THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 GIFT OF 
 
 Horace C, Brown 
 
Digitized by the Internet Arciiive 
 
 in 2008 with funding from 
 
 IVIicrosoft Corporation 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/feastoflanternsOOmilnrich 
 
THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 
 
THE 
 FEAST OF LANTERNS 
 
 By LOUISE JORDAN MILN 
 
 Author of 
 'Mr, Wur "The Purple Mask/' etc. 
 
 A. L. BURT COMPANY 
 
 Publishers New York 
 
 Published by arrangement with Frederick A. Stokes Company 
 
Copyright, Jp20, by 
 Frederick A. Stokes Company 
 
 All rights reserved 
 
 Eighth Printing 
 
 Printed in the United States of America 
 
 GIFT 
 

 mo 
 
 Sebttatton 
 
 TO DAGMAR, MY DAUGHTER 
 
 *^She who was kindest when fortune was blindest, 
 Bearing through winter the blossoms of spring,^* 
 
 London, SefUvibcr j, ig20 
 
 887 
 
THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 
 
THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 A LL Chinese home-life starts with one great un- 
 *■ ^ derlying advantage — physical beauty. 
 
 And it has many others. 
 
 Every Chinese is born into surroundings of pre- 
 eminent beauty — beauty of form, beauty of color, 
 beauty of exquisite juxtapositions — natural beauty and 
 beauty of all things that are made; into beauty, and 
 into an almost untainted atmosphere of good-taste and 
 intrinsic kindliness. 
 
 Consciously or unconsciously every Chinese is a sin- 
 cere lover of nature and of everything lovely. No 
 other people has so stern and uncompromising a sense 
 of justice, so ready a sense of humor, more balance, 
 more unflinching loyalty, or less exaggerated estimate 
 of the importance of self. It is a proud people without 
 vanity — a self-reliant, strong people, lacking brutality; 
 suave without affectation, dignified without self-as- 
 sertion — free from ridiculousness, industrious, con- 
 tented ; hard-working dreamers who, too, are shrewdly 
 practical, honest above all other races, home-keeping, 
 home-loving; first of all peoples in its love of children, 
 and in its chivalrous treatment and just estimate of 
 womanhood. 
 
 The clan of Ch'eng had all these characteristics — in- 
 
2 THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 
 
 deed few Chinese lack them — but for centuries it had 
 suffered from one outstanding disadvantage : prolific in 
 its marriages, those nuptials rarely had resulted in the 
 birth of a girl. The gods had been besought and 
 bribed, offerings made lavishly, vows proffered, temples 
 built, but all to scant avail, for still the wives of the 
 family brought forth men children only. 
 
 Since a girl must be dowered, the Chinese poor pray 
 for a preponderance of sons, but for a great and rich 
 noble to be daughterless is to be afflicted and pitied. 
 
 A lady of the Ch'engs had invented China's sweetest 
 wind instrument, and composed three of the great 
 classic love-songs, and at a time of sharp peril had won 
 back to their allegiance the revolting aborigines by her 
 diplomacy, her beauty and her playing of the flute. 
 Another had invented an imperial glaze, one had im- 
 proved the telescope, and discovered a constellation, an- 
 other had excelled all the other court ladies at em- 
 broidering, another — a poetess of the T*ang dynasty — 
 had enriched Chinese literature, one — when a decadence 
 of classical learning threatened — opened a school, and, 
 lecturing from behind a crimson curtain, to some hun- 
 dred men and youths, averted the catastrophe, and one 
 had eaten the peaches of immortality that grew in the 
 garden of Hsi Wang Mu, the lady of the West, and 
 that ripen but once in three thousand years, and is 
 now a god with the gods. But these were Ch'engs but 
 by marriage, and had been all but barren of daughters ; 
 and the few girls bom to the family had been ordinary, 
 in appearance and in gifts; none of the few had 
 achieved distinction, done China or her own clan a 
 great service or made an imperial marriage. 
 
 But nearly a thousand years and more ago when 
 Marco Polo, the Venetian, was friend and gossip to 
 
THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 3 
 
 the great Kublai Khan, the first Mongol Emperor, a 
 foremost soothsayer, in trance, had foretold that when 
 in far years to come China should sink low, and 
 threaten to pass out into international nothing, a girl 
 should be born to a prince of Ch'eng, a girl who would 
 journey far from home, suffer and learn from foreign 
 influence, and return to her homeland to save and 
 restore it. And whatever the Lis, the Sungs and the 
 Paos thought of the old prophecy, the Ch'engs held to 
 it stoutly, and selected their wives with even more than 
 the much care usual in such great families ; that those 
 brides might be worthy mothers of the girl savior of 
 China. 
 
 Ch'eng Shao Yiin, the head of the house now, had 
 been so remarkable in person, so remarkable in ability, 
 that she had added not meanly to the prestige of her 
 husband's family. And when in dying he decreed that 
 she should rule in his stead, no one resented it, and 
 their eldest son least of all. 
 
 To be a Chinese widow is not always the best of 
 luck. But a great Chinese lady, who has borne many 
 sons and lived greatly, may wear her weeds with a 
 difference. And, if the history of Chinese widowhood 
 were written adequately, a Western world-wide mis- 
 apprehension would have cause to hang its head low. 
 
 Ch'eng Yiin had lived greatly, and she had borne 
 her lord seven sons. She had known great joys and 
 two grinding sorrows : the death of her husband, and, 
 still sharper, that she had borne him no daughter. 
 
 Shaos had for centuries begotten more girls than 
 boys, and that was not the least of the several good 
 reasons why the bride of the young heir of the Ch'eng 
 clan had been selected from the house of Shao. But 
 the ill-luck of the Ch'engs still dogged them, and no 
 
4 THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 
 
 "lose-money-goods" came to play with and tyrannize 
 over the seven kisty boys that Yiin bore her lord. 
 
 She felt, and, to do him justice, so did Ch'eng O, her 
 lord, that the fault should not be laid at her door, for 
 Ch'eng Yiin was one of six sisters, and the niece of 
 almost a score of aunts. 
 
 While their youngest boy was still at her breast O, 
 the husband, died, and the wife, still young in years, 
 became formally what in fact she had been for some 
 years: regnant. Neither of these two things was in 
 the least odd — neither her potency in wifehood, nor 
 her absolutism in widowhood — for both are of daily 
 occurrence in China, especially among the rich and 
 powerful caste. 
 
 Ch'eng Shao Yiin was rigorous in all the obsequious 
 observance of mourning. For O she wore the coarse 
 colorless hempen dress of bereavement, lived in se- 
 clusion, grieved turbulently, omitting no one of the 
 hundred hard rites of mourners, except only the fast- 
 ing — since she still suckled a babe. But even in the first 
 wild torment of her loss she set herself determinedly 
 to end the old curse that for centuries had smirched 
 the luster of their clan. She married her sons early 
 and carefully, and as each daughter-in-law came into 
 her control she received the girl and new chattel with 
 warmth, and continued to treat her with more indul- 
 gence than a daughter-in-law can claim as a right. For 
 Ch'eng Yiin knew that while sorrowful women and 
 women of most self-control are more apt to conceive 
 sons, spoiled and self-indulgent wives are the more apt 
 to bear daughters. 
 
 Six wives one after the other came into the house, 
 and were heaped with kindness. None proved child^ 
 less. Babies came thick and fast — fat, beautiful babies^ 
 
THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 5 
 
 bom one and all with the magic triple bracelet of good 
 luck on its wrinkled yellow wrist — ^and one had it 
 twice. Soon the courtyard over-ran with babies and 
 the soft patter of tiny plump feet and a rain of tender 
 young laughing. But the grandmother, who adored 
 them, sat apart and watched them askance — for when 
 her eldest grandchild was sixteen, and the lot numbered 
 thirty-seven, there was not a girl child among them. 
 
 The concubines that Ch'eng Yiin bought for her sons 
 would have peopled a village, and soon did people a 
 hillside; and their purchase and keep would have 
 strained the purse of any family but moderately rich 
 even in China. Three of the secondary wives did have 
 daughters, but one girl died at birth, and the others 
 lived but a year. 
 
 To Chinese minds the pillorying of a little child is 
 not justice, and the child of a concubine is of legitimate 
 birth. Indeed, the concubine is of honorable, if sec- 
 ondary status. Ch'eng Yiin would have preferred a 
 granddaughter born of a first wife — because the young 
 wives of her choosing were all of distinguished lineage 
 which might fairly be expected to bequeath desirable 
 traits even on offspring engendered from loins of 
 Ch'eng. But failing such a granddaughter the woman 
 would have knelt by the cradle of the concubine's 
 daughter, and almost would have worshiped it — and 
 had. But no girl child came to stay. 
 
 Year after year, almost month after month, the ser- 
 vants went forth far and wide, clad in their best liver- 
 ies, carrying as gifts to kindred and friends, baskets 
 and trays of the red eggs with which the Chinese an- 
 nounce the birth of a son. And Ch'eng Yiin grimly 
 watched them go. And when her favorite daughter-in- 
 law disappointed her for the third time Ch'eng Yun 
 
6 THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 
 
 shook her fist in the face of a god, and slacked it of in- 
 cense. "What's the sense of paying a god who won't or 
 can't do his part?" she said bitterly. She was a utilita^* 
 rian and had little use and as little respect for a hier- 
 archy that was purely ornamental. She believed in 
 give-and-take and in all fair reciprocity. To her mind 
 worship was a payment. She worshiped Confucius and 
 Mencius — whose names she must not speak — because 
 they had bettered China, and left guideposts to Chinese 
 morality and sanity for all time. She worshiped her 
 ancestors because they had given her life and China and 
 a gorgeous heritage of good things; a love of books, 
 and education and mind to read them, music, birds, 
 flowers, wealth, the man of men for husband and mate 
 —-and gift and accomplishment to appreciate and enjoy 
 — ^pride of race, love of country, a lien on the here- 
 after. 
 
 To-day she was angry with the gods, and she in- 
 tended the special god who had so specially failed hei 
 to know it. She had lost her temper with heaven — 
 and her disappointment was petulant and spiteful, and 
 all her people avoided her, as far as they could, ser- 
 vants, retainers, household, her children and their chil- 
 dren — all but Ch'eng Chu-po, her youngest son and 
 idol, all but he and Ti-to-ti. 
 
 The others were afraid of her in her bitterness, but 
 not the two. Chii-po hung about her, and pressed her 
 hands, and brought her a flower of her favorite olean- 
 der from the garden. And Ti-to-ti crawled from his 
 basket — where he had been licking a hurt paw— curled 
 up on her robe's hem, and laid his tiny silk head on her 
 tiny satin shoe. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 TT was a vast domain over which this lady of Ch'eng 
 -*• ruled, and all in it — except her sons' wives — 
 worked hard ; and Ch'eng Yiin worked hardest of all. 
 To all intents it was a kingdom, and she ruled it a 
 despot and supreme. In the China of that golden day 
 there was little law and almost nothing of legal code, 
 except the simple straight laws of principle and com- 
 mon sense. China was the happy land of a sane and 
 contented people. 
 
 Every field was fertile, flowers crowded and laughed 
 from every nook and crack, the passion flowers climbed 
 up the great trunks of the orange trees, and the purple 
 globes of the vines* fruitage hung pendant between the 
 yellow orange balls. Bees sucked the honey of the 
 clover's breath. Peacocks fattened on the meadows of 
 scented grass. The ivory-carvers sang as they worked. 
 The bannermen laughed and jested as they practiced 
 hour after hour to make their wonderful archery more 
 skillful. Peasants left their rice to play at chess. The 
 four jewels of the scholar — paper, brushes, inkslab, ink 
 — had pride of place in every gentle's house. The gods 
 were docile, and the people prospered. Every month 
 had its festival, every day its pleasant duty and its 
 fructive toil. The looms sang their silken song, and 
 the women sang at their spinning wheels. The chil- 
 dren played leap-frog and blind man's buff among the 
 bright hibiscus flowers, filched nectarines from their 
 dripping panniers as the fruit-laden coolies passed to 
 the kitchen doors. 
 
8 THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 
 
 "Ask us a riddle ! Ask us a riddle !" the little thieves 
 clamored, as Ch'eng Shao came suddenly among them, 
 and the great lady laughed and said to them slowly, 
 
 "'Little boy red-jacket, whither away?' 
 *To the house with the ivory portals I stray/ 
 'Say, will you come back, little red-coat, again?' 
 *My bones will come back, but my flesh will remain/ " 
 
 She said it for them thrice, and when one black-eyed 
 urchin cried, "I know, honorable mistress, I know ! A 
 cherry! A cherry!" and all the other youngsters 
 caught it up, and pranced about her madly, screaming, 
 "A cherry, lady, 'tis a cherry!" she clapped her hands, 
 and bade the servant bring the little monkey-things 
 honey-cakes and cherries, and went her way to count 
 the new baby pigs that had been littered in the night, 
 and to test the quiet and the temperature in the silk- 
 worm sheds. 
 
 And every home was happy. It was love and laugh- 
 ter, flowers and hard work all the way in China then — 
 every day a day of toil, and every night a night of 
 zither and of song. 
 
 Her coal mines were wide and deep and very rich. 
 But they were worked so far from her house and her 
 garden — and from the precious silkworms* sheds— 
 that sight nor sound nor smut of them ever reached 
 the dwelling-place, the courtyards, or the vineyards 
 or the groves. 
 
 In the patriarchy of Ch'eng Yiin the incessant labor- 
 ing was a compulsion of her will, and a necessity of a 
 place at once so teeming and so intricately crossed and 
 counter-crossed with the industries that both fed and 
 enriched it. And of all those industries Ch'eng Yiin 
 knew and supervised each part. She knew her mul- 
 berry trees almost to a leaf, and the output and in- 
 
THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 9 
 
 crease of her fields almost to a millet seed. She could 
 weave better than the master-weaver of her hundred 
 looms, she could test the grades of tea with the light 
 touch of a finger's tip, or guess the tea plantation's 
 coming yield with but a glance. She knew always what 
 her stewards should have paid — that and no more — 
 for all the thousand things her larders stored, the 
 grapes from Shansi and Shangtung, the pink and snow 
 hams from Foochow, the lichees from Canton. She 
 spent a fortune every day, but nothing was wasted or 
 misused in all that vast, scattered place; not one little 
 grain of rice, not one tiniest blue kingfisher's feather, 
 not one melon seed. Everything was used to the best, 
 and every industry was made to pay, and to pay to its 
 utmost. The very by-products of the makings and 
 tradings of the place, under her skillful husbandry, 
 yielded harvest of gold. In the pretty mandarin fash- 
 ion she spoke of all the common people who were her 
 thrills, as "the babies," and if she ruled them hard, and 
 decided for them more than many mothers do for their 
 young, she ruled them well, and she was mother-good 
 to them. And they loved her something as children 
 do, and trusted her as dogs trust the human masters of 
 their love. And well they might. Her temper was a 
 wasp, her tongue a lash, but she was greatly bred, and 
 her soul was fine. She gave them food and play and 
 happiness, and she drove them to every jot of work 
 that she deemed good for them — and her. 
 
 She drove herself hardest of all, but she drove all 
 her underlings with no lenient hand. Her daughters- 
 in-law had no set tasks, and no nominal compelling, 
 but for the most part they were ceaselessly busied too 
 with their constant and recurrent mother-craft. 
 
 And, if the concubines cost much to buy and more 
 
lo THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 
 
 to keep, their mistress saw to it that they were useful 
 too. Sun-fo-So was skilled in simples, U-chiao deft 
 with her needle. Several were fair musicians, and kept 
 the courtyard amused and pleased. Ping- Yang (a 
 wife) supervised — under Ch'eng Yiin — the dairy. 
 Under Ch*eng Yiin Ayuli nursed the sick, and P'an- 
 p'an taught the babies — taught them to kot'ow, to eat 
 their rice fitly, and later to use the tally-board, and 
 write without spilling the smallest drop from their 
 ink-heavy writing brushes — for P'an-p'an was clever, 
 and had been well and delicately taught. Still another 
 — skilled as so many Chinese women are, in mathemat- 
 ics, kept the household accounts, another those of the 
 estate — both strictly supervised by Yiin herself. For 
 no multiplicity of affairs seemed to overtax her inde- 
 fatigability. Even in China, she was a wonderful 
 woman. Wearing no paint — since a widow — but gor- 
 geously clad always and heavily jeweled, she ran like 
 a girl on her wee feet, almost the smallest in China, 
 romped when in the mood with her little grandsons, 
 and outplayed them at mora, at whipping-top and at 
 "beggar-my-neighbor,*' and took the first hand, and 
 detailed, unflagging direction, at every industry on the 
 great teeming estate. 
 
 And because she was so busy her rancor passed — or 
 at least the ugly outer show of it — but the grief stayed. 
 Her stubborn heart panted for a granddaughter. And 
 no other wish granted or dream fulfilled would slake 
 it. 
 
 Two things, and two only, were paramount in the 
 soul of Ch'eng Yiin : to nurse a granddaughter in her 
 arms, and to conserve and serve China. China was her 
 god, patriotism her religion. 
 
 This, too, was a woman of moods — but in them all 
 
THE FEAST OF LANTERNS ii 
 
 she watched, weighed and ruled. Some days she ruled 
 laughing and to the sound of the lute, and her servants 
 ran laughing to her, and laughing away to obey, and 
 her boys hung at her sleeve laughing, and called her 
 by her pet names, and the wives and concubines sang 
 as they served. Some days she ruled frowning, wield- 
 ing a stick, and to the crash of cymbals, the bellow of 
 drums, and the servitors rushed gravely to do her will, 
 and her sons and her grandsons kot'owed and were 
 silent, and the wives and concubines kept out of her 
 way. But always she ruled, and always the others 
 obeyed. And every year she grew richer. 
 
 The summer the nettle-rash nearly maddened her, 
 prickling every inch of her delicate skin with torture, 
 prickling her temper to ferocity, she journeyed daily 
 about the estate, forcing them to carry her in her litter. 
 A bee stung her; she swore at the bee, and beat at a 
 slave, but she tasted the honey, and directed its storing. 
 At the lime kilns she suffered an agony, but she suf- 
 fered it grimly, and ordered and reordered the work- 
 men. And at the sheds of the silkworms she left her 
 litter, and moved about silent and placid among the 
 half -naked girls, nodding to them smiling approval ; for 
 nothing must break the tranquillity of the cool, quiet 
 houses where the brooding worms spin and feed and 
 hatch, watched bytheir faithful, placid girl attendants. 
 
 But no matter what she was doing, or how seemingly 
 absorbed in the moment's occupation or business, al- 
 ways her heart ached for the girl babe, that often and 
 often was coming perhaps, but that never came, except 
 as a boy. 
 
 But she loved the boys — all of them — the boys that 
 she bore, and the boys that their women bore them. 
 And they found her their merriest playmate, and, as 
 
12 THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 
 
 they grew towards manhood, their firmest friend. She 
 was womanly. 
 
 The Httk boys that were handsomest and brightest, 
 seeming to promise most to their own future and to 
 their country, often ran about the place dressed as girls 
 while they were young — to deceive the evil spirits who 
 had a special flair for boys, but rarely trouble to carry, 
 off or injure a mere girl. 
 
 And they worshiped her, her sons and her grand- 
 sons, and so did her servants ; and even the wives and 
 the concubines liked her. But it was men things that 
 felt her thraldom soonest, surest, deepest and longest. 
 For she had been born a Shao, and the women of that 
 house always have been enslavers of men. To love 
 and serve them men had but to see them. Emperors 
 had craved them, and been denied, and one a great 
 Manchu noble had wed in spite of the law, and held 
 and cherished her against all odds, risking his life and 
 his place. He had been condoned at the end — it was 
 said because his Emperor, catching a glimpse of the 
 girl, had envied and forgiven. 
 
 But no other Shao woman had ever given herself or 
 been given to a Manchu, nor had ever one of the 
 Ch'engs. They were Chinese — and they kept it unde- 
 filed through the centuries — but for the one willful 
 woman of long, long ago. They dwelt with the Man- 
 chus who had conquered them and been conquered by 
 them — dwelt with them in harmony, in courtesy, even 
 in liking ; but never they let down the one barrier. Only 
 the one woman — her name erased from their archives, 
 and taboo — ever had wed but with one purely Chinese. 
 And never a maiden of the Shaos or of the Ch'engs 
 had entered the Imperial harem. Their beauty and 
 their charm had invited it. But the old Manchu law 
 
THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 13 
 
 forbidding even the Emperor himself to seize a Chinese 
 maiden for wife or for concubine had stood them in 
 good stead. And to be born a Shao girl — or a Ch'eng 
 — was to become the wife of a Chinese man, and to 
 bear him children of race-blood unmixed. 
 
 It was a merciful law and a diplomatic one, that old 
 decree of the Emperor — but it was a shrewd one too. 
 Many a rebellion might have been hatched in the ver- 
 milion palace itself, and have overnm and destroyed 
 the kingdom, through the still machinations of some 
 slip of a Chinese girl, attached to her own people, and 
 enthroned in the favor of the foremost Manchu — tap- 
 ping state secrets, suborning state ministers, bribing the 
 eunuchs. 
 
 But both as wife and as widow Ch'eng Shao Yiin 
 had been in Pekin. She had lived at the Court once 
 or twice, and had life-long friends there — one in the 
 throne-room itself. 
 
 For this was a very great lady, the tiny glittering 
 figure with the oval unpainted face, who bent over the 
 side of the light lacquered boat, fishing for trout, and 
 clapping her hands, and laughing and babbling, when- 
 ever she caught one. 
 
 "Look ! Chii-po, look !" she cried, holding out on her 
 slim bamboo pole her slippery prize ; and then catching 
 it in both hands, and clasping it, all wet and wriggling, 
 to her bosom, 'The darling! What a mouthful he'll 
 make!" 
 
 "Nay, motherling," the boy cried teasingly, "it*s not 
 much of a fish." 
 
 "You lie!" 
 
 "Not I," he retorted significantly. "It's not so long, 
 or so heavy, or half so silvered as this one of mine. 
 Let's measure!" 
 
14 THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 
 
 He made to take her last catch, to compare it with 
 the one that he boasted. She resisted, screaming shril- 
 ly. They struggled. And her fish wriggled itself 
 loose, or slipped from the grasp of her one hand — she 
 was fighting Chii-po with the other — and fell with a 
 splash back into the lake. The spray from its fall 
 struck Ch'eng Yiin in the eyes. She swayed and 
 slipped, and must have fallen had not Chii-po caught 
 her in his arms. And they both rocked with laughter, 
 till she wiped her eyes on his sleeve, swayed back and 
 forth, laughing and scolding each other, and rocking 
 the boat till the boatmen had all their work to keep it 
 afloat. 
 
 The women and children in all the attendant boats, 
 a pretty flower-hung, silk-cushioned, carved fleet of 
 twenty, caught up the laughter, and echoed it shrilly. 
 The slave girls caught up their tiny instruments, and 
 laughing, sang to them. A slave boy clashed his tom- 
 tom, another beat his bells. 
 
 The blue kingfishers on the almond trees that fringed 
 the lake snatched up the music and the fun and 
 drenched the air with the sweetness of their song. A 
 great peacock, perched on the coping of the old stone 
 bridge, spread his indignant tail, and screamed a croak- 
 ing rebuke. And the little speckled trout, dived deep, 
 swam silently away. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 CH^ENG CHU-PO knelt at Ch'cng Yiin's feet. 
 "Motherling/* he pleaded, fondling her girdle, 
 "not yet. It is too soon." 
 
 Yiin frowned, and he continued more ceremoniously. 
 
 "O, honorable lady, jadelike and august, keep your 
 degraded slave with thy jasmine self.'' 
 
 "Fool," snapped his mother, "who speaks of sending 
 thee away? Or thinks of it? I do not propose to sell 
 or give thee to adoption. Dost think a Qi'eng, and a 
 Ch'eng of Shao blood," she added proudly, "will go to 
 his wife, or live in the house of her father? Your 
 bride comes to us — ^though she were the daughter of an 
 emperor, a descendant of the Two Holy Sage Ones, 
 or a daughter of the gods." 
 
 "Yes — lady — and mother, mistress and queen, thy 
 miserable slave knows that. But a new wife takes a 
 son from his mother, comes somewhat between their 
 hearts and the love they have held, especially if she be 
 fair and skilled in soft ways." 
 
 Ch'eng Yiin drew in a breath sharply. "How do 
 you know that ?" she said. 
 
 "I have seen my brothers wed. And you have 
 chosen fair maidens for their brides." 
 
 The woman sighed. "Yes. I know. The mother 
 loses h6r son when he weds happily — at least for a 
 time. I am loath to part with thee even so much. 
 And thou knowest it well. But our house has its 
 claims. We should have obeyed them ere now." She 
 
 15 
 
i6 THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 
 
 laid her hand on his head, and tears came in her sharp 
 eyes. "Listen, Chii-po. Of all I have borne, in thy 
 own generation, and in that of my grandsons, thou art 
 dearest to me. Thou wert our babe when thy most 
 honorable father became a guest on high. Thou hast 
 his look, and his way, as none other of them all has. 
 Partly because I have so loved thee, boy, I have kept 
 thee dangling here at my girdle, selfish, weak, reluct- 
 ant to share thee with a wife, reluctant to share thee, 
 my babe, even with a babe of thine own. Thou lovest 
 me, boy?'' 
 
 "Mother!" he cried, the wet in his eyes welling quick 
 in answer to hers, "as the flowers love the sun, as the 
 night loves the moon. Thou art my all. Drive me 
 not away." 
 
 "Nay, never that," she said fiercely. "But only to 
 loosen a little the grip of thy hand on my girdle, the 
 grip of my hand on thine every hour. Another should 
 serve thee at rice, another should sing thee to slumber, 
 when the day beats hot on the red of the roses, and the 
 birds seek the leafage that is thickest and coolest. List- 
 en. I have left thee unwedded in selfishness — but, 
 too, in a stem, self-restraint. Thou knowest how I 
 have longed for a daughter. But thou knowest not 
 why. In old age, and in illness a woman craves the 
 companionship of a girl she has nursed on her breast, 
 a woman younger and agile, of her own blood. There 
 are days when the needle grows heavy, and the bright 
 silks grow dull to the woman who bends to her em- 
 broidery frame with no daughters about her. A 
 woman's sons' wives belong to her. The daughters she 
 has borne are she — she herself — skin of her skin, 
 touch of her hand, soul of her soul." 
 
THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 17 
 
 Chii^po nodded. He understood. It was rarely 
 that he did not understand Ch'eng Yiin. 
 
 *'But no," she said, smiling gravely, "it was not for 
 that, or but in a small way for that, that I have so be- 
 sought the gods,* have so heaped tribute on the altar 
 of Kwang Yin. Still less was it to break an old curse 
 — which reads well in a tale, and does for the babies 
 to believe — but is but smoke in the estimate of the wise. 
 Such old tales it is well to tell over and over. It is ill 
 to let them die. But they are ill to believe. Fable and 
 poetry trim life, and deck the fame of a house. But 
 even a fool would not attempt to hew rock with them, 
 or solve mathematical profound problems. No man 
 comes to manhood's best development, no man knows 
 the utmost of courage, until a daughter nestles on his 
 knee. And for that I have prayed to Kwang Yin. 
 But another reason has been beyond all sharpest and 
 greatest. It is through its women — the women, not of 
 its marriage, but the women of its blood — that a family 
 gains power, augments and keeps it. The daughter 
 we give a great noble in marriage, makes him as a 
 child in her hands and, because her heart clings to the 
 home and the blood of her birth, he becomes our friend 
 and our ally. The sons she bears, carry his name, 
 worship his ancestors. They eat his rice when their 
 teeth have hardened their gums. But they suck our 
 milk. They are his, but too they are ours, even though 
 they never look into our eyes, or sit in our ko-tang. 
 Our daughters leave us — and gain us ten score of allies. 
 When we lift a girl into her flowery-chair, and send 
 her out on the long way that ends at her bridegroom's 
 door, we send an ambassador out across China — an 
 ambassador who makes few mistakes — whose diplo- 
 macy rarely blunders or fails — and never betrays it- 
 
i8 THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 
 
 self. For one woman can persuade more than can ten 
 men. The gossips and the babies praise the Manchu, 
 proclaim him generous, self-denying because he de- 
 creed, and has kept his plighting, that all Chinese girls 
 shall be inviolable against his desire." 
 
 "Yet," ventured the boy, *Ve have conquered the 
 Manchu far more truly than he conquered us." 
 
 Ch'eng* Yiin nodded. "Of course, my own frog- 
 ling — every race that has conquered our armies — and 
 these races have been many from long before the day 
 when Genghis Khan led his Tartar hordes here from 
 the Steppes of Russia — every such conquering race 
 has in turn been quietly influenced by us into a deeper 
 subjection than it had inflicted on us. That is one of 
 life's greatest laws. Perhaps its richest compensation. 
 And too — it is the inalienable heritage of China, the 
 birthright of the Chinese character, to subdue and con- 
 vert all that brashly break into her influence. But for 
 all that same the dominance throned within the pink 
 palace walls at Pekin sleeps safer, sits firmer, because 
 neither wife nor concubine of Chinese blood sways on 
 her golden lilies across his carpets, to bestir and fer- 
 ment race feud and Mongol intrigue. The witcheries 
 of Chinese women might have hurled him from his 
 throne even whilst he bent to caress her. But the slow 
 alchemy of Chinese influence has but soHdified the 
 throne and strengthened his tenure — Chinese thought, 
 Chinese art, Chinese custom — the great fructive cus- 
 toms of a wonderful race — have but refined, enriched 
 and more empowered the conquered and pupil." 
 
 She paused and studied her shoe proudly as it peeped 
 from under her wide trouser, a red jeweled shoe^ 
 no larger than a gigantic almond nut. and much the 
 same shape. 
 
THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 19 
 
 Then she went on — there is no end to the words of 
 a Chinese woman, and never fatigue. "The Chinese 
 can rule all their world — by its character alone, and can 
 keep the blood in its veins unashamed, unimpured. 
 Never shall the bird of paradise nuptial with dogs. 
 But enough of the Manchu and of things from our 
 point. Because it has been daughterless, the Ch'eng 
 race has stood alone, unsupported by the stay-ropes of 
 its women's alliances, unprotected by the outer guards 
 of its women's devotion and influence. A man can 
 adopt a son to celebrate his obsequies, to worship his 
 wraith, but no adoption can gain him a daughter's sub- 
 tle service. It was for the sake of your father's race, 
 the augmenting of his prestige, that I have besought 
 Kwang Yin to put girls in our cradles. It was for 
 that that I hastened the marriages of thy brothers, 
 w^edding them to wives from daughter-full families, 
 and have filled the courtyards with concubines till the 
 whole place has tinkled with the sound of their stick- 
 pins." 
 
 "Alas !" laughed Chii-po. 
 
 "Alas ! yes !" Ch'eng Yiin echoed grimly. "And why 
 have I not so hastened your marriage — now you shall 
 know. It was not my selfishness nor my weakness," 
 
 "I know that," her boy interrupted proudly, fond- 
 ling her hand. And he knew right well that neither 
 selfishness nor weakness had part in Ch'eng Yiin. 
 
 "The gods," she said gravely, "would be interceded 
 with decorum — not importuned or hurried. It has 
 been given to me that too many prayers may weary 
 and then anger a god. And so I have learned to wait 
 and be patient." 
 
 Chii-po dropped his eyes suddenly, and the hand on 
 her hand trembled a little. He was her slave — he so 
 
20 THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 
 
 loved her, and she was so strong — almost he was her 
 dupe, and willingly so, but no drugging of fascination 
 or of love could for one moment delude him into the 
 faintest behef that Ch'eng Shao Yiin had acquired 
 patience. 
 
 Perhaps she sensed it. For she added abruptly, 
 "But now the time has come." 
 
 "A little longer !" he caught her hand and pressed his 
 cheek upon its rings. 
 
 Yiin laid her other hand on his head. "Well then," 
 she said gently, "how long?" 
 
 "A year," he pleaded. 
 
 She shook her head. "Not nearly a year, my Chii- 
 po. Be more reasonable." 
 
 "Then, at least, until after the Feast of Lanterns." 
 
 "Until after the Feast of Lanterns," Yiin conceded, 
 and her voice sounded to say it not unwillingly. 
 
 "And we will stay close together, every hour till 
 then? And we will walk and talk and play, — just you 
 and I — and till then let us forget — forget the marriage 
 that must come — I like it not — and the woman it will 
 bring." 
 
 "And we will stay close together," she answered 
 gravely. "And we will walk and talk and play, just 
 thou and L But when the marriage comes you will 
 like it well enough — and I make little doubt that you 
 will like the woman it brings you better than I shall. 
 And in the meantime you shall forget it. I shall 
 remember it. A man," she added almost sadly, as she 
 rose, "rarely remembers; a woman never forgets. 
 Come, we will walk.'* 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 THEY left the room, and crossed through the court- 
 yard, past the devil-screen, to the outer door, and 
 into the outer grounds. Theoretically Ch'eng Shao Ytin 
 passed all her hours within her own apartments and in 
 the "flowery" courtyard, as a Chinese woman of high 
 caste should. Actually she went daily here, there and 
 everywhere about her vast domain, her journeyings 
 limited only by her whim, and her face and voice as 
 familiar to every coolie on the place as the trees and 
 the red roofs of the houses were. 
 
 At first the house had been built about two court- 
 yards, as a Chinese home should be built, but the many 
 marriages, and the lush influx of baby-life had first 
 crammed and cramped it, and then burst through it 
 quite; and that many of her children should not be 
 roofless, Y.iin had caused a grove of additional home 
 quarters to jut out again and again from every wall, 
 and from them others, like red-topped mushrooms, 
 quarters leading all into the others, strung together by 
 doors and courtyards, and that were houses in them- 
 selves except in name, and independent homes but for 
 the vigorous over-ruling of Ch'eng Shao Yiin, and that 
 in their irregular, straggling, sloping red-roofed mass 
 spread over several acres. But so wide were the gar- 
 dens in which they lay, and so vast the fields and groves 
 and hilly vineyards and quarries circling the gardens 
 about, that the great congerie of linked buildings 
 looked snug and homelike. 
 
 2J 
 
22 THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 
 
 They were all of but one story. In Pekin it was 
 against the law — and in China law is obeyed — to erect 
 a dwelling of more than one story — because Chinese 
 ladies spend their lives within home-walls, and depend 
 upon the courtyards of the "flowery'* quarters for fresh 
 air and sunshine. And so jealous is Chinese law and 
 Chinese sentiment of the comfort and welfare of wom- 
 en that even an Emperor would not venture to evade 
 the old custom which his subjects dare not disregard. 
 In this, her Ho-nan stronghold, the woman tottering 
 through a wilderness of flowers, leaning on her son's 
 arm as she went, was supreme. She might, and she 
 would, have built her home up to any height; but it 
 never had occurred to her to heighten it by a foot be- 
 yond the one story allowed in the imperial capital. 
 She approved the accredited regulation. And what 
 Ch'eng Shao Yiin approved that she did and obeyed. 
 
 All Chinese law is an expression of justness, and is 
 built on sanity. Chinese law is omnipotent. Chinese 
 laws are very few. 
 
 It is very difficult to say which is Chinese law, which 
 Chinese fashion; they are so one in source and aim, 
 sprung both from sentiment and tradition, whose only 
 concern is to preserve and augment a people's health, 
 happiness and peace. Chinese law has little machinery, 
 and needs but scant personnel. Few formal adminis- 
 trators of law are needed where laws are few, and every 
 law administered loyally by all, because sincerely re- 
 spected and approved by all, and administered by cor- 
 dial observance from the coolie in the wet paddy fields 
 to the yellow-robed Emperor. 
 
 The most fantastic custom or rite in China has 
 grown from some beneficent reason, is steeped in rea- 
 sonableness. And the Chinese know it. They take 
 
THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 23 
 
 their philosophies gayly, but the philosophies are sound 
 and shrewd. 
 
 Of all made things, perhaps Chinese roofs are the 
 most picturesque. The sun was just past its full when 
 the woman and youth strolled together through the 
 flowers to the bamboo groves on an Eastern hill. And 
 in the slipping sun, the red-tiled, sloping roofs, curved 
 and indented — the hundred roofs of the home of the 
 Ch'engs — glowed ruby warm. 
 
 The lovers, the woman and her son — gayer in satin, 
 silk and jewels than any flower in all that flower-rad- 
 iant place — planned how they'd make high holiday of 
 every day left them before — before the Feast of Lan- 
 terns. She caught her youth back from his, and prat- 
 tled to him as they went. . Once she broke from him to 
 chase a butterfly, and clapped her hands, applauding it, 
 when it escaped and disappeared beyond a great forest 
 of hollyhocks. 
 
 They passed a gardener asleep in the shade. They 
 passed two sweepers throwing dice. They passed a 
 mason setting a wall askew. Ch'eng Yiin took no 
 heed— except to shrug and laugh. Never had such a 
 thing happened with her before. But this was carnival 
 time — the play time of Chii-po, and the Suzerain of 
 every fate within that domain's far-flung boundary 
 walls would give no thought to aught but mirth and 
 tenderness while he was at her side. She was bidding 
 her boy good-by, and she would bid it, brave heart 
 that she was, with laughter and with song, with jest 
 and warm red wine. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 THAT night she made him a feast and shared it. 
 As a rule she ate her rice alone, keeping her state 
 in solitude, as Tze-Shi kept hers in Pekin. But now 
 and again she commanded a son, or a favorite daugh- 
 ter-in-law to her table — and Chii-po oftenest of all. 
 
 Since he was a man, and she but a woman, she should 
 have served him, or — for in China the precedence of 
 motherhood often supersedes the precedence of man- 
 hood — he should have served her. But Ch*eng Shao 
 Yiiin had never served any one in her life — not father 
 nor husband ; and she had no mind that Chii-po should 
 serve her to-night. 
 
 They ate side by side. And for the first time Chii- 
 po tasted monkeys* lips and torpedo's roe. 
 
 There are eight foods sacred to the Emperor. Un- 
 fortunately — for her conscience — Ch'eng Yiin was in- 
 ordinately fond of them all. For loyalty's sake she 
 never let even the servants who prepared and served 
 them see her touch one to her mouth. In priceless 
 bowls they were laid on a side-table, in some vicarious 
 ceremonial, or to be ready should the Son of Heaven 
 unexpectedly appear and be a-hungered — and at the 
 end of her own meal they were miraculously destroyed. 
 When the servants had withdrawn, she swayed 
 over to the malachite side-table, and swayed back to 
 her own, carrying the forbidden bowls — scarcely per- 
 turbed by her own presumption, (since no one had it 
 for example) and growing less so with each succulent 
 mouth fuf. 
 
THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 25 
 
 But to-night she shared her imperial master's delica- 
 cies with Chii-po, while the song-girls shrilled through 
 the casements, and the nightingale sang to the roses. 
 
 And when they had eaten and drunk from their tiny 
 wine cups, and finished their pipes^ — she took up a sam- 
 sien and sang to Chii-po while he lolled on the cush- 
 ioned sandal-wood seat at her side. 
 
 And when they were tired of music, or she though* 
 he was, she told him stories of his race — the endless 
 .stories of every great Chinese clan, gushing with senti- 
 ment, embroidered with poetry and fantasy, big with 
 brave deeds, decently darkened here and there with 
 crime, glittering with jade and amethysts, tinkling with 
 laughter, grim and glad with the clash of arms — 
 breathless stories of danger and conquest, whispered 
 stories of exquisite women and of love. Some he had 
 heard before, some were new. But Chii-po hung upon 
 them all, playing with her girdle, fingering her rings. 
 
 Till nearly morning she kept him with her, and 
 amused. Long after the household slept she told on 
 and on the tales he loved to hear — ^the casement thrown 
 wide to the sparkling, scented night. 
 
 Ch'eng Shao Yiin, prompt at appointments, punctual 
 in duty, had never been a slavish keeper of hours. 
 Day and night were one to her. And for much she liked 
 the night hours best. She worked by day, directing 
 and prodding the many industries of her wide estate, 
 but at night she read, and thought, resting her tireless 
 limbs, and storing up strength and poise from the still- 
 ness and the dark for the strenuous, restless day with 
 its intricate net-work of interests and activities. All 
 that lay to her hand to do, this little Chinese woman did 
 vigorously, eagerly and well. But she did all in her 
 own way, and at her own time. She bowed to no un- 
 
26 THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 
 
 derling's convenience — and all were her underlings here 
 — and certainly to no time-table. When she was hun- 
 gry she ate. When she was thirsty she drank. Out- 
 side her apartments relays of wakeful servants squat- 
 ted by night as well as by day, ready to rush to her 
 bidding at the first clap of her hands. In the middle 
 of the night her stewards felt no surprise to be sum- 
 moned to a saturnalia of farm accounts or sericultural 
 debate. In the dead and middle of the night frequently 
 elaborate meals were cooked for her, and ceremoni- 
 ously served. A clanging of an outer bell roused the 
 boatman from sleep to man her skiff for a drifting on 
 the lake to an accompaniment of many musics, or that 
 she might fish by moonlight. And that at midnight thf> 
 catch was small was neither here nor there. It was no^ 
 to catch fish the woman loved, but to fish for them. 
 She loved the night, and to put into it all the exercises 
 and activities that she best liked. Hours were for her 
 convenience, her servants, and not she theirs. 
 
 The instant Chu-po's laugh came a little slow, his 
 hand on her robe a little lax, she dismissed him. 
 
 When he had gone she lit her reading lamp, an an- 
 tique, jeweled treasure fed on pungent, perfumed oil, 
 sharp as vinegar, sweet as attar, and drew a book of 
 poems to her knee. 
 
 Ch'eng Yiin was too skilled, and she loved Chii-po 
 too well, to chain him too closely to her girdle in these 
 dear days of the last trysting of their closest intimacy 
 — the trysting whose close must mark some renuncia- 
 tion of her motherhood, and mark his childhood's 
 close. His sex had thwarted and disappointed her be- 
 yond all her previous disappointments — for when the 
 sweet pains of his coming had throbbed their message 
 
THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 27 
 
 through her being she had known that her last of child- 
 birth was at hand. If this were not a daughter, no 
 daughter would ever come — to fulfill her paramount 
 ambition, and in after years to wear her gems and don 
 her robes. But she had loved him from the first with 
 more than the sum of love she had given to his broth- 
 ers, and when the woman had put him to her breast, 
 and she drew her fingers across the down on his tender 
 head, she would not for China and its wealth, not for 
 China and its weal, have changed him for any girl. 
 And as the full years passed he had been her one per- 
 fect companion, her perfect joy, and her most unstinted 
 pride. 
 
 She knew him too well, loved him too much, to keep 
 him always with her now. And when his young 
 eye roved across the peony beds to the dim outlines of 
 the farther hills, she drove him from her to the chase — 
 or bade him bring her from the distant river's bank 
 some flower or fern that grew only there. 
 
 And if he had loved the freedom of his roamings be- 
 fore, it was twice a pleasure now. So much it was 
 his, the freedom, the zest of it, unwatched, undictated, 
 uncensored, careless, irresponsible, that it seemed his 
 very self, the ultimate expression of independence and 
 self -suzerainty, that its curtailment or abandonment 
 seemed not a remote catastrophe, but sheer impossibil- 
 ity. He went where he would, how he would and while 
 he would. Sometimes he dashed off on his sure-foot- 
 ed Arab, all the bells of the high, carved saddle jing- 
 ling a roundelay of speed and spirits, sometimes he 
 went afoot, unattended, lingering in the lanes, bound- 
 ing from rock to rock on a steep hill-side, eating fruits 
 he tore from their stems, drinking at a bubbling, chat- 
 
28 THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 
 
 tering brook, shouting aloud in his freedom and in the 
 splendor of his youth, gathering flowers, gloating on 
 their loveliness, and singing low snatches of some old 
 love tune as he turned toward home. 
 
 And always he came back to her with an added love. 
 And always she was waiting and watching for him, and 
 welcomed him with a bowl of fragrant wine and with 
 some new contrivance for his pleasuring : a prank 
 planned for them to play, an old book found to read to 
 him, a robe donned for him that he had never seen be- 
 fore, a priceless robe some ancestress had worn centu- 
 ries ago, a troupe of strolling players summoned by 
 runners from the nearest great city to enact a new play 
 in her theater — a gilt and bamboo edifice spliced up by 
 her carpenters in a day — or to reenact for him some 
 chief favorite of his, a quail fight for him to watch 
 such as even they had never had before, or a vase or 
 bronze new-bought, or disemboweled from some old 
 coffer — a troupe of boys from Foo-Chow to walk and 
 dance for him on stilts, playing ball and juggling as 
 they danced, a thousand birds of every throat and hue, 
 released, at the clapping of her hands, from wicker 
 prisons in the tangled grass, to take their eager bril- 
 liant flight above the pink almond trees up into the sky 
 — far — farther — dim — dimmer — out of sight. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 "DUT the Feast of Lanterns was at hand. 
 
 -■^ Once she spoke to him of what lay hot at her 
 
 heart, and cold in both their fears — but only once. 
 
 *'Have you any choice — any wish — my Chii-po?'* 
 she said. 
 
 "As to the girl?" he made no pretense not to under- 
 stand her; it was not their way. Chii-po cheated no 
 one, and she never cheated him. 
 
 She nodded. 
 
 "Choice ? In what way ?'* 
 
 And then he laughed at her. "How is even a wish 
 in the matter possible with me? I, who have never 
 seen a girl !" 
 
 She could not contradict him in that. The peasant 
 girls in their fields and in the cocoon sheds counted to 
 neither of them. And to him the slave girls in his 
 brothers' harems counted for less. 
 
 The mother nodded. "But from what province, 
 from what family? With what traits?" 
 
 "No," he said simply, "why should I care?'* 
 
 His mother sighed. She knew how much he might 
 care — afterwards; care and regret, if her choice went 
 awry. 
 
 "Will her feet be small as yours?" he added, how- 
 ever. "I like small feet — and hands like yours — the 
 rest is little. But the hands and the feet " 
 
 "Your bride's golden lilies will be small and well 
 squeezed," she interrupted severely. "Small as mine 
 will be hard to find — perhaps impossible. But they 
 
 29 
 
30 THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 
 
 will be as they should, and her hands very beautiful. 
 I promise you that/' 
 
 Across one corner of the domain an old, old river lay 
 like a broad band of silver. If it ran to the sea, it 
 moved v/ith such slow dignity, so silent and so calm, 
 that no eye could catch its course, and no one make 
 guess in which direction lay its source, in which its 
 passing into the ocean's wide marriage bed. Sunshine 
 and moonlight painted and jeweled it, but rarely rip- 
 pled, and the fierce storm winds that blew now and then 
 from the North far beyond the Hwang Ho and the Fu- 
 niu Shan failed to ruffle its proud calm. And the great 
 pink-throated cranes that came and mounted on the 
 mossed pebbles at its bend seemed not to cut with the 
 sharp scissors of their slender pointed beaks the im- 
 perturbable smoothness of its glass. The score of 
 other waters that danced and foamed, laughed and rip- 
 pled noisily through the wide-flung acres of Ch'eng 
 Yiin probably were as old as it, but they seemed babies, 
 and it old as time. And perhaps nothing else gains 
 so much reality from its seeming as does age — bub- 
 bling youth and quiet age. The little brooks and rills, 
 with their churning and their frothing waterfalls, 
 seemed of to-day, lusty but very young, reborn each day 
 in ecstasy and glee — the infants of each sun, the ur- 
 chins of each moon, with elves and water sprites for 
 playmates, and sweet banked flowers and ferns for 
 swaddling clothes. The river seemed veiy, very old 
 because it was so motionless — so self-sufficient and so 
 self-possessed. To Chu-po it had always seemed the 
 oldest thing in China, and the wisest, and at once the 
 most indifferent and the kindest. Its surface never 
 moved. Its depth was veiled and screened by its thick 
 calm. 
 
THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 31 
 
 When the lantern feast was very near — not four 
 "weeks off — ^and all China teemed and panted with ex- 
 cited preparations for her greatest festival, and with 
 all the clatter of its New Year keeping, Chii-po, a little 
 wearied of the incessant movement of his world — the 
 cackle and the din — wandered away to the river's near- 
 most bank — ever from his babyhood a favorite haunt 
 of his. 
 
 He had not come here to think. It was his wish and 
 his mood to avoid thought. He had come here to be 
 alone. He was fiercely tired of people, and harassed 
 by the thought of a companionship to come, apprehen- 
 sive of its claims and of its rasp. And the compan- 
 ionship of the old river, that he had loved longer than 
 he could remember, was endurable only because it was 
 so aloof and so still ; saying nothing, irresponsive and 
 apart. 
 
 Why he so shrank from the lot which was the honor 
 of every Chinese, and the signia of manhood, he could 
 not have told. Ch'eng Shao Yiin had chosen maidens 
 well through her reign, and each of Chii-po's brothers 
 was happy and comfortable with his wife. There were 
 no bickerings in the Kingdom of Ch'eng Yiin — ex- 
 cept when she chose to make them. And Chii-po, who 
 had had the run of the flowery quarters far more, and 
 years longer, than Chinese canons indicated, had found 
 his sisters-in-law pleasant enough folk at all times, 
 often amusing, if rarely restful, and sometimes well 
 worth knowing. But he was younger than his years 
 by nature; one of those whom the gods love and keep 
 young till death, and, from the over-mothering of 
 Gh'eng Yiin, young — a little babyish — in a manly way. 
 With all a Chinese's reverence for age in others, he was 
 Strangely ambitionless of age and the things of age for 
 
32 THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 
 
 himself. He had no wish to wear a beard or to be 
 "nine thousand years old" — only an Emperor may be 
 called older than that. The thought of the causal civil- 
 ities of marriage embarrassed him — to its more inti- 
 mate amenities he had not given a thought — and he 
 wondered ruefully whether he'd have to talk to the girl 
 his mother gave him, and, if he did, what in all the 
 range of words should he find to say to her? And 
 would she mind ? 
 
 Probably she'd hate it even more than he. Poor 
 little girl! The new thought tinged his mind with a 
 new kindliness towards her — almost his heart with a 
 tender sense of comradeship. It was the first feeling 
 of kindness that he had had toward his unknown, and, 
 as he believed, as yet unchosen bride. 
 
 Poor little girl ! 
 
 What was that? 
 
 Sounds and movement came from beyond the wal- 
 nut grove — ^two drifts of each moving toward each 
 other, and bearing down on him. One came from the 
 east, one from the west. There were twenty ways into 
 the estate — but each puncture well guarded at its gate. 
 The pad, pad of straw-shod coolie feet. The click of 
 palfreys' feet. The ringing of horses* bells. Who 
 was coming? He could and would avoid them. But 
 first he'd look. 
 
 Goat-nimble Chii-po left the bank, and climbed the 
 steep side of a rough ravine. Half hidden in a belt of 
 firs on the low hill's crest — he had no notion to be seen 
 and perhaps interrupted of his solitude — he paused 
 and looked, then stood still and watched — a sumptuous 
 sight. 
 
 Two cavalcades were converging a few rods away. 
 
 In each bannermen, footmen, horsemen and insignia* 
 
THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 33 
 
 carriers led the long retinue which ended behind its 
 master and personage with a straggling herd of ser- 
 vants and slaves, so many that only a Chinese head 
 could count them, and only a Chinese purse pay or feed 
 them. 
 
 There was nothing to distinguish servants from 
 slaves. Under the Manchu rule, the old system of 
 Government slavery had long disappeared — as did so 
 much of national ill — but the beneficent slavery of 
 great men's personal ownership survived and throve. 
 And among the hundreds of sleek, happy, well-fed re- 
 tainers now pouring at their masters' wake into the 
 Ch'eng domain, there was doubtless a goodly sum of 
 legal slaves — happier than their freemen fellows, be- 
 cause more permanently attached to their lord's ser- 
 vice, and more intimately of his acquaintance and care, 
 and more secure of both — many of them bearing his 
 name, all sharing in his pride of house and place. 
 
 The musicians were the most splendid in dress, minc- 
 ing consequentially like gay human tulips along the 
 paths. The dwarf-tree-bearers in one cavalcade, and 
 in the pther the cage-carriers, moved with even more 
 strut and pride of gait than did the music-makers, for 
 nothing else in all those twin throngs of mandarin 
 display was of finer value, or cherished with more elab- 
 orate solicitude, than the tiny dwarf trees, each in a 
 little tub of carved ivory or gemmed gold, and the little 
 singing birds in jeweled plumage and jeweled cages 
 of gilded bamboo or lacquer pierced-and-cut-lace. No 
 man carried more than one tiny, jeweled tree, or one 
 tiny, caged bird. And behind each such bearer walked 
 an attendant with all the tree or bird might need 
 while journeying — special food, special drink, careful 
 contrivances for warmth and freshened air. Chinese 
 
34 THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 
 
 birds are greatly loved. Chinese dwarf -trees are hardy 
 as the race that rears and cherishes them, but like that 
 virile race, are highly strung, and the trees must not 
 be buffeted about, or moved with ruthless carelessness 
 from place to place. And in this last the dwarf-trees 
 are less persistent of life and character than the humans 
 of the Chinese race. 
 
 Doubtless both birds and priceless trees were trib- 
 utes of compliment to the Lady of Ch'eng — and 
 doubtless many of the bamboo-corded bales, less easily 
 and less carefully carried in the long processions' rears, 
 held tribute too, to be laid at the preposterously small 
 feet of Ch'eng Shao Yiin. 
 
 Kites of every size and color, so like the bats and 
 birds they aped that from a greater distance Chii-po 
 must have thought them the living things they pre- 
 tended, were carried in each procession. And when a 
 light wind rose the aeolian harps and the tiny bells tailed 
 on some of them made soft music in the perfumed air. 
 
 Gong-bearers headed each procession and each was 
 closed by an indescribable motley crew of umbrellas, 
 banner carriers, tall-hat lictors, title-bearers, servants 
 carrying changes of raiment, mounted guards, foot- 
 guards, regalia-bearers, more gongs, fans, bastinadoes, 
 swords, bludgeons, soldiers, incense bearers, execu- 
 tioners, more umbrellas, bludgeons, road-clearers car- 
 rying whips, jesters and acrobats. 
 
 The coming notables seemed of equal rank. As they 
 met, one descended from his green chair, the other 
 from his horse. And the near-by retainers of each 
 ranged themselves at the sides of the path, standing 
 stolid and incurious, as if with their backs to walls. 
 
 The officials greeted each other with elaborate cere* 
 
THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 35 
 
 mony — but too, Ch'eng Chii-po thought, with cx)rdial- 
 ity. 
 
 One Qiii-po knew well, had often seen; the man who 
 had left his chair to do his friend courtesy and stood 
 blinking short-sighted eyes in the strong sunlight, his 
 spectacles in his hand, for no Chinese could be so un- 
 couth as to wear glasses when speaking to another. 
 The Mandarin I — I Kung Moy — came from Pekin 
 now and again to hold long and earnest conference with 
 the lady of Ch'eng, and sometimes Chii-po had been 
 called in to listen to their talk. And always I brought 
 Ch'eng Yiin dwarf-trees to enrich the "dwarf" forest 
 already a pride of China. 
 
 Wherever, whenever, I Kung Moy came politics was 
 afoot. He was in every sense a party man, and of 
 ceaseless activities. And Ch'eng Shao Yiin was a 
 great politician — China had no keener. She rarely 
 left her own domain, but almost daily her runners 
 passed to and fro, up and down China and across, by 
 path and river, carrying messages of serious political 
 import, messages to Pekin and Annam, to Manchuria 
 and Quelpart, and like messages in return to her. 
 
 She and I were of one mind on almost every aifair 
 of state, and that this was so, explained why he had 
 not been stopped at the gate. Ch'eng Shao Yiin was 
 always at home to I Kung Moy, and no custodian at 
 her gates but knew to kot'ow him instant admission. 
 Chii-po was sure that his mother had not been expect- 
 ing the mandarin, or any other guest, but I had come 
 unexpectedly once or twice before, and could never 
 come unwelcome. 
 
 Yiin would receive him as a Chinese lady should, 
 when such reception was necessary, with a heavy cur* 
 
36 THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 
 
 tain hanging between them. And so they would talk 
 and argue, and presently, when the talk grew hot, she 
 would jerk the curtain aside, beckon him to a nearer 
 seat, and they would speak low — in whisper now and 
 then — for hours, as man to man. And when he passed 
 from her presence, her sons would be called to do him 
 hospitalities. But his visit and his confidences invari- 
 ably were to Ch*eng Shao Yun. 
 
 But for the presence of the other mandarin Chii-po 
 was at a loss to account. Him Ch'eng Chii-po had 
 never seen before. But the stranger must have had 
 some password sufficient for the eastern gate. 
 
 So determined were the two men each to give the 
 other precedence that they seemed fated to remain 
 where they were, bowing and gravely gesticulating for- 
 ever, inextricably stuck in a bog of politeness. But at 
 last the stranger with a gesture drew the other's atten- 
 tion to a closely shuttered palanquin withdrawn a little 
 from his own retinue resting on the ground now, and 
 guarded by armed eunuchs. At that I Kung Moy 
 bowed quite to the ground, averted his eyes from the 
 deposited litter, and after many more obeisances, 
 backed up the path that led to the homestead of the 
 Ch'engs. And Ts retinue followed I. 
 
 The stranger turned as if some one had called to him 
 from the palanquin, and went towards it eagerly. All 
 the others — except the eunuch guard — turned their 
 backs to it — and moved a little farther off. 
 
 The litter's curtains parted; and a figure stepped out 
 on to the path, a slender figure that as it walked remind- 
 ed Ch'eng of some one — he could not remember whom. 
 It was a woman, her garments told him that, tissues 
 and brocades of jade green, dark blue embroideries 
 flower-shaped, trousers of orange silk, a jade-green and 
 
THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 37 
 
 sliver veil quite hiding her face. It was a woman of 
 rank. Her bearing told that. She was young, her 
 carriage told him, and happy and well. And some- 
 where he had seen her walk before. He was sure of 
 that; some one he knew well walked as she walked. 
 Odd! 
 
 The golden-lilied women have as many individuali- 
 ties of gait as big-footed women have. This girl^ 
 Chii-po was sure it was a girl — scarcely swayed as she 
 left the path and climbed the sun-drenched hillock be- 
 yond. Almost she scarcely seemed to move, but she 
 did move — rather rapidly. And the old man moved 
 smiling at her side. 
 
 It did not occur to Ch^eng Chii-po that this might 
 be his bride — his dreaded wife. 
 
 Nothing occurred to him except a dull throbbing 
 sense that he no longer wished to be alone. 
 
 But even had he been still lord of his wits, no such 
 thought could have occurred to him. His mother had 
 promised him no move towards his marriage until after 
 the Feast of Lanterns — and though China fell, Ch'eng 
 Shao Yiin's promise held. 
 
 He had seen a girl. 
 
 And he no longer wished to be alone. 
 
 A girl veiled and shrouded. A girl in some dis- 
 tance, two hill slopes and the width of a narrow mead- 
 ow between, but still a girl, living, breathing, moving 
 — and a girl of his own patrician caste — patrician as 
 Ch'eng Shao Yiin herself — or Ye-Ho-Na-I^h — the 
 empress-wife. 
 
 And now Chii-po saw that there were other, cur- 
 tained chairs behind hers — plainer and less obsequious- 
 ly guarded — her attendant women doubtless. 
 
 The low apex reached, the girl stood still and looked 
 
38 THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 
 
 about her through her veil. Then her hands shot out 
 from the jade-green draperies. They were very tiny 
 hands, but their shape and the loveHness — he knew that 
 it was there — ^were hidden by a crush of rings. With 
 an imperious, girlish gesture she Hfted her arms, and 
 the loose sleeves fell back, leaving them and their ex- 
 quisite loveliness all naked in the rose rays of the after- 
 noon's waning sun. Ch'eng Chii-po caught his breath ; 
 it stabbed him in his throat. He had never seen his 
 mother's arms. He had not seen the arms of any of 
 his brothers' wives — or, if he had, he had not noticed 
 them. He had not dreamed that flesh could be so fair, 
 or pull one so. Why did not that old man fall at her 
 feet? 
 
 The girl lifted her veil — she flung it back. 
 
 It was a girl! 
 
 All the gods, yes ; it was a girl. 
 
 She wore no paint on this journeying. Her delicate 
 face was amber-cream and faint oleander pink. Her 
 little curved mouth was redder than the rubies on her 
 hand. The little teeth that just showed in dazzling 
 purity when she smiled up at the tasseled blossoms of 
 the flowering tree were whiter than Omi's snow. The 
 narrow brows w^ere painted on her peachy amber skin 
 with a sharp velvet brush — a daring stroke of black 
 across the soft cream. Trembling jewels flashed and 
 dangled from the black gloss of her hair. Her eyes, 
 sparkled in the light, but were soft as some young doe's 
 and deep-pansy-dark within their lashes' lace-soft 
 fringe. 
 
 The boy trembled as he watched. Was she real? 
 Could anything so beautiful be real? 
 
 She reached up and pulled a flower from the tree i 
 that seemed to bend down to her as if proud and glad 
 
THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 39 
 
 to be torn by such delicate fingers — rifled of its loveli- 
 ness by such greater loveliness. 
 
 But it was her arms that moved him most — round 
 girlish arms, chinked with dimples, molded exquisite- 
 ly, slender, soft and virile. He had often noticed how 
 pretty the roly-poly babies' arms were in the court- 
 yards of his brothers' wives. And he had thought dim- 
 ples were the lovely livery of babyhood. Did girls 
 have dimples too? And, if one touched them, would 
 they feel as the baby dimples did ? 
 
 He flushed. 
 
 She drew the blossom she had filched across her face, 
 and for a moment held it there. Then, as she tucked 
 it in her robe, at something the man beside her said, she 
 laughed aloud, and the music of her little voice tinkled 
 across to Ch'eng Chu-po and smote him to the soul — 
 sent the quick, startled blood racing through his fright- 
 ened veins, and surging up his throat. Again he asked 
 the gods, was it real? Could such music be real? 
 Could such sweetness sound in common air? 
 
 The old man held out his hand — and she put her 
 palm in his, flung the veil back across her face — and 
 they retraced their way. Tenderly the man stowed 
 her, as something very precious, in her chair. The 
 bearers lifted it shoulder high — and they moved 
 slowly toward Ch'eng's home — the mandarin riding 
 close beside her chair — for his jacket told him that, 
 the button on his cap, the cornelian beads hanging 
 from his neck, and the caparisons of his steed. 
 
 The boy — ^but now a man — watched them until they 
 were out of sight — and then he stimibled back to the 
 calm old river's edge — as best he could — not as he had 
 come, but gropingly by the longer, twisting, circuitous 
 path — ^an easy, even, gentle foot-way that sloped down 
 
40 THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 
 
 imperceptibly — its gradient was so gradual — ^but 
 Ch'eng Chu-po, the goat- footed, stumbled as he went, 
 slipped, and once he almost fell. 
 
 He slid down beside the river, his face crushed into 
 the ferns at its brink — and lay as still as it. But pres- 
 ently he groaned aloud — it was a birth cry — ^groaned 
 because he was alone. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 THE stars were out when he went slowly home 
 Hours had passed. 
 
 They came hurrying to meet him, and brought him 
 rice. He thrust it away — and waved them back. 
 
 When he had bathed and dressed, he went to his 
 mother's room, the little carved and scented room 
 where she kept her privacy, and went in without ask- 
 ing or leave. 
 
 Ah Song was crouched outside the threshold. She 
 knew his step. She knew the importance and the se- 
 crecy that were going on within. But she made no 
 motion or word to stay him, and as he passed within, 
 a shrewd, prophetic smile flitted across her sightless 
 face. 
 
 The sole concern of Chinese diplomacy in those days 
 was — and up till then had been — foreign affairs. So 
 perfect was Chinese patriarchy, so beautifully it 
 worked, that there was little chance of internal broil, 
 and none of any so serious as to merit or need the 
 cognizance of Pekin — no excuse for * 'party" clash or 
 mouthings. Happy the country that has no politics. 
 And China had none until priest and adventurer came 
 bringing her the Cross and gun-boat. And even then, 
 when the diplomatic hydra reared its gory head it 
 found no chink or rent to stick its claws in, and so into 
 Chinese home affairs. But already a miasmic shadow 
 crept into China from the sea, threatening her witt» 
 
 4» 
 
42 THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 
 
 disruption and disease — the shadow of newer, rawer 
 civihzations ; civilizations less civilized, less humane, 
 less tested, less honest and less dignified. The slow, 
 rough influx of foreign interests was creeping slowly 
 upon the Chinese rivers, past the forts. As yet it 
 had but fastened on a treaty-port or two, and cankered 
 slyly at Shanghai and Hankow, Hongkong and Tien- 
 tsin, at Foochow and at its tiny stronghold of Shamien. 
 But the plague was in the air, and threatened China 
 to her core. And already a devoted band of Chi- 
 nese men — and women — w^atching had taken alarm; 
 men trained in observation and quick in thinking — 
 serious, sober men, unmovable in their belief that to 
 alter China were to poison and to maim. A resolute, 
 resourceful band with whom to think was to act. 
 
 Chinese politics was bom on the day that Hamel 
 landed at Quelpart. And it had grown apace. And 
 from it had formed such political "parties" as China 
 knew or Chinese contentment brooked: the Anti-for- 
 eigners Party and the Indifferents — one hating and at- 
 tacking all foreighers and foreign influence — the other 
 ignoring both. 
 
 Ch'eng Shao Yiin's father had been absorbed before 
 her — as his father before him — in politics, an anti-for- 
 eign agitation that was as much a patriotism as pol- 
 itics, and that same politics — with the self -same one 
 aim — had been from before her early marriage the 
 obsession of her soul, the secret but most strenuous 
 and vital industry of her life. 
 
 To drive the foreign villains out— out and back to 
 whence they came, affrighted and cured of any de- 
 sire or power to return — that was the great aim of 
 her life, and she worked at it and for it ceaselessly 
 with all her imperious might and main. 
 
THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 43 
 
 But still the missionaries and the traders came, 
 dnd in their wake the credentialed envoys so uncouth 
 and ill-born that they did not know how to behave 
 at a court, or how to kot'ow in the presence of a liege. 
 
 To drive the foreign vermin out, and to be rid of 
 it forever, was the fierce and tender ambition of her 
 being — and of her judgment. 
 
 And it was of that that Ch'eng Shao Yiin and I 
 Kung Moy talked and planned as they sat together in 
 her carved and scented room, the red curtain of her 
 seclusion flung wide aside, sex forgotten, etiquette 
 kicked contemptuously away. 
 
 They were conventionals, full of prejudice, the man 
 and the woman — she even more than he — filled with a 
 burning hatred of all foreigners, an unreasoning love 
 of the past and of old established ways, a venomous 
 loathing of new, untrod paths, and of the human sign- 
 posts of those alien paths, the priests, the merchants, 
 travelers, sailors, envoys from the inferior scum-lands 
 of unknown and undesired peoples. 
 
 But there is something to be said for their self- 
 opinionated point of view: 
 
 There is little insanity in China. There was none 
 until we came. She never borrowed a yen until we 
 induced her to — and she has always paid her debts 
 scrupulously. The Chinese have been the making of 
 every Christian colony in the eastern seas. A race 
 without deformities, self-keeping and self-kept, living 
 in comfort and content, ambitious for happiness and 
 the sweet things of life, well-ordered, spending hap- 
 pily, saving sanely and gladly, revering books, unaf- 
 fectedly worshiping nature, loyal and obedient, hold- 
 ing womanhood as high as it has ever been held any- 
 where, holding old age and childhood higher, and 
 
44 THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 
 
 cherishing them more nobly than ever has any other 
 race, kept ever-young by its universal bubbling sense 
 of humor, greatly endowed by high ideals to which it 
 hourly matched its daily life, and strong and straight 
 from a truer, stricter sense of justice than any other 
 race has ever reached, family rancor unknown, nepo- 
 tism a fineness and a cult, but never a self-seeking or 
 a vanity, the Chinese had little need of Potsdam, 
 Whitechapel or Washington, and have reaped what 
 advantage from European intrusion? Perhaps not 
 one! 
 
 Usually at their many conferences it was Ch'eng 
 Shao Yiin who talked, I Kung Moy who listened, 
 Ch'eng Yiin who instigated, suggested and elaborated. 
 This little woman, who had left her own estate but 
 four times in twenty years, who for all corporal contact 
 with the world beyond her gates, lived for the most 
 as closely cloistered as any nun of Carmel, was the 
 fire-brand of China's foreign policy, and its strongest 
 dynamic force. And she had never seen a European 
 or looked into their history or their creeds of life and 
 conduct. 
 
 But to-day it was the mandarin who talked, while 
 Ch'eng Yun listened and watched with flashing eyes, 
 and gathering brow, picking her fan to bits, tap-tap- 
 ping the floor with her scrap of jeweled shoe. 
 
 Until now, I Kung Moy had come to ask advice ; to 
 analyze and weigh it — and then, almost always, to 
 follow it. 
 
 To-day he had come from Pekin to give advice and 
 to press it. 
 
 A spoilt, tempestuous woman, life-used to rule and 
 to decide — ^her veriest whim the edict of her little 
 world — ^yet she was too big to resent being advised 
 
THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 45 
 
 by one whom she so respected and admired — so liked. 
 A tyrant, without hesitation or scruple, she knew that 
 give-and-take was the solvent and lubricant of life, 
 and constantly she used it so. It was not his advising, 
 but the advice itself that he gave that galled and revolt- 
 ed, and wreaked her vengeance on the ivory and tissue 
 of her fan — galled and infuriated her none the less be- 
 cause as he drove each unwelcome point home, she saw 
 it clearly and recognized its merit. Her gorge rose 
 and sickened — her judgment weighed and approved. 
 For such was her clarity and balance that when infu- 
 riated most she could think calmly, decide justly and 
 coldly. To no delinquent coolie in her lime kilns could 
 Ch'eng Shao Y.iin show cruder tyranny than she could 
 at need show herself — and at need did. 
 
 I Kung Moy had come to urge a change of tactics on 
 the part of the ring leaders of the anti-foreigners pol- 
 icy. And hearing him Ch'eng Yiin stiffened and 
 fumed, loathed and approved. 
 
 He had come to ask her to send Ch'eng Chii-po to 
 Europe — not for a year, or in the open service of their 
 liege — ^that would have been hideous enough — and such 
 debasing work was for Manchus, if it must be done — 
 she could not admit the necessity — but to send her son, 
 her youngest, best-loved son to England unobtrusively, 
 to go to school with English boys — to live among them 
 for a term of years — to mingk with them in such inti- 
 macy as he could achieve, and of his seeking — for a 
 long term of years — to eat their food — to eat with 
 them — if they would let him — to assimilate their ways, 
 to become, at least for a time, as nearly like them as 
 he could. 
 
 Ch'eng Shao Yun sickened at the thought. 
 
 To solve a problem it is first necessary to understand 
 
46 THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 
 
 it — so ran his argument. The evil of foreign invasion 
 was grovi^ing day by day. Whether it could be over- 
 come by force — and, if not by force, by what — it was 
 impossible to say until a more intelligent understand- 
 ing was reached of just what these foreigners were, 
 what their aim — their methods, their ways and depth 
 of thought. *To circumvent them, we must know 
 them." To defeat them by force might prove impossi- 
 ble. Probably it would. Chinese military power was 
 too scattered, too antiquated — and military prestige 
 was, among the Chinese, too low. Whatever these 
 English were or were not — it was the English he chiefly 
 feared. They were the persistent race — they were 
 mighty warriors. Of so much he was convinced. The 
 Chinese were not warriors. They had been, of course, 
 and they would be again. He did not forget the Prince 
 of Han, Ta'so Ta'so, Kublai Khan, Ch'ai Shao, Tsung- 
 ping, Wu Sankwei or any warrior out of all the long 
 warrior line of her illustrious ancestry — or of his less 
 valiant own. But now China was out of tune for war, 
 and naked of equipment. Whether this could be re- 
 trieved in time, he doubted. If not, the foreigners must 
 be defeated in other ways — circumvented, or their 
 fangs drawn. Neither of these things could they hope 
 to do until they knew them. And to know men you 
 must live among them. The best blood, the best young 
 brains in China must be banished, for a time, sent to 
 Europe, steeped and veneered in European ways. 
 
 Ch'eng slashed her knee angrily with her girdle. But 
 she listened — and questioned him reasonably enough. 
 
 "At closer range, in their native land, the English 
 might even be less detestable. The lads put forth to 
 exile and to school might not find it too unendurable." 
 
 Ch'eng Yiin shrugged wearily with a quiet uplift o£ 
 
THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 47 
 
 shoulder that said more than any mere bitterness of 
 words. 
 
 Already a start had been made. He was sending 
 his own grandson to study in the home of an English 
 priest — ^the mandarin eyed Ch'eng Yiin anxiously. 
 But she smiled a little indifferently. She had no fear 
 of Chu-po's apostasy, and, as for the contamination, 
 it was all contamination. That Chii-po might have to 
 listen to English prayers, enter English Joss houses, 
 was not worth a frown. To her mind religions were 
 made for man, not man for religions. She thought a 
 man as justified in changing his god and his temple as 
 in changing a coat, when it convenienced him. It 
 sounds a lax attitude for a woman, but it was charac- 
 teristically Chinese. She worshiped her gods punctili- 
 ously, but she judged them shrewdly. She paid them 
 well — as she did her servants — but she expected them 
 to do their part. She had thrashed a too dilatory god 
 once, and she might do so again. I Kung Moy was a 
 native of southern China. He took his religion less 
 casually. 
 
 He hurried on, relieved. He was sending I Kow 
 to school with a learned man, and later, when he knew 
 the tongue and could pass the examination, to a place 
 called Ox-ford. 
 
 "It is terrible! I shall suffer — torture," Ch'eng 
 Shao Yiin said slowly — interrupting him at last. "But 
 since it is needed, I will not grudge. For China — no 
 sacrifice is too great for China." 
 
 "Lady,*' the old man began, "Chuang Tzu told his 
 disciple " 
 
 Ch'eng Chii-po burst into the room, and flung him- 
 self at his mother's feet — clasping her shoe in two eager 
 hands. 
 
48 THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 
 
 Ch*eng Shao Yun motioned with her shattered fan 
 towards the mandarin. 
 
 But Ch'eng Chu-po spared no heed to I Kung Moy. 
 
 "Mother," he cried, *1 have seen a girl!" 
 
 "The place is full of girls," she said coldly. "There 
 are a hundred in the north silkworm shed.'* She un- 
 derstood him perfectly and instantly. But she had no 
 mind that I Kung Moy also should. "The place is full 
 of girl things," she repeated with a tiny shrug. 
 
 Ch'eng Chii-po rose impatiently, stood before her 
 straight and strong. His face was drawn and moved. 
 But it glowed. And his eyes leapt into hers — imperi- 
 ous now as he rose. 
 
 "I have seen a girl," he told her again — proudly — 
 "a lady girl." 
 
 I Kung Moy rose from his chair, passed quietly from 
 the room, and left them alone : the mother and the boy 
 that she knew that she had lost 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 SELFISHLY— of course— Ch'eng Yun had been 
 content that Chii-po should regard marriage with 
 reluctance. The boy was very dear to her, and he was 
 all she had — all that was quite her own. To her older 
 sons she was more than their children or their wives. 
 Every Chinese mother is that. No younger woman, 
 no child that he has begotten, can oust a Chinese mother 
 from the first place in the heart of the man that she 
 has borne. That is the great security in every Chinese 
 woman's life. No wonder that they long for sons. 
 Let her but bear a son, and she is forever supreme with 
 one, A Chinese father's influence is enormous, his au- 
 thority unquestioned and autocratic, but a mother's are 
 much more. Each son that Yiin had borne was filial, 
 and had remained so always. But the six elder she 
 shared now with wives and children, with friends and 
 quick interests of their own. But until this hour Chii- 
 po — always, and always to be, the dearest of her sons 
 — had been all hers. As a little child he had never had 
 a toy he would not push away at her approach. He 
 had a hunter's blood. But as a boy never he went 
 hawking, but he looked back at her as he went. A 
 word from her would call him back — and gladly back — 
 the hawk forgotten and dismissed. He had liked the 
 books that she had bid him like. He had seen pictures 
 and porcelains with her eyes — and the very flowers 
 that grew beside their paths, the wonderful panorama 
 of the Chinese outer world. He had thought her 
 
 49 
 
so THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 
 
 thoughts, breathed with her breath. The pulsing of 
 her heart had been his. And all the love-light in his 
 eyes had been hers — his unsoiled young passion hers. 
 It was gone. 
 
 And in one hour she was called upon to sacrifice him 
 to an absence that tore her to contemplate, an absence 
 of long wearying years in an environment she abhorred 
 and feared, called upon to yield Chii-po to that, to read 
 in his altered face, his crisper voice, that she had been 
 struck from her foremost place, thrust beyond a bar- 
 rier — sent into the outer cold. 
 
 The gods forbid, and all her womanliness forbade, 
 that she should wish him unhappiness, or in the mar- 
 riage she decreed less than content. She would see to 
 it that he was content, satisfied with his wife, shielded 
 in quiet and in peace by a quiet, docile girl — a wife 
 sheM choose so well that no scratching of his ease could 
 come. But she had wished the gift to be from her — 
 all that blessed, all that stirred him, from her; as much 
 her sole giving as her milk had been. 
 
 Fate had stolen a dastardly march on her. 
 
 Not that Ting Tzu — she knew whom he must have 
 seen, though he did not — could hold him from her long ; 
 his mother would be first and warmest with Chii-po 
 when the marriage glamor had passed — if she let it 
 come to that. 
 
 But he had begged her to hold her hand until the 
 Feast of Lanterns had come and gone; and she had 
 been well pleased to have hirn beg, well pleased to 
 keep her dreams with his, to match his will with hers ; 
 and she had thought to keep him all her own, all for her 
 loving, all loving of her, until the Lanterns had swung 
 and blazed, and burned out. 
 
 Ah well — what was, was. 
 
THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 51 
 
 "Sit," she said gently, "and tell me." 
 
 "Yes, ril try," he said eagerly. 
 
 It had been the habit of his fearless lifetime to an- 
 swer her always readily, frankly and without embar- 
 rassment. Not so to-day. The words halted, and when 
 they lagging came, came stupidly. 
 
 Ch'eng Shao Yiin did not help him out. 
 
 She had always helped him before when any 
 intricate telling had seemed to baffle his younger 
 grasp of fact and use of words. All confidence 
 between them till now had been mere dialogue and 
 gossip interchanged, friendliest conference, rather 
 than soliloquy, recital or confession. When he had 
 knelt beside her as a boy to tell her of his first offense 
 — the ruin of a priceless dwarf oak-tree, a century old 
 and less than six inches high, against which his ball 
 had dashed, he had played with her fan as he spoke, and 
 she had heard him with her hand on his arm. 
 
 And— "Well, what of it?'' she had said. "A sweep- 
 er will sweep it up. One priceless tree will not be 
 missed from the thousanded forest of the Ch'engs." 
 
 And he had nodded happily, and begged some treat 
 for the morrow. And they had gone together laugh- 
 ing to their rice. 
 
 Not so to-day. Ch'eng Chii-po did not touch any 
 garment of hers, or she of his. She heard him silently 
 — that was ominous — and watched him grimly through 
 half-shut, brooding eyes. 
 
 He told it lamely, but told it all. Her lips curled a 
 little at his description of the girl. Ch'eng Shao Yiin 
 had seen many girls. 
 
 When he had done, the woman said dryly, "How do 
 you know that she is one of us ?" 
 
52 THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 
 
 Ch*eng Chu-po laughed. It was answer enough — 
 the proud quality of that laugh. 
 
 "Did she see you?" Yiin asked him sharply. 
 
 "No," he said, "no one saw me." The woman's face 
 cleared a little. 
 
 "No one must know but you and me." 
 
 "Of course," the boy rephed. 
 
 Ch'eng Yun sat deep in rapid thought. The girl 
 was damaged — in that a marriageable man had looked 
 upon her unveiled face. But the girl herself was inno- 
 cent of the catastrophe. And the damage was slight, 
 even in Ch'eng Shao's exigent judgment. Such 
 chance preencounters were not unknown in Chinese 
 life. And in Chinese romances they were a common- 
 place — the pivot of half the novels written from Lo 
 Kuan-Chung and Shih Nai-an to Wang Shih Ch'eng 
 — from P'u Sungling till to-day. 
 
 Ch'eng Chii-po came nearer, and knelt down again 
 beside her. 
 
 "Mother! You will give her to me? I was bom 
 for her." 
 
 Ch'eng Yiin rose angrily. So! She had borne her 
 man-child for an unknown girl chit! Indeed! She 
 paced the room hotly. But she controlled herself, and 
 said presently, speaking dryly from the casement side, 
 looking at him again, not too kindly, "How ? We do 
 not know even who she is." 
 
 "I do not," Chii-po retorted quietly. "But they 
 came here." 
 
 "Oh!" Yiin conceded grudgingly. "Then it must 
 have been Ting Lo that you saw." 
 
 "The mandarin Ting?" 
 
 His mother nodded. "They brought me word that 
 he was here. I did not expect him. But I was willing 
 
THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 53 
 
 that he should visit Ch'eng Ping-yang, and sent your 
 brother word to welcome him and give him tendence, 
 and entrance to Ch'eng Ping-yang." 
 
 So — it was the father of his eldest brother's wife that 
 he had seen — the old man on the bedizened palfrey. 
 
 "He was welcome to welcome/' Ch'eng Yun went on. 
 "But I did not know that he had brought a woman in 
 his train !" 
 
 "He seemed more like in hers." 
 
 The mother made an impatient gesture with her 
 hands. 
 
 "Chut!" she said. 
 
 "And the lady ?" he asked, "Tell me her name." 
 
 "I do not know," she said sullenly. But in her heart 
 she knew. 
 
 "The daughter," he began, "is " 
 
 "Daughter!" his mother scoffed. "More probably a 
 new young wife!" 
 
 *'No," Ch'eng Chii-po said, "she is no wife. It was 
 father and maid I saw." 
 
 "So ho ! precocity! You are very shrewd. His wife, 
 I say!" It was a jealous lie. "Old men are fools." 
 That was not a Chinese theory. But Ch'eng Shao Yiin 
 was always independent in her words, and sometimes 
 in her thoughts. And she was angry with the gods. 
 
 But Ch'eng Chu-po shook his head. She could not 
 frighten him so. And nothing could frighten him 
 to-day. 
 
 Then he went towards her where she stood by the 
 open casement, and held out his hands, his face quiver- 
 ing with tenderness — and, too, with understanding. 
 For a moment she kept him at bay. Then she smiled — 
 a little — and took his face in her hands. 
 
S4 THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 
 
 "My little boy !" She whispered it. And her eyes 
 filled with tears. 
 
 "My mother!" His eyes brimmed too. 
 
 "You will always love me, Chii-po?" It was the 
 old prayer of universal motherhood. It choked her as 
 she spoke. 
 
 "Always," he said stoutly. 
 
 He linked her arm in his, and they leaned together 
 looking out at the stars. 
 
 "The night is very still, Chii-po! .... And how 
 
 sweet our garden smells Our country is very 
 
 beautiful, my son." 
 
 They held their tryst a little so — and it was reconcil- 
 iation too: his atonement, her conceding — her relin- 
 quishment. 
 
 "Wait," she told him presently. "You must wait, 
 Chii-po." 
 
 "But not long!" 
 
 She smiled. But she neither promised nor refused. 
 And she sent him from her then, and forbade him to 
 come again until she sent. 
 
 In all his eighteen years Ch'eng Chu-po had always 
 gone to his sleeping mat at his mother's bidding. So 
 complete had been her dominance of him that almost 
 invariably he had not only lain down, but had actually 
 slept when she told him to. 
 
 To-night he did not even go in the direction of his 
 apartments. He passed out into the night, paced the 
 garden paths from bed to bed, from lake to Httle water- 
 fall, beyond the lotus pond on the terrace — telling his 
 story to the drowsy flowers and to the night. 
 
 This was his betrothal night. In his heart he vowed 
 it so. 
 
THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 55 
 
 A serving woman passed near him going to the 
 house. Cbii-po knew her for an attendant of Ping- 
 yang, his eldest brother's wife. And he ran after her 
 and called her to him. She came readily enough — she 
 had nothing to hide or fear. Her mistress had sent her 
 on her late errand. 
 
 "You have visitors in your courtyard?" Ch'eng 
 Chii-po began. 
 
 "Yes, honorable lord." 
 
 "Your honorable lady's honorable father — ^and — ^her 
 honorable sister." 
 
 "Before evening rice they came, thrice honorable 
 sir." 
 
 "Can you tell me the most honorable maiden's 
 name?" 
 
 Nan Tung shot him a shrewd glance. But she an- 
 swered in a moment in a steady voice — ^her eyes sub- 
 serviently cast down. 
 
 "Ting Tzu, my honorable lord," she said, "Ting 
 Tzu." 
 
 Ch'eng Chii-po turned and walked away — no longer 
 knowing that the serving woman was there — or lived. 
 And Nan Tung scuttled off, laughing softly, to the 
 house. 
 
 "Ting Tzii," Ch'eng Chii-po breathed it twice. 
 
 "Ting Tzu," he told the moon. And then he told 
 the little flowers. He told the tiny twisted trees in the 
 forest of dwarf oaks, and the passion flowers. He told 
 the lotus cups sleeping fragrant on the burnished bosom 
 of the lake. And his heart was beating very fast. 
 
 Far into the night Ch'eng Shao Yiin sat where he 
 had left her — gazing broodingly into space. 
 
j6 THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 
 
 When she had gone into her sleeping room, disrobed, 
 and lain down on her mat, Ah Song, lying, as was her 
 service, just outside her mistress's door, heard Ch'eng 
 Shao Yiin sobbing piteously — ^hard, bitter, racking 
 sobs. Ah Song had not heard Ch'eng Yiin sob before 
 since the night Ch'eng Yiin's lord had died. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 CH'ENG PING-YANG leaned giggKng against 
 the sundial in her own courtyard and Nan Tung 
 squatted giggling at her feet. 
 
 "Get up," Ping-yang said, pushing the maid with her 
 shoe, "and go now. Tell him to come at once — that I 
 bid him haste — that Ch'eng Ko is crying for him, and 
 will not be comforted." 
 
 Nan Tung jerked herself up with alacrity. "Oh, 
 he'll make haste," she cried, as she ran. 
 
 "And so must I," Ping-yang said turning to the 
 house. 
 
 The wife of Ch'eng Hsu was the mischief-maker o^ 
 the place. But her practical jokes were harmless, 
 friendly even, as a rule, and she was more liked than 
 disliked by them all. A plump little creature with 
 wicked eyes and nimble wits, she had considerable 
 strength of will, well-cloaked by a careless manner, and 
 an ever ready laugh. Her will and her mother-in-law's 
 never clashed. Their lives ran on lines that rarely met 
 and never crossed ; and Yiin, somewhat underestimating 
 the other's mentality, as intellectual women so often do 
 that of those whose mental tastes differ from their own, 
 little thought how often Ping-yang took her own way, 
 or how persistently she pursued it. Still less did the 
 dowager suspect how much Ch'eng Ping-yang influ- 
 enced not only her husband, somewhat phlegmatic and 
 easily led, but all the courtyard lives, and many of the 
 retinue without. Ch'eng Yiin thought Ping-yang the 
 
 57 
 
58 THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 
 
 least interesting of all her daughters-in-law, but liked 
 her for being a contented, sunny little thing, lazy at 
 her needle, but a capital nurse, skilled at the zither, a 
 devoted mother, and, best of all, a peace-maker in that 
 crowded place — a little dull — but, some of us must be 
 dull. It was a blemish, but not a crime. And Yiin 
 thanked the gods that in the matter of wives, Ch'eng 
 Hsu was so easily satisfied. It would have humiliated 
 her to have had a marriage she had negotiated turn out 
 unpleasantly. 
 
 Ch^eng Ping-yang was far from dull. But she was 
 essentially a woman's woman. She cared little for men 
 — which was perhaps as well ; for with her kitten-purr- 
 ing ways, her skill at making menus, and her gluttony 
 for fun, and expertness in getting her own way, she 
 might have brought domestic water to the boil, and her 
 husband to some annoyance, if nothing worse, had she 
 had a mind for coquetry. 
 
 For women's women Ch'eng Yiin had little flair. 
 She herself was a man's woman — ^the friend and liker 
 of men — and from her birth men had been within her 
 thrall. Virtuous always, living, until the limited eman- 
 cipation of her widowhood, hidden within the court- 
 yard and the "flowery" quarters of her home, yet she 
 had been loved by many men. Her father had been her 
 serf. Her brothers had adored her. Her sons, only 
 less than her husband had been, were all her lovers. 
 There was not a man — from the poorest coolie — on the 
 place that had not some feeling of affection for her. 
 They liked to see her come — even though she came to 
 berate and tyrannize — and the bigger men that came to 
 see her from Pekin and from Soul and Nanking, came 
 eageriy — and more than one made excuses to come. 
 She had the qualities that lure men, and the qualities 
 
THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 59 
 
 that hold them too: a rarer gift. She had much 
 beauty, sparkle, a quick wit, and that indescribable 
 greatest quality of all: Charm — the quality that lasts 
 longest, and survives most — lasts through the disfigure- 
 ments of age and pain and poverty, lasts till death — 
 lasts and persists as only one other quality does, the 
 quality of high breeding. 
 
 It is the woman's woman that is a matchmaker. The 
 man's woman rarely is. If men care quickly for her, 
 she as quickly cares for men. And she has no special 
 delight in any man's absorption in any woman other 
 than herself. 
 
 Ch'eng Yiin had married her sons from duty, and 
 being her duty she had done it well. But she had done 
 it somewhat coldly. And now that the time had come 
 — and almost passed — for the marriage of Ch'eng Chii- 
 po, in her heart she had disliked it more than he. 
 
 Ch'eng Ping-yang was match-maker to her curled 
 and shielded fingernails. She had ached and itched for 
 years to make a match — and curtailed as the opportu- 
 nities of a guarded, patrician Chinese woman, locked 
 within her manless courtyard, are, she had encompassed 
 it now and then. Several marriages between the re- 
 tainers on the estate had been made by her. And at 
 least two of her brothers-in-law had fallen deeply in 
 love — after marriage — with their wives, under the di- 
 rect impulsion of her machinations. But she had 
 longed with all her merry soul to be the dea ex machina 
 of a true romance — a love affair of quality. And now 
 she thought she saw her way. No wonder that she 
 bubbled happily as she ran off — and the very pearls 
 hanging from her hair glowed and clattered merrily 
 and were glad. 
 
 When Ting Ping-yang had left her early home for 
 
6o THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 
 
 the long journey in her flowery chair she had felt one 
 keen grief, the deepest sorrow of her life, and through 
 all her placid, contented married life it had lived on in 
 her jolly little heart, an active gnawing sorrow still. 
 The leaving of a baby sister had wrung her heart. 
 
 And now that sister, a slender, soft-eyed girl with 
 amber rose-petal hands, who had just reached the 
 marriage years, had come with their father to visit 
 her. 
 
 Ting Tzu had not seen Ch*eng Chii-po the day be- 
 fore, but Sun Fuh, one of her waiting women, had — 
 and had gossiped of it to Nan Tung, wondering who 
 the slender young lordling was, all dressed in gold- 
 wrought satin and brocade, but with a hunter's pointed 
 face, who had stood and gazed and gazed with hungry 
 eyes on the unveiled features of Ting Tzu. And Nan 
 Tung — knowing well enough who it must have been, 
 had regossiped it all to Ch'eng Ping-yang when she 
 had tied her hair, and Ch'eng Ping-yang had chuckled 
 and hatched a plan, and had given Nan Tung a tinseled 
 scarf on which Tung had often thrown a lustful eye. 
 
 How good the gods ! She must try to remember to 
 burn them an hundred extra joss sticks. She really 
 must, the dear, good gods! Her heart had sung to 
 them yesterday when her father, in answer to her 
 imploring of years, had brought to her Ting Tzu. 
 That surprise had suffused her with happiness. But 
 now ! now she saw a way to secure Tzu's return again, 
 and always stay. O, gods! O, gods! That very 
 night for evening rice, she would make for their father 
 a compote of apricots such as he loved best. 
 
 "Ch'eng Ko," she called, as she ran through her 
 rooms, "Where are you, my fat frogling? I want you, 
 Ch'eng Ko!" 
 
THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 6il 
 
 When Nan Tung gave her message to Ch'eng Chii-po 
 he followed her, as she had foreseen, readily enough — 
 and without surprise. Ch'eng Ping-yang often sent 
 for him. They were special friends. And when spoilt 
 Ch'eng Ko was ill or very bad, nothing else could heal 
 or reform him so surely as a visit from his playmate 
 and uncle, Ch'eng Chii-po. Ch'eng Chii-po came with 
 Nan Tung at once, and no less willingly because the 
 summons had come from the sister of Ting Tzii. 
 
 When Nan Tung brought Chii-po into the courtyard, 
 and left him there, Ch'eng Ping-yang was waiting im- 
 patiently just inside her own door-way, Ch'eng Ko in 
 her arms. When she saw Chii-po she set the baby 
 sharply down on his yellow feet, and as she pushed him 
 through the open doorway she gave the sturdy plump- 
 ness below his spine a sounding spank. It did not hurt 
 him unendurably, but it offended and outraged him in- 
 tensely. And the angry baby ran bleating to Chii-po 
 — whfch was just what his mother had intended him 
 to do. 
 
 Chii-po caught up and cuddled him, and Ping-yang 
 dashed back into the house. 
 
 Ping-yang was almost crying when she burst into the 
 room where her young sister sat sorting skeins of silk. 
 
 "Go — go find it for me, Tzu, go quickly. Ch'eng 
 Hsu will kill me, if he learns I've lost it !" 
 
 Ting Tzii rose slowly. Naturally she had not seen 
 much of the brother-in-law, and was supposed not to 
 have seen him at all. But the gossip of the flowery 
 quarters is detailed and shrewd. The idea of harmless 
 Ch'eng Hsu killing a fly was absurd, let alone his 
 slaughter of the wife that under his mother ruled him. 
 
 "Go where? Lost what?" the girl said lazily, more 
 amused than interested. 
 
62 THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 
 
 "The little dragon of jade he gave me when Ch'eng 
 Ko was born, and swore me always to wear, but never 
 to lose. Go, girl, go and find it quickly, or I shall go 
 mad.'* And Ping-yang sank down on her heels in a 
 frenzy of weeping that seemed to indicate prompt ful- 
 fillment of the prediction of Ch'eng Hsu's wife- 
 slaughter. 
 
 "Where do you think the bauble is ?" Ting Tzu said 
 coolly. 
 
 "Bauble !" screamed Ping-yang. "Oh ! my jade drag- 
 on. Oh ! I tell you find it, Ting Tzu." 
 
 "Where?" 
 
 "I must have dropped it near the sun-dial in the 
 courtyard, near the Hoang Ko tree when Ko was tug- 
 ging at my chains.'* 
 
 Ting Tzu sauntered towards the door. 
 
 "Hurry," Ping-yang begged. 
 
 "It is too hot to hurry." But she sauntered a little 
 less provokingly slowly. 
 
 But Ping-yang sprang up vehemently, and rushing 
 to her, clutched her back. "Not like that," she said in 
 a sharp, business-like voice, pulling a stick pin from 
 Ting Tzu's hair and thrusting it in again at what she 
 considered a more seductive slant. "Wait! Wait, I 
 say, you need more paint !" 
 
