My Lady of the Chinese Courtyard Part 11

The children have come home and are clamouring for their supper.

They are growing rougher and noisier each day, and, I fear, are spending far too many hours in the servants' courtyard, where they hear of things not seemly for young ears. Canst thou send me Wong-si for a few months? She might be able to keep some order in my household, although I doubt a person of a nature not divine being able to still the many tongues I have now about me.

We send thee love, and greetings to thy new-born great-grandson.

Kwei-li.

21 My Dear Mother, I have been in the country with my friend Ang Ti-ti. It was the time of pilgrimage to the graves of her family at the temple near Wu-seh. My household gave me many worries, and my husband said it was a time of rest for me, so we took a boat, with only a few servants, as I am tired of chattering women, and spent three long happy days amongst the hills. We sat upon the deck as the boat was slowly drawn along the ca.n.a.l, and watched the valley that autumn now is covering with her colours rare. All the green of the fields is changed. All the gay foliage of the trees upon the hillsides will soon be dead and crumbling.

These withered leaves that once waved gaily in the air are lying now in cl.u.s.tered heaps, or fluttering softly to the ground like dull, brown b.u.t.terflies who are tired with flight. The only touch of colour is on the maple-trees, which still cling with jealous hands to coverings of red and gold. The autumn winds wailed sadly around our cabin windows, and every gust brought desolation to tree and shrub and waving gra.s.s.

Far away the setting sun turned golden trees to flame, and now and then on the sluggish waters of the ca.n.a.l would drift in lonely splendour a s.h.i.+ning leaf that autumn winds had touched and made into a thing of more than beauty.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Mylady28.]

We anch.o.r.ed the first night by a marshy bank girdled with tall yellow reeds and dwarf bamboo, and from our quiet cabin listened to the rainy gusts that swept the valley. Out of the inky clouds the lightning flashed and lighted up each branch and stem and swaying leaf, revealing to our half-blinded eyes the rain-swept valley; then darkness came with her thick mantle and covered all again.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Mylady29.]

We discussed the past, the present, and the future; and then, as always when mothers meet, the talk would turn to children. How we are moved by our children! We are like unto the G.o.ddess of the Pine-tree. She came out from her rugged covering and bore a man-child for her husband's house, and then one day the overlord of all that land sent to cut down the pine-tree, that its great trunk might form the rooftree of his temple. At the first blow of the axe the soul glided back into its hiding-place, and the woman was no more. And when it fell, three hundred men could not move it from its place of falling; but her baby came and, putting out his hand, said, "Come,"

and it followed him quite quietly, gliding to the very doorway of the temple. So do our children lead us with their hands of love.

On the second day we went to the temple to offer incense at the family shrine of Ang Ti-ti. We Chinese ladies love these pilgrimages to these shrines of our ancestors, and it is we who keep up the family wors.h.i.+p. We believe that it is from the past that we must learn, and "the past is a pathway which spirits have trodden and made luminous." It is true, as Lafcadio Hearn has written, "We should be haunted by the dead men and women of our race, the ancestors that count in the making of our souls and have their silent say in every action, thought and impulse of our life. Are not our ancestors in very truth our souls? Is not every action the work of the dead who dwell within us? Have not our impulses and our tendencies, our capacities and our weaknesses, our heroisms and our fears, been created by those vanished myriads from whom we received that all-mysterious gift of life? Should we think of that thing which is in each of us and which we call 'I' should it be 'I' or 'they'? What is our pride or shame but the pride or shame of the unseen in that which they have made?

And what is our conscience but the inherited sum of countless dead experiences with all things good and evil?"

"In this wors.h.i.+p that we give the dead they are made divine. And the thought of this tender reverence will temper with consolation the melancholy that comes with age to all of us. Never in our China are the dead too quickly forgotten; by simple faith they are still thought to dwell among their beloved, and their place within the home remains holy. When we pa.s.s to the land of shadows we know that loving lips will nightly murmur our names before the family shrine, that our faithful ones will beseech us in their pain and bless us in their joy. We will not be left alone upon the hillsides, but loving hands will place before our tablet the fruits and flowers and dainty food that we were wont to like, and will pour for us the fragrant cups of tea or amber rice-wine."

