, and then it might not be necessary at all. Who could tell? He came very near to expressing himself thus to Pau Lin.
And now it was the evening before the morning that little Yen was to march away to the American school. He had been excited all day over the prospect, and to calm him, his father finally told him to read aloud a little story from the Chinese book which he had given him on his first birthday in America and which he had taught him to read. Obediently the little fellow drew his stool to his mother’s side and read in his childish sing-song the story of an irreverent lad who came to great grief because he followed after the funeral of his grandfather and regaled himself on the crisply roasted chickens and loose-skinned oranges which were left on the grave for the feasting of the spirit.
Wou Sankwei laughed heartily over the story. It reminded him of some of his own boyish escapades. But Pau Lin stroked silently the head of the little reader, and seemed lost in reverie.
A whiff of fresh salt air blew in from the Bay. The mother shivered, and Wou Sankwei, looking up from the fastening of the boat’s rigging, bade Yen close the door. As the little fellow came back to his mother’s side, he stumbled over her knee.
“Oh, poor mother!” he exclaimed with quaint apology. “’Twas the stupid feet, not Yen.”
“So,” she replied, curling her arm around his neck, “’tis always the feet. They are to the spirit as the cocoon to the butterfly. Listen, and I will sing you the song of the Happy Butterfly.”
She began singing the old Chinese ditty in a fresh birdlike voice. Wou Sankwei, listening, was glad to hear her. He liked having everyone around him cheerful and happy. That had been the charm of the Dean household.
The ship was finished before the little family retired. Yen examined it, critically at first, then exultingly. Finally, he carried it away and placed it carefully in the closet where he kept his kites, balls, tops, and other treasures. “We will set sail with it tomorrow after school,” said he to his father, hugging gratefully that father’s arm.
Sankwei rubbed the little round head. The boy and he were great chums.
What was that sound which caused Sankwei to start from his sleep? It was just on the border land of night and day, an unusual time for Pau Lin to be up. Yet, he could hear her voice in Yen’s room. He raised himself on his elbow and listened. She was softly singing a nursery song about some little squirrels and a huntsman. Sankwei wondered at her singing in that way at such an hour. From where he lay he could just perceive the child’s cot and the silent child figure lying motionless in the dim light. How very motionless! In a moment Sankwei was beside it.
The empty cup with its dark dregs told the tale.
The thing he loved the best in all the world—the darling son who had crept into his heart with his joyousness and beauty—had been taken from him—by her who had given.
Sankwei reeled against the wall. The kneeling figure by the cot arose. The face of her was solemn and tender.
“He is saved,” smiled she, “from the Wisdom of the New.”
In grief too bitter for words the father bowed his head upon his hands.
“Why! Why!” queried Pau Lin, gazing upon him bewilderedly. “The child is happy. The butterfly mourns not o’er the shed cocoon.”
Sankwei put up his shutters and wrote this note to Adah Charlton:
I have lost my boy through an accident. I am returning to China with my wife whose health requires a change.
“ITS WAVERING IMAGE”
I
Pan was a half white, half Chinese girl. Her mother was dead, and Pan lived with her father who kept an Oriental Bazaar on Dupont Street. All her life had Pan lived in Chinatown, and if she were different in any sense from those around her, she gave little thought to it. It was only after the coming of Mark Carson that the mystery of her nature began to trouble her.
They met at the time of the boycott of the Sam Yups by the See Yups. After the heat and dust and unsavoriness of the highways and byways of Chinatown, the young reporter who had been sent to find a story, had stepped across the threshold of a cool, deep room, fragrant with the odor of dried lilies and sandalwood, and found Pan.
She did not speak to him, nor he to her. His business was with the spectacled merchant, who, with a pointed brush, was making up accounts in brown paper books and rolling balls in an abacus box. As to Pan, she always turned from whites. With her father’s people she was natural and at home; but in the presence of her mother’s she felt strange and constrained, shrinking from their curious scrutiny as she would from the sharp edge of a sword.
When Mark Carson returned to the office, he asked some questions concerning the girl who had puzzled him. What was she? Chinese or white? The city editor answered him, adding: “She is an unusually bright girl, and could tell more stories about the Chinese than any other person in this city—if she would.”
