Читать книгу The Vintage of Yon Yee - Louise Jordan Miln - Страница 6

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China thralled Edward Allingham from his first day there. He did not feel an exile from England. He felt that he had come home; the unusual feeling grew.

Already Shanghai was rich—English Shanghai—and richly social. But Allingham, with the first eccentricity of his well-ordered Englishman life, deliberately elected to find friends and exchange hospitalities among the Chinese. The mingling of Westerns and Easterns now so general in some treaty ports, at least on the surface, had scarcely begun then. But it was in the air, here and there. And Allingham, quietly determined to learn something of the people of the land that so fascinated him, found ways to achieve his desire.

He did not, as so many Europeans did, and do, class all Chinese together. He realized from the first that the home of imperial arts and supreme literature, great architecture must be also the home of an imperial race, the home of many fine and interesting personalities. Human charm must, he thought, go hand in hand with such charm of cultivated Nature; gardens more beautiful than he had seen in Europe, scenery adored and reverently emphasized and enhanced.

He had met a Chinese diplomat or two in London and at Oxford. To Allingham’s unaffected pleasure, he came across one of them again in Shanghai, and claimed acquaintance with a courteous bonhomie that the courteous Chinese could not rebuff.

Little by little the young Englishman won his way into the Chinese man’s confidence, and at last—much less easily—into his Chinese friend’s courtyards.

Koo Wing was “advanced,” far advanced for that time, or it could not have happened.

For himself, Koo Wing, the Chinese gentleman, was invulnerable to flattery. Indeed the most laudatory words that any Englishman could bring himself to pronounce could be but scanty and cold compared to the excessive exaggeration of all Chinese courteous speech. But for his country, even for his countrymen, Koo Wing was flattered and touched by this exceptional Englishman’s so evidently sincere and respectful appreciation of China, and eagerness to see and know more of China and of the Chinese.

An accomplished scholar in his own country, Koo Wing too had traveled far. He had not particularly liked Europe or admired what he had seen of Western ways. But he had gathered some ease towards Europeans, even some smattering of surface acquaintance with Western culture. He spoke English, not well but intelligently—as far as his English vocabulary went. He was instinctively broadminded. Being Chinese, he was tolerant. In much he was somewhat lax. He was greatly more interested in his scrolls—books and pictures—in the poems and essays he brushed, in his race’s history, in China’s philosophy, in his flowers and his birds than he was in things of more material moment.

The encroachments of the white races did not disturb Koo Wing; he scarcely realized them. Nor could he have conceived that they menaced China.

He liked and respected Edward Allingham. He liked him more and more as the months passed.

When Allingham, two years after his arrival in China, told Koo Wing, that he wished to marry Shang Yon Yee, Koo Wing was unpleasantly shocked. He said so, but with the gravest courtesy. When he learned that Shang Yon Yee was quite as anxious to marry the young Englishman as he to marry her, Koo Wing was pained. He told her so, but he showed no violence about it either then or at any time. And after a time, a decent time of decent remonstrance, Koo Wing, the exceptional Chinese, made no insuperable difficulty.

Just then Koo Wing was writing a history of the Chinese drama. The rest of his life scarcely could suffice for the monumental work he had planned, and was eager to accomplish with distinction—eager for the book’s sake, not for his own. He disliked any long or unsettling interruption of his engrossing task much more than he disliked the idea—crass as it was—of an Anglo-Chinese marriage at the edge of his own courtyard.

Allingham asked for no dowry with Shang Yon Yee, which was fortunate. Shang Yon Yee was penniless; and Koo Wing, who was poor, could not have provided her with even a modest wedding portion except by selling some cherished treasure—an ivory, a picture, a bronze or a jewel. To do that would disembowel him, Koo Wing believed.

He had been anxious because of Shang Yon Yee. She was not his daughter. And she was a widow. No Chinese gentleman ever could be induced to accept her in marriage. Koo Wing would not have tolerated anything less for her. Nor would he have seen her toil—had that solution been practical, which it was not. While he lived she would be cordially welcome to her simple share in his simple chia. But it constantly troubled him to wonder what her lot would be after he had joined his ancestors.