"Strange changes are coming upon this land, old customs are vanis.h.i.+ng, old beliefs are weakening, the thoughts of to-day will not be the thoughts of to-morrow; but of all this we will know nothing. We dream that for us as for our mothers the little lamp will burn on through the generations; we see in fancy the yet unborn, the children of our children's children, bowing their tiny heads and making the filial obeisance before the tablets that bear our family name."

This is our comfort, we who feel that "this world is not a place of rest, but where we may now take our little ease, until the landlord whom we never see, gives our apartment to another guest."

As I said to thee, it is the women who are the preservers of the family wors.h.i.+p and who are trying hard to cling to old loved customs.

Perhaps it is because we suffer from lack of facility in adapting ourselves to new conditions. We are as fixed as the star in its...o...b..t.

Not so much the men of China but we women of the inner courtyards seem to our younger generation to stand an immovable mountain in the pathway of their freedom from the old traditions.

In this course we are only following woman nature. An instinct more powerful than reason seems to tell us that we must preserve the thing we know. Change we fear. We see in the new ideas that our daughters bring from school, disturbers only of our life's ideals. Yet the new thoughts are gathering about our retreats, beating at our doorways, creeping in at the closely shuttered windows, even winning our husbands and our children from our arms. The enclosing walls and the jealously guarded doors of our courtyards are impotent. While we stand a foe of this so-called progress, a guardian of what to us seems womanhood and modesty, the world around us is moving, feeling the impulse of a larger life, broadening its outlook and clothing itself in new expression that we hardly understand. We feel that we cannot keep up with this generation; and, seeing ourselves left behind with our dead G.o.ds, we cry out against the change which is coming to our daughters with the advent of this new education and the knowledge of the outside world. But--.

All happy days must end, and we floated slowly back to the busy life again. As we came down the ca.n.a.l in the soft moonlight it recalled those other nights to me upon the mountain-side, and as I saw the lights of the city before us I remembered the old poem of Chang Chili Lo:

"The Lady Moon is my lover, My friends are the Oceans four, The Heavens have roofed me over, And the Dawn is my golden door.

I would liefer follow a condor, Or the sea-gull soaring from ken, Than bury my G.o.dhead yonder, In the dust and whirl of men."

Thy daughter, Kwei-li.

22 My Dear Mother, I have not written thee for many days. I came back from my happy country trip to find clouds of sorrow wrapping our home in close embrace. We hear Ting-fang is in deep trouble, and we cannot understand it. He is accused of being in league with the Southern forces. Of course we do not believe it, my son is not a traitor; but black forebodings rise from deeps unknown and the cold trail of fear creeps round my heart.

But I cannot brood upon my fears alone; this world seems full of sorrow. Just now I have stopped my letter to see a woman who was brought to the Yamen for trying to kill her baby daughter. She is alone, has no one to help her in her time of desolation, no rice for crying children, and nothing before her except to sell her daughter to the tea-house. She gave her sleep; and who can blame her?

Mother, send me all that thou canst spare from out thy plenty. I would I could give more. I would be a lamp for those who need a lamp, a bed for those who need a bed; but I am helpless. O, He who hears the wretched when they cry, deign to hear these mothers in their sorrow!

Thy daughter, Kwei-li.

23 I know that thou hast heard the news, as it is in all the papers.

Ting-fang is accused of throwing the bomb that killed General Chang. I write to rea.s.sure thee that it cannot be true. I know my son. Thou knowest thy family. No Liu could do so foul a deed.

Do not worry; we will send thee all the news. The morrow's tidings will be well, so rest in peace.

Kwei-li.

24,a.

I thank thee from my heart for the ten thousand taels telegraphed for the use of our son. Father has sent fifty thousand taels to be used in obtaining his freedom. I am sure it will not be needed, as my son is not the culprit. And if he were, it is not the olden time when a life could be bought for a few thousand ounces of silver, no matter how great the crime. We will not bribe the Courts of Law, even for our son.

But I am sure it will pa.s.s with the night's darkness, and we will wake to find it all a dream. I know, my mother's heart a.s.sures me, that my boy is innocent.

Do not speak or think of coming down. We will let thee know at once all news.

Kwei-li

24,b.

[-Telegram_]

We are leaving to-night for Canton.

25 We are entering Canton. The night denies me sleep, and my brain seems beating like the tireless shuttles upon a weaving-loom. I cannot rest, but walk the deck till the moon fades from the dawn's pale sky, and the sun shows rose-coloured against the morning's grey. Across the river a temple s.h.i.+nes faintly through its ring of swaying bamboo, and the faint light glistens on the water dripping from the oars that bring the black-sailed junks with stores of vegetables for all that greedy city of living people. The mists cling lovingly to the hill-tops, while leaves from giant banyan-trees sway idly in the morning wind, and billows of smoke, like dull, grey spirits, roll up-ward and fade into a mist of clouded jade, touched with the golden fingers of the rising sun.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Mylady30.]

I see it all with eyes that do not see, because the creeping hours I count until I find my son.

26 Ting-fang has been tried and found guilty. The runners have brought me hour by hour the news; and even his father can see nothing that speaks in favour of his innocence. It is known and he confesses to having been with the men who are the plotters in this uprising. He was with the disloyal officers only a few hours before the bomb was thrown, but of the actual deed he insists that he knows nothing. All evidence points to his guilt. Even the official who sentenced him, a life-long friend of ours, said in the open court that it hurt him sorely to condemn a man bearing the great name of Liu, because of what his father and his father's father had been to China, but in times such as these an example must be made; and all the world is now looking on to see what will be done.

I will write thee and telegraph thee further news; I can say no more at present; my heart is breaking.

Kwei-li.

27 A man came to us secretly last night and offered to effect my son's escape for fifty thousand taels. He said that arrangements could be made to get him out of the country-- and we have refused! We told him we could give no answer until the morning, and I walked the floor the long night through, trying to find the pathway just.

We cannot do it. China is at the parting of the ways; and if we, her first officials, who are taking the stand upon the side of justice and new ideas of honour, do not remain firm in hours of great temptation, what lesson have we to give to them who follow where we lead? It ust not be said that our first acts were those of bribery and corruption.

If my son is a traitor, we let him pay. He must give his life upon the altar of new China. We cannot buy his life. We are of the house of Liu, and our name must stand, so that, through the years to come, it will inspire those who follow us to live and die for China, the country that we love.

28 My Mother, From the red dawn until the dense night fell, and all the hours of darkness through, have my weary feet stumbled on in hopeless misery, waiting, listening for the guns that will tell to me my son is gone. At sunset a whispered message of hope was brought, then vanished quite again, and I have walked the lengthened reach of the great courtyard, watching as, one by one, the lanterns die and the world is turning into grey. Far away toward the rice-fields the circling gulls rise, flight on flight, and hover in the blue, then fly away to life and happiness in the great beyond. In the distance, faint blue smoke curls from a thousand dwellings of people who are rising and will greet their sons, while mine lies dead. Oh, I thought that tears were human only, yet I see each blade of s.h.i.+ning gra.s.s weighed down with dewdrop tears that glimmer in the air. Even the gra.s.s would seem all sorrow filled as is my heart.

The whole night through the only sound has been the long-drawn note of the bamboo flute, as the seller pa.s.ses by, and the wind that wailed and whistled and seemed to bring with it spirits of the other world who came and taunted me that I did not save my son. Why, why did I not save him! What is honour, what is this country, this fighting, quarrelling, maddened country, what is our fame, in comparison to his dear life? Why did we not accept the offer of escape! It was ours to give or take; we gave, and I repent-- O G.o.d, how I repent! My boy, my boy! I will be looking for his face in all my dreams and find despair.