“Why, you are offering me squeeze,” said she indignantly, as the full meaning of the thing flashed on her.
He made a soothing sound with his mouth. “Everybody does it,” said he.
“Indeed I don't.”
“Not enough?” said he. “There is five hundred and fifty dollars there,” and he looked at her questioningly. “Well,” thoughtfully, “I can make it two hundred dollars more, I have much oil,” and down went another bag of silver. More than six months' salary was on the table.
“And suppose,” said she, curious, “Mr ———— pays no attention to me.”
“That would be unfortunate,” with a low bow, “but I think not. I have much oil. I take risk.” Then she rose up wrathfully. “Take it away,” she said, “take it away. How dare you offer me squeeze!” And he did take it away, and as he probably knew her salary to the very last penny, thought her a fool for her pains.
I don't know whether Tuan extracted his squeeze beforehand, but I know all three boatmen had the long fingers of batter fried in lard for their breakfast the next morning, for I saw them having them, and Tuan informed me with a grin, “Missie pay dollar. Can do,” and I was very glad I had not patronised the Chinese inn.
Of course I rose very early. Before half-past four I was up and dressed and peeping out of my little tent at the rows and rows of boats that lay double-banked against the shore. The sun got up as early as I did, and most of those people in the boats were up before him. The boats were own sisters to the one in which I had come down the river, with one mast, and shelters in the middle, and all the people had suffered, as we had done, from wet, for such a drying day I have never before seen. All the sails of course had to be dried, all the mats, the dilapidated bedding, and it seemed most of the clothing, for padded blue coats and trousers were stuck on sticks, or laid out in the sun. All the scarecrows that ever I had known, had apparently come to grief on that double-banked row of boats. The banks were knee-deep in mud, but it was sandy mud that soon dried, and by six o'clock business on that shore was in full swing. There was a theatre and fair going on close at hand, but business had to be attended to all the same. These boatmen all still wear the queue, so the barber was very busy, as it is of course impossible to shave on board a boat, and even the immaculate Tuan had a fine crop of bristles all over his head. They were gone before he gave me breakfast this morning. The alluvial mud of the shore was cut into deep cart ruts, and there were any number of carts coming down to the boats and going away from them. There were ox carts with a solitary ox, harnessed much as a horse would be and looking strange to me, accustomed to the bullock drays of Australia with their bullocks, ten or twenty of them drawing by a single wooden yoke, there were mule carts and carts heavy with merchandise drawn by a mixed team of mule, ox, and the small and patient donkey, and the people took from the boats their loading of grain, grown far away in Mongolia, of stones, gathered by the river-bank, water-worn stones used for making the picturesque garden and courtyard paths the Chinese love, and even sometimes for building, and of osiers, grown up in the mountains. There were piles and piles of these, and men were carrying them slung on the ends of their bamboos. And the boats, for the return journey were loaded, as far as I could see, with salt and the thin tissue paper they use everywhere for the windows, it is much more portable than glass, and cotton stuffs, such as even the poorest up in the mountains must buy for their clothing. And because it was the Dragon Boat Feast, I suppose, many of the boats were full of passengers, people who had started thus early to make a day of it, innumerable small-footed women and small, shavenheaded children, what little there was left of their hair done up in tiny plaits, that stood straight out on end. And all had on their best clothing. Even the gentleman whose picture I have taken standing under a tree had on a new hat of the brightest yellow matting, and I wondered whether the poorer folk who thronged the river-side in Mesopotamia, so many long centuries ago, were not something like him. The only thing that was modern was the railway station and rolling stock, just behind the river-side town, and the great iron bridge that spans the river. Modern civilisation come to Babylon. It has barely touched the surface though of this age-old civilisation. The people who came crowding into the feast came in carts with heavy wooden wheels, Punch's prehistoric wheels, exactly as their ancestors came, possibly three thousand years ago, and the carts were drawn by mules, by oxen, by donkeys, and were covered, some with the ordinary blue cloth, some with grass matting, and sometimes, when they were open, the women carried umbrellas of Chinese oiled paper, with here and there one of ordinary European pattern. And the carts were packed very close together indeed, for there were numberless women, and the majority of them could only just totter along. For them to walk far or for long, would be a sheer impossibility. Country people? No, again I saw it strongly, these were serfs, perhaps, but not country people, they were a highly civilised people, far more highly civilised than I am who sit in judgment, so civilised that they were decadent, effete, and every woman was helpless!
They crowded round the theatricals that were going on there in the open, and all the stalls were crowded together round them too. These sellers cannot afford to spread themselves out when half of the likely buyers must needs be stationary. Never have I seen so many Chinese women of the well-to-do class together before. They wore their gayest silks and satins and embroidered coats, their hair was elaborately dressed and decked with flowers, their faces were painted and powdered, and usually there was on them the faintest of impassive smiles. Poor women of modern Babylon, maimed and crippled! It was rather a relief to look at the beggars, and there were many of them, who, clad in sacking and filthy rags, with wild black hair, beat their foreheads in the dust, and made loud moan of their sufferings. Everyone plays his part properly in China. It is the beggars' to make loud moan, it is the women's to give no hint of the cruel suffering that has made childhood and youth a torture, and left the dreadful aftermath behind it.