Pau Tsu came with the spring, and Wan Lin Fo was one of the happiest and
proudest of bridegrooms. The tiny bride was really very pretty—even to
American eyes. In her peach and plum colored robes, her little arms and
hands sparkling with jewels, and her shiny black head decorated with
wonderful combs and pins, she appeared a bit of Eastern coloring amidst
the Western lights and shades.
Lin Fo had not been forgotten, and her eyes under their downcast lids
discovered him at once, as he stood awaiting her amongst a group of
young Chinese merchants on the deck of the vessel.
The apartments he had prepared for her were furnished in American style,
and her birdlike little figure in Oriental dress seemed rather out of
place at first. It was not long, however, before she brought forth from
the great box, which she had brought over seas, screens and fans, vases,
panels, Chinese matting, artificial flowers and birds, and a number of
exquisite carvings and pieces of antique porcelain. With these she
transformed the American flat into an Oriental bower, even setting up in
her sleeping-room a little chapel, enshrined in which was an image of
the Goddess of Mercy, two ancestral tablets, and other emblems of her
faith in the Gods of her fathers.
The Misses Raymond called upon her soon after arrival, and she smiled
and looked pleased. She shyly presented each girl with a Chinese cup and
saucer, also a couple of antique vases, covered with whimsical pictures,
which Lin Fo tried his best to explain.
The girls were delighted with the gifts, and having fallen, as they
expressed themselves, in love with the little bride, invited her through
her husband to attend a launch party, which they intended giving the
following Wednesday on Lake Washington.
Lin Fo accepted the invitation in behalf of himself and wife. He was
quite at home with the Americans and, being a young man, enjoyed their
rather effusive appreciation of him as an educated Chinaman. Moreover,
he was of the opinion that the society of the American young ladies
would benefit Pau Tsu in helping her to acquire the ways and language of
the land in which he hoped to make a fortune.
Wan Lin Fo was a true son of the Middle Kingdom and secretly pitied all
those who were born far away from its influences; but there was much
about the Americans that he admired. He also entertained sentiments of
respect for a motto which hung in his room which bore the legend: “When
in Rome, do as the Romans do.”
“What is best for men is also best for women in this country,” he told
Pau Tsu when she wept over his suggestion that she should take some
lessons in English from a white woman.
“It may be best for a man who goes out in the street,” she sobbed, “to
learn the new language, but of what importance is it to a woman who
lives only within the house and her husband’s heart?”
It was seldom, however, that she protested against the wishes of Lin Fo.
As her mother-in-law had said, she was a docile, happy little creature.
Moreover, she loved her husband.
But as the days and weeks went by the girl bride whose life hitherto had
been spent in the quiet retirement of a Chinese home in the performance
of filial duties, in embroidery work and lute playing, in sipping tea
and chatting with gentle girl companions, felt very much bewildered by
the novelty and stir of the new world into which she had been suddenly
thrown. She could not understand, for all Lin Fo’s explanations, why it
was required of her to learn the strangers’ language and adopt their
ways. Her husband’s tongue was the same as her own. So also her little
maid’s. It puzzled her to be always seeing this and hearing that—sights
and sounds which as yet had no meaning for her. Why also was it
necessary to receive visitors nearly every evening?—visitors who could
neither understand nor make themselves understood by her, for all their
curious smiles and stares, which she bore like a second Vashti—or
rather, Esther. And why, oh! why should she be constrained to eat her
food with clumsy, murderous looking American implements instead of with
her own elegant and easily manipulated ivory chopsticks?
Adah Raymond, who at Lin Fo’s request was a frequent visitor to the
house, could not fail to observe that Pau Tsu’s small face grew daily
smaller and thinner, and that the smile with which she invariably
greeted her, though sweet, was tinged with melancholy. Her woman’s
instinct told her that something was wrong, but what it was the light
within her failed to discover. She would reach over to Pau Tsu and take
within her own firm, white hand the small, trembling fingers, pressing
them lovingly and sympathetically; and the little Chinese woman would
look up into the beautiful face bent above hers and think to herself:
“No wonder he wishes me to be like her!”
If Lin Fo happened to come in before Adah Raymond left he would engage
the visitor in bright and animated conversation. They had so much of
common interest to discuss, as is always the way with young people who
have lived any length of time in a growing city of the West. But to Pau
Tsu, pouring tea and dispensing sweetmeats, it was all Greek, or rather,
all American.
“Look, my pearl, what I have brought you,” said Lin Fo one afternoon as
he entered his wife’s apartments, followed by a messenger-boy, who
deposited in the middle of the room a large cardboard box.
With murmurs of wonder Pau Tsu drew near, and the messenger-boy having
withdrawn Lin Fo cut the string, and drew forth a beautiful lace evening
dress and dark blue walking costume, both made in American style.
For a moment there was silence in the room. Lin Fo looked at his wife in
surprise. Her face was pale and her little body was trembling, while her
hands were drawn up into her sleeves.
“Why, Pau Tsu!” he exclaimed, “I thought to make you glad.”
At these words the girl bent over the dress of filmy lace, and gathering
the flounce in her hand smoothed it over her knee; then lifting a
smiling face to her husband, replied: “Oh, you are too good, too kind to
your unworthy Pau Tsu. My speech is slow, because I am overcome with
happiness.”
Then with exclamations of delight and admiration she lifted the dresses
out of the box and laid them carefully over the couch.
“I wish you to dress like an American woman when we go out or receive,”
said her husband. “It is the proper thing in America to do as the
Americans do. You will notice, light of my eyes, that it is only on New
Year and our national holidays that I wear the costume of our country
and attach a queue. The wife should follow the husband in all things.”
A ripple of laughter escaped Pau Tsu’s lips.
“When I wear that dress,” said she, touching the walking costume, “I
will look like your friend, Miss Raymond.”
She struck her hands together gleefully, but when her husband had gone
to his business she bowed upon the floor and wept pitifully.