And I'd Do It Again

by Crocker, Aimée;

I might have answered that I was able to take care of myself … not that it was true. I might also have told my captain coldly that I was going to take this girl out of the place, for I had some such vague idea. But another person stepped through the silk doorway and everything changed.

  It was a man. A Chinese man.

  He was over six foot and a half, and dressed European fashion. He looked unsmilingly at the people, at me, and then at the girl.

  “Hysterics?” he asked, coldly.

  She jumped at his voice, stared at him, but said nothing.

  “Stop being maudlin, Bonny,” he said to her, in perfect English. “You’re interrupting business again. Ah Feng won’t like it.”

  And then, to the rest:

  “She tried the ‘cure,’ and you can see what shape her nerves are in. She’s not dangerous. Merely pities herself.”

  The girl was trembling and staring at the tall Chinaman in real terror. She clung to me, and I put my arm around her.

  Then I became conscious of the man in another way.

  His eyes seemed two inches long … I have never seen anything like it. His nose was not of the type usual in China, but straight and well formed. His chin was firm and square and his forehead broad and high. He had a commanding presence which everybody in the room could feel.

  He stood there, looking at me, now. It made me feel almost as I had felt years before under the hypnotic spell of Washington Irving Bishop in Honolulu. The man had power. He was mysterious as though wearing a mask, and he had power.

  “I wouldn’t waste my time with her if I were you,” he said to me, and then turned to my guide. “I have a chair outside if you think you had better take the young lady home, Captain X. May I …?”

  By now I had regained my speech.

  “Thank you,” I said, “but we have a chair. And I’m taking this poor girl with me.”

  She gripped me tightly.

  He stared coldly at me, and then said just as coldly:

  “Ah? But she is under contract to this place. She is worth one thousand Mex.”

  We Californians die hard.

  “I’ll pay it. To whom?”

  He looked at me evenly, while Captain X. mumbled protests and something about the proprieties. Then he answered me.

  “Ah Feng is here and will naturally permit you to throw your money away, but I think it is a trifle foolish.”

  His poise and nonchalance were maddening.

  Then he spoke rapidly in Chinese, and the Chinese fat-gentleman came clambering down from his perch on the platform, bowing and smirking and trying to say something in English, which, to my ears, was as good as Chinese.

  I produced a checkbook on the Shanghai correspondents of my bank, and made out a check to cash, for 1000 dollars Mex. It made a sensation, I can tell you, but I felt like the heroine of a melodrama.

  As I held it out, the girl on the floor snatched it and crumpled it up, crying:

  “No, no, no, you damned fool, you can’t do that …”

  But the fat Chinaman was on her in a moment and with a twist of his hand had her helpless, the check falling on the floor in a ball. He grabbed it, smoothed it out, scrutinized it, and put it in his pocket, smiling and bowing and scraping. Then he went back to his platform and pipe.

  “Now, Bonny, you are free,” said the tall Chinaman. “Thank the lady.”

  She looked up at me, crying huge tears and shaking her head. I lifted her to her feet, took the arm of my rather bewildered and not-a-little-shocked captain, and pushed the blond girl through the silk door. I had had enough.

  As we went through, I heard the tall Chinaman’s voice say:

  “Rather indiscreet of you, Captain X.,” and I could feel my cavalier’s muscles tighten in anger. But he said nothing.

  Outside, he said:

  “My God, I never should have taken you there. Damned drunken idea of mine. Please forgive me.”

  I tried to tell him I did not mind and that I was glad I could help the girl, but he had no enthusiasm about her either. I could see that.

  As for the girl, she said almost nothing. She asked where I was taking her, and I told her to my hotel. We were carried along in silence, and very slowly, she making extra weight in the chair. Finally Captain X. spoke:

  “You remember the Chinaman? The one in evening dress?”

  Before I could answer, the girl spoke up.

  “If you do, forget him. I’ll kill him one day.”

