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Title: The Street of Precious Pearls

Author: Nora Waln

Release date: April 28, 2019 [eBook #59385]
                Most recently updated: June 15, 2020

Language: English



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THE STREET OF PRECIOUS PEARLS

by

NORA WALN






New York
The Womans Press
1921

Copyright, 1921, by
National Board of Young Womens Christian Associations
of the United States of America




To Grace Coppock, who first encouraged me to go into the Far East, I
owe deep gratitude.

From the women of China I have learned that World Fellowship is not
alone an intellectual concept but a natural law in accordance with
which the hearts of all women throb to the same rhythmic beat of the
Universe.

To the women of America I dedicate this story of the life of my Chinese
friend and teacher: it is as accurate as she with her small store of
English words, and I with my limited knowledge of her language could
make it.




CONTENTS


  I

  Wherein Yen Kuei Ping turns off from the Big
  Horse Street to make purchases on the Street of
  Precious Pearls                                          7


  II

  Wherein there is a wedding and Kuei Ping becomes
  a member of the family of Chia                          19


  III

  Wherein there is a departure from family custom
  and Kuei Ping goes with her husband to
  live in Peking                                          31


  IV

  Wherein a son is born and there is great rejoicing      41


  V

  Wherein shadows throw their length across the
  tidy courtyard                                          49


  VI

  Wherein there is deepening sorrow                       55

  VII

  Wherein the heart of a woman is occupied with
  one desire                                              61


  VIII

  Wherein Kuei Ping prepares for a pilgrimage             65


  IX

  Wherein there is patience and tenderness and
  understanding and a return to a little home
  village                                                 73


  X

  Wherein twenty-seven slow years are added one
  upon another                                            81


  XI

  Wherein the narrator becomes Kuei Ping’s pupil
  and is filled with wondering questions and is
  witness to a dream come true in its threefold
  parts                                                   91




  _Wherein
  Yen Kuei
  Ping turns
  off from the
  Big Horse Street
  to make
  purchases
  on the
  Street of
  Precious
  Pearls_


Turning off from the Da Mou Lui or the Big Horse Street, the name
common to the main street in Chinese towns and villages, there is to be
found, if one seeks diligently for it, the Street of Precious Pearls.
Always it is a side street. Often it is so narrow that two sedan chairs
cannot pass. At those times of the day when the shadows are long there
is no golden sunshine reflected from the cobblestones that pave the
street. But I have found, for I like to visit the little shops on side
streets, that the more precious jewels glow with a warmer brilliancy
when the day outside is dark.

It is the street of greatest importance to every Chinese girl. On
it will be bought her dowry jewels. Ancient custom rules that the
betrothed bride shall convert the wealth she inherits from her father’s
household into precious stones. And so it is here on the Street of
Precious Pearls that her inheritance is spent, lest by bringing money,
as such, into her husband’s household she reflect upon the ability of
her new family to support her.

Yen Kuei Ping sat passively quiet as her chair-bearers turned into the
street at a low spoken word from her grandmother. She was third in the
procession. Madame Yen rode first, directly behind the house servant
who walked ahead, breaking a way through the crowded Big Horse Street
and into the quieter Street of Precious Pearls, crying, “Lend light,
lend light.” Next to Madame Yen came Kuei Ping’s mother, and bringing
up the rear was a fourth chair in which was carried a distant relative,
by name Chang An, who held a place in the household a trifle higher
than that of a trusted servant.

Following the swaying tapestried box-like chairs that marked the
presence of her mother and grandmother, Kuei Ping leaned forward in
her seat, peering through the horizontal aperture in front of her
with brightening eyes. The Street of Precious Pearls was quiet and
cool. Moss clung to the bases of buildings and the grasses that had
ventured up through the paving stones were worn away only in a central
path and in patches in front of entrance ways. Now and then someone
came from beneath one of the heavy curtain-like doors that closed a
shop, and slipped along the silent street, but the padded shoes of the
pedestrian made no noise on the grass-covered stones. Here was a peace
and quiet akin to the hush of the Mission Church, Kuei Ping caught
herself thinking, and then flushed at what she thought her irreverence
in comparing the gorgeous pageantry of the procession as she saw it
silhouetted against the dust-dulled gold lacquer of the shops with the
aesthetic simplicity of the Chapel.

They had traversed more than half the entire length of the street when
Madame Yen’s chair came to a stop before a shop with rich filigree
carvings and double entrance doors of heavy velvet with brass frames.
At the sound of their approach, two attendants of the door stepped
forward and swung it wide, that the chair-bearers might carry the
ladies into a tiny inner courtyard before they need dismount, saying as
they bowed, “Honorable ladies, enter the humble shop.” Thereupon, the
narrower inner curtains of the shop itself were held open and Madame
Yen and her relatives, bowing low, returned the formal greeting and
passed within.

At the entry of customers, numerous clerks and underlings, so it seemed
to Kuei Ping, swarmed forward with greetings and formal offerings of
stools upon which to sit and with cups of tea to drink. The head of the
shop and his partners flicked their long-stemmed pipes from sleepy lips
and rose, as though from deep meditation, struggling a bit with the
light that would penetrate into their eyes, even in the darkened room,
as they bowed, offering the courtesy of “the miserable place to the
pleasure of their honorable guests.”

The eldest among them with his own hand took from an attendant each cup
of tea as it was brought and offered it with a low bow to his guest.
Kuei Ping, lifting her gaze now and then from the floor, caught a glint
of joy of the coming bargain in the corners of the shrewd old dealer’s
mouth and in her grandmother’s eyes, even in the midst of courtesy and
greeting.

Rich jewels were brought forth, for Kuei Ping’s own grandfather was
a well known silk merchant and the coming alliance with an official
family was not beyond the knowledge of Wong Lui, dealer in jewels.
Madame Yen gave but a sweeping glance to the first display placed
before her. Kuei Ping had slipped into the background, but her mother
and the relative looked over the jewels and then up at Madame Yen as if
to agree that they were not worthy of attention. Wong Lui held various
secret conferences with his head clerk, and boys slipped away into dark
recesses to bring forth rarer treasures. Madame Yen and her daughter
preferred pearls, and from the mysterious caverns of the shop they were
brought. Exquisite gems, each wrapped separately, were removed from
their covers and glowed in a wondrous heap on the dark velvet cover of
the teakwood table.

Kuei Ping liked rich warm color but she liked it best subdued in the
luminous pearls. She was a favorite with her grandmother and this
preference was no secret to Madame Yen who placed her chair now, as the
hour grew on, that Kuei Ping might get the full value of the beauty
of the fabulous heap. Carefully, one by one, the preferred gems were
separated from those of lesser beauty by the two women. And still at
intervals, as though he had just awakened to some almost forgotten
knowledge, Wong Lui would cease caressing his drooping moustaches with
his slender hands and wave a clerk away to bring even rarer treasure.

But all things come to end in time and these mysterious errands grew
farther and farther apart and finally ceased. Wong Lui had placed his
best before them. Kuei Ping from under her modestly lowered lashes
caught glimpses of bright eyes that glowed from the darkness of the
inner rooms, the curious little clerks and underlings who peered
through the dividing parchment, eagerly following the tableau in the
center of the shop.

Not until the selected heap was before her did Madame Yen speak of
price and then only as a question. Kuei Ping had seen her grandmother
bargain before and so she scarce drew her attention away from the
lustrous heap of jewels even to listen. Wong Lui, too, was seasoned at
the game which both dearly loved and so with the skill of chess players
they moved slowly, each toward his goal, each carefully measuring the
other’s power to yield from his quoted price. At intervals, when the
conflict might have grown a trifle sharp, cups of tea were served.