After his first surprise and disgust, his feeling of betrayal, Koo Wing softened considerably to the astonishing proposition.

Shang Yon Yee was only seventeen. She never had seen the husband whose widow she was. He had died when she was six. And she cursed him for it. She so loathed the stringent conditions of widowhood, greatly though Koo Wing relaxed them for her, that she made faces at her dead husband’s name whenever she heard it. She ought to have been whipped for doing it—most Chinese widows would—but indulgent Koo Wing looked the other way. He pitied Yon Yee, and he had loved dearly her mother, his sister.

Shang Yon Yee was an orphan. He had taken her into his own care when her mother had died. Her father’s people callously preferred such bestowal of the girl.

Never would Koo Wing have failed his sister’s only child—his sister weltering in Purgatory because no son or grandson survived her—but he was well content to remember that Shang Yon Yee would not stay with him long. When she was twelve and her husband fifteen she was to be carried to her father-in-law’s household; so the betrothal document stipulated.

The bride was still in her cradle when their marriage rite had been performed: a proxy marriage that greatly convenienced the families living half the length of China apart. The boy bridegroom died. His family refused to receive the five-year-old widow, refused to burden themselves with her. Koo Wing might have forced them to do so; but he had scant means and less stomach for the lawsuit, which might or might not have gone in his favor. Unobservant as he was of jurisprudence in practise, he knew how often justice miscarried in China. Most of all, his pride forbade him to force, if he could, his sister’s child upon an unwilling family; his heart forbade him to sentence her to probable unkindness.

But her future was a bitter problem to Koo Wing; at times he too could have made faces at the name of Shang Fang.

Much as his Chinese gorge rose at it at first, much as his caste sense resented it—all Westerns were inferior ones in Koo Wing’s estimation—the marriage that the rich and otherwise desirable Englishman offered had its points, Koo Wing gradually realized. He did not like it, but for some things he did not dislike it. He was glad to see indubitable happiness cream and flush on Shang Yon Yee’s face. And he liked its convenience to himself.

And when in honeymoon contentment Allingham offered and pressed an incredible sum of money to enable Koo Wing to purchase the adoption of a living, lusty son for Koo Wing’s sister, the mother of young Mrs. Allingham, Koo Wing accepted the Anglo-Chinese marriage cordially and unaffectedly. To have done less would have been both churlish and ungrateful. No Chinese is ungrateful. Koo Wing was no churl.

Her adopted son, worshiping at her grave, released Ma Koo Lu from Purgatory, gave her an honored place in the Chinese Hereafter, made her a respectable ghost.

Naturally Edward Allingham did not believe that it did anything of the kind. The superstition was absurd—as absurd as several of the superstitions that had, he knew, hosts of convinced adherents at home in England. He wondered if Koo Wing really believed it either—Koo Wing who seemed so sane and sanely thoughtful.

But there was no doubt that Yon Yee believed it implicitly. Her mother’s rehabilitation gave her great joy.

To give his little wife a much smaller satisfaction, Edward Allingham would have paid many times the sum he had given.

He was deeply in love with his Chinese wife.

To have pleased her, he willingly would have purchased a son for her first husband, for whom he had no ill-will, since she never had seen him; had even a sense of thankfulness to the eight-year-old urchin who so obligingly had died, leaving an adorable widow to become the fascinating bride of Edward Allingham.

But little Mrs. Allingham hinted no such wish. And when Edward half jokingly suggested it, she screamed out at him prettily. Shang Fang was the concern of his own family, she exclaimed. If “Ned” had the much price of adopting a son to give, far much better he buy with it some pearls, and give them to her.

Allingham did.

Sore from his mother’s death when he came to China, his own countrywomen in Shanghai, for some reason, had jarred on him. The quiet girl with the butterfly hands, the demure face, eyes that twinkled and laughed on the very slightest provocation, dove-like voice, soothed him strangely; soothed his sorrow the more because she was not of his mother’s race.

