Mrs. Spring Fragrance
Ah! The Scotch woman grasped gratefully the old Chinese woman’s hand.
She could not speak for the tickle in her throat.
Then spake A Tae: “Teacher, forgive me,” besought she.
And the teacher smiled her answer.
A number of men and women came forward, looked into the teacher’s face,
thanked her for past kindnesses, and expressed their confidence in her.
“McLeod, Jean,” declared an old man, “you are a hundred women good.”
Which was the highest compliment that Jean McLeod had ever received.
“You are wrong, mother!” said she, turning with a beaming face to old
Sien Tau. “This is the happiest day I have known.”
Explained the father of the babe: “The gods, seeing my unworthiness,
took from me to give to you.”
And Little Me, straggling to the teacher’s side, piped in the language
she herself had taught him:
“I have one brother. I love him all over. You say baby boy best gift, so
I give him to you when my father and mother not see. Little Me give
better than Lee Chu and Hom Hing.”
It was some time before the tumult occasioned by Little Me’s boastful
but sweet confession subsided. It had been heard by all, but was
understood wholly by none save the teacher.
* * * * *
That when no watchful eye was there to see, the baby had been carried in
Little Me’s sturdy arms from under the home roof to the teacher’s
tenement room, was made plain to everyone by the child himself. But it
devolved upon Miss McLeod, in order to save her little scholar from
obviously justifiable paternal wrath, to explain his reason for the
kidnapping, and this she did so clearly and eloquently that the father,
raising his first born to his knee, declared in English: “I proud of
him. He Number One scholar,” while the mother fondly smiled.
Little Me looked at the baby in his mother’s lap, and then at the
teacher. His eyes filled with tears.
“You not like what I give you well enough to keep him,” he sobbed.
“Yes, yes,” consoled Miss McLeod. “I like him so well that I put him
away in my heart where I keep the baby of my story. Don’t you remember?
That was what the Father of the story gave the baby for. To be kept in
the people’s hearts after he had gone back to Him!”
“Ah, yes,” responded the child, his face brightening. “You keep my
brother in your heart and I keep him in the house with me and my father
and mother. That best of all!”
THE STORY OF ONE WHITE WOMAN
WHO MARRIED A CHINESE
I
Why did I marry Liu Kanghi, a Chinese? Well, in the first place, because
I loved him; in the second place, because I was weary of working,
struggling and fighting with the world; in the third place, because my
child needed a home.
My first husband was an American fifteen years older than myself. For a
few months I was very happy with him. I had been a working girl—a
stenographer. A home of my own filled my heart with joy. It was a
pleasure to me to wait upon James, cook him nice little dinners and
suppers, read to him little pieces from the papers and magazines, and
sing and play to him my little songs and melodies. And for a few months
he seemed to be perfectly contented. I suppose I was a novelty to him,
he having lived a bachelor existence until he was thirty-four. But it
was not long before he left off smiling at my little jokes, grew restive
and cross when I teased him, and when I tried to get him to listen to a
story in which I was interested and longed to communicate, he would bid
me not bother him. I was quick to see the change and realize that there
was a gulf of differences between us. Nevertheless, I loved and was
proud of him. He was considered a very bright and well-informed man, and
although his parents had been uneducated working people he had himself
been through the public schools. He was also an omnivorous reader of
socialistic and new-thought literature. Woman suffrage was one of his
particular hobbies. Whenever I had a magazine around he would pick it up
and read aloud to me the columns of advice to women who were ambitious
to become comrades to men and walk shoulder to shoulder with their
brothers. Once I ventured to remark that much as I admired a column of
men keeping step together, yet men and women thus ranked would, to my
mind, make a very unbeautiful and disorderly spectacle. He frowned and
answered that I did not understand him, and was too frivolous. He would
often draw my attention to newspaper reports concerning women of marked
business ability and enterprise. Once I told him that I did not admire
clever business women, as I had usually found them, and so had other
girls of my acquaintance, not nearly so kind-hearted, generous, and
helpful as the humble drudges of the world—the ordinary working women.
His answer to this was that I was jealous and childish.
But, in spite of his unkind remarks and evident contempt for me, I
wished to please him. He was my husband and I loved him. Many an
afternoon, when through with my domestic duties, did I spend in trying
to acquire a knowledge of labor politics, socialism, woman suffrage, and
baseball, the things in which he was most interested.
It was hard work, but I persevered until one day. It was about six
months after our marriage. My husband came home a little earlier than
usual, and found me engaged in trying to work out problems in
subtraction and addition. He laughed sneeringly. “Give it up, Minnie,”
said he. “You weren’t built for anything but taking care of kids. Gee!
But there’s a woman at our place who has a head for figures that makes
her worth over a hundred dollars a month. _Her_ husband would have a
chance to develop himself.”
This speech wounded me. I knew it was James’ ambition to write a book on
social reform.
