Mey Wing : a romance of Cathay

Chapter I. The Story of Chao Ju 7

II. San Dsi’s Thanksgiving 25

III. The Mother Love 41

IV. Met Wing and the Lady 58

V. The Betrothal and the Disappearance 79

VI. Christmas Joy and Sorrow 100

VII. The Shadow of the Buddhist and the Beggar King 117

VIII. The Riot and the Rescue 136

IX. Li Si Huing Intercedes 154

X. The End, Which Can Be Read 172

MEY WING: A ROMANCE OF CATHAY

CHAPTER I.

THE STORY OF CHAO JU.

Chao Ju lived in Tong Dsing. Around on the other side of the planet, where up is down, they have some queer customs. One of these is that when a boy is born, the father announces the joyful news by sending out hundreds of many-colored eggs to his friends. So when Chao Ju was born, the eggs were sent out at the right time. The incense of thanksgiving was burnt in the temple of Kiang Yin, the Merciful goddess to whom the incense of prayer had been offered when the mother went to her shrine to ask for a boy. The barber was called in, with his outfit carried on a pole across his shoulders, and the hair was shaved, leaving the little bald cranium with all the bumps showing, and the life-beats pulsing across the soft spot.

If any of you had gone to see the baby, you would have had to take a long journey. Take the steam-cars to San Francisco, and the steamboat to the Land of Long Ago. You must not stop to get more than a glimpse of the mountains and vales and lava trenches of the Sugar Islands. Carry with you a dreamy picture of Oahu, and hurry on, for while you are carried by ( 7 )

MET WING steam, and helped or hindered by wind and wave, the baby^s days are growing into weeks. The inviting glimpses of Dai Nippon must not tempt you to tarry, and the lights along the shore at Yokohama and Kobe and Nagasaki, that flash and flicker as your steamer swings at anchor through the night-watches, are beacons to guide you onward, for the baby’s first moon is changing into the second. When the boat ceases to throw up the green spray of the Japan waters, and cuts through the yellow tide which the Yang Tsi pours out to sea, you had better pack your steamer-trunk. There is no time to spend in Shanghai, if you are to be in at the second shaving of the baby’s head. Have your baggage transferred by a wheelbarrow-man to the river steamer, and sometime after midnight, with the turn of the tide, the sound of a strange chorus will arouse you, and with clanking of chains and jolting of clogs, the anchor comes slowly up, dripping muddy water, while the strange Chinese voices chant, “Lai ih, Lai er, Lai,* Lai,” and you float down into and steam up the steadily flowing current of the mighty river of China, the highway of an empire’s commerce.

As the dawn of the second day comes breathing out of the ocean mist behind you, it meets the shore lights at Nanking. But you must wait to pass through the gates that bar the gloomy passage, piercing the gray old walls. The morning traffic will be blocking the streets, and before you reach the south gate, eight miles away, the passing caravans may cause hours of

* “Come, once, twice. Come on.’

•IBE STOEY OF CHAO JXT delay. Call a canal-boat. Ask of the laoban his number and pledge ; tell him to take your baggage to the ancestral home of the Gong clan. Tell him if he is prompt and gets everything there in good shape there will be wine cash in addition to the sum agreed upon as transportation fees. But the boat travel is slow and uncertain, and the baby waits for its first visit to the temple. You had better call donkeys. At your call a dozen boys will come dashing upon as many donkeys, and loudly urge the claims of their respective animals. While you ride, the boy will run behind, and you can reach Tong Dsing, ninety li (thirty miles) away, by evening.

The house of Chao Ju’s father was built of adobe, and thatched with straw. The floor was of mud, dried and hardened by tramping of many feet, but it was swept carefully, and looked clean. The baby’s cradle was an old tub, and an old cotton comfort was his bed ; the old sweet light was in his eye, and his smile, and the old charm which has ever lingered about babies, held those around his tub just as it holds those who gather around costly cradles and silken curtains, and to him also,

Generally the smiles were plentiful, and the rice sufficient, for her husband was industrious. The three hens laid their eggs in the basket that lay beside the baby’s tub, and the baby crowed with pleasure when they cackled with pride over their daily feat. His almond eyes grew nearly round when he was puzzled or startled by the grunts that came through the thin walls behind him, but when he was older and was carried around where he could see the pigs, he squealed as naturally as they did. The awkward, hump-backed, long-haired calf of the water buffalo that drew his father^s plow grew faster than he did, but it remained stupid and awkward, while the baby grew into a bright, merry boy, taking his place as lord over the animals that had been his playmates.