The quiet of Koo Wing’s courtyard calmed Allingham’s troubled spirit. And there there was nothing to remind him poignantly of his mother; in the British Concession there was much. Sydney Gore and his mother were devoted to each other. It hurt Edward Allingham to see them together, reminding him bitterly of what he had lost. In the Chinese chia he was in another and different world. He grudged English women, dancing and driving and smiling in Shanghai, the life his mother had lost—she so much fairer and sweeter than they, so much worthier to live. The quiet existence of the ladies in Koo Wing’s courtyard would not have suited his vibrant mother, never reminded him of what she had lost. He did not grudge those quiet Chinese women anything they had; it did not occur to him that they had anything that had been taken away from her.

Shang Yon Yee attracted him at once. He thought her delicious—and quite the prettiest thing he ever had seen. He fell in love with her before he knew it, and he knew it before long; knew it for life’s greatest certainty, the second unalterable fact of his life. He knew that for weal or woe he loved Shang Yon Yee. And one night, far out in the garden, while the nightingales sang their throbbing bridal songs, when he took her into his arms and kissed her, Shang Yon Yee knew it too. She never had been kissed before—but it neither startled nor revolted her. His lips on hers was a sacrament between them. They knew that she was his.

Edward never had had a love affair in England. He had not needed one. His mother and the life at Oxford had filled his days and his nights with wholesome contentment. Boy and young man, he was constitutionally clean. And he loved his mother too splendidly for cheap “love” to allure him.

From the moment when he discovered that Yon Yee was dear to him, he thought of nothing less than marriage. He had broken Koo Wing’s bread. It was not in Alys Allingham’s son to smirch hospitality, most emphatically not in him to outrage that of a man of another race who had so trusted him, wrenched every adamant rule of Chinese social law and family tradition aside in favor of the alien stranger within China’s not often welcoming gates. But to all that Allingham gave no thought. He loved Yon Yee, and he was clean.

That she was a widow he thought a wild joke. And Shang Yon Yee thought it so too, after the night when he drew her to him, and kissed her, out with the crimson jasmine and rose celandines while the nightingales sang to the scented yellow lilies.

They were married—twice: English fashion and Chinese. Allingham insisted on the first, Koo Wing demanded the other.

The Chinese nuptials were not formidable. A widow, if she marries—luck she rarely has, especially among the sash-wearers—is wedded with scant ceremony. A few gifts interchanged, two tiny tied-together wine-cups drained, a bow to each other, a deeper obeisance to her outraged ancestors, served to make Shang Yon Yee Edward Allingham’s wife as far as she and Koo Wing were concerned.

The Concession scoffed—then shrugged and forgave. Edward Allingham was very rich.

He cared as little for the forgiveness as he had for the scoffing—nothing at all.

They were very happy.

Koo Wing saw the odd marriage a success. Even Frances Wilson, the bitterest-tongued woman in White Shanghai, had to own that the Allingham marriage was a success.

Why?

They pleased each other in every way, and did not care whom else they pleased or displeased. They were deeply in love; yet too they were sensibly and practicably companionable.

She gave him peace, she gave him love—his for her, hers for him. After marriage she gave him ecstasy. It did not pall. She kept his home admirably.

He gave her ardor and tenderness. She knew him manly, and almost could have believed him a god.

Edward Allingham never acquired her ways—the ways of her people—but he never offended them, nor did they offend him. They interested him, some of them he came to think admirable—for Chinese. She acquired his ways—the ways of his race—surprisingly. Even Mrs. Wilson had to own that she did.

Chinese and Manchus were not allowed to marry each other, but the law sometimes was disobeyed—though very rarely in Peking itself. Mrs. Allingham’s paternal grandmother had been a Manchu. Many a Manchu lady, dressed as a European, would have passed for one. Some Manchus are white-skinned. Yon Yee Allingham was not, but in the European clothes she sometimes wore she might have passed in the West for a Jewess or an Italian of short stature—until she spoke. She had a merry mind, acute, not profound. But who wants a profound woman? Edward Allingham did not. If she spoke English with a tinkle of Chinese accent and intonation, she learned it quickly—enough of it to suffice—spoke it prettily with a clear Manchu voice—and her husband loved to hear her.

