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.
Upon the child both parents lavished affection. He was a quaint, serious
little fellow, small for his age and requiring much care. Although
naturally much attached to his mother, he became also very fond of his
father who, more like an elder brother than a parent, delighted in
playing all kinds of games with him, and whom he followed about like a
little dog. Adah Charlton took a great fancy to him and sketched him in
many different poses for a book on Chinese children which she was
illustrating.
“He will be strong enough to go to school next year,” said Sankwei to
her one day. “Later on I intend to put him through an American college.”
“What does your wife think of a Western training for him?” inquired the
young girl.
“I have not consulted her about the matter,” he answered. “A woman does
not understand such things.”
“A woman, Mr. Wou,” declared Adah, “understands such things as well as
and sometimes better than a man.”
“An, American woman, maybe,” amended Sankwei; “but not a Chinese.”
From the first Pau Lin had shown no disposition to become Americanized,
and Sankwei himself had not urged it.
“I do appreciate the advantages of becoming westernized,” said he to
Mrs. Dean whose influence and interest in his studies in America had
helped him to become what he was, “but it is not as if she had come here
as I came, in her learning days. The time for learning with her is
over.”
One evening, upon returning from his store, he found the little Yen
sobbing pitifully.
“What!” he teased, “A man—and weeping.”
The boy tried to hide his face, and as he did so, the father noticed
that his little hand was red and swollen. He strode into the kitchen
where Pau Lin was preparing the evening meal.
“The little child who is not strong—is there anything he could do to
merit the infliction of pain?” he questioned.
Pau Lin faced her husband. “Yes, I think so,” said she.
“What?”
“I forbade him to speak the language of the white women, and he
disobeyed me. He had words in that tongue with the white boy from the
next street.”
Sankwei was astounded.
“We are living in the white man’s country,” said he. “The child will
have to learn the white man’s language.”
“Not my child,” answered Pau Lin.
Sankwei turned away from her. “Come, little one,” said he to his son,
“we will take supper tonight at the restaurant, and afterwards Yen shall
see a show.”
Pau Lin laid down the dish of vegetables which she was straining and
took from a hook as small wrap which she adjusted around the boy.
“Now go with thy father,” said she sternly.
But the boy clung to her—to the hand which had punished him. “I will sup
with you,” he cried, “I will sup with you.”
“Go,” repeated his mother, pushing him from her. And as the two passed
over the threshold, she called to the father: “Keep the wrap around the
child. The night air is chill.”
Late that night, while father and son were peacefully sleeping, the wife
and mother arose, and lifting gently the unconscious boy, bore him into
the next room where she sat down with him in a rocker. Waking, he
clasped his arms around her neck. Backwards and forwards she rocked him,
passionately caressing the wounded hand and crooning and crying until he
fell asleep again.
The first chastisement that the son of Wou Sankwei had received from his
mother, was because he had striven to follow in the footsteps of his
father and use the language of the stranger.
“You did perfectly right,” said old Sien Tau the following morning, as
she leaned over her balcony to speak to the wife of Wou Sankwei. “Had I
again a son to rear, I should see to it that he followed not after the
white people.”
Sien Tau’s son had married a white woman, and his children passed their
grandame on the street without recognition.
“In this country, she is most happy who has no child,” said Lae Choo,
resting her elbow upon the shoulder of Sien Tau. “A Toy, the young
daughter of Lew Wing, is as bold and free in her ways as are the white
women, and her name is on all the men’s tongues. What prudent man of our
race would take her as wife?”
“One needs not to be born here to be made a fool of,” joined in Pau Lin,
appearing at another balcony door. “Think of Hum Wah. From sunrise till
midnight he worked for fourteen years, then a white man came along and
persuaded from him every dollar, promising to return doublefold within
the moon. Many moons have risen and waned, and Hum Wah still waits on
this side of the sea for the white man and his money. Meanwhile, his
father and mother, who looked long for his coming, have passed beyond
returning.”