But there was a serious thoughtfulness about his eyes that also distinguished him from the unwinking placidity of the two-year-old buffalo. For changes had come into his home. His mother and father had taken him to the temple, and folded his baby hands decorously, while they were bowing and kneeling before the images in the temple of Buddha, and before the cabalistic characters that promised long life and riches and many children.

And this mother, too, dreamed her dreams, but told them to no one; dreamed of the mystery of the life she saw developing in her little one ; dreamed of the misty future when he should grow tall and straightlimbed and strong-armed ; of the school days and the scholar's robes; of the examinations and prizes and degrees conferred by the applauding judges ; of the time when her days would be crowned by the laurels he would wear ; when she would be nourished by the love of her successful son; when her name would be written as the mother of this great one whose baby-

THE STOEY OF CHAO JU steps her arms had steadied and who had been trained in studious habits by her wise care.

But the dreaming hours grew shorter, and the smiles less frequent when the fever from the flooded rice-fields entered into her husband^s blood. As his strength waned, she tried to take his place in the field until she, too, felt the clinging of the dreaded malaria. In the morning as she led the buffalo to pasture, she would take some rice cakes to lay before the gilded mud image of the god of the field and plain, in his earthen shrine on a corner of their field. In the evenings she carefully trimmed and lighted the red candles before the tiny household guardian that sat in his niche in the corner of the kitchen, over her cooking-place. They were not rich enough to build a blank, high wall in front of their door to deceive the evil spirits into the thought that no one lived there, but she did the best she could, and fastened a paper screen in that place. The spirits of the air, she was sure, were outwitted in this way, for they moved in straight lines; but the spirit foxes could turn and twist. It was evident to her that one of these cunning ones had already bewitched her husband, for he would grow cold and hot by turns. At times he would shake and tremble as the witching one frightened him ; then the fever would burn, and he would talk to this one who was luring his spirit to join in their spirit life. She sold one of the pigs to get money with which she hired a band of yellow-gowned priests to exorcise the evil. They filled the little house, set up their tablets and shrines, fastened up their ancient formulas which no one could read, burned their incense and candles, causing tears to run down the baby’s fat cheeks and nearly strangling the sick man; beat their gongs, chanted their weird rhymes in an unknown jargon, and after some hours departed, proving the success of their undertaking by the odor of burnt fox-hair behind them, driving before them all evil tormenters, and carrying with them the price of the pig.

But that night she knew that the fox had returned, and was sitting on the chest of her husband. He complained of the weight, and in her agony of heart she tried to push it off. When her hands swept, unresisted, through emptiness, and he still moaned under the increasing weight, bitterness of soul came upon her. She realized she had lost the battle and her husband. She covered her face with her coat, and cried out the death-call. Others came in and joined her, but she noticed them not. The light went out of her husband’s eyes and her baby was fatherless.

So mother’s tears made Chao Ju’s cloudy days, and his face grew thoughtful and questioning from much study of hers. She took up her burdens bravely. Her home was in one end of the house occupied by her husband’s kindred. His brothers tilled her fields, and she sewed and cooked and washed for them. The old father and mother directed all.

Great mother,” she would say sometimes, ^^why did the Illustrious One let the cunning ones take my head from me?” ^^Ah, wife of my son,” the old woman would say, have never read the books of the Wise Ones. How can I answer? But the fox runs not without the consent of the Superior Ones. Heaven willed it, and the destiny of man is bound in the web controlled by the Ten Thousand Great Ones.’^

There was little in this to comfort the widow, and once she ventured to question the old farmer :

^^Grandfather, why did heaven desire your son, who would have cared for you in old age?^’ ^^Did not the Great Master, even Confucius, say, foolish one, that since we know not all of earth we need not seek to know heaven? Take care of the little one and keep your house clean, and trouble not your mind with matters which concern not women.

Si Jing, the oldest brother, had a tailor shop in the neighboring town, Tong Dsing. He was one of the town elders, and a member of the lay council that controlled the temple affairs. He was a rigorous ritualist, and exacted from the members of his own family that they should observe the days and ceremonies of worship faithfully. Under his guidance Chao Ju learned early to religiously go through the exercises required, and to speak in awed tones of the countless gods that filled the air above his head. His mother, too, told him of the cunning fox spirits who had coaxed his father away, and gave him a charm to keep them off. This was always tied to a string around his neck.

