Part 2

At home in the evening he fed the cat, the bird, and the flowers. Then, seating himself in a carved black chair—a present from his wife on his last birthday—he took out his pipe and smoked. The cat jumped into his lap. He stroked it softly and tenderly. It had been much fondled by Mrs. Spring Fragrance, and Mr. Spring Fragrance was under the impression that it missed her. “Poor thing!” said he. “I suppose you want her back!” When he arose to go to bed he placed the animal carefully on the floor, and thus apostrophized it:

“O Wise and Silent One, your mistress returns to you, but her heart she leaves behind her, with the Tommies in San Francisco.”

The Wise and Silent One made no reply. He was not a jealous cat.

Mr. Spring Fragrance slept not that night; the next morning he ate not. Three days and three nights without sleep and food went by.

There was a springlike freshness in the air on the day that Mrs. Spring Fragrance came home. The skies overhead were as blue as Puget Sound stretching its gleaming length toward the mighty Pacific, and all the beautiful green world seemed to be throbbing with springing life.

Mrs. Spring Fragrance was never so radiant.

“Oh,” she cried light-heartedly, “is it not lovely to see the sun shining so clear, and everything so bright to welcome me?”

Mr. Spring Fragrance made no response. It was the morning after the fourth sleepless night.

Mrs. Spring Fragrance noticed his silence, also his grave face.

“Everything—everyone is glad to see me but you,” she declared, half seriously, half jestingly.

Mr. Spring Fragrance set down her valise. They had just entered the house.

“If my wife is glad to see me,” he quietly replied, “I also am glad to see her!”

Summoning their servant boy, he bade him look after Mrs. Spring Fragrance’s comfort.

“I must be at the store in half an hour,” said he, looking at his watch. “There is some very important business requiring attention.”

“What is the business?” inquired Mrs. Spring Fragrance, her lip quivering with disappointment.

“I cannot just explain to you,” answered her husband.

Mrs. Spring Fragrance looked up into his face with honest and earnest eyes. There was something in his manner, in the tone of her husband’s voice, which touched her.

“Yen,” said she, “you do not look well. You are not well. What is it?”

Something arose in Mr. Spring Fragrance’s throat which prevented him from replying.

“O darling one! O sweetest one!” cried a girl’s joyous voice. Laura Chin Yuen ran into the room and threw her arms around Mrs. Spring Fragrance’s neck.

“I spied you from the window,” said Laura, “and I couldn’t rest until I told you. We are to be married next week, Kai Tzu and I. And all through you, all through you—the sweetest jade jewel in the world!”

Mr. Spring Fragrance passed out of the room.

“So the son of the Government teacher and little Happy Love are already married,” Laura went on, relieving Mrs. Spring Fragrance of her cloak, her hat, and her folding fan. Mr. Spring Fragrance paused upon the doorstep.

“Sit down, Little Sister, and I will tell you all about it,” said Mrs. Spring Fragrance, forgetting her husband for a moment.

When Laura Chin Yuen had danced away, Mr. Spring Fragrance came in and hung up his hat.

“You got back very soon,” said Mrs. Spring Fragrance, covertly wiping away the tears which had begun to fall as soon as she thought herself alone.

“I did not go,” answered Mr. Spring Fragrance. “I have been listening to you and Laura.”

“But if the business is very important, do not you think you should attend to it?” anxiously queried Mrs. Spring Fragrance.

“It is not important to me now,” returned Mr. Spring Fragrance. “I would prefer to hear again about Ah Oi and Man You and Laura and Kai Tzu.”

“How lovely of you to say that!” exclaimed Mrs. Spring Fragrance, who was easily made happy. And she began to chat away to her husband in the friendliest and wifeliest fashion possible. When she had finished she asked him if he were not glad to hear that those who loved as did the young lovers whose secrets she had been keeping, were to be united; and he replied that indeed he was; that he would like every man to be as happy with a wife as he himself had ever been and ever would be.

“You did not always talk like that,” said Mrs. Spring Fragrance slyly. “You must have been reading my American poetry books!”

