A Marriage in China

Front matter

A MAERIAGE IN CHINA PRINTED BY BPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NBW-STREET SQDAEE LONDON A MAEEIAGE IN CHINA 11 Y MRS. ARCHIBALD LITTLE (A. E. N. BEWICKE) ' I am become a perfect epicure in reading ; plain beef or solid mutton will never do. I am for a Chinese dish of bears' claws aud birds' neats.' Goldsmtth's 'Citizen of the World. LONDON F. V. WHITE & CO. 14 BEDFORD STREET, STRAND, W.C. PEEFACE To those Consuls and Commissioners of Chinese Custcrns who have shown me kindliness in China, this book is jointly dedicated. Some of them may feel surprise on meeting therein other men arbitrarily promoted to the posts they them selves occupy, but no one of them need fear being con fronted by his own portrait or caricature, either in his own Consulate or Commissionership, or elsewhere ; though here and there be may find a composite photograph recalling this one by his learning, that one by bis courtesy.

As they remember but too well, the Riots whereof mention is made did in reality take place : 1 889, February, Chinkiang ; 1891, May 12, Wuhu ; May 25, Attempt at Nanking; June 5, "Wusiieh ; June 7, Attempt at Kiu kiang ; September 2, Ichang. That no explanation is given of these outbreaks, neither why they occurred, nor why they ceased, nor who directed them in their goodly ordering, is because, if known to any of these gentlemen, it is a secret so far locked within his breast. If some find there be something too little said of merchants, let it be remembered that it is missionaries rather than merchants who have so far found facilities in

Preface

VI the last ports opened by British diplomacy. Whilst if others think something too much of Taoism doth herein appear, was it not a Commissioner who said, ' For one Chinese missionaries convert, I wonder how many Euro peans are converted by the Chinese ! ' With which words I take leave of these bigb officials in European and Chinese employ, begging them to com mend my pages to that public that they serve, and wishing them quick promotion and much happiness in the old home and the new ! Alicia Bewicke Little. Chungking : 1893. TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAP- FAQ. I. The Old Home 1 II. Gardie 8 III. Leaving for China ,15 IV. At the Club Bar. No. 1 20 V. Tea and Tea-cups 29 VI. An American Bishop 37 VII. Long Ago 47 VIIl. From the Hankow Commissioner's Point op View . 52 IX. At a Mission Station 58 X. Life in an Outport 67 XI.

The First Rumour of a Riot 79 XII. In the Niukan Gorge 81 XHI. The Rescue Party 91 XIV. Looking Back 100 XV. Haste to the Wedding! 107 XVI. A Japanese Bath 117 XVII. Struggling with the Rapids 126 XVIII. More Japanese Bathing 137 XIX. Arriving at Chungking 141 XX. Sent Down 149 XXI. Was it Fate or Character? 161 XXII. A Stern Chase 172 XXIIl. Taking Counsel 178 XXIV. The Gardens by the River TABLE OF CONTENTS VIII chaf. rAGE XXV. Dr. Donaldson's Appeal • ■*■" XXVI. Mrs. FitzHugh under Sail 202 XXVII. The Rift within the Lute 209 XXVIII. The Rift Widening 217 XXIX. A Missionary's Troubles 227 XXX. Miss Frost and Susanna 235 XXXI. Susanna in the Seat of Judgment . . . . 245 XXXII. Shanghai Races 249 XXXIII. A Snake in the Grass 261 XXXIV. His Race was Run 264 XXXV. The Skeleton in the Cupboard 269 XXXVI.