Kuei Ping, resting her eyes upon the pearls so soon to be hers, drank
deep draughts of their beauty. Impelled by their drawing power she
gathered a handful of them up in her soft pink palm, unmindful of the
bargainers but not unnoted by them. The quick eyes of each had counted
the number and the face of Madame Yen had softened as she looked upon
the girl. Wong Lui had noted that also and put it down in his favor in
the game before them.

The girl, holding the jewels thus in her hand that she might feel their
nearness, saw them glow into warmer color as she held them, as though
her touch breathed life into them. In after years she was to think
often of the care with which they had been selected and to pay homage
in memory to the experience and knowledge which made possible that rare
power of choice, for even Wong Lui, seasoned dealer in jewels, had
shown respect for Madame Yen’s judgment.

With a suddenness so abrupt as to make her feel she must have jerked
physically, Kuei Ping was back in memory, as she was so often these
days, at the little mission school where she had been sent when she
could go no farther in lessons with her brothers at home. This too had
been an indulgence upon the part of her family, gained by her nearness
to her grandmother.

It was graduation day. This was the memory she conned over most often.
Kuei Ping had stood first in her class and when the exercises were over
she had stolen away into the garden to bid it a last farewell, with
the small remembrance reward that had been given to her clasped in her
hand. Ever since that day Kuei Ping had worn it next to her heart.
She could feel its hard edge now as she sat holding the pearls. In
memory the fragrant perfume of the la France roses at the end of the
walk drifted out to her again, she recalled the crunching sound Miss
Porter’s stiff foreign shoes had made as she came down the path, and
the tenseness of the principal’s voice as she had spoken, asking Kuei
Ping to come and sit in the arbor and talk with her.

From the first day Kuei Ping entered school she had worshipped the tall
golden-haired American girl in the shrine of her heart as an Angel of
Freedom. While they sat in the arbor she had held Kuei Ping’s hand
in the foreign way. Kuei Ping thrilled to the memory of that touch
more than to the glow of the pearls. Miss Porter built for the girl
who listened at her side that afternoon, a dream bridge of words that
connected the road of Kuei Ping’s life with that strange land called
the United States, where men and women had equal opportunity, and from
which the Chinese girl with her brilliant mind trained to new ways
might return to give service to her own country women. Kuei Ping had
held her breath lest she lose a word while Miss Porter talked, quiet at
first, carried away by the marvel of the opportunity, then very still
because she knew its impossibility. For at the spring holidays Madame
Yen had told her granddaughter of the plans for her marriage and had
given her the engagement gifts from the Chia household that had been
kept these two years now, waiting until she should be finished with
school.

Her family loved her. Kuei Ping had known that from the first moment
she opened her eyes and smiled into her mother’s face. They awaited
her return home and her fulfillment of their plans for her. There were
ties that bound her a part of the whole which made up the unit of her
family, bonds that could not be pushed aside with the brusqueness that
made possible the spirit of freedom that lit the eyes of the American
girl. And yet it was this spirit of freedom and of service in the wider
ways of life to which she had built the secret shrine within her heart.
It was a hard conflict, but Kuei Ping’s decision was reached before she
had lifted her quiet eyes to thank Miss Porter and say that she could
not go.

The latter had been a trifle curt. Kuei Ping had wept bitter tears
over it since, because she had failed the person she admired most in
all the world. The utter futility of attempting to make East and West
understand each other had stilled her lips from any sharing of her
feeling about her home, or any repetition to her grandmother of the
conversation in the garden. The engagement bracelets in the bureau in
her mission school room and the silver honor medal beneath her dress
were each sacred things that belonged in separate parts of her life.

Madame Yen reached over now to Kuei Ping for the pearls she had taken
from the table, that they might be put in the same case with the
others. The bargain was closed. Fresh cups of tea were brought forth
and refused, Madame Yen and her relatives saying over and over as they
were bowed out, “We have squandered your valuable time,” and Wong Lui
and his attendants begging them not to waste their breath in courtesy
for his humble shop.

Outside, the chair-bearers, trained to patience by long hours, waited.




  _Wherein
  there is a
  wedding and
  Kuei Ping
  becomes a
  member of
  the family
  of Chia_


When Kuei Ping was a child of six, playing at games with the little
cousins who dwelt in the Yen compound, or teasing to learn to read with
her brothers, soothsayers, upon examination of a document from the
house of Chia, had found that her destiny was entwined with that of
Chia Fuh Tang, ten years her senior. With care the grey old man, whose
judgment Madame Yen trusted, had taken the card upon which were drafted
the eight characters indicating the year, the month, the day, and the
hour at which Fuh Tang had entered the world and, comparing them with
the similar characters of the girl, had returned a favorable report of
the auspiciousness of the union. With deliberation and due patience he
had compared the combination of their characters with each of the five
elements, metal, wood, water, fire and earth, to make sure that in the
proposed marriage there was no destroying omen such as the uniting of
wood and fire. He next discovered that the two cyclic animals that had
presided over the birth of the youthful couple were not at variance
with each other. Thereon it was ascertained that the two would abide
together in harmony.

Later, the Imperial Calendar being consulted as to the black and yellow
days which would govern the lives of the two, a second document was
sent from the house of Chia, informing the family of Yen that the
fourteenth day of the month had been found to be the day most favorable
to the conclusion of an engagement and asking that, if found agreeable
to them, a return document, setting the month, be returned. Fate
had already decided the month as the second of the Chinese calendar
year by causing the girl to be born under the sign of the tiger. The
culmination of the alliance had waited but the year to be set by the
contracting families as the eighteenth spring of Kuei Ping’s life.

The month, corresponding to April on the western calendar of that year,
came with a touch of summer on its breath. Soft rains fell early. From
the wind-dried earth sprang a carpet of velvety green. By the middle of
the month brown-green orchids had pushed out to the light, azaleas and
the wild wisteria were opening buds, the yellow mustard scattered gold
over the country-sides, and the southeast wind was languid with the
sickening sweet perfume of the purple soi bean.

Kuei Ping, wearing the heavy wedding garments in which she had been
dressed, felt near to suffocation in the close room. Yet she shuddered
as from a chill when Chang An, having put the finishing touches to the
married way of hair-dressing, placed the vanity case before her, urging
the girl to teach her own fingers the arrangement.

The old woman felt the shudder and the tense strain of the girl’s body
as she fastened the tiny buttons of the collar of Kuei Ping’s dress.
Looking down at her she said tenderly, “Be not alarmed, little flower
of our hearts. Thou needest have no fear. Look but into the mirror at
thy beauteous face before the veil is dropped over it. What man living
could pass by the fire of thy deep eyes untouched! Look now, as I
hold the veil of pearls before thy eyes, and see that they out-rival
the lustre of the gems. Even thy hands are shaped like the petals of
the new opened lotus, and thy grace is as exquisite as that of the
wind-swayed blossom. Take the incense burner and make thy heart a lake
of peace upon which thy beauty may float with the serenity of the
flower thou dost resemble.”

Kuei Ping, gazing deep into the mirror as into a wondering dream,
reached out her hands for the many-wired burner Chang An brought
ere she left the little bride alone. Slowly, one by one, the girl
smoothed out the twisted curves until the interlacing grooves were one
continuous whole in which the incense burned before the Goddess of
Mercy without a break.

