Part 5

I made my first visit to the theatre. Aunt Gwendolin said I should not go until I came _out_, but Uncle Theodore said he would take me himself, and defy all fashions and formalities.

"I enjoy seeing the little girl absorbing our civilisation," he said to grandmother; "sometimes I fancy it seems rather uncivilised to her."

Grandmother demurred a good deal; she said she did not know but I would be quite as well, or better, if I never went near a theatre. But Uncle Theodore said that was an old-fashioned idea that grandmother held to because of her Puritan ancestry; that it was generally conceded now that the theatre is a great educator, the greatest educator of the people extant to-day.

"There is going to be a world-renowned actress to-night, a star of first magnitude in the theatrical world," he added, "and I want my niece to have the advantage of hearing her."

I dressed my very prettiest for the occasion. Uncle Theodore always has an eye for the artistic in dress. I donned soft silks, soft ribbons, and soft feathers. It is one of my uncle's ideas that women should be softly clad; he absolutely hates anything hard, stiff, or masculine-looking on a woman.

When we entered the theatre the orchestra was playing most ravishing music. I could have stayed there all night and listened to it without tiring, I believe. It must be the American half of me that is the music-lover, for the Chinese are not very musical.

The boxes were full of wonderfully well-dressed men and women. How beautiful women can look in this great country, dressed in every colour of the rainbow! Men are of less account in America; but they looked well enough, too, in black coats and white shirt-bosoms.

After awhile the heavenly music stopped, the curtain on the stage rolled up, and the play began.

At first it was entrancing, magnificent--the stage-furnishings, gorgeously dressed women, clever-looking men, all acting a part--a lovely world without anything to mar it, right there in that small space of the stage before our eyes.

Then a woman, the star actress, came in wearing a very decollete gown (I am getting hardened to them now), and began to talk in a manner I never had imagined people in good society would talk--right before those hundreds of men and women. I'll not write it down; I do not wish to remember it. But the party of women on the stage, instead of being shocked or ashamed, all laughed little, rippling, merry laughs. My cheeks burned, and I did not dare to look at anybody, not even Uncle Theodore.

After that I could not like the theatre any more and drawing away within myself, I looked and listened as if the actors had been hundreds of miles from me.

When the play was over and we were on the way home Uncle Theodore said: "If I had known the nature of the play, I would not have taken you to-night, Pearl."

"But _I_," I cried, "_I_ am only _one_! There were hundreds of people being _educated_ as well as _I_!"

Uncle Theodore turned and looked at me quickly; then he said coldly:

"My dear, you have a great deal yet to learn."

When we reached home I went at once upstairs to my room, and Uncle Theodore retired to his den.

Neither of us has ever mentioned the subject since.

Cousin Ned is around morning, noon, and night now. He is walking with a crutch, having had his shin kicked at a foot-ball match.

_June 20th, 1----_

I went with grandmother to-day on her weekly visit to the "Home for Incurable Children." Grandmother goes to carry her presents, and "to cheer up the little folk," she says; I went prompted by curiosity.

We were ushered in by a cheery, wholesome-looking maid who knew grandmother, and gave her the freedom of the house.

We first entered the ward where the older children were kept, and there grandmother distributed her books and pictures.

While she sat to rest I wandered from one cot to another, where white little faces looked up at me, pleasantly answering my questions, or volunteering information.

"I am a _new_ patient," one midget said, with a placid air of importance.

"I'm goin' to have an _operation_ to-morrow," said another exultingly.

"That's one blessed fact about children," said the attending nurse, "they never fret in anticipation. They look forward with positive pride to a new experience--even if it is an operation."

In one bright room three boys were playing a game of number-cards, one a hunchback, another with crippled lower limbs, and a third, seated on a long high bench, handling the cards with his toes, his arms and hands being useless.

The top part of the foot of the socks belonging to this last lad had been cut off, and he was picking the cards off the table with his bare toes; passing them from foot to foot, and replacing a certain card on the table, quite as expertly as another boy might do it with his fingers.