 But that was too much. Ting Tzu thrust her off. 
 "You have gone mad," the younger sister mocked. 
 "More paint to go look for an old stick pin in the court- 
 yard. Was it a stick pin though?" she added from the 
 doorway, "or a dangle of your chain?" 
 
 "Yes — ^yes. I mean both !" 
 
 "Indeed! And what kind of jade?" 
 
 "Yes, yes. Any kind." 
 
 Ting Tzu's lazy suspicion was convinced and scoffinj 
 
THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 63 
 
 skepticism now. But she threw her sister a scornful 
 glance, and went off, laughing to herself, to see what 
 was at the sun-dial near the Hoang Ko tree — to see 
 ^vhat hoax Ch'eng Ping-yang was playing now. 
 
 Ch'eng Chu-po was at the sun-dial near the Hoang 
 Ko tree, playing with Ch'eng Ko. 
 
 Ting Tzu saw him before he saw her. She gave a 
 little smothered breath, and went a step nearer him. If 
 he had never seen a girl, she had seen many men young 
 and comely. She had many brothers, and more than 
 once at home and from the curtains of her palanquin 
 had peeped. A tiny smile curved her pretty painted 
 lips. She knew now why Ping-yang had cried out for 
 more rouge, and told her idiotic lies about a bit of jade 
 that was stick pin, neck dangle and both. She took 
 another step, a very cautious step, gave a tiny musical 
 scream, dropped her eyes in great confusion, and stood 
 stock still — one hand clutching her robe above her heart 
 — 2i terrified girl too overcome to retreat or move. 
 
 Ch'eng Chii-po looked up, and Ko fell thump upon 
 the ground — too angry even to cry out. But he might 
 have cried the courtyard down, for all the help he could 
 have wrung from aunt or uncle now. 
 
 Their hour had come. 
 
 There was neither question nor entreaty in Ch*eng 
 Chii-po's blazing eyes. They worshiped, but they 
 claimed her. And as he gazed she lifted her jeweled 
 head and looked at him. 
 
 It was betrothal. 
 
 Neither spoke, or yet thought to speak. There was 
 no need. 
 
 Ch'eng Ko sucked his thumb amazed — too interested 
 now to wail, or assert his outraged dignity. 
 
64 THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 
 
 Ch'eng Chii-po held out a hand. 
 
 Ting Tzu went toward him a step. Birds have gone 
 to snakes so, and sunflowers turned toward the sun. 
 
 Ch*eng Chii-po reached out both arms. 
 
 "My lord!" she whispered to him. 
 
 "Ting Tzu!" he cried at that, and moved on her» 
 but not far — ^with all the passion of his sex and years 
 in face and voice^ — and all the passion of his passion- 
 ate race, all the passion of inviolate manhood patrician 
 bom. 
 
 Ko wriggled fatly afoot, to get a fuller view. 
 
 "Ting Tzu," whispered Chii-po tenderly, as her 
 mother might have done. 
 
 The dark-eyed girl gave a little joyful sob. Then, 
 at a thought, she clapped sudden palms to her face, 
 and ran like a lap-wing into the house. It was genu- 
 ine. She had remembered how little paint she wore, 
 and was shocked and appalled at the indecency of his 
 having seen her so. And Ch'eng Chii-po understood, 
 and loved her better for her modesty. 
 
 She brushed by Ping-yang, inside the door, and 
 would not be caught; but she called over her shoul- 
 der as she fled, "Ch'eng Ko has swallowed your jade 
 dragon." 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 "D ALKED of her sister, Ch'eng Ping-yang betook 
 -^ her to her son. But Ch'eng Ko had found his 
 anger again, and his voice and finger-nails. Twice 
 outraged within an hour! It infuriated him to the 
 proud baby soul of him. He would have none of 
 her. He spat naughty names at her, and toddled off 
 to find Nan Tung. 
 
 Ping-yang crept out to the courtyard. 
 
 Ch'eng Chii-po was standing very still. And when 
 she saw his face, Ping-yang, sex-wise, did not speak 
 to him, but turned and went slowly back. 
 
 She was well pleased at her success. 
 
 At last, she'd made a match. And such a match! 
 
 There might be trouble with Ch'eng Shao Yiin. 
 Probably there would. It was quite impossible to say. 
 Good luck to it, if there were ! It would be her next 
 game to play — her next trick to win. 
 
 All that day Ch'eng Shao Yiin, after she had made 
 time to send for Ting Lo, and welcome him, sat in 
 conference with I Kung Moy. 
 
 Toward sunset they sent for the older mandarin, 
 and late into the night the three sat together, deep 
 in earnest talk — talk of China and her perils, and no 
 word of marriage crept into it. 
 
 A dozen international encroachments shadowed in 
 the air even then, and one or two were well afoot. 
 Japan longed and schemed for some excuse to seize 
 
 <5 
 
66 THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 
 
 Korea, that pointed like a dagger at her throat. Shan* 
 tung and Liatung were marked for pawns in the game 
 that Russia and Germany played, and were only too 
 ready to play bloodily. And in that game, even then, 
 Japan dreamed to take a hand, sharpening deadly 
 weapons stealthily beneath her pretty robes of flower- 
 and-butterfly embroidered silk. England held Hong 
 Kong, and held it arrogantly, newly naming its city 
 and port after England^s own queen, and telling decent 
 Chinese at what hour they must scurry from the free- 
 dom of the streets. 
 
 Strict sense of time is not a Chinese trait. And 
 among the wealthy there is almost none. When they 
 are drowsy or weary they lie down. When they are 
 hungry they eat. And when they talk interminably 
 tossing a subject back and fro — tearing it to tatters, 
 leaving the main issue for ten hundred by-paths — 
 harking back to it again and again — stripping it naked, 
 dressing it in every elaborate garnishment of quota- 
 tion, simile, historical allusion, metaphor, poetical quo- 
 tations, every other sentence loaded with epigram — 
 time ceases to move for them. The cliche has great 
 pride of place on every Chinese tongue. Statesmen, 
 little children, fine ladies and beggar men use com- 
 mon tags of speech, bits of old fable and countless 
 epigrams as surely as they talk. Only Chinese memo- 
 ries could hold the store of common lore, of national 
 philosophy and classic tags of thought and speech 
 that pack the Chinese mind high and low. And only 
 a Chinese mind could have followed the intricacies 
 and digressions of the long converse of Ch'eng Shao 
 Yiin, I Kung Moy and Ting Lo. But for all its seem- 
 ing disj ointment, it was succinct to them — a variegated 
 
THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 6; 
 
 expression of one crisp axiom: The Foreigner must 
 go— and a careful canvass of how to enforce it. 
 
 At its close — for to-day at least — ^it had been agreed 
 that each should contribute a son or grandson — one or 
 more — and much taels to the immediate furtherance of 
 the Cause. 
 
 It was characteristic of Ch'eng Yiin that having ac- 
 cepted the necessity of banishing to Europe much of 
 China's best youth, risking and subjecting them to all 
 that might befall them there, a necessity bitterly re- 
 pugnant to her, she should push hotly to its accom- 
 plishment. I Moy had come to urge her: she urged 
 him now. 
 
 But when there seemed little more to say for the 
 moment on these things, and she clapped her hands 
 for guest-tea to be brought, and the mandarins were 
 about to take the hint — as they must — and go, she 
 turned to the father of her daughter-in-law, and ex- 
 pressed her pleasure that he had brought with him his 
 younger girl. 
 
 And the pleasure she spoke in courtesy might have 
 been sincere enough had but Chii-po kept his chance 
 view to himself. If Ping-yang had not been Ch'eng 
 Shao's favorite daughter-in-law, she had been her least 
 troublesome one, and a marriage between Chii-po and 
 Ting Tzii would fit in rarely with his mother's plans. 
 The girl's dower would be enormous. The girl's an- 
 cestry could not have been bettered. And here was 
 an unforced opportunity at hand to see the girl's per- 
 son, and study her character for herself before in- 
 itiating a proposal from which it might be awkward 
 to withdraw. But Chii-po's ill-advised display of will- 
 ingness made Ch'eng Shao Yiin strangely unwilling 
 
68 THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 
 
 for the match. However, the girl was here, and she 
 might as well have a look at her. Indeed, hospitality 
 and the merest politeness demanded that and more. 
 So when Ting left Ch'eng Shao Yiin he took a gra- 
 cious message, saying that on the morrow they should 
 meet. 
 
 Ting Tzii had been surprised that the message had 
 not come before, and Ping-yang was affronted by the 
 delay, and for that all the more determined to cir- 
 cumvent the opposition from Ch'eng Yiin, which she 
 foresaw, to the consummation of the match she had 
 so successfully made. 
 
 Ch'eng Shao Yun would have preferred to take Ting 
 Tzu unaware, by running across her at some unusual 
 hour in Ping-yang's quarters. But she concluded to be- 
 gin with no such flagrant breach of etiquette her ac- 
 quaintance with a girl so high born and who might 
 become the first wife of her favorite son — though she 
 had practically determined that the girl should not. 
 
 She knew that this was weakness on her part; 
 and she despised it. But Ch'eng Shao Yiin had taken 
 her own way too long to be thwarted of it even by 
 herself. She had determined to send Chii-po to Eng- 
 land because she loved him less than she loved China, 
 and to part with him, to lose him even, would hurt 
 her less than it would to refrain from any possible 
 service to China. And, if China were to be benefited 
 by this new hideous means, the house of Ch'eng must 
 not be left out of the priesthood of the sacrificial move- 
 ment. And, if a Ch'eng were sent, it must be the 
 best of all the Ch'engs. But in the selection of a bride 
 she felt no such compulsion to scourge herself. It 
 uras for her to select, and for Chii-po to accept. And 
 she intended that it should be so. 
 
THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 69 
 
 Chii-po had made no attempt to see Ting Tzu again. 
 The sisters had expected it, and Nan Tung had hov- 
 ered near his door and across his path, ready to take 
 a token or a word. Chii-po understood why he ran 
 across the handmaid so often in one day, but he gave 
 no sign. And, fortunately, it did not occur to him 
 that her mistress had given her the cue — still less that 
 Ting Tzu was party to the ruse. Nor was Ting Tzu. 
 Chii-po's name had not passed her pretty painted lips, 
 nor any hint of him. 
 
 The Chinese boy was finer than his women-folk. He 
 had been glad of the encounter that had confirmed his 
 infatuation of the previous day. But he had no wish 
 to press farther a clandestine suit. He had her prom- 
 ise, and she had accepted his. That was fixed and 
 firm, although no word had passed beyond his whisper 
 of her name, her whisper of "My lord." It was ecstasy 
 to know that they were bound — indissolubly bound, 
 and that they mutually acknowledged it, and mutually 
 rejoiced. But all the rest should be done in propriety, 
 as his ancestors and hers had been wedded for three 
 thousand years. He had no wish to see Ting Tzii 
 again, or hear her voice, until he lifted the red veil 
 from her face on their marriage hour. If another 
 meeting now had been offered him in plainer terms, he 
 would have avoided it. And had her shadow fallen 
 upon the grass when he walked by the tulip beds, he 
 would have turned his eyes aside, and strode away. 
 While they lived he would not yield her or his right 
 in her. Nothing should move him from that. But 
 he would not approach her until marriage — scarcely 
 with a thought — or suffer her to be cheapened. But 
 when he learned that she and Ping-yang were going 
 at noon to the temple in the bamboo grove, he hurried 
 
70 THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 
 
 to the path beside the flamingoes' house where sho 
 must pass, and strewed it with jessamine flowers — not 
 ostentatiously, but here and there a spray that might all 
 have fallen from some careless hand — that he might go 
 there again and find perhaps some spray her foot had 
 crushed. 
 
 Nan Tung, watching, saw him do it. But she told 
 no one but Ah S5ng, not even Ch'eng Ping-yang, and 
 Ah Song told no one. 
 
 And when passing by the yellow oleanders Ch'eng 
 Ping-yang exclaimed and bent down to lift up a spray 
 of jessamine — Nan Tung stayed her with a cry. The 
 lady must not, it was ill-luck. And Ping-yang, as 
 superstitious as any living woman, obeyed. But Ting 
 Tzu said, "What nonsense. Where is it written? No- 
 where, I think. We have no such warning in ChiWi," 
 and bent down and lifted up the spray, and smelling it 
 drew it across her face, and tucked it at her throat. 
 And another spray, that she did not see, she trod upon 
 and crushed a little with her light foot. 
 
 And Nan Tung fell behind giggling. 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 TT was the same day that the three^ — Ch'eng Yiin 
 -■• and her guests — sat in such long conclave, that 
 Ping-yang and her sister went to the temple to pray, 
 to deck it with a lotus flower at the old god's feet, and 
 to fume it with joss-sticks. The old year had but two 
 days to run, and on New Year's Day all must be in 
 order for the gods, and all slight earth enmities for- 
 sworn, all earth debts paid. And still more must tem- 
 ples be swept and decked, and gods appeased when the 
 Feast of Lanterns — but seventeen days off now — 
 dawned. 
 
 The old joss sat on a pedestal, and Ting Tzu tip- 
 toed up to stare him in the face. It was wonderful 
 how the little mutilated feet — just one toe each— could 
 do it. But they did. And Ting Tzu swayed in perfect 
 balance leisurely, and took a good, long look. 
 
 "He needs a new coat of paint," she said disgust- 
 edly, tottering down on to her heels, "and lots of gilt." 
 
 "Our gods all do," Ping-yang answered with a shrug. 
 "They are all a shabby sight. I wouldn't keep a coolie 
 so. But Ch'eng Shao Yiin is angry with the gods, and 
 keeps them so for punishment." 
 
 Ting Tzu was a pious little thing, but she was in 
 no humor to join in criticism of the lady mother of 
 Ch'eng Chii-po. "The gods must do their part," she 
 said. 
 
 "They have to here," Ch'eng Ping-yang laughed, 
 "or go like poor Wealth God, and worse. See," and 
 
 71 
 
72 THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 
 
 she touched a deq) welt in the lacquer shoulder of the 
 god, "Ch'eng Yiin thrashed him well one day. And 
 I have heard her threaten to burn him." 
 
 Ting Tzu was plainly shocked. But she only said 
 gently, *1 shouldn't like to burn a god." But she tip- 
 toed up again and dusted the Wealth God's grimy nose 
 with her scarf, and touched his long, ugly scar com- 
 passionately. "Never mind," she whispered as she lit 
 another bundle of incense, and stuck it where the slight- 
 est breeze must puff its delicious sweetness up to the 
 worn and paintless nose, "you shall have a new coat, 
 a very bright new coat of paint, and lots of finest gilt 
 some day." And then blushing furiously at what the 
 promise implied of her future power in the temples of 
 the Ch'engs, she plumped down on her heels and was 
 lost in prayer. 
 
 "Trusting a foreigner is *like climbing a tree to 
 catch a fish,' " Ch'eng Y-iin was saying, when Ting Tzu 
 had bent down and picked up a yellow jessamine spray, 
 and she was saying the self -same thing two hours 
 later when Ch'eng Chu-po slipped through the ole- 
 ander trees, and caught up a spray of jessamine from 
 the grass. 
 
 It was early next day when Ch'eng Shao Yiin sent 
 for Ting Tzu. The girl was glad to go, and rose, shy 
 but eager, when the message came. She had grown 
 a little impatient waiting for the courtesy. Ch'eng 
 Yiin bade Ping-yang to her presence too, but Ping- 
 yang was seized with a sudden cramp, pressed her 
 hands to her head, and toddled moaning to her own 
 room, sending a humble message to her husband's 
 mother by Ch'eng Hsu. Then she clapped her hands 
 
THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 73 
 
 for Nan Tung to let down all the blinds, all but half 
 of one nearest her mat, then bring her a novel and a 
 gorge of rich sweetmeats. And Ting Tzu went in to 
 Ch'eng Yiin alone. 
 
 The stricken Ping-yang dearly would have liked to 
 have gone too, and listen and watch. But as the elder 
 and married sister etiquette would have obliged Yiin 
 to address to her most of her remarks and attention, 
 and Ping-yang contentedly secure of the impression 
 the child would make, and divining too that Ting Tzu 
 would be less embarrassed so, resigned herself to soli- 
 tude — which she hated — to cramp and to sv/eetmeats. 
 
 And so Ting Tzu went in alone. 
 
 The girl was frightened and very shy. But she 
 was happy. 
 
 Ting Tzu was prepared to love. 
 
 Ch'eng Shao Yiin was prepared to hate. 
 
 Sometimes love conquers hate. Sometimes hate con-* 
 quers love. 
 
 Ch'eng Yiin had made but little toilet. Why should 
 she? Even to herself she would not acknowledge that 
 the visitor she had sent for was, in any sense, a rival. 
 Ch'eng Yiin dressed with care and splendidly for guests 
 of importance, for Chu-po always, and for the gods, 
 when they were good, but by no chance for a little girl 
 who came but for an hour. 
 
 She sat on a low dais at the carved and cushioned 
 divan's farther side — alone but for blind Ah Song,, 
 who sat in the shadow of the divan tatting noise- 
 lessly. 
 
 Yes — the girl was beautiful. Ch'eng Yiin could but 
 see it at a glance. The robe of violet satin embroidered 
 with lemon chrysanthemum flowers and gray-green 
 leaves, slashed open above a vest and trousers of bright 
 
74 THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 
 
 delicate green, turquoise-sewn and tied with silver 
 cords, each end a pearl, and the jewels that she wore 
 — rings, nail protectors, buttons sparkling on her coat, 
 and all the gems pendant from her hair were rich and 
 beautiful, even in China. But they were little to the 
 girl. And with all her Chinese worship of beauty 
 speaking in her veins, Ch'eng Yiin found the friendly, 
 lovely eyes a little hard to hate. And the child's car- 
 riage was as faultless as her face. Even in dingy, 
 soiled sackcloth she must have looked unmistakably 
 what Chii-po had proudly called her : a lady girl. The 
 jessamine in her hair was no sweeter than her timid 
 smile. And when Ch'eng Yiin looked down sharply 
 at the other's feet, she almost smiled, her face grew 
 a little more amiable, and Ah Song knew that her sigh 
 was one of relief. The feet of Ting Tzii were just a 
 shade larger than the feet of Ch'eng Shao Yiin. 
 
 That they had been well bound the woman knew 
 the instant she saw her move. Ting Tzu swayed like 
 a zephyr-buffeted lily as she came, but she neither stag- 
 gered nor splodged. Ting Tzu was mistress of her 
 feet. And when Yiin spoke to her, she answered in 
 a voice that was startlingly sweet. No wonder Chii-po 
 had lost his silly head. What must he not have done, 
 if he had heard that scented, silver voice? 
 
 Ch'eng Yiin bade Ting Tzu to a seat, and when all 
 the needed ceremonial things had been said, she ques- 
 tioned her, "How do you like Ho-nan?" 
 
 "Here," Ting Tzu told her, "and for leagues before 
 we reached your honorable gates, it is more beautiful 
 even than my own home. But my honorable father, 
 who has traveled much, tells me that all China is very 
 beautiful" 
 
THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 75 
 
 "In which province would you wish to live when 
 you are wedded ?" Yiin said graciously. 
 
 Ting Tzu reddened a little beneath her paint — she 
 was well painted to-day — but the eyes lifted to the 
 shrewder woman's eyes did not flinch. 'That/' she 
 answered quietly, "is as my honorable father pleases." 
 
 "But have you had no dream — of a province?" 
 
 "Of a province, honorable lady, oh, yes. I have 
 dreamed always of Shantung." 
 
 "Why?" Ch'eng Yiin said sharply. 
 
 "That I might live in the province of the holy crys- 
 tal tree," the girl said softly. 
 
 Ah Song laid her tatting on the checkered floor, and 
 rose and stood near Ting Tzii. 
 
 "Shantung!" exclaimed Ch'eng Yiin, "there are 
 devils dicing for Shantung — devils that live on a river 
 called the Rhine, devils from Nippo, and for all I know 
 from France and England too." 
 
 "They must be killed, then," Ting Tzu said proudly. 
 And hatred had had a blow — beneath the belt perhaps. 
 But often it is so that women hit. 
 
 Ah Song sat down on the floor, and touched with 
 her hand Ting Tzu's little padded shoe. And the girl 
 looked down, and knowing her history, she laid her 
 finger tips just a moment on the blind woman's face. 
 Ch'eng Shao Yiin liked the girl for that. Oh! her 
 blood told — ^there was no denying that. 
 
 Presently Ti-to-ti left his mistress's side, and came 
 and looked up at the visitor with a little yelped request. 
 
 "May I?" Ting Tzu asked Ch'eng Yiin prettily. 
 
 Yun nodded pleasantly. She began to Hke the girl, 
 in spite of herself — and to like her very much. 
 
 Ting Tzu hesitated to caress or lift the tiny plead- 
 
76 THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 
 
 ing creature because of the fineness of her breeding 
 — and from a natural instinct of deference to a woman 
 older than herself, and her hostess. The little Chi- 
 nese girl was but a child and worldly green. This 
 visit was more of a social function than had fallen 
 to her before. But her ancestors had been gentle for 
 hundreds of years. But her little natural courtesy had 
 an especial appeal to Ch'eng Yiin, among whose sharp 
 traits was a violent resentment of any touching of a 
 personal belonging of her own — above all a living 
 belonging. 
 
 The girl lifted the tiny wriggling creature, and cud- 
 dled his soft curly head under her chin. And Ti-to-ti's 
 big bulging beads of eyes almost bulged out of their 
 sockets with gratification, and his tiny tail beat a vio- 
 lent ecstasy against her breast. And Ch'eng Shao 
 Yun could but read it for an augury, for Ti-to-ti rarely 
 made friends, and he was very psychic. 
 
 She kept the girl with her more than an hour, and 
 questioned her mercilessly. What had she read ? Could 
 she write the grass characters rapidly and exactly? 
 What were her accomplishments? Did her feet ever 
 hurt? Did she like jewels best, or birds and flowers? 
 The one ornament in the room was a porcelain ewer 
 of thin, crisp Ming ware of the L'ung Ch'ing period, 
 with a long rustic spout, and the characteristic faint 
 green glaze over its white surface, and silvery-blue 
 panels of figure subjects; a graceful, priceless thing 
 the Ch^engs had owned for more than three hundred 
 years. Ch'eng Yiin bade Ting Tzu take it up and feel 
 its glaze — and say what she thought of it. 
 
 All this would have been a rudeness, and perhaps 
 a cruelty, from an Occidental woman — and an embar- 
 rassment, if not an angering to an English girL But 
 
THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 77 
 
 Ting Tzu took it in the best of all good part. She 
 approved it cordially, conscious that just so carefully 
 would she catechize a girl she thought to ask in mar- 
 riage for her son, should the gods bless her to have 
 a son to her lord Ch'eng Chii-po — as no doubt they 
 would. For she had learned his name from lisping 
 Ch'eng Ko. 
 
 She took the porcelain gravely, and chatted happily 
 of ceramics, and of the greater arts which they but 
 reflected. And when Ch'eng Yiin bade her play and 
 sing, she rose instantly and selected a lute from the 
 instruments lying on a window ledge, and to its accom- 
 paniment sang a silvery staccato song. 
 
 And again, in spite of Ch'eng Yiin, she pleased 
 Ch'eng Yun. For it was not the amorous love song 
 that the woman had half expected — and that most Chi- 
 nese girls would have sung, knowing few else — that 
 Ting Tzu sang, but an old classic thing, vestal simple 
 and sweet, about the stars and trees. 
 
 Ch'eng Yiin nodded approval. Then, testing her 
 taste once more — and liking her voice, bade Tzu sing 
 again. 
 
 And Ting Tzu sang a little song of Spring that Wei 
 Ying-wu had written twenty-seven centuries before : — 
 
 "When freshets cease in early spring and the river dwindles 
 
 low 
 I take my staff and wander by the banks where wild flowers 
 
 grow. 
 I watch the willow catkins wildly whirled on every side; 
 I watch the falling peachbloom lightly floating down the 
 
 tide." 
 
 Then Ch'eng Shao Yiin called for the guest-tea, 
 which bade the girl go. And she went happily and 
 
78 THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 
 
 happy — delighted with the mother of lord Ch'eng 
 Chii-po. And when she slept that night she dreamed 
 that the room was full of wild ducks, circling o'er her 
 head, and that beneath them Ch'eng Chii-po bent over 
 her with eyes aflame, smiling at her through a mist of 
 crimson gauze. 
 
 But Ch'eng Shao Y.iin, when the door panel had 
 closed in again, rested her face in covering hands, and 
 sat a long, long time lost in thought and jealousy. 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 NO other people work at once so hard and so 
 sanely as the Chinese do. Almost every month 
 has its holiday-break, and, if the lives of the hard- 
 working populace were not so punctuated and their 
 tremendous toil so punctured, it seems improbable that 
 even Chinese grit could stand the enormous strain to 
 which Chinese industry subjects it. 
 
 New Year's Day is the great obligatory day of feast 
 and fuss. Debts must be paid before the New Year 
 dawns. And every one must eat and play. No one 
 may toil. iWomen in labor and silk worms about to 
 hatch must have some tendance. But nothing indus- 
 trial that is avoidable may be performed. China halts 
 for the day, and stands at attention before her history 
 and her gods. 
 
 To commit suicide during the great month of New 
 Year festival would be too heinous a selfishness, and, 
 far worse, it would be bad form. And to no people 
 is bad form so impossible as to the Chinese. Even 
 to die is scarcely pardonable — to be avoided, or put 
 off, by every possible device of ingenuity. In 1875 
 the Emperor died on the fifteenth day of the Chinese 
 year, and the entailed omission of the Lantern ob- 
 servances was as heavy a national calamity, as acute 
 a grief, as the death of the imperial boy itself. No 
 profusion of lamps might be outhung on street or 
 building, from the inn's pretty balconies, in private 
 park or on country path. None might wear best robes. 
 
 79 
 
8o THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 
 
 Indeed not one mark of the sacred feast might be 
 taken except an inordinate, and ahnost private gorging 
 of the traditional sugared mince-meat balls. And for 
 months the national temper and stout tranquillity suf- 
 fered from having lacked the tonic stimulant of the ac- 
 customed relaxation and inspiration. 
 
 The Chinese are supposed to like noise because they 
 make it so intensely. But this, as almost everything 
 else said of Qiina in our generous Christendom — is 
 ignorant and libel. The unutterable noise made at 
 every Chincce festival is but a loud precaution to scare 
 the devils away. Devils are great cowards and brain- 
 less too, as every Chinese knows. The screen set 
 before the dwelling's outer entrance, or just within 
 it, serves to keep the demons out, only because they 
 lack the wit to swerve a little to the left or right, and 
 pass it so. The youngest Chinese babe that has learned 
 to toddle, the dullest Chinese dolt, is never thwarted 
 for a moment by the devil-screen, but navigates se- 
 renely past it without an instant's loss of time. And 
 the most devilish devil of all the black art dares not 
 face the incredible, hideous noise of a Chinese fes- 
 tival, but picks up his wicked tail and horns and 
 claws, and runs and runs and runs from the onslaught 
 of such terrific din. Small boys and tender girls in 
 America fire off fiendish fire-crackers, fearsome tor- 
 pedoes and sizzing rockets in honor of sacred liberty. 
 Children in England do it in vindication of young 
 misrule and in imitation of older drolls. But, in 
 China, gray beards, priests and princes do it to drive 
 the evil spirits cowed away. 
 
 New Year is the national carnival of noise. Even 
 the more elaborate fireworks, that scream and paint 
 the New Year's night, spattering the Chinese sky with 
 
THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 81 
 
 ten thousand cascades of noisy stars and lurid flam' 
 ing caricatures of a thousand famiHar things, are 
 let loose to the dark more in rebuke of evil spirit things 
 than for pleasuring of the gaping, living populace. 
 
 New Year festivities begin at the rising of the yearns 
 first moon. No debt must be still unpaid when that 
 slender crescent breaks palely through the night. And 
 then the month-long orgie of gift-giving begins, and 
 the noisy and furious keepings of the New Year reek 
 and reel on to end in the Feast of Lanterns. 
 
 The Feast of Lanterns is the beauty-keeping time 
 of the Chinese, and every item of its observance is 
 full of significance and of soul. It had its birth two 
 thousand years ago when the Hun dynasty ruled over 
 China. At first it was a formal ceremonial rite of 
 worship performed in the temple of the First Cause. 
 It lasted three days then. Now it lasts six, and has 
 grown from its strict religious beginning to what it 
 is now, the home festival, the most elaborate expres- 
 sion of Chinese art and artifice, of Chinese observance 
 and belief, of Chinese spirit and hope — of Chinese 
 brotherhood, peace and good will. It had no lanterns 
 and no name of Lanterns on its old first day — for 
 China then was lanternless. It began on the thirteenth 
 of the first moon and ended on the sixteenth, bringing 
 to an end then, as now, all the explosive festivities of 
 the New Yearns festival; visits, feasts and shrill up- 
 roar. The moon at its full round was the light by 
 which the devout sacrificed and prayed to the great 
 First Cause, with an excess of ritual which even Egypt 
 never surpassed. For eight hundred years they kept it 
 as at first, and then the lanterns came — the lovely, 
 eloquent lanterns that are now as characteristic of 
 China as is any inanimate thing, specking with quaint 
 
82 THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 
 
 beauty, drenching with fantastic shapes of light, her 
 every night, her palace parks, her lonely mountain 
 paths, the banks of her heaving Yellow Sorrow, her 
 precipices, her barnyards and her glens, and with their 
 pretty parti-colored outlining make every Chinese street 
 of night-merchandise a votive grotto and a fair. An- 
 other three hundred years and the beloved festival — 
 the Chinese love it best of all — was stretched by some 
 days, and so — as now — ^when Ting Tzu and her father 
 kept it in the home of the Ch'engs — it lasted full six 
 days and nights. The third day of the Feast of Lan- 
 terns is its great day of all, and on the nineteenth of 
 the moon, at dawn, China bends again her strong yel- 
 low back and takes up the heavy workaday burdens 
 of common daily life. 
 
 I Kung Moy had gone on the second day of the 
 year. On New Year's Day itself he could not travel 
 — and his business with the lady Ch'eng iiad kept him 
 in Ho-nan till then — but Ting Lo and his girl lingered 
 still — the mandarin nothing loath, and urged by Ch'eng 
 Shao Yiin. She was not ill-pleased to show him how 
 the House of Ch'eng kept holiday, and he was glad 
 to be the longer with Ping-yang, and glad to keep from 
 home, because of a new young wife who was a shrew, 
 and had made of the Lanterns' last feast a penance 
 and a scourge. December and June mate more hap- 
 pily in China than elsewhere, because Chinese age is 
 virile and well-knit, and Chinese youth is deft and 
 content. But even in China such union is but make- 
 shift at best, and a desperate gamble always. It had 
 worked badly in the yamen and in the home of Ting 
 Lo. And this, his absence from home at the Feast 
 of Lanterns, was almost without precedent. It is the 
 
THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 83 
 
 one time in the year when every Chinese wills and 
 tries to be at home. 
 
 And it is the Chinese time of woman's public license. 
 Within her "flowery quarters" she has extraordinary 
 license all the time. But during the Lantern Feast 
 she may mingle freely in the crowds of men — even 
 unveiled, if she will, unless herself a stickler and of 
 highest rank — going on foot, or carried in her litter, 
 to see and swell the laughing, chattering throng, and 
 all the sumptuous show, and masque of light. 
 
 All was in readiness. The cakes were baked, and 
 the lanterns hung. The cakes were piled in mountains, 
 heaped in thousands on lacquer trays: the flat round 
 moon-cakes, crisp, wafer-thin, honey sw^eetened disks 
 — and the small white globes of sugar-covered mince- 
 meat that are sacred to the feast. These are cere- 
 monial balls and are made with the greatest care and 
 exactitude, of one perfect snowy white, round as a 
 billiard ball and about two-thirds its size. For days 
 the Ch'eng kitchens had been busied with their pretty 
 manufacture, and in every home in China some at 
 least were made. And the greedy kitchen gods licked 
 their fat lips in hungry anticipation, for to the kitchen 
 gods always are given the first batch of the Lantern 
 cakes else would they be tough and bring cramp. They 
 are the one item of the Lantern feasting never omitted. 
 Even if an Emperor lies newly dead — as in 1875 — 
 and every other detail of the great play-time is fore- 
 gone, the cakes are made and are eaten in incredible 
 quantities. The lower class and middle class Chinese, 
 and many of those in purple born, eat melon seeds all 
 the time. But once a year, all China to a tooth, de- 
 
84 THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 
 
 vours the round, white lantern cakes. The day before 
 Ch'eng Ko and his mother already had devoured some 
 pounds of them — she had helped to make them, with 
 her sleeves tucked away from her arms — from dimpled 
 wrist to dimpled elbow — from elbow to dimpled shoul- 
 der; and before the festival was as many hours old 
 as his years, Ko had crunched and swallowed so many 
 of the sick-sweet things that his little yellow belly 
 stuck out from him as round and hard as they. 
 
 The decorating of the grounds and of the houses, 
 Ch'eng Shao Yiin supervised herself. A Chinese in- 
 terior must be sparsely adorned, lest beauty jostle 
 beauty, and jostling clash. One flower in one fine vase, 
 and the finest room in China is adorned enough. But 
 at festival time every tree, every shrub and bridge, 
 every point from which anything will hang, to which 
 anything can be fastened out of doors, is begilt and 
 bespattered with streamers, artificial flowers, strips of 
 gilt and festoons of lanterns. 
 
 Many Chinese lanterns are costly and veritable works 
 of art. Some hanging gayly now, roped and garlanded 
 from tree to tree, coolies had brought in hundreds 
 from K'ai-feng Fu and Ch'en-Chow Fu but the other 
 day. Others were heirlooms kept with the family jades 
 and bronze, and almost as valuable. 
 
 Those not reserved for the procession of the great 
 night, she had festooned about the place for criss- 
 crossed miles. It was important that the pretty, 
 painted, pendent baubles should be so arranged as to 
 give the greatest pleasure to the onlooking spirits of 
 the dead, who at this time at least moved and lived 
 again with their kindred. And so Ch'eng Yiin ar- 
 ranged and rearranged till, of the hundred helpers 
 who worked with her, every back and arm ached but 
 
THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 8 J 
 
 her indefatigable own. Nor was this work alone for 
 hireling hands. Taste was as essential as strength. 
 Her sons worked with her, and even their wives. And 
 for this one festival the women of the harems darted 
 busily here and there on their tiny, nimble feet — veiled, 
 of course, but not so thickly that they could not see 
 to do all the intricacies of her bidding. And many a 
 veil slipped off; and no one cared — least of all Ch'eng 
 Shao Yiin, a tyrannous stickler for decorum and tra- 
 dition where neither interfered with the common sense 
 and business of the hour, but as ruthless on occasion 
 in her disregard of etiquette and others' opinion, as of 
 the disinfavored gods. Ting Tzu tripped beside her, 
 silent, a little in her wake. Ting Tzu was closely 
 veiled — for she was not at home here, and would 
 take no license of her maiden state. But the veil 
 thinned a little across her eyes — and as she walked 
 she smoked. It was easy enough to slip the slender 
 stem of her tiny -bowled pipe between the edges of 
 her pearl sewn veil. She held it decorously together 
 with one little gem-heavy hand, and with the other she 
 managed her jeweled pipe, emptying it with a quick 
 twist of her wrist, and filling it again, from the em- 
 broidered pouch hanging at her girdle, every few mo- 
 ments; for the diminutive bowl held but a pinch of 
 the silky, scented tobacco. And she took no part in 
 the work — that was a family toil, for Ch'eng hands, 
 and liegemen of the Ch'eng. Perhaps she'd help next 
 year. And at the thought she sighed a little, remem- 
 bering that she might never keep the feast again in 
 her childhood's home, or hang her silken lanterns on 
 the tulip trees that sentineled her father's doors. It 
 had been such a happy, happy home until her father's 
 new young wife had come. And even so her father. 
 
86 THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 
 
 for her sake, defied the pretty shrew now and then, 
 as he had in coming here and bringing Tzu with him. 
 
 Chii-po held aloof. He had never cared to work 
 with his hands. He sat for the most part on the 
 fantastic stone railing of a bridge or on some carved 
 stone seat, and tweaked his lute. And when they 
 were near enough, his mother called to him for com- 
 ment or advice, and he called them gayly back. But 
 he never looked at Ting Tzu, or she toward him. 
 And at last he went away — and they saw him no more 
 that day. 
 
 On the roofs and crevices of the silkworm houses, 
 Ch'eng Yun suffered no lanterns to be hung, lest the 
 light and the myriad candles' heat should creep in and 
 harm the delicate brooding worms. But festoons of 
 rich scented flowers, orange blossoms, arbutus, sweet 
 laurel-like tung ch'ing holly, and the perfumed blos- 
 soms and lovely tinted foliage of the tallow tree, she 
 had hung there instead. For the silkworms love every 
 sweet fragrance, and it nourishes them. 
 
 When your feet have taken silk, and they are happier 
 than they have ever been before, do you ever give 
 a thought to the nun-like girls in China that were 
 foster-mothers to the delicate wormlings that spun your 
 stockings' super-silk? 
 
 The story of silk is the story of a woman's move- 
 ment, and a womanly movement — not always quite the 
 same thing. Men are interlopers in sericulture, and 
 somewhat recent ones. They have been useful along 
 the line of its commercial development; but the honor 
 and the history belong to women. 
 
 Silk was born in China. A little Chinese girl prob- 
 ably discovered it a few thousands of years ago when 
 she, under a mulberry tree, sat playing jackstones with 
 
THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 87 
 
 a handful of cocoons. And a Chinese queen gave the 
 infant industry her patronage and her labor, cherished 
 and cultivated the silkworms, planted the mulberry 
 groves, invented the loom. And for centuries the royal 
 women of China tended and developed the cult in all 
 its branches — silkworm farms, dyeing, weaving — until 
 the sericulture that began in one royal woman's in- 
 terest and patriotism became, as it still is, the imperial 
 art of an imperial people. 
 
 China may play at a Republic, may masquerade 
 as a democracy; but she can no more slough her an- 
 cestry, or permanently betray it, than she can roughen 
 and coarsen the imperial fabric of her silk looms by 
 calling it "cottons made in Manchester." China is an 
 Empire, and her workmanship and her silks are im- 
 perial. 
 
 No other silks approach them. To the silks of China, 
 the silks of Japan are as cheap glass is to jade. 
 
 From its dawn, women have been as potent in 
 China's history as men have. And, as a rule, the 
 greater the Emperor the greater in personality and 
 in influence have been his mother and his wife. 
 
 The Lady of Si-Ling — ^probably one of the three 
 most celebrated Chinese women, the wife of Huang-Ti, 
 the Emperor who reigned in China twenty-six cen- 
 turies before Christ, and who was the arch-patron, and 
 in many ways the father, of Chinese agriculture — gave 
 the first great impetus to the silk industry of China. 
 She grew mulberry trees, and encouraged the people 
 high and low to do so. She studied and improved 
 the rearing of the worms, and the reeling of the silk. 
 She herself invented the loom and perfected it for the 
 patterned weaving of the beautiful silken webs, which 
 were sold for more than their weig^ht in gold, not only 
 
88 THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 
 
 in Persia and in India, but in distant luxury-loving 
 Greece. She gave her personal time an i the work of 
 her own hands to the lovely industry, as has almost 
 every Chinese Empress since. Even the famous Dowa- 
 ger Empress of our day — the most libeled woman in 
 history — found time to tend her worms and use her 
 loom. And it has been the invariable practice of the 
 ladies of the Chinese Court, the women of the no- 
 bility, and the peasant women of the far-off, far-scat- 
 tered countrysides, to ply regularly some part of the 
 exacting industry. 
 
 Chinese girls, scantily clad that they may be ex* 
 quisitely sensitive to the slightest change of tempera^ 
 ture, watch over and time all the stages of the silk- 
 womi^s Hfe. From the time the first worm is hatched 
 until the last has spun its cocoon they require skillful 
 and absolutely unremitting attention. The shed must 
 be well ventilated, weatherproof, and in every particu- 
 lar scrupulously clean. The attendant girls must be 
 quiet, cheerful, gentle and even in their movements, 
 clean in person and sweet of breath. They must live 
 on simple, unscented food. One strong whiff of garlic 
 will ruin, if it does not kill, the finer silkworms, and 
 injure the coarsest. The silk girls may live on honey 
 and rose leaves if they like, but they must never eat 
 onions or ginger. 
 
 In some silkworm houses — in Sze-Chuen, for in- 
 stance — for greater warmth, the best cocoons are shel- 
 tered in her own bosom by the attendant girl, and 
 after that she must be quiet indeed. There are nuns 
 in China, holy women for the most part, leading clois- 
 tered lives, but their daily life is worldly and vibrant 
 compared to that of the silk-girls. 
 
THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 89 
 
 For centuries the Chinese guarded all the secrets of 
 their sericulture well. Even yet some of them are 
 closely kept. And the perfection of Chinese manipu- 
 lation cannot be approached. 
 
 A Chinese Princess, marrying an Indian Prince, car- 
 ried in the lining of her head-dress silkworm eggs and 
 mulberry tree seed to India, and, from that, silk and 
 silk industries spread over the world. 
 
 Ho-nan is not a province of the richest silks. It 19 
 the province of wild silk. But the indefatigability o£ 
 Ch'eng Yiin had wrought miracle in the sericulture of 
 the estate. Her silks were noted now, and not even 
 for the pleasuring of the sainted dead would she risk 
 the welfare of her pregnant worms. Besides the 
 flower-hung break in the wilderness of lamps would 
 give relief and variety to the eyes of the spirits, as 
 to their nostrils; and it would make an oasis and a 
 fragrant sanctuary for the outshone fire-flies, the 
 **lamps-of -mercy" that lit so many a poor pilgrim on 
 his perilous, candleless path across the steep hillsides 
 to the copper-roofed temples in the north, and the fire- 
 flies would hang their own festoons of jeweled lights 
 about the matted roofs of che thatched palace of the 
 worms. 
 
 At dusk she ordered all to rice and sleep. And most 
 of her servitors did sleep — dog-tired from her cap- 
 taining. 
 
 The day broke clear, but for that season and place, 
 cold. And many a woman shivered as she hurried at 
 that cold moment just before the dawn to the temple 
 where she chose to pray. The temples were the 
 women's until the dials and the water-clocks warned 
 
90 THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 
 
 the approach of eight, and then any man that would, 
 could seek a god without risk of brushing some close- 
 veiled figure as it flitted back from prayer to rice. 
 
 When Ping-yang and Ting Tzu came into Ping's 
 own court-yard, just as the delicate first outriders of 
 the sun were opaling all the sky with molten wisps of 
 rose and green, they saw it as if fairy hands had 
 decked it in the night. The grass was widely lozenged 
 with strips of silken carpeting. A thousand tiny lan- 
 terns hung — not yet lit, of course — about its house- 
 enclosed sides. A great Ch'ien Lung vase nearly as 
 tall as Ping-yang and chin-high to Ting Tzu stood 
 near the Hoang Ko tree. The big vase was full to 
 its brim with attar, wasting in pungent, cloyed sweet- 
 ness a fortune in the air. A mat of woven jessamine 
 flowers, pink, lemon and white, and their bright gray- 
 green leaves lay before the vase. An open book and 
 a gemmed and silver lute lay on the fragrant mat. 
 And the old sundial was an altar with a throng of 
 worshiping flowers. For unHt tapers, tiny ivory bells 
 hung circled on the dial's upmost rim making soft 
 music ripples of tinkling love and prayer at every 
 slightest pulsing of the day's fresh breath. And on 
 the dial's old flat face, a red rose, still wet with dew, 
 pointed the hour when the great glittering procession 
 would form and pass with music across the estate 
 from gate to gate, circling twice the lotus lake. 
 
 Ting Tzii bent above the dial, and drank the roses* 
 breathed-out wine. But Nan Tung, sitting stolid a 
 pace away, mending a shoe of Ch'eng Ko's — though 
 none should work to-day — neither looked up nor spoke 
 — and neither sister questioned her, "Who has done 
 this thing?" — but when they had gone out through the 
 doorway that led presently to the dwellin^^^'s door, and 
 
THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 91 
 
 Nan Tung saw that Ting Tzu had dropped a bit of 
 honey-suckle, she went and picked it up — and hid it in 
 the baby's shoe, and hurried through another door. 
 
 By seven the whole domain was in a hum of merri- 
 ment and ecstasy. Even in the open, great bundles 
 of joss sticks burned down to their light stems, to be 
 replaced by others before they went out, and heaping 
 all the grass and paths with little hills of white ash. 
 
 Pageant followed sports, and sports followed pa- 
 geant, all day long. Every one munched white sugared 
 mincemeat balls, and every one was glad and gay — 
 and there was no silence in all the place except in 
 the acres where the cocoon sheds stood. But it was 
 decorous merriment, with an added courtesy beyond 
 the quiet courtesy which is the garment and the nerve 
 of Chinese daily life — for the dead were here to-day, 
 threading their kindly, silent way among the teeming 
 human things, watching and enjoying all. It was 
 for these spirit guests, ancestral and honored, that 
 the incense burned, that no grosser man-smells should 
 by any chance offend the nostrils of the gracious ghosts. 
 Fire-crackers crackled out in fearsome burst, and 
 drums threatened rattlingly — not for the coarse amuse 
 ment of living ears, but to affright and drive every 
 evil, prowling entity away, lest they profane the pres- 
 ence of the beloved dead, or injure or annoy them. 
 
 Even the silkworm girls were here, in glad-eyed 
 relays. Ah Song was in charge of the worms to-day, 
 with only now and then a handful of girls slipping 
 in noiselessly to see if all was well, and watch with 
 her for an hour. Ah Song cared nothing for fes- 
 tivities. 
 
 Chii-po was very brave in crimson silk and pink 
 flowered brocade, a pouch with all its dangle of ac- 
 
92 THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 
 
 companiments swinging from his girdle. Ch'eng Shao 
 Yiiin had made and embroidered it, and had contrived 
 herself the dozen pretty nicknacks bunched with it. 
 Every Chinese dandy wears such a pouch and pretties, 
 and many a grave graybeard. And always it is the 
 token and the handwork, of mother, sister or wife. 
 In his tunic a great green diamond blazed, fastened 
 across the stem of a little honeysuckle spray. And 
 behind him walked upright Zo Min-yii, his favorite 
 bear, halting at every third step to beg, catching for 
 his pains one of the sugared mincemeat balls. It 
 seemed he ate a thousand, and then begged for one 
 more. But even a Ho-nan bear can have enough, and 
 after some hours of gorging he heaved a gigantic sigh, 
 and lay down on the path, and went to sleep, for cool- 
 ness on his back, all his shaggy paws stretched up 
 like ill-shaped steeples, and his great sugar-packed 
 stomach between them like a great brown onion bulb. 
 And all day long, feasting and procession, juggling 
 ^nd wrestling, swerved aside from where he lay, yield- 
 ing him pride of place with a good-natured laugh. 
 
 And Ch'eng Shao Yiin, her daughters and her gttest, 
 sat in a great pavilion of sandalwood and jasper, and 
 watched the fun — with the handmaidens and the con- 
 cubines sitting at their feet. And when the ladies 
 wearied of the sport, or of the heat, they slipped away 
 into one of a group of tents to lie and rest, sip iced 
 cups, or sweet hot wine, gamble a little, or gossip and 
 eat. 
 
 Every woman in that festal multitude carried and 
 plied a fan — as did most of the children and many of 
 the men — in the surging humbler folk as well as the 
 "sash-wearers" gathered at the pavilion, and strolling 
 xnore leisurely about the park-like place. All Chinese 
 
THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 93 
 
 garments have their story and their significance, as 
 well as their beauty and their use. But the fan has be- 
 come almost a part sentient and actual of the Chinese 
 human body — another hand, a necessary organ. It has 
 written Chinese history, and has marked it. It has 
 illuminated Chinese literature for centuries. It illus- 
 trates Chinese daily life — the eloquent, time-honored 
 Chinese fan, in eloquent, supple conservative Chinese 
 hands. And every woman there wore in her hair at 
 least one stickpin, blue-enameled and azure — encrusted 
 with the precious feathers of the kingfisher — the jewel- 
 bird of China. 
 
 A quick side-light may be thrown on a phase of 
 Chinese life not always accurately understood in Eu- 
 rope, by one small incident that came just before the 
 great hour of the processional. 
 
 "Who was that girl who hurt her hand on Ch'eng 
 To-jung's wife's stick-pin?" Ch'eng Hsu said to his 
 wife, as they met a moment near the pavilion. "I saw 
 you bind her finger with a corner of your scarf." 
 
 "Oh, that is Ma-wung, your number three con- 
 cubine," she told him carelessly. "I hke the girl." 
 
 And Ch'eng Hsu looked as little interested as he 
 was. 
 
 With the dark came the great throbbing hour of 
 all the festival: the procession of lanterns, and the 
 carnival of fireworks. 
 
 Ch'eng Yiin and the younger ladies watched it all 
 from a little fleet of lacquered boats floating on the 
 bosom of the lotus lake. The men, and the women 
 and children not of Yiin's party, watched from every 
 coign of vantage on the shore. Even in the darker 
 evening time the sky looked velvet blue, speckled with 
 its radiant powdering of brilliant stars. From every 
 
94 THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 
 
 bough of every tree lanterns hung, lit now, that tht 
 ancestral spirits gathered here, moving lovingly about 
 their old earth-ways, might have light to see. A Chi- 
 nese coolie will half starve himself for months rather 
 than risk the spirits of his ancestors stumbling in the 
 night-time dark of the Lanterns' long festival. The 
 tree-hung lanterns here were beautiful and odd, no 
 two alike, but they were the merest utilitarian at- 
 tendants of the hundreds of masterpieces of the pro- 
 cession. 
 
 No English words could half describe the beauty 
 of that festal sight — probably no eyes or hearts not 
 Chinese and centuries-trained see it quite. The night 
 was very still. The stars looked very far and pale — 
 and now and then one shot across the sky in a little^ 
 rush of flame. The lantern bearers were all bravely 
 clad, happy but grave, selfless but important in the 
 meaning of their task. And the incense smoking up 
 almost imperceptibly from the burning sandalwood 
 rose like a warm mist in the quiet evening air. Twenty 
 little boys came first, each carrying two swaying cen- 
 sers of gauzy lanterns. Then a long, slow moving 
 stream of older, sturdier youths. Here one walked 
 alone to better show the beauty of some special paper 
 lamp. Others came abreast in twos, in threes — and 
 wider ranks. No flower grows in all great China that 
 was not mimicked by lanterns of gauze or silk. Every 
 lantern was hand-painted by a master's hand — except 
 here and there one wonderfully embroidered. Many 
 of the lovely, swaying lights were so heavy — for all 
 their fragile surfacing — that they must be slung on 
 long, stout bamboo poles resting on the shoulders of 
 two men or more. Some were fashioned of tissue 
 so delicate that it scarcely was visible, showing the 
 
THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 95 
 
 candles within clearly cut, and the paintings on the 
 gauze seemed to ride unsupported through the air. 
 Some were built of thick, clear silk and the hidden 
 candles gave out a soft blurred, opalescent glow as 
 if a swarm of fire-flies burned within alabaster pris- 
 oning. Every fruit of Chinese fact and fancy had its 
 lantern picturing. Birds, fish, peacocks, eagles with 
 wide tigerish eyes, beasts from the jungle, tamed ani- 
 mals of farmyard and barn, spinning wheels, all the 
 lovely leafage of long bamboo stems — and the East 
 has nothing lovelier than its bamboos — squirrels, 
 cranes, wolves and pretty parti-colored ducks, inex- 
 pressibly beautiful clusters of wistaria in bud and 
 fuller bloom, oranges and orange buds and flowers 
 swinging from one sweep of green-leaved twisted 
 stems, melons, pineapples, cacti in flower, great grape 
 clusters, the very sight of which might have made 
 a Bacchus reel, boats, caravans, old warships, state 
 barges, snow-topped mountains in red eruption, every 
 jewel of the wide world's wealth cut into some ex- 
 quisite shape, temples, gods, warriors and dancing 
 girls, babies in their tall cradles, stern old men with 
 flowing beards of snow-white flame — perhaps the tu- 
 lips were loveliest, or the peonies, perhaps the chrys- 
 anthemums or the begonias, or blue and rose lark- 
 spurs, or perhaps the little humming birds. Many 
 of the lanterns were vase-shaped, picturing for the 
 people China's wealth of porcelain art — the lovely 
 but least of her fine arts. Of the more intricate and 
 fantastic lanterns, many were made with such ex- 
 traordinary mastery and skill, and of texture so deli- 
 cate and marvelously balanced, that at the slightest 
 touch of wind they shifted into other shapes; the 
 rose became a rose-pink gull, the green-leaved red 
 
96 THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 
 
 tulip a green-leaved cluster of dangling cherries, the 
 gentian flower a blue swallow in proud flight. A school 
 of kittens seemed to play at ball. Bears pranced and 
 begged, persistent as spoiled children. Great fat turtles 
 sprawled, and green lizards crawled. And yet the 
 procession had but begun. 
 
 On and on it passed, wending its slow illumined 
 way, the watchers breathless, silent for the most part, 
 but now and then, when something of special beauty 
 or of deeper meaning passed, the people gave a great 
 sigh of pleasure or of sympathy — once or twice a 
 woman sobbed — and when the great dragon came, a 
 gust of feeling swept and swayed the onlooking ranks, 
 as a wind of summer hits and swings the swelling 
 tassels of the ripening corn, and they broke into a 
 happy whispering of song. An impassive people! A 
 cruel bestial people! And inferior to the Japanese! 
 
 Hail to the missionary ! And to the incrawling, in- 
 breaking European throng! China needs them so, to 
 bring her civilization, to teach her the art of living, 
 of which all other arts are but handmaids, and to 
 give her soul! 
 
 And this was not a sudden spurt of excess, sump- 
 tuousness and riot expenditure to dazzle a visiting man- 
 darin, but just the annual home festival of the Ch'engs, 
 m welcome of the home-coming of their dead. They 
 had kept it here and so for hundreds of years. Not 
 a coolie or a slave girl here but from birth or pur- 
 chase had watched it every year. 
 
 The dragon — the Great Dragon, for many others 
 had gone before among the great waxen lilies and the 
 flaming trumpet-flowers — was the apex but not the 
 end of the long spectacle of beauty and of feeling. 
 
THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 97 
 
 All day long little balloons had floated in the noise- 
 torn air, some released and free, hundreds tethered 
 to the glass bracelets on almost every childish wrist, 
 or string-held by little yellow hands. From many 
 of the chubby gas-filled balls dangled Httle delicate 
 chimes of bells, making soft music as they went — just 
 a whisper of elfin sound, tinkling down sweetly between 
 the pauses in the fireworks' holocaust of sound. And 
 when the darkness grew each released balloon was radi- 
 ant with an increased light, or with a coating of phos- 
 phorus. And all day long occasionally aircraft had 
 skimmed through the ether. For airships were in- 
 vented in China centuries before fanatic inventors or 
 obsessed patriotism thought of them in Christendom. 
 What we invent and acclaim to-day, China did cen- 
 turies before Britain was mapped or Europe known, 
 and when our ancestors waded through the weed-thick 
 marshes of Thorny, wearing woad and greasy blue 
 paint or less, Chinese science mastered the air, and 
 refined the daily life of China's far-flung, puissant 
 peoples. When the night came, the aircraft gliding 
 overhead showed lights of rose and silver, riding like 
 dolphin-birds through the ocean of the sky. 
 
 A thousand illuminated balloons proclaimed the 
 Dragon's approach, and a great air-bat, flying like a 
 winged snake of green diamonds, heralded it. 
 
 But when the Dragon came, the children forgot 
 their balloons and their kites — the daylight had been 
 thick with kites, free and held — and the pretty, shin- 
 ing toys dragged gas-spent and neglected on the 
 ground. 
 
 A hundred men — inconspicuously clad in gray, that 
 the splendid monster might the more seem independent 
 of them — carried above them the gorgeous leviathan 
 
98 THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 
 
 that seemed to sprawl slowly through the air it3 
 scaly, horned and corrugated sides. 
 
 It wriggled like a fat, supple demon as it went, 
 Satanic contortions quivered its painted, caved and 
 hillocked sides. Every few yards it turned its awful 
 head, oped wide its terrible jaws, and belched out on 
 the delighted people a soft mist of warm perfum.e. 
 The people squirmed and grinned with happiness as 
 the fine musk-scented rain showered and drenched 
 them with sprays so fine that it caressed them gently, 
 and scarcely seemed the wet it was. And many a good 
 gift fell with the rain of scent. Of all those gifts 
 the ruyie were most prized — precious little emblems 
 of twisted jade, mascots of good luck, just such as the 
 Son of Heaven himself accepted and gave on his birth- 
 days in imperial Pekin. And the youngsters clutched 
 joyously the sweetmeats that the huge writhing mon- 
 ster spat them as it went — sweetmeats they were too 
 happy and too already- fed to eat, each sweetmeat in- 
 scribed or embossed with a beneficent character mean- 
 ing "Peace," ^Telicity," "Good Luck," "Fidelitv," 
 "Great Learning," "Health," "Longevity," or "Gifted 
 in Art." 
 
 Before the shining Dragon swung — tantalizing, just 
 out of his reach — a great sheeny pearl, modeled out 
 of tight-stretched changeable white, rose and silver 
 silk : and emblem of "The Unattainable." He followed 
 it. He snapped at it. But never he reached it. When 
 he hurried, it hurried. When he almost mouthed it, 
 it just escaped. He nearly contrived, it just evaded. 
 
 When the great Dragon had gone, passing out of 
 sight on its long, fiery way, a troup of children — but 
 old enough for the long walk — came carrying armfuls 
 of fresh flowers. Then youths intoning classic poems. 
 
THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 99 
 
 Then actors, dressed for their parts, reminded all that, 
 though the greatest day of the great festival was spent, 
 the morrow held great treasure in her womb — more 
 games, and the great theatrical event. Last of all came 
 a shy band of vestal girls, delicately clad, singing a 
 good-night hymn of sweet repose. 
 
 Each succeeding day of the feast dwindled a little 
 from its day before; that the inevitable and salutary 
 homespun end might not seem abrupt or harsh. But 
 each day was packed with pleasure and kindliness. 
 And the Feast of Lanterns slipped away to the last 
 observance and the last indulgence of its last night^s 
 last hour. 
 
 And almost as the day broke and the chill wind of 
 coming morning whispered them "To bed'' and then 
 'To work/* and plucked the little love songs from 
 the instruments hanging in half the trees, the happy 
 people (the ill-used Chinese people) went — singing 
 softly as they went — weary with gladness and delight 
 — contented to their homes, to rest a few hours on 
 their mats, sleep if they could, then to spring up at 
 the first clap of the "get-up" cymbals, refreshed and 
 inspired, to the strenuous daily toil which is the back- 
 bone of Chinese life, and is half of Chinese happiness. 
 
 Ye little gods of Europe, will not the greater Heaven 
 itself peep through the blanket of your petty dark, 
 and bid you cease your busy-bodying in Asia, and heal 
 the sorrows and the souls of your own peasantry and 
 cultured working class? If but some Power would 
 give you the gift to see yourselves as Asia sees you! 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 
 TT was raining ominously when the train moved 
 -■■ away towards the outer gates. Great angry clouds 
 were swooping down from cold Manchuria like angry 
 beast-birds of prey. The flowers were shivering on 
 trembling stalks, and the fruit shook frightened on 
 the quivering trees. The coolies, moving busily about 
 the place, wore their ragged rain-coats of long, coarse 
 grass — as did the humbler servants of the departing 
 Tings. 
 
 But Ch'eng Chii-po wore still a gala dress — robes 
 almost as rich and gay as a bridegroom might have 
 worn. He stood with his brothers just outside the 
 outer door, and did homage with them as the man- 
 darin's long cavalcade moved away ; it would have been 
 a rudeness to his mother's guest had he not been there. 
 But when the Tings had disappeared behind a winding 
 of the path, and his brothers turned to the shelter of 
 the house, he sped, by a shorter way he knew, through 
 the rain, to where he had stood almost a moon before 
 — to where he had first seen the face of Ting Tzu. 
 But now when the train passed by on the road below, 
 he stood boldly forth, his red and green and rose 
 robes shining clearly through the rain. The mandarin, 
 not minded to dismount, though indeed that extreme 
 of courtesy was not his obligation to one so mucn 
 younger and of lesser rank — (the old man was riding 
 on hrs palfrey, defiant of the storm) — but highly 
 pleased, pretended not to see the boy. But the cur- 
 
 100 
 
THE FEAST OF LANTERNS loi 
 
 taining of a girl's palanquin parted an inch — perhaps 
 in answer to the wind, perhaps in scorn of the rain 
 — and Ch'eng Chu-po knew that she had seen and 
 understood. 
 
 And when hemo longer could see her chair, he gath- 
 ered up his long heavy robes, and ran like the boy 
 he was, taking^again steep, narrow, short cuts he knew, 
 running sometimes where there was no path, and 
 scarcely foothold, until he reached the outer gate, 
 and stood waiting there when the long cortege came. 
 
 And this time Ting Lo dismounted and greeted 
 young Ch'eng as an equal. But Chii-po would have 
 none of that, and kot'owed to the very ground, saying, 
 "I am thy slave." And Ting raised him up, and em- 
 braced him lingeringly. And again the sun came out, 
 the storm drew back, and again, as Chii-po held the 
 mandarin's stirrup and served him at his mounting, 
 Ting Tzu's curtains parted a narrow breadth. 
 
 Then they went. 
 
 And in a pepul tree a bird, leaf -sheltered, began to 
 sing. 
 
 Ch*eng Chii-po sought admittance to Ch'eng Shao 
 Yiin, and she gave it him. 
 
 And when he had made obeisance to her three times 
 thrice, and had said to her all the due ceremonial 
 things, saying them with an added ceremony, as be- 
 fitted the grave importance of his errand, and too, 
 because he had come to force her august hand, and, 
 as he sensed, perhaps to hurt the older heart he loved, 
 he knelt down and clasped his hands upon her knee. 
 
 "When?" he said. 
 
 "When? When what, Chii-po?" 
 
 "When shall she come?" 
 
102 THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 
 
 "She shall not come/' his mother told him slowly 
 
 Chu-po rose, and stood before her smiling, but def- 
 erential still. "What fault have you to find, my hon- 
 orable Mother?" he began. 
 
 "With the girl? None.'* 
 
 "I meant not to ask that," Ch'eng Chii-po said 
 quietly, "for you could have none. The honorable 
 maiden has not one. But with the marriage?" 
 
 "Fault enough," she replied briefly. "And I have 
 other plans. To-morrow I send to ask the hand 
 of " 
 
 "Listen, my Mother," he interrupted her — almost 
 as hideous an outrage from a Chinese son as if he had 
 struck his mother's face. Ch'eng Yiin bit her lip, and 
 the hot blood painted all her face. 
 
 "You forget yourself, worm! It is for me to or- 
 der, and for you to obey." 
 
 "In all but this. And I do not forget. In all but 
 this I will obey you while we live. I do not forget 
 my duty or your years, the birth you gave me, or 
 my long happiness at your dear side. But I remember 
 my love." 
 
 "Your love! Your bastard indecency, you mean," 
 she raved. She beat the air. She screamed and tore 
 her robe. She called him many a foul name. She 
 would have heaped abuse upon Ting Tzu, had she 
 dared. But even in her insane rage she dared not — 
 as yet. She threatened him with her clenched fists, 
 as if she*d strike him to the ground. 
 
 And Chii-po stood steadily still and smiled. 
 
 "Speak! Answer me!" she panted, gasping for her 
 spent breath. 
 
 "I will die unmarried, or wed Ting Tzu," he said. 
 
 Then she forgot everything but her jealous fury, 
 
THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 103 
 
 and she hissed out a foul opprobrious term, and linked 
 it to Ting Tzu. 
 
 Ch'eng Chu-po went proudly to the door. 
 
 *'Come back/' she screamed. 
 
 He paid no heed. 
 
 Shao Yiin rushed after him, and caught him roughly. 
 "Stay till I bid you go, thou base reptile." 
 
 *'Not to hear one rudeness of her." And he flung 
 Ch'eng Yiin gently off. 
 
 "I will have thy life," she stormed, and the tears 
 were pelting down her cheek. 
 
 "That you can indeed do, lady," the boy said gently. 
 "Command my death, and I will instantly obey. But I 
 think, O Mother, you will not do that." 
 
 "I will have you tortured, vermin." 
 
 "It is within your power, great Ch'eng Shao Yiin. 
 And I, whom you bore and gave your breast, am help- 
 less to resist — as helpless as when you suckled me." 
 
 "Out of my sight," she hissed. 
 
 "Lady, yes. But hear me first. You must." 
 
 Ch'eng Shao Yiin sank speechless to her seat. 
 "Must!" from a son to a mother! Did China live! 
 Was Ho-nan real? 
 
 "I think you will neither kill nor torture me. You 
 are angry " 
 
 She found her voice at that, and laughed, "Angry 
 
 — oh! no, I — I am thy " (Her anger hissed and 
 
 choked her.) 
 
 — "But I think you could not live to know the sen- 
 tence carried out, even if you summoned the slaves, 
 and gave them order for it. But — oh, listen. Mother 
 — this I swear to you, by the sacred presence within 
 the pink walls of the vermilion palace at Pekin, and by 
 the crystal tree that grows above the holy grave in 
 
104 THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 
 
 Shantung, by all the honorable ancestors of our great 
 house, and by the love you bore me, lady, by every 
 time of all the thousands that you have laid your 
 hand on me in kindness, unless I lift the red veil from 
 the face of Ting Tzu, I, with my own hand, will take 
 my hfe." 
 
 This was their hour of mutual torture and of mutual 
 trial; so strained that neither had noticed that he had 
 spoken her name — something a Chinese son may 
 net do. 
 
 Again he turned to go. And he thought that Ch*eng 
 Shao Yiin would not yield. He had never known her 
 yield. 
 
 She sat and watched him through inscrutable eyes. 
 She knew that he would keep his word. 
 
 "Go, then,*' she said, speaking quietly again. "Go. 
 I have other sons and grandsons, too. My grave will 
 not miss thy unfilial worship." 
 
 But when he put his hand upon the sliding panel, 
 which was the room's outer door — "Chii-po!" she 
 sobbed, "come back to me, varmint!" 
 
 He ran and caught his mother in his strong young 
 arms. She threw her head down on his breast, sobbing 
 wildly now, and he sheltered her in his arms, and 
 comforted her, and held her very close. 
 
 Ting Tzu had won. 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 
 T^WARF trees grow in China, but not dwarf souls. 
 •*-^ Having yielded — even though it had been be- 
 cause she must — Ch'eng Shao Yiin did it magnificently. 
 She was not petty. Venomous in anger, revengeful 
 even, full of prejudice and arrogance as a monkey is 
 full of mischief, a tyrant from ner cradle to her grave 
 — and T/hy not — daughter of tyrants, and mother of 
 tyrants? — except in the immediate eruption of her 
 rage, or under the lasting bitterness — cold and merci- 
 less — of the conviction of justice outraged or trust 
 betrayed — for all her pranks of temper and airs of 
 sex, she was not petty, and would no more condone 
 a meanness of her own than one of friend or foe. 
 Chii-po had beaten her, or rather Ting's chit of a girl- 
 child had, and after her first — and last — shrill out- 
 break, she took her first defeat like the true queen 
 thing she was ; regally, smilingly and graciously. And, 
 if for it she loved Ting Tzu none the more, she did 
 love Chii-po for it with some added love, for it fed 
 further her great pride in him. 
 
 He had cowed her with his threat of suicide. There 
 is nothing a Chinese fears or deplores more than a 
 kinsman's suicide. Self-slaughter dismays them not at 
 all. Suicide honors the self -slayer, but lays an ever- 
 lasting ban on those who cause it. To send Chii-po 
 to the execution ground would have been simple and 
 stainless — could she have done it — even to have sent 
 him the cord of dispatch, bidding him use it, was think- 
 
io6 THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 
 
 able, for that would have made the slaughter hers, 
 not his, his hand but her instrument conceded to his 
 pride by her charity, conceded for his blood's sake. 
 But his voluntary suicide would have heaped a shame 
 upon her which nothing could cleanse or redeem. 
 
 The very threat of it defeated her. And her defeat 
 was complete. Well, now to turn it into triumph — 
 like the great lady she was — greatness and strength 
 the very marrow of her. Or, at least, if she could 
 not trick herself to feel that it was her own triumph, 
 to so deck it — her sacrifice — that she should trick her 
 world and following into thinking it so: lier act, her 
 wish, her triumph. 
 
 And Chii-po's terrible, stern threat had told her 
 something else, had convinced her of more than her 
 own defeat. It told her that he indeed belonged to 
 Ting Tzu — that his soul was mingled inseparably in 
 the soul of the girl, his heart pulsing in Ting Tzu's, 
 and that, for the time at least, they were wedded al- 
 ready. For Ch'eng Shao Yiin had loved Ch'eng O, 
 and had been loved by Ch'eng O, and she knew 
 what the big love was, knew its purple signs, and 
 that when it mantled so, in most chance, it had come 
 to stay. 
 
 But again Ah Song, lying on the mat without her 
 door, heard her sobbing through the night. 
 
 On the morrow she met Chu-po with a smile. And 
 she dealt with him then, and on all the days that fol- 
 lowed, with a tender gayness and a brave gracious- 
 ness that rang hollow only to blind Ah Song, whose 
 pathos only Ah Song knew, and of all others none — 
 but Chu-po suspected, and he himself but half sus- 
 pected. 
 
THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 107 
 
 Chii-po was grateful, and he clung to her even as 
 he had never clung before with a tenderness and a def- 
 erence and a leaning on her that were like a little 
 child's, and too, manly with a new-come manliness. 
 
 And she set all her strength and all her exquisite 
 wit to pleasure him. 
 
 Having yielded to him in the one thing supreme, 
 a smaller woman might have thwarted and girded 
 him in a thousand little things, finding so, or seeking 
 to find, outlet and relief for a sour spleen of disap- 
 pointment. And Chii-po would have accepted it with 
 splendid gentleness. But Ch'eng Shao Yiin was not 
 petty, and she scorned to smirch her yielding with 
 any seeming pettiness. 
 
 She caressed her boy, deferred to him, invited his 
 caress and accepted it lovingly. And they clung to- 
 gether through all the days, and each hour tied and 
 bound them together with some new tendril of devotion 
 and gratitude. She thwarted him in nothing. And he 
 waited her pleasure with perfect and sunny patience. 
 
 Each of their old mutual pastimes they took up to- 
 gether again, if only for an hour. And he was very 
 gentle with his mother, for he knew that she was saying 
 good-by — the mother's terrible farewell to her boy. 
 
 What she felt, he sensed. But she showed it not 
 at all. 
 
 As a little boy it had been his chiefest pleasure tc 
 watch and hear her call the birds. And for him she 
 called the birds almost daily now. Many Chinese are 
 gifted so — especially women. The Great Dowager 
 could call the wild birds to her in all the leafy stretches 
 of the Summer Palace grounds. And Ch'eng Shao 
 Yiin called the Ho-nan wild birds to her when she 
 would. Holding up a long wand new-cut from some 
 
io8 THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 
 
 young tree, and fresh-peeled of its tender bark, all wet 
 and fragrant with its sap, she would call out a bird- 
 note in her voice of utmost music, and presently the 
 little wild bird would answer. The woman called 
 again, and presently the bird came down and perched 
 shyly on the wand, Yiin called again. The bird an- 
 swered. And after a time it fluttered down to her 
 hand, and let her hold it to her face. In part this 
 was her personal magnetism. In part it was the ac- 
 cumulated magic ot a race that has obeyed for count- 
 less generations Confucius' commandment to "hurt no 
 living thing/' Ch'eng Chii-po never tired of watching 
 Ch'eng Yiin call the wild birds — not even now when 
 half of his soul slept from his mother, dreaming of 
 Ting Tzu. 
 
 She thwarted him in nothing. And so she did not 
 delay beyond the pause that Chinese decency and the 
 dignity of their great house demanded and enforced 
 — to send her marriage tenders to Ting Lo. 
 
 And when at last — for life's greatest function takes 
 long in China, moves slow — Ting Tzu came with clash 
 of gongs and panorama of cortege to her bridegroom, 
 Ch'eng Shao Yiin received her with tender kindness. 
 
 Even in China marriage was not often so splendidly 
 performed. Picture followed picture — pomp crowded 
 pomp. A thousand perfumes reeked among a thou- 
 sand glittering lights. Ten thousand flowers nodded 
 rosy welcome to the red-veiled girl, twice ten thou- 
 sand blossoms heaped before her binded feet. Jest 
 followed ceremonial, song followed prayer. No one 
 on all the vast estate did any work except in service 
 of the bride. Ch'eng Ko ran unregarded riot un- 
 rebuked. Almost the silkworms were forgotten. 
 
 They carried Ting Tzii to him in a procession that 
 
THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 109 
 
 stretched in color and gorgeousness more than a mile. 
 She sat alone in her bridal chair, trembling a little 
 within the gauze shelter of her red wedding veil ; eager 
 but frightened to reach her long journey's end, and 
 to reach the very presence of Chii-po. Motherless, 
 she grieved to have left her first home, and grieved 
 bitterly to part from the father who had both fath- 
 ered and mothered her through all her tender, cher- 
 ished years. Happier than most Chinese girls so 
 carried in their **flowery" chairs, in knowing that her 
 red veil would not be lifted from her pretty, painted 
 face by a to-be-hated bridegroom — still she felt a lit- 
 tle cheated by that very surety and the absence of sus- 
 pense. Like all her race a gambler-born, lifers biggest 
 gamble was robbed for her of some of its palpitating 
 zest by her knowing something of the man to whom 
 they were carrying her, and too she felt some social 
 damage — slight but acute and real, in having been seen, 
 even though through no fault of her own, before their 
 marriage by the man upon whose favor all her future 
 happiness must depend. Would he ever in all the long 
 years to come hold her less dear, even a little less 
 worthy for it? She shuddered miserably at the 
 thought, and lifted her veil to study yet once more 
 her face in the jewel-circled mirror of polished steel 
 into which she had already gazed anxiously a thou- 
 sand times since they had carried her — sobbing and 
 struggling — through her father^s door, and packed her 
 like some very precious bundle into her red and gilded 
 palanquin — sobbing and struggling, but doing it care- 
 fully not to crack her nuptial paint, or disarrange the 
 dangling headings of her crown, or crush or tear any 
 atom of all her splendid yards of bridal finery. It 
 had been her duty to sob, protest and struggle. And 
 
no THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 
 
 she had done it well — for she was dutiful and very 
 proud of all the traditions of her race and caste, as 
 proud and careful as Ch'eng Yun herself. But it had 
 been her privilege to keep herself looking nice — and 
 she had done it to a miracle. 
 
 The mirror was reassuring, and the face reflected 
 in it cleared. 
 
 It was not a light disc to hold, and her little fingers 
 were almost crippled with a barbarous weight of rings 
 and nail protectors. Reluctantly she laid the clear 
 steel down, and leaned back again, sighing a little, in 
 her chair — and fell to dreaming of Chii-po — and the 
 hour to come. 
 
 The looking-steel had reassured her, and her think- 
 ing of Chii-po was reassuring too. It was a catas- 
 trophe to have looked into his eyes already, and a 
 damage too of her; she did not blink that — could not. 
 But the eyes had been kind. And she had seen love 
 in them : such ardor and petition of love that no girl, 
 even any one of all the denser races, could have failed 
 to read it or to recognize it. Chii-po loved her. She 
 knew it. Could she hold that young love, making it 
 the flower and perfume even of her old age? She 
 sighed quickly, but not too unhappily — for her father 
 had told her that Ch'eng Chii-po came of a loyal, con- 
 stant clan, Ping-yang had said it too — and surely she 
 knew, for she lived among them, and they had an 
 aunt whom Tzii much resembled, who was lovely still 
 at the great age of fifty, and probably she — Tzu— ' 
 would bear him sons, and within her crimson robes she 
 wore an amulet the old witch woman had given her 
 at home, a charm to chain forever a husband's love. 
 
 She wished she had not been seen by her lord — so 
 unfortunately preseen — that was far more calamity 
 
THE FEAST OF LANTERNS in 
 
 than that she had seen him. It would have been a 
 dehghtful, heartbeating business to be going to him 
 knowing nothing of him or of his features. But what 
 she already knew was reassuring. And probably she 
 would find still some surprise in m.arriage and in her 
 years of wifehood — where happier girls found nothing 
 else. 
 
 She had seen Ch'eng Chii-po. She had read his 
 heart. He had laved her with his desire. And to its 
 demand her own heart had gone quick and warm. And 
 of all the smaller things, that, as she knew, made 
 up so much more of daily life and rice-side felicity, 
 she had learned of him from the courtyard gossip 
 and from busy-tongued Ping-yang all that could be 
 told. 
 
 Ting Tzu leaned back against her perfumed cush- 
 ions smiling to herself and dreaming rosy, quivering 
 dreams. 
 
 "Ch'eng Tzu," she whispered to herself, and then 
 beneath her paint she blushed redder than her veil. 
 
 Then bells clanged. Ten thousand crackers splut- 
 tered out their sharp poppings. Incense puffed in 
 through the curtains of her litter. Tom-toms clashed 
 and tore the silence to a thousand shreds of noise. 
 Wild music — ^wild and wilder — bleated beside the paths. 
 They were carrying her more slowly and more proudly 
 now. And she must, she knew, have reached the outer 
 gate. 
 
 She clutched the talisman within her robe. Kwang 
 Yin grant that she should keep, while she lived, her 
 lord's love! 
 
 Ting Tzu was trembling newly now, and her heart 
 beat wild and sick. 
 
112 THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 
 
 It seemed an endless way now — and yet too short. 
 
 They set her down. 
 
 She heard her father's voice. She thought he spoke 
 her name. 
 
 Then silence came. 
 
 A quick foot pressed to her chair. 
 
 A man's hands parted her curtains, and lifted her 
 up into a man's arms. 
 
 She was trembling violently now — no need to pre- 
 tend reluctance — and as Ch'eng Chu-po carried her 
 reverently across the threshold, lifting her athwart the 
 marriage-fire burning on the door-step, not speaking 
 to her — yet, but for all that sending her a message and 
 a comforting as he bent his head to hers, she thought 
 her heart had lost a beat. 
 
 And Ch'eng Chii-po thought so too, and he felt her 
 cold within her robes, and felt the fluttering of her 
 sweet girl-flesh — and it ran racing through his veins. 
 
 At last they were alone. 
 
 She was his wife. 
 
 The interminable ceremonies were done. 
 
 The night was coming near. 
 
 They stood alone — life's greatest sacrament at their 
 lips — together and alone in the garnished room that 
 was to be the inner sanctuary of all their wedded life. 
 
 The husband lifted his wife's crimson veil and threw 
 it from her face. 
 
 For a time they stood so — she swaying a little orr 
 her tiny feet — he clenching his hands in a desperate, 
 generous attempt at self-control. 
 
 Of the two he was trembling the more now. 
 
 But, when at last, she looked piteously up to him, he 
 
THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 113 
 
 <5miled down at her with tender gentleness. But the 
 trembling of his young lips betrayed the tumult within 
 — but his voice was very quiet — when presently he 
 spoke to her. 
 
 ''Ch'eng Tzu," he said slowly, "Cheng Tzu!" 
 
 "My lord," she whispered — when she could. 
 
 He took her hand in his — scarcely touching it — at 
 first. 
 
 Her little hand was icy cold. But it warmed quickly 
 in his clasp — and then Chii-po's tender touch grew 
 bolder — not less kind, not less considerate, and grasped 
 Tzu's Httle fingers in a joyous vice. 
 
 The room was garnished for this hour. New mats 
 of silky rice-straw strewed the lacquered floor. One 
 — just one — great branch of sweet flowering jessamine 
 leaned from an ivory bowl. One picture hung on a 
 wall. One sentence of good import was written on 
 one wall-hung scroll. And near the window through 
 which the fragrant garden stretched stood a great vase 
 of flambe Ch'ien Lung ware. It was the same vase 
 that had stood till now in the courtyard of Ch'eng 
 Ting Ping-yang. And even in her new confusion 
 Ch*eng Ting Tzu knew it, and knew too why it was 
 here — why her lord had wished, willed and con- 
 trived it. 
 
 She smiled at it. She could not smile at him — ^yet. 
 
 Ch'eng Chii-po caught Tzii to him with fumbling 
 hands, and poured out to her an ecstasy of halting, 
 pelting and compelling words. 
 
 It is not so that Chinese girls expect to be wooed. 
 Ch'eng Chii-po knelt at her feet. He laid his hand 
 in entreaty on her shoe. She looked down and giggled 
 shyly. He half rose and clasped her knee, and drew 
 
114 THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 
 
 her down to him, and held her so. And they sat 
 together, his arms about her, so leaning against the 
 great Ch'ien Lung vase — happy and shy as two chil- 
 dren in a new-found, sudden intimacy that was very 
 sweet. 
 
CHAPTER XV 
 
 THE marriage throve. 
 For they had gone unspoiled to it, the boy 
 and the girl, and both were true and lovable: two 
 children growing up together in harmony and trust. 
 
 And such is Chinese marriage as a rule. The new 
 ideal of marriage that Europe is finding to-day — 
 urged by bishop and scientist, philosopher and race 
 philanthropist, in desperate anxiety for our man-sex, 
 and in hope for the future of our race — and a new wis- 
 dom that red-handed, sad-eyed, wide-eyed war has 
 taught, and urges — China has held, and has held to, 
 for centuries. When the marriage-need comes, the 
 marriage is there. The marriage-opportunity heaps 
 young lives with happiness, content and health, and 
 makes of appetite a sacrament and not a nameless 
 lust, a wholesomeness and not a disease, an innocence 
 and not a sore — makes human birth as sweet, as nat- 
 ural and as welcome as the birth of the flowers that 
 bud in the sheltered leafage of sunny spring. 
 
 Ch'eng Tzu thought her young husband more god- 
 like and more manly than any other of all earth's men 
 — because she had no knowing of any other man. 
 
 Ch'eng Chii-po gave his first passionate caress to 
 the girl at whose feet he knelt on their marriage eve- 
 ning, and he adored his wife — because he had frit- 
 tered away no part of love's outer garments. 
 
 Neither had had earlier loves — or even love-pass- 
 ages — ^with which to compare this anointed love of 
 
 "5 
 
ii6 THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 
 
 theirs (perhaps to find the new and lawful lacking in 
 some phase or lure) — and so, were absorbed in it, 
 and he in her as she in him. 
 
 And when they knew that a babe was to come, all 
 the jealous bitterness went from Ch'eng Shao Yiin's 
 heart, and she loved Ch'eng Tzu as her own. And 
 waiting for the baby's birth, they three were almost as 
 one. 
 
 After the interruption of marriage negotiations and 
 long ceremonial, Yiin took up her own life again 
 vigorously, and faced solitude grimly — hiding her jeal- 
 ousy beneath a feverish, imperious industry. But Ah 
 Song sensed how it rankled, and knew that beneath all 
 her stern, driving rush and fuss of daily things, Ch'eng 
 Yiin was waiting scornful but tortured for Chii-po to 
 come back to her. 
 
 Chii-po never did come back — in the old full- 
 ness. Ch'eng Tzii filled his being. But soon he 
 sought his mother's companionship, claimed her advice 
 about many things; and Tzii crept into the older 
 woman's heart, slowly at first — but the girl won upon 
 the woman day by day, the more easily and the more 
 surely because from the first Tzii had loved Ch'eng 
 Yiin. 
 
 And all went well with them. 
 
 Scarcely a silkworm ailed that year. Scarcely a 
 rice grain withered or mildewed. And the great birth- 
 hour raced with the Feast of Lanterns. 
 
 Tzii thought the Feast would outstrip the little child. 
 Ch'eng Yiin thought her grandchild would be there 
 first. And the two women made a jeweled bet. 
 
 But neither won it. 
 
 It was so sweet to carry her child — her child and her 
 lord's — beneath her girdled heart that Ch'eng Tzii 
 
THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 117 
 
 was not impatient for its birth; even perhaps she was 
 a Httle reluctant to share it just yet with any other 
 love and hands but hers, reluctant even to share it 
 with the wide-eyed flowers, or the sun and air of day. 
 
 But Ch'eng Shao Yiin was all impatience. She could 
 scarcely wait. For she knew that at last a girl child 
 was to be bom to them: the fabled daughter of the 
 Ch'engs — maiden-minister of China— sweetest flower 
 of Han. 
 
 Every augury proclaimed it a girl. And so did 
 every wise woman on the place. 
 
 But Ch'eng Shao Yiin had little use for such prophe- 
 cies. They had failed her too often. But in herself, 
 with all her soul, she knew this was a girl. She had 
 MO smallest doubt of it. 
 
 Just as the first lantern was lit the child was bom. 
 
 It was a boy. 
 
 Ch'eng Ting Tzu tried not to be glad. 
 
 And Ch'eng Shao Yiin fell into a frenzy that 
 threatened her arrogant life. When ^Ti-^to-ti came 
 fawning to her for a sweetmeat she kicked the little 
 loving thing away. And scarcely any dared approach 
 or speak to her save only Ah Song. Ah Song watched 
 her shrewdly through the sightless eyes that saw so 
 much more than others' eyes could see, and when 
 Ch'eng Yiin's enraged disappointment had a little worn 
 its fury out, spent and dashed itself to pieces against 
 the hard rock of the proud woman's splendid spirit, 
 blind Ah Song told her that lord Chii-po's lady was 
 very ill of body — dying perhaps, and tormented and 
 soul-crushed because instead of the so-hoped-for girl, 
 a mere man child had come to her swelling breast. 
 
 At that Ch'eng Shao Yun tidied her disheveled hair, 
 shook out her twisted garments, loaded herself with 
 
ii8 THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 
 
 gems, and hurried to congratulate and to console 
 Ch'eng Ting Tzu. And she carried with her an arm- 
 ful of red roses and great scarlet hibiscus flowers. 
 
 It was a very tender face the woman bent over the 
 pale young mother thing, lying with the wee, new- 
 come, red and buff mauling crooked in one dimpled 
 arm — for Yiin remembered her own chagrin and suf- 
 fering in such self -same hours, and forgot her own 
 selfish disappointment as all her big womanly heart 
 went out in sympathy to the girl who had borne the 
 Ch'engs another boy. 
 
 Ch'eng Tzu — coached by Ah Song — lay very still, 
 and tried to look miserable. 
 
 "It is only a boy," she whispered with a sob. 
 
 *'Chut," Yiin told her sharply, but proudly too, 
 ''forget all the folly I talked. I was mad. Thank all 
 the gods it is a man." And she kot'owed to the 
 unconscious babe. When had that proud thing 
 kofowed before? "See!" holding out her flowers. 
 And moving about the room, she decked it with the 
 red roses and the great crimson hibiscus flowers — 
 chamber of birth and triumph! 
 
 And Ch'eng Chii-po breathed softly a sigh of secret, 
 great relief. He had greatly feared that for the bear- 
 ing of a boy, his mother would hate Ch'eng Tzu. But 
 he need not have feared it. Dwarf trees grow in 
 China but not dwarf souls. 
 
 Ch'eng Shao Yiin pretended to be delighted with 
 her grandson, to think him more precious than any 
 jade, the flower of all the jades, and to love him as 
 she had neve^r loved before. 
 
 And before Ch'eng Lo Yuet — for so they named 
 him — was a week old, she did. And the Wealth God 
 was lifted up from the ignominious dust, repedestaled 
 
THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 119 
 
 and given yet another coat of finest gold-leaf from 
 shoe to shaven poll, given a big blazing sapphire of 
 price to dangle in his tinsel crown. And often Yuet's 
 grandame would fight his mother for the holding of 
 him, nursing him for hours, and crooning to him old 
 lullabies she had not sung since Ch'eng O had died — 
 and h^d thought not to sing again. 
 
CHAPTER XVI 
 
 ALL this time Ch*eng Shao Yiin's purpose to banish 
 "Chii-po, to sacrifice him and her own heart to 
 China, had neither slept nor sagged. 
 
 And when the Feast of Lanterns was passed his 
 mother sent Ch'eng Chii-po to England — sorrowing 
 but obedient. Nor was he altogether unwilling; for 
 he, too, saw now the peril gathering over China — 
 sensed the big white bear that lumbered on her from 
 the Russ land, heard the swords sharpening in every 
 garden in Japan, treachery boiling up in Korea, rapac- 
 ity and avarice scheming in half the chancelleries of 
 Europe. 
 
 And when the time came to go, he went with an 
 unmoved, if a mask-like, face. And the two women 
 who loved him most drew close together — a new friend-, 
 ship linking them, and Ch'eng Lo Yuet cradled in 
 their arms. 
 
 The years passed slowly for the women waiting for 
 his return in the teeming Ho-nan home. 
 
 Ch'eng Shao Yiin bore it best — partly because it 
 was her temper to bear all heavv things so — little frets 
 she never bore — partly because of a daily growing 
 infatuation for little Yuet — a lovely child with Ch'eng 
 O's eyes and her own splendid indomitable temper, 
 delicately cloaked with the pretty silken manners of 
 Ch'eng Ting Tzu. 
 
 Several sorrows fell upon Yun in those slow years 
 of Chii-po's long absence. 
 
 120 
 
THE FEAST OF LANTERNS I2i 
 
 Each year she grew more anxious for her country. 
 
 Smallpox — always China's scourge — swept down 
 across the Fu-niu Shan range, and devastated half a 
 village. 
 
 Again it came — and left Ping-yang a childless 
 widow. 
 
 Yun's second son, journeying at her command 
 with a message to Pekin, was caught in the whirling 
 rapids of the Hwang Ho, and China's turgid yellow 
 sorrow had robbed Ch'eng Shao Yiin of another son 
 and of that son's sons, for at her wish they had gone 
 with him to see something of the old capital, and to 
 make first obeisance at the footstool of their Liege. 
 
 One by one death reaped her golden grain of life 
 and hope till none of her bearing were left her but 
 those that she had given away into adoption, and 
 Chu-po in England, and Clm-po's son clinging to her 
 hand now as once Chii-po had done. Such family-out- 
 wiping is scarcely rare in China. 
 
 She bore it all with proud quiet — ^holding Yuet's 
 hand the closer, scarcely letting him out of her sight, 
 and sending long letters more and more often to 
 Ch'eng Chii-po. 
 
 He would have returned to her now; and craved 
 it, but she forbade it, commanding him to stay until 
 his task in England was done. 
 
 Only a woman, and a Chinese woman, and passing 
 rich at that, could have outplanned the elaborate fes- 
 tivities that had marked the marriage of Ch'eng Chu- 
 po and Ting Tzu. 
 
 Ch'eng Shao Yiin did it for the home-coming ol 
 Chii-po. 
 
122 THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 
 
 And h^ came at last — slowly — in state — carried in 
 an endless cortege of grief. 
 
 Cholera had caught him at Hong Kong, and he had 
 died there. 
 
 It killed Ch'eng Ting Tzu — snapped her radiant 
 life off as some sudden gust of storm might have 
 snapped the slender stem upon which a lovely blossom 
 grew. And Ch'eng Shao Yiin and Yuet were left 
 alone. 
 
 Waiting to be newly wooed, and newly a bride, the 
 black news cut through Tzu like a knife. She caught 
 her hand to her heart, gave her child a look, and heaped 
 down on the ko'tang floor at Yiin's feet. 
 
 If her pain had been intense, its torture was brief. 
 She died as she fell. 
 
 They buried her with him— buried them on the very 
 spot where he had seen her first. 
 
 The family burying ground lay farther north. But 
 on the day that he had left them, Chii-po had told his 
 mother that it was there he'd pray to be laid when his 
 time came to be a guest on high. And his wish — 
 remembered now — weighed with Ch^eng Yun far more 
 than any command of Feng-shui, had Feng-shui 
 ordered it otherwise. But Ah Song wailing about the 
 courtyard — waiHng in a human grief, but seeming too, 
 half in trance — cried out that the hillock near the 
 stream was gods-decreed for the burial of lord Ch'eng 
 Chu-po; and then the necromancers hurriedly found 
 it so. 
 
 Ch'eng Shao Yiin showed no grief. And only blind 
 Ah Song understood — and knew Ch'eng Yiin's grief 
 was too great to be shown or seen. Only the sightless 
 eyes of the old seer and slave had sight to see that 
 agony. And only Ch'eng Shao Yiin and Ah Song 
 
THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 123 
 
 tnew — or suspected — ^that Chii-po's mother was newly 
 jealous of Chii-po's wife — jealous because Ch'eng Tzu 
 lay coffined at Ch'eng Chu-po's feet. 
 
 Yiin built a paifang, in honor of Ch'eng Ting Tzu, 
 across the path between the still river and the new 
 graves, holding — and admitting — so, to all, that being 
 slain by the mere word of her lord's death proved the 
 devotion of Ch'eng Tzu as clearly as if the girl had 
 hung herself beside his corpse. 
 
 Yiin gave little Ch'eng Lo Yuet two loves now-— 
 the love that she had borne him already and with it all 
 her love that had been Chii-po's. 
 
 Yiin lived and had her being for Lo Yuet — and for 
 China : always for China. China first of all ! 
 
 And what had been a sacrificial purpose before 
 became an obsession now. And she would not be 
 balked of it. The more her love of her grandson 
 the sterner her resolve to send him from her. Ch'eng 
 Lo Yuet should go to England, as his father had gone 
 — and should return and live, as that father had not, 
 to work and win for China. 
 
 She had promised a son to China. And no accident 
 so small as death should rob China of the gift, or her 
 herself of the completed sacrifice. 
 
 And surely China's need grew sore. Already war 
 threatened concerning Korea. The big white bear 
 stretched out its taloned paws. Theft dared to turn 
 its covetous Christian eyes even on the sacred grave 
 where the crystal-tree grew in Shantung. 
 
 Ch'eng Lo Yuet should go to England, to learn of 
 Europe — Europe's rank nefarious wiles — to return 
 home to hoist the impertinent invaders with their own 
 hot petard. 
 
124 THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 
 
 But he should marry first — and beget a child — for 
 China must not be left Ch'engless — or the Ch*engs 
 gone-on-high without earth-living worshipers. 
 
 Ch*eng Lo Yuet should beget a son, here where his 
 father had begotten him, and then he should go. 
 
 He should beget a son. She gave the old hope up 
 ' — almost the wish. That, too, she sacrificed. 
 
 And when Lo Yuet's age came ripe for it she found 
 him a wife, and gave her to him without a pang. Her 
 capacity for personal suffering was dead — buried in 
 the coffin of Chii-po, Ah Song thought — ^but not her 
 capacity for loving — since she still loved Lo Yuet even 
 more than she had loved Chii-po. 
 
 No pre-romance prefaced the marriage of Ch'eng 
 Lo Yuet. 
 
 Ch*eng Shao Yiin left him with his tutors, and made 
 a great journey — an almost royal progress — across 
 China, visiting a score of great families, studying their 
 daughters well. 
 
 She selected Hua Foh T*ien, a maiden of a clan 
 older than her own, and as great. 
 
 And when Ch'eng T'ien was big with child, Shao 
 Yiin sent Yuet to England. 
 
 The child was born — when the painted lanterns 
 swung red and rose and gold in the radiant processional 
 of the glowing feast, and the great twisted dragon 
 belched its fiery challenge to the stars — again a boy. 
 
 The years passed— quick busy years for all on the 
 old Ho-nrn estate. And the reports that came, from 
 Oxford now, of the progress of Ch*eng Yuet, could 
 but satisfy the all-demanding heart of his grand- 
 mother. 
 
 But fate had not yet buffeted Ch'eng Shao Yun 
 enough 
 
THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 125 
 
 When Yuet*s absence had less than two years to run, 
 his young son died. 
 
 Ch'eng recalled her grandson home. 
 
 Again when the line of Ch'eng seemed secured she 
 sent him back to complete his European days as at 
 first planned: a few months more in Oxford, then a 
 final year of travel. 
 
 But fate was not yet done with Ch'eng Shao Yiin. 
 
 The young Chinese — the foremost student of his 
 college, and easily its most brilliant, died at Oxford a 
 few weeks before taking his degree. 
 
 Shao Yiin heard it with a bitter smile, and bade them 
 give great tending to Ch'eng T'ien. 
 
 For, if fate were or were not done with Ch*eng Shao 
 Yiin, Ch'eng Shao Yiin was not yet done with fate. 
 
 Her purpose hdUi 
 
CHAPTER XVII 
 
 AH SONG came from the chamber of Ch'eng T'ien 
 and hurried through the garden. She carried no 
 stick or staff, but she sensed her way with a double 
 second-sight. She breasted the bridge, skirted the lotus 
 pond, found the terrace, and left it, threaded the twisted 
 paths and the molten quivering tulip maze, without a 
 hesitation or one mis-step. She knew every inch of 
 the vast, scattered estate, Ch*eng Yiin^s only rival, in 
 sure, intimate mastery of its every path and nook. 
 
 A carrier pigeon winged from its cote, and followed 
 lier, flying low, circling her head again and again with 
 a curling waste of time and a wanton indirectness of 
 flight that told its flying a dallying and no execu- 
 tion of message-business — calling down to her 
 now and then, and watching her expectantly 
 through its hard glittering beads of crimson eyes. 
 Always Ah Song had a word for every bird. 
 She had none to-day. On the terrace the pea- 
 cocks strutted to her screaming, and tweaked her skirt 
 for grain. But she thrust them off, tearing her gar- 
 ments roughly from their clamorous beaks, and pushed 
 through them on towards the silkworm sheds. Ah 
 Song had no time for peacocks now. 
 
 The Lady Ch'eng sat brooding — lost in thought — 
 on a bench near the worms' largest shed, and did not 
 even look up as Ah Song came. 
 
 "Honorable mistress, thy slave brings news !" 
 
 "So " was Yiin's scant reply, nor did she lift her 
 eyes. 
 
 V26 
 
THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 127 
 
 "The honorable Ch'eng T'ien^s time has come." 
 
 "Her women are with her — and the midwives?" 
 But Shao Yiin scarcely seemed interested. 
 
 "All that, jade-like. It was very quick." 
 
 "Nay — it was high time." 
 
 "It is not that thy slave means, O honorable." 
 
 Ch'eng Shao Yiin did not trouble to ask what it was 
 than that Song had meant. 
 
 "Her hour has come — and gone." 
 
 Ch'eng Yiin looked up at that. "You mean — the 
 child has come? — Speak to the point!" 
 
 "O, mistress," Song stammered brokenly. 
 
 "The child?" Yiin demanded fiercely. She rose 
 slowly — and saw that tears were tumbling from the 
 sightless e)^es, down Ah Song's withered face. 
 
 "The child has driven Ch'eng T'ien on high," Song 
 retorted — almost as fiercely as Shao Yiin had spoken 
 — and then the slave whimpered, then sobbed; for she 
 had loved the young mother of Lo Yuet's child. 
 
 "That!" Ch'eng said contemptuously. For what 
 of it? Lo Yuet was dead. His wife could bear no 
 other child. Ch'eng Yiin thrust out an angry arm and 
 clutched Ah Song's wrist. "The child?" she hissed at 
 the other, stamping a foot — and a sob broke through 
 the hiss. 
 
 "The child lives, lady. It will live. It is well with 
 the honorable great-grandchild." 
 
 "So " Ch'eng Yiin said more gently. "I will see 
 
 it presently," and she turned and went a pace towards 
 the cocoons' shed. 
 
 Ah Song followed her, and caught at her robe. 
 
 Yiin looked back at her with cold astonishment. 
 The old blind servant was privileged — loved even — 
 Wt not privileged to such license as this. 
 
128 THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 
 
 But Ah Song held tightly to the garment she had 
 caught. "Stay!" she implored. And she kot'owed 
 till her old knees creaked. "My honorable mistress, 
 it — ^it is a girl" 
 
CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 THOU liest? Thou darest to lie?" Ch'eng Shao 
 Yiin was stammering now. A painful red crept 
 into her paintless cheeks. 
 
 **The honorable babe is strong and well," Song said 
 proudly. "And it is — a girl." 
 
 Ch'eng Shao Yiin hid her face behind her hands. 
 They twitched a little too. 
 
 "The gods are good," she whispered presently. 
 Then she turned, and moved slowly towards the house 
 — the dwelling house where she had borne her sons, 
 where now the girl dead in child-birth lay, and a 
 daughter of the Ch'engs lived — lived to lift a curse, 
 lived to service China. 
 
 The child throve. 
 
 When the time came to name her, she was named 
 T'ien Tzu. 
 
 They named her T*ien Tzu, but not, of course, to 
 call her that for years. On the third day, when her 
 tiny ears were pierced, and the soft thread of strong 
 red silk left in, she would be given a milk-name — she 
 who could never know her natural milk — and she 
 would gain a cradle-name, and presently a pet-name, 
 Jade, Moonlight, Jessamine, Lotus, Rose, Violet or 
 any other lovely flower. Though probably milk-name, 
 cradle-name and pet-name would be the same. She 
 would be spoken of, as every new-come girl in China 
 (where girl babes are murdered, so 'tis said) she would 
 
 I2g 
 
130 THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 
 
 be spoken of commonly as "my thousand ounces o! 
 gold." Later she would have a school-name, though 
 girls of such high birth do not go to school. But her 
 name was Ch'eng T'ien Tzu, recorded so for ever on 
 the scroll of the Ch'engs. 
 
 And if Ch'eng Shao Yiin had loved Chu-po, as she 
 almost madly had, if Shao Yiin had loved Lo Yuet 
 even more, it grew to worship, the love she gave Ch'eng 
 T'ien Tzii. 
 
 Never an hour they spent apart. And when T'ien 
 Tzu was old enough to notice and crave, the very foods 
 she might not have Ch'eng Yiin eschewed, living again 
 on the pap things and savorless simplicities that chil- 
 dren thrive on best. 
 
 From the first Yiin taught the little girl herself. All 
 that a Chinese girl of high birth should know was 
 instilled and drilled day by day into this young daugh- 
 ter of the Ch'engs — accomplishments and learning of 
 sterner stuff. And she too, was taught much that 
 many maidens of her own caste are not often troubled 
 or privileged to master. Above all Ch'eng Shao Yiin 
 taught her history — the history of China as Pan Chao 
 — the famous historian of the first century (a woman, 
 by the way) — ^had known and written it. All other 
 history seemed of small account to Yiin — as did the 
 peoples whose past it recorded. For herself she 
 scorned to waste an hour upon it — her hours grew few 
 now — but because she destined her great-granddaugh- 
 ter to fight and worst those inferior peoples, and knew 
 the fight would need much equipment of understand- 
 ing them, as well as supersubtlety, Yiin judged it right 
 that Tzii should know something of the unworthy his- 
 tories of unworthy Christendom, and especially of the 
 English whom Yiin held China's foremost menace. 
 
THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 131 
 
 And for that purpose Yiin procured and employed a 
 tutor from the University at Pekin, a learned Chinese 
 who had spent some years in Europe, and was credited 
 with speaking English well, and with having studied 
 diligently at Oxford. He came when Tzu was only 
 six. And Ch'eng Yiin paid him richly to teach Tzu 
 English, a smattering of English ways, all he could of 
 English history and of its inner meaning, and, above 
 all, to teach his pupil to hold China ever higher than 
 the barbarians among whom she already knew she was 
 soon to live. 
 
 But the child's Chinese education Ch'eng Shao Yiin 
 gave her herself, and was well able to do. The teem- 
 ing literature, the splendid arts, the kind philosophies, 
 the unsurpassed cultures and the pretty graces of 
 China, the doyen lady of the Ch'engs knew well. She 
 had taught her sons, and her sons' sons, and was as 
 able as she was willing to teach Ch'eng Tzii. 
 
 So ambitious was Yiin for the child that she stinted 
 her of play and of playmates — but did not quite deprive 
 her of either. 
 
 Mung Panii, a slave girl a little older than Tzu, 
 shared some of the lessons and the scant hours of play. 
 Ch'eng Shao Yiin had no mind that Tzii should forget, 
 while in banishment, either the language or the thoughts 
 of China, and so purposed that Mung Panii should go 
 to England with Tzu, that they might speak together 
 for an hour each day — speak Chinese. And for this 
 it was important that the maid should speak the purest 
 Chinese, and know something of the finer things. 
 
 On warm spring-time days sometimes lessons were 
 relaxed for an hour, and Yiin would take Tzii by the 
 hand, and wander with her among the trees, and call 
 the wild birds down. And little Tzii would flute and 
 
132 THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 
 
 chirrup to them too, and once a katydid came and 
 perched upon her tiny wrist, and poised a moment 
 there, happy so. And always at the New Year festivi- 
 ties, all Tzu's tasks were laid aside, to be neglected, 
 forgotten, if she would, until after the Feast of Lan- 
 terns. 
 
 Of all the mighty race of Ch'eng only they two were 
 left to watch the Feast of Lanterns now — Ch'eng Shao 
 Yun, growing old at last, and little Ch'eng T'ien Tzu 
 clinging to her skirts. But each year Yiin decreed that 
 the Feast should be richer and lovelier than it had been 
 before. That seemed impossible. But the indomita- 
 ble woman wrought it. She had boundless wealth, 
 and at her aid the incomparable arts of an imperial 
 people which, if not as immeasurably superior to all 
 others as Ch'eng Shao Yiin thought, must be conceded 
 by any sane and intelligent judgment, second to none. 
 
 Ch'eng Shao Yiin had always loved the Feast of Lan- 
 terns, and she had always loved to display her wealth. 
 And she suspected — there were hints of it — that in the 
 flesh she should not see the feast for many more years 
 now. The grief of her life had strained her, and 
 strained her all the more because she had willed to show 
 no sign of it, to meet and greet it with an unmoved 
 face. And the shock of Tzu's birth, a girl come to 
 them at last, had strained her even more. 
 
 And she chose to make for Ch'eng Tzu out of the 
 Feast of Lanterns a picture book that should epitomize 
 all the great panorama of Chinese art and life — China's 
 history, China's tenets, all that was spiritual, all that 
 was bed-rock of glorious fact : China's very soul. She 
 sought to give the child a picture and an imprint deep- 
 bitten, a memory and a sense, that could not fade, go 
 where she would, do what she might. 
 
THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 133 
 
 Ch'eng T'ien Tzu was a still child. For a Chinese 
 of her sex she was almost tongue-tied. Her hates 
 and loves were hidden deep — if she had them. They 
 rarely showed. But she took a passionate delight 
 from the first in the Feast of Lanterns. It gave her 
 her first vivid impression, and her most lasting — an 
 impression that each year deepened, to which each 
 year added glow, detail and significance. In it she 
 sensed the soul of China, and through it learned her 
 glory imperial and imperishable. Through it she 
 grasped the dual religion of her race, and made it her 
 own, as through nothing else she could have done — 
 the pulsing, living religion that is half ancestor wor- 
 ship, half worship of the beauty of nature. For the 
 Feast of Lanterns, as Yiin taught her from the first, is 
 China's yearly offering to the quick spirits of her dead; 
 and each jeweled, embroidered lantern, swinging and 
 lurching pendant to the less radiant night, reflects and 
 records some flower or other gem of nature or some 
 jewel of China's story, as Chinese porcelain reflects 
 and records the treasures of her greater arts. 
 
 The Feast of Lanterns came to be a sacrament to 
 little Ch'eng T'ien Tzu. It is that to most Chinese. 
 
 Tzu knew how long and how arduous was its prep- 
 aration each year, what skill and industry went to 
 the making of it. And the knowing made of Chinese 
 ceaseless industry a rite and a dignity. For always 
 Ch'eng Shao Yiin — leaning now a little on her ivory 
 staff — was at her side to speak the illuminating word, 
 to walce the burning Chinese thought. Yiin intended 
 that Tzii should go to Europe, but Yiin intended that 
 Europe should leave Ch'eng Tzii cold. 
 
 The first thing Tzii could remember was the Feast 
 of Lanterns. And when her time came to become a 
 
134 THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 
 
 guest on high, her last earth-lingering thought would 
 be of the Feast of Lanterns. 
 
 When Tzu was ten the festival was kept with such 
 extravagance of splendor, such ingenuity of new device, 
 that Ch'eng Shao Yun knew that even she could never 
 hope to surpass it in all the years to come. She was 
 satisfied that it should be so. For years would pass 
 before Ch'eng Tzii should see the great home feast 
 again. 
 
 They watched it hand in hand. But they watched it 
 silently. Even Yiin had nothing more to tell the child,, 
 and the woman's throat was stiff and choked. 
 
 On the morrow the little Chinese girl of ten began 
 her long journeying. She went wondering but placid 
 and obedient, neither anxious nor depressed. She 
 went with many obeisances, but scarcely with regret. 
 Her young sheltered life had been so free from pain or 
 doubt that she could not conceive that either could 
 ever come to her, or indeed conceive of them at all. 
 And, too, she came of a race whose women for thous- 
 ands of years had, when little older than she, been sent 
 from home never to return, lifted into their *'flow- 
 eries" and given to a new home, an unknown husband 
 and to other mothering, 
 
 Ch'eng Shao Yiin felt the parting more — felt it so 
 sharply that almost she showed it. 
 
 She felt that she might not see Tzii again. She 
 knew that ill-health and break-up threatened her. 
 Even if she lived many years, this was her parting 
 from Ch'eng T'ien Tzu. For the girl would return 
 to China of marriageable age — and more. To be sure, 
 Yiin had no thought to give her in marriage — but 
 rather to adopt the younger son of some great house. 
 
THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 135 
 
 both that the ancestors of the Gh'engs might be duly 
 worshiped, and that Ch'eng Tzu might hve her Hfe 
 out in the stronghold of the Ch'engs — still a Ch'eng 
 and the mother of Ch'engs: doubly Ch'eng — Ch'eng 
 by marriage as Ch'eng by birth. But even so the Eng- 
 lish years would change the girl. The child that she 
 was giving up would never come back to her again. 
 In giving Tzu she was giving her all — more than her 
 life, because the music and the sunshine of her life, 
 the one companionship left to her now from all her 
 long life's wealth of love. But never for one heart- 
 beat did Ch'eng Shao Yiin waver— -or even think of 
 it — from the purpose that I Kong Moy had stirred in 
 her on the day that Tzu's grandfather Chii-po had first 
 seen Tzu's grandmother. Ting Tzu. For the imperi- 
 ous old woman was abjectly and devotedly the servant 
 of great imperial China. 
 
CHAPTER XIX 
 
 ENGLAND was very kind to the little Chinese 
 stranger within its fog-hung gates. The child's 
 sweetness was unmistakable, her dainty high-breeding 
 told instantly on all who met her — on those who were 
 precluded from realising just what the strong charm 
 was almost as much as on those whose caste-sympathy 
 recognized it as a fine something in which they them- 
 selves had their own lesser share, and her personal 
 beauty was irresistible. For when the oddness had 
 worn off a little, even the dullest English eyes, and 
 the most isle-bound British taste, could not fail to see 
 that Ch'eng Tzu was very lovely. 
 
 Ch'eng Shao Yun had known from the first that 
 her great granddaughter was strangely like the girl with 
 whom Chu-po had fallen so madly in love — and, as it 
 proved, so irrevocably. And year by year, Ch'eng 
 T'ien Tzu grew more and more like her father's mother 
 when the elder Tzu had been loveliest, and had just 
 come to Ho-nan and to love. Critical and familiar 
 eyes could scarcely have told Ch'eng T'ien Tzu from 
 Ting Tzu at the same age, had it not been for one dif- 
 ference slight but marked — a difference that was the 
 granddaughter's one visible inheritance from her 
 mother. 
 
 Ch'eng T'ien Tzu had the characteristically Chinese 
 lovely and luminous eyes, but they were set straight in 
 her head, as Manchu eyes so often are, and as Ch'eng 
 Hua Foh T'ien's had been. And more than once 
 
 136 
 
THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 137 
 
 Ch'eng Shao Yiin had wondered if there were any 
 truth in a scandal centuries old that had discredited a 
 lady of the Huas with a Manchu lover of imperial 
 rank. It had never beoti proved. And Hua Foh 
 T'ien's dowery had been fabulous, and her feet almost 
 smaller than Yiin^s tiny own. But every few genera- 
 tions some babe of descent from the impeccable Chinese 
 house of Hua came into life with its new eyes straight 
 set, 
 
 Tzu liked England from the first. And from the 
 first she won her way into the English hearts about her. 
 After the first brief, sharp homesickness all the lines 
 of her English sojourn fell in pleasant, kindly places. 
 
 Ch'eng Shao Yiin was obsessed and imperious, but 
 she was sane. 
 
 She had made no attempt to select herself t^e house 
 of Tzu's European stay — appreciating that she, 
 Chinese and in far off Ho-nan, could have no wiseness 
 concerning the child's English environment or entour- 
 age. So she put its determining into Sheng Liu*s 
 hands, and into those of a Chinese official in London. 
 Neither man blundered. 
 
 Ch'eng Yiin's sanity had exacted of her one other 
 concession concerning Tzu — a concession that cost Yiin 
 considerably more self-control and sacrifice. She had 
 made no attempt to instil her own acrid hatred of the 
 English into the tender, sunny soul of little Tzu. She 
 had taught her that with every decent Chinese China 
 came first — that the Chinese was first of all the peoples 
 — and that a Chinese of high birth, any Ch'eng, could 
 give China nothing short of worship and selfless fealty. 
 But beyond these broad lines she neither went nor tried 
 to go. For she realized that a pre-prejudice must 
 cramp the young plastic mind, and incapacitate it to 
 
138 THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 
 
 understand best, and best learn from, the English. 
 And she trusted the girl's own Chinese instinct and 
 acuteness to draw their own conclusions — always to 
 China's favor — and to harden into just enmity when 
 the time for enmity and action should come. For she 
 had seen her own intellect, her own force^ her own 
 indomitable persistence beneath the gentleness and the 
 exquisite loveliness that Ch'eng T'ien Tzu had inher- 
 ited from Chii-po's wife. And she was well assured 
 that in her child's scarce conscious heart throbbed a 
 patriotism and a loyalty as deep and as uncompromis- 
 ing as her own. She trusted Tzu, for Tzu was 
 Chinese and a Ch'eng — descended from half the great- 
 est clans in China — descended, best of all perhaps, from 
 the house of Shao. She sensed herself within the 
 child; and perhaps trusted her most, as certainly she 
 loved her most, for that — and she felt secure that when 
 she left the earth-land she loved, and to her utmost 
 served, her own soul would live on in Ho-nan in the 
 bosom of the girl with the perfect eyebrows and deep, 
 jade-like eyes, set Manchu-level in a peach-like face. 
 
 To this second concession — so difficult that only a 
 great soul could have made it, or a great will enforced, 
 little Tzu owed even more than she did to the first of 
 her happiness in England. 
 
 Ch'eng T'ien Tzu was very happy in England. 
 
 And while she grew there, and grew not a little into 
 English ways and thinking, the bereft grandmother 
 lived on in China, growing strangely older, but busier 
 and more busied than before — she grieved, but it was 
 not in her to repine or be idle. And she saw each day 
 China's peril, and China's need of loyal service and 
 action, growing more and more. 
 
 Each year the Feast of Lanterns kept its solemn* 
 
THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 139 
 
 sparkling festival. But Ch'eng Shao Yiin never 
 watched it now — scarcely turned her head from book 
 or document when the crackers cannonaded through 
 the paths, much less went to her casement to watch the 
 great illuminated dragon as it passed. She would 
 watch the Feast of Lanterns next when she watched it 
 hand-in-hand with home-come Ch'eng T'ien Tzu, or — 
 more, probably, she thought — when she came back to 
 it a guest from on high. 
 
 She leaned heavily on her ivory stave now when she 
 walked, but she went, even more ceaselessly than 
 before, about her great domain where the coal mines 
 belched up a rich daily harvest of black gold, and the 
 silkworms — though Ho-nan is a province of wild and 
 inferior silks — because Ch'eng Yiin willed and planned 
 and watched it, and her servants obeyed, spun her a 
 sheened, supple wealth that fed upon the fabric markets 
 of the world. A Tzarina wore coronation silk that 
 had been the Lady Ch'eng's, and a cardinal wore it in 
 the Vatican, and the very by-products of the place 
 wove and piled her fortune a Rothschild might strain 
 to match. 
 
 And in every village and hillside home there was 
 peace and plenty, and at least one woman who carried 
 cocoons in her yellow breast, and when their time had 
 come — her day's housewifery done — lit her oil-fed 
 light, or her resined torch, scalded the cocoons, and 
 her own patient heroic hands, spun the cocoons' gleam- 
 ing oflf-flux, and wove it on a homemade bamboo loom. 
 And to every humble home that was her people's, the 
 Lady came and served and ruled it as tenderly and 
 ruthlessly as she did the gigantic industries of the place 
 "•—the great silkworm sheds, the dark coal mines, the 
 teeming acres of cotton fields, the busy factories, the 
 
HO THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 
 
 art works and the great store-houses opulent with grain 
 — tottering sometimes on her own tiny, indefatigable 
 feet, carried sometimes in her palanquin. 
 
 Too Ch'eng Shao Yiin often went from Ho-nan in 
 these later years of her loneliness. Probably she 
 would have done so in any case, since she wished it, and 
 thought it best — for, however subservient to custom 
 such imperious women may seem or hope to be, they 
 never are in fact subservient when subservience would 
 entail an unwilling and not self-willed abnegation of 
 self and of personal conviction. The Ch'eng Shao 
 Yuns of earth rule their own daily destinies every- 
 where. But even in China — perhaps more in China 
 than anywhere else — a woman as old as Ch'eng Yiin 
 was now, as rich and as strong of character and poise, 
 may do, and even go, much as she will. 
 
 Again she had a son, a boy adopted by her that the 
 ancestor-worship of the Ch'engs need not lapse or fail, 
 that the Ch'eng name might not die, but live in the sons 
 •f Tzu, and that Tzu herself should neither be hus- 
 ]»ndless nor dwell permanently elsewhere than on their 
 own estate. The boy was being educated in Pekin, 
 strictly in accordance with the judgment and wish of 
 C3i'eng Shao Yiin and under her strict supervision. 
 
 But it was not to see him — Ch'eng Wen — that the 
 woman journeyed to Pekin, as she often did. He was 
 Iwit a passive pawn in her game of life, in no way, and 
 in no way to become, of her affection — just a necessity 
 bought and paid for, a chattel necessary to her scheme 
 of life for Ch'eng T'ien Tzii. And it was Tzia — not he 
 — that Yiin intended to rule, when Tzii had come 
 home, and she herself had joined their ancestors. 
 
 Ch'eng Shao Yiin pilgrimaged to Pekin to hold con- 
 ference with the great Dowager. They had been 
 
THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 141 
 
 friends for years, the Manchu Empress and the Chinese 
 chieftainess, close-knit in their one love of China — - 
 their burning patriotism — and in their hatred, and 
 growing fear, of the encroaching foreigners. 
 
 The Chinese peril grew near and acute — not the 
 "Yellow Peril'* of which the papers of Christendom 
 prate glibly when copy's scarce, and which may yet 
 strike Europe harder than any one of Fleet Street 
 thinks (but in its nastiest, most merciless scourge to 
 come from a smaller, younger, less honest people than 
 the Chinese) but a dual peril threatening China from 
 within, and from the prying aliens without. 
 
 War menaced, international war. And the secret 
 societies festered and cankered at home. 
 
 The two women, great enthroned Manchu and great 
 Chinese, were troubled and anxious. Anxiety grew to 
 alarm. Tze-Shi and Ch'eng Yiin were almost some- 
 what distraught. 
 
 But in England, the girl Tzu — almost as blind as 
 British statesmanship— took no heed of such things. 
 
 She grew in the cool English green like some happily 
 transplanted exotic flower in the quiet garden of hd 
 simple country rectory home. 
 
 Ch'eng T'ien Tzu was well content in England. 
 
 Mung Panii was not. 
 
CHAPTER XX 
 
 TV/fUNG PANU disliked everything in England, 
 -*--■" and Ch'eng Tzu disliked some few things very 
 much. 
 
 She missed the sun. Even in summer the sun 
 seemed far-off to her and cold, as it had never seemed 
 in China. And in the long, sunless stretches of the 
 English winter she suffered an agony of spirit that was 
 even worse than the withering shrinking of body. She 
 wore furs in the house, and Mrs. Ford, tenderly anx- 
 ious for the Chinese children's comfort, piled up the 
 Rectory fires until the servants feared she'd bum the 
 Rectory down, and the Rector said so, and often in the 
 night rose from his comfortable bed to prowl and peer 
 about the house unhappily, sniffing and looking for 
 smoldering disaster. But in that first winter of her 
 English stay little Ch'eng Tzu was never once really 
 warm. "Does the sun never shine in England?" she 
 cried more than once to the fog when it blanketed the 
 Rectory and the village in impenetrable gloom. But 
 summer came again, and brought her flowers. And 
 when the next winter came Chinese Tzu had grown a 
 little acclimated; if not reconciled. But she never 
 ceased to miss the sun, the hot, downpouring Chinese 
 sun, and to long and even sicken for it, as the drunk- 
 ard, denied, craves for wine. 
 
 Often the Rectory food revolted the child. Mrs. 
 Ford kept a generous table and had an excellent cook. 
 But the best English cooking is so inferior to the every- 
 
 Id2 
 
THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 143 
 
 day fare of well-to-do Chinese that it is surprising that 
 Ch'eng Yun's great-grandchild contrived to eat enough 
 to keep her well during those first savorless months at 
 the Rectory. Beef is a positive offense to most Chinese 
 palates; it was to Tzu's. And the knives and forks 
 frightened her. And Mrs. Ford made culinarily the 
 greatest mistake of all, and made it, as such mistakes 
 are so often made, out of the veriest kindness — ^in 
 attempting to tempt little Miss Ch'eng with Chinese 
 dishes. She questioned Mung Panii and ransacked 
 books of Chinese travel for food hints. The prepar- 
 ing of the resultant dishes first made the placid Rectory 
 cook sullen and then quarrelsome, and set before 
 Ch'eng Tzu she found them even nastier than she had 
 found their predecessors. That they were Chinese she 
 never even suspected. Then Tzu's Rectory menu set- 
 tled down to a long deluge of rice. Such rice I Ch'eng 
 Tzu hardly recognized it at first. 
 
 But she was young and strong, and determined to 
 be pleased, if she could. And, if she never learned 
 to relish beef and roast potatoes, she grew used to 
 much that was set before her, and throve and kept bon- 
 nie on chicken and tomatoes, pancakes, bread and milk, 
 fruit and the Rectory eggs and fish. 
 
 Cold baths she would not endure. Indeed Mrs. Ford 
 never tried that but once. Once was quite enough. 
 Tzu never succeeded in getting in England a bath 
 that she considered hot, until she had an English house 
 of her own, but she did get them — after that first 
 memorable cold one — of a temperature that she ad- 
 mitted endurable. Mrs. Ford called them boiling. 
 
 Her new English clothes troubled the Chinese child 
 not a little. She felt them uncomfortable, and saw 
 them hideous. But she was obedient — Ch'eng Yiin had 
 
144 THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 
 
 enjoined it — and Beatrice Ford was lenient. She let 
 the child select the colors she was to wear, and wear 
 English cuts and trimmings somewhat modified 
 towards Chinese modes. Tzu insisted upon tying her 
 blue-black hair with crimson ribbons — the signal color 
 of Chinese maidenhood, and Mrs. Ford made no ob- 
 jection. And twice a year a box of clothing came 
 from China, and in her own room often, and in the 
 general house sometimes, Ch'eng Tzu was allowed to 
 wear her lovely native dress. Why *' Madame Ch'eng" 
 sent Tzu the Chinese garments greatly puzzled the 
 English lady. For Cheng Liu told her that the ven- 
 erable lady in Ho-nan imperatively wished that Tzu 
 should in all possible ways conform to English cus- 
 toms. But Ch'eng Shao Yiin as httle wished Tzu to 
 forget what Chinese clothes were, or how to wear them, 
 as she wished her to forget how to read, write and 
 speak Chinese. The Chinese clothes were sent, as 
 Mung Panti had been sent — to remind Ch'eng T'ien 
 Tzu of home, and to keep her accustomed to things 
 Chinese. 
 
 Long Chinese letters came to the child, and went 
 from her. She had Chinese books with her, and mu- 
 sical instruments, and quite a horde of Chinese toys 
 — clay and wooden figures and animals — gayly painted, 
 a score of games and half a score of costly Chinese 
 dolls — all treasures of her younger days. Tzu at ten 
 was quite too old for toys. But she loved them all. 
 But Mrs, Ford soon found that Tzu preferred not 
 to show her Chinese toys, and liked nothing less than 
 visiting or being visited by English children. And 
 nothing would induce her to bring her lute or her 
 guitar out of her own room, or to play her C/linese 
 music except there. 
 
THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 145 
 
 At first Sheng Liu came to the Rectory often, and 
 stayed always several days. Then — as the girl grew 
 more accustomed to her new surroundings — he came 
 less frequently and stayed more briefly. But he never 
 ceased to come, and he wrote to Tzu, and she to him. 
 
 The Rector liked to teach. Tzu loved to learn. And 
 they two got on famously together. She was ap- 
 palled at his ignorance — of China, and despised him for 
 it not a little. But she soon learned that most Eng- 
 lish folk knew even less of China than he did: he 
 knew that there were eighteen provinces in China, 
 he knew that white poppies yielded the better crop, 
 and he had heard of Marco Polo and of the great ob- 
 servatory at Pekin. Most English people, she dis- 
 covered, had not. 
 
 She had no playmates here. The Ford boys were 
 away at school in Germany — all three of them, and 
 would probably not come home until she had gone to 
 school in London, which she was to do as soon as it 
 could be arranged, and she had learned enough Eng- 
 lish, and enough of English ways. And she learned 
 both rapidly. She had no playmates, but she had 
 had but few in Ho-nan. And, when she found how 
 Tzu disliked it, Mrs. Ford soon gave up inviting Eng- 
 lish children to the Rectory over often. But Tzu 
 had Mung Panii with her always, and Sheng Liu to 
 come to her, if she wished him, and to come as fast as 
 English steam would bring him. 
 
 And so the child led her little dual life — English- 
 seeming, Chinese at core. 
 
 Mrs. Ford wondered how soon the English part 
 would get the upper hand, and drive the old Chinese 
 thought and feeling into obscurity, and banishment. 
 And sometimes Sheng Liu grimly wondered it too. 
 
146 THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 
 
 Mung Panti feared it. And Panii combated it with 
 all her might and with all her Chinese skill. Of all 
 her great devoted retinue none had ever served Ch'eng 
 Shao Yiin more ardently than the homesick slave girl 
 Mung Panii did — none unless blind Ah Song. 
 
 Beatrice Ford taught Tzu to skate and to ride. 
 The Rector taught her golf and chess, and the les- 
 sons that seemed to Sheng Liu most desirable, 
 
 Tzu liked Mrs. Ford. She liked the Rector better 
 — until he began to press his faith upon her a little 
 unwisely. Possibly like her great-grandmother, Tzu 
 had more flair for men than for women. Certainly 
 she liked Sheng more warmly than she did Mung 
 Panii, and preferred his company to Panii's, liked the 
 Rector — at first — a little better than she did his wife, 
 though Mrs. Ford was destined to wear better in the 
 child's regard. And the greatest friend she made 
 in her Rectory years was a man, and her capture of 
 him was something of a triumph. Gibbs the old 
 gardener was sour and gnarled. He worked well. But 
 he was never known to speak unless spoken to, and 
 rarely to answer with decent civility then. And he 
 hated all she-things — two-footed or four — with a 
 deadly, venomous hatred. Tzii made him hers within 
 a month. They spent long hours together, trowels and 
 watering cans in hand, and he told the Rector that 
 the "little yellow heathen'' made the flowers grow. 
 Perhaps she did. For she loved them. And she 
 warmed one churlish old English heart. 
 
 A sincere churchman, it was not to be expected that 
 Philip Ford would refrain from trying to show Ch'eng 
 Tzii the error of Chinese theologies. How could he? 
 It would not have been to his credit. But his cau- 
 
THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 147 
 
 tious attempt at proselytizing only served to lose him 
 his first place in Tzu^s regard. 
 
 He went to work very subtly, as he thought. But 
 the Chinese girl instantly discovered his intention, and 
 her Chinese soul took offense, — not fright — and its 
 wings beat back to the painted gods of China. She 
 had one with her, in a box of camphorwood. She 
 had forgotten it — but now she took it out, and put 
 it beside her picture of Ch*eng Shao Yiin. And Mrs. 
 Ford and the maids thought it quite the ugliest of 
 her dolls. 
 
 If the English cleric had been less profoundly ig- 
 norant of the belief he aimed to annihilate, his chance 
 of success might have been more. But probably not, 
 for irreligion is fairly invincible. And in any Euro- 
 pean sense the Chinese mind is essentially irreligious. 
 Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism are accredited 
 the three religions of China. But the statement is lax. 
 Confucianism is not a religion. It is a philosophy, a 
 code of ethics, and of conduct. Taoism, more spirit- 
 ual — and to-day more debased — is scarcely more. Bud- 
 dhism has little hold in China — except upon the sim- 
 plest minds here and there in the remote North. The 
 religion of China is a mingling of common sense, 
 reverence for ancestors, and adoration of nature. And, 
 because it satisfies its adherents, it will not easily be 
 undermined. The Rev. Philip Ford never got one 
 word of his message through to Tzu — nor would he 
 have done so, if she had spent as many years at the 
 Rectory as she spent months. He was a good teacher. 
 He knew his theme. But he did not know Tzu's. 
 
 She had seen the kitchen gods abused and left sup- 
 perless at home when her rice had displeased Ch'eng 
 
148 THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 
 
 Yiin, and regularly as the dinner hour came around 
 Ch'eng Tzu regretted that Mrs. Ford had no kitchen 
 gods, and longed to procure her a pair — to supervise 
 the Rectory cooking. 
 
 But the Rector made an admirable English scholar 
 of Ch'eng Tzu and quickly taught her how to beat 
 him at billiards every time. 
 
 Tzu loved no one, except her great-grandmother 
 across the world in Ho-nan. But they all loved her, 
 and were tenderly good to her. Beatrice Ford cried 
 herself to sleep the first time she saw Ch'eng Tzu*s 
 naked feet. Mung Panii was furious. Tzii was 
 greatly offended. But from that hour the English 
 woman devoted herself to the Chinese child almost 
 fanatically. And the busy days passed fairly happily 
 for the exiled little Ch'eng. 
 
 Of course, she was home-sick sometimes — and ex- 
 cept for her own companionship, and the companion- 
 ship of the flowers, and the animals about the place, 
 she was very lonely. 
 
 Beatrice Ford's heart bled hourly for the child. She 
 was sorry too for Mung Panii. But Panii was older 
 — and, as Mrs. Ford told her husband, Panii had her 
 feet. But Tzii was such a baby — barely ten — and her 
 feet so cruelly maimed. Beatrice Ford thought that 
 the old Ch'eng woman in China must be insane — or 
 else a monster — to send such a child so far, to live 
 among entire strangers — strangers alien to her in every 
 way. 
 
 And there was something little short of tragedy in 
 it, truly enough! A child of ten, a girl child delicately 
 reared, exquisitely sheltered till now. Born in riotous 
 sunshine, brought up in sunshine, living all her little 
 life in a land throbbing with color and with festival, 
 
THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 149 
 
 ringing with laughter and song; steeped in glowing 
 traditions and in picture, the very devils picturesque 
 and amusing, suddenly sent across the world tossed on 
 the great, seemingly-shoreless ocean, in a monster 
 ship, no woman of her own race near her, only a slave 
 girl more frightened and homesick than herself for 
 companionship, thrust into the English fog and mist 
 and cold, given strange foods to eat, with strange 
 utensils, told to speak a language she did not know, 
 stared at if she went outside the gate as if she'd been 
 a circus or an unbelievable sleight of hand performance 
 or some abnormal growth or a "freak" of nature — ^to 
 live her girlhood out among people who could not 
 possibly understand her, and whom she could not pos- 
 sibly understand! Beatrice Ford wondered that such 
 an experience did not kill or craze her. 
 
 Oh! she was very good to Tzu — and scarcely less 
 good to Mung Panii. 
 
 And indeed to meet the experience as little Tzii did 
 told her very callous, or very brave. 
 
 Tzu was wonderfully brave. Her race had been 
 brave for many centuries. And she had boundless 
 confidence in Ch'eng Shao Yun. She knew that what- 
 ever her great-grandmother had done was kindest — 
 and deserved her burning gratitude. And her love 
 and loyalty never wavered. 
 
 And in Ho-nan Ch'eng Yiin sickened for her child. 
 
 And Tzii was very busy. Her great-grandmother 
 had told her to work. She worked ! And there was 
 so much to learn. And she wished to learn it all. 
 And she had dreams for comforters, warm day-dreams 
 of her going home, of the time to come when her 
 hand would lie close and safe again in Ch'eng Yun's 
 hand. The lilies in the courtyard would make her 
 
150 THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 
 
 garments sweet, and the fireflies at the night time would 
 turn the garden into fairyland. 
 
 But sometimes her face quivered a little in the dark- 
 ness of the night, when the winter rain beat upon 
 her window-pane, and the wind whistled down her bed- 
 room chimney. Sometimes, when she was sure that 
 Mung Panii slept, she crept out of bed, and caught 
 up a doll, or a spotted wooden tiger, and took it back 
 to sleep with her — and once she took her god. 
 
CHAPTER XXI 
 
 WHEN the Earl died, and his income followed his 
 title to a distant kinsman, the Ladies Worthing 
 looked about them hurriedly for something to do. 
 
 They were penniless and plain. But they were sen- 
 sible and full of pluck. They had no stomach for 
 charity, and no appetite for permanent penury. 
 
 And, realizing how scant other capital they had, and 
 somewhat undervaluing their sterling capital of per^ 
 sonality and character, they cast about them for avo- 
 cations in which their titles would best count as capital. 
 
 Joan and Lucy decided on a bonnet shop. They 
 began modestly enough— they had to begin modestly 
 — in Putney, but by dint of sheer hard work they 
 achieved Kensington and a solid bank account ida Bays- 
 water, and after ten strenuous, anxious years. Mary 
 thought the titled milHner stunt overdone — she said 
 — and besides, it needed heaps of talent, which no 
 Worthing had ever had, and, she added, she was too 
 passionately fond of clothes, above all bonnets and 
 hats, to be willing to make her living botching them 
 — or, if she learned to turn out successful ones, to part 
 with them to other women. She disliked most women, 
 almost as much as men seemed to dislike her, al- 
 though she had some flair for growing girls. The 
 pretty ones intrigued her, and the plain ones pulled 
 her sympathy. 
 
 Lady Mary Worthing decided to open a girls* 
 school. 
 
 151 
 
152 THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 
 
 Her sisters cried out shrilly, her acquaintance 
 mocked, the family solicitors argued. 
 
 And moreover, however could she? That was the 
 final, clinching dissuasion of them all. 
 
 And it did seem rather final. 
 
 Lady Mary hadn't the haziest idea how to accom- 
 plish it, or even of how to begin trying to do so. She 
 had very clear-cut ideas of just what manner of school 
 she wished hers to be. No modest Putney begin- 
 nings for her. Hers was to be a fashionable finishing 
 school near Belgrave Square, very expensive and very 
 successful. Lady Mary wished to make a great deal 
 of money. 
 
 Lucy tittered, and the Lady Joan screamed with 
 mirth. Thorndyke, Hall and Thorndyke shrugged re- 
 lieved blackclad shoulders, and smiled indulgently. It 
 was a harmless ambition, and perfectly safe, since quite 
 impossible of fulfillment. Fashionable finishing schools 
 just off Belgrave Square require lavish monetary capi- 
 tal ; Lady Mary had none and no means of getting any. 
 
 Quite. But Mary Worthing did it. 
 
 How she did it is a not uninteresting story. But 
 it is her story, not ours. And one passing hint must 
 suffice. Lady Mary Worthing had had a Scots mother. 
 
 She not only did it, but she made it pay, long 
 before her scoffing sisters' bonnet shop did. 
 
 It was the starting at all that smacked of modern 
 miracle. Once started the rest was easy and simple, 
 and success a foregone conclusion. 
 
 Lady Mary had no educational fads — scarcely an 
 educational theory, and none too much education of 
 her own. She played a fairish game of bridge, but 
 the tradesmen's books beat her every time. But she 
 dressed exquisitely — as soon as she could — her man- 
 
THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 153 
 
 ners were both patrician and charming. She flattered 
 the parents, and she made her girl pupils happy, and 
 "turned them out" highly creditable both to herself 
 and to the Court of St. James. And it was perhaps 
 her best asset of all that she knew to a nicety whom 
 and what to exclude from her teaching staff, and from 
 her list of pupils, and did it rigorously. 
 
 And to the surprise of every one — and to the frank 
 and open envy of her sisters — she married. But, 
 though her husband was no kinsman, his name was 
 Worthing too, and she felt it an added advantage that 
 she need not change her name to achieve the coveted 
 prefix of "Mrs." — though "Mrs." understood. James 
 Worthing was a gentleman and a decent, friendly soul. 
 And the tradesmen's arithmetic held no alarms for 
 him. He could boast little more education than his 
 wife, but he could do shillings and pence and even 
 pounds and ounces. Lack of sufficient means had 
 driven him from the army — but his brief soldiering 
 had been creditable, and was an advantage to him still, 
 and an advantage to his wife's school — an advantage 
 of which she made the quiet most — which was a useful 
 something which no one living could do better or with 
 more perfect breeding than Lady Mary could. Cap- 
 tain James Worthing had been very honorably wounded 
 in the Boer War, and had not only deserved, but, what 
 is rarer, had received the D.S.O. 
 
 Captain Worthing had secretarial work at the Chi- 
 nese Legation. He was no sponger on his wife. And 
 he made her a good husband. And she rewarded 
 him after five years of steady matrimonial good con- 
 duct on his part — hers goes without saying — by mak- 
 ing him a proud parent. The welcome offspring proved 
 — a little to the dulling of his pride, and to Lady 
 
154 THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 
 
 Mary's frank disgust, not only carrot-haired, but twins. 
 
 But the boarders were as delighted as amused when 
 the mother and her daughter and son returned to Bel- 
 grave Square, and the Chinese Minister sent two price- 
 less christening cups of opalescent jade. 
 
 No other babies came to the school near Belgrave 
 Square — and Lady Mary bore it placidly, having 
 learned incidentally that for more than a century twins 
 had been very prevalent among the Trulls. James 
 Worthing had had a grandmother whose maiden name 
 was Trull. But these two babies soon made the school 
 a home. They did not have the run of the class- 
 rooms, of course, but they soon had wide freedom of 
 crawl at recreation hours, and many a girl there then 
 owed a sweetness and a womanliness, that was her life- 
 long wealth and charm, to the fact that two red-headed 
 babies had crept into her heart, and clung there, gur- 
 gling, contented and at home, when she was at board- 
 ing school. 
 
 It was a nice school. Captain /Worthing neither kept 
 unduly in the background, nor over obtruded — ^was a 
 thoroughly nice fellow, and Lady Mary was a nice 
 woman and exceptionally sane. 
 
 She ruled well. And she was growing rich. 
 
CHAPTER XXII 
 
 DONALD — he was almost five now, and naturally 
 Edith was too — made a fat dash for the toasting 
 fork, but Lady Mary made a quicker grab for his pina- 
 fore, caught it, and wrenched him back and up into 
 her lap. 
 
 Elenore Selwyn was toasting crumpets — none too 
 easy a task even on the wide grate's glowing coals, 
 for at its other end Justine du Bret was popping com. 
 
 This was the girls' own hour, their time of com- 
 plete freedom. This was their sitting room and sanc- 
 tum. Here no teacher might come, be her errand what 
 it might. "Home from home" the girls called it. And 
 at this, their hour of twilight sanctuary, even Lady 
 Mary never came without special and explicit invita- 
 tion. She was popular with her charges, and careful 
 to keep her popularity and her welcome unworn and 
 cordial — so careful that not always would she come 
 even when urged. 
 
 It was winter, crisp and clear, the sun just down, 
 and the logs piled ready to lay on the ruddy coals 
 when the schoolgirl cookery should be done. 
 
 "My, how good!" the mistress said, as she munched 
 the first crumpet, sizzling hot and buttered thick. 
 
 Baby Edith stood behind Justine with chubby arms 
 about the French girl's neck, red curls cuddled on the 
 black. Edie meant to have the first taste of the pop- 
 corn. 
 
 Dorothy Fielding was pouring the fragrant tea. 
 
 155 
 
156 THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 
 
 And a dozen or more other girls lounged prettily about 
 the cheerful room. They were all licensed here. Even 
 moderate slang came and went unrebuked. Lady Mary 
 herself had been known to drop a sly word of it here 
 now and then. And here she never spoiled sport. She 
 rarely spoiled it anywhere needlessly. Her policy was 
 far different. 
 
 When the meal was nearly done, and a pause came 
 in the chattering, Lady Mary said suddenly, 
 
 "Shall I tell you a story, girls, before I tote the 
 babies off to bed?" 
 
 They turned to her expectant, and surprised. She 
 did many companionable things for them, and often. 
 But she had never told them a story before. They 
 had not suspected story telling to be among her com- 
 fortable, straight-cut gifts. And they were most of 
 them rather old for story teUing. 
 
 "Please," the Infanta Mercedes said, the first, as 
 always, to remember her manners even here. 
 
 "We have a new pupil coming to-morrow," the 
 Head began. "It is very interesting — quite like a story 
 in a book, I think. I am peculiarly anxious to make 
 her one of my successes — and that she should be happy 
 here — and learn a great deal. And I want you all 
 to help me." 
 
 The tense interest of the girls grouped about her 
 laxed almost noticeably. New girls were no great 
 rarity. And they had chill sympathy with any girl 
 who could be unhappy here. And there was little 
 thrill in Lady Mary's beginning — and no promise of 
 anything novel. She always was anxious to make you 
 one of her very special successes, and to have you 
 work tremendously, and learn lots. Story, indeed ! 
 
 Then she told them Ch'eng Tzu's story — as much 
 
THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 157 
 
 of it as she knew. Its vital core, the real reason of 
 the girl's banishment, Lady Mary knew nothing of, 
 nor suspected. 
 
 A little Chinese girl, a Princess or more in her own 
 country, fabulously rich, an orphan without one near 
 relative living, even in China — (the fall of Port Ar- 
 thur had killed Ch'eng Shao Yiin — though she had lived 
 more than a year after it, dying but a year ago) was 
 joining them to-morrow, to learn all that their teach- 
 ers, Lady Mary and the girls themselves, could teach 
 her. And Lady Mary begged for her not only the 
 sufferance, but the friendship of the girls. 
 
 "She is very young, the youngest girl I have ever 
 taken — not quite thirteen — precocious, my cousin 
 writes me, lovable when you come really to know her. 
 She may feel very strange among us — I suppose she 
 will — but perhaps less strange than we'd expect, for 
 she has been living for two years, a little more than 
 two, with my cousin, Mrs. Ford, at the Rectory, and 
 so she already knows something of quiet English coun- 
 try ways — but nothing of London. She has never been 
 in a city — or even a large town — in her life — not even 
 in China — except that she must have passed through 
 Hong Kong and Liverpool, when she sailed and landed. 
 She has never been to a function in her life, more 
 exciting than a rectory croquet party." 
 
 "Does she speak English, Lady Mary ?" 
 
 "After two years in an English rectory? Of course 
 she does, Elenore. But she has not forgotten her own 
 language — for she has a friend with her, an older girl, 
 with whom she has spoken Chinese, for at least an 
 hour every day." 
 
 "They boze come, Madame?" 
 
 "Try to say your 'th,' Justine," Lady Mary re- 
 
158 THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 
 
 minded kindly. "No, Miss Ch'eng comes alone. Miss 
 Mung is ill, nothing much, and is to stay with the 
 Fords, for the present. Be good to her, girls. Re- 
 member she is very far from home — a stranger here, 
 perhaps a stranger there too, when she goes back, 
 since none of her family is living. Be good to her." 
 The last words were a plea, and a little anxious. Mary 
 Worthing knew how hard girls could be. And on her 
 own account she had hesitated seriously before con- 
 senting to receive little Miss Ch'eng. She had no 
 great liking for Orientals — not that she knew any well, 
 or many at all. But it had seemed an exceptional 
 opportunity to show what she could do. And her am- 
 bition as an artist in "turning out" girls admirably 
 had pricked her on to this somewhat unwelcome, and 
 certainly difficult, attempt. Lady Mary was deeply 
 in love with her work. 
 
 "Do your best — I know you will," she said, with 
 just a tiny sigh, as she rose to separate Donald and 
 Edith, who were squabbling lustily with each other 
 for sole possession of the pop-corn popper. And when 
 she had taken it from both of them, and "toted" them 
 off to bed — a protested process always — an uncordial, 
 smoldering silence fell upon the room. 
 
 Justine broke it. "Mon dieu. I zink it time I go 
 back to France." 
 
 "A Chink!" one English girl said bitterly. 
 
 "Don't you think we'd better wait until we see her ?" 
 Elenore Selwyn suggested. But there was more British 
 love of fair play than conviction in her voice. She 
 did not say it warmly. 
 
 None of them liked it. 
 
 Several of them were far from home, exiled from 
 their own homes and kindred — the French and Spanish 
 
THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 159 
 
 girls, two Russians, a Roumanian and a Cuban. And 
 three were orphans. 
 
 These schoolgirls were not insular. And without 
 exception they were ladies. Half of them were the 
 daughters of noblemen. Two had fathers in the Cabi- 
 net — a Tory Cabinet — one was the daughter of a great 
 newspaper owner. Others were the children of diplo- 
 mats, generals, eminent jurists. Most of them had 
 traveled and knew something of the world — more than 
 one might have boasted royal godmothers, and three 
 had royal blood — collateral but legitimate. 
 
 But they one and all resented the coming of Ch'eng 
 Tzu. And no one disputed it with a word or look 
 when Marion Helmsely said, with scornful finality, 
 **I do think we might draw the line at Chinese." 
 
CHAPTER XXIII 
 
 TF Lady Mary, the next day, was asked less cordially 
 "■- than she usually was, to "come in to us, won't 
 you?'* she took no notice, and said quickly, **Yes, 
 thanks, I'll be there." 
 
 It was during lunch that the invitation was given 
 and accepted. The Chinese girl had not come yet, and 
 no further mention had been made of her. 
 
 Lady Mary came into their sitting room later than 
 she usually did. Their tea had been cleared away. 
 And she came without the twins. 
 
 But Ch'eng Tzu walked beside her — slim and tran- 
 quil. 
 
 Short of being a Scandinavian blonde, she scarcely 
 could have looked less like what the girls had ex- 
 pected. 
 
 Her skin was much lighter than that of the pretty 
 Cuban toasting chestnuts at the fire, and except for 
 her blue-black hair, she was less brunette than sev- 
 eral of the English girls. In the half light of fire 
 and shaded lamps she scarcely looked a foreigner in 
 that rather cosmopolitan little gathering. 
 
 Her hair looked dusky, but not over glossy. It was 
 free from unguents, braided closely about her head. 
 And she carried no signal of her fabulous wealth, not 
 one gem, not so much as a ribbon. She was dressed 
 severely in unrelieved white — the material almost 
 coarse. For she still wore mourning for Ch'eng Yiin 
 — the only relative she had ever known. 
 
 i6o 
 
THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 161 
 
 From her first coming she had conformed to English 
 ways in almost every particular. She had done it at 
 first because her great-grandmother had so enjoined 
 her, but soon had come to like doing it. But every 
 once in a long while Beatrice Ford had found some 
 little point upon which Ch'eng Tzu would not con- 
 form. She dressed as an English girl, excepting only 
 her shoes — and they were a compromise — and that she 
 had a passion for thrusting things in her hair — for 
 lirst choice, jeweled, beaded tassels that tinkled and 
 shook. But she would not wear black for mourning, 
 nor allow the coarse, white robes she chose to be 
 trimmed in any way. And never a stick-pin, a flower 
 or a tassel did she wear in her hair now. 
 
 *'It scarcely looks comfortable," Mrs. Ford had 
 pleaded. 
 
 "It is not intended to be comfortable," Tzu had told 
 her. "I do not wish to be comfortable — now." 
 
 And that had ended it. 
 
 The Infanta Mercedes went up to Ch'eng Tzu, and 
 held out her hand — partly it was good manners, partly 
 it was impulse, and there was fellowship in it too. 
 Beauty appealed compellingly to Mercedes always. 
 And she was the first to recognize the rare beauty 
 of the girl in the coarse white gown. Her princely 
 homes in Spain were rich in masterpieces of old por- 
 traiture, not a few by Velasquez among them, and the 
 girl standing beside Lady Mary reminded the Infanta 
 of the loveliest Velasquez on the walls at home. 
 
 Tzu put her hand, it was like a warm yellow rose 
 leaf, in the Infanta's hand, and thanked her with a 
 smile. And when she smiled every girl there saw her 
 beauty: it sparkled through the room. Lady Mary 
 caught her breath at it, and more than one girl did too. 
 
i62 THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 
 
 "I am glad that you have come," Mercedes said, and 
 Elenore Selwyn hurried forward then, not because she 
 was attracted, but because she was a "good sort," and 
 said heartily, "Yes, we are very glad you have come." 
 
 Ch'eng Tzu dimpled. She rather wanted to say 
 "Why?" But that would have been rude, so, instead 
 she smiled again and bowed. 
 
 She rather doubted that they were glad that she had 
 come — ^yet. But she did not resent it. For herself, 
 it scarcely touched her, and she was a just soul, and 
 knew how little an intimate group of Chinese girls 
 would have liked to have an unknown English girl 
 thrust among them, to share all their work and play, 
 and, no doubt, to interrupt, if not spoil, their many 
 interests. 
 
 Tzu sensed the embarrassment that the other girls 
 were too socially accustomed to show. But it was 
 there, and Tzu knew it was, and rather pitied it. She 
 was accustomed to it — in others — here in England. In 
 the quiet country rectory and countryside, she had 
 grown used to noticing that every one or group to 
 wl:om Mrs. Ford had introduced her was awkwardly 
 embarrassed. And it had always amused her greatly. 
 It did now. But of that she gave no sign. 
 
 "Do you like England?" Elenore asked desperately. 
 
 "Very much," Tzu replied truthfully, not allowing 
 herself to smile — too much. But her eyes danced. 
 
 There was an awkward pause. 
 
 Hector broke it. 
 
 He stalked across the room, and rubbed ingrati- 
 atingly against Ch'eng Tzu. 
 
 She bent down and took him in her arms, and sitting 
 down put him on her lap. And he began to purr. 
 
 Hector had broken the ice. 
 
THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 163 
 
 "Well! I never!" Lady Mary said. 
 
 "I'm blowed!" a girl confided to her chum. 
 
 No one had ever heard Hector purr before. No 
 one had ever been allowed to nurse him before, since 
 he was a very young kitten. And never before had 
 any one been allowed to push friendship to the strok- 
 ing point, inside an acquaintance of some months. 
 
 Lady Mary explained all this, and added, "I think 
 you must be a witch. Miss Ch'eng." 
 
 "So ?" Tzia laughed. "I think it is just your English 
 cat that is very kind, and such a gentleman, that he 
 too makes me welcome." She lifted the big beastie, 
 and cuddled his head against her radiant, pomegranate 
 face, looking across him laughingly. 
 
 Lady Mary — the least psychic of women — ^had a 
 quick prevision of what a sensation this Chinese girl 
 might make when the time came to introduce her. 
 Lady Mary hoped she might be able to present Ch'eng 
 Tzu herself. It would be a noble advertisement for 
 Che school — although happily it needed none — and it 
 would be a personal pleasure. How would not a girl 
 look when dressed to the greatest advantage who was 
 so exquisitely lovely in that shapeless, almost hempen, 
 thing? In brocades and tissues and jewels — and the 
 Lady Mary Worthing was glad — rather meanly — to 
 remember that the Chinese Minister's wife was not in 
 England, to insist perhaps upon presenting Miss Ch'eng 
 herself. 
 
 When the dressing-bell rang, Ch'eng Tzu had made 
 three friends, the Infanta Mercedes, Lady Mary and 
 Hector. 
 
 And one of them had gained a friend. Hector had 
 
CHAPTER XXIV 
 
 TN the next five years Ch'eng T'ien Tzu had many 
 ^ experiences, and made many acquaintances — not 
 friends. The fault was hers, perhaps — for always 
 something held her back. 
 
 She stayed nearly three years at Belgrave Square 
 — it wasn't exactly Belgrave Square, but near enough 
 to claim the hall mark — and spent two on the conti- 
 nent. 
 
 As soon as the girls forgave her for being Chi- 
 nese — and they did it far sooner than they had in- 
 tended, or quite approved of — she grew popular, and 
 several of them loved her. But Tzu never attached 
 herself to any one to the others' exclusion, and, un- 
 less a little to the Spanish Mercedes, scarcely to any 
 one more than to the others. It was not that she 
 held herself aloof. It was not that she was unfriendly. 
 She was bright, gay and obliging always — half the 
 life and merriment of the London house. And, if 
 they all grew to like her, and some to love her, she 
 grew, if a little more slowly — to like most of them. 
 They were nice girls. And she met all their many 
 kindnesses more than halfway and cordially. In their 
 different ways — after the first strangeness and re- 
 pulsion wore off — they were very good to Chinese 
 Tzu, and for every kindness she was radiantly grateful. 
 
 Under sufficient provocation the Chinese are capable 
 of great and ruthless cruelty. Often their vengeance 
 is venomous and implacable. But no Chinese is capable 
 
THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 165 
 
 of ingratitude. Not even Europe or European ex- 
 ample can inoculate them with it. 
 
 Ch*eng Tzu was grateful to every one at Belgrave 
 Square, but not one of them ever knew what she 
 really thought of them. Lady Mary, several of the 
 teachers, and the acuter girls, wondered about it very 
 much, but they never learned. She gave no hint, and 
 she treated all alike. 
 
 She laughed and romped delicately, she danced and 
 sang, she worked tremendously, she tossed back jest 
 for jest, and lavished gift for gift. But in some in- 
 tangible way she seemed to live apart, her personality 
 thinly, delicately veiled. 
 
 Even to Panii she expressed no preference for one 
 schoolmate above another. Mung Panii had joined her 
 at Lady Mary's soon after her own arrival. 
 
 Panii hated all English and all things English vio- 
 lently — and said so when she dared, which was not 
 often. Tzu commanded silence, and the slave girl 
 obeyed. To Panu, Ch'eng Tzu spoke only of China 
 and in Chinese when they were alone, as they often 
 were. They shared a room. And never to any one 
 else, if she could help it, did she speak of China. 
 
 "Probably has forgotten all about the rummy place, 
 and doesn't like to say so. She was only ten when she 
 left, you know," Laura Kingsland said once to Inez, 
 and Tzu, overhearing by accident, laughed softly to 
 herself. 
 
 But Ch'eng Tzu had not forgotten China. She 
 grew each day more at home in England. Month by 
 month she found some new thing to like and respect 
 in the English about her. But always she felt the 
 liand of far-off China on her shoulder. Almost it 
 seemed that each year she remembered her ov/n coun* 
 
i66 THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 
 
 try the more, and the more acutely, though each year 
 certainly weaned her more and more to the foster 
 arms of England. But between the country that she 
 remembered and the country in which she lived she 
 made few comparisons to China's disadvantage. And 
 twice she let a proud word slip that favored China. 
 
 In her first year at Lady Mary's a recalcitrant ser- 
 vant, dismissed for rudeness, created a scene, thrust 
 herself into the room where girls and mistresses sat 
 chatting, threatened Lady Mary, hurling at hef 
 scurrilous, insolent abuse, and the crushing pronounce- 
 ment, "Call yourself a lady! You're no lady!" Some 
 of the girls were amused, some frightened, others — as 
 Lady Mary was — merely coldly angry. One mistress 
 waxed hysterical. Ch'eng Tzu grew pale with fury, 
 and her astonishment struck an unconsidered comment 
 from her usually careful lips. 
 
 Mercedes said to her, "How abominable!'* 
 
 And Ch'eng Tzii replied, "It could not have hap^ 
 pened in China." 
 
 But it could have happened in China — or something 
 very like it — and often did. For in middle-class China 
 a dismissed servant may stand just inside your gate- 
 way all day, and curse you shrilly, and, if a woman, 
 not infrequently does. But Tzu never had heard it 
 Such things did not happen under the rule of Ch'eng 
 Shao Yiin. 
 
 Some months later, Laura Kingsland — as highly 
 bom as any English girl there — offended Tzu's Chi- 
 nese taste far more than the harridan servant had 
 done. 
 
 Laura was easily the beauty of the school — with 
 lights of sheer gold in her rippling hair, eyes blue as 
 
THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 167 
 
 gentians, soft English roses in the snow of an almost 
 perfect patrician face. 
 
 Balked of some indulgence she asked, one day when 
 her parents had come to tea, Laura was openly rude 
 to her mother, a white-haired woman as lovely as the 
 girl. 
 
 Again the Infanta Mercedes commented, and again 
 to Tzu. 
 
 * 'Laura is like a peasant cat. She ought to be 
 beaten,'* the Infanta said. 
 
 "It could not have happened in China," Tzu said 
 proudly. 
 
 "Nor in Spain," Mercedes added quickly. 
 
 But for this twice, whatever Ch'eng Tzu may some- 
 times have thought, no one ever heard her reflect 
 on any English trait, nor on any one English. 
 
 She listened. She watched. She chatted. But all 
 her chatting was impersonal. 
 
 Mung Panii lived in the school household just as 
 Tzu did. Esprit de corps was one of Lady Mary's 
 planks. No distinctions between the pupils were ever 
 made at her school. And under her roof the Chinese 
 mistress and the Chinese maid lived on a parity. But 
 the Chinese difference between them neither ever for- 
 got. Tzu ruled, and was absolute. That they ate 
 together, worked together, and slept almost side by 
 side did not strike them as strange or inappropriate. 
 Chinese mistress and maid often share their rice, and 
 bend over the same embroidery frame. 
 
 Lady Mary took "Miss Ch'eng" about with her a 
 great deal. She always took the older girls out with 
 her a good deal — a part of their preparation for their 
 social duties to come. And it had been clearly stipu- 
 
i68 THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 
 
 lated that she was to show Tzu as much as possible 
 of EngHsh hfe. "She had been educated in Qiina 
 and, if necessary, her education would be completed 
 in China." And it was English ways that Madame 
 Ch'eng wished her great-granddaughter taught, and 
 would pay to have her taught. 
 
 Lady Mary sniffed a little at the idea of a girl of 
 ten having been educated, and educated in China, but 
 she made the desired bargain, and kept it staunchly. 
 And she soon became very keen to take Tzu about with 
 her. The girl was charming and charmingly behaved, 
 and her quaint appearance seemed an attraction. Lady 
 Mary, in spite of her chic clothes, had never been 
 spectacular herself, and she found the small social 
 eruption Tzu's entrance always caused, tonic and grati- 
 fying. 
 
 Mung Panii never vsent out with them. She stayed 
 behind, in their own room, and burned joss sticks. 
 But there was nothing startling in that, for half the 
 idle women in London burned joss sticks by now. 
 
 But Ch'eng Tzu studied in the ordinary way too — 
 and she read many books. Study is a Chinese instinct, 
 and the Chinese reverence books. Confucius said, 
 "You can never open a book without learning some- 
 thing." If that is true, Ch'eng T'ien Tzu must have 
 learned and stored a very great deal during these years. 
 For she had a Chinese memory, the most wonderful 
 of all memories. 
 
 After Belgrave Square she traveled on the continent 
 for two years — seeing all the usual places and many 
 that were unusual. She lingered where she was most 
 interested, and was presented and greatly vouched 
 for, at Rome, Madrid, St. Petersburg, Berlin and 
 Bucharest. 
 
THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 169 
 
 When Tzu came back to England, Lady Mary had 
 her old wish. Lady Mary Worthing presented her old 
 pupil — Miss Ch'eng — to the English Queen. 
 
 Ch'eng Tzii was her own mistress now. Before 
 dying, Ch'eng Shao Yiin had decreed it so, and none of 
 the old woman's scattered progeny, absorbed into other 
 clans now, had wished to dispute it, or had had powet 
 to do so. It was not unheard of for Chinese girls to 
 be so placed, though more a Manchu than a Chinese 
 custom. From Tzu's birth, her great-grandmother had 
 determined the long-desired girl to be the next chiei 
 of the Ch'engs, and there could be no question that 
 at Ch'eng Yiin's death, Ch'eng Yiin's suzerainty had 
 passed to Ch'eng Tzu. The details of the girl's Euro- 
 pean school-days, and of her school-days' gi^iardian- 
 ship, Yiin had provided, and to evade or neglect any 
 item of that provision no more occurred to Ch'eng 
 T*ien Tzu than it occurred to Ch'eng Shao Yiin to 
 make her heir a ward-in-chancery, or any Chinese 
 equivalent of it. She had hoped to live to greet Tzii on 
 Tzu's home return, and to guide the earlier years of 
 her re-Chinesed days, letting the girl study and even 
 somewhat share her own methods of rule. But she had 
 realized how precarious her own hold on life grew, and 
 she had let life slip, and her own hold relax, content 
 that Tzu would follow her will in all things, and in her 
 footsteps. The King is dead. Long live the King! 
 The crown and the regency never die. As little could 
 the sovereignty of the Ch'engs, or its queenship change. 
 As she had been, Tzu would be. As she had done, 
 Tzu would do. As she had reigned and served, Tzu 
 would reign ana serve. 
 
 Ch'eng Shao Yiin had looked to Europe to do much 
 for Tzii, and through Tzu do much for China, usii^ 
 
170 THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 
 
 the bitter ingredient of a disliked alien race to medicine 
 China, as a pharmacologist employs bitter drugs to 
 purge a distraught human frame. But Ytin had taken 
 no heed, turned no thought, to what Europe might do 
 to Tzu. To Ch'eng Shao Yiin seed was everything, 
 soil but little, and foreign soil less than nothing. She 
 knew that transplanted flowers altered in vigor and 
 in character, but to her it was inconceivable that pa- 
 trician Chinese seed could develop in any way along 
 new lines, be its transplantation what it might. Camel- 
 lias — and tangerines might change their tints — or even 
 deteriorate — but not a Ch'eng. The Ch'eng was im- 
 mutable, absolute, fixed. From Europe Ch'eng Shao 
 Yiiin feared much for China. But she feared it not at 
 all for Ch'eng T'ien Tzu. Among her friends were 
 several who had lived in Europe, and Europe had 
 tainted none of them. Sheng Liu had lived there, and 
 China had no son more Chinese than he. 
 
 Several things led Ch'eng Tzu to linger still in Eng- 
 land after her program that her great-grandmother 
 had mapped out had been quite performed. 
 
 England tempted her. 
 
 She shrank from returning orphaned and detached 
 to an altered China. 
 
 And there had been no clear limit named to her 
 stay. She was to go to school. She was to travel. 
 And she was to see and study English life. So 
 much Ch'eng Yiin had said clearly. But she had in- 
 dicated no dates except the date of the girl's departure 
 from home. It was not Ch'eng Yiin's way to an- 
 nounce a date until that date had come. 
 
 She was to go home. Of course! — She intended 
 to go home. But Ch'eng Yiin was not waiting for 
 her there — ^and, for that and other reasons, she saw 
 
THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 171' 
 
 no need to hurry. And her own inclination gave her 
 no spur, but held her rather here where she had ac- 
 quaintances — she had none in China — and where she 
 had spent more than half her life. For she was twenty 
 and a month. 
 
 So she took a little house in Mayfair, furnished it, 
 and gathered a household about her, a household of 
 English servants. Panii was the only Chinese in Tzu's 
 entourage. And she engaged a chaperon so in every 
 way impeccable that her salary ran into so large a 
 sum that almost Ch'eng T'ien Tzu might have been 
 said to nave bought her. 
 
CHAPTER XXV 
 
 THE Chinese concentrate and they specialize: two 
 of the secrets of their general efficiency, content 
 and success. As individuals they arrive, because on 
 their paths of life they so rarely turn aside — they 
 pause to gather many a wayside flower, but they do 
 not turn off into side paths to seek such blossoming, 
 still less retrace their steps. They go straight on, and 
 they rarely reach a cul de sac. 
 
 Had Ch'eng T*ien Tzu been now in China her life 
 would have been direct and, in a superficial sense, cir- 
 cumscribed. She would have done one set of things : 
 the things at once fitting her station and indicative of 
 it. She would have known one dual set of people, 
 the equals of her natural entourage, and its servitors 
 and dependents. 
 
 But in London she lived more diversely. There 
 she would have had her niche, and filled it. Here ^he 
 was a looker-on, and she looked to the right and to 
 the left, far and wide, pausing — and straying off — to- 
 look longest at whatever most amused her, as well as 
 at what interested her most. But the distinction must 
 be admitted a little hypocritical, for with her character- 
 istically Chinese sense of humor, whatever amused 
 keenly interested. Little came amiss to her young 
 curiosity, nothing long or greatly balked her inherited 
 gift for analysis. 
 
 In China she could have met on any parity, with 
 any freedom or cordiality of intercourse, only one very 
 
 172 
 
THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 173 
 
 limited class — women of her own caste. In London 
 she met "everybody" now, and in the easy "give and 
 take" of social intercourse rubbed shoulders of per- 
 sonality with many sorts and conditions of women — • 
 and men. 
 
 Her wealth, the rank of her sponsors and her car- 
 riage were her password into high and guarded places. 
 Her baffling personality, the uniqueness of her appear- 
 ance, of her story, of her entertainment — and of her 
 loveliness, made her popular in the better class Bo- 
 hemia so extraordinarily on the increase in London 
 — increase of numbers, of influence, and probably of 
 permanence. 
 
 Miss Ch'eng became a fashion and a rage — no high 
 achievement perhaps in a milieu that has idolized an 
 aged cowboy, and welcomed mountebanks and boors, 
 a satiated society that prefers eccentricity to the best 
 conventionality, and to dance (so called) in public 
 restaurants — under the gaze of any who can pay the 
 price — rather than to talk quietly in cool, private 
 places. 
 
 Of what she thought of it all she gave no indica- 
 tion. No one knew, not even Mung Panii. But now 
 and then some man, traveled and experienced in his 
 country's civil service, wondered. And Sheng Liu tried 
 several times to find out — in vain and anxiously. 
 
 She entertained sumptuously, but in European fash- 
 ion. The rooms in which she received her guests were 
 furnished in accordance with European custom, but 
 more sparsely and more beautifully than can be claimed 
 to be in strict accordance with European taste. But 
 tucked away in odd parts of the house were little 
 strongholds of Chinese decoration and furnishing. 
 And Lady Mary knew — and Mrs. Marston suspected 
 
174 THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 
 
 — that whoever was welcomed into one of them had 
 gained Tzu's respect and something warmer than the 
 sunny coldness which was all she gave or showed 
 to most. Lady Mary believed that that sunniness was 
 a manner and a courtesy, the coldness a fact and a 
 conviction. 
 
 She dressed as an Englishwoman — with a deft dif- 
 ference that was more individuality and love of the 
 beautiful than Chinese. And too she wore her English 
 clothes with a difference. They hung always. They 
 never clung. Lady Mary knew that she wore always, 
 day and night — usually, but not always, inside her 
 gown — an exquisite bit of jade. Panii knew that it 
 was a niyie — but not that Ch'eng Chii-po had given 
 it long ago to Ch'eng Ting Tzu. 
 
 As a schoolgirl she had worn shoes and slippers 
 that copied somewhat English shoes. But now she 
 always wore Chinese shoes — tiny, embroidered, jeweled 
 things, that peeped out from her English skirts with 
 an emphatic note of Cathay and of the history of its 
 women. 
 
 And London never wearied of marveling at what 
 the girl's maimed fragments of feet could do in those 
 tiny, padded shoes. She played tennis in them. She 
 skated in them. She danced in them — quadrilles and 
 minuets. No man had ever put his arm about Ch'eng 
 T'ien Tzu, or touched more than her fingers' irre- 
 sponsive tips — and scarcely any English woman. The 
 Worthing twins had kissed her as babies, and Tzu had 
 suffered it. Edith kissed her still — sometimes. But 
 Tzu had never kissed them. She abhorred the very 
 sight of kissing, and this oriental instinct she wore 
 about her as a veil. And, for all her bared face, the 
 
THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 175 
 
 girl seemed veiled in several ways, definable some, 
 others indefinable. 
 
 She dressed her black hair very simply and to a 
 smoothness that was never, but for one brief season, 
 fashionable in modem London. But Ch'eng Tzu still 
 loved to stick flowers in her hair, and to hang jewels 
 from it. Lady Mary's babies had loved — when Tzu 
 put her mourning off — to play with the tassels dan- 
 gling from above the tiny jeweled ears. All babies 
 loved to do it, and still many did. Every baby adored 
 Miss Ch'eng, and made free of her. Old people loved 
 her — wooed to it probably by her unfailing Chinese 
 deference to their years. Animals and birds were her 
 veriest creatures. Wild home-sick things came to her 
 at the Zoo, and looked at her with appealing eyes. And 
 on the Embankment and the Terrace at St. Stephen'^ 
 gulls had eaten from her hand. 
 
 Doncaster House, built when git)und in London cost 
 less than now, was big and roomy. A regiment might 
 have been billeted in the wide hall alone. But in to- 
 night's super-crush. Lady Doncaster, panting in a pur- 
 ple dress, and with a purple face, was wedged tight 
 among her suffocated guests. Her diamonds looked 
 red with heat — all the jewels looked hot, and the 
 crammed flowers were cooked — by electricity. Even 
 Miss Ch'eng's long rope of pearls looked warm against 
 her gown of silver brocade, and the tassels of smaller 
 pearls hanging from her hair, and the great pear-shaped 
 pearl on her forehead looked pink and winked warmly, 
 more like the baubles of a geisha than the proud, im- 
 perial things they were. But the girl herself looked 
 cool. Tzu liked the heat, and had no need to use her 
 
176 THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 
 
 little fan — which was as well, for there was no elbow* 
 room in Doncaster House to-night. Here and there 
 the pattern of her silver-threaded brocade was touched 
 with tiny beads of steel. Her long sleeves were thickly 
 sewn with jewels of many colors. London had never 
 seen Miss Ch'eng's arms — not even at Buckingham 
 Palace. To-night, even in this hot crush, a number of 
 women wore velvet, and hot-hued velvet — but no other 
 woman would have thought to wear fur. But the 
 chinchilla, wastefully cut into a design of curving 
 scrolls, appliqued on the hem of Ch'eng Tzu's skirt, 
 looked cool and light. Her toilet conceded nothing to 
 the heat. 
 
 Her manner conceded nothing to the crush, or to 
 those that made it. Seven years ago, in her coarse 
 dress of mourning white, her beauty had sparkled in 
 the school-house room. To-night it looked a softer 
 beauty, the pale glimmering of a moonstone. And 
 her slow progress through the hot rooms was still and 
 cold. Mrs. Marston, white-haired, white-govmed, was 
 the more compelling figure of the two, and not be- 
 cause of her greater inches. 
 
 John Selwyn stopped to speak to Mrs. Marston, but 
 did not even see the girl beside her, to whom the Aus- 
 trian Ambassador was speaking. Lord Ash ford was 
 leaving as Mrs. Marston and the girl came in. But 
 Miss Ch'eng saw Ashford, and turned a little and 
 watched him as he chatted with her chaperon. The 
 astute and practiced diplomatist neither saw nor sus- 
 pected the interest in Tzu's eyes. It was the sudden 
 interest of a Chinese woman, and only Chinese eyes 
 could have pierced to it. And Chinese eyes did. A 
 Chinese, dressed, like Miss Ch'eng, in European clothes, 
 watching her intently, standing near, but not waiting 
 
THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 177 
 
 or wishing to speak to her, saw it almost before it 
 glinted slightly in her eyes and across her immovaWe 
 face. And seeing it, Wang No frowned, and his deli- 
 cate hand tightened on his fob. 
 
 Ch'eng Tzu saw her countryman a moment later, 
 and sent him a Chinese salutation with her fan. And 
 ^t that he had to come to her. He bowed before her 
 coldly, and waited for her to speak. 
 
 "Good-evening,'* Tzii said, smiling for the first time 
 that night — Miss Ch'eng's smiles were few, and they 
 were home-keeping. "I sent you a message by Sheng 
 Liu, Mr. Wang, did he not deliver it? I told him to 
 ask you to call on us." 
 
 Again Wang No bowed ceremoniously. * 'Thrice 
 honorable," he said, answering her in their native 
 tongue, "the noble gray beard gave thy contemptible 
 slave thy gracious command." 
 
 "Which you have disobeyed," the girl said with an 
 amused shrug, and speaking still in English. 
 
 The man bowed. 
 
 Tzu gave him a level look. She could not have 
 eyed him so in China. But then in China she could 
 not have taken speech or heed of him at all. She often, 
 but with discretion, gave acquaintances permission to 
 visit her, but she never invited them. That this so 
 excepted man refused to come — it amounted to that — 
 amused her, but did not vex her, for she was a girl, 
 and she knew the reason of his refusal, and knew 
 that now as he stood before her, angry, disapproving, 
 imperturbable and seeming cold, his blood was throb- 
 bing wildly in his veins, and his Chinese heart pound- 
 ing sickly an old and world-universal agony beneath 
 a well-cut, white English waistcoat. 
 
 "But I intend you to come, Mr. Wang. So I sup- 
 
178 THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 
 
 pose I must get Mrs. Marston to ask you. You cannot 
 refuse to obey a woman of her years, and a sash- 
 wearer." 
 
 "There are no sash-wearers among these foreign- 
 ers, jade-Hke maiden," he said coldly, speaking again 
 in Chinese, "and thy contemptible worm can disobey 
 any Englishwoman." 
 
 Ch'eng T'ien Tzu laughed — a tinkled laugh that was 
 music, and had a sweet, soft tang of wild honey. Her 
 laugh was less rare than her faint moonlight smile. 
 But several men turned toward her at it as she moved 
 slowly on with a tiny gesture of her fan which he 
 could not disobey. And Wang moved beside her re- 
 luctantly, Tzu chatting to him almost merrily, in Eng- 
 lish, which he answered, as briefly as he could, cere- 
 moniously and always in Chinese. 
 
 *Why are you angry with me, Mr. Wang?" she 
 teased him presently. She was incapable of bantering 
 with any Englishman. But she took a naughty and 
 a very girlish satisfaction in flaunting this country- 
 man of hers here in London, to whom she could not 
 have spoken, scarcely permitted herself to think of, at 
 home. 
 
 She had scarcely expected him to evade her ques- 
 tion. Evasion is not a Chinese habit, though igno- 
 rance proclaims it so loudly. But his answer cam^ 
 more blunt than she had expected. 
 
 "Because you are here." 
 
 "At Doncaster House? Or in England?" 
 
 "Both." 
 
 A naughty pleasure rippled on her mobile face, and 
 she turned it to him squarely. It was her rule, as 
 well as her habit, to bear an impassive face abroad. 
 Only Panii often saw expression on it. But she chose 
 
THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 17^ 
 
 to toss even that veil carelessly aside now with Wang 
 No, and no face is more mobile or more expressive 
 than a Chinese woman's face so unveiled. It was an 
 unveiled face Ch'eng T'ien Tzu turned to Wang No. 
 And her eyes — wide open for once — ^were dancing. 
 
 "My honorable great-grandmother," but still speak- 
 ing EngHsh, "decreed it.'' 
 
 "I know " his Chinese words were longer and 
 
 richly dressed with ceremonial courtesies and humble 
 salutations — but his tone was crisp and hard. "But I 
 believe that the most honorable noble Lady Ch'eng 
 Shao Yiin would think your task here now quite done, 
 and would wish you to go home." 
 
 "Why do you stay?" 
 
 "The Son of Heaven commands it. My honorable 
 father commands it." It was answer doubly enough 
 for any Chinese to make, for any Chinese to hear. 
 "But I go soon," he added. 
 
 Ch'eng T'ien Tzu shifted a little. "I like England," 
 she said lightly. 
 
 Wang No said nothing, but his eyes said that he 
 believed and hoped that she lied. And Tzii laughed 
 again, and mocked him delicately with her fan. 
 
 "And," she told him, just a little sadly, "I might 
 feel strange at home — after all these banished years. 
 I should be lonely at home — now." 
 
 "Banished, indeed!" the man exclaimed. "I think 
 you would not feel strange, at home — could not. Or 
 if you did, it would soon pass. And you need not be 
 alone there long." 
 
 Ch'eng Tzu veiled her eyes with their lids, to hide 
 their quick triumph. Wang No had "declared" him- 
 self. Defiled — as she knew he held her by her English 
 sojourn and junketing — English acquaintance, unveiled 
 
Mi8o THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 
 
 face, unmaidenly practices, continental journey ings, yet 
 would Wang No, if they were both again in China, if 
 his father consented, send the matchmaker to her. And 
 it was no small triumph. A Chinese does not often 
 offer himself and his sons to a woman of whom he 
 disapproves. 
 
 "Perhaps! Who knows?" she said hghtly, and re- 
 leased him with a courteous twist of the wrist that 
 held her tiny fan of jeweled gauze, and turned to greet 
 an English acquaintance. 
 
 She greeted many during the next hour, and let one 
 bring her an ice. As she listened and replied, now 
 to one, now to another, she kept wondering who the 
 man was that had gone away so soon after speaking 
 to Mrs. Marston. Ch'eng Tzu had watched him go. 
 
 At midnight she chanced again on Wang No. 
 
 She spoke to him in Chinese, and at it his eyes leapt 
 to hers, and his hand clenched upon his fob, and Ch'eng 
 Tzu, seeing and understanding, added something 
 quickly in English — for the minx was not unkind, and 
 she was highly bred. 
 
 They sauntered, walking as best they could, through 
 the still thickening crowd, toward a litle sheltered room 
 where palms grouped about a fountain. Tzu parted 
 the thick curtains that screened the doorway of the 
 hidden nook from the dense throng of guests, and 
 Wang followed her. 
 
 But the tiny pleasance was already tenanted. 
 
 Ch*eng Tzu's scrap of padded shoe made no sound, 
 and Wang's light English evening shoes made scarcely 
 more. The well-born Chinese are light of tread. 
 
 Tzu stiffened and stood stock still. Wang No saw 
 almost as soon, and he pushed protectingly in front oi 
 her, to shield her from what was there to see. 
 
THE FEAST OF LANTERNS i8i 
 
 On the fountain's broad, flat edge, a man and woman 
 sat in unmistakable intimacy : a fair-haired woman with 
 naked shoulders and uncovered arms, one hand — th^ 
 hand that wore the wedding ring — lying heavily upon 
 her companion's knee. And the man was handling 
 her hair with careless, familiar fingers. 
 
 But they had heard Wang No's quick stepping in 
 front of Tzu, and moved uselessly apart. The woman 
 looked up with a startled, anxious face. 
 
 *Tzu!" 
 
 For answer Ch'eng Tzu turned and all but flung 
 out through the curtains. 
 
 It was Laura who had called out at her. And the 
 Englishman who had been caressing her axcustomedly 
 was not the husband to whom Ch'eng Tzu had seen 
 her married not a year ago. 
 
 As the two Chinese came back into the outer room, 
 letting the curtains fall again before the English in- 
 timates, they came directly upon Mrs. Marston. 
 
 Ch'eng Tzu caught at her chaperon's hand — Ch'eng 
 Tzii rarely touched any one. **It could not have hap- 
 pened in China," the girl said sharply. 
 
 Mrs. Marston looked at her more amazed than her 
 long social experience often left her — not because 
 Tzu's words were meaningless, not because the girl's 
 voice, in which the woman's acute ears had often de- 
 tected scorn, was more full of scorn, and of scorn 
 more bitter, than she had ever heard it, but because 
 of the raging excitement in voice and girl. Tzu was 
 trembling with it. 
 
 The woman looked from Tzii to the Chinese man 
 — had he offended Miss Ch'eng? — But when she had 
 looked at him Mrs. Marston thought not. 
 
 "Let us go!" Tzii said, more imperiously than the 
 
i82 THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 
 
 woman had ever heard her speak — more imperiously 
 than Ch'eng T'ien Tzu ever had spoken before to any 
 one of Marion Marston's years. 
 
 "But Melba is just going to sing," Mrs. Marston 
 said feebly. "I was trying to find you to tell 
 you." 
 
 "I am going home at once," Tzu said, stamping one 
 red shoe. Then she laughed bitterly. "Home! I 
 mean back to Curzon Street." 
 
 Wang No followed them gravely to their carriage 
 None of them spoke again till he closed the door upon 
 them. 
 
 Then — Ch'eng Tzu leaned forward a little, and held 
 out her gloved hand to him. 
 
 He took it at once. "Good-night," he said gravely. 
 And he said it in English. 
 
 It was to Mrs. Marston that he added, "May I come 
 to see you?" 
 
 Ch'eng T'ien Tzu answered before the other could, 
 "Will you come?" 
 
 "When may I?" And he smiled into his young 
 countrywoman's eyes. 
 
 "To-morrow at three," she said in their own tongue. 
 But in proud courtesy to the older woman, she repeated 
 her words in English. "When I wish you to leave us, 
 I will give you your guest tea in a Chinese room." 
 
 "Thank you," the man said gravely. 
 
 "Ch'ing, Ch'ing," Tzu said, as he stepped away. 
 And this time she did not translate it into "good-by," 
 but left it his and hers — the intimate something, and 
 too, a claim, of Chinese to Chinese, in common ban- 
 ishment in an alien country. 
 
 They were turning into Curzon Street, and Mrs. 
 
THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 183 
 
 Marston was half asleep, when Ch'eng Tzu said 
 abruptly : 
 
 "Who was the man that came up and spoke to you 
 as we went into the Pompadour drawing-room?" 
 
 "Eh? Let me think," was the sleepy answer. But 
 the woman was wider awake now than her voice. She 
 had never heard Miss Ch'eng ask who any man was 
 before. 
 
 "He was neither tall nor short. His hair, short 
 as it's cut, is a little curly. He had a pink flower in 
 his coat — daphne, I think. He is dark — for an Eng- 
 lishman." 
 
 Marion Marston was very wide awake indeed now. 
 "Oh!" she replied indifferently, "that was Lord Ash- 
 ford — ^Jack Selwyn. His cousin Elenore was at school 
 with you. Haven't you met him?" 
 
 "I don't remember, if I have," Miss Ch*eng said 
 indifferently. And Mrs. Marston drew a startling con- 
 clusion, because the girl troubled to add, and did it 
 with a pretty, suppressed yawn, "One forgets so many 
 people, in Londoa" 
 
CHAPTER XXVI 
 
 WILL those Chinks talk? I w<^nder if they'd 
 know either of us again/* 
 
 "Tzu won't talk. I can't say abont the man." 
 
 **Tzu! You know the she-Chink, then? Damn it.*' 
 
 "We were at school together for two years." 
 
 **Hell!" and the man kicked a little piece of lace 
 and muslin viciously. 
 
 Laura picked up Tzu's handkerchief. "What does 
 it matter, Dick? Half London knows.'* 
 
 "Probably half London suspects. But no one knows 
 - — until now. And we don't want them to," the man 
 said moodily. "Can you square your negro friend?" 
 
 "I tell you Tzu will never say a word." 
 
 "I wouldn't want to bet on it." 
 
 "I would.** 
 
 "Is she fond of you?'* 
 
 "No, old dear, she is not." 
 
 "The devil!** 
 
 "Oh! do stop fussing, Dick. If I don't care, you 
 needn't. And I tell you I know what I am saying. 
 Wild horses wouldn't get a word about it out of her." 
 
 "What about the other Chink?" The man was 
 not reassured. 
 
 "He may, of course," Lady Cooper conceded crosslyj 
 angry at an interruption that bid fair to end her eve- 
 ning's pleasure, and hotly humiliated that all his con- 
 cern was so clearly for himself. 
 
 "Then you must square her, and make her squara 
 him." 
 
 i8j. 
 
THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 185 
 
 "'No one can make Ch'eng Tzu do anything,'* Laura 
 j$aid sharply. "I'd like to see any one 'square' her." 
 
 "Soft-soap and coax her. She's a woman." 
 
 "I shall never mention it to her," the woman said 
 curtly. **I shall take my chance, and you'll have to 
 take yours. What a hero you are! If you can't be 
 
 anything but disagreeable, you'd better go " she 
 
 added a little pleadingly. 
 
 But he ignored her challenge, and spurned her invi- 
 tation. 
 
 "Go! I should say so. We'd better both make 
 tracks," he said sulkily, "and not together, either." 
 
 Meeting Sir Aston Cooper a little later, Dick David- 
 son greeted him heartily. 
 
 "Your wife was looking for you, in that big red 
 room, a few moments ago." 
 
 "Was she? God bless my soul!" said the elderly 
 baronet, even more delighted than surprised, and hur- 
 ried off beaming. 
 
 And when he had found his wife he almost crushed 
 her hand, and apologized profusely for having kept 
 her waiting. 
 
 "Dick Davidson's one of the nicest boys I know," 
 Sir Aston said as they reached home. "We must ask 
 him to the Grange for the first shoot." 
 
 "Ask whom you like," his wife told him dully. 
 " 'Nice' is about the last thing Fd call Dick Davidson." 
 
 "Darling," her husband coaxed, "don't be so preju- 
 diced and critical. You are so particular." 
 
 Lady Cooper had been entirely truthful in telling 
 Davidson that she would not approach Miss Ch'eng. 
 But the night and the next morning brought otheif 
 counsel, though certainly no other inclination. 
 
l86 THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 
 
 She had no idea who the man with Tzu had been. 
 He might talk. And she had no mind to throw away 
 the ample convenience of Sir Aston's bank account 
 for a man who she now realized clearly would avoid 
 facing the catastrophe with her. 
 
 As she sipped her early tea she half resolved to 
 go and speak with Ch'eng Tzu. She did not relish 
 the task. If Tzu had been indifferent to her at school, 
 she had very actively disliked the Chinese girl. But 
 she had no fine feeling about it, and little sensitiveness. 
 Some friends of her own race she would relish telling 
 of it. Probably she would boast of it to two or three. 
 It would have humiliated her to speak of it to others. 
 But Ch'eng Tzu was only a Chinese. She had visited 
 Miss Ch'eng several times, because every one else did 
 that could, and because Tzii was the fashion now. But 
 she despised the Chinese woman sincerely, and no more 
 thought of her as an equal, or cared for her opinion, 
 than if Ch'eng Tzu had been a Zulu, or a scullery 
 maid. 
 
 She had picked up the handkerchief that Tzu had 
 dropped, simply because all pretty, costly things ap- 
 pealed to her, and she had disliked seeing rose-point 
 kicked by a man's boot, and had rescued it with no 
 thought either of keeping it herself, or of restoring it 
 to Miss Ch'eng. But she had brought it home with 
 her, and it would serve as an excuse for an early call 
 — ^at an hour she'd probably find the other alone — if 
 she finally determined to go. She spread it out over 
 her blue dressing-gown. What lace! Yes — she almost 
 thought she'd go. 
 
 After breakfast she had a stormy scene with Sit 
 Aston. A dressmaker's bill, of '^unbelievable extrava- 
 
THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 187 
 
 gance" he called it, had reached him with a peremptory 
 note. He was very rich and very much infatuated. 
 But even his income had its limits, if his infatuation 
 had not. Sir Aston Cooper was very angry and he 
 was frightened. Such preposterous conduct, uncurbed, 
 might land a richer man than he in bankruptcy. He 
 pleaded, stormed and threatened. 
 
 Lady Cooper did not plead. She brazened it out. 
 She stormed too, and threatened. But she did con- 
 descend to coax at last. For she had more than this 
 one bill for him to swallow. Her enormous allowance 
 — his solicitors had called it "imbecile" — was over- 
 drawn for six months, and she owed a thousand pounds 
 at bridge. 
 
 She didn't cry. But he nearly did when she had 
 told him all. And before he would write her the neces- 
 sary checks she had to perch herself upon his knee, 
 and stroke his face for quite a minute. She rather 
 disliked doing it, she hated having to do it. And she 
 was in a hurry. Dick was coming at eleven. 
 
 But the Hon. Richard did not keep his appointment. 
 She waited for him almost an hour, then she rang for 
 her car, and went to Curzon Street. 
 
 Miss Ch'eng's footman who opened the door had 
 announced Lady Cooper before, and did not hesitate 
 to announce her now. And before Ch'eng Tzu thought 
 of such a possibility Laura was with her. 
 
 Neither moved to shake hands. 
 
 "You dropped your handkerchief by the fountain 
 when you came upon us," the visitor said calmly, hold- 
 ing it out, "and I picked it up. Here it is." 
 
 "I am sorry you troubled." Miss Ch'eng made no 
 sign of taking it. 
 
l88 THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 
 
 Lady Cooper laid it on a table and sat down. *'No, 
 of course, I might have sent it. But I wanted to speak 
 with you — about last night." 
 
 "Please do not do so." Ch'eng T*ien Tzu stood 
 looking down coldly on the other. 
 
 Laura laughed. "Who was the man?" 
 
 Miss Ch'eng lifted her delicate brows slightly, but 
 made no more reply. 
 
 "Who was the man?" Lady Cooper persisted, "the 
 Chinaman who blundered in with you, into my little 
 tete-a-tete?" 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 "jWhy do I wish to know? That's easy." 
 
 "Perhaps my Chinese intelligence is dense." 
 
 "I don't know anything about the general run of 
 Chinese intelligence," Lady Cooper returned with care- 
 less flippancy — it was unassumed — "but your intelli- 
 gence is not dense. No one's was ever less so." 
 
 Miss Ch'eng bowed. 
 
 "Who was he? Or tell me this — it's what I really 
 want to know — will you vouch for him — for his 
 silence ?" 
 
 Ch'eng T'ien Tzu's face flamed red. "I vouch for 
 my friend — to you?" And this time the hauteur in 
 her voice got its angry message through. 
 
 "Forgive me, dear, if I sounded rude," Laura Cooper 
 said prettily. "I don't quite know what Fm saying. 
 I've had such a rotten time this morning. My hus- 
 band was in a silly rage over a bill of mine, and some 
 other things. And I had to sit on his lap and let him 
 hug me before I got him tame " 
 
 The Chinese girl — still standing — threw out one 
 hand, as if to ward off a blow. "We do not speak 
 of such things in China. Kindly go." 
 
THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 189 
 
 The English woman was the angrier of the two 
 now. But she was growing frightened, and it held 
 her. She rose and stood, cringing a little. "Yes, Fve 
 lots to do," she said weakly, "and you are busy too. 
 I only came so early because I wanted to be sure of 
 finding you, and finding you alone. Fm going now. 
 But won't you please tell me, will the — the Chinese gen- 
 tleman — your friend — say anything to any one — about 
 last night?" 
 
 Miss Ch'eng smiled. "It did not interest him," she 
 said. 
 
 "But will he tell?" 
 
 "He is a Chinese gentleman," was Tzu's cold re- 
 tort. 
 
 "That means he will say nothing? I am so very 
 anxious." 
 
 "It means. Lady Cooper, that he has forgotten it." 
 
 And Lady Cooper took the cue at last. "Good-by, 
 Miss Ch'eng, and thanks." 
 
 At that moment a footman came in carrying a tray. 
 It was Miss Ch'eng*s rule that every guest admitted 
 to her — no matter what the hour — was offered some 
 refreshment. Tzu motioned the man away. And he 
 went wondering, carrying his cakes and lemonade. 
 
 Again Ch'eng Tzu had got her message through. 
 
 "Are you going to cut me — if we meet?" Lady 
 Cooper said from the door, laughing a little, and less 
 anxiously than she felt. 
 
 Ch'eng Tzu answered gravely : "To do that would 
 be a rudeness to Lady Mary Worthing, at whose home 
 I met you." 
 
 And then the other went. She knew that she had 
 been here for the last time. But she knew that Ch'eng 
 Tzii would never do a rudeness to Lady Mary. 
 
igo THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 
 
 When she was alone Ch^eng Tzu rang again. 
 
 "Send Miss Vail to me," she told the man that 
 came. 
 
 Ellen Vail was Miss Ch*eng's English maid. Panii 
 was her maid and tire woman still. But Panii's needle- 
 craft was slight. She had been learning other things 
 when most Chinese girls of her class are being taught 
 to sew. Vail had charge of their mistress's European 
 wardrobe, and waited on her sometimes. 
 
 When the English maid came now, Ch'eng Tzu 
 pointed to the lace handkerchief, and then to the fire. 
 "Burn it — or take it away. I do not care which. I 
 wish never to see it again/' 
 
CHAPTER XXVII 
 
 'IIIT'ANG came just as the clocks struck three. 
 ^^ Tzu received, and welcomed, him in a Chi- 
 nese room. She chose to show him honor — and she 
 felt it — her countryman and of her caste. And for 
 herself she was glad to escape from England for an 
 hour. She had even begun to change into a Chinese 
 robe after lunch — she had eaten it alone. But she 
 had thought better of that. To have received Wang 
 No, wearing Chinese robes, her face unveiled, her 
 eyes unabashed, would have emphasized how un-Chi- 
 nese a thing she did in receiving him at all. The 
 morning had left her nervous — morally unstrung. And 
 to have met Wang No to-day, dressed as the women 
 of their race dressed, but doing what no virtuous 
 woman of her race, caste and years ever did, would 
 have embarrassed her to-day she felt — lightly as she 
 held Mr. Wang's disapproval and angry strictures, as 
 a rule. 
 
 The morning had shocked and revolted Ch'eng Tzu 
 more than last night's contretemps had. The sorry 
 tableau by the fountain had filled her with an angry 
 contempt for Laura Cooper. To the Englishman she 
 did not give a thought, then or now. Ch'eng Ting 
 Tzu would have thought — could she have known her 
 — Ch'eng T'ien Tzu shamefully "advanced," but, for 
 all her social enfranchisement, the girl was wedded to 
 old prejudices, and had no taint — or leaven of "one 
 self -same law for man and woman." What she had 
 
 191 
 
1192 THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 
 
 seen had given her for, and in, herself a sour humihat- 
 ing sense of sex degradation. But the visit of the morn- 
 ing had seemed to her much the more horrible. That a 
 woman, caught and seen as Laura had been the night 
 before, should come out into the clear light of day, 
 face the morning sunlight unabashed, present herself 
 before an unspoiled woman, and ask a girl who had 
 known her as a girl, ask an unmarried girl, to con- 
 done — ^and somewhat connive, was to Ch'eng Tzu im- 
 measurably grosser than the dalliance by the fountain. 
 Her gorge rose at it. 
 
 [What she felt about it all was a little unjust, and 
 a trifle pharisaical — but the sweet good taste of it is 
 undeniable. Such things happen in China sometimes. 
 They happen everywhere. There is no race so guarded 
 that womanhood is always safe even against itself. 
 In China it happens very rarely, and, when it does, it 
 comes from some great irresistible mutual passion, not 
 from social laxity. And in that East scores over West. 
 [And in China it happens so rarely that Tzii had some 
 excuse for saying that it could not happen there — but 
 not quite excuse enough, for she had read deeply her 
 people's history, and had read Chinese fiction widely, 
 and must have known that in many Chinese novels just 
 such misbehavior is recorded. 
 
 Ch'eng T'ien Tzu was not quite fair. And to-day, 
 for the first time in years, she was consciously home- 
 sick. Probably she had always been a little homesick 
 without knowing it. 
 
 Laura Cooper had set ajar for Wang No a door 
 until now shut and barred against him. 
 
 Ch'eng Tzu was glad to see him — and told him so. 
 And all their talk was of home and things of home. 
 Mrs. Marston sat by the window, and made lace, but 
 
THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 193 
 
 her thoughts were far away ; and for the most part 
 they did not interrupt her. She left them presently, 
 and Mung Panii slipped in and sat down at Ch'eng 
 Tzu's feet. 
 
 After Panu came Tzu spoke to him in their own 
 tongue — and until he went English was not spoken 
 again, scarcely remembered. 
 
 Mrs. Marston did not come back. She knew that 
 Miss Ch'eng would send for her, if she wished for 
 her. Tzu did not send. 
 
 The little Chinese room was heaven to Wang No. 
 He had been racked with homesickness every hour of 
 his long absence from China. When he slept he heard 
 his mother call him, and the temple befls of home, the 
 lanterns of wayfaring coolies on the mountain passes 
 flickered in his closed eyes, he smelled the lotus on 
 the lakes — and he woke in a sweat, and moaning, 
 writhing, because he could not call out in answer to 
 his mother. 
 
 This was China! And she he loved was here. 
 
 Two pillars of sandalwood, one beautifully planed 
 to marble smoothness, one carved as elaborately as a 
 lady's fan, supported the lacquer ceiling. A hand- 
 woven rug of silk lay on the lacquer floor. Everything 
 was elaborate ; nothing was crowded. The ceiling was 
 painted with homing birds. A great bronze crane 
 held the jeweled incense-burner in his polished beak, 
 his eyes were rubies, his feet were pink with claws of 
 pale coral. There was lavishness of color, and no 
 premeditated color-scheme — but the whole room had 
 the tone of amber — partly from the sandalwood every- 
 where: hanging from the ceiling in pierced lambre- 
 quins, the open-work cornice, the screen inlaid with 
 mother-o'-pearl, the great chair picked with turquoise. 
 
194 THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 
 
 as was the couch of sandalwood, the stools and table, 
 partly from amber colored cushions embroidered with 
 orange chrysanthemums and lemon peonies, partly 
 from a gold-stone brazier and the great yellow lily 
 moving a little in the hot breeze that came from the 
 open window. The cornice was a jungle of dwarf bam- 
 boo, rhododendrons, arbutus and loquat, with many a 
 thistle and sharp-thorned briar. Monkeys and drag- 
 ons and weird- faced imps peeped and played in that 
 jungle of sandalwood. And open-mouthed dragons, 
 gargoyle-like, held up each corner of the painted ceil- 
 ing. A porcelain elephant, that might have been Pu- 
 sien's, so richly was it caparisoned, stood on the floor, 
 and held up on its back a great candlestick of yellow 
 crystal taller than Ch'eng Tzu, filled with a great red 
 candle. And smaller candles of red wax stood spiked 
 (every Chinese candlestick is fitted with a spike) on 
 the long, low table with the gong. From one comer 
 of the ceiling hung an antique lantern of jade. Three 
 silk scrolls on the walls — far lovelier than any kake- 
 mona of Japan, recorded a saying of a sage, the praise 
 of a flower, and a couplet of the poet Li Po. On the 
 fourth wall hung the one picture in the room (except 
 for a miniature) and it needed not its beautifully exe- 
 cuted idiographic lettering to tell its story or to sig- 
 nature it the brush-work of great Ma Yuan, for the 
 herons lived on the silk, slaking their thirst at a living 
 pool, one, wing-outspread, come a little later than the 
 others, moving yet, looked up questioningly to a gather- 
 ing cloud. The picture breathed. The miniature was 
 a portrait of Ch'eng Shao Yiin, as Tzu had known and 
 loved her, but wearing robes and gems of state, painted 
 for Ch'eng Tzu by an artist who had crossed China to 
 do it at Ch'eng Yiiin's bidding. It was framed in cam- 
 
THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 195 
 
 phor wood carved and pierced. It stood on a slab of 
 solid gold, in a niche as in a shrine. And a curtain 
 embroidered with the crests of Ch'eng and Shao hung 
 beside the niche, ready at a touch to veil the picture 
 face of the old chieftainess. There was no door in 
 the room. Panels that slid back and forth shut its 
 privacy from the London house. The panels, too, of 
 tEe fragrant, amber-tinted sandalwood, were carved, 
 one with sprays of peach blossoms and cherries in fruit, 
 one with dragonflies and wild roses, one with hawthorn 
 in leaf and bloom, several with Buddhas in bold relief, 
 exquisitely, minutely chiseled. There was no imperial 
 yellow in this Chinese room of a London house, but 
 the room almost breathed the forbidden color, since 
 every other tint of the supreme color, except the one 
 Emperor-sacred shade, mingled in one delicious amber 
 glow. A piece of needlework — Tzu's — lay on the 
 couch. Her lute was on a stool. 
 
 This was China! And she he loved was here — a, 
 Chinese girl, for all her hideous English dress, with 
 cherry ribbon twisted in her braids, a red flower in 
 her hair, and tiny clumping shoes that told each golden 
 lily but one human toe. 
 
 The clock struck five when Ch'eng Tzu bade Mung 
 Panii bring the guest tea. 
 
 When it came Wang drained his scalding cup, and 
 left her almost without a word. But his eyes spoke, 
 and Tzu knew that he would come again. 
 
CHAPTER XXVIII 
 
 "1X7 ANG NO often came again. 
 ^^ He made no further effort to resist the pres- 
 ence of Ch'eng T'ien Tzu. 
 
 But his race-blood was stronger than the clamor of 
 his love, and he spoke no word to her that all the world 
 might not have heard unmoved — unless racially moved 
 — and he spoke scarcely any word that Panii did not 
 hear — when she troubled to listen. 
 
 If what Wang sometimes said, in the little amber 
 room, of Europe and of international things, might 
 have angered, or even alarmed a listening Englishman, 
 he said it but seldom. China was their theme. 
 
 And if Wang No had urged his suit with frank 
 words, frank English fashion, he might have won 
 Ch'eng Tzu. 
 
 But he could not. He loved her too well to do her 
 that indignity. And his Chinese taste forbade it. He 
 wooed her, heaven knows, and Ch'eng Tzu knew it, as 
 did Mung Panii and Mrs. Marston. His devotion 
 moved her — and an emotion in her presence that he 
 could not always hide. But he spoke no word. 
 
 Ch'eng Tzu was kind to him more often than not. 
 Sometimes she teased him. He met both moods with 
 the same grave courtesy. And, if either moved him, 
 he gave no sign — no sign added to those that despite 
 himself escaped him occasionally in her presence, and 
 that mastered him as often and in the same degree 
 when she flaunted as when she was kind. 
 
 196 
 
THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 197 
 
 She wondered sometimes if she could have torn him 
 from his determined self-control. But it never oc- 
 curred to her to try. To have invited a man to woo 
 her would have been as impossible to Ch'eng T'ien 
 Tzu as to have taught one how to woo her, or to hint 
 to any man how his wooing of her would fare. 
 
 The Chinese man and the Chinese girl met con- 
 stantly now, in her house, and at the London whirl 
 of functions. But since the night she had held it — 
 gloved — out to him through her carriage window he 
 had not touched her hand, nor had any garment of 
 hers brushed against him. And they knew that their 
 fingers would not touch again until their acquaintance 
 had ended — in marriage or in parting. 
 
 Ch'eng Tzu wondered how it would end. They all 
 did. And Wang No wondered most of all. The three 
 English women who loved Ch'eng Tzu wondered how 
 it would end, almost as anxiously as Wang No did. 
 
 Lady Mary thought that Wang would win. And 
 she hoped it. She liked the man. Lady Mary hoped 
 the wedding would be in London. She longed to at- 
 tend it, and have a voice in the multi-colored functions. 
 She even hoped that Mr. and Mrs. Wang might con- 
 tinue to live in London — at the Chinese Legation, per- 
 haps. She was very loth to lose Tzu. 
 
 Mrs. Mars'ton, who saw more of Miss Ch'eng than 
 Lady Mary Worthing did, and far oftener saw her 
 with Mr. Wang, had no idea what the upshot would 
 be. She would not have hazarded a sixpence either 
 way. 
 
 Nor would Mung Panii, who heard most of their 
 talk — and with the added interpretation of understand- 
 ing the tongue in which they spoke when alone but 
 for her. And Mung Panii wished it, if possible, more 
 
198 THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 
 
 eagerly than Wang himself did. For she knew that 
 the marriage would mean a return to China. Mung 
 Panii would have sold her soul — if it had occurred 
 to her that she had one — in return for a passage to 
 China. To be back in China but for one moon she 
 would joyfully have given her rest of life. She loathed 
 each day of her exile more and more. She sobbed her- 
 self to sleep almost half her nights in an agony of 
 homesickness and despair. Ch'eng Tzu had repeat- 
 edly offered to send Panii back to China, and the slave 
 girl had ached to go. But her august lady Ch*eng 
 Shao Yiin had charged her to stay with Ch'eng Tzu, 
 and stronger than her hate of Europe, stronger than 
 the terrible homesickness that tore and tortured her, 
 was the slave-girl's fealty to Ch'eng Yiin. Mung Panii 
 would sooner have disobeyed the son of Heaven him- 
 self, or him who slept beneath the crystal tree at K'iuh- 
 fow, and whose name she might not speak, than have 
 disobeyed Ch'eng Yiin living or dead. 
 
 Elenore Selwyn thought that Ch'eng Tzu would 
 never marry Wang No. And she was sorry to think it, 
 for she liked Wang — and liked him more each time 
 she met him. Attractions are even stranger than an- 
 tipathies. Almost half our antipathies can be searched 
 out, and accounted for, but probably not a quarter of 
 our affinities can. Love is a slyer, subtler thing than 
 hate is ; liking than dislike. And Elenore Selwyn was 
 the one English person, the one only thing in Eng- 
 land, that Wang No liked. Not only liked her, but 
 he liked her warmly, and he respected her. It was not 
 her fault that she was English, and went about at 
 night with naked neck and arms — and Mr. Wang never 
 failed to remember it; all the English abominations 
 were England's — the fault of an abominable people, a 
 
THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 199 
 
 contemptible system, and neither in justice nor in Chi- 
 nese chivalry to be laid at the door of Miss Selwyn. 
 That she was as she was was supremely to her credit, 
 the miracle of England, the one flower in a welter of 
 weeds. Her friendship with Elenore was the one sole 
 thing in Ch'eng Tzu's English sojourn of which Wang 
 No approved. He always treated Miss Selwyn with 
 a cordial deference, and tried sincerely to oblige and 
 please her. And no one could be more charming than 
 Wang No was when he cared to be. 
 
 Elenore thought that Tzu would not marry Wang. 
 
 Mercedes — she and her husband were in London for 
 a few weeks — ^was sure that Tzu would not. 
 
 And so the restless shuttle of conjecture went. But 
 it wove no woof. 
 
 Tzu expected to marry when she went home. She 
 wished to do so, and intended it. She dreamed of it 
 sometimes. For she was intrinsically feminine, quickly 
 normal of body and mind, and her soul was sane. 
 
 She liked Wang No. To European blindness he 
 looked "very much like any other Chinaman," but 
 Ch'eng T'ien Tzu knew him handsome. And Sheng 
 Liu valued him. And that Wang No loved her counted 
 to her for much. It had to count, for she had come 
 to ripe marriage years, and he was the only eligible 
 Chinese man she knew. There were other young but 
 adult countrymen of hers at the Legation, and she had 
 had speech of all of them. But each of them was 
 married. 
 
 Several of her schoolmates had married happily men 
 of their own choice. And the happy thrill of it had 
 reached Ch'eng Tzu, and a little moved her even while 
 it shocked. It was impossible even for a Chinese girl 
 of strictest caste to live as she had lived in England 
 
200 THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 
 
 for ten years now, to see as she had seen, without hav- 
 ing century-old ideals a little warped, inherited instinct 
 a little swayed towards some freedom of personal 
 choice, some opportunity of personal inclination. 
 
 Did she love Wang No ? No. 
 
 Could she? Might she come to? Perhaps. 
 
 His devotion touched her. His ardor reached her. 
 More than once it flushed her cheek, when he had left 
 her — not before. She knew that they were congenial. 
 Slowly he was becoming to her — this courtly country- 
 man of hers — what the girls had called their sanctum 
 at Belgrave Square — **home from home." And she 
 knew that he was waiting, and panting, for her return 
 to China. It almost seemed as if Wang No was 
 destined her by fate. And yet ■ 
 
CHAPTER XXIX 
 
 T ORD ASHFORD pitched the letter from him with 
 ■*— ' an oath that made the breakfast crockery shiver, 
 and rammed his doubled fists into the pockets of his 
 shabby bath gown. 
 
 "Shut it, you silly ass," Tom Granville said fiercely, 
 fishing the offending epistle out of the slop-basin. The 
 basin had considerable discarded tea in it. Tom shook 
 the wet pages gingerly, and laid them out to dry, if 
 they could, on the spotless damask. "Damn you, see 
 what you've done, you blighter, made me spot my 
 pretty dress." 
 
 "Blow you, and your silly clothes. Shy over the 
 matches, can't you?" 
 
 If the peer's bath robe was nondescript and shabby, 
 the warrior's matutinal raiment was fine enough to 
 cover a regiment with rainbowed glory — a delicate con- 
 fection of pink silk, embroidered with silver storks and 
 butterflies of gold. The pink dressing gown smelled 
 of violets and tobacco, and it made the guardsman's 
 crimson head scream. 
 
 Captain Granville shied the matches over — and he 
 shied them accurately. They landed neatly on Jack 
 Selwyn's nose. And the silver match box was heavy 
 and sharp-edged. 
 
 "You would, would you !" Ashford rose to battle. 
 
 They closed instantly, and wrestled mightily — • 
 shouting opprobrious epithets at each other, as they 
 lurched interlocked about the room. 
 
 201 
 
202 THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 
 
 Burton — their man — came in hurriedly, but accus- 
 tomed and unperturbed — and pounced — but with dig- 
 nity — upon the table glass. 
 
 "You leave his love letter alone, Burts," Tom admon- 
 ished. 
 
 "Damn the letter," the noble spluttered, his head 
 pinioned under Granville's arm. 
 
 Granville released him — so quickly that he almost 
 lost his footing — and drew back in shocked surprise. 
 
 "Don't let me hear you speak like that again of a 
 lady's letter, you low old turnip — or I'll punch your 
 head again." 
 
 "You haven't punched it first yet, you red-headed 
 carrot ! Lady ! No lady'd write a thing like that." 
 
 "What's the matter with it?" 
 
 "Look, and see !" 
 
 Tom picked up the dampened sheets, and scrutinized 
 them through his single eyeglass. 
 
 "Good lord, Jack, old bean, what a vermilion awful 
 fist ! You have my sympathy." 
 
 "Yes, ain't it!" 
 
 "Who the glory wrote it. Ashes? I can't read a 
 word of it!" 
 
 "Of course you can't. Who the hell could? And 
 eight pages of it, and probably important." 
 
 "Do you think she's going to sue you, old dear?" 
 Tom stared at his friend with a commiserating eye. 
 
 "Probably not, you brilliant humorist. But I want 
 to read it. I promised her " 
 
 "Breach of promise! My poor, poor friend!" and 
 the Hon. Thomas Stuart Granville sank into a chair, 
 and began to moan piteously. 
 
 "Shut up that slosh. I tell you, we must read it 
 It*s from my cousin — — '* 
 
THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 203 
 
 "Oh!'* The news was dull. 
 
 — "and I promised her I'd give her anything in 
 reason she chose, for her birthday, and, of course this 
 is a little list of what she wants." 
 
 "Eight pages of it." 
 
 "Oh — she has generous ideas — if she can't write. 
 And she trusts me. I say, Tom, a girl ought to be 
 arrested who writes a fist like that." 
 
 "I quite agree," the young guardsman said cordially. 
 "Couldn't her people afford a governess ? Didn't tl^y 
 ever send her to school even? Board-schools are 
 cheap." 
 
 Ashford took the letter up again, and began study- 
 ing it disgustedly. 
 
 Tom sat down on the damaged table-cloth, and began 
 eating out of the marmalade pot — the only provender 
 that Burton had not yet carried away. 
 
 "Shut off stuffing, you pink old crocodile," Jack 
 Selwyn said pathetically, "and try and help me mdce 
 a word out here and there." 
 
 The warrior spooned the last of the marmalade into 
 his mouth, threw the porcelain pot at Burton — as he 
 came in. The man caught it gravely, and with un- 
 abated dignity bore it away. 
 
 Granville went to Jack, and studied — over his 
 shoulder — ^the hieroglyphic page. 
 
 "Nell deserves brimstone." 
 
 "Who?" 
 
 "Nell — my cousin Elenore." 
 
 "You're a pretty brand of liar. Ash-bin. That's not 
 from Miss Selwyn." 
 
 "Oh! isn't it! You know my cousin's handwriting 
 better'n I do, of course." 
 
 "I have had a note or two from Miss Selwyn," Tom 
 
204 THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 
 
 Granville retorted coldly. *'Her handwriting is beauti- 
 ful." 
 
 Lord Ashford roared with laughter. "Nell's maid 
 wrote any notes you had, old dear. Dean always 
 writes Nell's letters. She must be away or something. 
 Nell can't write, I tell you, any better than this fly- 
 tracks. If she writes to a florist's for violets, they send 
 her roses. She's given it up since her catastrophe with 
 Lord Tunnicraft. The old boy wrote her an offer of 
 love and coronet. And Nellie wrote back. Thank 
 you kindly, no.' And he went out and bought her a 
 ring — big square diamond set in platinum, and came 
 round with it smirking — kissed Nell before she knew 
 what was up, and tried to ram the sparkly on her 
 finger." 
 
 "Don't be a disgusting beast," Tom said curtly. 
 
 "Give you my word it's true." Which it was. 
 Elenore's writing had been the scandal of Lady Mary's 
 school. "And from the day of that chaste salute to 
 this Dean writes all Nell's letters — signs 'em even." 
 
 The guardsman moved to the window, and stood — 
 his pink embroidered back to Ashford — gazing mood- 
 ily across Hyde Park. Those "note or two" were in- 
 side the pink dressing-gown, in a pocket book, with a 
 rose-bud he'd begged. And a lady's maid had written 
 ihem ! He'd kissed the handwriting of a lady's maid 
 — :rather more than once! 
 
 When they settled down presently to the business 
 of the day, with valiant industry and the soothing aid 
 of good tobacco, they contrived to read Elenore's let- 
 ter — in places. 
 
 As her cousin had thought, it embodied her birthday 
 demand. She wished to give a house-party, of her 
 
THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 205 
 
 very own — at Jack's place, Ashford Grange— '''Aunt 
 Annie will chaperon" — the guests of Nell's selection — 
 she enclosed a list — "We needn't bother with that," 
 Jack said tossing it aside — "and Jack was to be there, 
 of course, and be very, very good." 
 
 "That's all right." Lord Ashford was relieved. 
 "I suppose I'd better ask Nell if I may bring you along, 
 Tom. You're dying to come, aren't you?" 
 
 "Oh, not particularly." 
 
 * Who's lying now, you ruddy-headed lobster?" 
 Ashford chuckled. 
 
 Captain Granville blushed. 
 
 Lord Ashford rang the bell abruptly. "Where the 
 devil is the Morning Post, Burton, and the other 
 rags?" he demanded harshly when the servant came. 
 "Why the blooming Moses can't you allow me to see 
 the morning papers — when you've quite finished with 
 them?" 
 
 "Beg pardon, m'lord, your lordship's a-sitting on 
 them." 
 
 "Put them higher up then, another time." 
 
 "Very good, m'lord," the man said amiably. 
 
 "Pretty lordship you are!" The taunt came from 
 the window. Then came a plaintive cry — "Good 
 lord, look at this ! All ruined with tea." And clutch- 
 ing tragically at his pink and gold and silver gown the 
 soldier began to sob like a little girl. 
 
 "Darn your blinking togs," was the heartless reply. 
 The guardsman sobbed but the more piteously. 
 
 But Ashford, engrossed in print, ignored him. 
 
 "For the love of Mike," the peer burst forth in 
 triumph, tossing the newspaper with a whoop of 
 
2o6 THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 
 
 ecstasy towards the ceiling. "Tom ! Tom, me darlint, 
 our nag has won!" 
 
 "Never.'' 
 
 "Honor!" 
 
 "The good old outsider!" 
 
 Pandemonium ! The outsider — backed in freak and 
 joke — had won by an hundred to one. 
 
 They rocked in each other's arms. 
 
 They sang. 
 
 They danced about the room together, shouting 
 hymns to ragtime tunes — with Indian war whoops for 
 Amens. 
 
 And the maiden lady in the flat above rapped on the 
 floor — her floor, their ceiling — ^with a poker, and they 
 heard her not. 
 
 The scene was typical. Ch'eng Tzu might have said 
 of it that it could not have happened in China. But it 
 happens in London every day. 
 
 And these were very gallant English gentlemen — 
 staunch friends, fair foes, clean-limbed, clean-hearted 
 English boys, thinking little evil, doing none — ^upright, 
 true, not uncultured, not unthoughtful : lion cubs at 
 play — splendidly whelped, and warranted to crash and 
 muddle through every grim emergency of life. Both 
 had served their country, in time of war; and stood 
 ready to serve her again, to their last gasp. Jack 
 Selwyn had deserved the honors he took at Oxford. 
 Tom Granville had well won the V. C. he sometimes 
 had to wear. They loved each other tenderly. They 
 revered all good women, and pitied all who were frail. 
 Tom had been wounded in battle twice. Both had 
 been scarred in the hunting field. They loved their 
 kindred and their King. They rode straight — and 
 lived straight. And both stood ready to die for Eng- 
 
THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 207 
 
 land any hour, and to do it blithely — and stood ready 
 to suffer for it things far more hideous and sordid than 
 any death, and to do it gladly and heroically for any 
 number of protracted years. 
 
 The scene was typical. So were the boys. 
 
CHAPTER XXX 
 
 ASHFORD GRANGE, long and low, gray, red- 
 • roofed, mullioned-windowed — the loveliest but not 
 the largest of Ash ford's houses, sparkled softly in the 
 early morning's silver sheen. Wide swathes of ten- 
 der grass stretched softly green and newly washed 
 between the flower-clotted gardens and the old gray 
 house. And beyond the gardens stretched a cool para- 
 dise of trees. The girl plainly clad in gray linen, move- 
 ing slowly with many a pause among the flowers, 
 found, as she stopped to smile at him, the "bonnie 
 lark," perched on a daisy's stalk, bending it "amang 
 the dewy weet wi' speckled breast," a "neebour 
 sweet," and he looked up at her with tiny friendly eyes, 
 as if he thought her indeed a "companion meet," and 
 ducked her a gracious salutation with his downy head 
 as he sprang "upward blithe to greet the purpling 
 East," and the "modest crimson-tipped flower" 
 straightened itself up, shaking the tiny dewdrops from 
 its rose-petaled head. 
 
 And the girl went slowly on through the tulips and 
 the ferns, drinking the roses' wet attar-breath, weaving 
 their red and pink and amber beauty into her soul, 
 and moved towards the long cool vista that stretched 
 through the trees. 
 
 Tzu had seen nothing in Europe that she had liked 
 so much as this — nothing she'd thought so beautiful, 
 or that satisfied her so, since she had left Ho-nan. 
 Ashford Grange seemed to her indeed a "liome from 
 home." The house looked, she thought, a home. And 
 
 208 
 
THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 209 
 
 with its long, low, irregular gray walls, its red sloping 
 roofs, it reminded her of her home far across the 
 world sprawling gray and irregular, low beneath curv- 
 ing, red, tent-shaped roofs. The pergola over there, 
 hung thick with ramblers of every hue, and lacquered 
 by the sunrise, was not unlike a paifang. The smell 
 of honeysuckle came to her across the tall lilies. There 
 were violets everywhere — as there were at home. 
 Musk brushed her skirt, and her skirt beat sweetness 
 from lemon verbenas and clove pinks. A bell called 
 in the distance — it might have been a distant breeze- 
 blown temple bell at home. The sound of rushing 
 water, and the liquid trickling of a rill met somewhere, 
 and kissed, beneath the hiding of the trees. And the 
 new hour and all the perfect peace were hers. No 
 other human creature seemed awake, certainly none 
 was astir. She and the shy wild things of the place 
 were all alone — she and they alone with the new day. 
 
 Ch^eng Tzu stretched out her hands in greeting to 
 the sun, coming up to England and to her from China 
 — on its way back to China — bringing her a message, 
 taking a message from her. The sun was rising up 
 from China — and, for that, and for its regnant self 
 the Chinese girl kot'owed to it, before she stooped to 
 gather a few violets for her breast. And the rising 
 sun shot a shaft of radiant light through the perfumed 
 air, — it fell at Ch'eng Tzu's feet, and kissed them. 
 
 The day called to her, the day and all its quivering 
 things, and she called back to them. They claimed 
 her. And she claimed them, and gave herself to them, 
 as she curled down against a great oak tree, and took 
 communion with Nature, drinking from its perfumed 
 chalice, breaking its blessed daily bread; such intimate 
 communion as occidental souls cannot take. 
 
210 THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 
 
 Europeans living in China, and living there vdth an 
 un-European humbleness of sympathy to which she 
 sometimes shows a little of her sceret, never cease to 
 wonder, never slake their surprise, at how marvelously 
 psychic the Chinese are. But they never suspect but 
 the outer fragments of that marvel. 
 
 What occidental science to-day begins to whisper of 
 Nature, Chinese soul-instinct has known always. 
 Chinese poets, Chinese artists, Chinese sages have told 
 it, and Chinese prince and peasant have received the 
 message, and quickened to it. The Chinese have 
 known for centuries that birds have immortality, that 
 flowers have souls and hearts and **love the fresh air 
 they breathe." Ch'eng Tzii knew that the roses loved 
 the air that touched them, and that the air loved them. 
 She knew that the dewdrops counted their petals, en- 
 joyed their velvet, and that the birds gloated over their 
 colors. 
 
 In Europe Confucius is credited the greatest Chinese, 
 and the most far-reaching and potent force in Chinese 
 life and thought — perhaps because "Confucius" is the 
 only Chinese name that most educated Europeans 
 know. Ch'eng T'ien Tzu scarcely presumed to men- 
 tion Confucius's name. In China she could not have 
 mentioned it at all. Ch'eng Shao Yiin had never 
 spoken it. But Tzu knew that not Confucius but old 
 Lao Tze — another name she must not voice — counted 
 in China for most, had taught China most. And it 
 was of a saying of Lao Tze that she was thinking as 
 she sat leaning against the great oak, with the English 
 violets in her gown — his saying that : "The tree that 
 needs two arms to span its girth sprang from the tiniest 
 shoot. Yon tower, nine stories high, rose from a little 
 
THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 211 
 
 mound of earth. A journey of a thousand miles began 
 with a single step/' 
 
 Scrupulous in their observance of the intricate Con- 
 fucian ritual, with all its long minutely prescribed cere- 
 monial, the Chinese — loving freedom as no other people 
 has, but holding soul- freedom as much, compared to 
 physical freedom — soon wearied of the chain and 
 cramp of the older philosopher's materialism and nar- 
 row elaborate rule, and turned for refreshment, rest 
 and soul-growth to the rhythmed thought of Lao Tze's 
 spirituality and to the Nature that it hymned : finding 
 ''books in the running brooks, sermons in stones," 
 friends in flowers, counsel in the far-off hills, compan- 
 ionship in the white-crested water's foaming fall — 
 peace and satisfaction without satiety in the blue sky 
 and the breathing cloud. 
 
 Probably! — in international thought — Confucius's 
 name will always be the name most prominently asso* 
 ciated with China — ^and largely too, though unspoken, 
 most celebrated in China. But a nicer estimate would 
 give old Lao Tze pride of place. The more visible 
 observance of Taoism has become cheapened, degraded 
 even, by its popular malpractices : crass fortune-telling 
 and superstitious gibberish. But the fine spirit of the 
 great cult remains, permeating China with beauty, 
 spirituality and sanity. And perhaps it is the soul of 
 Lao Tze that may yet preserve China from her last 
 and crassest folly — the crime and stupidity of aping 
 the pinchbeck ways of alien modernity, and substituting 
 for the most ideal and successful democracy the world 
 has known a mountebank and puritanical republic. 
 Insanity is all but unknown in China, and conceivably 
 it is so because Lao Tze still breathes out his healthy 
 
212 THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 
 
 heart upon his people, and because they Hve so much 
 with nature, holding with nature their greatest inti^ 
 macy. Confucius was great-souled and great-minded. 
 It was idiocy to behttle him. It is the minghng of 
 their sages* teaching that has made the Chinese what 
 they are : a contemplative and the most practical, inde- 
 fatigable and industrious of all races ; the only human 
 race that has had the wit, the sanity and the culture to 
 make of daily downright hard work a pastime, a cul- 
 ture and an art. 
 
 The Chinese love nature — scenery, birds, verdure, 
 foliage and all the misted wonders of the air, for them- 
 selves, for what they are — with a loyal and an under- 
 standing love. Ch'eng Tzu loved the lark that had 
 greeted her and left her, the daisy he had bent to a 
 dew-bath in the grass, the violets at her breast, the 
 lovely things she saw through the vista of the trees — 
 loved them passionately — for their souls, their being, 
 for what she knew they were and said and felt and 
 thought and told her, even a thousand times more than 
 she loved the beauty which was to her but their signa- 
 ture^ — as a hungry lover craves more to see his loved 
 one's face, and touch it, to hold her hands in his, to 
 feel her breath upon his cheek, than he does to find a 
 letter from her in his post. 
 
 Dim in the distance a hill misty and gray in the early 
 light, soft with willow trees, stooped down to a marshy 
 meadow where kingcups grew and cuckoo flowers and 
 purple flags, with violets and forget-me-nots edging a 
 silent, tranquil pool. It reminded Ch'eng Tzu of a 
 landscape of Ma Yuan's — perhaps easily the greatest 
 landscape painter earth and art have ever bred — a long 
 scroll of silk, that sometimes was reverently unrolled 
 and hung for a few days on the K'o-tang wall at home; 
 
THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 213 
 
 a famous picture, and little Tzu had loved it passion- 
 ately — remembering it she loved it now, and for it 
 loved this English landscape, and understood it, the 
 more, and felt and claimed it hers. 
 
 She thrilled to the breaking day. She felt nearer 
 to China than she had felt in years. The soul of her 
 womanhood was waking to consciousness as it had not 
 before. And she felt happier, happier to be in Eng- 
 land, more one with it, than she had ever done before. 
 
 A pale blue butterfly came hovering down and lit a 
 moment on her hand. A tiny squirrel studied her from 
 behind a clump of fern — ^and sent her a soft chattered 
 friendly greeting before it scampered leisurely away. 
 
 Tom opened his sleepy eyes, and lay very still, star- 
 ing in astonishment at Jack. 
 
 They had arrived so late the night before that they 
 had seen neither Elenore nor her guests. A bursted 
 tire, a recalcitrant crank, and a wrong turning had 
 delayed them for hours. A somnolent and indignant 
 footman had let them in, and they had tumbled as 
 quietly as they could to bed — grumbling in whispers at 
 each other because they had to share a bedroom. The 
 Duchess — the "Aunt Annie" of Elenore's undecipher- 
 able letter — ^had even hinted, over the telephone, that 
 it might be necessary to put a third bed in Ashford*s 
 room; Nell was so cramming the roomy old Grange 
 with her birthday guests. 
 
 Tom watched Lord Ashford with astonishment that 
 grew. The clock showed little more than six. Jack 
 Selwyn — regrettably indifferent to habiliments as a 
 rule, and incurably fond of his morning pillow — was 
 brushing his hair with rapid assiduity, at the same time 
 regarding his own face gravely in the mirror. His 
 
214 THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 
 
 tie was beautifully knotted. His flannel trousers were 
 immaculate, and he evidently intended to assume soon 
 a coat as immaculate, hanging ready on his bed, for 
 Tom saw a pink rosebud in the white lapel. 
 
 "What the hell's the meaning of it?" 
 
 Jack frowned at him through the glass. 
 
 "You go to sleep again. You're not on in this act." 
 
 Granville raised up on to an elbow, and propped 
 his head in his hand. 
 
 "I require to know the cause of this sudden lunacy," 
 he said sternly — "brushing your hair as if you were 
 going to a fresher dance — at four in the morning!" 
 
 "It's gone six," Ashford said, curtly. 
 
 "And we didn't get to bed till after two." 
 
 Jack put on his coat. 
 
 "For the love of Mike," the man in bed remon- 
 strated, "tell me what is up." 
 
 "You turn over and go to sleep." 
 
 "Precisely what I desire to do. But my torturing 
 curiosity won't let me. Tell me about it." 
 
 *T couldn't sleep — I'm going out. It's a ripping 
 morning." 
 
 "Good Lord ! Where did you get that flower? It's 
 fresh picked or I'm a turnip." 
 
 "You are — a mangel-wurzel." 
 
 "John Selwyn, you've been out already! And not 
 in those new flannels. You picked that rose. What 
 sent you back here to dress for a garden party, in a 
 very devil of a hurry too, and with a look of acute 
 anxiety on your pretty face?" 
 
 "I'd come and thump you, if I had time," the peer 
 retorted, scrutinizing a fresh silk handkerchief criti- 
 
THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 215 
 
 cally, and rearranging it in his coat pocket three sepa- 
 rate times. **But I haven't, I'm in a hurry." 
 
 "So I perceive. Well! My aunt, kid, if I didn't 
 know you never looked at one twice, Fd say it was a 
 girl." 
 
 "It is a girl." 
 
 Tom Granville sat bolt upright in bed. But he was 
 speechless. 
 
 Jack laughed. "I couldn't sleep, Tom, straight 
 stuff. Got tired thrashing about on my bed, and hear- 
 ing you snore in yours. So I got up. Thought Fd 
 have a pipe in the garden. Well, I didn't — I picked 
 you a rose instead — but when I realized how like hell 
 you look in pink, I put it in my coat instead. And 
 now I'm off. There's a girl out in the garden I want 
 to speak to " 
 
 "Which girl?'* Tom asked shyly — he no longer 
 thought the situation funny. 
 
 "I've no idea. I didn't see her face." 
 
 "Holy Moses! And you've dressed up like that! 
 I say, boy, are you well? One of the maids of course, 
 at this pagan hour " 
 
 "I didn't see her face, I tell you, just a girl in a gray 
 dress mooning about the garden, but it was not a 
 maid." 
 
 "How do you know?" Granville demanded dis- 
 gustedly. 
 
 "I saw her walk. It was a lady, the girl I saw out 
 there with the flowers — no maid, more like a princess. 
 And it was a girl. I know that, if I didn't see her 
 face." 
 
 "Hope she's sixty — ^when you see her face " 
 
 "No fear ! I know. I say, Tom, old lobster, I wish 
 
2i6 THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 
 
 I knew who all Nell's asked. I may know her, and 
 may not. But I can say 'Good-morning' to any one in 
 my own garden. Ta-ta." 
 
 Granville listened to Ash ford running down the 
 stairs, then sank back into his pillows with an eloquent 
 whistle. 
 
CHAPTER XXXI 
 
 nr^OM whistled low and long. Here was news 
 -*• indeed. Jack Selwyn off before breakfast to 
 talk to a girl in a garden — a girl whom for all he knew 
 he'd never seen before. Gee whiz ! What next ! 
 
 He — Tom himself — had been in love for years, and 
 he supposed everybody knew it. He was pretty sure 
 Jack did. But Jack! — that was different. Jack was 
 only twenty-four — almost three years younger than 
 he himself. And Jack had never cared for girls — 
 except his cousin Elenore — and that was just brother- 
 and-sister of a very special sort. Her people had 
 brought Jack up; their home had been his until he 
 came of age. He and Nell had been inseparable since 
 they were babies. Tom had fallen in love with a pic- 
 ture of her Jack had at public school, long before he*d 
 seen Elenore herself, and had treated his fag with spe- 
 cial amenity in consequence. But he knew that Jack 
 had never bothered with any other girl. Of course, 
 if he had put it to himself, probably he*d have said 
 that Jack would go the marriage-way of most men 
 some day. You were pretty sure to marry if you lived 
 long enough. There were lots of girls — and girls 
 were ripping. And Jack was twenty-four. But Tom 
 never had put it to himself. It had never crossed his 
 head. He had always thought of Jack — as far as it 
 had shaped into thought — as a very desirable belong- 
 ing of his own and Elenore's. And now the boy was 
 off at six in the morning — "all dressed up" — after a 
 
 217 
 
2i8 THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 
 
 girl. By Jove. Go to sleep again! Of course he 
 couldn't go to sleep after this — ^who could! He won- 
 dered who the devil the girl was any way ? Probably 
 one of the maids after all. And then the drinks would 
 be on Jack. Tom chuckled grimly. He rather hoped 
 it was a maid. Jack's face would be worth seeing. 
 Tom lit a cigarette, curled down more comfortably, 
 and gave himself to tobacco and day-dreams— of 
 Elenore. 
 
 This was Ashford's own room. A water color of 
 Elenore smiled above the fireplace. What a face! 
 English, fair, wholesome. How blue her eyes were! 
 How well her head sat on her shoulders! How nice 
 that soft brown hair! He wondered if she hated red 
 hair as much as some people did. All the Granvilles 
 had red hair. And probably — oh ! damn it ! He was a 
 cad to take such a liberty as to think of that 
 
 But the dream would not be driven away. And Tom 
 Granville lay very still, his eyes riveted on a pictured 
 face, his thoughts far away. He forgot to smoke. 
 The cigarette burned steadily on until he dropped it 
 with an oath. Tom was still sucking his finger when 
 Jack came in. Jack's face was worth seeing: dis- 
 gusted and thoroughly sulky. 
 
 "Hello, old bean! Sold?" 
 
 Lord Ashford nodded, and pushed the bell viciously. 
 
 "Scullery or t weenie, or only sear and yellow ? You 
 didn't stay long." 
 
 "I didn't stay at all. You wait till I see Nell 
 Selwyn, I won't half roast her ! What !" 
 
 "Wasn't she gracious?" 
 
 "Gracious be blowed. I didn't speak to her — when 
 I saw her " 
 
 Tom grinned. He was not ill-pleased. 
 
THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 219 
 
 "Tea — and look sharp/' Ashford said snappily, as 
 Burton appeared. 
 
 "Very good, my " the man began, to break off 
 
 and cross the room more quickly than he often moved. 
 "Beg pardon. Sir, but are you afire?" 
 
 "No," Tom assured him, "but I have been. And 
 probably the damned bed is." 
 
 That restored Jack Ashford's perturbed spirit. 
 
 "Set himself alight with his own head, Burts. He 
 often does." 
 
 Tom found a boot, and flung it, as Burton left the 
 room carrying a smoldering sheet. 
 
 "She was under the trees when I got there," Jack 
 said more amiably, "sitting down — as if she meant to 
 stay there all day. I got quite near, and had a jolly 
 good look before she saw me. I don't think she did 
 see me at all. Tom, she's a Jap !" 
 
 "A what?" 
 
 "Japanese, or Indian, or something rummy of that 
 sort." 
 
 "Black, eh?" 
 
 "Good Lord, no! Not even brown. A good sight 
 lighter than Mercedes de Piro was, or a Cuban girl that 
 went to school with Nell. But she's a Jap or some- 
 thing of that sort." 
 
 "Lady's maid of somebody. My Aunt Susan's got 
 a Jap butler, and he's top hole." 
 
 Ashford frowned. "No! I tell you this was a 
 lady-girl." 
 
 "Lady-girl!" Tom chuckled at the odd phrase. 
 "Well — you needn't bully me, if she is. And why 
 didn't you speak to her then?" 
 
 "Didn't want to. Shouldn't have known what to 
 say. She might have screamed." 
 
220 THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 
 
 "Funked it, eh? Youll need to get over that, my 
 child. There's lots of them about now. I took a 
 Maharanee in to dinner at Aunt Kate's last year — 
 awfully interesting woman. Intelligent — ^what! We 
 live in an advanced age, you and I, old dear. No Lon- 
 don drawing-room is complete without an Asiatic 
 And Tm quite expecting to waltz with an African belle 
 any day." 
 
 "I dare say ! But I prefer English. Oh ! there you 
 are at last ! Pour it out. And, I say, Burts, who all 
 are here?" 
 
 Burton recited a page from the Court Circular. 
 
 "Thought I saw a Japanese — gentleman — out an 
 the hall just now." 
 
 "No, sir," the servant told him, "I think not. 
 There's no Japanese gentleman staying here, I think, 
 except her Grace's pugs. But there is Miss Sheng, a 
 Chinese lady." 
 
 "Hello !" Granville whispered. 
 
 "Chinese," Lord Ashford cried. "That's ten thous- 
 and times worse ! You wait till I see Nell." 
 
 Breakfast was an elastic appointment at the Grange 
 — eaten when and where you liked. The Duchess 
 hadn't breakfasted out of her own rooms for twenty 
 years. 
 
 Lord Ashford looked about him a little apprehen- 
 sively as he and Tom went into the breakfast room. 
 Tom saw it and grinned. Then Elenore came in 
 through another door, and Granville forgot all about 
 Jack Selwyn. 
 
 But Miss Ch'eng did not come. She breakfasted 
 much later, eating fruit in her own sitting-room, while 
 
THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 221 
 
 the Duchess ate steak, omelette and several other things 
 in bed. 
 
 Ashford followed his cousin when she left the din- 
 ing-room. 
 
 But his attack upon her was less direct and strong- 
 armed than he had led Tom — and incidentally Burton 
 - — to anticipate. 
 
 "Who all are here, Nellie?" 
 
 "I sent you a list." 
 
 "Much good that was! You wrote it. Where's 
 Dean?" 
 
 "In a sling. At least her right wrist is. She 
 sprained it." 
 
 "Who's here— that I don't know?" 
 
 Elenore ran through a score of names. 
 
 "And who's Miss Sheng? I never heard the name 
 l)efore." 
 
 "Ch'eng," his cousin repeated severely. "Do try to 
 say it correctly. And, Jack, I particularly want Tzii 
 to have a really good time." 
 
 "^Choo'? Who's 'Choo'?" 
 
 "Ch'eng T'ien Tzu is a dear. She was at Lady 
 Mary's when I was." 
 
 "Not English, I gather from her names." 
 
 "Of course not. She is Chinese." 
 
 Lord Ashford whistled. 
 
 "Don't be coarse, Jack — if you can help it. Miss 
 Ch'eng is very charming." 
 
 "Look here, Nell. I gave you carte blanche — I 
 know that. But, great Scot, a Chinese girl, here with 
 us! What is she — why " 
 
 "My friend," Elenore said icily. "And your guest." 
 
 "Oh — all right — coz. Don't get the wind up." 
 