  Now all this was very confusing and bewildering to me, and I wanted to know just what it was that had happened and who the Chinaman was. The girl and the captain seemed to have a mutual tacit understanding not to tell me, and they put me off with ridiculous remarks, chiefly warning me against the big Celestial.

  Of course, nothing could have excited my curiosity more. But for the moment I did not press the thing.

  At my hotel the captain left us, rather reluctantly, and I took the girl to my rooms, making some sort of explanation to the hotel clerk.

  “Now, tell me about it,” I asked her. After much begging the question she did.

  Her name was Bonny Walke. She had come to China four years before, married to a missionary. That was ironical. One day while trying to get into Manchuria with her husband and a party, they were attacked by bandits and she was held for ransom with a young missionary and hidden outside of Changsha in Hunan somewhere. They almost died of cold and starvation, but the two of them eventually escaped. Well, according to her a natural intimacy grew up between the young missionary and herself. She made a hero of him. But she insisted that there was nothing out of the way. Her story goes that her missionary husband, who managed not to be caught by the bandits, did not see the platonic relationship in quite the same light, and that he was jealous of their continued friendship when they got back to Shanghai. Anyhow, he left her, and she was in disgrace socially. She tried various jobs, and finally came to Hong Kong as the companion of a young American girl who was very rich.

  The girl met the big Chinaman I had seen, fell in love with him and married him. She died six months afterwards, and he got all her money. He, it appears, was a Manchurian noble and a lawyer of some note, but enjoyed rather a bad reputation in the British settlement. Bonny Walke insisted that he had poisoned his American wife, that he had also poisoned a former rich Chinese wife, and that he was the owner of all the vice-dens in all the foreign settlements of China. In fact she said so much about him that I began to believe it was impossible for any man, Chinese or not, to be as bad as she said he was. And so very good-looking, too.

  But that was Bonny Walke’s story and she stuck to it.

  You will be amused to know that I later learned quite differently. She was never a missionary’s wife, had come over with an entertainment troupe on a Pacific liner and had taken a job as “hostess” at one of the Shanghai gambling establishments, had gone in for opium and had turned out the wreck of a beautiful girl that I saw.

  But give her credit for imagination.

  I saw the Chinaman again. This you expected from the foregoing, but I doubt if you expected the real circumstances.

  Let me say right here and now that I never was a woman to “follow up” a man. In fact, as nearly as I can remember I have never even telephoned a man in my life. It is not any false idea of superiority nor yet any purposeful trick to make them come to me. Yet the fact remains. Analyzing it, I suppose I am too lazy. Or it is because I have always clung to the old-fashioned idea that Man is the pursuer and Woman the pursued. I like gallantry. I have always liked it. And it leaves very little place for gallantry if the woman takes the role of the pursuer, whatever the form or the excuse may be.

  But to my story.

  I had gone to Macao, the Brilliant, and it was a Sunday. This is a place about three hours from Hong Kong by steamer where the whole world comes to gamble. By that I mean, of course, the whole Western world gathered in the East.

  In the company of an English lieutenant and some friends I inspected the famous
place and ventured even to play a little myself, although I have never been lucky at games of chance. Suddenly I heard myself paged. I thought it was a mistake, but no. It was quite real.

  Responding, I learned that a gentleman had come all the way from Hong Kong in a private yacht to see me on some special matter, but the “boy” (he was fifty if a day) could tell me no more. Curiosity overcoming discretion, I followed my “boy,” and suddenly found myself face to face with the tall Celestial.

  Immaculate and intensely European in attire, he stood in the bar, bowing with extreme Oriental courtesy.

  “I fear I have taken advantage of you,” were his first words.

  Rather dazed, I assured him that he had not. Little I knew.

  “I called at your hotel,” he went on, “and learned that you had come here. I followed you. Was I rude? You Americans, one never knows.”

  It left me little to say. Again I assured him to the contrary.

