THE LADY-HELP FROM HOME—THE JAP—THE AMERICAN GIRL—THE GERMAN WOMAN—THE
CHINAMAN WING LONG—OTHER CHINAMEN.
I think I could write volumes on the miseries and discomforts inflicted
by the ignorant and pretentious lady-help. Not for a moment would I
say one word to wound the real honest workers, who can, however, be
recognised at once, and I ought certainly to know, having been most
devotedly helped and nursed through long years of ill-health by one
of the best. But I speak of those women who have reached the age of
maturity, and yet have never put enough earnestness into anything to
learn to do even one single trifle well, and who tell you with an air,
as though it were something to be proud of, that they have never done
any work, but are quite willing to learn.
It was unfortunately one of this helpless class that was sent out to
me, and though she had undertaken to cook and bake in good style for
her £70, she had not troubled herself to learn the rudiments of either
cooking or baking. She told me, with a ladylike smile, that she had
thought she would soon be able to pick it up from me! She had had some
time before leaving England, when she might have taken lessons; but as
far as I could learn, she spent the time in making a round of farewell
visits.
She considered herself eminently respectable and superior, and, I
believe, thought that these virtues alone were worth her pay to any
family. Before long, too, the ideas of equality, which she absorbed in
a perfectly undigested state, went to her head, and made her take all
kinds of liberties, which Americans born and bred would not dream of.
It is certainly a fact that ignorant aliens, taking up these new ideas,
have a most offensive way, quite their own, of interpreting them.
We bore with muddle and confusion and fatigue for some seven months,
longing to be able to dismiss her, but uneasy at the notion of her
being adrift so far from home. We might have spared ourselves, as it so
often happens, for she came one day to tell me, with a proud toss of
the head, that she had found another place that would suit her better.
So she went, leaving us thankful to escape from her on any terms.
Then we tried a Jap, who was also unsuccessful, and we returned to an
American girl. This time we were more fortunate; she was a middle-aged
woman, capable and willing, and fortunately also fond of reading; so
that we were able, by lending her plenty of books, to keep the effects
of the loneliness at bay for some time.
She thoroughly enjoyed all the most up-to-date books, and we often
laughed among ourselves at the comicalness of Sarah Grand, Grant Allen,
Ibsen, and even Mrs. Humphry Ward in the kitchen. She had decided views
about all she read, and had, indeed, the intention, so she told us, of
writing something for the public herself when she could get leisure.
However, this peaceful time came also to an end. In eight months or
so she wearied of the loneliness and wanted to return to town and her
friends.
Our next fate was a German woman. I believe she was a little out of her
mind; she certainly nearly drove us out of ours. She was an enormous,
coarse-looking woman, and often told us how she had been a keeper in
one of the large State asylums for many years; and, oh, how we pitied
those poor lunatics at her mercy!
My husband was ill with an abscess in the throat while she was with us,
and for some wicked reason of her own, whenever anything was put on the
stove, such as beef tea or hot water for poultices, she regularly took
it off again as soon as we left the kitchen.
Finally we telephoned our distress to our friend in town, and he
advised a Chinaman. We agreed, and by the evening train out came a
bright, smiling little man called Wing Long, and we found at once
comfort and peace.
He was a beautiful cook, careful and economical, and very proud of
making all his dainty cakes and sweets for much less than we could have
bought them in town.
In the evenings, when we were all quietly reading, he would come in
suddenly, carrying two big dishes piled up with different dainties,
saying, “Coss one dollar in San Miguel, makee him fifty cents here,”
and plump them down in the middle of the table for us to admire. If
friends were coming to supper, he would work so hard, and would make
innumerable dishes and dainties that I had not dreamt of ordering, and
when the evening arrived, would come bustling in with all these grand
“plats” till we could hardly keep from smiling at the grand show. His
idea was not so much hospitality, I fear, as a great desire to make an
impression upon strangers of the grand way in which we lived. He would
say privately afterwards, “Dey no see notings likie dat, dey no eatie
such our dinner; oh, no!”
One drawback to all his virtues there had to be, of course. He had
told me, as the months passed and he still remained with us, that
his friends in Chinatown were much surprised; for, he said, looking
intently at me, he was called “Clazey Jim,” and had never stayed long
anywhere. This made us a little uneasy, though nothing could have
been more reassuring and sane than his usual cheery, diligent ways.
But once or twice he did alarm me slightly, when he would launch out
about his hopes of some day becoming a Buddhist priest, when he should
have saved enough money to take as an offering to the priesthood. In
speaking of this he became quite excited, joining his hands together as
though in prayer and raising them above his head, turning up his eyes,
and telling me all kinds of wonderful legends about miracles that had
happened to believers in Buddha.
