They made a great contrast than which the old beauty-packed garden had seen nothing prettier: two living, sentient expressions of womanhood, greatly different, greatly alike.
Each was natural, each was artificial—sweet, elaborate, decorated, highly bred.
Nang Ping’s face and lips were painted; Mrs. Gregory’s were not. But her nails were slightly, beneath her gloves, and so were Nang’s that had never worn a glove. Mrs. Gregory’s eyebrows were lightly penciled. Nang Ping’s were not. Nang Ping’s hair had taken the longer to dress, but the dressing of the other’s had cost an hour. The black hair was stiffened into shape with thick scented gum; the blonde hair was marcelled into shape by hot tongs. And Mrs. Gregory had the slightly smaller feet, and far less comfortably shod. For Wu had set his face against one custom of his country, and braved the anger of his ancestors. Nang smoked a pipe—Basil Gregory could not insert his smallest finger-tip into its tiny bowl—Florence Gregory smoked cigarettes; and they both inhaled sometimes. And each considered the other of inferior race.
They looked at each other curiously—Mrs. Gregory frankly so. Nang veiled her keen interest. But her interest was the more. The English woman was keenly interested in China and in things Chinese. The country had fascinated her powerfully, its odd people considerably. But she did not take Chinese womanhood very seriously. Every one of intelligence knew by now that many Chinese men were clever, almost hideously so, but equally every one knew that Chinese women were limited—very. Of course, the terrible old woman who ruled at Pekin was shrewd, unless her ministers, Li Hung Chang and the rest, did it all for her, which was probable; and then, too, she wasn’t Chinese really, Tartar not Mongol. And Mrs. Gregory had no suspicion of what must have interested her in Nang Ping indeed. She was keener to see the garden, and, if possible, the house—it was said to be very wonderful—than to exploit little Miss Wu. But she thought the girl pretty after a grotesque Chinese fashion, “cute” and not unattractive, and she looked at her with sincerely friendly eyes.
The young eyes that looked back at her were mingled adoration and resentment. This was Basil’s mother, and she was like him. This was the honorable mother who had given him life and nursed him at her breast. And this was the woman because of whom he was going to forsake her, and shut her out forever from peace, honor and paradise. Because of this woman standing smiling at her here he forbade her Europe and joyful motherhood. And he had shut her forever out of China! Why? Oh! why?
There are three supreme moments in the life of every Chinese girl to whom the gods are not hideously unkind: the moment when her unknown bridegroom lifts up her red veil and looks upon her face—perhaps to love and cherish, perhaps to loathe and punish; the moment when the midwife says, “Hail, Lady, it is an honorable son,” and lays the funny little red, squirming firstborn on her breast to be adored, and always to adore her; and the moment when she meets eyes with her husband’s mother, and they look a little into each other’s souls. And this last is the supreme moment of her fate. In all the small ways that make up the most of every woman’s life, her comfort and happiness will depend upon this mother-in-law even more than upon her husband—and mothers-in-law live long in China. Women are the pampered class in China, as they are almost everywhere, and will be until “new” hermaphrodite “movements” have pulled nature from her throne. And in the quiet ways, the ways that count, the supremacy of the Chinese mother is even greater than the autocratic supremacy of the Chinese father. Occidental readers may believe this or disbelieve it as they like; superficial travelers, ill-equipped for Asian sojourn, may see or miss it, but the fact remains. Motherhood has ruled China for thousands of years. It is not the fair young wife or the favorite daughter who rules a Chinese, but his mother, old, wrinkled, toothless, bent. From the thraldom of his father, from the thraldom of his gods, he may escape; from the thraldom of his mother, never! Nang Ping knew now that she would never wear the soft red veil. That great moment had been, and passed, for her when Basil had kissed her first in the pagoda. The child that even now just fluttered beneath her breast—a son, she thought, and surely blue-eyed—must die unborn; she knew that now. He would never purl and pull and purr at her exultant breast. But this was Basil’s mother, the honorable grandmother to whom she had given a first grandson! What this moment might have been! Something of the agony of the disappointment gnawing at her baffled heart crept into her narrow eyes, and turned her faint and sick, and almost she swayed an instant standing proud and gracious among her flowers—and the child leapt.
Basil Gregory stood irresolute, embarrassed, looking from his mother to Nang Ping, from Nang Ping to his mother.
Mrs. Gregory turned to him with a happy smile. “Ah! Basil, there you are.”
“Yes, Mother, I missed you,” he said as lightly as he could, “and found my way here to make the acquaintance of Miss Wu.”
He gestured courteously toward Nang as he spoke, and Mrs. Gregory moved to the girl and held out her hand. Nang Ping moved too, a little towards her guest, and made the elaborate gesture, hands clasped, of Eastern greeting. Mrs. Gregory still held out her hand, and wondered, when she gained the girl’s, which was the softer or the better kept, Nang’s or her own. Basil had wondered it often.