A Woman In China

by Mary Gaunt

CHAPTER XIV—TO THE GREEKS, FOOLISHNESS

Missionary compound—Prayer—Reputed dangers of the way—The German girl—Midwife—The Bible as a guide—“My yoke is easy, My burden is light”—A harem—Helping the sick and afflicted—A case of hysteria—Drastic remedies—Ensuring a livelihood—“Strike, strike”—Barbaric war-song—The Chinese soldier—The martyrdom of the Roman Catholic priest.

And with my entrance into that missionary compound I entered a world as strange to me as the Eastern world I had come across two continents to see.

The compound is right in the heart of the town, and was originally a Chinese inn, built, in spite of the rigour of the climate, Chinese fashion, so that to go from one room to the other it was necessary to go out of doors. The walls looking on to the street were blank, except in the room I occupied, where was a small window, so high up I could not see out of it. How it must be to pass from one room to the other when the bitter winter of Northern China holds the mountains in its grip, I do not know.

I walked in out of the unknown and there came forward to meet me that sad-looking woman with the soft brown eyes and bright red lips. Take me in, yes, indeed she would take me in. I was dusty, I was torn, and I think I was more weary than I have ever been in my life, and she made me welcome, made me lie down in a long chair, and had tea brought in. A tall buxom German girl entered, and then to my surprise, and not a little to my discomfort, my hostess bowed her head, and thanked God openly that I had come through the dangers of the way, and been brought safely to their compound! For a moment it took my breath away, and so self-conscious was I, that I did not know which way to look. My father was a pillar of the Church of England, Chancellor of the Diocese in which we lived, and I had been brought up straitly in the fold, among a people who, possibly, felt deeply on occasion, but who never, never would have dreamt of applying religion personally and openly to each other. Frankly I felt very uncomfortable after I had been prayed over, and it seemed a sort of bathos to go on calmly drinking tea and eating bread and jam. The German girl had just arrived, and they heard that the day after she had left Peking, the German Consul had sent round to the mission station, where she had been staying, to cancel her passport, and to say that on no account must she go to Jehol as the country was too disturbed. However she and her escort, one of the missionaries, had come through quite safely, and the Tartar General in charge here had said she might stay so long as she did not go outside the boundaries of the town. But naturally, they were much surprised to see me, a woman and alone.

I looked round the room, the general sitting-room, a bare stone-floored room, with a mat or two upon it, a little cane furniture, a photograph or two, and some texts upon the walls, a harmonium, a couple of tables, and a book-case containing some very old-fashioned books, mostly of a religious tendency, and some stories by A.L.O.E. There was a time when I thought A.L.O.E's stories wonderful, and so I read one or two of them while I was here, and wondered what it was that had charmed me when I was eleven.

The only other woman in that compound, beside my hostess, was the German girl who had come out to help.

“I gave myself to the Lord for China,” she said, and she spoke simply and quietly, as if she were saying the most natural thing in the world, as if there could be no doubt of the value of the gift—truly it was her all, she could not give more. And the Chinese did need her, I think—that is only my opinion—but not exactly in the way she counted most important. She had taken the precaution to become a midwife, and indeed she must be a godsend, for Chinese practices are crude and cruel in the extreme. It is the child that counts, the mother, even in her hour of travail, must literally make no moan. A woman once told me how she went to see her amah, who was expecting a baby, and she was asked to wait. She waited about an hour, for she was anxious about the woman, and the room was very still, there was no sound till the silence was broken by the first cry of the new-born infant. The child had been born behind the screen while she waited, and an hour later, to her horror, the white-faced young mother was up and preparing to cook the family evening meal. The woman would not have cried out for the world. No Chinese woman would. If poor human flesh is weak, and a sigh of pain escape her, her mother-in-law will cover her mouth with her hand, but mostly the woman will gag herself with her long black hair, she will not disgrace herself by a cry as long as her senses are with her. It is all very well to say the Chinese do not suffer as white women suffer. They are not like the sturdy negro women who have lived a primitive, open-air life, walk like queens, and have exercised every muscle. They are the crippled products of an effete civilisation, who spend long hours on the k'ang, and go as little as possible from their own compound. To those women that German girl will be a blessing untold. I think of their bodies while she labours for their souls. Anyway she is surely sent by God.