Foreshadowings 278 XXXVII. A Confession of Faith 283 XXXVIII. At Sea Again 291 XXXIX. Expiation 294 XL. At the Club Bar. Finis 304 XLI. The New Life A MAEEIAGE IN CHINA

Chapter I The Old Home

I can recall so well how she would look — How at the very murmur of her dress On entering the door, the whole room took An air of gentleness. That was so long ago, and yet his eyes Had always, afterwards, the look that waits And yearns and waits again, nor can disguise Something it contemplates. C. B. Going. The little drawing-room looked out through two windows, one a well-rounded bow, on to a quiet garden, shut in by a high brick wall, except where the long, narrow greenhouse, projecting almost at right angles from the drawing-room, occupied one side of it. Needless to say, there was a mountain ash forming a complete arbour, with its red-berried branches trailing all round, and a circular seat beneath them ; and that there was no barren expanse of turf abandoned to a lawn tennis net ! Lawn tennis was of another epoch from that garden, with its single dahlias, its bushes of lavender, and peonies !

What turf there was was of the richest, but cut up by little old-fashioned borders of fanciful shapes, all brimful of flowers, except in one spot where a sweetbriar bush had been allowed to grow somewhat wildly, and at another where three small yew bushes had been cut into grotesque shapes, one bearing a resemblance to a lion, the others more like candle sticks than anything else. The drawing-room looked as peaceful and old world as the garden ; the roomy, comfortable sofa, and B the spindle-legged chairs, all covered with that glazed chintz with bright knots of flowers that even Morris and cretonnes have not quite abolished ; the pictures on the walls of ladies and gentlemen in powder and heavy gold frames, the gentle men wearing blue coats, the ladies snuff-coloured gowns, all but one — if not by Romney, then after Romney — in a figured chintz.

There was an old blue china bowl in the middle of the round table — itself, as in the old style, religiously placed in the middle of the room — and the bowl was brimming over with wallflowers, yellow and dusky red. And beside the wallflowers, looking like a monthly rosebud of long ago, sat Miss Gardiner, with a bright pink colour on her dear old cheeks, against which the grey curls were pinned tightly, and with bright blue eyes, and cap with pink bows and floating pink strings, that all alike seem to have gone out of fashion together, and left the world perhaps more æsthetic, but certainly less cheery. She wore some not very fine white lace about her throat and bosom, secured by a brooch of tiger's claws, as she sat leaning against the back of her chair, but in a somewhat upright, alert fashion, with her hands lightly folded on her lap, evidently making company of the lady who occupied the post of honour on the sofa ; a lady all in black silk, lace trimmed, but loose fitting, with dark eyes and hair, and a settled redness on her face. ' He is somewhere in China, you know, my dear sister's son.

I don't recollect exactly where. It did end in 'ow, I know, and it is not Shanghai. But he goes there from time to time. Everyone in China seems to pass through Shanghai to go anywhere. It is evidently quite a centre, though you would not think so to look at the map,' added Miss Gardiner, nodding her head with the air of im parting information she was somewhat proud of possessing. The lady on the sofa bowed slightly, as if accepting it. ' You did not know I had a nephew in China \ ' continued Miss Gardiner. ' Such a dear, clear fellow ! No ! not a missionary, nor in business ; something in the Consular Service. I do not know exactly what he is called now. He is not a consul exactly, and he is not an interpreter any longer. So curious, they always set them to interpret when they first arrive in China, when you would think the young men them selves stood rather in need of help in that way.

Such a specially difficult language as it is, too, as Claude says. He brought me those two dear old monsters by the fireplace last time he came home, and that lovely bit of sang de bœuf he sent me from THE OLD HOME 3 Peking. Oh ! and that cushion, and my brooch, and nearly everything I have that is not strictly useful. Though so practical a people, the Chinese do not seem to make things for use,' said the dear old lady, again nodding her head, proud of her information. ' Claude 1 ' said the other lady interrogatively, and her face wore an air of having known it from the first, and yet being somewhat additionally depressed, when Miss Gardiner, all smiles and animation, said : ' Yes ! Claude Fortescue, that is my dear boy's name. My sister married Captain Fortescue on his return from India — on his return from India,' she repeated musingly. ' He did not live many years, and my sister died just before Claude went out to China.

