“Auntie went out of town this morning,” said Adah Charlton. “I, ’phoned
for you to come up, Sankwei because I wished to have a personal and
private talk with you.”
“Any trouble, Miss Adah,” inquired the young merchant. “Anything I can
do for you?”
Mrs. Dean often called upon him to transact little business matters for
her or to consult with him on various phases of her social and family
life.
“I don’t know what I would do without Sankwei’s head to manage for me,”
she often said to her niece.
“No,” replied the girl, “you do too much for us. You always have, ever
since I’ve known you. It’s a shame for us to have allowed you.”
“What are you talking about, Miss Adah? Since I came to America your
aunt has made this house like a home to me, and, of course, I take an
interest in it and like to do anything for it that a man can. I am
always happy when I come here.”
“Yes, I know you are, poor old boy,” said Adah to herself.
Aloud she said: “I have something to say to you which I would like you
to hear. Will you listen, Sankwei?”
“Of course I will,” he answered.
“Well then,” went on Adah, “I asked you to come here today because I
have heard that there is trouble at your house and that your wife is
jealous of you.”
“Would you please not talk about that, Miss Adah. It is a matter which
you cannot understand.”
“You promised to listen and heed. I do understand, even though I cannot
speak to your wife nor find out what she feels and thinks. I know you,
Sankwei, and I can see just how the trouble has arisen. As soon as I
heard that your wife was jealous I knew why she was jealous.”
“Why?” he queried.
“Because,” she answered unflinchingly, “you are thinking far too much of
other women.”
“Too much of other women?” echoed Sankwei dazedly. “I did not know
that.”
“No, you didn’t. That is why I am telling you. But you are, Sankwei. And
you are becoming too Americanized. My aunt encourages you to become so,
and she is a good woman, with the best and highest of motives; but we
are all liable to make mistakes, and it is a mistake to try and make a
Chinese man into an American—if he has a wife who is to remain as she
always has been. It would be different if you were not married and were
a man free to advance. But you are not.”
“What am I to do then, Miss Adah? You say that I think too much of other
women besides her, and that I am too much Americanized. What can I do
about it now that it is so?”
“First of all you must think of your wife. She has done for you what no
American woman would do—came to you to be your wife, love you and serve
you without even knowing you—took you on trust altogether. You must
remember that for many years she was chained in a little cottage to care
for your ailing and aged mother—a hard task indeed for a young girl. You
must remember that you are the only man in the world to her, and that
you have always been the only one that she has ever cared for. Think of
her during all the years you are here, living a lonely hard-working
life—a baby and an old woman her only companions. For this, she had left
all her own relations. No American woman would have sacrificed herself
so.
“And, now, what has she? Only you and her housework. The white woman
reads, plays, paints, attends concerts, entertainments, lectures,
absorbs herself in the work she likes, and in the course of her life
thinks of and cares for a great many people. She has much to make her
happy besides her husband. The Chinese woman has him only.”
“And her boy.”
“Yes, her boy,” repeated Adah Charlton, smiling in spite of herself, but
lapsing into seriousness the moment after. “There’s another reason for
you to drop the American for a time and go back to being a Chinese. For
sake of your darling little boy, you and your wife should live together
kindly and cheerfully. That is much more important for his welfare than
that he should go to the American school and become Americanized.”
“It is my ambition to put him through both American and Chinese
schools.”
“But what he needs most of all is a loving mother.”
“She loves him all right.”
“Then why do you not love her as you should? If I were married I would
not think my husband loved me very much if he preferred spending his
evenings in the society of other women than in mine, and was so much
more polite and deferential to other women than he was to me. Can’t you
understand now why your wife is jealous?”
Wou Sankwei stood up.
“Goodbye,” said Adah Charlton, giving him her hand.
“Goodbye,” said Wou Sankwei.
Had he been a white man, there is no doubt that Adah Charlton’s little
lecture would have had a contrary effect from what she meant it to have.
At least, the lectured would have been somewhat cynical as to her
sincerity. But Wou Sankwei was not a white man. He was a Chinese, and
did not see any reason for insincerity in a matter as important as that
which Adah Charlton had brought before him. He felt himself exiled from
Paradise, yet it did not occur to him to question, as a white man would
have done, whether the angel with the flaming sword had authority for
her action. Neither did he lay the blame for things gone wrong upon any
woman. He simply made up his mind to make the best of what was.