The hours hung heavy upon her. Over the door that closed her from
the feasting came stray bits of gossip. She heard the click of ivory
dominoes as the dowagers gambled at sparrow. The plaintive call of
stringed instruments came to her as from a great distance. Now and
then, as a minstrel took up the refrain, she caught the words of some
old love song, or heard repeated in chant the valor of a departed
family hero.

The clamor outside grew greater and then subsided into the murmur of
conversation. The one o’clock feast had passed. The shadows of late
afternoon sank into darkness. A servant came to light a taper beside
her mirror. Chang An returned and put the finishing touches to her
toilet. Her mother wrapped the long band of red satin around her head
over the new hair arrangement signifying that they bound her to the
will of the family to which they sent her. Madame Yen with loving
fingers placed the inner veil of red chiffon and then dropped over it
the veil of pearls that had come the day before from the bridegroom.
The long strip of red silk carpet was laid by servants that she might
go to kneel before the family altar and then be placed in the waiting
sedan chair without touching her feet to the polluting ground.

The time of departure was near. The rooms and courtyards in which
she had lived were strangely unfamiliar with their elaborate decking
in honor of the event. Heavily veiled and her eyes lowered, she felt
rather than saw the crowded mass of her relatives. The minstrel took
up the wail of separation and loss. She heard the tossing of the four
cakes which were to bring luck to her family, and the rattle of the
sieve placed over her wedding chair to ward off evil spirits as she was
sealed into it.

The journey which she must make in darkness began. Ahead of her, almost
a mile long, the procession of her attendants went. Sitting strained
and still she could hear the clash and clang of brass cymbals, the
shifting of burdens from tired shoulders at regular intervals, and
now and then, as she strained her eyes, the flare of waving torches.
Half way to the end of the tiring journey the noise increased, and she
gathered that they had been met by members of the bridegroom’s family.
Dull red balls of light swung above the entrance gates. Her chair was
borne through the double rows of the procession which had preceded her
and set down in a reception room. She heard the murmuring words of
good omen uttered as she was helped from her cramped seat and out onto
a second strip of red carpet that led to the part of the compound that
was to be hers.

Kuei Ping saw Chia Fuh Tang for the first time in one swift stolen
glance from behind her veil. He stood with his back to her as she
entered the doorway. In that glance she knew that he was taller than
her father, that he wore a long mandarin garment with a square of heavy
embroidery in the center of the back, over which a black queue hung;
she saw the flash of a jewel in the front of his hat as he turned
toward her. Then she must lower her eyes to the floor where his dark
slippers made a spot of contrast with the bright carpet.

He came forward to meet her. Kuei Ping, hidden beneath the concealing
veils, was led forward a few steps by her attendants. Then, as custom
dictated, both sat for a few minutes side by side. Kuei Ping, still
wrapped in the long veil that reached to the hem of her wedding
garments, too weary to stand alone, leaning upon Chang An and another
attendant was then led forth to kneel with Fuh Tang before the family
altar in worship of heaven and earth and to make low obeisance before
the Chia ancestral tablets. Here Chang An lifted the edge of her veil
that she might drink with the bridegroom from a goblet of wine ere she
was led back into her room to dress for the wedding feast.

Her tired nerves seemed almost to snap at the continued twang of
the stringed instruments. Chang An cooled her hot brow with calming
hands as she took away the heavy veils and helped to dress her in the
lighter dainty pink garments from her trousseau chest. And Kuei Ping,
remembering that Madame Yen had told her that Fuh Tang too had attended
a foreign school, and the evidences of ill ease he had shown in the
ordeal that had passed, wondered whether he knew of the western custom
of personal choice, and stilled her own trembling with the realization
that he had not seen her as yet.

Fuh Tang saw her first thus, with tenderness and something akin to
pity in her eyes, when he came to sit and wait for the serving of the
feast. Food was placed before them but custom forbade the bride to eat
or sleep for three days. She must sit with downcast eyes, her face
immovable while the feasting about her went on, the target of all eyes,
the subject of ribald jokes. Long hours passed again in which she had
need of all the patience gained with the little incense burner. They
left as a memory the odor of heavy perfume that came from hot rooms,
the clatter of chopsticks and bowls, the glimmer of many-colored robes
and the glitter of jewels of the men guests, strangers and relatives,
who came in an almost ceaseless stream during that first twelve hours
to gaze upon the beauty of the bride. Their remarks burned as a searing
iron across her consciousness.

Two more days the feasting lasted. Women kinsfolk of the family who
had not met together for many months, gossiped and drank tea, adding
color to the women’s side of the large compound with their rich
garments of brocade and satin. Some of them swayed on small bound feet
with a “golden lily” glide. They went about examining the chests of
wedding gifts, commenting upon the hundred and twenty boxes filled with
garments and linens, discussing the charms put here and there to bring
good luck.

In the other side of the vast dwelling place the men drank wine and
made merry, their long-skirted garments of silk in seafoam green and
saffron and deep blue, and their chains of amber and jade and the
settings of diamonds and pearls on their hands and in their hats
outdoing the vivid glory of the women’s dress. Here Fuh Tang went at
intervals to offer hospitality in food and wine, and to joke with his
guests.

On the morning of the third day Kuei Ping came forth to find the guests
for the most part dispersed, to worship at the ancestral tablets with
her husband, to make low obeisance to her honorable new mother and
father and the elder relatives, and to show her respect before the
household Kitchen God.

Thus Kuei Ping became an integral part of the family of Chia.




  _Wherein
  there is a
  departure
  from family
  custom and
  Kuei Ping
  goes with
  her husband
  to live
  in Peking_


Moonlight on which the white magnolia flowers floated as birds about
to take wing, filled the courtyard and touched the town with a magic
of pale green gold. Kuei Ping could not sleep. She lay wide-eyed,
following the pattern that a moonbeam made as it filtered through the
parchment window. Unable to resist longer the call of the path of light
she slid from her bed to the floor. Cautiously pulling about her the
long garment that lay waiting for the morning, she crept through the
door of her pavilion into the courtyard. Still holding her slippers in
her hand she listened for sounds of others awake. From the rooms of
her honorable women relatives came only the rhythmic breathing of deep
sleep.

She passed safely out of the women’s division of the compound, stealing
through the intricate lacery of courtyards and curious-shaped gateways,
stopping to dabble her fingers in the waters of a fountain and then,
at a disturbed quack from the pet heron who stood sleeping with one
foot drawn up beneath him, she sped carefully away. Her shadow mingled
with that of the flowering magnolia trees as she slipped from place to
place like a long-caged bird trying its wings in newly gained freedom,
stooping now over the fragrant heart of a rose, brushing gently the
stiff little potted evergreens that stood in a row at the base of the
spirit screen, turning back to feel the velvet of the purple iris,
holding up her hands to let the full-blown wisteria petals flutter
through them.

From over the walls came a mysterious groping after expression from
the strings of some blind wandering musician. It vibrated on the heart
of Kuei Ping, calling her beyond the confines of the compound she had
entered as a bride two months earlier. Square across the entrance
gateway, placed so that evil spirits flying in to bring disaster would
be flung back, stood the high, many-colored spirit screen guarding the
household, while it slumbered, from disaster. Her hand still touching
the familiar potted trees on the inner side of the screen, Kuei Ping
crept around it. No sound save that of irregular snoring came from the
gatekeeper’s house. Her fingers trembled as they sought for the open
link in the chain that held the bar across the outer gate. A wild rose
that had clambered up beside the gateway and dared to cross the bits
of broken glass that made more impassable the top of the wall gave her
courage. Noiselessly she slid the bar and stood without the compound.

