here i am in this strange country about which i have learned in the geography and history, and about which i heard my father talk. the daughter of an american man and a chinese woman, i suppose i am what is called a mongrel. my father was a commissioner of customs in china, and living for years in that country he fell in love with my mother and married her—as was natural. who could help falling in love with my dear, yellow, winsome, little mother? my name is margaret, called after my father's mother; my father said that the word margaret means a pearl, so he gave me the pet name "pearl." dear father!
"it was a monstrous thing for brother george to marry away there," i overheard my aunt gwendolin remark a short time after my arrival. "why could he not have come back home to his own country and found a wife?—and above all to have married a heathen chinese!"
"not a heathen," said my grandmother, reproachfully, "she had previously embraced the faith of europeans; so my dear george wrote me from that far-away country."
"oh, they are all heathens in my estimation," cried my aunt gwendolin, scornfully; "what faith they embrace does not change the fact that they belong to the yellow people."
my mother died while i was yet a child, and my father has died and left me alone in the world within the last year. grandmother, my father's mother,[pg 5] when she learned about her son's death, sent at once for me.
"i cannot leave a granddaughter of mine in that country, and among that heathen, if not barbarous, people," she wrote to the american consul, "and i ask your services to assist her to come to my home in america."
the consul, absent-minded, gave me my grandmother's letter to read, and thus i learned her feeling about my mother's people and country. i never would have come to this horrible america if i could have helped myself; but i am scarcely of age, and by my father's will grandmother is appointed my guardian.
the result of it all is, that having crossed the intervening waters, i am here in the home of my grandmother, my aunt gwendolin and my uncle theodore morgan.
when i arrived this morning i was ushered into the sitting-room by a maid, and the first one i beheld was my grandmother, sitting in a rocking-chair. she called me to her, and crossing the room, i kotowed to her, that is i went down on my hands and knees and touched my forehead to the floor, as my chinese nurse had taught me when i was yet a baby that i should always do when i came into the presence of an elderly woman, a mother of children.
"my dear grandchild!" cried my grandmother, "do get up. all you should do is to kiss me—your grandmother!" and she put out her hand and assisted me from the floor.
grandmother is the dearest, prettiest little woman i ever saw, with white hair and the brightest of eyes, and i have to love her, although i had made[pg 7] up my mind to hate everything in america. a moment after she had lifted me from the floor, my aunt gwendolin came in. she is tall and thin, not nearly so beautiful a woman as my chinese mother. she wears skirts that drag on the floor, and her hair is built up into a sort of a mountain on top of her head. i am reminded every time i look at her of a certain peak in the thian shan mountains. i very much prefer little women, like my own dear mother, like the women of my own country.
my uncle theodore is long-armed, long-legged, long-bodied. he looks a little like my father, and for that reason i hate him a little less than my aunt gwendolin.
after my mother's death, my father brought into our home a french governess, daughter of a french consul, to[pg 8] teach me. father seemed to be lost in his business, or his grief at the loss of my mother, and paid very little heed to me after the arrival of the governess.
"she is an educated woman," he told me when he had engaged her, "and i want her to teach you all you could learn in a first-class girls' school in europe or america."
after that the french governess spent hours with me every day, and i saw my father only at intervals. how much we talked about, that french lady and i! everything, almost, except religion; that my father vetoed, as her faith was not the one he wished me to embrace. "i'll take you over to your grandmother by and by," he used to say, "to get the proper religious instruction."
the governess said that i inherited more from my father's side of the house[pg 9] than my mother's; that although i was born in china, i was more of an occidental than an oriental; more than once she said that my american mannerisms and tricks of speech were really remarkable, and that i was a living example of the power of heredity. but i am never going back on my mother's people, never, my dear little oval-faced mother whose grave is under a spreading camphor tree at the heart of the world.
does it not mean something that china is at the centre of the world—the kernel?
"the girl is not bad to look at, in fact i think she is a beauty—a face filled with the indescribable dash of the orient," said my uncle theodore, when they were talking me over in the sitting-room after i had retired to my[pg 10] chamber upstairs. evidently they had forgotten the opening in the floor which had been left by the workmen while making some changes in the plumbing. and they did not know my extraordinary keenness of hearing, which my governess said was an oriental trait.
it seemed to give my governess some pleasure to talk about that keen sense of the orientals, and to speculate as to how they had acquired it. "they have lived in a country where it is necessary, for self-protection, to hear all that is being plotted and planned," she said, "a country of conspiracies and intrigues, of plots and counterplots. centuries of this have developed abnormal hearing."