“The new religion—what trouble it brings!” exclaimed Lae Choo. “My man
received word yestereve that the good old mother of Chee Ping—he who was
baptized a Christian at the last baptizing in the Mission around the
corner—had her head secretly severed from her body by the steadfast
people of the village, as soon as the news reached there. ’Twas the
first violent death in the records of the place. This happened to the
mother of one of the boys attending the Mission corner of my street.”
“No doubt, the poor old mother, having lost face, minded not so much the
losing of her head,” sighed Pau Lin. She gazed below her curiously. The
American Chinatown held a strange fascination for the girl from the
seacoast village. Streaming along the street was a motley throng made up
of all nationalities. The sing-song voices of girls whom respectable
merchants’ wives shudder to name, were calling to one another from high
balconies up shadowy alleys. A fat barber was laughing hilariously at a
drunken white man who had fallen into a gutter; a withered old fellow,
carrying a bird in a cage, stood at the corner entreating passersby to
have a good fortune told; some children were burning punk on the
curbstone. There went by a stalwart Chief of the Six Companies engaged
in earnest confab with a yellow-robed priest from the joss house. A
Chinese dressed in the latest American style and a very blonde woman,
laughing immoderately, were entering a Chinese restaurant together.
Above all the hubbub of voices was heard the clang of electric cars and
the jarring of heavy wheels over cobblestones.
Pau Lin raised her head and looked her thoughts at the old woman, Sien
Tau.
“Yes,” nodded the dame, “’tis a mad place in which to bring up a child.”
Pau Lin went back into the house, gave little Yen his noonday meal, and
dressed him with care. His father was to take him out that afternoon.
She questioned the boy, as she braided his queue, concerning the white
women whom he visited with his father.
It was evening when they returned—Wou Sankwei and his boy. The little
fellow ran up to her in high glee. “See, mother,” said he, pulling off
his cap, “I am like father now. I wear no queue.”
The mother looked down upon him—at the little round head from which the
queue, which had been her pride, no longer dangled.
“Ah!” she cried. “I am ashamed of you; I am ashamed!”
The boy stared at her, hurt and disappointed.
“Never mind, son,” comforted his father. “It is all right.”
Pau Lin placed the bowls of seaweed and chickens’ liver before them and
went back to the kitchen where her own meal was waiting. But she did not
eat. She was saying within herself: “It is for the white woman he has
done this; it is for the white woman!”
Later, as she laid the queue of her son within the trunk wherein lay
that of his father, long since cast aside, she discovered a picture of
Mrs. Dean, taken when the American woman had first become the teacher
and benefactress of the youthful laundryman. She ran over with it to her
husband. “Here,” said she; “it is a picture of one of your white
friends.” Sankwei took it from her almost reverently, “That woman,” he
explained, “has been to me as a mother.”
“And the young woman—the one with eyes the color of blue china—is she
also as a mother?” inquired Pau Lin gently.
But for all her gentleness, Wou Sankwei flushed angrily.
“Never speak of her,” he cried. “Never speak of her!”
“Ha, ha, ha! Ha, ha, ha!” laughed Pau Lin. It was a soft and not
unmelodious laugh, but to Wou Sankwei it sounded almost sacrilegious.
Nevertheless, he soon calmed down. Pau Lin was his wife, and to be kind
to her was not only his duty but his nature. So when his little boy
climbed into his lap and besought his father to pipe him a tune, he
reached for his flute and called to Pau Lin to put aside work for that
night. He would play her some Chinese music. And Pau Lin, whose heart
and mind, undiverted by change, had been concentrated upon Wou Sankwei
ever since the day she had become his wife, smothered, for the time
being, the bitterness in her heart, and succumbed to the magic of her
husband’s playing—a magic which transported her in thought to the old
Chinese days, the old Chinese days whose impression and influence ever
remain with the exiled sons and daughters of China.