Part 3
Little Bo Te played unheeded at her feet. Heavier and heavier upon her husband sank the evils of consumption, and it was to his long slender pipe he turned feverishly for relief from pain and doubt.
Unlit, the candles of the house furnished no glow for those who dwelt within.
_Wherein Kuei Ping prepares for a pilgrimage_
Kuei Ping made her preparations for departure carefully and quietly. She put into the parcel of clothing only the barest necessities, leaving the warmer garments and her dowry pearls, which she had still clung to even when everything else of value had been sacrificed for the use of the others of her household. She made sure that there was a fair supply of rice in the house and that Chang An had prepared some in readiness for the morning meal. She wrote a short note telling of her departure. Then she steeled her heart against entering the room where her husband and little son lay sleeping. It was better thus, she told herself, that she should go away in the night without any fuss or staying of steps. She knew that she must go if she was to find the truth for which she sought, and the desire to find it was the controlling motive of her life. What she had left of material things would last until the news of her departure reached the Chia compound. Then they would call Fuh Tang back with eager voices to the ease and plenty of his family, and he would take the little son with him. Kuei Ping felt that it was right that he should, but she knew that if she was to hold to that resolution she must not enter the room for one last look at the sleeping boy.
It was night, the second time in her life that she walked through the city streets alone, but she felt no fear. They led her to freedom. As she passed from the dusty courtyard and through innumerable hutungs on the outer side of grey walls, she was filled with a longing to tell the women shut within those walls of what she had learned and why she went. Lanterns hung at gateways threw out feeble rays of light along the narrow passageways. Turning into Hatamen Street she found a sleepy chair-bearer who carried her out to one of the farther city gates. There she dismissed him, for she sought peace and quiet in which to prepare for her new life of service. Shut within the walls of her home she could make no plans. A guard lay asleep at one of the gateways leading to the top of the city wall. She passed by him unnoticed and found a secluded spot on beyond an overlooking watch tower.
Here in the quiet above the city she prayed, seeking for knowledge. A gentle dew seemed to moisten the parched earth as she waited. Then there came the hush of nature that precedes dawn. A faint touch of gold appeared in the sky behind the purple western hills. The gold was shot with rays of flame color that melted into warm amber which became softened around the edges with lavender and wisteria shades; then in the ever-changing heavens amid the glory of color rose the sun, complete in its magnificence, giving light unto the entire world.
Kuei Ping stilled her prayer to gaze in wonder at the beauty of the sunrise and then to look down upon the city as it roused itself for the tasks of the day. What she saw were but familiar things in a new light. She saw an old man taking down the shutters from his shop. She saw the dark lurking figures, the petty thieves and marauders of the night, slink away through side alleys, and in their places came the familiar traveling restaurant with its bowls of steaming morning broth. She heard the restaurant carrier’s voice mingled with the call of the hucksters from the country. She heard the feeble cry of a waking baby. Over the wall in the compound just below her she watched a little lad patting earth about a leafless plant with his two hands while an amah urged him in to eat his morning rice.
Kuei Ping turned to her worn book to read again the words of Jesus as He had told of the Father to all those who had eyes to see and ears to hear. She read of love and of patience and of understanding for the trials of others and of forgetfulness of self. Patience and quiet which she had thought of until now as attributes only of Buddha she saw welded into the personality of the Son who had come to dwell on earth that those who sought Him might know more of his Father. Her vague longing for knowledge and for service became a desire to live as He had lived, simply and lovingly sharing whatever knowledge was trusted to her as He had shared with those of his own household and the small section of the world where He had dwelt.
Below her within the city she saw not only dusty walls that shut out the light, but lights too which shone from within. She came down from her morning of prayer no longer crying out for freedom. Freedom she had gained through forgetfulness of self. She was filled with a deep abiding sense of joy as she went back through the awakening streets to her own husband and child.
Bo Te had crawled down from his bed and sat in the corner of the room playing with the broken bits of the little ivory idol Chang An had kept hanging about his neck. He reached out eager hands to his mother asking her to fix it again. She held him close, a song of happiness throbbing in her heart.