"she has a superb figure," said my uncle, continuing to talk about me, "and[pg 11] that oval face of hers, with her creamy complexion, is really bewitching."
"yellow! you mean, yellow!" interrupted my aunt gwendolin; "she's entirely too yellow for beauty. i'm terribly afraid that some of our set will discover her nationality. that's one thing you must remember, theodore, nobody on this continent is ever to learn anything about her chinese blood. they are so despised here as a race. she is our brother's daughter, with some foreign strain inherited from her mother; that is enough; never, never, let us acknowledge the chinese. the italians and spanish are yellowish too,—i have it!" she exclaimed, "spanish!—spanish will do!—some of those are our people now, you know! it will be quite interesting to have her a native of one of our dependencies—a[pg 12] descendant of some old spanish family!"
"do not be foolish, gwendolin," said my grandmother.
"i could not endure the thought of introducing a celestial," continued my aunt. "none must know that we have introduced the yellow peril into the country!"
"why, gwendolin, how you do talk," said my grandmother; "the child's father was an american, and she was admitted into this country as an american."
"you must talk with the girl to-morrow, theodore," continued my aunt, ignoring my grandmother's remark, "and tell her to keep sacred her progenitors. she speaks such perfect english no one would suspect that there was much foreign about her."
"she has a striking, unusual air that[pg 13] would attract a second glance from most people," said my uncle. "if you can keep her nationality from professor ballington you will do better than i think you can; he is a great ethnologist; it is his life-work to make discoveries in that line."
"well it must be kept, no matter what means we resort to," returned my aunt gwendolin, with a ring of determination in her voice.
"poor child," said my dear old grandmother, "she is my granddaughter, and i love her already, my george's child. she looks beautiful to me whether yellow or no."
i had gone down to dinner on this first evening in a soft yellow silk, with long flowing sleeves trimmed with dragons, i know i looked well in it. governess always said i did. it was[pg 14] partly chinese and partly european in design. governess planned it herself, and she said the french were born with a knowledge how to dress artistically; she boasted that she made it to suit my peculiar style.
"did you notice that china silk she had on at dinner?" said aunt gwendolin; "there must be an end to all that; a ban must be put on everything chinese."
"it was rather becoming i thought," said uncle theodore, "in harmony with the clear yellow of her skin. let her dress alone, she seems to know how to put it. that is a born gift with some women, and if it is not, they never seem to acquire it. there is great elegance in the straight lines of the oriental dress."
"let her alone," said aunt gwendolin scornfully, "and let the whole city know we have introduced the yellow per——"
"gwendolin, dear," interrupted grandmother, "do not speak so."
"those chinese silks, of which she seems to have gowns galore—i was at the unpacking of her trunks—must be tabooed," said my aunt. "her father has evidently intended her to dress like an european or american; she has some waist line, and does not wear the sacque the women wear in china; but her sleeves are years old."
"the dear child may object to having her attire changed at once," said my grandmother. "she is used to those soft clinging silks, and may not want to give them up. and sleeves are of little consequence. let her alone for awhile."
"let her alone!" again retorted aunt gwendolin, "and let professor ballington see her? he'd know her nationality at once in that yellow silk covered with [pg 16]sprawling dragons, as almost anybody might. i cannot have anything so mortifying occur when the girl is calling me 'aunt'!"
"ballington is a curious kind of a chap, and values people on their own merits; he'd think none the less of the girl because she has some chinese blood in her," returned uncle theodore.
"i'll take her out to-morrow," continued my aunt, "and buy her some taffeta silks and french muslins, and dress her up as a christian should be dressed."
grandmother said no more. the mother is not the head of the house in america as she is in dear old china. i suppose it is the daughter who rules in this country.
i am so sleepy i cannot listen any longer, even to talk about myself. my governess has taught me that [pg 17]eavesdropping is not honourable, but i cannot avoid hearing so long as i stay in my room, and i have nowhere else to go. i will turn out the electric light, throw myself on the bed, yellow silk and all, and cry myself asleep. i wonder is that an american or a chinese act? my governess was continually tracing my actions to one or other of the nations.
