Mrs. Spring Fragrance
into the house very softly for fear of awakening the baby whom I had
left sleeping. As I stood in the hall I heard my husband’s voice in the
sitting-room. This is what he was saying:
“I am a lonely man. There is no companionship between me and my wife.”
“Nonsense!” answered Miss Moran, as I thought a little impatiently.
“Look over this paragraph, please, and tell me if you do not think it
would be well to have it follow after the one ending with the words
‘ultimate concord,’ in place of that beginning with ‘These great
principles.’”
“I cannot settle my mind upon the work tonight,” said James in a sort of
thick, tired voice. “I want to talk to you—to win your sympathy—your
love.”
I heard a chair pushed back. I knew Miss Moran had arisen.
“Good night!” I heard her say. “Much as I would like to see this work
accomplished, I shall come no more!”
“But, my God! You cannot throw the thing up at this late date.”
“I can and I will. Let me pass, sir.”
“If there were no millstone around my neck, you would not say, sir,’ in
that tone of voice.”
The next I heard was a heavy fall. Miss Moran had knocked my big husband
down.
I pushed open the door. Miss Moran, cool and collected, was pulling on
her gloves. James was struggling to his feet.
“Oh, Mrs. Carson!” exclaimed the former. “Your husband fell over the
stool. Wasn’t it stupid of him!”
* * * * *
James, of course, got his divorce six months after I deserted him. He
did not ask for the child, and I was allowed to keep it.
II
I was on my way to the waterfront, the baby in my arms. I was walking
quickly, for my state of mind was such that I could have borne twice my
burden and not have felt it. Just as I turned down a hill which led to
the docks, someone touched my arm and I heard a voice say:
“Pardon me, lady; but you have dropped your baby’s shoe!”
“Oh, yes!” I answered, taking the shoe mechanically from an outstretched
hand, and pushing on.
I could hear the waves lapping against the pier when the voice again
fell upon my ear.
“If you go any further, lady, you will fall into the water!”
My answer was a step forward.
A strong hand was laid upon my arm and I was swung around against my
will.
“Poor little baby,” went on the voice, which was unusually soft for a
man’s. “Let me hold him!”
I surrendered my child to the voice.
“Better come over where it is light and you can see where to walk!”
I allowed myself to be led into the light.
Thus I met Liu Kanghi, the Chinese who afterwards became my husband. I
followed him, obeyed him, trusted him from the very first. It never
occurred to me to ask myself what manner of man was succoring me. I only
knew that he was a man, and that I was being cared for as no one had
ever cared for me since my father died. And my grim determination to
leave a world which had been cruel to me, passed away—and in its place I
experienced a strange calmness and content.
“I am going to take you to the house of a friend of mine,” he said as he
preceded me up the hill, the baby in his arms.
“You will not mind living with Chinese people?” he added.
An electric light under which we were passing flashed across his face.
I did not recoil—not even at first. It may have been because he was
wearing American clothes, wore his hair cut, and, even to my American
eyes, appeared a good-looking young man—and it may have been because of
my troubles; but whatever it was I answered him, and I meant it: “I
would much rather live with Chinese than Americans.”
He did not ask me why, and I did not tell him until long afterwards the
story of my unhappy marriage, my desertion of the man who had made it
impossible for me to remain under his roof; the shame of the divorce,
the averted faces of those who had been my friends; the cruelty of the
world; the awful struggle for an existence for myself and child;
sickness followed by despair.
The Chinese family with which he placed me were kind, simple folk. The
father had been living in America for more than twenty years. The family
consisted of his wife, a grown daughter, and several small sons and
daughters, all of whom had been born in America. They made me very
welcome and adored the baby. Liu Jusong, the father, was a working
jeweler; but, because of an accident by which he had lost the use of one
hand, was partially incapacitated for work. Therefore, their family
depended for maintenance chiefly upon their kinsman, Liu Kanghi, the
Chinese who had brought me to them.
“We love much our cousin,” said one of the little girls to me one day.
“He teaches us so many games and brings us toys and sweets.”
As soon as I recovered from the attack of nervous prostration which laid
me low for over a month after being received into the Liu home, my mind
began to form plans for my own and my child’s maintenance. One morning I
put on my hat and jacket and told Mrs. Liu I would go down town and make
an application for work as a stenographer at the different typewriting
offices. She pleaded with me to wait a week longer—until, as she said,
“your limbs are more fortified with strength”; but I assured her that I
felt myself well able to begin to do for myself, and that I was anxious
to repay some little part of the expense I had been to them.
“For all we have done for you,” she answered, “our cousin has paid us
doublefold.”
“No money can recompense your kindness to myself and child,” I replied;
“but if it is your cousin to whom I am indebted for board and lodging,
all the greater is my anxiety to repay what I owe.”
When I returned to the house that evening, tired out with my quest for
work, I found Liu Kanghi tossing ball with little Fong in the front
porch.
Mrs. Liu bustled out to meet me and began scolding in motherly fashion.
