Part 23

"At first he could not believe it was I, for by this time we indeed looked like veritable beggars, but he was finally convinced and promised to tell my uncle. After nightfall he opened the gate and led us in by a back passage to my aunt's apartments where she and my uncle were waiting for me. They both burst into tears as they beheld my plight. Two old serving women, who had been many years in the family, helped us to change our clothes and gave us a bath and food. My feet had suffered the most. They were swollen and ulcerated and the dirty rags and dust adhering to the sores had left them in a wretched condition. It took many baths before we were clean, and weeks before my feet were healed.

"We remained with my uncle until the close of the Boxer trouble, and until my grandfather's return from Hsian where he had gone with the Empress Dowager and the court, and then I came back to Peking."

"Your grandmother must have felt ashamed when she heard how hard it had gone with you," I remarked.

"We never mentioned the matter when talking together. That was a time when every one was for himself. Death stared us all in the face."

"Where is your slave girl now? I should like to see her," I remarked.

"After the troubles were over I married her to a young man of my uncle's household. I will send for her and bring her to see you."

She did so. I found she had forgotten much of what she had learned of Christianity, but she remembered that there was but one God and that Jesus Christ was His Son to whom alone she should pray. She also remembered that as a small child she had been baptized, and that in school she had been taught that "we should love one another"; this was about the extent of her Gospel, but it had touched the heart of her charming little mistress and had saved her life.

There were sometimes amusing things happened when these Chinese ladies called. My husband among other things taught astronomy in the university. He had a small telescope with which he and the students often examined the planets, and they were especially interested in Jupiter and his moons. One evening, contrary to her custom, this same friend was calling after dark, and when the students had finished with Jupiter and his moons, my husband invited us to view them, as they were especially clear on that particular evening.

After she had looked at them for a while, and as my husband was closing up the telescope, she exclaimed: "That is the kind of an instrument that some foreigners sent as a present to my grandfather while he was viceroy, but it was larger than this one."

"And did he use it?" asked my husband.

"No, we did not know what it was for. Besides my grandfather was too busy with the affairs of the government to try to understand it."

"And where is it now?" asked Mr. Headland, thinking that the viceroy might be willing to donate it to the college.

"I do not know," she answered. "The servants thought it was a pump and tried to pump water with it, but it would not work. It is probably among the junk in some of the back rooms."

"I wonder if we could not find it and fix it up," my husband persisted.

"I am afraid not," she answered. "The last I saw of it, the servants had taken the glass out of the small end and were using it to look at insects on the bed."

One day when one of my friends came to call I said to her: "It is a long time since I have seen you. Have you been out of the city?"

"Yes, I have been spending some months with my father-in-law, the viceroy of the Canton provinces. His wife has died, and I have returned to Peking to get him a concubine."

"How old is he?" I inquired.

"Seventy-two years," she replied.

"And how will you undertake to secure a concubine for such an old man?"

"I shall probably buy one."

A few weeks afterwards she called again having with her a good-looking young woman of about seventeen, her hair beautifully combed, her face powdered and painted, and clothed in rich silk and satin garments, whom she introduced as the young lady procured for her father-in-law. She explained that she had bought her from a poor country family for three hundred and fifty ounces of silver.

"Don't you think it is cruel for parents to sell their daughters in this way?" I asked.

"Perhaps," she answered. "But with the money they received for her, they can buy land enough to furnish them a good support all their life. She will always have rich food, fine clothing and an easy time, with nothing to do but enjoy herself, while if she had remained at home she must have married some poor man who might or might not have treated her well, and for whom she would have to work like a slave. Now she is nominally a slave with nothing to do and with every comfort, in addition to what she has done for her family."

While we were having tea she asked to see Mr. Headland, as many of the older of my friends did. I invited him in, and as he entered the dining-room the young woman stepped out into the hall.

My friend greeted my husband, and with a mysterious nod of her head in the direction of the young woman she said: "Chiu shih na ke,--that's it."

XVI

The Social Life of the Chinese Woman