“American poetry!” ejaculated Mr. Spring Fragrance almost fiercely, “American poetry is detestable, _abhorrable_!”

“Why! why!” exclaimed Mrs. Spring Fragrance, more and more surprised.

But the only explanation which Mr. Spring Fragrance vouchsafed was a jadestone pendant.

THE INFERIOR WOMAN

I

Mrs. Spring Fragrance walked through the leafy alleys of the park, admiring the flowers and listening to the birds singing. It was a beautiful afternoon with the warmth from the sun cooled by a refreshing breeze. As she walked along she meditated upon a book which she had some notion of writing. Many American women wrote books. Why should not a Chinese? She would write a book about Americans for her Chinese women friends. The American people were so interesting and mysterious. Something of pride and pleasure crept into Mrs. Spring Fragrance’s heart as she pictured Fei and Sie and Mai Gwi Far listening to Lae-Choo reading her illuminating paragraphs.

As she turned down a by-path she saw Will Carman, her American neighbor’s son, coming towards her, and by his side a young girl who seemed to belong to the sweet air and brightness of all the things around her. They were talking very earnestly and the eyes of the young man were on the girl’s face.

“Ah!” murmured Mrs. Spring Fragrance, after one swift glance. “It is love.”

She retreated behind a syringa bush, which completely screened her from view.

Up the winding path went the young couple.

“It is love,” repeated Mrs. Spring Fragrance, “and it is the ‘Inferior Woman.’”

She had heard about the Inferior Woman from the mother of Will Carman.

After tea that evening Mrs. Spring Fragrance stood musing at her front window. The sun hovered over the Olympic mountains like a great, golden red-bird with dark purple wings, its long tail of light trailing underneath in the waters of Puget Sound.

“How very beautiful!” exclaimed Mrs. Spring Fragrance; then she sighed.

“Why do you sigh?” asked Mr. Spring Fragrance.

“My heart is sad,” answered his wife.

“Is the cat sick?” inquired Mr. Spring Fragrance.

Mrs. Spring Fragrance shook her head. “It is not our Wise One who troubles me today,” she replied. “It is our neighbors. The sorrow of the Carman household is that the mother desires for her son the Superior Woman, and his heart enshrines but the Inferior. I have seen them together today, and I know.”

“What do you know?”

“That the Inferior Woman is the mate for young Carman.”

Mr. Spring Fragrance elevated his brows. Only the day before, his wife’s arguments had all been in favor of the Superior Woman. He uttered some words expressive of surprise, to which Mrs. Spring Fragrance retorted:

“Yesterday, O Great Man, I was a caterpillar!”

Just then young Carman came strolling up the path. Mr. Spring Fragrance opened the door to him. “Come in, neighbor,” said he. “I have received some new books from Shanghai.”

“Good,” replied young Carman, who was interested in Chinese literature. While he and Mr. Spring Fragrance discussed the “Odes of Chow” and the “Sorrows of Han,” Mrs. Spring Fragrance, sitting in a low easy-chair of rose-colored silk, covertly studied her visitor’s countenance. Why was his expression so much more grave than gay? It had not been so a year ago—before he had known the Inferior Woman. Mrs. Spring Fragrance noted other changes, also, both in speech and manner. “He is no longer a boy,” mused she. “He is a man, and it is the work of the Inferior Woman.”

“And when, Mr. Carman,” she inquired, “will you bring home a daughter to your mother?”

“And when, Mrs. Spring Fragrance, do you think I should?” returned the young man.

Mrs. Spring Fragrance spread wide her fan and gazed thoughtfully over its silver edge.

“The summer moons will soon be over,” said she. “You should not wait until the grass is yellow.”

“The woodmen’s blows responsive ring, As on the trees they fall, And when the birds their sweet notes sing, They to each other call. From the dark valley comes a bird, And seeks the lofty tree, _Ying_ goes its voice, and thus it cries: ‘Companion, come to me.’ The bird, although a creature small Upon its mate depends, And shall we men, who rank o’er all, Not seek to have our friends?”

quoted Mr. Spring Fragrance.