Fuh Tang still lay in the stupor of drugged sleep, but as she leaned over him she saw in his blue-lined face something of the price that he had paid for her freedom thus far. For the first time she saw the real contrast between him and the handsome gallant man who had loved her enough to break down the walls of custom for her and sacrifice his own career to earn her bread by daily work. She saw him not as a destroyer of her trust, but as the victim of circumstances which had been too great for both of them until now. She saw thus now because she measured their love not by her need of him, but by his need of her. She read, too, in the repeated calls from his household for their return more than just the desire to enforce old traditions. She felt something of the weight of the household burdens upon the tired shoulders of Madame Chia, and the patience and understanding which it required to keep life going on smoothly and happily in a home. And she knew that according to custom it was her duty, as the wife of the eldest son of the family, to relieve Madame Chia and to be ready to take her place when she should be called to the world beyond.
She saw her path of service within her own small world first in ministering to those who had need of her and then perhaps out through them to others.
With an abiding peace in her heart Kuei Ping unfolded and put back in the familiar pigskin chests the garments she had prepared for her pilgrimage.
_Wherein there is patience and tenderness and understanding and a return to a little home village_
A procession of three sedan chairs made its way along the Big Horse Street of Kuei Ping’s home village. It was the time of the Feast of Lanterns. Made in shapes of birds, and fish with great eyes, and cocks, and little houses that spun round and round when they were lit, some large and some small, they decorated the shops and hung in front of entrance ways, or dangled from sedan chairs. Bo Te, riding with his father in the front of the procession, cried out in glee over each new display or shouted in pure ecstasy over the firing of a particularly loud bunch of firecrackers. The street was packed with slow-moving holiday makers and with vendors who cried their wares and made sales in the midst of traffic, so that Fuh Tang spoke to the chair-bearer in the lead asking him to go through the more quiet Street of Precious Pearls and connect with the hutung on the opposite side.
Kuei Ping rode second in the home-bound procession. Chang An, following behind, leaned forward and raised her voice to remind her of the day, which seemed so long ago now, on which they had come here to buy Kuei Ping’s dowry pearls. The street, too, had its decking in honor of the holiday, dainty lanterns of dull gold decorated in red hung before Wong Lui’s close-shuttered doorways, and lovely ones shaped like bright colored autumn leaves decorated a shop farther down the street.
The chairs wound out of the Street of Precious Pearls and on through the streets along which Kuei Ping had passed on her wedding day. Then she had gone in darkness, wrapped in heavy veils, toward a life of unfamiliar things. To-day she came through the same streets again to the Chia compound, conscious of joy in her coming, filled with a deep gladness that she had a place there. Her husband seemed to gather new strength as they passed through ways he had known in boyhood.
Chia Sung Lien with his household met them at the gateways to the family dwelling. Shining with happiness, the old man bade them welcome and begged them to accept his apology that the honorable mother could not meet them at the doorway too, but that she bade them come to her pavilion with haste that she might greet them. When the formal greetings were over Chia Sung Lien took his little grandson about, showing him the wonders of the courtyards, bringing out for his delight the little secret boxes of play treasures saved from his own boyhood, figures carved of ivory and of ebony, coins which he had saved from pocket-money years ago, letting the child hold the pet birds upon their perching sticks, showing him the purple velvet carp and the silver and gold fish in the fish pond, and exhibiting him to all the old servants of the household and to all the relatives who came to call.
Joy and love radiated through the vast dwelling and were reflected in the passive faces of all who made their home there. Kuei Ping came to realize almost as a revelation the gentle respect for each other and the careful consideration of the group as a whole which were absolutely essential to the life of the compound. What she had at first accepted as natural, then struggled against as a barrier to life, she came now to see in a truer light and to value that which was best in it. She saw with new eyes the patience required upon the part of Madame Chia to keep the household running smoothly and happily. The old woman, now no longer able to go about, directed affairs from her great bed, dividing duties and favors among the daughters-in-law of the family who again divided them among the other members of the house.
Going to visit within her own girlhood dwelling, Kuei Ping, from out of her brief experience, came away again marvelling at the smoothness of her grandmother’s plans, and the care with which her mother had been taught to carry on the family rites after Madame Yen should go on to the life beyond.
Both families accepted with quiet respect Kuei Ping’s feeling about the God in whose service she now lived. If they felt her mistaken they did not speak of it. The duties of attendance upon the family altar and the dropping of daily rice before the Kitchen God were continued by the widow of the deceased son. Kuei Ping came in turn to see beauty in the regularity with which they served as they believed, and the patience with which they lived.
In the dimly lighted courtyard under the familiar magnolia trees she walked with Fuh Tang. His steps were slower now. On the branches above their heads hung lanterns for the festival, through the latticed windows of the rooms about the court warm home lights glowed, from the kitchen court came the sound of servants chattering as they finished the tasks of the day, then above the other noises rose the shrill voice of their son. They stayed their steps to listen. He was telling the other children of the compound about the courtyard in which he had lived with Father and Mother and Chang An and an old gateman all by himself, telling them about the big city that is Peking. And of the wondrous procession which he had once seen there when Father had lifted him upon the wall that he might get a far-away glimpse of the Emperor with lots and lots of banners and men going with him. They heard him say that when he grew up he was going to be an Emperor and ride along a golden road at the head of a big procession. They heard him shout that he would if he wanted to, when the other children mocked his dream with its impossibility. They heard Chang An bear him away to bed.
Fuh Tang’s eyes twinkled with humor as he looked down at Kuei Ping. She laughed back. The barrier that had seemed to separate them was down. True, the walls of the compound that had pressed in upon their earlier freedom were about them, but Kuei Ping saw them now only as encircling walls of stone and mortar.
_Wherein twenty-seven slow years are added one upon another_
The years that followed were but the melting together of the pearls of Kuei Ping’s life. They held the gems of joy and of sorrow. She took up again the task of learning from Madame Chia the ways of household management, observing as carefully as possible the honorable mother’s wishes, coming to love her for her patience and her ability. She went often during the remaining days of Madame Yen’s life to the bedside, sometimes reading to her grandmother from the Book of Life she had received from the West, sometimes listening quietly as the old lady told her bits of wisdom she had learned from her own living.
The second of the new years within the compound gave to Kuei Ping a baby girl. Fuh Tang, growing steadily weaker, brightened with the coming of the gentle little child. Kuei Ping watched him as he played with the baby and let a hope grow in her heart that he would be well again. The entire household came to share that hope. A year passed in which each of the days was a glorious promise of more.
Then the end came suddenly in a short spasm of suffering. When it was over Kuei Ping could not feel that Fuh Tang was finished with life, but that he had passed on where there was no more of earthly suffering.
The long days that followed bore their pain of loneliness. The sleeves of his garments hung so empty and lay so still as she folded them away. Bo Te cried piteously for the return of his father. Stilling his cries and lulling to sleep the little daughter, Kuei Ping felt herself to blame that she had wanted freedom and perhaps had bought it with Fuh Tang’s life. Then there came over her a great thankfulness for what he had given her--the right to come and go as she chose through the compound door, two children to guide in their wanderings beyond it, and a love that seemed nearer now than it had since those days when the weariness had first begun to come upon him.
Her days were different from those of the women whose homes joined hers along the hutung only in that she had greater personal freedom and that she sought to live by the pattern of the life of Christ. The duties were the same round of daily household tasks. Time and time again she found it hard to live as near like the Master in kindliness and love as the women whom she knew who still worshipped in the old familiar ways. But as her daughter grew older she was tenfold thankful for the little she had learned of Christian faith and of the place it gave to women.
While Kuei Ping’s children were small she taught them, gathering about her each morning, as her uncle had done before her, all the children of the compound. She followed in her lesson plans the same teaching of nature from the plants in the garden, the same beginning of five written characters from the old classics each day, but to the worn book of Rites she added the parables from the book of Christ. A dream grew then,--to found a home school in which all the children of the neighborhood who would, might come and learn not the western way of life, but the home way enlightened by the teachings of Jesus.
Almost miraculously she and her little village passed untouched through the Boxer rebellion. Perhaps it was their smallness that saved them from the destroying hand of the fanatically-crazed men who sought to save their country as the center of the universe, complete in itself, and to drive out all other influences. Kuei Ping likes to think of it as a modern miracle.
But the fall of the Manchus and the coming of a Republic so cut down her means that the little school had to be pushed back again into the realm of dreams after it had grown to a reality with twenty day students. One entire side of the home had been used for the plan. Now only a few rooms of the compound were Kuei Ping’s even for dwelling quarters, for other Chia relatives came seeking shelter. Their official incomes shaved to a mere pittance, the fatty places in which they had squeezed more than twice their earnings taken away, the piteous flock did not know what else to do.
It was then that Kuei Ping faced the problem not of dividing what she had with others but of earning for her own children their livelihood and of preparing them to fill the place in life which she had so blithely planned for them. Again her thoughts turned to the West where women knew how to do things with which to earn money. Bo Te, now called by his school name Kwan Wa, begged to give up his education and to seek for work. He had only two more years of study before the completion of his chosen course, and as he had been offered the opportunity of a scholarship she refused to consider the suggestion.
It was then that she began to teach foreigners Chinese. Miss Porter, to whom she went with her problem, sent her the first two pupils. She found two rooms in a section of a courtyard near enough to the mission school for her daughter to attend classes with other girls of her own age. The expenses of her life were small, her group of private pupils grew larger and as she came to earn even a little more than she needed, this she added to a tiny growing heap of savings. Bit by bit she revived again the hope that when her son had finished his education she would build her school. As a part of this growing plan she held as capital the string of pearls bought so long ago. The jewels, treasured as they had been through each period of vicissitude in her life, had come to have an intrinsic beauty which strengthened her desire to use them where they would luminate the lives of others.
The affairs of government rocked above her head. She was conscious of them but they did not shake her determination to secure the title to a part of the old home where her maternal grandmother had spent her life, to be used for her school.
Then her little daughter fell ill of fever. Long months of nursing made her better but the foreign doctor urged the seashore and Kuei Ping again delayed her school plans, and took from her savings.
Kwan Wa’s marriage and an opportunity to begin the school came in the same year. His work for the year took him to Mukden and his salary was sufficient to make her earnings unnecessary for the family needs.
He, too, shared her plan for the home school and widened that dream to a plan that they should build near it a church for the worship of the Christian God whom they sought to follow.
It was a joyous day when Chia Kuei Ping at last saw the dream again a reality. No new buildings were built. The old compound in which her mother had lived before she was married was large enough for a part to be used as a dwelling and a part for classes. Each overlapped the other so that they were one--a home where education and living are one and the same.
The plan grew more rapidly than she could well manage alone. Then she discovered a man and his wife, childless, followers too of this new religion from the West but members of another of its man-made branches, who wished to help. They came to her to add to her teaching staff, giving their time and their small income to the project.
Again as time passed and the word of the school and its teachings spread, she found that her doors must be widened and her pocketbook fattened to make possible the needed expenditures. It was then that she returned to the task of teaching foreigners to speak Chinese, riding the twenty long miles to and from her home twice a week to the city of Peking.
A small inheritance came from her father’s family and this was laid aside as the beginning of the church she dreamed of building, where in a place set apart those who wished to enter might find a quiet place for communion with God. Into this building she put her dowry pearls, at last.
On her fiftieth birthday the people of her village laid the corner stone of the new church and even those who followed still the ways of worship of their fathers lent their hands to the building.
_Wherein the narrator becomes Kuei Ping’s pupil and is filled with wondering questions and is witness to a dream come true in its threefold parts_
The key to new treasure is often found in places unexpectedly near. It was midforenoon of a day in early spring. I approached the stuffy cubby hole, in which my private teacher waited, with lagging steps, struggling with the temptation to be finished with school for the day. On Hatamen Street a fortune teller squatted, reading fates with his magic paraphernalia; outside of Chen Men an old man in a lantern had promised to teach me to paint on parchment; there was a temple bazaar on at Lung Fa Fsu--a dozen different allurements called. Reluctantly I tapped upon the door several minutes late.
A woman older than my former teacher bade me enter. It is the custom in the school where I study Mandarin, or official Chinese, to change instructors often lest one copy too accurately mannerisms in intonation. Perhaps had it not been spring, or had I not been late we would have conned over lessons for weeks and gone no deeper behind the veil of passive expression on either face, each of us busy with her own thoughts while we droned over Chinese proverbs. As it was I had seen the official looking document laid upon the table and the light in Chia Kuei Ping’s eyes that told better than words the story of a long hoped for dream suddenly come true. Perhaps she felt the need in mine. I count it among the most precious treasures of my life that she did not pass me by with only a drilling on Chinese proverbs.
Proverbs are good, but she gave me much more. The document she translated was the appointment of her son to go to study railway transportation for three years in America, England and the continent of Europe. While she talked, I who could understand only a few of her words, caught something of what that meant to her and to her people. Through her eyes I saw burdens lifted from the necks of millions of overladen men and women who with their bodies now make the largest part of the transportation service of her country. She was not blinded to the long years before her son’s dream of an interlacing series of freight trains should take their place; but her dream had been fulfilled in his opportunity.
The days that followed were filled with deep joy for me. In the atmosphere of her own home Kuei Ping let me know her daughter and her four grandchildren. Nestled at the foot of the western hills, where seventeen generations of her mother’s family have dwelt, she let me sit at her feet and listen to life as it was lived about her. She did not still my eager questions, but she shared with me what she had learned from fifty-five years of life, teaching as simply and as eagerly as she taught the pupils of her own school.