The girl listened, but never a smile appeared on her face. "It is my mother's voice that speaks but the thoughts are not my mother's. Can I, your daughter, ever give myself to another man while my husband has gone all lonely down to the Yellow Springs?[181] I beseech you, my mother, grant your daughter's last request. In seven days' time my betrothed was to come to escort me to his home and I was to sit in the red marriage-chair and to be carried away to be his bride. I pray you, my mother, that my wedding-day may not be cancelled. When the spirit of my husband comes for me on that day I shall be ready." The girl's mother did her utmost to shake her daughter's resolution, for she loved her dearly, and feared the girl was concealing some dreadful intention in this strange request. But her words were quite without avail, and she soon left her daughter to talk matters over with her husband. It was not without some justifiable pride that they finally decided to humour her; for in China the girl who on the death of her betrothed renounces all thought of marriage with a living man and, by remaining faithful to the dead, embraces at the same instant wifehood and widowhood, brings glory and honour to her father's family and also to the family of the dead bridegroom. The emperor's representative—the head of the local civil government—will himself do homage to her steadfast virtue, and will doubtless convey to her parents some mark of imperial approval; while her native village will derive widespread fame from the fact that it had once been her home.
The bridegroom's parents, in the case before us, received with appreciative gladness the announcement of the girl's fixed determination to remain faithful to their son, and they readily agreed to fall in with her wish for the formality of a marriage between the living and the dead. Preparations for the strange wedding went on apace, and though there was no merriment and very little feasting, strangers who suddenly arrived on the scene would never have guessed that the bridegroom was lying stiff and cold with never a thought for the beautiful bride that was to be his.
Though marriages of this kind—so strange and perhaps shocking to Western notions—were by no means unknown, several years had elapsed since such a ceremony had taken place in the district, and the local interest shown in it was very great. On the day of the wedding two large palanquins—one red, the other green—were carried on stalwart shoulders from the bridegroom's house to that of the bride. At ordinary marriages in Shantung the bridegroom usually goes in the red chair to meet his bride while the green chair follows behind, generally empty.[182] On arrival at the bride's house the bridegroom is received with much ceremony and introduced to every one except his bride, whom he is not allowed to see. Most of the introductions take place in a guest-room, where he is regaled with light refreshments. Meanwhile the red chair in which he arrived is taken into the inner courtyard to await the bride. As soon as it is announced that she is ready to start, the bridegroom takes ceremonious leave of the family and prepares for departure. The bride in her red chair goes in front, he—in the green chair this time—follows behind. Thus bride and bridegroom, who have not yet exchanged a word, set out for the bridegroom's home. There they are received by his relatives, and the other nuptial ceremonies follow in due course.
To outward appearance there was little to suggest any unusual circumstances in the marriage of Chang Shih. The red chair and green chair came to her house in the usual way; the only difference was that in the red chair there was no living bridegroom, only his p'ai-wei—a white strip of paper bearing his name and age and the important words ling wei—"the seat of the soul."[183]
On arrival at the home of Chang Shih, the p'ai-wei was taken with the deepest marks of respect out of the red chair and carried into the house. It was reverently placed on a small shrine in the guest-chamber, and in front of it were set a few small dishes of fruit and sweetmeats and several sticks of burning incense. Then every member of the family separately greeted it with a silent obeisance. When the time came for departure, the p'ai-wei was carefully carried out of doors again and placed in the green chair, the red one being now occupied by Chang Shih; and thus the strange bridal procession started home again, the soul of the dead bridegroom escorting the body of the living bride. On arrival at the house the p'ai-wei was again taken out of its chair and set up in the large hall where the dead man's family and their guests were waiting to receive Chang Shih. For the time being her widow's sackcloth had been cast aside, and she was clad in the resplendent attire of a rich young bride. If her face bore signs of inward emotion they were totally concealed beneath powder and rouge, and not even her own parents could have told what thoughts or feelings were uppermost at that time in their beautiful daughter's mind. She went through the usual ceremonies that accompany a Chinese wedding, so far as they could be carried out without the living presence of the bridegroom.
Having paid the necessary reverence to Heaven and Earth, to the souls of the ancestors of her new family, and finally to the living members of that family in the order of their seniority, she retired to the room that would in happier circumstances have been the bridal chamber, and there she quickly divested herself of her gay wedding robes and reassumed the dress of a widow in deepest mourning. Her betrothed—her husband now—had already been laid in his coffin, but in accordance with the usual Chinese custom many days had to elapse between the coffining and the burial. Those days were devoted to the elaborate rites always observed at a well-conducted Chinese funeral, and the young girl having taken her place as chief mourner performed her painful duties in a manner that gained her renewed respect and admiration. At last came the day of the burial. From the home of the living to the home of the dead marched a long procession of wailing mourners robed in sackcloth; several bands of flute-players and other musicians went in front and behind; there were scatterers of paper money, coloured-flag bearers and trumpeters, whose duty it was to conciliate and keep at a distance evil spirits and ill-omened influences; there were lantern-bearers to pilot the dead man's soul; there was a great paper image of the Road-clearing Spirit, borne in a draped and tasselled pavilion; there was a dark tabernacle containing the tablet to which the spirit of the deceased himself would in due course be summoned; there was the long streamer, the ling ching or Banner of the Soul; and there was the coffin itself, almost entirely concealed beneath its canopy, covered with richly embroidered scarlet draperies.
It is not usual, nowadays, in eastern Shantung, for the female mourners to accompany funeral processions throughout the whole sad journey, but on this occasion the widowed maiden acted in accordance with the ceremonies sanctioned by the sages of old,[184] for she followed the coffin all the way to the grave. Then at last the attendant mourners—members of her father's family and of the family of the dead—were for the first time admitted to the secret of her intentions. No sooner had the coffin been lowered than Chang Shih threw herself into the grave and lay across the coffin-lid face downwards, as if to embrace, for the first and last time, the husband whose form she had never seen in life nor in death. For a few moments her fellow-mourners waited in decorous silence until the violence of her passionate outburst should have spent itself, but seeing that she did not stir one of them at last begged her to leave the dead to the dead. "My place is by my husband," was the girl's reply. "If he is with the dead, then my place too is with the dead. Fill up the grave." To obey her behest was out of the question, and for some time no one stirred. Knowing the nature of the girl, her relatives felt sure that if they forcibly removed her from her present position and compelled her to return home with them she would seize the first opportunity of destroying herself.