However, a new life was beginning for this girl in more ways than one. The bridegroom was going back to his business, that of a photographer in T'ai Yuan Fu, leaving his wife with his mother. She was to be sent to the school for married women opened by the missionaries, and, of course, her feet were to be unbound. Probably, I hope I do not do him an injustice, the bridegroom would not have objected to bound feet, but he did want an educated mother for his children, and the missionaries will take no woman with bound feet. They will do the best they can to retrieve the damage done, though she can never hope to be anything but a maimed cripple, but at least she in the future will be free from pain, into her darkened life will come a little knowledge and a little light, and certainly her daughters will have a happier life and a brighter outlook.
Missions in China, if they are to do any good, are necessarily patriarchal. They look after their converts from the cradle to the grave. The kindergarten run by a Chinese girl under the maternal eye of young Miss Grace Maccomaughey was quite a pretty sight, with all the little tots in their quaint dresses of many colours and their hair done or their heads shaved in the absurd fashion which seems good to the proud Chinese parents—for Chinese parents are both proud and tender and loving, though their ways seem strange to us. But babies all the world over, yellow or black or white, are all lovable, and these babies at the kindergarten were delicious.
“Beloved guest, beloved guest,” they sang in chorus when I came in and they were told to greet me. “Peace to thee, peace to thee.”
And “Lao T'ai T'ai” they used to address me in shrill little voices as I went about the compound. Lao T'ai T'ai (I shouldn't like to swear I'd spelled it properly) means “Old lady”—that is, a woman of venerable years who is rich enough to keep a servant—and it was the first time in my life I had been so addressed, so I looked in the glass to see if I had developed grey hair or wrinkles—riding on a mule-pack would be enough to excuse anything—and then I remembered that if in doubt in China it is erring on the side of courtesy to consider your acquaintance old. I dare say to the children I was old. I remember as a very little girl a maiden aunt asking me how old I thought her, and I, knowing she was older than my mother, felt she must be quite tottery and suggested in all good faith she might be about ninety. I believe the lady had just attained her five and thirtieth year, and prided herself upon her youthful appearance. At any rate her attitude on this occasion taught me when guessing an age it is better to understate than to overestimate. At least in the West. Here in the East I was “Old lady” by courtesy.
And they begin the important things of life early in China. At the kindergarten there were two little tots, a boy and a girl, engaged to be married. The boy was the son of one of the mission cooks and the girl was the daughter of his wife. He, a widower, sought a wife to look after his little boy, and he got this young widow cheap. Her price was thirty tiaous—that is, a little over one pound—and at first he said it was too much and he could not afford it, but when he heard she had a little girl he changed his mind and scraped together the money, for the child could be betrothed to his little son and save the expense of a wife later on.
They were a quaint little pair, both in coats and trousers, shabby and old, evidently the children of poor people, and both with their heads shaven save for a tuft of hair here and there. The boy had his tufts cut short, while the girl's were allowed to grow as long as they would and were twisted into a plait. Such a happy little couple they were, always together, and in the games at the kindergarten when they had to pair these little ones always chose each other. Possibly the new wife in the home was a wise and discreet woman. She might be glad too at the thought that she need not part with her daughter. Anyhow I should think that in Fen Chou Fu in the future there would be one married couple between whom the sincerest affection will exist.
I suppose Chinese husbands and wives are fond of each other occasionally, but the Chinaman looks upon wedded life from quite a different point of view from the Westerner. I remember hearing about a new-made widow who came to sympathise with a missionary recovering from a long illness. She was properly thanked, and then the missionary in her turn said in the vernacular:
“And you too have suffered a bitterness. I am sorry.”
“I?” incredulously, as much as to say, Who could think I had a sorrow?
“Why, yes. You have lost your husband, haven't you?”