It was almost as well, it would have been such a great grief to her. But then, I suppose, he would not have gone. To let you into a little secret, I think he was very sorry to have to go back to China this time, he seemed so greatly taken with your niece — cousin, I mean. Not that he proposed,' said Miss Gardiner, blushing. ' I certainly thought he would have, but I feel sure he did not, or Lilian would have told me of it. But he was certainly greatly taken.' A girl's figure had been visible in the greenhouse for the last few minutes, and she now came into the room, a young girl in a pale green and white dress, a large straw hat, that had fallen back from off her head, still tied round her throat. Very young and very pretty, yet the first thing every stranger noticed about Lilian Grey was rather her high-bred air and carriage than her beauty.

With a dainty grace, that was an inherent part of herself, she now offered the first pink of the season to the dark lady ; then, seeing the two elders apparently absorbed in their conversation, passed out by the open window as noiselessly as she had come in. Mrs. Betterton had indeed the air of being very much preoccupied, as she accepted with some bewilderment the flower the young girl offered with such a pretty gesture. 'Of course she was very young— very, very young,' said Miss Gardiner. ' And perhaps he thought he had not enough to offer. Marriage is so expensive,' she added with a sigh. ' Is it ? ' said Mrs. Betterton somewhat grimly. ' Why, surely to keep two is so much more expensive than to keep one,' said the maiden lady, flushing a little. ' And then — and then ' ' It depends upon the style in which a man thinks it b necessary for his wife to live,' said the dark lady, saying each word as if it cost her an effort to think of it, and was in no case the word she had at first intended using. ' Ah, yes !

And I dare say dear Claude would think great style necessary. He is so fastidious, nothing short of the best would ever satisfy him.' The dark lady's face from red grew almost purple, before she said, somewhat as if cutting the subject short : ' You did not know that I have lived in China, I believe. Yes, that is the reason you have never heard of me before, nor Lilian, since she was quite a little girl. I knew your nephew out there. The house he was occupying there is not generally reckoned one of the best in the Consular Service. It would hardly be possible to think of anyone living in great style in it. No, he is not likely to be there still, I should think. At least I hope not, for his sake. They do not generally keep them too long in one place when they appoint them to a very lonely outport.

It is too severe a trial, I suppose they think.' All of this hesitatingly, and in answer to various eager questions from the bright-faced maiden aunt. And yet the same Mrs. Betterton, who had such difficulty in expressing herself about this young man in the Consular Service, was at no loss for an answer when asked if missionaries were doing good work in China, or what were the prospects of China becoming a Christian country. To be sure, no one had ever yet talked to her for more than ten minutes since she returned to England without asking her at least these two rather far-reaching questions ; so she had practice in replying to them. But this same woman, who could barely string two stuttering sentences together about a young consular official, had made herself felt at the great Exeter Hall meeting two nights before, when some of the most eloquent men of England had been among the speakers. ' Have you any reason to think that — that — Miss Grey was attracted by Mr. Fortescue 1 ' she now asked, after a somewhat gloomy silence. ' How could she be otherwise 1 ' said the old maiden lady with a sweet smile. ' He is so very, very nice, is he not ?

And then he was the first gentleman who had ever paid her any attentions. Of course I try that Lilian should have all the advantages. But we live very quietly here. And not even at the one or two balls she has since been to can she have met anyone more cultivated and attractive than Claude. THE OLD HOME 5 And then, when he was last home, she had been nowhere. That must have been the reason, I think. He must have thought it hardly fair to bind her. For he certainly paid her every attention, and I don't it is quite the act of a gentleman to do that — and to do no more,' said poor Miss Gardiner a little plaintively. ' We must never judge lightly of one another's actions,' said Mrs. Betterton, with what seemed an unnecessary degree of solemnity. ' Very often — if we knew all— just what we are most inclined to condemn would be what we should most approve.