I walked into another room to see the little babies; blind, crooked-limbed, distorted, never going to be able to use their bodies properly.

"Why does God leave them here?" I demanded of grandmother as soon as we had reached the open air again.

"Perhaps," said grandmother quietly, "to give us the blessed privilege of acting the God toward them."

"Christianity means brotherhood, Pearl, dear," she added, after we had walked several yards in silence.

What a great country this America is! Caring for its ailing and crippled in such a beautiful way!

"Oh, China!" I cried, when I was all alone in my own room, "_you_ would drown your blind, crooked-limbed, distorted babies, or throw them out on the hillsides to die! Oh, China! China! would you could come over here and see how America treats her 'weak and wounded, sick and sore?' These are the words of a church hymn."

I said something to this effect the same evening to grandmother, and she replied:

"Perhaps, my dear, it may be the duty of some of us to carry America to China."

SEASIDE, _July 31st, 1----_

We are at the seaside. It is the fashion in America for whole families to shut up their houses in hot weather and go off to some summer resort--the women of them--whether to be cool, or to be in the fashion I do not yet know. Grandmother wanted to go one place, Aunt Gwendolin to another, and Uncle Theodore, who said he might run over for a few Sundays, to yet another. At last a charming spot upon the Atlantic coast was decided upon. Uncle Theodore settled the question emphatically, because dear grandmother needed the revivifying influence of the sea air.

Aunt Gwendolin fretted a little at first for fear it might be humdrum, and commonplace, and for fear none of "our set" would be there; but she recovered from her depression when she heard that Mrs. Delancy, Mrs. Deforest, Mrs. Austin, and others of the same clique had also chosen that particular part of the coast as their recuperating place.

Mrs. Delancy dropped in one day to tell her that the whole fashionable tide had turned toward that coast this summer, and she knew we should have a "simply _grand_ season."

Aunt Gwendolin's spirits rose after that, and she immediately went about ordering a most elaborate summer wardrobe--morning gowns, evening gowns, walking suits, yachting suits, bathing suits.

Uncle Theodore went ahead of the rest of the party and engaged a suite of rooms in the most fashionable hotel on the Beach, from the broad balconies of which the view of the sea is grand, and the air delicious.

Grandmother and I spend much time together. As I am not "out" Aunt Gwendolin says that I cannot attend any of the functions to which she is going daily--and nightly. I do not know what I miss by being obliged to stay away from the parties and balls, but I know it is very delightful wandering on the beach with grandmother, watching the lights, shades, and colours on the water, the dipping and skimming of the water birds, the movements of the lobster fishers, the going out and coming in of the tide, and all the many, many objects of interest around the great sea world; never caring whether I am fashionable or not fashionable, whether anybody is noticing me or not noticing me.

The only objects that I do not like to look at on this sea beach are the human bathers. The sea-gulls taking their bath are graceful, but, oh! those grown-up women in skirts up to their knees, and bare arms, wandering over the beach like great ostriches! They mar the picture of beauty which the earth and sky and sea unite to make, and I would shut them up if I had the power--or add more length to their bathing suits.

Perhaps the sea-gulls would not look graceful either if they had half their feathers off.

We were here a week when Professor Ballington came. We were all a little surprised to see him because he is not a "society man," as Aunt Gwendolin says. He does not appear to care much for "functions," and spends much time wandering on the beach. Grandmother and I meet him frequently.

One time when I went out for a little run before breakfast I found him staring at the great green sea that kept restlessly licking the sand at his feet. He looked lonesome, and I tried to say something to cheer him up. Then he asked permission to join me in my stroll, and we had a most delightful time, finding shells, and stones, the formations of various periods of time, Professor Ballington said. He seems to know everything. I do not wonder he cares so little for society, or the company of women in general. Strange how much more the men, the cultured men, the society men, of America know than the women! I suppose it is because the women have to spend so much time talking about the change of sleeves.

There was a dance one night in the ballroom, which is around at the opposite side of the house from our apartments, and leaving grandmother absorbed in her book, I slipped around on the balcony and peeped through the slats of the closed shutters on the dancers within.