But if he was a somewhat serious child, he was a healthy boy, and these things did not hinder him from enjoying a boy^s games and playthings. He gathered

MET WING the singing crickets, and fed them in little pens made of bamboo slips. He watched the elder boys fly kites, and ran with his own papers. He practiced for hours to see how often he could kick a cloth-covered coin into the air without letting it fall to the ground. Through most of the year his daily task was to take care of the lumbering water buffalo when it was not working. When he wished to take it out, he would go to where it was eating and clamber over its great head and immense horns, up its wrinkled neck, and perch on its broad back, with a long switch in his hand. Guiding it with this stick, he would drive it to some grassy spot, and sit or lie on its back for hours while it browsed. Sometimes he would slip off while the brute would go to a deep pond, and drink and wallow in the water with only its head visible. Often, though, he would drive it into the deepest water, and remain on it while it would swim around till he permitted it to go out. If he got wet, his one or two cotton garments did not suffer, and he did not seem to mind it.

The days when his head was entirely shaved had ended. The age of the half-moon tonsure passed, too, and lately a round patch of hair around the crown was allowed to grow long, and was tied with a red cord. Still he had not commenced his student ^s course. His mother was not able to pay the fees of the village schoolmaster. She knew nothing of letters, and could not help him. His uncles had cares of their own, so the boy^s cue was quite thick and long, and he still kicked his coin, and watched the buffalo while it fed. But he was disturbed by his lack of schooling.

Mamma, can I go to school next feast he would ask.

'^The rice crop was not good this year, my jewel, and the taxes are due. Our head men have gone to petition the magistrate to remit a part of our payment this fall, but my heart is not hopeful. Our new magistrate has come with an empty pocket and I fear it must be filled.”

Before my next birthday I will have passed eight New Years, and I know no characters.”

‘‘1 am very sorry there is no way. Let us pray the gods to grant us good crops next season. Then you can commence.”

But when he was ten, his hope was still unfulfilled. His mother went into Nanking to spend a few days with the uncle of her husband^s sister^s half-niece. There was to be a wedding in the house, and Gong Sau- Dse was wanted to assist in the preparations. While they worked, tongues wagged noisily, and visiting proceeded industriously. The presents for the bride were brought in for inspection. The embroidered garments and silver ornaments were unusually good and numerous for people in their rank, and Gong Sau-Dse remarked on this to another distant relative, who was in for the festal days.

^^Our fortunate relative seems to be planning to keep the lilies* of his happy one from all touch with the ground.”

* Boundjeet.

Yes, the wolf will not seek her as long as the foreign devils continue their contributions/^

stupid one listens! My elder sister speaks in riddles/’

^^What is it my dull lips have failed to make plain to my honored friend?”

Your younger sister has had bitterness enough from long acquaintance with evil spirits of our own country. Whence is it that devils from outside the eighteen provinces bring happiness to others?”

^^Has no word come to your lucky abode of the crafty ones who make their dwelling in human forms that come from over the sea?”

^^Our poor place hears little from the great world.” indeed am from a mean village and can give little reliable information. But the son of my sister’s younger brother-in-law brought his peanuts to market one day, and heard of them. He failed to see them, but while his donkey was resting, he went to a tea-house to rest a rest. There he met a peddler who gave him direct word of them. He had passed the square house where they work their charms, and as he was a fellow-countryman he willingly told what he had learned.”

‘^Ah, that was fortunate! You never can trust' to what strangers tell you.”

'^Yes, so I am sure of the matter. The wall was high and the gate closed, but there was a hole in it through which he could see, and he was so astonished at what he saw that he forgot to call his wares for half a day. The only one of them that he saw was a little one. It must have been a boy, for there were no bandages on its feet. Instead of walking sedately, it was jumping and skipping like a frog whose pond has dried up. And its hair was not black like the sons of Han, nor smooth in proper braids, but wriggled over its head like the yellow feathers on that hen out there that was hatched on a rainy day and never got dry till the curl was fixed in its plumage.’^

Wonderful, wonderful

'^Well, you may say so! But, still more marvelous to hear, its skin was paler than that of a fortunate woman, whom the sun has never burned, when she lies in her shroud, and it had eyes the color of that blue coat you have on, and light jumped from them so, that once it looked right through him. Indeed, his head has been light ever since, though he came away at once.^^

Marvelous! My ears tingle with listening. But enlighten my dull heart, elder sister! What benefit has our kinsman from such beings?’^