“Oh, why you go down town before you strong enough? See! You look all
sick again!” said she.
She turned to Liu Kanghi and said something in Chinese. He threw the
ball back to the boy and came toward me, his face grave and concerned.
“Please be so good as to take my cousin’s advice,” he urged.
“I am well enough to work now,” I replied, “and I cannot sink deeper
into your debt.”
“You need not,” said he. “I know a way by which you can quickly pay me
off and earn a good living without wearing yourself out and leaving the
baby all day. My cousin tells me that you can create most beautiful
flowers on silk, velvet, and linen. Why not then you do some of that
work for my store? I will buy all you can make.”
“Oh!” I exclaimed, “I should be only too glad to do such work! But do
you really think I can earn a living in that way?”
“You certainly can,” was his reply. “I am requiring an embroiderer, and
if you will do the work for me I will try to pay you what it is worth.”
So I gladly gave up my quest for office work. I lived in the Liu Jusong
house and worked for Liu Kanghi. The days, weeks, and months passed
peacefully and happily. Artistic needlework had always been my favorite
occupation, and when it became a source both of remuneration and
pleasure, I began to feel that life was worth living, after all. I
watched with complacency my child grow amongst the little Chinese
children. My life’s experience had taught me that the virtues do not all
belong to the whites. I was interested in all that concerned the Liu
household, became acquainted with all their friends, and lost altogether
the prejudice against the foreigner in which I had been reared.
I had been living thus more than a year when, one afternoon as I was
walking home from Liu Kanghi’s store on Kearney Street, a parcel of
silks and floss under my arm, and my little girl trudging by my side, I
came face to face with James Carson.
“Well, now,” said he, planting himself in front of me, “you are looking
pretty well. How are you making out?”
I caught up my child and pushed past him without a word. When I reached
the Liu house I was trembling in every limb, so great was my dislike and
fear of the man who had been my husband.
About a week later a letter came to the house addressed to me. It read:
204 BUCHANAN STREET
DEAR MINNIE,—If you are willing to forget the past and make up, I am,
too. I was surprised to see you the other day, prettier than ever—and
much more of a woman. Let me know your mind at an early date.
Your affectionate husband,
JAMES
I ignored this letter, but a heavy fear oppressed me. Liu Kanghi, who
called the evening of the day I received it, remarked as he arose to
greet me that I was looking troubled, and hoped that it was not the
embroidery flowers.
“It is the shadow from my big hat,” I answered lightly. I was dressed
for going down town with Mrs. Liu who was preparing her eldest
daughter’s trousseau.
“Some day,” said Liu Kanghi earnestly, “I hope that you will tell to me
all that is in your heart and mind.”
I found comfort in his kind face.
“If you will wait until I return, I will tell you all tonight,” I
answered.
Strange as it may seem, although I had known Liu Kanghi now for more
than a year, I had had little talk alone with him, and all he knew about
me was what he had learned from Mrs. Liu; namely, that I was a divorced
woman who, when saved from self-destruction, was homeless and starving.
That night, however, after hearing my story, he asked me to be his wife.
He said: “I love you and would protect you from all trouble. Your child
shall be as my own.”
I replied: “I appreciate your love and kindness, but I cannot answer you
just yet. Be my friend for a little while longer.”
“Do you have for me the love feeling?” he asked.
“I do not know,” I answered truthfully.
Another letter came. It was written in a different spirit from the first
and contained a threat about the child.
There seemed but one course open to me. That was to leave my Chinese
friends. I did. With much sorrow and regret I bade them goodbye, and
took lodgings in a part of the city far removed from the outskirts of
Chinatown where my home had been with the Lius. My little girl pined for
her Chinese playmates, and I myself felt strange and lonely; but I knew
that if I wished to keep my child I could no longer remain with my
friends.
I still continued working for Liu Kanghi, and carried my embroidery to
his store in the evening after the little one had been put to sleep. He
usually escorted me back; but never asked to be allowed, and I never
invited him, to visit me, or even enter the house. I was a young woman,
and alone, and what I had suffered from scandal since I had left James
Carson had made me wise.
It was a cold, wet evening in November when he accosted me once again. I
had run over to a delicatessen store at the corner of the block where I
lived. As I stepped out, his burly figure loomed up in the gloom before
me. I started back with a little cry, but he grasped my arm and held it.
“Walk beside me quietly if you do not wish to attract attention,” said
he, “and by God, if you do, I will take the kid tonight!”
“You dare not!” I answered. “You have no right to her whatever. She is
my child and I have supported her for the last two years alone.”
“Alone! What will the judges say when I tell them about the Chinaman?”
“What will the judges say!” I echoed. “What can they say? Is there any
disgrace in working for a Chinese merchant and receiving pay for my
labor?”
“And walking in the evening with him, and living for over a year in a
house for which he paid the rent. Ha! ha! ha! Ha! ha! ha!”
His laugh was low and sneering. He had evidently been making enquiries