All was in a whirl, and there I saw, with my own two eyes, men with their arms around the waists of women, whirling those same women around the great room in time to music played by an orchestra. It made me dizzy to look at them.

"Wouldn't that shock China!" I cried. "Shall _I_ have to submit to that when I come _out_? Oh, why cannot I always stay _in_?"

I was so excited I did not know I was talking aloud, until the voice of Professor Ballington over my head said:

"You do not like the thought of coming out into society? You would like always to stay in domestic retirement?"

"Yes, yes," I said; "what can save me from coming _out_?"

"Marry some good man," he said, "and spend your energies making a quiet, happy home for _him_."

He was looking at me in a very peculiar way, and I felt frightened, I don't know why, and skipped along the balcony back to grandmother's sitting-room.

When I entered who should be there talking to grandmother but Mrs. Paton. She said she had felt lonesome without grandmother in the city, and had made up her mind to spend a week at the seaside.

"Oh, grandmother!" I cried, as soon as I had greeted Mrs. Paton, "shall I _have_ to come _out_? Cannot I always stay _in_?"

Grandmother clasped my hand in hers, in the old way she had of quieting me, and explained to Mrs. Paton that I did not incline to the ways of society people, and had a dread of entering the world which Aunt Gwendolin loved so well.

"Give your life to some noble cause, my dear," said Mrs. Paton earnestly, turning her eyes upon me. "The world is in sore need of consecrated women. You could be a foreign missionary, or a home missionary. Oh, don't waste your life on the frivolity called Society!"

This is not Professor Ballington's advice. Which is right? How glad I am that in this "land of the free," I am not compelled to follow any will but my own!

_August_ SEASIDE.

Well, I did get a surprise last evening while out strolling on the beach, for whom should I meet but "Sawbones," otherwise Chauffeur Graham. He is having summer holidays now, and before settling down to some work to make money for his autumn college expenses, he snatched a day to get a whiff of sea air, he said.

He seemed very pleased to see me, and I was _delighted_ to see him, and extended my hand to him in cordial greeting.

I know Aunt Gwendolin would object to her niece shaking hands with the chauffeur--it was the medical man I shook hands with.

I stayed out there as long as I dared, and we had a lovely stroll along the beach in the moonlight, the waves whispering at our feet as we walked and talked. Chauffeur Graham said that it always seemed to him that the waves were coming from the many far-off lands with their incessant pleadings that we carry our enlightenment and advantages to the suffering places of the earth.

That was the medical man speaking in him. He must be noble or he would never hear those voices in the waves.

How I wish it were proper for me to give him some of the money I do not know what to do with, so that he could go on with his studies and not need to work between times to earn a pittance.

Grandmother says she is going to engage him again in the autumn, when we all return to the city; she knows him now, and feels safe in his hands, he is so careful.

"It is such a nuisance to have a man that you cannot command at any hour of the day--or night," said Aunt Gwendolin. "Make him understand, if you engage him again, that all his time belongs to _us_. These gentlemen chauffeurs who are straining after a university education are unendurable!"

"He shall have whatever time he wants for his studies or examinations. It is the least I can do to show my sympathy with his life work," returned my grandmother.

_Another Stroll_.

I had another stroll this evening on the beach with Chauffeur Graham--while Aunt Gwendolin was getting ready for the dance--and he told me something.

"When I am through with my medical course," he said, "I intend to go to China to practise what I have learned."

I stopped suddenly in my walk and faced him. "Why are you going to China?" I demanded.

It makes me indignant to have this nation, an infant in years, patronising my hoary-headed Empire!

"If a man is going to do his duty by the world," he returned, "he will go where his work is most needed. They have no native medical school in China.

"They are a great people," he added after a short pause, "likely to be in the van of the world's march in the ages to come; and I want to have a hand in getting them ready. Napoleon said, 'When China moves she will move the world.' All the broken legs will be set in this country whether I am here to set them or not; I want to go where they will not be set unless I do it."

