Mrs. Spring Fragrance
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.”
THE WISDOM OF THE NEW
I
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.”
II
Wou Sankwei stood behind his desk, busily entering figures in a long
yellow 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 in
America 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 it be 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 a matter 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.”
III
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 beyond her; 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 silk dresses, 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.