^‘Well, strange things take place these days. My eldest son was frightened dead last moon by seeing a fox ride our cow one moonlight night, but I have felt safer ever since, for he never ventures out after dark now. But these strange creatures — the affair stands this way. For some unaccountable reason they desired to open a school in this vicinity, but no one would rent them a building.’^

Naturally enough, surely. Such as you describe are certain to have some sinister thought, and who wants to be responsible for harboring heretical teachings?^^

^^True words! But our kinsman has long been suspected of neglecting the teachings of the ancients. Besides, he had an old place that had long been unoccupied. The last tenant was a fortune-teller, who failed to offer the proper sacrifices to his familiar, and when he moved the spirit was angry and did not accompany him, and he has frightened everyone else away. Indeed, one man moved in, though the neighbors warned him. But the second night the spirit poisoned the rain that fell through a broken tile to the child^s bed, and she died of heat in a few days. So four feasts have passed and the spirits have put the marks of their mouldy wings over the holy characters our kinsman pasted up. Is it not a good play to put the foreign devils to match these evil ones of our own heretical people, and see which will turn tail first? In the mean time, golden lilies may wear satin, for the foreigners have paid a thousand strings of cash for a yearns lease.

It was Chao Ju’s first visit to the city, and many things were marvelous to him ; so the conversation did not strike him as bearing on any matter especially strange. But when a school was mentioned, his ears opened wide. For the desire to know something had grown in him until it was an overmastering longing. He had given his mother and uncles no peace in his pleading for school privileges, until they were almost ready to make the necessary sacrifices, to have quiet from his importunity. But Si Jing had lately moved to the city and opened a shop, and the expenses of the move and the difficulty in getting trade among so many competitors made it necessary for him to draw on the family for help, and no money could be spared for schooling.

Chao Ju determined that he would see this strange school. He slipped out quietly, and ran down the street to where he had heard that the place was located. There was a gate, but by standing on tiptoe he could look through a small opening. He took hold of the lock-bar to raise himself up, when unexpectedly the gate was pushed open, and he fell inward. He could hear the hum of studying inside the room next the gate, and while he was somewhat frightened, curiosity was strong, and before he got away a teacher came out of the door to see the cause of the noise. As Chao Ju saw that he was an ordinary Chinaman with a kindly face, his desire overcame his fright, and he responded, in backward, country manner, to the inquiries. He was led on by the sympathetic old pedagogue until he had told all about his own longings and the inability of the family to pay the fees. The teacher kindly expressed the wish that he might have so bright a lad in his school, and the boy forgot all. about its reputed connection with the strange newcomers. It was late and about time for school to be dismissed, so the teacher asked him to come again on the next day, if he had time; and went back into the school.

As Chao Ju walked away, some of the pupils overtook him. One of them lived near where he was staying, and had played with him on the preceding day. From him Chao Ju learned that the school was a free one. He had heard before of schools established by charitable people for the advantage of poor children, and many a time he had lamented that he did not live near one. Here was his opportunity. Impetuously he besieged his mother, jumbling his discovery and arguments and pleadings so that she could not understand more than half he said. She gathered that there was a free school near, where he wished to go for the few days they were to be in the city. And since she was busy and this would take him out of the way and put him in good hands, she yielded easily.

On the next morning, when for the first time the boy entered a schoolroom as a pupil, his little heart was so full of struggling emotions, exultation and fear, ecstacy and shame for his ignorance, hope and despair, that he struggled with an inclination to either laugh out, or cry, and, suppressing both, wore such a meaningless mask that the teacher doubted whether he were as bright as he had seemed the day before. But the hunger with which he seized upon the characters, and bolted the teacher’s suggestions, left no question as to his making a scholar. For a few days he thought of nothing else, as a few of the mysterious characters came to be alive with intelligence to him.

Then the dread of going away took hold of him, and, as the day came near, his face was so troubled at times

'THE STORY OF CHAO JH that the teacher drew from him his fears. Chao Ju had learned, mean time, that certain of the scholars lived in the building, and that some who were unable to pay, even received boarding without paying for it. He did not ask why this was, but simply laid hold on it as a golden opportunity by which he must profit.

