"But there are many, many unhappy ones, then," he returned gently. "I
wonder if unhappy marriage in all countries is not due to selfishness
and lack of love and to unwillingness to compromise on unimportant
differences."
We could not possibly quarrel here, and our talk proceeded amiably.
My thoughts at dinner that night seem very amusing to me as I recall
them now. Chan-King was so like one of us, as we sat at table together,
that I found myself wondering if it was true that a Chinese wife did not
eat at the same table with her husband; if she actually did wait upon
him and obey him without question in everything; if Chan-King would
return to China soon and there become an insufferable, autocratic
Eastern husband. The thought oppressed me unbearably. Since Chan-King
was leaving next day on a summer-vacation trip, this was a farewell
dinner. He insisted on helping me with the dishes afterwards, for ours
was a simple household, and we usually had no maid. We were very merry
over the task. "In China," he confided, as he stacked the saucers, "the
lot of women is much easier. They have servants for everything of this
kind. I know an Englishwoman who married a Chinese, and she afterwards
taught in a college for the sake of something to do."
"She did quite right," I said. "Idleness is not good for anyone."
"Chinese wives are not idle," he answered gravely, "they have many
duties for everyone in their household."
At this he turned his eyes upon me, with an intent, inner look. Because
I was impressed, I chose to be flippant.
"If I obstruct your view, I will move," I said.
"It would do no good," he answered. "You are always there--wherever I
want to look."
Later he was writing his name in Chinese characters on a photograph he
had given my mother. I stood beside him. He dropped the pen, turned to
me and took both my hands in his own. He bent toward me, and I drew
away, shaking my head decisively. I wrenched one hand free, and the
kiss he meant for my lips reached my fingers instead. I was overwhelmed
with a sense of invasion. We quarrelled, but without bitterness or real
anger. I was simply convinced that, since love was not for us, we were
bound by all ethics to keep our relations in the outward seeming of
friendship. For a moment I felt that one of my ideals had been rudely
shattered.
"Oh, but you have mistaken me!" he declared earnestly, refusing to
release my hand.
"Kisses are not for friendship," I managed to say.
"I'm sorry," he confessed, but I saw in his eyes that he regretted my
misunderstanding of him, nothing more.
During his summer travels he wrote me many letters. I had time to think,
and in my thoughts I admitted that to be a friend of Chan-King was
better than to have the love of anyone else in the world.
When he returned, we wandered together one evening down to the campus
and sat on a stone bench in the moon-shade of a tall tree. I had
overheard a remark, tinged with race prejudice, that had awakened again
in my heart that brooding maternal tenderness, and when Chan-King's eyes
pleaded wistfully I gave him, as a sacrificial offering, the kiss before
denied.
That autumn he transferred for a year to a New England university. He
told me long afterwards it was so that absence might teach me to know my
own heart. I loved him now and admitted it to myself with bitter
honesty. But all fulfilment of love seemed so hopeless and remote, the
chasm fixed between our races seemed so impassable, that I gave up in my
heart and put away his letters as they came, smiling with affected
youthful cynicism at the memory of that kiss, which could mean nothing
more to us than a sweet and troubled recollection.
He came back unexpectedly at the end of the college term. There was an
indescribably hopeful, anxious look in his eyes as he took my hands. My
first sight of his face, grown older and graver in those long months,
brought a shock of poignant happiness, very near to tears. Off guard, we
met as lovers, with all antagonisms momentarily swept away, all
pretences forgotten. I went to his arms as my one sure haven. For this
hour love made everything simple and happy.
My father and mother were astonished when we told them of our intention
to marry. With gentle wisdom, Mother suggested that we should allow
ourselves a year of engagement, "in order to be sure," as she expressed
it. We were very sure, but we consented.
Chan-King wrote at once to his people in south China, telling of his
engagement. For me, he had one important explanation, made in his frank,
straightforward way. "In China," he told me, "it is usual for parents to
arrange their children's marriages, often years in advance. When I was
very young, it was generally understood that I would later marry the
daughter of my father's good friend, three years younger than I. There
was no formal betrothal, and, when I left home to study, I asked my
father not to make any definite plans for my marriage until my return.
The subject has never been mentioned since, and I don't know what his
ideas are now. But they can make no difference with us--you understand
that, Margaret, dear?" Again I felt myself in spiritual collision with
unknown forces and wondered at his calmness in opposing the claims of
his heredity.
His family replied to his letter with a cablegram, forbidding the
marriage. I had never seriously expected any other decision. A letter
followed, conciliatory in tone, in which his father explained that,
since Chan-King's foreign education was nearly completed, arrangements
had been made for his marriage to Miss Li-Ying immediately upon his
return home. He gave a charming description of his bride, whom Chan-King
had not seen for twelve years. She was, he said, young and modest and
kind, she was beautiful and wealthy, and, moreover, had been given a
modern education in order to fit her for the position of wife to an
advanced Chinese. The match was greatly desired by both families. In
conclusion, the letter urgently requested that Chan-King would not make
it impossible for his father to fulfil the contract he had entered into
with a friend, and very gently intimated that by so doing he would
forfeit all right to further consideration.
There were other letters. An American friend, a missionary, wrote--oh,
very tactfully--of the difficulties he would have in keeping an American
wife happy in the Orient. A Chinese cousin discussed at length the
sorrows a foreign daughter-in-law would bring into his house--the
bitterness of having in the family an alien and stubborn woman, who
would be unwilling to give his parents the honour due to them or to
render them the service they would expect of their son's wife.
Many letters of this kind came in a group. There was a hopeless tone of
finality, a solid clan consciousness in those letters that frightened me
a little. I was uneasy, uncertain. I had found no irreconcilable
elements in our minds, for I was very conservative West, and he was very
liberal East. But here were represented the people with whom his life
must be spent and the social background against which it must
harmoniously unfold. I felt with terrific force that it was not
Chan-King, but Chan-King's traditions and ancestors, his tremendous
racial past, that I must reckon with.
Also, I did not wish to stand in the way of his future. I doubt if I
could have found courage to marry Chan-King, if I had then realized the
importance--especially in diplomatic and political circles--of clan and
family influence in China. But he gave it up so freely, with such
assured and unregretful cheerfulness, that I could not but share his
mood.
In these calm, logical, impersonal family letters, which Chan-King
translated for me, there was a strain of sinister philosophy that
chilled me as I read. The letters dealt entirely with his duty in its
many phases--to his parents, to his ancestors, to his country, to his
own future. Nothing of love! Only one relative--a cousin--mentioned it
at all, and in this wise: "You are young now, and to youth love seems
of great importance. But, as age replaces youth, you will find that love
runs away like water."
"That is not true, Chan-King," I said, with solemn conviction. "Love is
greater than life or age; it lives beyond death. It is love that makes
eternity!"
At this time, Chan-King did not quite comprehend my mystical
interpretation of love. But he answered very happily, "To have you for
my wife is worth everything else the world can offer."
Chan-King continued to write to his family briefly and respectfully,
declining to be influenced in any way. Replies came at lengthening
intervals and then ceased. There was no open breach, no violent tearing
asunder of bonds. Courteously, quite gently, the hands of his people
were removed, and he stood alone.
"But surely your mother will not give you up!" I exclaimed one day when
it dawned on me that not one message had she sent in all the
correspondence.
"Not in her dear heart," he said, with unshaken faith, "but of course
she will not write to me if my father disapproves."
"But a mother, Chan-King!" I protested. "Surely her feelings come first
always!"
Chan-King's tone was patient after the manner of one who has explained
an obvious fact many times. "In China," he reminded me again, "the
family comes always before the individual. But with you and me, Margaret
beloved, love has first importance."
His never-failing insistence upon viewing ours as an individual
instance, not to be judged by any ordinary standards, was a source of
great strength to me always. During the short period that followed
before our marriage, we tiffed a few times in the most conventional
manner, with fits of jealousy that had no foundation; small distrusts
that on my part were mere efforts to uphold what I considered my proper
feminine pride, and on his, were often failures to discount this
characteristic temper of mine. Only, somehow, there was never any
rancour in our quarrels. Not once would we deny our love for each other.
So we planned to be married immediately. There were no reasons why we
should delay further. That is to say, none but practical reasons, and
what have they to do with young people in love? "It is a little late for
us to begin practical thinking," said Chan-King cheerfully, when we
discussed ways and means. "But we might as well make the experiment."
Chan-King was no longer merely a student with a generous allowance from
a wealthy father. On his own resources, with his education not
completed, he was about to acquire a foreign wife and to face an
untried world. We were strangely light-hearted about all this. Chan-King
had regularly put by more than half of his allowance since coming to
America. I meant to be a teacher of languages, economically independent
if circumstances required such aid for a man beginning a career. Our
plans were soon completed. At the end of another term, which we would
finish together, Chan-King would be graduated, and then, after a year of
practice in his profession, he would return to China, there to begin his
life work. I was to follow later. Nothing could have been more
delightfully simple so far as we could see. A few days later we were
married in my mother's house by an Anglican clergyman. "Of course you
will live here with us until you go to China," my parents had said. "We
want our children with us, if you can be happy here."
This seemed a very natural arrangement to Chan-King, accustomed as he
was to family life. But I was apprehensive. The popular Western idea
that people cannot be friends if they are related by law was heavy on my
mind. I did not expect any drastic readjustment of temperament between
my Chinese husband and me, but I did look forward somewhat timorously to
a trying period of small complications due to differences in domestic
customs and the routine of daily living.
I need not have worried a moment; a wonderful spirit of family
co-operation was an important part of Chan-King's Oriental heritage.
From the day of our wedding he took his place with charming ease and
naturalness as a member of the household. The affection that existed
between my husband and my parents simplified that phase of our relation
perfectly, and left us free to adjust ourselves to each other and the
world, though the latter we took very little into account. Until I met
Chan-King, the idea of being conspicuous was unendurable to me. But when
I early perceived that to appear with him anywhere was to invite the
gaze of the curious, I discovered with surprise that it mattered not at
all. (I was very proud of my husband and loved to go about with him.) We
were happy from the beginning.
Discovering life together proved a splendid adventure, which renewed
itself daily. The deep affection and tenderness between us created
subtle comprehensions too delicate to be put into words. A quick look
interchanged during a pause in talk would often convey a complete
thought. I always felt that Chan-King had acuter perceptions, more
reserve, and more imagination than I. Also he was meticulous--as I was
not--in regard to small amenities. I had always been used to having my
own way without causing discomfort to anyone else, but I found that I
could not speak carelessly or act thoughtlessly without the risk of
violating his sense of the fitness of things. My greatest difficulty in
the first few months of our marriage came from my constant effort to
adjust my mode of thought and action to meet a highly trained and
critical temperament, to whom the second-bests of association, spiritual
or mental or material, were not acceptable. Yet, if he exacted much, he
gave more. In everything, he had a generosity so sincere and spontaneous
that it aroused a like quality in me.
I am in many ways the elemental type of woman, requiring, I know, a
certain measure of domination in love. It was imperative that I should
respect my husband, and it pleased me to discover, in our several slight
domestic crises, that his was far the stronger will. I had taken my vow
to obey, having specified that the word was not to be omitted from the
marriage ceremony. How I should have kept it under a tyrannical will I
do not know, for Chan-King was not a domestic dictator. He took it for
granted that we were partners and equals in our own departments of life.
He trusted my judgment in the handling of my share of our affairs, and
in later years often came to me for advice in his own. Nevertheless,
morally, the balance of power was in his hands, and I was glad to leave
it there. Often our disagreements would end in laughter because each one
of us would give way gradually from the position first assumed, until we
had almost changed sides in the discussion. This happened again and
again.
From the very beginning, I saw clearly, by some grace, the point at
which Chan-King's Oriental mind and Occidental education came into the
keenest conflict: my attitude towards other men and their attitude
toward me. He was never meanly jealous or suspicious, but there was in
him that unconquerable Eastern sense of exclusiveness in love, that
cherishing of personal possession, so incomprehensible to the average
Western imagination.
I had planned to instruct a young man in French during the summer
months, as a part of my vacation work, and I casually announced my
intention to Chan-King. He opposed it at once, I thought unfairly. I was
a great while persuading him to admit his real reasons for objecting.
Finally I said, somewhat at random, "If my pupil were a girl, you would
not care."
"You have enough work as it is," he persisted, but without firmness, and
his eyes flickered away from mine. I laughed a little. He turned to me a
face so distressed that my smile died suddenly. "Oh, don't laugh!" he
said, painfully in earnest. "You must keep in mind what you are to me.
I--cannot be different. I am sorry."
I gave up my harmless young pupil and said nothing more. From that
moment I began to form my entire code of conduct where men were
concerned on a rigidly impersonal and formal basis. It was not
difficult, for my first and only affection was centred in my husband,
and the impulse to coquetry was foreign to my nature.
My husband's determination to leave my individuality untrammelled was
sometimes overborne, in small ways that delighted me, by his innate
sense of fitness. We played tennis and he played excellently. One day,
as we left the courts, he said to me, "Tennis just isn't your game,
Margaret. Your dignity is always getting in the way of your drive. I
don't want you to give up your dignity--it is too much a part of you.
But you might leave tennis alone and try archery. I am sure that is
more suited to your type." The amused obedience with which I took his
suggestion soon became enthusiasm for the new sport.
To me, marriage had always seemed the most mystic and important of human
relations, involving at times all the rest--and particularly parenthood.
I am a born mother, to whom the idea of marriage without children is
unthinkable. Since I put away my dolls, dream children had taken their
place in the background of my fancy. I saw them vaguely at first, but
with the coming of love I knew quite clearly how they would look. Now
that I had married Chan-King, I should have liked a child at once as a
surer bond between us and a source of comfort for myself while he would
be making his start in China. I knew that he loved children, for on
several occasions I had deliberately put a tiny neighbour in his way
and had taken note of his warm friendliness and gentleness with the wee
thing. But, fearing that he would be unwilling to accept a new
responsibility while our affairs were still unsettled, I put aside my
desire for a child, though my loved books were growing strangely
irksome. I did not know that my husband shared the usual foreign belief
that the American woman is an unwilling mother.
Then one day he went to call on a friend of his, a Chinese student whose
wife and little son were with him. "I saw the Chinese baby," he told me
with boyish eagerness. "He is going to have a little brother soon. Lucky
baby!"
"Lucky parents!" I corrected him, and sighed enviously. Chan-King looked
at me, the wonder on his face growing into a delighted smile. "Do you
mean it, Margaret?" he asked incredulously. Then we talked long and
earnestly of our children. To Chan-King's old-world mind, children
should follow marriage as naturally as fruit the blossom, and his
happiness in discovering that my ideals were exactly his own brought us
to another plane of understanding and contentment with each other.
Besides, he explained, a grandchild would do much to reconcile his
parents to our marriage.
Happily, when the school term was over, I put aside my books for a
needle. I had always been fond of sewing, but never had I found such
fascinating work as the making of those tiny garments of silk and
flannel and lawn. My practical mother protested against so much
embroidering, but my husband only smiled as he rummaged gently through
the basket of small sewing.
"You are a real Chinese wife, after all," he would say. "A Chinese wife
sews and embroiders a great deal. She even makes shoes for the family."
"Shoes, Chan-King?"
"Shoes, no less. To make shoes beautifully is a fine art, and a Chinese
woman takes pride in excelling at it. She is proud of her feet and makes
all her own shoes."
Then he would tell me stories of his childhood and recall memories of
the closed garden in his old home, where he played at battledore with a
tiny girl, while her mother and his mother sat together, embroidering
and talking in low tones. The two young mothers were friends and were
planning for the marriage of their son and daughter, which would
strengthen the friendship into a family bond.
I took great interest in this little girl, who flitted through
Chan-King's stories like a brilliant butterfly seen through a mist. Her
name was Li-Ying and she was only three years old when she ran, with her
little feet still unbound, through those sweetly remembered green
gardens of his childhood. Somewhere now she was sitting, her lily feet
meekly crossed, embroidering shoes, waiting until her father should
betroth her to another youth.