The next day, unknown to my husband, I called upon the wife of the man
who had employed me as stenographer before I was married, and inquired
of her whether she thought I could get back my old position.
“But, my dear,” she exclaimed, “your husband is receiving a good salary!
Why should you work?”
I told her that my husband had in mind the writing of a book on social
reform, and I wished to help him in his ambition by earning some money
towards its publication.
“Social reform!” she echoed. “What sort of social reformer is he who
would allow his wife to work when he is well able to support her!”
She bade me go home and think no more of an office position. I was
disappointed. I said: “Oh! I wish I could earn some money for James. If
I were earning money, perhaps he would not think me so stupid.”
“Stupid, my dear girl! You are one of the brightest little women I
know,” kindly comforted Mrs. Rogers.
But I knew differently and went on to tell her of my inability to figure
with my husband how much he had made on certain sales, of my lack of
interest in politics, labor questions, woman suffrage, and world
reformation. “Oh!” I cried, “I am a narrow-minded woman. All I care for
is for my husband to love me and be kind to me, for life to be pleasant
and easy, and to be able to help a wee bit the poor and sick around me.”
Mrs. Rogers looked very serious as she told me that there were
differences of opinion as to what was meant by “narrow-mindedness,” and
that the majority of men had no wish to drag their wives into all their
business perplexities, and found more comfort in a woman who was unlike
rather than like themselves. Only that morning her husband had said to
her: “I hate a woman who tries to get into every kink of a man’s mind,
and who must be forever at his elbow meddling with all his affairs.”
I went home comforted. Perhaps after a while James would feel and see as
did Mr. Rogers. Vain hope!
My child was six weeks old when I entered business life again as
stenographer for Rutherford & Rutherford. My salary was fifty dollars a
month—more than I had ever earned before, and James was well pleased,
for he had feared that it would be difficult for me to obtain a paying
place after having been out of practise for so long. This fifty dollars
paid for all our living expenses, with the exception of rent, so that
James would be able to put by his balance against the time when his book
would be ready for publication.
He began writing his book, and Miss Moran the young woman bookkeeper at
his place collaborated with him. They gave three evenings a week to the
work, sometimes four. She came one evening when the baby was sick and
James had gone for the doctor. She looked at the child with the curious
eyes of one who neither loved nor understood children. “There is no
necessity for its being sick,” said she. “There must be an error
somewhere.” I made no answer, so she went on: “Sin, sorrow, and sickness
all mean the same thing. We have no disease that we do not deserve, no
trouble which we do not bring upon ourselves.”
I did not argue with her. I knew that I could not; but as I looked at
her standing there in the prime of her life and strength,
broad-shouldered, masculine-featured, and, as it seemed to me,
heartless, I disliked her more than I had ever disliked anyone before.
My own father had died after suffering for many years from a terrible
malady, contracted while doing his duty as a physician and surgeon. And
my little innocent child! What had sin to do with its measles?
When James came in she discussed with him the baseball game which had
been played that afternoon, and also a woman suffrage meeting which she
had attended the evening before.
After she had gone he seemed to be quite exhilarated. “That’s a great
woman!” he remarked.
“I do not think so!” I answered him. “One who would take from the
sorrowful and suffering their hope of a happier existence hereafter, and
add to their trials on earth by branding them as objects of aversion and
contempt, is not only not a great woman but, to my mind, no woman at
all.”
He picked up a paper and walked into another room.
“What do you think now?” I cried after him.
“What would be the use of my explaining to you?” he returned. “You
wouldn’t understand.”
How my heart yearned over my child those days! I would sit before the
typewriter and in fancy hear her crying for her mother. Poor, sick
little one, watched over by a strange woman, deprived of her proper
nourishment. While I took dictation from my employer I thought only of
her. The result, of course, was, that I lost my place. My husband showed
his displeasure at this in various ways, and as the weeks went by and I
was unsuccessful in obtaining another position, he became colder and
more indifferent. He was neither a drinking nor an abusive man; but he
could say such cruel and cutting things that I would a hundred times
rather have been beaten and ill-used than compelled, as I was, to hear
them. He even made me feel it a disgrace to be a woman and a mother.
Once he said to me: “If you had had ambition of the right sort you would
have perfected yourself in your stenography so that you could have taken
cases in court. There’s a little fortune in that business.”
I was acquainted with a woman stenographer who reported divorce cases
and who had described to me the work, so I answered: “I would rather die
of hunger, my baby in my arms, then report divorce proceedings under the
eyes of men in a court house.”
“Other women, as good as you, have done and are doing it,” he retorted.
“Other women, perhaps better than I, have done and are doing it,” I
replied, “but all women are not alike. I am not that kind.”
“That’s so,” said he. “Well, they are the kind who are up to date. You
are behind the times.”
One evening I left James and Miss Moran engaged with their work and went
across the street to see a sick friend. When I returned I let myself