  “My only excuse is perhaps difficult to explain,” he went on. “You are a … a type. You are curiously interested in people. One could not help but observe. I could find no one who was willing to present me formally. You see, I enjoy rather a bad reputation. So I took the liberty …”

  It was about like that. The words I do not remember exactly.

  Mr. Huan Kai Chan was a contrast to most of the men I had met in my life. He did not have the air I had so frequently observed of looking for a comfortably well-to-do wife. He seemed to need nothing. He was self-sufficing. His words seemed to be proven by his attitude … interested in me as a “type.”

  Well, in revenge, I was interested in him as a “type.”

  Can you imagine anything so beautiful? Tall beyond most tall men, copper-colored, full lips, deep eyes of that extraordinary length, full, rounded chin, erect, king-like, the image of what you have always conceived to be meant by a Chinese Prince. Not noticeably Oriental, exquisitely dressed, poised …

  But why go on? He was fascinating.

  I scarcely remember how he did it, but conversation grew and I suddenly found myself walking aboard his yacht, quite at ease, quite his guest, quite unafraid of his bad reputation which he admitted so readily, so gracefully, so apologetically.

  And I had forgotten about the nice, sturdy English lieutenant.

  There is no good in trying to explain what happened.

  I fell under the spell of Huan Kai Chan, under the spell of his Manchurian mystery, his power, his princeliness. That was all.

  And I did not return from his yacht for three weeks.

  It was like stepping into a new world. Modern, the yacht, and yet there was something about the teakwood finishing, the rich silks, the constantly burning incense, that dated ten thousand years before the Scottish builders of that steam powerplant and hull were born.

  And there was something about the crew.

  Discipline was the word. It was not like the military discipline of American or European conception. It was fear and respect. There was no form you could see. There was no ritual. But there was a feeling that every gesture, every clap of the hands would be obeyed … to the letter.

  And so they were.

  There was something about Huan Kai, as I always called him, that reminded one of the Count of Monte Cristo. Magnificence. Abundance. The grand manner.

  And yet, never a smile, never the slightest betrayal of emotion. He was a man absolutely apart from others. What torrents of thought went on behind that beautiful Oriental mask, no one ever knew. Least of all I.

  He had a habit of sitting all morning, nearly rigid, on a mat, robed in glorious silks of brilliant color, looking either straight ahead of him or straight at me. Not a word was spoken. Not a line of his face moved.

  He did not smile, but he could tell stories, and he could tell me about his amazing country. I think I never have known anybody who could be so fascinating in description of a country as Huan Kai was. He loved China, admired even its poor struggle to maintain its place in a world which had surpassed it in mechanical devices as a substitute for civilization. But most of all he loved her traditions and her age-old thought and philosophy which we cheaply call religions.

  Whatever Huan Kai may have been to the outside world, that, for reasons which were probably well founded, gave him the title of “Mr. Gold,” he was a man of unfathomable culture and erudition. I even grew to be afraid of him, like everybody else, but I never ceased to admire his mind and his learning.

  “Remarkable man, but a swine,” was the comment of a certain British officer. It was entirely true.

  But I am getting ahead of my story.

  I want to paint for you some of the insight Huan Kai gave me to Chinese life. I never could have learned it otherwise, for I am not one of those who learn languages easily and Chinese remained always a closed book to me.

  Perhaps the thing which Americans and Europeans have the greatest difficulty in understanding about Orientals is their attitude towards women. At least it is true of the missionaries we send there. I may be wrong, but I think that more effort has been devoted by divers branches of the Christian Church to uproot concubinage in China than any of the so-called evils which are supposed to prevail there.

  Far be it from me to approve or disapprove the system. But let me explain it to you as Huan Kai explained it to me.

  In the Chinese household, the mother-in-law is supreme. The wife awaits only the day she may become one and so come, in her turn, into power. I mean, naturally, the mother of the husband. A man has seven reasons for divorcing his wife, the first and most important being disobedience to his mother. A Chinese woman has no legal grounds for divorce, since she cannot obtain one without her husband’s permission.