Mrs. Spring Fragrance tapped his shoulder approvingly with her fan.

“I perceive,” said young Carman, “that you are both allied against my peace.”

“It is for your mother,” replied Mrs. Spring Fragrance soothingly. “She will be happy when she knows that your affections are fixed by marriage.”

There was a slight gleam of amusement in the young man’s eyes as he answered: “But if my mother has no wish for a daughter—at least, no wish for the daughter I would want to give her?”

“When I first came to America,” returned Mrs. Spring Fragrance, “my husband desired me to wear the American dress. I protested and declared that never would I so appear. But one day he brought home a gown fit for a fairy, and ever since then I have worn and adored the American dress.”

“Mrs. Spring Fragrance,” declared young Carman, “your argument is incontrovertible.”

II

A young man with a determined set to his shoulders stood outside the door of a little cottage perched upon a bluff overlooking the Sound. The chill sea air was sweet with the scent of roses, and he drew in a deep breath of inspiration before he knocked.

“Are you not surprised to see me?” he inquired of the young person who opened the door.

“Not at all,” replied the young person demurely.

He gave her a quick almost fierce look. At their last parting he had declared that he would not come again unless she requested him, and that she assuredly had not done.

“I wish I could make you feel,” said he.

She laughed—a pretty infectious laugh which exorcised all his gloom. He looked down upon her as they stood together under the cluster of electric lights in her cozy little sitting-room. Such a slender, girlish figure! Such a soft cheek, red mouth, and firm little chin! Often in his dreams of her he had taken her into his arms and coaxed her into a good humor. But, alas! dreams are not realities, and the calm friendliness of this young person made any demonstration of tenderness well-nigh impossible. But for the shy regard of her eyes, you might have thought that he was no more to her than a friendly acquaintance.

“I hear,” said she, taking up some needlework, “that your Welland case comes on tomorrow.”

“Yes,” answered the young lawyer, “and I have all my witnesses ready.”

“So, I hear, has Mr. Greaves,” she retorted. “You are going to have a hard fight.”

“What of that, when in the end I’ll win.”

He looked over at her with a bright gleam in his eyes.

“I wouldn’t be too sure,” she warned demurely. “You may lose on a technicality.”

He drew his chair a little nearer to her side and turned over the pages of a book lying on her work-table. On the fly-leaf was inscribed in a man’s writing: “To the dear little woman whose friendship is worth a fortune.”

Another book beside it bore the inscription: “With the love of all the firm, including the boys,” and a volume of poems above it was dedicated to the young person “with the high regards and stanch affection” of some other masculine person.

Will Carman pushed aside these evidences of his sweetheart’s popularity with his own kind and leaned across the table.

“Alice,” said he, “once upon a time you admitted that you loved me.”

A blush suffused the young person’s countenance.

“Did I?” she queried.

“You did, indeed.”

“Well?”

“Well! If you love me and I love you—”

“Oh, please!” protested the girl, covering her ears with her hands.

“I _will_ please,” asserted the young man. “I have come here tonight, Alice, to ask you to marry me—and at once.”

“Deary me!” exclaimed the young person; but she let her needlework fall into her lap as her lover, approaching nearer, laid his arm around her shoulders and, bending his face close to hers, pleaded his most important case.

If for a moment the small mouth quivered, the firm little chin lost its firmness, and the proud little head yielded to the pressure of a lover’s arm, it was only for a moment so brief and fleeting that Will Carman had hardly become aware of it before it had passed.

“No,” said the young person sorrowfully but decidedly. She had arisen and was standing on the other side of the table facing him. “I cannot marry you while your mother regards me as beneath you.”

“When she, knows you she will acknowledge you are above me. But I am not asking you to come to my mother, I am asking you to come to me, dear. If you will put your hand in mine and trust to me through all the coming years, no man or woman born can come between us.”

But the young person shook her head.

“No,” she repeated. “I will not be your wife unless your mother welcomes me with pride and with pleasure.”