How soft the dust felt beneath her feet as they touched it for the
first time. Pilgrimages she had made with her honorable mother-in-law
to pay respect to the ancestral hall, to worship at the temple of
Buddha, and to ask after the health of Madame Yen and her household,
but it was not fitting that the new bride should soil her feet upon
the common ground. Chair-bearers came within the courtyard to bear her
forth upon those journeys.

Leaning back against the wall, Kuei Ping drew a deep breath of air. Now
near and now far away the music called. Thither along the road to his
former place in the world of other affairs Fuh Tang had returned six
days after their marriage. Above her head the wood-rose nodded in the
breeze. Men went out and beyond. Women in that far-away land from which
Miss Porter came, walked, too, in similar paths of freedom.

She looked up at the venturesome rose. It wafted down fragrant perfume.
On her questioning mind came a consciousness of a change in the
music--loneliness and a vague hunger that died away in a vibration of
despair. There came upon the heart of Kuei Ping an overpowering sense
of walls that stretched along the dusty hutung, closing in upon the
lives of uncountable women. Even the roots of the wood-rose held her
body within the compound. With cold hands and eyes blinded by tears she
put the bar back in place. Her feet caught in the skirt of her long
mandarin robe as she stumbled back into her room.

The morning would bring its round of regular hours in which she, the
wife of the eldest son, would continue her lessons in family duties,
ready to take the burden when it should fall from the ageing shoulders
of Madame Chia.

The noon of the day brought its difference. Kuei Ping sat on the folded
rug at the feet of her new mother, putting tiny stitches in a piece of
satin embroidery, when the sounds of welcoming voices came from the
outer court. The women’s conversation about small household affairs
was stilled as they heard the gateman repeating the name of Fuh Tang,
and the other servants take up the cry, “You bring us unexpected joy
by your presence, most gracious master.” A needle prick from which a
drop of red blood stained Kuei Ping’s embroidery was the only trace of
excitement the quiet little bride showed as she rose to greet him with
his mother. Within her there fluttered a hope that he had come upon
this unexpected visit in answer to a call from her heart. She breathed
a prayer of thanksgiving to the Goddess of Merciful Gifts that she
had been given patience to perform the tasks of the day in quietness,
and that she had donned for the afternoon the most becoming of the
wisteria silk garments from her trousseau chests. The wistful light in
her eyes changed to one of sure gladness as they met his. She heard
the explanation of his coming as put into words to their most gracious
mother, but Kuei Ping knew without words that he had come because he
loved her.

Throughout the week and on into the next Fuh Tang lingered. The
full moon had become a waning quarter, making the lighting of the
many-colored lanterns in the courtyard necessary to turn it into a
fairy land at twilight time. A messenger came calling him back to his
post, and Madame Chia, fearing family dishonor, urged upon her son the
necessity for immediate departure as soon as the next day should dawn.

Kuei Ping, bringing back to the gracious mother the household keys with
which she had been entrusted to dole out the next day’s supplies to the
cooks, heard the last words of Fuh Tang’s reproval.

It was in the courtyard, where the scattered petals of the blown
magnolia flowers were bruised under their feet as they walked, that Fuh
Tang told Kuei Ping that he must return upon the morrow to his waiting
work. His voice had trembled as he spoke, and Kuei Ping, crushing
consciously beneath her tiny embroidered slippers the blossoms that
had seemed to dare to float out to freedom and then had dropped in a
withered mass on the paved courtyard, had begged him to let her go with
him. He had stayed his steps, startled at the suggestion. His calm
hands folded into opposite coat sleeves, he had listened with ears that
could not believe they heard aright.

Fuh Tang did not depart when morning came. The orders of an Emperor
waited. The elders of the two august families of Yen and Chia met
together to bring wisdom to the minds of the two young people who
contemplated so drastic a departure from family custom. Separately
and together they were called before the family tribunal. Faithfully
and completely until now both of them had submitted to the rules
of tradition; mechanically and faithfully they performed the small
duties given them now. Kuei Ping listened to the daily words of her
grandmother with reverently bowed head and modestly lowered eyes.
Words were futile, for no one among the women spoke to let her know if
by chance they understood.

In humiliation Kuei Ping’s heart was lighter than ever before. She knew
that Fuh Tang would not depart without her. His younger brother was
dispatched to fill Fuh Tang’s too long neglected orders.

In early autumn they left the protection and the guidance of their
families in disgrace. Love for each other, so strong that it broke
down old barriers to personal freedom, set them out upon the road of
life a unit separate from the complex life of the compound. Fuh Tang,
appealing to the principal of the school he had attended, secured
through him a position as clerk with the British consul at Peking.

In the Tartar City just west of the entrance to the Forbidden City they
found a small dwelling place.




  _Wherein
  a son is
  born and
  there is
  great rejoicing_


From the time of Kuei Ping’s earliest memory she had known that among
her people the crown of womanhood was the bearing of a son who would
perpetuate the name and the virtue of his ancestors. Feeling the first
stirring of a new life entrusted to her, she was filled with joy in the
privilege that was hers, a joy that was at times almost overpowered
by the fear that she might fail in fulfillment of that trust. Daily
she went to the temple of the Merciful One begging the Goddess of One
Hundred Children to grant unto her a male child.

Other women waited in the temple also for their turn within the prayer
gate, buying faggots of incense to burn before the altar, dropping
gifts of money and touching infants’ shoes to the hem of the Goddess’
robe. At times, in these new days of life in the small courtyard where
Fuh Tang had founded their home, her thoughts turned to those earlier
teachings in school, precepts from the foreign Bible. Kuei Ping had
even whiled away idle hours, while she waited for her husband’s return
from his duties as clerk, by reading the translation her teacher had
given her. But now in her time of greatest need she turned back to
old familiar ways of worship through which her mother before her had
reached toward an unknown power, behind the wall of earthly life.

Carried by the devious ways of tongue and ear, by which news can travel
the length of an empire without need of telephone wires, the knowledge
of Kuei Ping’s hopes reached the heart of the Yen compound. One morning
as she walked with Fuh Tang to the outer gateway, Chang An stood
requesting admittance from the gateman. She offered no explanation of
her coming save that Madame Yen could no longer give her shelter and
that she had come to them for a roof. Thus without loss of face on the
part of her elders Kuei Ping was given the comfort of an older woman.

Under the busy fingers of the two the garments prepared for the child
grew to a needlessly large heap. Kuei Ping, eager in her preparation,
made tiger caps and sewed bright buttons like eyes in the toes of shoes
that she knew in her thoughtful moments were in sizes large enough
for walking children. Chang An gave suggestions as to the cutting of
innumerable padded coats and long hooded caps for winter, and for the
scanty garments of bright red for summer. Together they made ready the
cradle of peach wood that the child might be rocked safely into a long
life.

Twice during the last days of waiting Miss Porter, visiting a friend
in the city, came to call upon Kuei Ping. Once the friend, a mission
doctor, had accompanied her. This accounted for the stiff white foreign
skirt that fluttered before her eyes as Kuei Ping struggled back to a
full consciousness of the room and its surroundings.

No joy in anticipation had prepared the young mother for the wonder of
the babe as it lay nestled within her arm. Watching with languid eyes
the quick deft movements of the foreign woman as she made the bed more
comfortable, and beyond her the familiar figure of Chang An lighting
the tapers of the Lamp of Seven Wicks to warn disaster from the
new-born son, Kuei Ping slipped into a dream in which her child grew up
to see both East and West and interpret the best of each to the other.

The months that followed were rich in happiness. Winter melted into
spring. Flowers bloomed in the courtyard. Street vendors came each
morning with great bunches of long-stemmed violets. On starlit evenings
Fuh Tang carried his little son out into the courtyard where they sat
talking of their happiness and his future.

It was on a late afternoon when fruit hung ripe on the hawthorn trees,
and soft autumn breezes swayed the leaves of the moonflower vine that
the sturdy baby made his first attempt to walk. Fuh Tang and Kuei
Ping, both leaving him to stand in Chang An’s hands, moved away, a
double inducement for him to take his first step. Intent upon the child
they did not hear the sound of a guest entering the courtyard gate.
Daring at last to make the venture, the baby toddled into Fuh Tang’s
outstretched arms, and it was not until he stood holding the child that
they perceived their aged father, Chia Sung Lien, looking in upon them.

Fuh Tang, going each day to his duties at the office of the British
consul, brought back news of the events of the outside world, but Kuei
Ping, her life full to overflowing in her love for her husband and
child and occupied with the tasks of making the slender income supply
the daily needs of the household, had scarce realized that men outside
were at war. The news that the father bore them brought close the
realization. Fuh Tang’s only brother, dispatched more than a year ago
to fill his place in ignored orders, had fallen in battle under General
Tso in a vain attempt to defend the city of Pingyang from the Japanese.

The aged man’s eyes followed hungrily the movements of his sturdy
grandchild, while they brought him a chair and tea and offered the
courtesies due to age from youth. He took from his pockets gifts to the
little son who held out his baby hands, unafraid, to receive them.

When the women and child had retired into the house and Fuh Tang sat
with his father alone in the gathering twilight the old man spoke
of the need of a man child to carry on the traditions of the Chia
household, to give rest to the departed dead and minister to the
spirits of those who wandered in the unknown beyond. He spoke almost
with fear of the sonlessness of the brother who had gone, and he asked
that the little grandson be returned to his rightful place in the
family even if his parents must pursue a foolish and selfish desire for
freedom.

Bowed with a heavier sorrow than when he entered, with even the shadow
of dread lurking in his eyes, Chia Sung Lien turned back from his
fruitless errand. Youth with its new spirit of freedom had refused to
place upon the altar of old tradition its most precious gift.

Fuh Tang and Kuei Ping, talking the matter over alone, had come to
know that each believed that if their ideal for their son was to be
realized he must live his life in the freer atmosphere of their own
home.

Untouched by the near tragedy in the lives of his elders, little Bo Te
played happily with the pearl charm Chang An had hung from a silver
chain about his neck.




  _Wherein
  shadows
  throw
  their
  length
  across
  the tidy
  courtyard_


Fuh Tang lay ill. The heaviness upon his chest grew more and more. Kuei
Ping, straightening the fever-tossed coverlets, knew that the charms of
the medical man who had been summoned had no power to heal her husband.
A great fear laid hold of her--a fear that drove her out into the icy
night alone. No chair-bearer came in answer to her frantic call and the
slender means of the household did not support a private chair. Bending
her head to break the force of the wind she struggled somehow to the
door of the mission doctor who had eased her own pain a year ago. With
bare fists she pounded against the gate for admittance; in staccato
breaths she cried out her need to the sleepy gateman.

The old man who opened the door told her that the doctor had been away
since early evening. Many people were ill and the foreign doctor took
no rest but he would tell her the instant she returned.

Kuei Ping refused to come inside and wait. The lonely return through
the streets had no terror for her equal to the fear that Fuh Tang might
call for her and find her gone when he wanted her most. The doctor came
into the little courtyard, weary from a long day and night without
sleep, just as the first feeble rays of dawn lit the sky. The doctor’s
weariness seemed to drop from her like her outer garments as she began
work upon her patient. Noon-day showed a marked change in his breathing
and evening found him sleeping quietly.

Knowledge and careful nursing brought Fuh Tang back to life again but
never again did he recover his old strength. A slight cough persisted
long after spring was with them and Fuh Tang had returned to his work,
a cough that grew more frequent as summer came on. All about them men
and women and little children died of such coughs, blinked out like
candles after five or six years of slow burning weariness. He did not
speak of it to Kuei Ping but a great dread came over him which grew
into a weariness that made work almost impossible. He did not have the
disease, thus Fuh Tang argued with himself, his fatigue was but the
result of his long illness, yet some foreboding kept him from going to
a foreign doctor to confirm his belief that he did not have it.

It was then that he began to smoke a long-stemmed pipe. Just a few
whiffs of opium quieted his nerves and gave him pleasant dreamless
sleep from which he woke rested and ready for work. Upon his salary
the daily food for his family depended. In leaving the family compound
the two had become in reality a separate economic unit. Fuh Tang’s
earnings, plus some money he had possessed at the time of their taking
the small home in Peking, had been sufficient for only a very simple
mode of life. During his illness his pay had come regularly. For this
Fuh Tang was grateful, but he grew anxious lest he be unable to perform
his daily tasks.

At first short smokes gave him relief from worry. Just one on the
way to work in the morning stilled the desperate growing pain in his
chest, seemed even to still his coughing. Then as the months went by,
the amount needed for relief grew greater. He came to have a hunted
desperate look in his face if he did not get the opium at the usual
time. The smoking made necessary his leaving home earlier than formerly
if he was to keep from Kuei Ping the knowledge of his fear. He laid the
first stone in the barrier which grew up between them when he did not
share with her his anxiety. Kuei Ping, carrying her second child, was
more sensitive than in normal times.

The frosts of late autumn had turned to dried husks the beauty of the
garden. Was it to be so with their love which had begun with such
happiness? Thus Kuei Ping found herself questioning day after day.
Even little Bo Te did not seem to call unto himself as much of his
father’s attention as formerly, yet he grew more fascinating every day,
his mother felt.

Fuh Tang, fighting the weariness that crept further upon him, came
to leave the shelter of his home with a sense of relief. Outside he
could smoke and let down under the strain of pain and the necessity to
struggle against his growing absent-mindedness.

Thus the first shadows of a wall of doubt separating Kuei Ping and Fuh
Tang cast their length across the tidy courtyard of their youthful
love.




  _Wherein
  there is
  deepening
  sorrow_


Kuei Ping’s second son lived but a few hours. Chang, preparing the
burial rites, sobbing her grief and disappointment even as she summoned
the soothsayer to examine the Imperial Calendar for the lucky day upon
which to place the small body in its coffin, felt utterly baffled by
the quiet passiveness of the mother. It was to Fuh Tang that she must
turn for every decision and whom she must help to still his grief while
the message requesting burial in the Chia family burial grounds was
written and dispatched by messenger.

It was Chang An who placed the mirror above the door of Kuei Ping’s
room, hoping that it would change the evil that had entered the house
into real happiness. It was she who procured the blue papers to paste
upon the entrance gateway announcing a death within the compound. It
was she who tied about the neck of the deceased child two wisps of
cotton wool in order that he might bear away the misfortune of the
family and save it from a too numerous brood of girl children.

Chia Sung Lien, fearing that this may have been a frustrated attempt
by his younger son to come to the aid of his family by re-entering the
world through the body of the child, returned with the messenger to
make sure that the soul be given the most careful attention, and that
the burial rites be attended with more elaboration than usual for a
baby.

To Kuei Ping the weeks and months that followed were one long weary
night-mare. By day she haggled with tradesman and food-shop keepers
over the price of a bit of cloth for garments for Bo Te, over shrimp
for soup or vegetables and rice for food. At night she lay shivering
under the coverlets, listening to the restless tossing of her husband,
kept awake by her own thoughts and his loud breathing.

Fuh Tang sank lower and lower into the lethargy of opium smoking until
one day he returned home to announce that the British consul had no
more work for him that season. He no longer strove to hide the use of
the drug from her, his only desire was to get it. Day after day he sat
dreaming his colorless dreams while she struggled with the problem of
keeping a roof over their heads, one by one pawning their possessions
until little save the bare walls remained.

These walls, closing in upon her daily, became menacing shadows at
night. Bitterly she condemned her own blindness in believing that she
had hoped to find freedom in this way.

Thus the poison of the poppy stilled into pleasantness the dreams of
Fuh Tang and the poison of selfish despair did its work upon the heart
of Kuei Ping.

Meanwhile the winds grew colder and winter came upon them.




  _Wherein
  the heart
  of a woman
  is occupied
  with one
  desire_


Kuei Ping, struggling against the sense of walls that shut her off from
life and any understanding of it, spoke quick words of rebellion when
Chang An urged upon her a more frequent attendance at the temple of
Buddha. Borne in upon the heart of Kuei Ping came a desire to pierce
through and beyond the walls that menaced her, to force her way through
the shadowy darkness she could no longer tolerate and find the way to
the light of which Miss Porter had spoken in early morning chapel long
ago.

In her earlier times of need she had instinctively turned to worship
of the Merciful One, but now she could force her blinding eyes to see
nothing save the smirking smile on the face of the lacquer god. The
routine of prayers seemed but a mockery; the burning of incense faggots
before the fat squatting creature but added to the ugliness of his
already over-smoked and oily figure. Peace she no longer brought upon
herself in the temple, because peace was no longer what she wanted.

Out and beyond herself and all of the women of her race she wanted to
go, out to find and serve that God whom she had heard called the God of
Life and of Light. Turning through her slender book of translations
from the western Bible she marked, as she read, all the phrases which
called her out to service, marked them until they stood in bold relief
upon the pages overshadowing with their prominence all the other words.

Little Bo Te played unheeded at her feet. Heavier and heavier upon her
husband sank the evils of consumption, and it was to his long slender
pipe he turned feverishly for relief from pain and doubt.

Unlit, the candles of the house furnished no glow for those who dwelt
within.




  _Wherein
  Kuei Ping
  prepares
  for a
  pilgrimage_


Kuei Ping made her preparations for departure carefully and quietly.
She put into the parcel of clothing only the barest necessities,
leaving the warmer garments and her dowry pearls, which she had still
clung to even when everything else of value had been sacrificed for
the use of the others of her household. She made sure that there was a
fair supply of rice in the house and that Chang An had prepared some
in readiness for the morning meal. She wrote a short note telling of
her departure. Then she steeled her heart against entering the room
where her husband and little son lay sleeping. It was better thus,
she told herself, that she should go away in the night without any
fuss or staying of steps. She knew that she must go if she was to find
the truth for which she sought, and the desire to find it was the
controlling motive of her life. What she had left of material things
would last until the news of her departure reached the Chia compound.
Then they would call Fuh Tang back with eager voices to the ease and
plenty of his family, and he would take the little son with him. Kuei
Ping felt that it was right that he should, but she knew that if she
was to hold to that resolution she must not enter the room for one last
look at the sleeping boy.

It was night, the second time in her life that she walked through the
city streets alone, but she felt no fear. They led her to freedom. As
she passed from the dusty courtyard and through innumerable hutungs on
the outer side of grey walls, she was filled with a longing to tell
the women shut within those walls of what she had learned and why she
went. Lanterns hung at gateways threw out feeble rays of light along
the narrow passageways. Turning into Hatamen Street she found a sleepy
chair-bearer who carried her out to one of the farther city gates.
There she dismissed him, for she sought peace and quiet in which to
prepare for her new life of service. Shut within the walls of her home
she could make no plans. A guard lay asleep at one of the gateways
leading to the top of the city wall. She passed by him unnoticed and
found a secluded spot on beyond an overlooking watch tower.

Here in the quiet above the city she prayed, seeking for knowledge.
A gentle dew seemed to moisten the parched earth as she waited. Then
there came the hush of nature that precedes dawn. A faint touch of
gold appeared in the sky behind the purple western hills. The gold
was shot with rays of flame color that melted into warm amber which
became softened around the edges with lavender and wisteria shades;
then in the ever-changing heavens amid the glory of color rose the sun,
complete in its magnificence, giving light unto the entire world.

Kuei Ping stilled her prayer to gaze in wonder at the beauty of the
sunrise and then to look down upon the city as it roused itself for
the tasks of the day. What she saw were but familiar things in a new
light. She saw an old man taking down the shutters from his shop. She
saw the dark lurking figures, the petty thieves and marauders of the
night, slink away through side alleys, and in their places came the
familiar traveling restaurant with its bowls of steaming morning broth.
She heard the restaurant carrier’s voice mingled with the call of the
hucksters from the country. She heard the feeble cry of a waking baby.
Over the wall in the compound just below her she watched a little lad
patting earth about a leafless plant with his two hands while an amah
urged him in to eat his morning rice.

Kuei Ping turned to her worn book to read again the words of Jesus as
He had told of the Father to all those who had eyes to see and ears to
hear. She read of love and of patience and of understanding for the
trials of others and of forgetfulness of self. Patience and quiet
which she had thought of until now as attributes only of Buddha she saw
welded into the personality of the Son who had come to dwell on earth
that those who sought Him might know more of his Father. Her vague
longing for knowledge and for service became a desire to live as He
had lived, simply and lovingly sharing whatever knowledge was trusted
to her as He had shared with those of his own household and the small
section of the world where He had dwelt.

Below her within the city she saw not only dusty walls that shut out
the light, but lights too which shone from within. She came down from
her morning of prayer no longer crying out for freedom. Freedom she
had gained through forgetfulness of self. She was filled with a deep
abiding sense of joy as she went back through the awakening streets to
her own husband and child.

Bo Te had crawled down from his bed and sat in the corner of the room
playing with the broken bits of the little ivory idol Chang An had kept
hanging about his neck. He reached out eager hands to his mother asking
her to fix it again. She held him close, a song of happiness throbbing
in her heart.

Fuh Tang still lay in the stupor of drugged sleep, but as she leaned
over him she saw in his blue-lined face something of the price that he
had paid for her freedom thus far. For the first time she saw the real
contrast between him and the handsome gallant man who had loved her
enough to break down the walls of custom for her and sacrifice his own
career to earn her bread by daily work. She saw him not as a destroyer
of her trust, but as the victim of circumstances which had been too
great for both of them until now. She saw thus now because she measured
their love not by her need of him, but by his need of her. She read,
too, in the repeated calls from his household for their return more
than just the desire to enforce old traditions. She felt something of
the weight of the household burdens upon the tired shoulders of Madame
Chia, and the patience and understanding which it required to keep life
going on smoothly and happily in a home. And she knew that according to
custom it was her duty, as the wife of the eldest son of the family, to
relieve Madame Chia and to be ready to take her place when she should
be called to the world beyond.

She saw her path of service within her own small world first in
ministering to those who had need of her and then perhaps out through
them to others.

With an abiding peace in her heart Kuei Ping unfolded and put back
in the familiar pigskin chests the garments she had prepared for her
pilgrimage.




  _Wherein
  there is
  patience
  and tenderness
  and understanding
  and a
  return to
  a little
  home village_


A procession of three sedan chairs made its way along the Big Horse
Street of Kuei Ping’s home village. It was the time of the Feast of
Lanterns. Made in shapes of birds, and fish with great eyes, and cocks,
and little houses that spun round and round when they were lit, some
large and some small, they decorated the shops and hung in front of
entrance ways, or dangled from sedan chairs. Bo Te, riding with his
father in the front of the procession, cried out in glee over each new
display or shouted in pure ecstasy over the firing of a particularly
loud bunch of firecrackers. The street was packed with slow-moving
holiday makers and with vendors who cried their wares and made sales in
the midst of traffic, so that Fuh Tang spoke to the chair-bearer in the
lead asking him to go through the more quiet Street of Precious Pearls
and connect with the hutung on the opposite side.

Kuei Ping rode second in the home-bound procession. Chang An, following
behind, leaned forward and raised her voice to remind her of the day,
which seemed so long ago now, on which they had come here to buy Kuei
Ping’s dowry pearls. The street, too, had its decking in honor of the
holiday, dainty lanterns of dull gold decorated in red hung before
Wong Lui’s close-shuttered doorways, and lovely ones shaped like bright
colored autumn leaves decorated a shop farther down the street.

The chairs wound out of the Street of Precious Pearls and on through
the streets along which Kuei Ping had passed on her wedding day. Then
she had gone in darkness, wrapped in heavy veils, toward a life of
unfamiliar things. To-day she came through the same streets again to
the Chia compound, conscious of joy in her coming, filled with a deep
gladness that she had a place there. Her husband seemed to gather new
strength as they passed through ways he had known in boyhood.

Chia Sung Lien with his household met them at the gateways to the
family dwelling. Shining with happiness, the old man bade them welcome
and begged them to accept his apology that the honorable mother could
not meet them at the doorway too, but that she bade them come to
her pavilion with haste that she might greet them. When the formal
greetings were over Chia Sung Lien took his little grandson about,
showing him the wonders of the courtyards, bringing out for his delight
the little secret boxes of play treasures saved from his own boyhood,
figures carved of ivory and of ebony, coins which he had saved from
pocket-money years ago, letting the child hold the pet birds upon their
perching sticks, showing him the purple velvet carp and the silver and
gold fish in the fish pond, and exhibiting him to all the old servants
of the household and to all the relatives who came to call.

Joy and love radiated through the vast dwelling and were reflected in
the passive faces of all who made their home there. Kuei Ping came to
realize almost as a revelation the gentle respect for each other and
the careful consideration of the group as a whole which were absolutely
essential to the life of the compound. What she had at first accepted
as natural, then struggled against as a barrier to life, she came now
to see in a truer light and to value that which was best in it. She saw
with new eyes the patience required upon the part of Madame Chia to
keep the household running smoothly and happily. The old woman, now no
longer able to go about, directed affairs from her great bed, dividing
duties and favors among the daughters-in-law of the family who again
divided them among the other members of the house.

Going to visit within her own girlhood dwelling, Kuei Ping, from out
of her brief experience, came away again marvelling at the smoothness
of her grandmother’s plans, and the care with which her mother had been
taught to carry on the family rites after Madame Yen should go on to
the life beyond.

Both families accepted with quiet respect Kuei Ping’s feeling about the
God in whose service she now lived. If they felt her mistaken they did
not speak of it. The duties of attendance upon the family altar and the
dropping of daily rice before the Kitchen God were continued by the
widow of the deceased son. Kuei Ping came in turn to see beauty in the
regularity with which they served as they believed, and the patience
with which they lived.

In the dimly lighted courtyard under the familiar magnolia trees she
walked with Fuh Tang. His steps were slower now. On the branches above
their heads hung lanterns for the festival, through the latticed
windows of the rooms about the court warm home lights glowed, from the
kitchen court came the sound of servants chattering as they finished
the tasks of the day, then above the other noises rose the shrill voice
of their son. They stayed their steps to listen. He was telling the
other children of the compound about the courtyard in which he had
lived with Father and Mother and Chang An and an old gateman all by
himself, telling them about the big city that is Peking. And of the
wondrous procession which he had once seen there when Father had lifted
him upon the wall that he might get a far-away glimpse of the Emperor
with lots and lots of banners and men going with him. They heard him
say that when he grew up he was going to be an Emperor and ride along a
golden road at the head of a big procession. They heard him shout that
he would if he wanted to, when the other children mocked his dream with
its impossibility. They heard Chang An bear him away to bed.

Fuh Tang’s eyes twinkled with humor as he looked down at Kuei Ping. She
laughed back. The barrier that had seemed to separate them was down.
True, the walls of the compound that had pressed in upon their earlier
freedom were about them, but Kuei Ping saw them now only as encircling
walls of stone and mortar.




  _Wherein
  twenty-seven
  slow years
  are added
  one upon
  another_


The years that followed were but the melting together of the pearls of
Kuei Ping’s life. They held the gems of joy and of sorrow. She took
up again the task of learning from Madame Chia the ways of household
management, observing as carefully as possible the honorable mother’s
wishes, coming to love her for her patience and her ability. She went
often during the remaining days of Madame Yen’s life to the bedside,
sometimes reading to her grandmother from the Book of Life she had
received from the West, sometimes listening quietly as the old lady
told her bits of wisdom she had learned from her own living.

The second of the new years within the compound gave to Kuei Ping a
baby girl. Fuh Tang, growing steadily weaker, brightened with the
coming of the gentle little child. Kuei Ping watched him as he played
with the baby and let a hope grow in her heart that he would be well
again. The entire household came to share that hope. A year passed in
which each of the days was a glorious promise of more.

Then the end came suddenly in a short spasm of suffering. When it was
over Kuei Ping could not feel that Fuh Tang was finished with life,
but that he had passed on where there was no more of earthly suffering.

The long days that followed bore their pain of loneliness. The sleeves
of his garments hung so empty and lay so still as she folded them away.
Bo Te cried piteously for the return of his father. Stilling his cries
and lulling to sleep the little daughter, Kuei Ping felt herself to
blame that she had wanted freedom and perhaps had bought it with Fuh
Tang’s life. Then there came over her a great thankfulness for what
he had given her--the right to come and go as she chose through the
compound door, two children to guide in their wanderings beyond it, and
a love that seemed nearer now than it had since those days when the
weariness had first begun to come upon him.

Her days were different from those of the women whose homes joined hers
along the hutung only in that she had greater personal freedom and that
she sought to live by the pattern of the life of Christ. The duties
were the same round of daily household tasks. Time and time again she
found it hard to live as near like the Master in kindliness and love as
the women whom she knew who still worshipped in the old familiar ways.
But as her daughter grew older she was tenfold thankful for the little
she had learned of Christian faith and of the place it gave to women.

While Kuei Ping’s children were small she taught them, gathering about
her each morning, as her uncle had done before her, all the children
of the compound. She followed in her lesson plans the same teaching
of nature from the plants in the garden, the same beginning of five
written characters from the old classics each day, but to the worn
book of Rites she added the parables from the book of Christ. A dream
grew then,--to found a home school in which all the children of the
neighborhood who would, might come and learn not the western way of
life, but the home way enlightened by the teachings of Jesus.

Almost miraculously she and her little village passed untouched through
the Boxer rebellion. Perhaps it was their smallness that saved them
from the destroying hand of the fanatically-crazed men who sought to
save their country as the center of the universe, complete in itself,
and to drive out all other influences. Kuei Ping likes to think of it
as a modern miracle.

But the fall of the Manchus and the coming of a Republic so cut down
her means that the little school had to be pushed back again into
the realm of dreams after it had grown to a reality with twenty day
students. One entire side of the home had been used for the plan. Now
only a few rooms of the compound were Kuei Ping’s even for dwelling
quarters, for other Chia relatives came seeking shelter. Their official
incomes shaved to a mere pittance, the fatty places in which they had
squeezed more than twice their earnings taken away, the piteous flock
did not know what else to do.

It was then that Kuei Ping faced the problem not of dividing what she
had with others but of earning for her own children their livelihood
and of preparing them to fill the place in life which she had so
blithely planned for them. Again her thoughts turned to the West where
women knew how to do things with which to earn money. Bo Te, now called
by his school name Kwan Wa, begged to give up his education and to seek
for work. He had only two more years of study before the completion
of his chosen course, and as he had been offered the opportunity of a
scholarship she refused to consider the suggestion.

It was then that she began to teach foreigners Chinese. Miss Porter,
to whom she went with her problem, sent her the first two pupils.
She found two rooms in a section of a courtyard near enough to the
mission school for her daughter to attend classes with other girls of
her own age. The expenses of her life were small, her group of private
pupils grew larger and as she came to earn even a little more than she
needed, this she added to a tiny growing heap of savings. Bit by bit
she revived again the hope that when her son had finished his education
she would build her school. As a part of this growing plan she held as
capital the string of pearls bought so long ago. The jewels, treasured
as they had been through each period of vicissitude in her life, had
come to have an intrinsic beauty which strengthened her desire to use
them where they would luminate the lives of others.

The affairs of government rocked above her head. She was conscious of
them but they did not shake her determination to secure the title to a
part of the old home where her maternal grandmother had spent her life,
to be used for her school.

Then her little daughter fell ill of fever. Long months of nursing made
her better but the foreign doctor urged the seashore and Kuei Ping
again delayed her school plans, and took from her savings.

Kwan Wa’s marriage and an opportunity to begin the school came in the
same year. His work for the year took him to Mukden and his salary was
sufficient to make her earnings unnecessary for the family needs.

He, too, shared her plan for the home school and widened that dream to
a plan that they should build near it a church for the worship of the
Christian God whom they sought to follow.

It was a joyous day when Chia Kuei Ping at last saw the dream again a
reality. No new buildings were built. The old compound in which her
mother had lived before she was married was large enough for a part to
be used as a dwelling and a part for classes. Each overlapped the other
so that they were one--a home where education and living are one and
the same.

The plan grew more rapidly than she could well manage alone. Then she
discovered a man and his wife, childless, followers too of this new
religion from the West but members of another of its man-made branches,
who wished to help. They came to her to add to her teaching staff,
giving their time and their small income to the project.

Again as time passed and the word of the school and its teachings
spread, she found that her doors must be widened and her pocketbook
fattened to make possible the needed expenditures. It was then that she
returned to the task of teaching foreigners to speak Chinese, riding
the twenty long miles to and from her home twice a week to the city of
Peking.

A small inheritance came from her father’s family and this was laid
aside as the beginning of the church she dreamed of building, where in
a place set apart those who wished to enter might find a quiet place
for communion with God. Into this building she put her dowry pearls, at
last.

On her fiftieth birthday the people of her village laid the corner
stone of the new church and even those who followed still the ways of
worship of their fathers lent their hands to the building.




  _Wherein the
  narrator
  becomes
  Kuei Ping’s pupil
  and is
  filled with
  wondering questions
  and is witness
  to a dream
  come true
  in its
  threefold parts_


The key to new treasure is often found in places unexpectedly near.
It was midforenoon of a day in early spring. I approached the stuffy
cubby hole, in which my private teacher waited, with lagging steps,
struggling with the temptation to be finished with school for the day.
On Hatamen Street a fortune teller squatted, reading fates with his
magic paraphernalia; outside of Chen Men an old man in a lantern had
promised to teach me to paint on parchment; there was a temple bazaar
on at Lung Fa Fsu--a dozen different allurements called. Reluctantly I
tapped upon the door several minutes late.

A woman older than my former teacher bade me enter. It is the custom
in the school where I study Mandarin, or official Chinese, to
change instructors often lest one copy too accurately mannerisms in
intonation. Perhaps had it not been spring, or had I not been late we
would have conned over lessons for weeks and gone no deeper behind the
veil of passive expression on either face, each of us busy with her own
thoughts while we droned over Chinese proverbs. As it was I had seen
the official looking document laid upon the table and the light in Chia
Kuei Ping’s eyes that told better than words the story of a long hoped
for dream suddenly come true. Perhaps she felt the need in mine. I
count it among the most precious treasures of my life that she did not
pass me by with only a drilling on Chinese proverbs.

Proverbs are good, but she gave me much more. The document she
translated was the appointment of her son to go to study railway
transportation for three years in America, England and the continent
of Europe. While she talked, I who could understand only a few of her
words, caught something of what that meant to her and to her people.
Through her eyes I saw burdens lifted from the necks of millions of
overladen men and women who with their bodies now make the largest
part of the transportation service of her country. She was not blinded
to the long years before her son’s dream of an interlacing series
of freight trains should take their place; but her dream had been
fulfilled in his opportunity.

The days that followed were filled with deep joy for me. In the
atmosphere of her own home Kuei Ping let me know her daughter and her
four grandchildren. Nestled at the foot of the western hills, where
seventeen generations of her mother’s family have dwelt, she let me sit
at her feet and listen to life as it was lived about her. She did not
still my eager questions, but she shared with me what she had learned
from fifty-five years of life, teaching as simply and as eagerly as she
taught the pupils of her own school.

Ancient trees mark cool spots of deep green on the bare cathedral-like
glory of western hills that overlook her village. They shelter the
ancient temples in which her forefathers and her neighbors have
worshipped for many generations. Some are falling into decay, but all
have been built with infinite care by the hand of man. In the quiet
of early morning I have listened with Chia Kuei Ping to the chant of
services in the Llama temple, to make which men carried pure white
marble all the way from India that they might have a fitting dwelling
place for their gods. I have walked with her beneath the peaceful shade
of wide-spreading trees that stretch their branches over the roof of
a temple where men and women seek through worship of Buddha to bring
blessedness to themselves and their families. She has led me beneath
the counting board whose legend reads “As you live so shall the evils
be marked against you,” through the noisy mart of a Taoist temple where
seekers after truth please their gods by avoiding evil.

The mountains overlook, and the temples surround, her little school
and church, the former but a part of her ancient family dwelling,
the latter new like her religion. The trees that surround it are
but slender saplings, little more than sprouting roots. The simple
structure of the building has no architectural beauty to compare with
the ancient temples on the hillside. I wonder just a little at her
daring to place it there. Then from within her dwelling comes the sound
of childish voices singing--the children who are being taught what
she has learned of life while she goes just a little ahead, listening
with the eager heart of youth for the voice of the Father who gave his
Son that those who seek might learn of Him. Her school is filled to
overflowing with the youth of her village.

Parents, too long bound by old tradition to learn to walk in new ways,
covet for their children the luminous light that shines in the eyes of
Chia Kuei Ping.




      *      *      *      *      *      *




Transcriber’s note:

  Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.





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