" There lives a righteous Judge "' Miss Gardiner looked impressed, and also greatly relieved. So sympathetic a nature had not failed to be pained that one who knew her nephew in China should yet refrain from all word of praise of him to his old aunt in England ; but now, at the first word of semi-censure to which she had nerved herself, thinking the other might be biassed by some apprehension of wrong done to her relation, Lilian, Mrs. Betterton dissented with energy. Miss Gardiner returned to the opinion to which she had inclined from the beginning, that Mrs. Betterton was a stern, hard woman, too just to censure, whilst too unloving to praise. She could picture to herself how her dear Claude would be sure to dislike her. But now the tea-tray came in, and with the tea returned Lilian Grey to dispense it, which she again did with a pretty grace that had something of the old school in it.

Mrs. Betterton watched her with large, dark, earnest eyes. ' I dearly loved your mother, child,' at last she said abruptly, and the tone in which she said it almost sounded as if she had struggled against that love, which had yet been too much for her. Lilian had felt oppressed by the intense watchfulness of those dark, glowing eyes, but she looked up relieved now. ' I am like her, am I not ? ' she asked. ' Dear Gardie never saw her ; but when I look in the glass I think I am like the little miniature I have of her.' ' You are the very image of her,' said Mrs. Betterton, ' in the way you speak and move and do everything. Your very turns of the head are all your mother's. She was my first love,' said the grim woman, smiling, ' and my darling little cousin. When she married your father and went away to Vienna I thought the light of my life had gone out.' ' You did not love my father t ' asked tho girl gravely, her eyes dilating somewhat, as if the idea shocked her. 1 If I over hated any man, I hated your father,' replied Mrs. Bettortorr with incisive firmness. ' Ho stolo your mother's love from nro, and ho took her away from me.

Up to that time she had looked up to me for everything. Then it was all " Harcourt "— " Harcourt says this," and " Harcourt says that," till my very heart was sick within me. Ho was a clever, accomplished man of the world, and a born diplomatist. What could I do against him, a raw country girl without a natural gift of any kind, only a too passionately loving heart ? So I went away. Arrd your mother married and werrt to Vienna. And there you were born. And there sho died. And wo had never made friends again after what sho called my unkind opposition to hor marriage. But she would not havo been lying in her grave had ho left her to me a little longer. But, no. I have nothing more to reproach your father with except that he took her away. And ho married the Grafina ' ' That was years afterwards,' said tho girl quickly. 'Oh, yes ; it was years afterwards.

I don't reproach him with it. And ho died of yellow fever at Rio Janeiro, did ho not 1 Poor man 1 poor man ! ho was a very high-bred gentle man. I take it there is something of him in you, too, my child. And now I must go my ways,' said Mrs. Betterton, rising. 'Hero is an address that will always find me ; arrd, if you ever want a friend, recollect that I loved your mother dearly. But it seems of so little use to say that when orro is going back to China.' ' You are going hack agairr 1 ' asked Miss Cardiner in sudden awe. ' Yes, I have only come homo to place my two boys at school. There is a very good school at Chefoo, in Clrirra, but I thought I should feel happier about them in England ; and in reality in the west of China one is hardly nearer Chefoo than one is to England. I mean one is so far from both.

Sometimes, do you know, I think life is all a mistake ! ' said Mrs. Betterton, fixing her glowing eyes on the young girl's face. ' If anyone had told me, when I was a girl, that your mother's daughter should be left an orphan, and I bo willing to live thousands of miles away ! But I havo put my hand to tho plough, and I dare not draw back. This sacrifice, too, must be laid at His feet that bled. Tho fields are ripening to the harvest in China, but the reapers are few. And since THE OLD HOME 7 Mr. Betterton has been taken away from among us, I feel as if I must work doubly hard. So I have brought our two boys home to be trained for the Lord's service, and the two little ones go back with me. So shall I not be forsaken of all my children, and they need a mother's care the most, the little ones.

