"But we mustn't be in too great a hurry in choosing her a husband. We must make certain of a suitable man. Meantime I want your help in something far more pressing. You realize of course that Nancy is four years older than Li-an. We must make some arrangement for her; we can't delay it any longer. I thought for a time of marrying her to an Englishman, but now that I have been thinking about the matter I know that Nancy, though she is English-born, can never be at home in the West. She is Chinese by nature and training and speech, and Chinese she ought to remain; so now I am determined to find a Chinese husband for Nancy, and I want you to be matchmaker. Please don't annoy me by a statement of objections and difficulties; I know these as well as you. But there are a few points to keep in mind: first, I must see the man you suggest. I am not going to be put off with any dunderheads; I want the best. If I can't get the best there will be no engagement. Furthermore, the man must be of good family; he must be well educated, a man of scholarly tastes—and he must know no English, no English at all. I won't have a son-in-law sucking his breath and grinning at his own smartness as he gibbers 'Yes-s' and 'Alright.' Do you understand?"
The woman nodded.
"You may think I am asking the impossible in expecting such a paragon. Well, you know the proverb that what we value cheaply we sell cheaply. We don't need to apologize for Nancy and I will not have you setting about this task as though we were asking favors. Yet of course there will be a prejudice against the girl because of her foreign birth. That perhaps will frighten the conservative families, the very families we ought to look to for decent, obedient, scholarly boys. I am ready to make one concession to overcome the handicap of Nancy's having been born English; if I am satisfied with the man you choose, I will give Nancy a portion of ten thousand taels at her marriage; if I am very well satisfied, I might stretch the sum to fifteen thousand."
After this last offer, which outweighed all Herrick's other provisions, the t'ai-t'ai accepted her commission as matchmaker. She was admirably fitted for the post, since she came of good family herself, an excellent but impecunious family with many ramifications, many branches, all prolific of sons and daughters, all equally genteel, all equally poor. Within the confines of her own family the t'ai-t'ai knew she could find many candidates for Nancy's hand. She did not propose to look further.
Her father had been Herrick's teacher of Chinese. He was a gentleman of the old school, a scholar of distinction, benignant in his ways, a fountainhead of Chinese lore. The family had been broken by the disgrace of the patron, whom an arbitrary whim of the Empress Dowager had banished from court. Without exception every man of the family had been thrown out of official employment. Years of vain waiting for reinstatement had followed: they could not dig; to beg they were ashamed. Swiftly their fortune melted away till Herrick's future father-in-law broke with tradition by undertaking to instruct foreigners in the obscurities of the Mandarin tongue.
For a long time he was the only man of his extensive family who deigned to work. The others continued from day to day, living always on the edge of solvency, getting food and clothing by some mysterious means of which Chinese families are rarely so impoverished as to lose the secret; they had been rather contemptuous over the one member who stooped to teach foreign devils for a living, but they did not scruple to share in the profits of his abasement; they were outraged by his marrying a daughter to a foreign devil, but always borrowed a liberal part of the money the t'ai-t'ai brought home as her gift to the exchequer. They waited and taught their sons and grandsons to wait for the turn of affairs which might restore them to office, restore them to the emoluments of magistracies and deputy inspectorships. Waiting had become the family profession and was practised with all the assiduity of the Oriental who has known better times and feels sure that in some lucky cycle of the future, in the wheel which shifts dynasties and oligarchies and republics and chaos, fate again will provide better times to her patient servants. The t'ai-t'ai, surveying the case, decided that fifteen thousand taels would be an extremely useful addition to the family fortunes, the very harbinger of better times. There was more profit to be made out of Nancy than out of her own daughter Li-an, for Nancy, being no kin, could be married to a member of her prolific family, whereas Li-an's dowry would be swallowed by some other voracious clan. It would be foolish to let fifteen thousand taels slip out of her hands to the advantage of someone else. With so many nephews and cousins sitting idle at home, one surely could be sacrificed in the interests of the family, even to contract something so undesirable as a mixed marriage.
The t'ai-t'ai put the reins of the household into the hands of the nurse—she was always careful not to give power to a concubine—and after she had stipulated this and stipulated that, lest the old amah wax rich in her absence, she climbed into a mule cart and started lumbering along the dusty ruts of the road home.
CHAPTER XV
The visits of Hai t'ai-t'ai were always occasions of intense importance to the family, and the woman, growing frankly elderly at the early age of thirty, played her part with such pomp and independence of manner as effectively to inspire awe in the hearts of her needier relations. Much largess depended upon her smile, and all except her old mother, who reigned haughtily like an autocrat now that her father was dead, crowded round the t'ai-t'ai with many questions of concern for her welfare and the health of her body.