"It won't be for long, this," he assured me. "We shall all be together at home very soon. You are brave and dear and true, Margaret. You shall never be made sorry. Be patient."
His first letters told of his new work in one of the older colleges for which Shanghai is famous. He also began his practice of law in an official capacity. His first step toward the diplomatic service had been taken.
At the end of four months, I received his summons and went about making ready for the journey to China with my young son. My life-work was to help my husband in making a home. His life-work was in China. The conclusion was so obvious that neither I nor my parents had ever questioned it. But, now that the moment had come, the friends of the family were very much excited. They asked strange questions. Are you really going? How can you leave your mother? How can you give up beautiful America? Aren't you afraid to go to China? I answered as patiently and reasonably as I could. They wearied me very much.
Of China itself I had no clear conception, in spite of Chan-King's letters, for, though my old prejudice had passed away, still I saw all the country only as a background for my husband's face.
I followed Chan-King's minute instructions concerning travelling arrangements, and Wilfred and I had a pleasant voyage. Early one morning I looked through the port-hole and saw about me the murky waters of the Yangtze, alive with native craft, while dimly through the mist loomed the fortifications of Woosung. Already the tender was waiting, and soon we were aboard, moving rapidly up the mouth of the river. The mist cleared, green banks arose on each side, and through distant trees gleamed red brick buildings like any at home, side by side with the white-plastered walls and tip-tilted roofs of China. In that long ride, Shanghai grew upon me gradually, a curious mixture of the known and the unknown, tantalizing me with the feeling that I had seen all this before and ought to remember it better. In the water about me, steamer, launch and battle-ship mingled with native junk, river-barge and house-boat. Suddenly in the waiting group on the customs jetty I saw my husband. In another moment we had drawn alongside the wharf and he was in the tender beside me, greeting me in the formally courteous manner he deemed suited to public occasions. Taking Wilfred in his arms, he drew me up the steps and to a waiting carriage.
Here again was the confused mingling of the strange and the familiar: clanging tram-cars, honking motor-cars, smooth-rolling rickshaws, creaking wheel-barrows and lumbering, man-drawn trucks; dark coolie-faces under wide straw hats, gently bred features beneath pith helmets, black, bearded countenances below huge, gay turbans; a bewildering jumble of alien and English speech.
Even in Chan-King I found it. He was wearing American dress, his face had not changed, the tones of his voice were the same, but he was speaking Chinese, and his directions to the mafoo were to me a meaningless succession of sounds.
But, when he was beside me in the carriage and the horses had started, he turned suddenly and smiled straight into my eyes. Then, Shanghai, Borneo or the North Pole—all would have been one to me. I asked no questions; I was with my husband and child, driving rapidly towards the home prepared for me. I had come home to China.