Mark Carson had a determined chin, clever eyes, and a tone to his voice which easily won for him the confidence of the unwary. In the reporter’s room he was spoken of as “a man who would sell his soul for a story.”
After Pan’s first shyness had worn off, he found her bewilderingly frank and free with him; but he had all the instincts of a gentleman save one, and made no ordinary mistake about her. He was Pan’s first white friend. She was born a Bohemian, exempt from the conventional restrictions imposed upon either the white or Chinese woman; and the Oriental who was her father mingled with his affection for his child so great a respect for and trust in the daughter of the dead white woman, that everything she did or said was right to him. And Pan herself! A white woman might pass over an insult; a Chinese woman fail to see one. But Pan! He would be a brave man indeed who offered one to childish little Pan.
All this Mark Carson’s clear eyes perceived, and with delicate tact and subtlety he taught the young girl that, all unconscious until his coming, she had lived her life alone. So well did she learn this lesson that it seemed at times as if her white self must entirely dominate and trample under foot her Chinese.
Meanwhile, in full trust and confidence, she led him about Chinatown, initiating him into the simple mystery and history of many things, for which she, being of her father’s race, had a tender regard and pride. For her sake he was received as a brother by the yellow-robed priest in the joss house, the Astrologer of Prospect Place, and other conservative Chinese. The Water Lily Club opened its doors to him when she knocked, and the Sublimely Pure Brothers’ organization admitted him as one of its honorary members, thereby enabling him not only to see but to take part in a ceremony in which no American had ever before participated. With her by his side, he was welcomed wherever he went. Even the little Chinese women in the midst of their babies, received him with gentle smiles, and the children solemnly munched his candies and repeated nursery rhymes for his edification.
He enjoyed it all, and so did Pan. They were both young and light-hearted. And when the afternoon was spent, there was always that high room open to the stars, with its China bowls full of flowers and its big colored lanterns, shedding a mellow light.
Sometimes there was music. A Chinese band played three evenings a week in the gilded restaurant beneath them, and the louder the gongs sounded and the fiddlers fiddled, the more delighted was Pan. Just below the restaurant was her father’s bazaar. Occasionally Mun You would stroll upstairs and inquire of the young couple if there was anything needed to complete their felicity, and Pan would answer: “Thou only.” Pan was very proud of her Chinese father. “I would rather have a Chinese for a father than a white man,” she often told Mark Carson. The last time she had said that he had asked whom she would prefer for a husband, a white man or a Chinese. And Pan, for the first time since he had known her, had no answer for him.
II
It was a cool, quiet evening, after a hot day. A new moon was in the sky.
“How beautiful above! How unbeautiful below!” exclaimed Mark Carson involuntarily.
He and Pan had been gazing down from their open retreat into the lantern-lighted, motley-thronged street beneath them.
“Perhaps it isn’t very beautiful,” replied Pan, “but it is here I live. It is my home.” Her voice quivered a little.
He leaned towards her suddenly and grasped her hands.
“Pan,” he cried, “you do not belong here. You are white—white.”
“No! no!” protested Pan.
“You are,” he asserted. “You have no right to be here.”
“I was born here,” she answered, “and the Chinese people look upon me as their own.”
“But they do not understand you,” he went on. “Your real self is alien to them. What interest have they in the books you read—the thoughts you think?”
“They have an interest in me,” answered faithful Pan. “Oh, do not speak in that way any more.”
“But I must,” the young man persisted. “Pan, don’t you see that you have got to decide what you will be—Chinese or white? You cannot be both.”
“Hush! Hush!” bade Pan. “I do not love you when you talk to me like that.”
A little Chinese boy brought tea and saffron cakes. He was a picturesque little fellow with a quaint manner of speech. Mark Carson jested merrily with him, while Pan holding a tea-bowl between her two small hands laughed and sipped.
When they were alone again, the silver stream and the crescent moon became the objects of their study. It was a very beautiful evening.
After a while Mark Carson, his hand on Pan’s shoulder, sang:
Listening to that irresistible voice singing her heart away, the girl broke down and wept. She was so young and so happy.