But he did not know how to speak to his mother on the subject. When he did, she was inclined at first to laugh at him. But the boy’s persistence and tears and stormings finally carried the day. Even after they learned that the school was under the control of the foreigners, the mother and Si Jing, the uncle, finally consented. After all was said, the school was taught by an old Chinese scholar of some little reputation as a benevolent man. The sacred Confucian characters were studied. They could not see how the boy could be hurt. Even if these queer strangers did desire to lay up credit with their gods by thus helping children of the Middle Kingdom, their boy would be kept, free of cost to themselves, until he was old enough to enter his uncle’s shop as an apprentice. Perhaps the mother recalled her dreams of the time when he lary in her arms and her husband was hulling the rice just in the next room.

At any rate, the boy remained. He was taught to recognize and pronounce characters which the teacher wrote for him on slips of red paper. After a time, he took the brush into his own hands and attempted to write. Then he committed the three-character classic, and a catechism of Christian truth. Next he took up the Confucian Analects, and copies of the Gospels of Matthew and Mark in mandarin dialect. The countless spirits which had peopled the air of his country life gradually receded, and in their place came a new idea, that of a vast, mysterious, overshadowing one, brighter than the sun in his noonday shining, and more terrible than the army with its banners that sometimes tramped past the schoolhouse door and frightened him with the awful insignia of power and death.

There was a pane of window-glass set in the roof over his head, which admitted light to the low room. He had been accustomed only to windows made of oiled paper. This light seemed startingly clear. And the feeling grew on him that the eye of the Great One was looking through that glass, searching out his very thoughts and taking cognizance of his every move. He came to fear it, but did not tell his thoughts to any one. He changed his seat from directly under it to the east side of the room, but every afternoon between three and four o^clock, when the restlessness of the closing hours would fill the room, the eye would reach him again, and the same indefinable dread would come over him. He made no further attempt to evade it, but gave himself up to its searching, first with trembling apprehension; then, as the days became moons, the presence became to him in some sense a comfort. For he was removed from all his kindred, and he did not remember his father’s face. The teacher was kind to him, and the other boys were

THE STOIlY OE CHAO JU friendly as boys go. He had grown accustomed to the strange dress and appearance of the bearded foreigner and his sweet-voiced wife, who came occasionally to examine the school and speak about the One who loved them all. But he did not understand them very well, though he liked the oranges the bright-faced lady sometimes laid on his desk as she patted his partly shaven head.

Still, after a year had passed, that eye gave him more sense of being personally cared for than any other of his surroundings. He was making good progress in his books, and when he was twelve he was given the Gospel of Luke to commit. One day he read of how the wonderful Boy went up to Jersualem when He was twelve years old, and entering the temple became so absorbed in discussion of the precious old text-books of His school life, that He failed to heed the passing of the time until His friends had left Him; how He remained there until they returned seeking Him, and how He answered them, ^^Wist ye not that I must be about my Father ^s business?’^

A lonesome, longing wave flowed through his veins. He had no father whose business he might attend to. No one came seeking after him. The afternoon was passing. The teacher was hearing a boy recite. The other boys were variously engaged. He was alone, though others were all around him. He laid his forehead upon his arm on the table in front of him, and thought of the Boy. Who was the Father of whom He spoke? It could not be Joseph, for the carpenter, though a good man, found no place in the great temple. Chao Ju had daily repeated with the school, ^^Our Father,’^ but that was to an indefinite Someone whom he did not know, and it did not recur to him now. But while tears of one who was lost fell on his desk, the Eye came searching after him. Its companionship comforted him. At first he received it passively, till suddenly another thought-wave went over him that this was his Father^s eye. His heart warmed with the love that filled it, and he straightened up, saying, too, must be about my Father^s business.’^

Chapter II. San Dsi’s Thanksgiving

Wu Wan Fuh was his name, and that meant that his coming had brought ten thousand happinesses into his father’s home. But San Dsi was what he was always called, and that was because he was the third son. No account was made of any number of sisters who may have preceded him. His other name, given him by the teacher of the school where he learned a few characters when he was too small to earn wages, was forgotten in these later days. The father was known as Wu Chuei Dsi, because when a boy, as he was bathing in a pond near his village, he had unwittingly disturbed the water dragon that resided there, and had suffered ever since from a charm woven from the dragon’s wrath. He did not at first realize what had happened, but came out of the water chilled and numbed. Severe pains appeared in the limb soon after, and it gradually became twisted and shrunken, and he was called ^^Wu The Lame.”

But we did not know of these things until San Dsi was about twelve years old. I had occasion to go out beyond the Water West Gate one day, and sent for a donkey. It came saddled and bridled and belled, with the usual accompaniment of a donkey-boy. To the uninitiated the word ^^boy” may be misleading, ( 25 )