"Go where the vineyard demandeth Vinedresser's nurture and care."

I repeated the lines which I had heard them sing in the church.

"That's about the way it is," he returned, looking at me in pleased surprise.

He left this morning on an early train, to go back to the peg and grind, and now the place is slow and lonesome. After all I think it is better to have to peg and grind; it surely must be the spice of life which rich people miss. I do not care how quickly the hot months pass, and we can go back to the city again.

_Sept. 30th, 1----_

We are all back in the city again, and settled into the old routine; but there is a new excitement in the air. Aunt Gwendolin insists that I require to go to some fashionable "Young Ladies' Boarding School," to be "_finished_." She says (but not in grandmother's hearing) that I do not talk as I should, that my voice is quite ordinary, and I must learn the tone of society ladies before I can be brought _out_.

"You mean the _artificial_ tone?" said Uncle Theodore, who was present when I was getting my lecture.

"Call it what you like, Theodore," snapped Aunt Gwendolin, "it is the tone used by an American society woman; the girl talks yet in the natural voice of a child."

"Would that she could always keep it," returned Uncle Theodore.

After much talking my aunt persuaded my grandmother that I should go to some such school.

"My dear," said grandmother timidly, "your aunt seems to think you may gain much by a period spent in some good school. She may be right. It certainly cannot hurt you, and if it can be of any benefit there is nothing to prevent your having it."

To comfort dear grandmother I raised no objection, and it is settled that I go in the fall term. The choice of a school was left entirely to Aunt Gwendolin, and she has decided upon the most expensive and most fashionable one in the country. She has been corresponding with the lady principal; my rooms have been ordered; and everything is complete.

One day my aunt placed in my hand one of her monogrammed sheets of writing-paper, pointing to the following paragraph:

"It is the family's wish that much attention be given to preparing the young girl whom I am sending to you, for Society; heavy or arduous work in any other line is of secondary consideration. The prestige of your school could not fail to be enhanced by the presence of a Spanish girl of good family."

"I am not a Spanish girl, Aunt Gwendolin!" I said.

"I did not say you were," returned my aunt, "I simply said the prestige of her school could not fail to be enhanced by the presence of one."

Have I got to live up to _that_?

BOARDING SCHOOL, _October 10th, 1----_

I am here at last, accompanied by two large leather trunks, which Aunt Gwendolin has filled with all sorts of costumes, for all sorts of occasions.

A page opened the door in response to the hackman's ring, when after some hours' journey by rail, I arrived at the fashionable "Boarding School," and a maid conducted me up a flight of softly carpeted steps to my appointed rooms.

I had not more than taken off my wraps, when Madam Demill (she has declared that her name should be spelled De Mille, but it has become corrupted in this democratic America) the head of the establishment, called upon me. She was cold, hard, stately; a creature of whalebone and steel as to body, and of pompadours and artificial braids as to head.

She announced after her first greeting that there was going to be a party that evening, and she wished me to be dressed in evening costume, and appear in the drawing-room at half past eight o'clock.

"If you would wear some of your distinctly Spanish costumes it would be very _apropos_," she added. "I see you have the decided Spanish complexion. I am glad you are pronounced in your nationality; it is so much more interesting. As you did not arrive in time for dinner, a tray shall be brought to your room with sufficient refreshment to keep you in good feature until you partake of the refreshment offered at the party," she added as she swept from the room.

How helpless I felt! I was to dress in evening costume for the "party." What was I to put on? For the first time in my life I wished that Aunt Gwendolin were near me. How I longed for my yellow silk gown that my governess in China had designed with flowing sleeves trimmed with "sprawling dragons!" I knew I looked better in that than in anything else, and I knew how to put it on; no infinitesimal hooks and eyes, pins and buttons, to be found, and put in exact places; which if one fails to do in the American gown the whole thing goes awry.

My worry was dispelled by the arrival of the maid with the promised tray. It was not too heavily laden to prevent me from completely emptying it, with the exception of the dishes.

While I was eating the maid unpacked my trunks,--you have not got to do much for yourself in a fashionable boarding school--hanging the articles in an adjoining clothes closet. During the same period of time a happy thought occurred to me.

"I will call Aunt Gwendolin over the long distance telephone and ask her what I shall wear at the party to-night!" was the happy inspiration.

In response to my request the maid conducted me to the telephone, and when the connection was made, I called:

"Hello, Aunt Gwendolin! This is the Yellow Pearl speaking!"

"How does that little minx know that she is the yellow peril?" I heard my aunt say, probably to Uncle Theodore in the room beside her. Then she turned to me and replied:

"Well."

"What gown shall I wear to-night at the party?"

Back over the two hundred miles of field, forest, lake, came Aunt Gwendolin's thin, squeaky voice:

"Wear your cream-coloured Oriental lace."

"Does it fasten in the front or back? If in the back I cannot put it on myself!" I returned, over the fields and trees and waters.

"Yes, you _can_, get some of the girls to fasten it for you," cried the voice through the phone. "Be sure and wear _that_; it so emphasises your Spanish style of beau----"

I hung up the receiver.

At my request the maid helped me to get into the cream Oriental lace; and at half past eight I made my appearance in the drawing-room, as to dress, looking like a Spanish grande dame, and as to face, looking as yellow, and lonesome, and sour as the fiercest Spanish brigand.

I was introduced to Mr. This-One, and Mr. That-One and Mr. The-Other-One. They all looked alike to me, with high collars, and patent-leather shoes. After awhile there was a little dance, but as I did not know how I had to sit against the wall, and Madam Demill said I must be put under a dancing master at once.

The day following, in the afternoon (all the so-called lessons are gone through in the forenoon, and we have nothing to do but amuse ourselves the rest of the day) a number of the girls came to call on me in my apartments. There were a dozen or more of them present when an arrogant-looking one, with her hair arranged in an immense pompadour over her forehead, from ear to ear, drawled through her nose.

"I suppose you do not love Americans since we beat your country at the battle of Manila?"

"No," I said truthfully, "I do not love Americans." (Of course I mentally excepted grandmother, Professor Ballington, Chauffeur Graham--and Uncle Theodore when he acts nice.)

The girls threw their chins into the air, their eyes shot fire, and I heard several faint sniffs.

Then a slim, golden-haired, blue-eyed girl stepped out from the group, and coming quickly to my side, she put her arm around me and said:

"We'll _make_ her love us!" and she actually touched her rosebud lips to my yellow cheek.

Since that I have not hated Americans quite so savagely.

The act seemed to have a softening effect on the others, too, for from that time they all have treated me very decently, even the girl with the pompadour.

Golden Hair seems to have a great deal of influence in the school. There are _some_ nice girls in America.

_Oct. 15th, 1----_

Life in this "Fashionable Boarding School" is just about a repetition, daily, of what transpired the evening of my arrival. It is not worth recording, so I am closing up my diary until I return to grandmother's. It takes Yick, and Mrs. Yet, and Chauffeur Graham, and Professor Ballington, and even a pinch of Aunt Gwendolin to give a little spice to life.

_Thanksgiving_

I took a run back to grandmother's for what those Americans call Thanksgiving--It is most amusing to foreigners like me--and Yick.

On grandmother's table there was what they tell me is the regulation dinner for the day--roast turkey and pumpkin pie.

When Yick, in his best costume, had walked proudly into the dining room with the immense turkey on a platter, and deposited it on the table, he returned to the kitchen convulsed with laughter, Betty has told me since.

"Christians queer people! Christians queer people!" he sputtered merrily. "Thank God eat turkey, thank God eat turkey!"

I knew what Yick meant, the Oriental idea of thanking God would have been some act of self-denial. It was hard for the poor "heathen Chinee" to construe the American self-indulgence into an act of thanksgiving. Poor Yick, and poor Yellow Pearl! How far both of you are from comprehending civilisation.

_Holidays, Dec. 20th, 1----_