They were very happy—for several years.

Then England—British insularity, if you will—reasserted itself. Allingham never ceased to love his docile, little Chinese wife, but sometimes he wearied a trifle, not knowing at first that he did. Then that worst of all wearying was oftener, clearer; until the day came when he caught himself almost repenting his marriage and blamed himself that he did.

He played the game.

And he rejoiced that Yon Yee never suspected that for him their rapture, their entire content, had worn a little thin. He rejoiced that he was able to guard her happiness, keep it complete and unsuspicious.

Allingham never took his wife to England. This was not because he shrank from being seen with her in England. He did not—or never suspected that he did. If he had suspected that, he would have gone to Europe with his Chinese wife. Edward Allingham from first to last played the game with Yon Yee. He believed that she was much happier in China than she would be in Europe. Believing it, he would not take her out of China, not even for a brief return there for which he often longed. To go without her never occurred to him. If it had, he would have despised himself that it did.

Three years after their marriage their only child was born. Allingham was glad that it was a daughter—he did not know why. But silent, gently smiling, very lovingly Yon Yee Allingham knew. She knew that Edward unconsciously felt that in the years to come a “Chinese” daughter would be to him a less embarrassment than would a son.

And the wife knew that sometimes their marriage irked her husband. She gave no sign. She loved him passionately; more loyally, more unselfishly than passion often can. She knew that it would pain him to so much as suspect that she sometimes thought that he had a little regretted, and had winced now and then, or that she ever felt that for him their companionableness had waned in the least.

He had spared himself nothing to spare her pain; he should never learn that he had not succeeded.

They both were fine—vintage—the best of two splendid races.

Yon Yee Allingham never left her childbed, until they lifted her cold body into its coffin.

When they both knew that she was dying she smiled at him and comforted him. “I have had a long lifetime of great happiness,” she told him. “It is more joy to me to be dying here on our pillows than to have all that the gods themselves could give me apart from you.”

She caressed the wee head nestled on her bosom, and clinging to her husband’s hand made her first urgent request of him.

Allingham, sobbing, swore to grant it, swore to fulfil it always.

And now, for more than twenty years, Edward Allingham had kept his promise.

Dying Yon Yee had begged him to give equal shares in their child’s life to China and to England, to Chinese influence and to English influence. Edward Allingham had given his word. He had kept it as even the pledges of honorable men rarely are kept.

“Let her, I entreat,” the dying woman had said, “know both our lands, both our peoples, both our cultures, until she is old enough to know herself to which she should cleave, with which her happiness is.”

The words were shrewd and thoughtful. Edward Allingham thought them acutely so. He always had known that Yon Yee was not dense, had a pretty wit, thought as quickly as she was slow to speak. But it was those, her death-bed words, that told him the quality and strength of her mind.

He gave her the assurance she craved, and gathered her into his arms for the last time.

Just at the last she spoke again.

“Call her Lois. The English word is sweet; too it has a sound of our tongue—mine.”

Allingham knew that she did not hear his broken reply. But he knew that she had known how surely he would obey.

English prayers were read at her funeral, Christian commitment. But he laid her in a Chinese coffin, in a Chinese grave, in a lovely spot he chose and bought. He walled her grave-garden with cypress trees. He laid wine and rice on her grave. He paid the necromancers highly to pronounce the fêng-shui of the new burial-ground fortunate; did it because he believed that she would have wished it.

He wondered sadly if, and how much, she sometimes had longed for Chinese customs that she as his wife had more and more discarded; wondered how badly she had lacked Chinese companionships, the women of her own race.

He thanked God that she never had sensed that once or twice he had felt something alien, some disjointment in their marriage.

He reproached himself that he had. He gathered her child close and vowed that he would atone to it for the wrong he involuntarily had dealt its mother.

He missed his wife. He grieved for her.

He clung to their child.

He kept his word—his impulsively given word—for more than twenty years.

Call him a morbid sentimentalist or even a sickly one, call him weak—or call him a man; concerning such things, tastes differ widely. This is his story, not his defense.