  The result of this arrangement is curious. It works two ways. First, it tends to cultivate a philosophical acceptance of life on the part of married women. Homes, in general, are happier than in our Western world. Secondly, every family desires male children rather than female children. Not only that they may be heirs, but so that the wife may hold her position of authority.

  In cases where the children are continually girls, there is great unhappiness. The wife, in self-defense, “eats vinegar,” as the saying is, which means that she either procures a mistress for her husband or welcomes (ostensibly) a mistress of his own choosing.

  If the mistress has children, male or female, it is the legitimate wife who is their “mother,” and the mistress is called “nurse.” This is very important to the home and to family life, for barrenness is another reason for divorce in China, and the mistress may often serve to keep the family united.

  There at least is a sort of insight into the soul of China that Huan Kai gave me. I am grateful for it, whatever it be worth.

  Another thing was his deep comprehension of the religious meaning of his country. Himself, he was a Buddhist, but his understanding of the other three … if they may thus be called … doctrines or systems … was complete.

  He knew Christianity, not as a religion, but as a philosophical system. He had read the Bible, had traveled in Europe and in America and had even studied in some of the world’s most famous universities. And his favorite theme was that no religion was ever created by the West, and that all the doctrines of the world came from Oriental sources. Christianity is but a revised form of Judaism, he pointed out, and its forms and rites are adaptations of Oriental cults.

  Yes, I admired Huan Kai. All these things and more he talked of to me, in that slow, almost inattentive manner of his. He seemed to take a pride in teaching me and explaining to me the meaning of his country and his countrymen. And I was grateful, in a girlish way, although I was not and never have been the scholarly sort of woman.

  But there was a miracle at work in me … the miracle that I had never understood on that early day when I had a vision of the Hindoo woman on my childhood bed. The East and its subtle spirit were filling me and working in me and reaching out to me and calling me. I was in tune with those things which Westerners can seldom comprehen
d altogether and generally not at all. I am sure that Huan Kai knew it and that it was part of his entire scheme about me.

  But now the scene changes. Hong Kong and its British Victoria, its Cantonese wifeless population, its Peak and its Turkish bath rainstorms … and the well-meaning, nice, but somehow “heavy” English captain whose attentions were beginning to be boring … all of this changed and slipped behind, and I dropped splash into the heart of China, into the soul of China, and my own soul was filled with it.

  We went to Shanghai.

  The mere fact of going to another Chinese city may not seem like much of importance if you have never been to Shanghai, but let me insist upon it. Shanghai is like no other city in the world. I will not use the old word “astounding,” but it is hard to avoid it, for that ancient city (named Shanghai “on the sea,” by a forgotten emperor) is, or was in that day, a place to astound anyone.

  Huan Kai and I embarked in his yacht and sailed into the port of the Wangpoo River, winding our way amongst the junks and sampans and through the smells and noises into Shanghai. As in Yokohama, the waterfront is called the Bund, and a magnificent thoroughfare it is. The foreign settlement was not very impressive to me, for I was in search of Chinese reality. But when I was installed in the Oriental Hotel, the only good institution of its kind not distinctly “foreign,” I perceived that even here I was in the midst of the Orient.

  My room is worth a description.

  The only partitions were thin green wooden panels which reached just to the top of the door. At night a brilliant light from the outer hallway shone in and made sleeping impossible … until you got used to it. Not only that, but on the roof was a Chinese orchestra, composed of cats, whistles, cicadas, tin pans, crickets, sandpaper and combs with tissuepaper over them … or so I conceived it. They played and wailed and screeched until midnight or later, and, as if they were an accompaniment, passersby on the famous Nanking Road talked politics or some other subject which required a vigor that was truly Celestial.

  In the hallways also there was talk … real, argumentative talk with that peculiar rise and fall and inflection of voices which the Chinese language demands … and fortissimo!