The night air was still sweet with the perfume of roses as Will Carman passed out of the little cottage door; but he drew in no deep breath of inspiration. His impetuous Irish heart was too heavy with disappointment. It might have been a little lighter, however, had he known that the eyes of the young person who gazed after him were misty with a love and yearning beyond expression.

III

“Will Carman has failed to snare his bird,” said Mr. Spring Fragrance to Mrs. Spring Fragrance.

Their neighbor’s son had just passed their veranda without turning to bestow upon them his usual cheerful greeting.

“It is too bad,” sighed Mrs. Spring Fragrance sympathetically. She clasped her hands together and exclaimed:

“Ah, these Americans! These mysterious, inscrutable, incomprehensible Americans! Had I the divine right of learning I would put them into an immortal book!”

“The divine right of learning,” echoed Mr. Spring Fragrance, “Humph!”

Mrs. Spring Fragrance looked up into her husband’s face in wonderment.

“Is not the authority of the scholar, the student, almost divine?” she queried.

“So ’tis said,” responded he. “So it seems.”

The evening before, Mr. Spring Fragrance, together with several Seattle and San Francisco merchants, had given a dinner to a number of young students who had just arrived from China. The morning papers had devoted several columns to laudation of the students, prophecies as to their future, and the great influence which they would exercise over the destiny of their nation; but no comment whatever was made on the givers of the feast, and Mr. Spring Fragrance was therefore feeling somewhat unappreciated. Were not he and his brother merchants worthy of a little attention? If the students had come to learn things in America, they, the merchants, had accomplished things. There were those amongst them who had been instrumental in bringing several of the students to America. One of the boys was Mr. Spring Fragrance’s own young brother, for whose maintenance and education he had himself sent the wherewithal every year for many years. Mr. Spring Fragrance, though well read in the Chinese classics, was not himself a scholar. As a boy he had come to the shores of America, worked his way up, and by dint of painstaking study after working hours acquired the Western language and Western business ideas. He had made money, saved money, and sent money home. The years had flown, his business had grown. Through his efforts trade between his native town and the port city in which he lived had greatly increased. A school in Canton was being builded in part with funds furnished by him, and a railway syndicate, for the purpose of constructing a line of railway from the big city of Canton to his own native town, was under process of formation, with the name of Spring Fragrance at its head.

No wonder then that Mr. Spring Fragrance muttered “Humph!” when Mrs. Spring Fragrance dilated upon the “divine right of learning,” and that he should feel irritated and humiliated, when, after explaining to her his grievances, she should quote in the words of Confutze: “Be not concerned that men do not know you; be only concerned that you do not know them.” And he had expected wifely sympathy.

He was about to leave the room in a somewhat chilled state of mind when she surprised him again by pattering across to him and following up a low curtsy with these words:

“I bow to you as the grass bends to the wind. Allow me to detain you for just one moment.”

Mr. Spring Fragrance eyed her for a moment with suspicion.

“As I have told you, O Great Man,” continued Mrs. Spring Fragrance, “I desire to write an immortal book, and now that I have learned from you that it is not necessary to acquire the ‘divine right of learning’ in order to accomplish things, I will begin the work without delay. My first subject will be ‘The Inferior Woman of America.’ Please advise me how I shall best inform myself concerning her.”

Mr. Spring Fragrance, perceiving that his wife was now serious, and being easily mollified, sat himself down and rubbed his head. After thinking for a few moments he replied:

“It is the way in America, when a person is to be illustrated, for the illustrator to interview the person’s friends. Perhaps, my dear, you had better confer with the Superior Woman.”

“Surely,” cried Mrs. Spring Fragrance, “no sage was ever so wise as my Great Man.”

“But I lack the ‘divine right of learning,’” dryly deplored Mr. Spring Fragrance.

“I am happy to hear it,” answered Mrs. Spring Fragrance. “If you were a scholar you would have no time to read American poetry and American newspapers.”

Mr. Spring Fragrance laughed heartily.