But oh ! the heart hunger for my boys, and for him whose loving words of counsel are silent now till we meet again upon the other shore ! Ah me ! the flesh is weak, and it often seems as if that crossing might be made so quickly. It is not like the long, long journey to China. And now I am told I must not return at once, but out of the fruits of my experience raise up other workers ! To do is easy,' murmured rather than spoke the devoted woman. ' To suffer — why, as soon as it is more than one can bear, friend Death comes and saves. But to speak to others ! It is like pouring out my own heart's blood for them to see. And to look upon the unawakened, unprepared faces, and call upon them to take up the burden — that, that is terrible ! But I am speaking of what you cannot understand,' she said, breaking off with a smile, as she saw the growing agitation on her hearers' faces — a gathering flush upon the gentle Miss Gardiner's cheek, whilst the girl's clear eyes seemed to be following and seeing every working of her mind. ' This is only to explain to you — to you both — that I am staying on in England for a while, but only as long as I can be more useful here for the mission field than if I were myself upon it among our dear Chinese.

But if there ever is any way I can serve you, Lilian, for your mother's sake — And to think that but for this dear, good Miss Gardiner, you, my poor chdd ' She broke off agam, this tune quite overcome by her own emotion. ' Don't say that,' said the girl, putting her arms round her spontaneously, as she would never have thought it possible she should on first seeing her that afternoon. ' Besides, I shall always now have your love to count upon — for my dear mother's sake.' Mrs. Betterton was greatly touched, and folded her in a passionate embrace. Then she took leave of Miss Gardiner more formally, yet still with much effusion. And then, before they had quite realised what was happenmg, the dark lady in the long, loose black silk jacket, clumsily shaped so as to conceal her figure, in accordance with Chmese notions of propriety, as she bad already explained upon more than one missionary platform, was driving off to catch the train in that startlingly good time that alone seems safe to people when they first arrive from the far East, taking with her the black bag that oontained her Bible, and from which she never parted, but taking with her also a host of kindly feelings, such as are but seldom the creation of one afternoon's meeting. ' And I meant to have gone to the station with her, of course,' said Miss Gardiner. ' And see, she has left my beautiful clove pink behind,' said the girl, pressing it lovingly to her lips now for the sake of her to whom she had given it.

Chapter II Gardie

Golden morning and purple night, Life that fails with the failing light I Death is the only deathless one. All things must end that have begun. John Payne. It was a very still life, that led by Miss Gardiner and Lilian Grey at Northampton, though the elder lady did try that the younger one should have ' all the advantages.' But to Lilian that old house and garden were all the home she had ever known. She could not recollect Vienna and her mother. Twice for brief periods she had stayed with her father and his second wife ; for the rest, she had been either at school or with Miss Gardiner. And now for over a year she had left school and lived continuously with Miss Gardiner, carrying on her studies, and enjoying what little society came in her way, but taking this latter as a rule very lightly, never having been told yet to regard it as the serious business of a woman's life, and not being herself of a nature ever to conceive such an idea unaided.

She was very fond of the old doctor who came in for a cup of tea whenever he happened to be passing late in the afternoon ; very deferential to a very old gentleman, a lawyer, who lived hard by — Northampton is somewhat celebrated for its old people ; not particularly friendly with any girl of her own age, and not at all particularly interested in the various partners who had danced with her at the two or three balls to which she had been taken. Truth to tell, the GARDIE 9 matter that had most interested her at those balls had been her own dress. To the young and inexperienced girl the shimmering silver and gossamer white had seemed too lovely for any human being to wear. Then she had gone to her first ball, and seen others wearing like lovely garments as if they had always done so — were to the manner born ; but a feeling of reverence for her own dress had remained with her to the end, for she could not help recollecting how very different and how very simple all her other frocks had always been.

There was also a pearl necklace round her throat that had been her mother's, and that even Miss Gardiner had warned her to be careful of, it was so valuable. And Lilian moved about even more daintily than usual, careful not to disarrange a frilling, much less lose a pearl. When people paid her compliments her eyes dilated a little with a faint smile, but she was in no way gratified, neither did she blush. How could anyone help looking well in such a lovely dress 1 was all she thought as she danced her best, just as if she were at a dancing school, but with no further thought of her partners, nor any realisation that she was reckoned the beauty of the ball, and that everyone was talking of her as an heiress as well. Before that there had come the one event of surprising interest into her life : Miss Gardiner's nephew in China had come home to Northampton on leave.

Lilian had always thought of him beforehand as a pudding-faced boy, possibly because some one else's nephew had turned out to be such. So when she had heard that be was coming home by way of Siberia, which Miss Gardiner grieved over because it would so shorten his time in England, she had taken no interest, only always agreed with ' Gardie,' as she called her, that it was a great pity, because she knew the old lady thought it so. Then when a man over six foot had arrived, very thin, with stooping shoulders, and clothes that hung upon them as if hanging upon a clothes peg, she bad been simply surprised. But when he turned to greet her, and she saw his whimsical brown eyes, with a surprised, half -frightened expression in them as they met hers, she was flattered as nothing had flattered her before, for she was a very young girl, and she saw at once that this tall, strange-looking man recognised her as a woman, and bowed down before her womanhood and did reverence.

When he had had a few good nights' rest, and a little of that English food that tastes so extraordinardy and incredibly good when one first comes back to it, and had had his hair cut, even in his old clothes it was impossible for any girl not to see that Claude Fortescue's was a very striking, indeed eminently noticeable, personality. Then, besides bis mobile expression, and eyes that seemed to read the innermost natures of those they looked at, his voice had tones in it. And he talked with quaint turns of phrase, and picturesque, unexpected touches of his journey home and of China, so as to make all the places he mentioned for ever after cease to be merely places in the map, and become instead his places, which it seemed hardly as if anyone else had a right to visit, or even live in, without his leave and by his express permission.

Perhaps Lilian Grey did not form any very exact idea of Vladivostock, or even of Foochow, or the Yangtsze River, of which she had heard so much more ; but she pictured some thing, and it never even occurred to her again to speak of the Yangtsze Kiang, as her geography books had taught her. It was Claude Fortescue who gave the lion bush in the garden red holly berries for eyes, after the Chinese fashion. It was he, too, who first put Lilian through a course of English literature. He gave her his little well-used copy of the Elia Essays. He read to her Keats' ' Ode on a Grecian Urn,' then smiled his curious smile : ' I wonder — I wonder if Chinese towns only existed upon Chinese vases, we might fancy equally poetically about them. Ought we to thank Heaven, " 'Tis Greece, but living Greece no more " 1 There are people so mis guided as to tell us a knowledge of the exact truth is the one great thing to seek after in connection with everything.

Oh, whatever you do, escape from ever knowing the truth about anything. Avoid reality, Miss Grey ! ' ' About myself 1 Must I not be real 1 ' asked the girl, half mockingly. ' Could you be , I never thought of that,' said he. ' No ! no ! You are nothing but a mirage ! I thought so from the first, with your white face, like white rose petals, and footsteps that are never heard. You are a mirage ! What might be, but never is.' ' Sometimes I seem to myself like that,' said Lilian sadly. ' My father was such a distinguished man, they all say, and be died, and my mother. And I am all there is left. And I am — nothing.' ' What might you be 1 ' he asked gravely. GARDIE 11 'I don't know,' hesitated the girl. 'It is so hard to know what a woman can be. And I am not clever— or am I ? But I have sometimes thought I might be — an inspiration.' ' You are that,' said he, speaking as if it were a matter of course, yet with a kindling fire in his face, although he looked away on the ground. ' Then you must look up, or I am none to you,' cried she, laughing gaily at the, toher, absurdity of the idea. ' I will look up,' said he fervently.