He was quite embarrassingly generous. When he went into town for a
holiday, he would return in high spirits. He was always in a perfect
fever to get his bundle of purchases undone and to show us all he had
bought. He would drag out a small pair of embroidered shoes for himself
and show them to us; then perhaps a silk jacket or a tasselled girdle,
such as they wear round the waist. Always, too, there were boxes and
bottles of uncanny-looking medicine, of which he generally took several
doses indiscriminately on the spot to prove to us how strong was his
faith in their virtue; then, with a flourish, he would bring out a
dainty parcel and hand it to me with a kind little word, and some
curiosity for the boys, or often a piece of pretty porcelain for the
house.
It was too much, but we did not know how to stop it. His delight over
all this was quite pathetic. So far in our experiences he is the only
lovable Chinaman we have come across, and he proved to be out of his
mind! For seven months all went well, however, and we felt that the
five dollars a month extra in wage was money well spent for such
comfort and order; then the friendly, kindly spirit of our little Wing
Long seemed to cloud over, and we determined to send him away for a
rest and a holiday. We still did not understand what was amiss.
He was to leave us the following morning, and had installed Chong Woh
as _locum tenens_, when that night a violent opium frenzy seized him,
giving us all a good fright, and keeping us awake and on the watch most
of the night, lest he should set fire to the house or carry out some
other mad freak.
In the morning he seemed quite sane, and painfully humble and
broken-spirited. There was nothing for it, however, but that he must
go. We had heard too much about the opium habit among Chinamen to dream
of trying to overcome it. We heard, too, from Chong Woh that Wing had
been in the asylum several times; so it seemed a hopeless business.
We none of us liked the _locum tenens_ Wing had provided, and hearing
of a Chinaman who was leaving a neighbouring ranch where the family had
gone East, we engaged him. He was a tall, fat man, with a very stately
way of carrying himself, and from his airs most evidently considered
himself a “beau.” It was in the month of January when he was with us,
and in the early mornings it was rather too cold to be comfortable
with his thin white cotton jacket only, so he wore over this a wadded
sleeveless jacket made of soft Chinese silk of a most lovely golden
bronze colour, which made him look very grand indeed.
Like Wing, too, he seemed very generous, and had not been with us
long when he produced from somewhere a large jar of very good Chinese
preserved ginger, which he brought in upon a tray, together with a
little Chinese box of “welly fine tea.”
It was given with a gracious, lordly air, and I accepted it with the
finest manner and the best compliments I could muster. Again in a few
days he brought a sweet-scented Chinese lily, growing in a bowl, which
I knew he had been tending in his bedroom till it should bloom; and a
packet of his quaint writing-paper, which I had admired one day when
I chanced to see him writing letters, he brought with the same grave
courtesy.
But he had already been some months in the country, and soon wearied
of the quiet of our place. He came one day and told me that he had
urgent business to attend to in China, and must leave us and sail very
shortly for his Celestial fatherland. So he went, and every time I go
to the little Chinese store now I see him there, and we smile in a
most friendly fashion to each other, while he serves me and asks if
we are all well, and neither of us is so ill-bred as to refer to that
“business in China”!
During the winter months the town of San Miguel is quite crowded
with Eastern visitors; all the hotels and boarding-houses are full,
and every Chinaman who is worth his salt, is engaged, at a good wage
too. The only men who are at liberty are the blacklegs, the gamblers,
and opium fiends. So, though our friend at the agency bureau did his
very best for us, he could not save us from such a time of worry
and annoyance as I can hardly bear to look back upon. We were all
over-worked, tired out, and had illness in the house as well.
For three months we had such a succession of Chinese blackguards as
makes my flesh creep to remember. Some of them stayed one day, some two
or three, some a week; but we became positively ashamed of driving into
El Barco station, taking in and bringing out different Chinamen.
It is a drive of ten miles too, there and back, and added no small
bother and waste of time to the rest of the discomforts. Then there
were gaps between, when the expected Chinaman did not arrive, and the
buggy came home empty; and we would turn from the verandah where we had
been anxiously watching, with an opera-glass, to see if there were one
figure or two in the buggy, turn into the house with the knowledge that
we must cook and bake and sweep for ourselves as best we could until
better times dawned.
Alas, then, for a charwoman within call, however inefficient! It would
be something, at least, to get the sweeping and washing-up done.
(_To be continued._)
[Illustration]
“OUR HERO.”
A TALE OF THE FRANCO-ENGLISH WAR NINETY YEARS AGO.
BY AGNES GIBERNE, Author of “Sun, Moon and Stars,” “The Girl at the
Dower House,” etc.