The last little scholar of Pau Tsu’s free class for children was
pattering out of the front door when Liu Venti softly entered the
schoolroom. Pau Tsu was leaning against her desk, looking rather weary.
She did not hear her husband’s footstep, and when he approached her and
placed his hand upon her shoulder she gave a nervous start.
“You are tired, dear one,” said he, leading her towards the door where a
seat was placed.
“Teacher, the leaves of a flower you gave me are withering, and mother
says that is a bad omen.”
The little scholar had turned back to tell her this.
“Nay,” said Pau Tsu gently. “There are no bad omens. It is time for the
flower to wither and die. It cannot live always.”
“Poor flower!” compassionated the child.
“Not so poor!” smiled Pau Tsu. “The flower has seed from which other
flowers will spring, more beautiful than itself!”
“Ah, I will tell my mother!”
The little child ran off, her queue dangling and flopping as she loped
along. The teachers watched her join a group of youngsters playing on
the curb in front of the quarters of the Six Companies. One of the
Chiefs in passing had thrown a handful of firecrackers amongst the
children, and the result was a small bonfire and great glee.
It was seven years since Liu Venti and Pau Tsu had begun their work in
San Francisco’s Chinatown; seven years of struggle and hardship, working
and waiting, living, learning, fighting, failing, loving—and conquering.
The victory, to an onlooker, might have seemed small; just a modest
school for adult pupils of their own race, a few white night pupils, and
a free school for children. But the latter was in itself evidence that
Liu Venti and Pau Tsu had not only sailed safely through the waters of
poverty, but had reached a haven from which they could enjoy the
blessedness of stretching out helping hands to others.
During the third year of their marriage twin sons had been born to them,
and the children, long looked for and eagerly desired, were welcomed
with joy and pride. But mingled with this joy and pride was much serious
thought. Must their beloved sons ever remain exiles from the land of
their ancestors? For their little ones Liu Venti and Pau Tsu were much
more worldly than they had ever been themselves, and they could not
altogether stifle a yearning to be able to bestow upon them the
brightest and best that the world has to offer. Then, too, memories of
childhood came thronging with their children, and filial affection
reawakened. Both Liu Venti and Pau Tsu had been only children; both had
been beloved and had received all the advantages which wealth in their
own land could obtain; both had been the joy and pride of their homes.
They might, they sometimes sadly mused, have been a little less assured
in their declarations to the old folk; a little kinder, a little more
considerate. It was a higher light and a stronger motive than had ever
before influenced their lives which had led them to break the ties which
had bound them; yet those from whom they had cut away were ignorant of
such forces; at least, unable, by reason of education and environment,
to comprehend them. There were days when everything seemed to taste
bitter to Pau Tsu because she could not see her father and mother. And
Liu’s blood would tingle and his heart swell in his chest in the effort
to banish from his mind the shadows of those who had cared for him
before ever he had seen Pau Tsu.
“I was a little fellow of just about that age when my mother first
taught me to kotow to my father and run to greet him when he came into
the house,” said he, pointing to Little Waking Eyes, who came straggling
after them, a kitten in his chubby arms.
“Oh, Liu Venti,” replied Pau Tsu, “you are thinking of home—even as I.
This morning I thought I heard my mother’s voice, calling to me as I
have so often heard her on sunny mornings in the Province of the Happy
River. She would flutter her fan at me in a way that was peculiarly her
own. And my father! Oh, my dear father!”
“Aye,” responded Liu Venti. “Our parents loved us, and the love of
parents is a good thing. Here, we live in exile, and though we are happy
in each other, in our children, and in the friendships which the new
light has made possible for us, yet I would that our sons could be
brought up in our own country and not in an American Chinatown.”
He glanced comprehensively up the street as he said this. A motley
throng, made up, not only of his own countrymen, but of all
nationalities, was scuffling along. Two little children were eating rice
out of a tin dish on a near-by door-step. The singsong voices of girls
were calling to one another from high balconies up a shadowy alley. A
boy, balancing a wooden tray of viands on his head, was crossing the
street. The 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 a corner entreating passers-by to pause and have a good
fortune told. A vender of dried fish and bunches of sausages held noisy
possession of the corner opposite.
Liu Venti’s glance travelled back to the children eating rice on the
doorstep, then rested on the head of his own young son.
“And our fathers’ mansions,” said he, “are empty of the voices of little
ones.”
* * * * *
“Let us go home,” said Pau Tsu suddenly.
Liu Venti started. Pau Tsu’s words echoed the wish of his own heart. But
he was not as bold as she.
“How dare we?” he asked. “Have not our fathers sworn that they will
never forgive us?”
“The light within me this evening,” replied Pau Tsu, “reveals that our
parents sorrow because they have this sworn. Oh, Liu Venti, ought we not
to make our parents happy, even if we have to do so against their will?”
“I would that we could,” replied Liu Venti. “But before we can approach
them, there is to be overcome your father’s hatred for my father and my
father’s hatred for thine.”
A shadow crossed Pau Tsu’s face. But not for long. It lifted as she
softly said: “Love is stronger than hate.”
Little Waking Eyes clambered upon his father’s knee.
“Me too,” cried Little Sleeping Eyes, following him. With chubby fists
he pushed his brother to one side and mounted his father also.
Pau Tsu looked across at her husband and sons. “Oh, Liu Venti,” she
said, “for the sake of our children; for the sake of our parents; for
the sake of a broader field of work for ourselves, we are called upon to
make a sacrifice!”
Three months later, Liu Venti and Pau Tsu, with mingled sorrow and hope
in their hearts, bade goodbye to their little sons and sent them across
the sea, offerings of love to parents of whom both son and daughter
remembered nothing but love and kindness, yet from whom that son and
daughter were estranged by a poisonous thing called Hate.