“You are no Chinese woman,” he teased. “You are an American.”

“Please bring me my parasol and my folding fan,” said Mrs. Spring Fragrance. “I am going out for a walk.”

And Mr. Spring Fragrance obeyed her.

IV

“This is from Mary Carman, who is in Portland,” said the mother of the Superior Woman, looking up from the reading of a letter, as her daughter came in from the garden.

“Indeed,” carelessly responded Miss Evebrook.

“Yes, it’s chiefly about Will.”

“Oh, is it? Well, read it then, dear. I’m interested in Will Carman, because of Alice Winthrop.”

“I had hoped, Ethel, at one time that you would have been interested in him for his own sake. However, this is what she writes:

“I came here chiefly to rid myself of a melancholy mood which has taken possession of me lately, and also because I cannot bear to see my boy so changed towards me, owing to his infatuation for Alice Winthrop. It is incomprehensible to me how a son of mine can find any pleasure whatever in the society of such a girl. I have traced her history, and find that she is not only uneducated in the ordinary sense, but her environment, from childhood up, has been the sordid and demoralizing one of extreme poverty and ignorance. This girl, Alice, entered a law office at the age of fourteen, supposedly to do the work of an office boy. Now, after seven years in business, through the friendship and influence of men far above her socially, she holds the position of private secretary to the most influential man in Washington—a position which by rights belongs only to a well-educated young woman of good family. Many such applied. I myself sought to have Jane Walker appointed. Is it not disheartening to our woman’s cause to be compelled to realize that girls such as this one can win men over to be their friends and lovers, when there are so many splendid young women who have been carefully trained to be companions and comrades of educated men?”

“Pardon me, mother,” interrupted Miss Evebrook, “but I have heard enough. Mrs. Carman is your friend and a well-meaning woman sometimes; but a woman suffragist, in the true sense, she certainly is not. Mark my words: If any young man had accomplished for himself what Alice Winthrop has accomplished, Mrs. Carman could not have said enough in his praise. It is women such as Alice Winthrop who, in spite of every drawback, have raised themselves to the level of those who have had every advantage, who are the pride and glory of America. There are thousands of them, all over this land: women who have been of service to others all their years and who have graduated from the university of life with honor. Women such as I, who are called the Superior Women of America, are after all nothing but schoolgirls in comparison.”

Mrs. Evebrook eyed her daughter mutinously. “I don’t see why you should feel like that,” said she. “Alice is a dear bright child, and it is prejudice engendered by Mary Carman’s disappointment about you and Will which is the real cause of poor Mary’s bitterness towards her; but to my mind, Alice does not compare with my daughter. She would be frightened to death if she had to make a speech.”

“You foolish mother!” rallied Miss Evebrook. “To stand upon a platform at woman suffrage meetings and exploit myself is certainly a great recompense to you and father for all the sacrifices you have made in my behalf. But since it pleases you, I do it with pleasure even on the nights when my beau should ‘come a courting.’”

“There is many a one who would like to come, Ethel. You’re the handsomest girl in this Western town—and you know it.”

“Stop that, mother. You know very well I have set my mind upon having ten years’ freedom; ten years in which to love, live, suffer, see the world, and learn about men (not schoolboys) before I choose one.”

“Alice Winthrop is the same age as you are, and looks like a child beside you.”

“Physically, maybe; but her heart and mind are better developed. She has been out in the world all her life, I only a few months.”

“Your lecture last week on ‘The Opposite Sex’ was splendid.”

“Of course. I have studied one hundred books on the subject and attended fifty lectures. All that was necessary was to repeat in an original manner what was not by any means original.”

Miss Evebrook went over to a desk and took a paper therefrom.

“This,” said she, “is what Alice has written me in reply to my note suggesting that she attend next week the suffrage meeting, and give some of the experiences of her business career. The object I had in view when I requested the relation of her experiences was to use them as illustrations of the suppression and oppression of women by men. Strange to say, Alice and I have never conversed on this particular subject. If we had I would not have made this request of her, nor written her as I did. Listen: