It had been a peaceful week in the Wou household—the week before little
Yen was to enter the American school. So peaceful indeed that Wou
Sankwei had begun to think that his wife was reconciled to his wishes
with regard to the boy. He whistled softly as he whittled away at a
little ship he was making for him. Adah Charlton’s suggestions had set
coursing a train of thought which had curved around Pau Lin so closely
that he had decided that, should she offer any further opposition to the
boy’s attending the American school, he would not insist upon it. After
all, though the American language might be useful during this century,
the wheel of the world would turn again, and then it might not be
necessary at all. Who could tell? He came very near to expressing
himself thus to Pau Lin.
And now it was the evening before the morning that little Yen was to
march away to the American school. He had been excited all day over the
prospect, and to calm him, his father finally told him to read aloud a
little story from the Chinese book which he had given him on his first
birthday in America and which he had taught him to read. Obediently the
little fellow drew his stool to his mother’s side and read in his
childish sing-song the story of an irreverent lad who came to great
grief because he followed after the funeral of his grandfather and
regaled himself on the crisply roasted chickens and loose-skinned
oranges which were left on the grave for the feasting of the spirit.
Wou Sankwei laughed heartily over the story. It reminded him of some of
his own boyish escapades. But Pau Lin stroked silently the head of the
little reader, and seemed lost in reverie.
A whiff of fresh salt air blew in from the Bay. The mother shivered, and
Wou Sankwei, looking up from the fastening of the boat’s rigging, bade
Yen close the door. As the little fellow came back to his mother’s side,
he stumbled over her knee.
“Oh, poor mother!” he exclaimed with quaint apology. “’Twas the stupid
feet, not Yen.”
“So,” she replied, curling her arm around his neck, “’tis always the
feet. They are to the spirit as the cocoon to the butterfly. Listen, and
I will sing you the song of the Happy Butterfly.”
She began singing the old Chinese ditty in a fresh birdlike voice. Wou
Sankwei, listening, was glad to hear her. He liked having everyone
around him cheerful and happy. That had been the charm of the Dean
household.
The ship was finished before the little family retired. Yen examined it,
critically at first, then exultingly. Finally, he carried it away and
placed it carefully in the closet where he kept his kites, balls, tops,
and other treasures. “We will set sail with it tomorrow after school,”
said he to his father, hugging gratefully that father’s arm.
Sankwei rubbed the little round head. The boy and he were great chums.
* * * * *
What was that sound which caused Sankwei to start from his sleep? It was
just on the border land of night and day, an unusual time for Pau Lin to
be up. Yet, he could hear her voice in Yen’s room. He raised himself on
his elbow and listened. She was softly singing a nursery song about some
little squirrels and a huntsman. Sankwei wondered at her singing in that
way at such an hour. From where he lay he could just perceive the
child’s cot and the silent child figure lying motionless in the dim
light. How very motionless! In a moment Sankwei was beside it.
The empty cup with its dark dregs told the tale.
The thing he loved the best in all the world—the darling son who had
crept into his heart with his joyousness and beauty—had been taken from
him—by her who had given.
Sankwei reeled against the wall. The kneeling figure by the cot arose.
The face of her was solemn and tender.
“He is saved,” smiled she, “from the Wisdom of the New.”
In grief too bitter for words the father bowed his head upon his hands.
“Why! Why!” queried Pau Lin, gazing upon him bewilderedly. “The child is
happy. The butterfly mourns not o’er the shed cocoon.”
Sankwei put up his shutters and wrote this note to Adah Charlton:
I have lost my boy through an accident. I am returning to China with
my wife whose health requires a change.
“ITS WAVERING IMAGE”
I
Pan was a half white, half Chinese girl. Her mother was dead, and Pan
lived with her father who kept an Oriental Bazaar on Dupont Street. All
her life had Pan lived in Chinatown, and if she were different in any
sense from those around her, she gave little thought to it. It was only
after the coming of Mark Carson that the mystery of her nature began to
trouble her.
They met at the time of the boycott of the Sam Yups by the See Yups.
After the heat and dust and unsavoriness of the highways and byways of
Chinatown, the young reporter who had been sent to find a story, had
stepped across the threshold of a cool, deep room, fragrant with the
odor of dried lilies and sandalwood, and found Pan.
She did not speak to him, nor he to her. His business was with the
spectacled merchant, who, with a pointed brush, was making up accounts
in brown paper books and rolling balls in an abacus box. As to Pan, she
always turned from whites. With her father’s people she was natural and
at home; but in the presence of her mother’s she felt strange and
constrained, shrinking from their curious scrutiny as she would from the
sharp edge of a sword.
When Mark Carson returned to the office, he asked some questions
concerning the girl who had puzzled him. What was she? Chinese or white?
The city editor answered him, adding: “She is an unusually bright girl,
and could tell more stories about the Chinese than any other person in
this city—if she would.”
Mark Carson had a determined chin, clever eyes, and a tone to his voice
which easily won for him the confidence of the unwary. In the reporter’s
room he was spoken of as “a man who would sell his soul for a story.”
After Pan’s first shyness had worn off, he found her bewilderingly frank
and free with him; but he had all the instincts of a gentleman save one,
and made no ordinary mistake about her. He was Pan’s first white friend.
She was born a Bohemian, exempt from the conventional restrictions
imposed upon either the white or Chinese woman; and the Oriental who was
her father mingled with his affection for his child so great a respect
for and trust in the daughter of the dead white woman, that everything
she did or said was right to him. And Pan herself! A white woman might
pass over an insult; a Chinese woman fail to see one. But Pan! He would
be a brave man indeed who offered one to childish little Pan.
All this Mark Carson’s clear eyes perceived, and with delicate tact and
subtlety he taught the young girl that, all unconscious until his
coming, she had lived her life alone. So well did she learn this lesson
that it seemed at times as if her white self must entirely dominate and
trample under foot her Chinese.
Meanwhile, in full trust and confidence, she led him about Chinatown,
initiating him into the simple mystery and history of many things, for
which she, being of her father’s race, had a tender regard and pride.
For her sake he was received as a brother by the yellow-robed priest in
the joss house, the Astrologer of Prospect Place, and other conservative
Chinese. The Water Lily Club opened its doors to him when she knocked,
and the Sublimely Pure Brothers’ organization admitted him as one of its
honorary members, thereby enabling him not only to see but to take part
in a ceremony in which no American had ever before participated. With
her by his side, he was welcomed wherever he went. Even the little
Chinese women in the midst of their babies, received him with gentle
smiles, and the children solemnly munched his candies and repeated
nursery rhymes for his edification.
He enjoyed it all, and so did Pan. They were both young and
light-hearted. And when the afternoon was spent, there was always that
high room open to the stars, with its China bowls full of flowers and
its big colored lanterns, shedding a mellow light.
Sometimes there was music. A Chinese band played three evenings a week
in the gilded restaurant beneath them, and the louder the gongs sounded
and the fiddlers fiddled, the more delighted was Pan. Just below the
restaurant was her father’s bazaar. Occasionally Mun You would stroll
upstairs and inquire of the young couple if there was anything needed to
complete their felicity, and Pan would answer: “Thou only.” Pan was very
proud of her Chinese father. “I would rather have a Chinese for a father
than a white man,” she often told Mark Carson. The last time she had
said that he had asked whom she would prefer for a husband, a white man
or a Chinese. And Pan, for the first time since he had known her, had no
answer for him.