When Chan-King showed me a portrait of himself, taken in a group with
his mother and father when he was eight years old, I examined very
thoughtfully the austerely beautiful face of the woman who had brought
him into life. She sat on one side of the carved blackwood table. Her
narrow, panelled skirt was raised a trifle to show her amazingly tiny
feet. On the other side of the table sat Chan-King's father, an
irreconcilably stern and autocratic-looking man, magnificently garbed in
the old style. Beside him stood a small, solemn boy, wearing a round
cap, his queue still bound, he told me, with a red cord, his hands lost
in the long velvet sleeves that reached almost to his knees. I put my
finger on the head of this boy. "I hope our son will look exactly like
him," I said.
At last the hoped-for son was born and laid in my arms. He was swaddled
and powdered and new and he wept for obscure reasons. But my husband and
I smiled joyfully at the delicious, incredible resemblance of that tiny
face to his own. Chan-King looked at him a long time, a quizzical, happy
smile in the corners of his mouth. Then he kissed me very gently and
said, "He's a real Liang baby, Margaret. Are you glad?" I answered that
I was glad, as I had been for everything love had brought to me.
Our plans progressed favourably, and, when our son Wilfred was five
months old, Chan-King returned to China. I bid him good-bye in the way I
knew would please him most--calmly and without tears. But, when it came
to the last moment, I felt unable to let him go. Mutely I clung to him,
the baby on my arm between us.
"It won't be for long, this," he assured me. "We shall all be together
at home very soon. You are brave and dear and true, Margaret. You shall
never be made sorry. Be patient."
His first letters told of his new work in one of the older colleges for
which Shanghai is famous. He also began his practice of law in an
official capacity. His first step toward the diplomatic service had been
taken.
At the end of four months, I received his summons and went about making
ready for the journey to China with my young son. My life-work was to
help my husband in making a home. His life-work was in China. The
conclusion was so obvious that neither I nor my parents had ever
questioned it. But, now that the moment had come, the friends of the
family were very much excited. They asked strange questions. Are you
really going? How can you leave your mother? How can you give up
beautiful America? Aren't you afraid to go to China? I answered as
patiently and reasonably as I could. They wearied me very much.
Of China itself I had no clear conception, in spite of Chan-King's
letters, for, though my old prejudice had passed away, still I saw all
the country only as a background for my husband's face.
I followed Chan-King's minute instructions concerning travelling
arrangements, and Wilfred and I had a pleasant voyage. Early one morning
I looked through the port-hole and saw about me the murky waters of the
Yangtze, alive with native craft, while dimly through the mist loomed
the fortifications of Woosung. Already the tender was waiting, and soon
we were aboard, moving rapidly up the mouth of the river. The mist
cleared, green banks arose on each side, and through distant trees
gleamed red brick buildings like any at home, side by side with the
white-plastered walls and tip-tilted roofs of China. In that long ride,
Shanghai grew upon me gradually, a curious mixture of the known and the
unknown, tantalizing me with the feeling that I had seen all this before
and ought to remember it better. In the water about me, steamer, launch
and battle-ship mingled with native junk, river-barge and house-boat.
Suddenly in the waiting group on the customs jetty I saw my husband. In
another moment we had drawn alongside the wharf and he was in the tender
beside me, greeting me in the formally courteous manner he deemed suited
to public occasions. Taking Wilfred in his arms, he drew me up the steps
and to a waiting carriage.
Here again was the confused mingling of the strange and the familiar:
clanging tram-cars, honking motor-cars, smooth-rolling rickshaws,
creaking wheel-barrows and lumbering, man-drawn trucks; dark
coolie-faces under wide straw hats, gently bred features beneath pith
helmets, black, bearded countenances below huge, gay turbans; a
bewildering jumble of alien and English speech.
Even in Chan-King I found it. He was wearing American dress, his face
had not changed, the tones of his voice were the same, but he was
speaking Chinese, and his directions to the _mafoo_ were to me a
meaningless succession of sounds.
But, when he was beside me in the carriage and the horses had started,
he turned suddenly and smiled straight into my eyes. Then, Shanghai,
Borneo or the North Pole--all would have been one to me. I asked no
questions; I was with my husband and child, driving rapidly towards the
home prepared for me. I had come home to China.