“Look up at me,” bade Mark Carson. “Oh, Pan! Pan! Those tears prove that you are white.”
Pan lifted her wet face.
“Kiss me, Pan,” said he. It was the first time.
Next morning Mark Carson began work on the special-feature article which he had been promising his paper for some weeks.
III
Cursed be his ancestors,” bayed Man You.
He cast a paper at his daughter’s feet and left the room.
Startled by her father’s unwonted passion, Pan picked up the paper, and in the clear passionless light of the afternoon read that which forever after was blotted upon her memory.
“Betrayed! Betrayed! Betrayed to be a betrayer!”
It burnt red hot; agony unrelieved by words, unassuaged by tears.
So till evening fell. Then she stumbled up the dark stairs which led to the high room open to the stars and tried to think it out. Someone had hurt her. Who was it? She raised her eyes. There shone: “Its Wavering Image.” It helped her to lucidity. He had done it. Was it unconsciously dealt—that cruel blow? Ah, well did he know that the sword which pierced her through others, would carry with it to her own heart, the pain of all those others. None knew better than he that she, whom he had called “a white girl, a white woman,” would rather that her own naked body and soul had been exposed, than that things, sacred and secret to those who loved her, should be cruelly unveiled and ruthlessly spread before the ridiculing and uncomprehending foreigner. And knowing all this so well, so well, he had carelessly sung her heart away, and with her kiss upon his lips, had smilingly turned and stabbed her. She, who was of the race that remembers.
IV
Mark Carson, back in the city after an absence of two months, thought of Pan. He would see her that very evening. Dear little Pan, pretty Pan, clever Pan, amusing Pan; Pan, who was always so frankly glad to have him come to her; so eager to hear all that he was doing; so appreciative, so inspiring, so loving. She would have forgotten that article by now. Why should a white woman care about such things? Her true self was above it all. Had he not taught her that during the weeks in which they had seen so much of one another? True, his last lesson had been a little harsh, and as yet he knew not how she had taken it; but even if its roughness had hurt and irritated, there was a healing balm, a wizard’s oil which none knew so well as he how to apply.
But for all these soothing reflections, there was an undercurrent of feeling which caused his steps to falter on his way to Pan. He turned into Portsmouth Square and took a seat on one of the benches facing the fountain erected in memory of Robert Louis Stevenson. Why had Pan failed to answer the note he had written telling her of the assignment which would keep him out of town for a couple of months and giving her his address? Would Robert Louis Stevenson have known why? Yes—and so did Mark Carson. But though Robert Louis Stevenson would have boldly answered himself the question, Mark Carson thrust it aside, arose, and pressed up the hill.
“I knew they would not blame you, Pan!”
“Yes.”
“And there was no word of you, dear. I was careful about that, not only for your sake, but for mine.”
Silence.
“It is mere superstition anyway. These things have got to be exposed and done away with.”
Still silence.
Mark Carson felt strangely chilled. Pan was not herself tonight. She did not even look herself. He had been accustomed to seeing her in American dress. Tonight she wore the Chinese costume. But for her clear-cut features she might have been a Chinese girl. He shivered.
“Pan,” he asked, “why do you wear that dress?”
Within her sleeves Pan’s small hands struggled together; but her face and voice were calm.
“Because I am a Chinese woman,” she answered.
“You are not,” cried Mark Carson, fiercely. “You cannot say that now, Pan. You are a white woman—white. Did your kiss not promise me that?”
“A white woman!” echoed Pan her voice rising high and clear to the stars above them. “I would not be a white woman for all the world. You are a white man. And what is a promise to a white man!”
When she was lying low, the element of Fire having raged so fiercely within her that it had almost shriveled up the childish frame, there came to the house of Man You a little toddler who could scarcely speak. Climbing upon Pan’s couch, she pressed her head upon the sick girl’s bosom. The feel of that little head brought tears.
“Lo!” said the mother of the toddler. “Thou wilt bear a child thyself some day, and all the bitterness of this will pass away.”
And Pan, being a Chinese woman, was comforted.