222 THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 
 
 "I don't intend to. I leave that to you. But, John 
 Selwyn, if you are not nice to Tzu, I'll never speak to 
 you again." 
 
 *'0h — all right — no need to go off the deep end." 
 His voice was meek, but his face was sulky. "I say, 
 Nell, can she speak English?" 
 
 "Better than you do — and everything else. You are 
 taking her in to dinner." 
 
 "No, please, I can't do that. I say, Nell." 
 
 "Aunt Annie goes in last, of course. There is no 
 other married woman here until to-morrow. Miss 
 Ch'eng takes precedence. It belongs to her. There 
 is no other girl here of her rank." 
 
 "Chinese rank ! My hat ! I say, what am I to say 
 to her?" 
 
 "Just what you'd say to any other lady at your own 
 table." 
 
 "Oh ! I'll not forget she is a lady," Ashford said a 
 little huffily. "I told Tom so." 
 
 "You said you didn't know her, pretended not to 
 know her name even." 
 
 "No more I did. But I saw a girl in the garden this 
 morning, in the distance, a — a foreigner — just saw her 
 back— but I told Tom." 
 
 "Said it was a princess," Granville corroborated, 
 joining them in the hall. 
 
 Elenore was mollified. "So she is," she said stoutly. 
 "See that you treat her as such." 
 
 "Tennis?" Tom said ingratiatingly. 
 
 "If you like," Elenore told him. "Coming, Jack?" 
 
 "Thank you, no. I am about to search the library 
 for a life of Confucius." 
 
 "I wouldn't, if I were you," his cousin said over hef 
 shoulder. "You couldn't possibly understand it." 
 
THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 223 
 
 Lord Ashford watched them moodily until they were 
 out of sight. Then he turned on his heel and made 
 for the stables. 
 
 "Chinese !'* he muttered. 
 
CHAPTER XXXII 
 
 T ORD ASHFORD supposed he'd meet his dinner 
 •*--' partner during the day. He hoped so. He wasn't 
 looking forward to it — except disagreeably. But he'd 
 like to get it over, as informally as possible, crash 
 through the ice somehow, before the more formal hour 
 — get his bearings a little as it were. Thank heaven 
 there were some married women coming to-morrow. 
 He wouldn't have to go through it twice. He sup- 
 posed married women took precedence of any girl- 
 even one who ate with chopsticks, or undoubtedly could, 
 and was a granddaughter of Confucius himself. 
 
 But Ashford did not meet Miss Ch'eng until just 
 before dinner was announced, though he heard her 
 name all day long, pronounced by twenty tongues in 
 twenty different incorrect ways. 
 
 There had been a riding party in the morning, and 
 several girls lunched in their habits. Tzu among them. 
 But she sat at the other end of the long table, beyond 
 a barricade of flowers, and he caught no glimpse of the 
 girlish face shaded by her broad hat. He thought the 
 Chinese guest was not there, and wondered, but would 
 not ask. Perhaps the Chinese did not lunch. He won- 
 dered if she ate meat. 
 
 When Ch'eng T'ien Tzu came into the long draw- 
 ing-room — a great white, candle-lit room, John Selwyn 
 caught his breath. There were eyes there that could 
 not at first see, or focus rather, the loveliness in that 
 unaccustomed type. But Ashford saw it at a glance. 
 
 224. 
 
THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 225 
 
 In his wordless British way he worshiped beauty. His 
 ancestors had collected pictures for centuries, and had 
 spared no pains to make their beautiful holdings more 
 beautiful. Lord Ashford was no mean judge of 
 beauty : and he quickened to it always. 
 
 He quickened to Ch'eng Tzu as she stood a moment 
 near the door. It might be hard to talk to her, but it 
 would be good to look at her through all the dinner 
 hour. And what an artist had designed that dress ! 
 
 The face of Chinese age is full of extraordinary 
 dignity. The faces of Chinese youth are extraordinar- 
 ily lovely. This girlish face was the most exquisite 
 that old storied English room had ever seen; radiant, 
 patrician, gracious, tinted like a pomegranate flower. 
 The twisting dress of crepe, blue as forget-me-nots, 
 hung and half clung falling from a band of turquoises 
 an inch below her throat — a throat that was velvet 
 just not white. He could see the lumps of rings under 
 the loose long gloves. She wore no other jewels, 
 unless those were real that blazed out from the tiny 
 padded shoes that her gown escaped. The girl's black 
 hair was braided about her proud-set tiny head, and 
 above each ear she wore a little stiff bunch of forget- 
 me-nots. He thought the Chinese had narrow slant 
 eyes. This girl's were magnificently set, absolutely 
 straight — fearless, unfathomable, sparkling now like 
 deep brown diamonds. He had never seen anything 
 to match the sure, exquisite penciling of her narrow 
 eyebrows. And her mouth — there was no describing 
 that — her mouth 
 
 The Duchess beckoned him. 
 
 "This is my nephew. Lord Ashford, Miss Shen," 
 she said. 
 
 "I saw you in the garden," he told her, as he bowed. 
 
226 THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 
 
 "this morning, Miss — Ch'eng," stammering a little at 
 the name. 
 
 Ch'eng Tzu smiled frankly at her host. * Thank 
 you for having such a beautiful garden, Lord Ash- 
 ford," she said. 
 
 Ashford's gray eyes leapt — in spite of him — at 
 Ch'eng Tzu's voice. English ears can never grow 
 quite accustomed to Chinese voices. And there are a 
 few of our English alphabetic sounds that the Chinese 
 voice will not repeat, and some sounds we slur they can- 
 not slur. When a Chinese man speaks our tongue the 
 light timbre of his voice is always something unwel- 
 come to our hearing — and the finer his birth, the lighter 
 his voice. Ch'eng Tzu's pronunciation of English was 
 almost English, the slight difference as intriguing as 
 a tiny mole on a beauty's white cheek or a dimple in a 
 baby's chin. And her voice, with a tiny ripple in it, 
 like the natural ripple in some happy woman's hair, 
 was very musical, like a scented flute, or an exquisite 
 silver bell, low, clear and strangely sweet. 
 
 "Thank you, for liking it," he replied, with a slight 
 grateful bow for which the Chinese girl liked him. 
 Elenore's cousin was well-bred she thought. And she 
 remembered that she had thought he looked that at 
 Doncaster House. 
 
 He offered Miss Ch'eng his arm, half wondering if 
 she'd take it. 
 
 Ch'eng Tzu took it very simply, and quite imperson- 
 ally — as a queen might accept a chamberlain's — just 
 touching his coat with her glove. But Ash ford knew 
 that the distance the girl kept was a natural aloofness 
 and no pose. And, if he had thrilled to her beauty, 
 he liked her for the distance that she kept. He wished 
 his mother might have known this girl. 
 
THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 227 
 
 Elenore, who had been watching them a little anx- 
 iously, sighed with relief. She was very pleased with 
 Jack. She'd knit him a pair of braces — and embroider 
 them, or a very special tie. And then she gave her 
 attention to her own escort quite whole-heartedly. 
 Jack was a good boy. 
 
 He was still a somewhat embarrassed one. The 
 garden had been a good opening. But the announce- 
 ment of dinner had interrupted it — and he didn't know 
 how to get back to it. He could think of no com- 
 promise between stark silence and the weather — as 
 they moved to the dining-room. He took craven 
 refuge in the weather. 
 
 Miss Ch'eng answered pleasantly, and showed none 
 of the amusement she felt. Possibly she felt less than 
 she would have felt at the conversational poverty of 
 another man. She had not forgotten the man who had 
 caught her interest at Lady Doncaster's, and had known 
 that she had not. 
 
 When dinner began her host found himself in 
 scarcely better small-talk fettle. 
 
 "Do you Hke England, Miss Ch'eng?" he asked 
 rather desperately. 
 
 Ch'eng Tzu did not misunderstand, and, understand- 
 ing, she did not resent the trite old question. Many 
 an Englishman who'd taken her in to dinner had 
 clutched at it as at a life-belt. She was accustomed 
 to the embarrassment of Englishmen who met her for 
 the first time. 
 
 "Most of it," she said laughing. 
 
 Jack Selwyn wondered which was loveliest, the white 
 brightness of her teeth, or their perfect shape. Ch'eng 
 Chii-po had wondered the same thing years ago when 
 another Tzu had laughed at him first. 
 
228 THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 
 
 "It is almost half home to me, Lord Ash ford — 
 your England," Miss Ch'eng continued more gravely. 
 And she added a trifle sadly, "In a sense I am without 
 a country; I have been away from home so long — 
 since I was ten." 
 
 "How jolly rotten for you." He said it impulsively. 
 
 Tzii nodded. "Yes— just that." 
 
 "But you remember China?" 
 
 "Yes," she told him, with an odd smile. "I remem- 
 ber China, Lord Ash ford — quite well. I think China 
 is not easily forgotten. And we Chinese have per- 
 sistent memories — self-centered ones." 
 
 "I wish I had seen China." It was a new wish — 
 brand new. 
 
 The girl divined that he was at a loss for subjects 
 for chat. She liked him none the less for not being 
 glib. And when he ventured a question or two, she 
 told him of her country, and something even of her 
 people — a rare thing for Ch'eng Tzu to do. She al- 
 most never could be led to speak of China unless alone 
 with her sparse Chinese London acquaintance. 
 
 While dinner was still young she had put John 
 Selwyn at his ease — partly by her quiet good-nature, 
 partly by her magnetism — the magnetism to which chil- 
 dren and all animals responded invariably. 
 
 He thought her hands the most wonderful things 
 he had ever seen — and probably they were: tiny, 
 flower-sweet things, exquisitely modeled, proud and 
 dimple-nicked beneath a wicked weight of rings. Lit- 
 tle quiet, tranquil hands that made him think of pale 
 yellow rose leaves and of old French love-songs. He 
 marveled that she had contrived to carry them about 
 without breaking them. And he wondered what they 
 
THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 229 
 
 felt like — and how it would feel to touch them, the 
 funny little things! 
 
 Lord Ashford ate very little dinner. And the lady 
 on his left grew more and more indignant. Her host 
 scarcely remembered to speak to her once — and, when 
 he did, what he said was not worth the trouble of 
 hearing. 
 
 In the drawing-room after dinner Ashford went to 
 Miss Ch'eng and stayed by her for a decent time. 
 Not to have done so would have been rude. 
 
 The men in the smoking-room missed Ashford, an 
 hour or so after the women had all said good-night. 
 Granville volunteered to find him. He had seen Jack 
 saunter off by himself some time before. 
 
 Tom ran Jack to earth in the library. Lord Ash- 
 ford, long after midnight, was reading an article in 
 the Encyclopedia Britannica — ^the article on China. 
 
CHAPTER XXXIII 
 
 NOVELTY is stimulating. All men find it so. A 
 great deal that Miss Ch'eng could do and do 
 well, Ash ford would have taken for granted in almost 
 any English girl, and, taking it for granted, would 
 have found it commonplace and tame. Tzu rode al- 
 most as well as he, matched him at tennis. So did 
 Elenore. In Elenore he accepted it indifferently. In 
 the Chinese girl it was unexpected, and gave him 
 the tonic tingle of novelty. She played the piano^ ad- 
 mirably — which Nell did not — could give him odds at 
 billiards, and beat him hands down at bridge. She 
 distanced him hopelessly at chess. She was more widely 
 read, and more deeply than he — and he had taken hon- 
 ors at the 'Varsity, and still loved books. She spoke 
 French better than he did — and knew other European 
 tongues of which he was all but ignorant. Man-like, 
 this might have bored him in a plainer, older woman, 
 piqued him in a pretty girl of his own race. But he 
 found it vastly attractive in this dainty Oriental with 
 the piquant, flower-like, girlish face, and the hands like 
 pale yellow butterflies — and never tired of it, because 
 it never ceased to surprise him. 
 
 Lord Ashford was too good a host to devote him- 
 self to one guest to the exclusion of others — ^though 
 often inclination pressed manners hard — and Ch'eng 
 Tzu was not the girl to allow it. But her racial lone- 
 liness gave her a prior claim which her host was not 
 slow to yield. And accident threw them together 
 
 2Z0 
 
THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 231 
 
 oddly often, and each day pushed their acquaintance 
 towards ripe and fruited friendliness. 
 
 Elenore smiled. 
 
 Tom Granville was troubled. 
 
 The house party shrugged and grinned — but only a 
 girl or two did it acidly. They thought Lord Ash ford 
 might have been better employed. 
 
 Jack had given Nell carte blanche, and she had in- 
 vited most of their guests for a long stay — three weeks. 
 Jack had grumbled at the length when she told him. 
 He grumbled to another tune now, and pestered Nell 
 to *'keep it going** for five weeks — or six. 
 
 An English man and a Chinese girl were in love. 
 And inside a week every human being, except Ash ford 
 himself, knew it of him. What Ch'eng T'ien Tzu felt, 
 or if she felt, no one, but she herself, could hazard. 
 Tzu gave no sign. 
 
 But Tzu knew. And she was troubled even more 
 than Granville was. 
 
 She had known at the Doncaster crush that for the 
 first time in her life a man had interested her. And 
 she knew that she came of a strong race whose women 
 cared but once. But she had no mind to make a mis- 
 alliance, even if this English man would bow his pride 
 of race beneath a Chinese yoke. And she thought that 
 he would not. She knew that Lord Ashford had lost 
 his heart — for a time, at least, but she thought that 
 he would not lose his head. She would marry, of 
 course. A life less fulfilled was unthinkable. She 
 would go home — soon now, and throw her lot in with 
 her own people. To do less would be unthinkable. But 
 she was here, through no fault or weakness of her 
 own. "Character is destiny," Ch'eng Yiin had taught 
 her from her birth. Well — ^she would not fail or 
 
232 THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 
 
 smirch her destiny. She was going back to China — 
 home. But first she'd drink this cup — not to the dregs, 
 not to the rich-scented purple depth, but sip the golden 
 perfumed bubbles foaming at the rim. Fate had pro- 
 vided the shrine. Fate was a divinity — and she, 
 Ch'eng Tzii, would taste but a lip-touch of the heady 
 draught, before she spilled its richness out to soak and 
 be lost on the English grass — a libation to China — 
 would taste, just taste, that she might hoard its mem- 
 ory, and know sometimes its tang when she was alone 
 in China. Alone in China! But she would not be 
 cdone in China — long! Ah, well — all she had done in 
 Europe, even what she was doing now, had been com- 
 manded by Ch'eng Shao Yiin. Who was she to know 
 better than Ch'eng Shao Yiin ? That venerable queen- 
 thing could do no wrong. 
 
 And Ch'eng T'ien Tzu went to the mirror and 
 fastened honeysuckle in her hair. And at her breast 
 she thrust an English rose — just opening pink. 
 
 The old butler hurried across the room unceremoni- 
 ously, the pompous quiet of a lifetime torn away, and 
 spoke to his master without prefix; man to man. 
 
 "Nero has broken loose." 
 
 "My God!" Ashford sprang up, his wine glass 
 shattered on his plate. 
 
 A girl gave a little silly scream. A sillier girl gig- 
 gled. Elenore Selwyn clutched the cloth. 
 
 Ashford turned to her. "Where is Tzu?'* he 
 snapped. 
 
 They all were there, all but Tzu. 
 
 Elenore choked. "She was picking cherries — in the 
 walk. I left her there half an hour ago " 
 
THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 233 
 
 **Has Miss Ch^eng come in? Can't you speak/* 
 John Selwyn cried, rushing from the room. 
 
 "Not yet, my lord, I've been in the hall for some 
 time," a footman said. 
 
 They all crowded into the hall. 
 
 John Selwyn was pelting up the stairs. "Tom," he 
 called over his shoulder. "No woman is to leave the 
 house. See all the side doors shut and fastened. Bates. 
 Stand by that front door, Tom. I want you in a min- 
 ute. Tell the maids. Bates." 
 
 They heard him rush through the upper hall — break 
 through a door. And he was running down the stair? 
 again, a great whip and a thong dangling from his 
 arm, loading his pistol as he ran. His face was white. 
 
 "Which way did he go?" 
 
 A stable boy — he had brought the word — answered. 
 "He was headin' for the Cherry Walk, my lord." 
 
 Ashford swayed, an instant, and choked back a sob. 
 
 Elenore caught at him at the door. 
 
 "Jack," she sobbed, "don't hurt Nero unless you have 
 to " 
 
 "Not unless I have to,'* he said grimly as he ran, 
 "Keep the women in, Tom, until I come back." 
 
 Granville nodded, and laid his hand on Elenore SeK 
 wyn's arm. And they stood together watching Jack 
 rush down the path calling, "Tzu !" 
 
 Nell swayed a little. She was crying softly now. 
 Tom put his arm about her, and led her into a sitting- 
 room. 
 
 "Shut that door," Granville commanded as they 
 went. "Watch through the window, Clark." 
 
 Jack's face had quivered a little when she had said, 
 "Don't hurt Nero," and Elenore had thought she saw 
 
234 THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 
 
 tears near his eyes as her cousin pounded down the 
 stairs. 
 
 She knew, and Tom did, how Jack loved the dog ; a 
 great untamed mastiff whom scarcely the man who 
 fed him dared approach — docile to his master, brute 
 and bully to all other living things, — a terrible, vicious 
 dog-monster, herculean in strength, lion-limbed, who 
 should have been destroyed long ago — only Jack Sel- 
 wyn could never have it done. 
 
 How had it happened? Who was to blame? And 
 little children might be playing in the woods and 
 meadows, and at the cottage doors. And Tzu was in 
 the Cherry Walk. 
 
 A hundred men were hunting Nero now — men with 
 whips and sticks. Farm laborers with forks, game- 
 keepers well armed — their master and Nero's foremost 
 in the chase. 
 
 Ch'eng Tzu was sitting beneath the oak tree where 
 he first had seen her, her hat upturned at her side, 
 filled with red and yellow cherries. Nero lay beside 
 her, his great head pillowed on her lap, one paw — it 
 could have killed a child; it had killed a sheep, and 
 had shredded a stout barrow into tow— snuggled on 
 her ankle. Tzii was eating cherries. 
 
 Jack tried to call him — but no sound came — ^he 
 pointed his pistol, moved another step, a cautious step, 
 tried again to rule his voice. And this time a sound 
 came, a guttural, tortured sound. 
 
 Nero heard and looked up, beat his great tail a little 
 on the ground — but made no other move, lifting his 
 eyes, but not his head. 
 
 The girl looked up and smiled. 
 
 "We are having a pic-nic," she called. 
 
THE FEASl' OF LANTERNS 235 
 
 "Hush!" Ashford gasped sternly. **No — for God's 
 sake don't move." 
 
 Ch'eng Tzu laughed. "Are you afraid of my dog, 
 Lord Ashford? I won't let him hurt you" — and she 
 gave the great shaggy brute's head a proprietary pat. 
 
 How he got to them John Selwyn never knew. 
 Ch'eng Tzu knew that he lurched as he came — the 
 nozzle of his pistol still aimed steadily at Nero's head. 
 The hand that held the pistol never wavered the tremble 
 or the space of a hair. But the girl saw how gray 
 his face was, and how it twitched. 
 
 He reached them. Down on his knees — his body 
 thrown on the big dog's — his arm about the dog's 
 throat — the lead was snapped on; with a superhuman 
 effort — Nero had thrice his strength, and the man's 
 strength was spent — he hurled the brute a little way 
 from the girl, pitching him over onto his splendid 
 tawny back. Nero lay quite still, upside down but 
 content — ^with a pistol at his head, and gestured lazily 
 one friendly paw. 
 
 "Please go," Ashford said hoarsely. 
 
 Ch'eng Tzii held out her hand. "Give me that 
 gun " 
 
 "I may have to use it. Go! but not quickly. He 
 may try to spring." 
 
 Tzu cuddled back against the tree, and selected a 
 cherry — two, on their slender, dangling stalks. 
 
 "I'm sorry if we've frightened you," she said. "But 
 it's nonsense, indeed it is. He's quite a darling. He 
 wouldn't hurt me for the world. No animal will attack 
 or harm a Ch'eng," she added simply. "I think he 
 knows I'm Chinese. And I know he knows I love him. 
 He is my friend." 
 
 And at last Ashford believed it — and let the pistol 
 
236 THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 
 
 lay on the grass — but close to his hand. And Tzu 
 spoke more intimately to him than she had done be- 
 fore — told him things about her country and her people 
 that she had not told before — ^told him of her won- 
 derful old great-grandmother, to whom wild birds came 
 when she called them, Ch'eng Shao Yiin who had ruled 
 a great estate with a glance or a gesture, and whose 
 magnetism could conquer every four-footed wild thing, 
 and with a smile could make them come and crouch 
 and fawn upon her. 
 
 And Nero crept back and laid his head again upon 
 her knee, and watched her with adoring eyes. 
 
 And John Selwyn, Lord Ashford, knew that he 
 would give his soul to take the Chinese girl into his 
 arms, and hold her there. 
 
CHAPTER XXXIV 
 
 NERO'S done it!" Tom said dejectedly. 
 'T rather think he has," Elenore replied cheer- 
 fully. 
 
 Granville groaned — and missed his shot. 
 
 **Why do you mind so much?" the girl asked, win- 
 ning hers, and throwing down her cue. She had won 
 the game. 
 
 "Because it isn't natural. It's upside down and in- 
 side out. And those things never work." 
 
 "Tzu's splendid." 
 
 "She's top-hole. Fm not blaming Jack. I blame no 
 one — unless it's the old lady over in China that you 
 say sent her here to grow up where she don't belong, 
 among people with whom she can never really mix — 
 without a single friend or thing of her natural own. 
 It wasn't cricket." 
 
 "No," Elenore said slowly, "Tzu doesn't mix. I 
 doubt if she'd *mix' anywhere, in China any more than 
 here. But I like her and respect her more than any 
 girl I know. And she is very lovable. We all loved 
 her at school. I don't see how Jack was to help it — • 
 and after the other day." 
 
 "No more do I. I'd be in love with her myself, if 
 I hadn't been in love already for ten years and more." 
 He said it stoutly, and looked Elenore Selwyn square 
 in the face. He tried to look her in the eyes — but 
 Elenore was looking hard at the scoring board. "I 
 can understand Jack being in love with Miss Ch'eng 
 
 237 
 
238 THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 
 
 all right — that's easy — and I can understand Miss 
 Ch'eng caring for him — ^lord, yes — if she does — that's 
 not my trouble, but what my trouble is, what I can't 
 understand — is how they are going to hit it off — after. 
 That does me." 
 
 "Well," Elenore said, "it's up to them." 
 
 "I suppose it is," Granville agreed gloomily. 
 
 "Perhaps they won't risk it." 
 
 "Oh, they'll risk it. I know Jack." 
 
 "But I know Tzu — if any one — of us — does." 
 
 "It's up to Jack," Tom insisted. 
 
 "No," Elenore contradicted. "I think it's up to 
 Tzu. My how it rains," she added as the storm crashed 
 against the window panes. 
 
 "Yes, it's a nice drizzle," Granville said admiringly. 
 He blessed the torrents that had been pelting down 
 all day, and given him this hour. 
 
 There is nothing a novelist so dreads as making a 
 proposal. And the dread is justified of its abortive 
 children. 
 
 The proposal is every fictionist's Waterloo. In real 
 life there are few proposals, and almost never one ar- 
 ticulate. Men contrive without it — and women assist 
 them. It is common knowledge that no woman will 
 tell even to her bosom friend at the time, or to her 
 children in the after years, what her husband said 
 when he asked her to be his wife — not because every 
 woman has this one nice reticence, but because he did 
 not — say anything. 
 
 Captain Granville was made of manly stuff. He in- 
 tended to propose to the girl he loved. And he in- 
 tended to do it squarely — with crossed "t's" and dotted 
 **i's." He thought it wasn't playing the game to do 
 
THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 239 
 
 it less verbally and directly. And he meant to do it 
 now. 
 
 It wasn't his most ecstatic moment, but he hoped 
 it might lead to it. 
 
 He planted himself in front of the door. 
 
 "Tea now," Elenore said, waiting for him to let 
 her pass. 
 
 But he did not give way. 
 
 "Elenore," he said, "could you — ^would you mind 
 too much — marrying a red-headed man?" 
 
 The girl flushed. She laughed softly. But her eyes 
 grew very tender — and her mouth. 
 
 "Fd like to marry the nicest man I know — Tom," 
 the girl said softly. 
 
 He took her hand — and then he took the other one. 
 "You know, we are all red-headed," he said patheti- 
 cally — "every one of our branch for centuries. But 
 we all go bald very early." 
 
 "Oh!" she smothered her laughter in his coat — it 
 wasn't far. 
 
 Tom laid his face on hers. "You know I've al- 
 ways loved you, Nell — and always will. Will you be 
 my wife? Will I do, dear?" 
 
 "Yes — please," she whispered. 
 
 "Thank the lord that's over then," the man said. 
 And he said several other things — gradually — his face 
 on hers, his fingers in her hair. He was saying them 
 still when Jack sauntered in. 
 
 "Hello!" Lord Ashford remarked. 
 
 "You clear out," Tom told him. 
 
 But Elenore freed herself, and turned a laughing 
 face to Jack. He had never known before how pretty 
 she was. Few people ever did — except Tom Granville. 
 
240 THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 
 
 "What's the joke, Nell ?" Ashf ord said tenderly. He 
 was more moved than he had often been. 
 
 "I'm going bald," Tom answered for her. "And 
 my wife thinks it's funny." 
 
 "You're going strong," Lord Ashford said. Then 
 he went to Elenore, and took her in his arms, and 
 kissed her reverently — and bolted from the billiard 
 room, going whence he'd come. He closed the door 
 behind him. 
 
 And the darkening storm wore a halo. 
 
 " 'Ave that there 'ound been killed," old Mrs. Smedly 
 asked anxiously. 
 
 "Not 'im, the blooming man eater," the stable boy 
 told her bitterly. " 'E's been pampered. 'E'll die o* 
 old age an' clotted cream — that's wot 'e'll die of " 
 
 And more lettered people were saying much the same 
 thing. The house party said it freely — in various 
 tones of disapproval and amusement. Peasant and 
 gentle, the entire countryside was far more excited 
 at the reprieve of Lord Ashford's terrible dog than 
 they were in Miss Selwyn's engagement. 
 
 The engagement had been a conclusion so long fore- 
 drawn that it was somewhat stale before it transpired. 
 The most match-making matrons in Mayfair had 
 washed their jeweled hands of Captain Granville years 
 ago — four years ago, in Elenore Selwyn's first season. 
 
 But few of the house-party had even heard of Nero 
 — so paddock-cloistered had he lived — till his lurid 
 escape, and melodramatic — as they saw it — if tame, 
 capture. To the women of the large house-party the 
 big dog's dash for freedom, and presumably to cele- 
 brate it with a feed of human flesh, had come as some- 
 thing of a conversational refreshment. 
 
THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 241 
 
 Sitting safe in boudoir, drawing-room, or at bridge- 
 table, Nero, providentially reenclosed, brought some- 
 thing of the jungle to them. Their London-jaded souls 
 were more easily stirred than children's. "That ter- 
 rible brute — so incredible that dear Ashford should 
 keep him, and fond of him too — must be — and such 
 a nice boy, and such a quiet dear thing — your deal, 
 dear" — Nero and his escapade were a novelty — and 
 a novelty less repetitional than the new Montenegrin 
 dancer, or the last society divorce — "Mary Montecute, 
 of all people, only fancy, and Lord Smythson!" 
 
 Two women left abruptly. "The brute got out once, 
 and he may again any day. No one can say I am a 
 coward, but I draw the line at being eaten by a mad 
 dog." Several, more spectacularly mettled, begged 
 Lord Ashford to introduce them into Nero's paddock, 
 "and let me pat him," and were denied it. And men 
 of the party, who had scarcely noticed Ch'eng Tzu 
 before, regarded "the little Chinese girl" with new in- 
 terest, and an affectionate respect. Any girl who could 
 make friends with Ashford's beast was a damned good 
 sport, if her relatives did eat rats and puppies, and 
 carry their new-bom female children to the top of the 
 nearest hill, and leave them there to die. 
 
 Nero remained unavoidably ignorant of his happy 
 advancement into the scintillating intellectuality of 
 Mayfair social small talk. But he realized that his 
 existence had brightened considerably. And, being 
 a dog, he was grateful. Ch'eng Tzti took him for a 
 long walk every day — even when it rained — Lord Ash- 
 ford in close attendance on them both, in case of emer- 
 gency. And the "clotted cream" of the stable boy's 
 sarcasm, though a verbal inexactitude, was no exag- 
 geration. Nero would not be killed. Nothing less 
 
242 THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 
 
 regal than old age would usher him on high to be p» 
 mandarin — so Ch'eng Tzii told Ashford, and Nero cor- 
 roborated her with a thumping tail — among the dogs 
 who had joined their ancestry. But Nero would make 
 no second unauthorized and unaccompanied escape. 
 His paddock door would never be left unlatched and 
 unguarded again. The head stableman, and two of 
 his underlings had been dismissed. 
 
 "Aunt Annie" agreed with Captain Granville that 
 NeTo had ''done it." But Nero had not. He was 
 an accessory after the doing. Propinquity, novelty, and 
 the one thing in human nature for which there is no 
 analysis, the call of maid to man, the claim of man 
 to maid, had done it — in as far as it yet had been done. 
 Nero had convenienced and hastened — advanced it. 
 But he was but a supernumerary in the play in whose 
 essential cast there is rarely but two. 
 
 Moreover the now expectant house party stood a fair 
 chance of disappointment. They counted on the an- 
 nouncement of a second, and more exciting engage- 
 ment, but there was not a little probability that this 
 preliminary first act would end an unfinished play. 
 
 Love at its strongest — is a mighty destroyer. It 
 can shatter all things but one: self-control established 
 and convinced. 
 
 Ch'eng Tzu, a quickening girl, home-sick for a home 
 she'd scarcely known, and homelinesses she'd never 
 known, heart-sick for soul-rights, lonely in exile — 
 exile none the less exile for all the interest, soft gar- 
 ments, and jeweled comforts — ripe for happiness, had 
 given him her heart almost at once — and she knew it. 
 For long centuries the women of her race had loved at 
 first sight — prepared for it by tradition and upbring- 
 ing — the first sight of a husband's eager face when 
 
THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 243 
 
 he lifted her crimson veil. Ch'eng T'ien Tzu — so alone 
 in England, so socially exposed — had loved suddenly, 
 as Ting Tzu — so harem guarded — in a Ho-nan court- 
 yard suddenly had loved Ch'eng Chii-po. It was in 
 their blood — a thing of fate and character, no un- 
 maidenliness. But Ch'eng T'ien Tzu did not intend to 
 become the wife of John Selwyn. And she beUeved 
 that he would not seek it. 
 
 Ashford knew now that he loved Tzu — and he was 
 amazed to find what a masterful thing love was. He 
 wondered if it took many fellows by the throat as 
 it had him; and he watched Granville with troubled, 
 speculative eyes. He would have avoided Ch'eng Tzu 
 now, if he could. But that was beyond his strength. 
 He followed and waylaid her, and his assiduity was 
 grave, without smirch or taint of flirtation. He came 
 of a race that rode straight. He was incapable of 
 any thought even, of flirtation, with this girl so alone 
 and so trebly a guest, Nell's guest, his guest, and a guest 
 of England. But both his judgment totally, and his 
 taste somewhat, discountenanced his taking of a Chi- 
 nese wife. He was willing that Tzu should know he 
 loved her, indifferent if others did, but he did not in- 
 tend to woo her. 
 
 The Chinese and the English are the two races rich- 
 est and strongest in self-control — character is destiny. 
 And it was improbable that the match-making ac- 
 credited to Nero would succeed. 
 
CHAPTER XXXV 
 
 ANOTHER day had come — so the clocks said. 
 The storm still held, a deluge now that wrapped 
 the Grange in blackness. Electric lights and dinner- 
 candles were as necessary to satisfactory breakfasting 
 as kidneys and omelettes were. The Duchess had or- 
 dered fires in all the rooms, and Elenore was disturbed 
 for the success of her dance. For it must not be sup- 
 posed that gossip and tobacco (about equally shared 
 between the two sexes — the women smoked every- 
 where, and the men everywhere but in the drawing- 
 rooms) were the only entertainment Elenore had 
 provided for her guests. Gossip and nicotine undoubt- 
 edly were the roast beef and Yorkshire, but there 
 were souffles in abundance and in variety. There 
 was dancing every night in the hall, in an improvised 
 ballroom, for those who chose. To-night's was to have 
 been a big affair — half the county invited. Elenore 
 wondered how many, if any, could come through such 
 a deluge. 
 
 "May I show you the pictures now?" Ashford asked 
 as Miss Ch'eng left the table. 
 
 Of all he had Lord Ashford loved and knew his 
 pictures best. Ancestor worship is not a conscious 
 English trait. But that Chinese characteristic is deep- 
 rooted in the family loyalty of many an English aris- 
 tocrat, though it expresses itself but mutely and along 
 lines distinctly non-Chinese. But as Ch'eng Tzu went 
 with him from canvas to canvas the race-barrier be- 
 
 344 
 
THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 245 
 
 tween them seemed less to her than she could have 
 credited even an hour ago. She realized — it was patent 
 — that this man loved his great possessions — his homes 
 and lands, his tenants, the treasures stored and cher- 
 ished in old rooms, because his ancestors had gathered 
 them together, and lived in them for him. He ac- 
 cepted his wealth, his high position, with the unques- 
 tioning simplicity of a well-bred, unself conscious child. 
 Above all, he loved his pictures — his face quickened 
 at them as until now she had only seen it quicken for 
 her. And presently she saw that he loved the pic- 
 tures for what they told rather than for what they 
 were, for the beauty they recorded rather than for 
 the beauties of color and line that were their own. 
 That drew the Chinese girl closer to him than she 
 had felt before. But the pictures themselves left her 
 a little cold. And he felt it, and presently he said 
 so, and asked her why. 
 
 Ch'eng Tzu laughed a little — a little sadly but not 
 unproudly, and sitting down on a wide, low window- 
 seat, knotted her hands upon her knee, and answered 
 frankly, with a gentle shake of her head that set jade 
 and an opal quivering gently, "It is because I am Chi- 
 nese, I think. Your pictures are very beautiful, Lord 
 Ash ford. But I think them dead. There is scarcely 
 a picture in a gallery in Europe that seems to me quite 
 alive, or quite to get its message through." 
 
 "Not even the Turners ?" 
 
 Tzu smiled, and shook her head. "Color isn't move- 
 ment. It isn't even life. Our masters spare color 
 more than they use it. They never crowd a fore- 
 ground, because their pictures are designed to make us 
 look off and through them to the sky, and mist and 
 hill beyond — to show us the loveliness beyond the silk 
 
246 THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 
 
 even more than the beauty instanced on it — the soul 
 beyond the line. Your pictures seem to me still-life — 
 their clouds never shift, their atmosphere is paint, the 
 water-wheels never turn, their torrents never break 
 or foam, even the flowers in a valley, or at the gorge's 
 edge, are like flowers in a woman's hat in a shopwindow, 
 they never tremble in the wind, they don't grow, they 
 are sewed on — most of all, I think, your pictures have 
 no wind. And their foregrounds are clotted with a 
 crowd of things that hold the eye from the better 
 things beyond. Your pictures are still-life, ours are 
 thought. Yours show the artist's skill, ours show us 
 nature. In a landscape of Ma Yuan's you can hear 
 the wind. Do I boast too much, Lord Ashf ord ? You 
 asked me to say." 
 
 "By Jove" — there was room on the window seat for 
 two — "you have surprised me, though!" 
 
 "You thought there were no pictures in China?" 
 She mocked him, but there was friendship in the mock- 
 ing. 
 
 "Did you think there were many in Europe before 
 you came?" Jack retorted. "Had you ever heard of 
 the Sistine Madonna?" 
 
 The girl laughed merrily. "That's fair. No, Lord 
 Ashford, I didn't know there was a Europe until I 
 was eight, and my great-grandmother told me I was 
 going there — and all I ever gathered of it in my own 
 country was that it was full of soldiers and mission- 
 aries and — and peculiar women. No, I had never 
 heard of Raphael, of Turner or of Tintoretto. But I 
 have been industrious here. And I have tried to study 
 your art. In Europe pictures are gulped and talked 
 about. In China pictures are read and felt. You 
 would think our pictures rigmaroles. We think yours 
 
THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 247 
 
 scraps. Our greatest pictures are long scrolls. We 
 unroll and re-roll them bit by bit, and read them as 
 you read a book. Ours tell a story, yours, at best, an 
 incident. Ours show nature, as a man sees it stretch- 
 ing slowly through a wood or by a river. Yours cut 
 a piece out of nature, and put it in a frame, and hang 
 it up to dress a wall. Nature does not cut a tree and 
 a brook out of her panorama and frame the fragment, 
 and hang it on a wall, and say, *0h, look !' or a mo- 
 ment out of a life, and call it a story. Our figure- 
 pictures are novels. Yours are short stories." 
 
 She left the window-seat and went back to his pic- 
 tures — and found some pleasant truth to say of them 
 one by one. And John Selwyn grew meek in his sur- 
 prise at what she knew of art — an alien art. He had 
 brought her here to show her his pictures, but she 
 was showing them to him. 
 
 He lured her back to the window-seat, as soon as 
 he dared, and when he asked it, Ch'eng Tzu told him 
 something — not much^ — of Chinese pictures and of the 
 artists who had painted them. He tried to follow her 
 — but much of it was a little difficult, and all of it was 
 embarrassingly new. The music of the girFs voice 
 reached and pierced him, but like the European paint- 
 ers she'd strictured, not much of her message got 
 through. He had never heard of great Ma Yuan or 
 of Ku K'ai-Chih, and English ears find strange Chi- 
 nese names hard to catch when heard for the first 
 time, English memories find them even more difficult 
 to remember. But he began to suspect something of 
 how much this wonderful girl of twenty knew, and 
 to surmise that her exquisite beauty of mind and 
 person — the fine finish of each delicate feature — was 
 but the natural, simple flowering of the long culture 
 
248 THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 
 
 of a great race — the imperial culture of an imperial 
 people. And he began to sense how little he knew 
 of many things of supreme interest and value. That 
 message at least — and she had no thought to give 
 it — Chinese Tzu did get through, as they sat together 
 on the window-seat, the storm beating on the panes, the 
 great gallery glowing with electric lights. 
 
 He still thanked God that he was English — as well 
 such English may — nothing could prick him there. 
 But a Chinese girl with crippled feet had jarred his 
 old insularity and cut it to the quick. She had stirred 
 his senses, and delighted his eyes from the first. To- 
 day she had quickened his mind, and had made to it a 
 gift. 
 
 In speaking of a picture she'd seen at home, a bull- 
 finch on a bamboo spray — Ting Yuch'uan had painted 
 it — Ch'eng Tzu suddenly said something in Chinese. 
 Almost he had laid his hand on those tiny apricot- 
 tinted fingers. At the Chinese words he drew back. 
 They stung him. And he felt the gulf between them, 
 and a cold wind from it in his face. He wondered 
 if Tzii had spoken Chinese — he had not heard her 
 do so before — to remind him of a distance that must 
 be kept. 
 
 Perhaps her soul had, or some spirit instinct of 
 her race. But, if she had, she had done it uncon- 
 sciously. She had not seen the half -approach of Lord 
 Ashford's hand. 
 
 "Have you been very home-sick here?" Jack said 
 gently. 
 
 "Home-sick? Scarcely that — at least not very. I 
 was so young. Home has been more a bright memory, 
 and a happy promise, than an aching need. But, oh! 
 
THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 249 
 
 so lonely. It has been hard, my loneliness — so cruelly 
 alone." 
 
 "But you have friends here — of your own people?" 
 *'None. My old tutor is in London still. But I see 
 less and less of him. And we were never comrades. 
 There is no one of my kindred here. I am the only 
 Ch^eng in exile — I have a Chinese woman with me in 
 London — a companion in some surface ways, but not 
 a friend — a slave girl a few years older than I am^ 
 My great-grandmother had her educated well, that she 
 might live with me here, and speak Chinese with me 
 every day. She is near me always in London — in the 
 house. But — she's a slave, a big-footed woman. I 
 have no friends. And I have never had a playmate^ 
 since I left home — not many then, for I had to work 
 too hard. And I often long to play." 
 
 "But at Lady Mary^s — you were there '* 
 
 "I had the twins — just babies^ — no friends among 
 the girls." 
 
 "But surely — why Elenore loved you " 
 
 "She was very kind to me. Most of them were. 
 But I never knew any of them. And none of them 
 knew me. I know no one in England." 
 
 Ashford was moved. "Your Chinese maid — I have 
 not seen her — is she not with you here?" 
 
 Miss Ch'eng laughed. "Mung Panii? No, indeed. 
 I have Vail, my English woman, with me here. She 
 does not fit in, in an English servant's hall — Mung 
 Panii. I never take Panii to a country house. How it 
 rains, Lord Ashford. It's a gorgeous storm." 
 
 "Yes," he said heartily. He was grateful to the 
 storm, as Tom had been. Then, "Your porcelains," 
 he began — knowing, as he thought, something of them, 
 
250 THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 
 
 and thinking perhaps to bear some share less ignorant in 
 talk of them — and he would show her the Chinese vases 
 in the yellow room some day — she would be delighted 
 with them. 
 
 But Ch'eng Tzu pushed the porcelains aside with 
 an almost contemptuous gesture of a jeweled hand. 
 "Our porcelains are a minor art — just a reflection and 
 a record of the worthier arts; something of a partial 
 catalog," she said, moving to the door. 
 
 He dismissed the showing of the vases. "But, won't 
 you stay a little longer — and tell me more ?" he begged. 
 
 "I must go," the girl said. "I have a letter to 
 write." 
 
 "Write it after lunch." 
 
 Tzu shook her head. "I shall be very busy after 
 hmch, dressing for Elenore's ball." 
 
 "But you'can't dress from lunch till dinner!" 
 
 "Every moment of it until tea. No dinner for me 
 to-night. Just a biscuit and a tea-pot in my room. 
 I make a Chinese toilet for to-night. It takes many 
 hours." 
 
 "Why?" he said a little lamely — ^perhaps a little 
 gauchely. 
 
 "Because I am Chinese, Lord Ashford. To do honor 
 to Elenore — she was very good to me at school — and 
 to do honor to myself. I am Chinese, and I do not 
 wish my friends to forget it — if any one could be 
 so blind " 
 
 Ashford bowed, and drew aside — that she might pass 
 and go. 
 
CHAPTER XXXVI 
 
 JOHN SELWYN smoked more than was good for 
 him that afternoon — and as a host he was so remiss 
 that it amounted to not being one, and to a rudeness 
 that was all the more because it was not intended. 
 
 No one saw him after lunch. Tom failed to find 
 him when Nell ordered it. It was Burton that found 
 him at last, and only Burton knew in what scant time, 
 and how ill-temperedly Ashford had dressed for 
 dinner. 
 
 Tzu in Chinese clothes! He wished she wasn't 
 going to do it. He hated it. He wondered why 
 he hated it. He wondered why she did it. Over his 
 third pipe he concluded that he hated it because he 
 foresaw how all the county apes would stare at her, 
 and nudge and gibber, as they did at some new 
 creature at the Zoo. It was a feeble and an unjust 
 conclusion. It was years since any one of Elenore's 
 well-born guests had favored the Zoo and not one of 
 them was ill-mannered enough to nudge. Over pipe 
 number five he concluded that Miss Ch'eng was doing 
 it in rebuke of him, and to keep him in his place. 
 Good Lord, she needn't have troubled. He'd thought 
 of little but race-barriers for a week now. He told 
 his seventh pipe that he didn't give a damn for that or 
 anything else. And when Burton interrupted a last 
 pipeful Ashford flung it away, and ordered the man 
 to find a Johnnie who could sell decent tobacco, which 
 the tobacconist in present possession of his patronage 
 damn well didn't. 
 
 251 
 
252 THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 
 
 Ashford was mistaken about Tzii. She was putting 
 on her Chinese robes in self-defense against self — 
 to remind herself, and, in a qualm of conscience to 
 show herself to him as she was. But it was an act 
 of honesty, not an act of rebuke or warning. It was 
 herself she feared, it was she herself whom she wished 
 to warn. She trusted Lord Ashford not to overlook, 
 much less overleap the sharp-spiked racial barrier. 
 But it was her pride — and her alarm — to-night to lose 
 Miss Ch'eng, to be again Ch'eng Tzu the great-grand- 
 daughter of Ch'eng Yiin — a girl born in Ho-nan, 
 going back to Ho-nan. 
 
 At the court of St. James she wore her native 
 dress — because it privileged her to cover arms and 
 neck — but she had not cared to wear it elsewhere, 
 except in her own house — and not there when she 
 had guests. She still thought her own dress both 
 more comfortable and more beautiful than the dress 
 of European women, but for some reason, which she 
 could not have explained, she preferred to keep it 
 to herself. Probably in this Ch'eng Tzu's taste wa^ 
 at fault. The European and American Christian 
 missionaries — the men in pigtails and second-hand 
 Chinese garb, the women dressed as amahs or Chinese 
 frail, were the sorriest sights and the silliest that the 
 much-seeing streets of Shanghai ever saw. And 
 Ch'eng Tzu would have kept her Chinese maiden 
 state in Europe with more dignity in a Chinese dress. 
 But she had been sent to England when a child — and 
 by the time the choice of her garments had been 
 altogether in her control she had grown accustomed 
 to wearing clothes such as all the girls about her wore. 
 
 But to-night she would be a looker-on in England. 
 
THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 253 
 
 and attend an English function as a Chinese guest, 
 in her true colors. 
 
 Ch'eng Tzu had never dressed her own hair — and 
 her English maid had never dressed it in Chinese 
 style. But between them they accomplished it at last. 
 A Chinese coiffeuse might have looked at it askance, 
 but Vail thought it quite Chinesey. Secretly Tzu 
 wondered if it would keep up. But wonderful as it 
 was, it was secure enough. Vail was no bungler. 
 The diamonds and the yellow honeysuckle sprays, the 
 dangling pearls, the carved and glimmering jades, the 
 tassels, and the pins encrusted with blue kingfisher 
 feathers were fast and safe in an immovable founda- 
 tion. 
 
 The jade-green wide-legged trousers, embroidered 
 with wistaria in its natural colors, the overrobe of 
 rose, fur-edged, a jeweled dragon on each side, the 
 vest of crimson crepe powdered with diamonds, and 
 the top-coatee of clear, soft blue sewn with pearls — 
 a paneled, almost skirt-shaped garment that hung 
 almost to the lower edge of the jade-green trousers — 
 and all the jewels of her station blazing about her, 
 made a picture such as few there had ever seen before. 
 The little hands were lost beneath their rings. And 
 gems enough to enrich any crown in Europe might 
 have been spared from her breast and not been missed. 
 A messenger had brought most of them from London 
 the day before. Miss Ch'eng had brought no such 
 an array with her to the country house. 
 
 These were not the treasured jewels of the Ch'engs, 
 or any part of them. Ch'eng Yiin had not deemed it 
 necessary to send heirlooms to Europe — though she 
 had yielded to little Tzu's request for Ma Yuan's 
 
254 THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 
 
 herons. But Yiin had sent before her death, a case 
 of ornaments new-bought, in readiness for the first 
 attendance of Miss Ch'eng at the EngUsh Court. Tzu 
 had never worn so many before — and these were not 
 a half. Her tiny fan had taken an artist a year to 
 paint, an ivory-carver a year to stick. The tiny shoes 
 were red as dye could stain satin, and to-night they 
 were plainer than she often wore, their brilliant color 
 not cloaked by embroidery or ornament — except for a 
 cluster of loose-hanging pearls that clicked as she 
 walked. Tzu wished to emphasize her feet. 
 
 She was dressed now — all but the paint. The paints, 
 red, white and rose, lay ready on their tray of glass. 
 Vail waited for her mistress' order, half hoping that 
 Miss Ch'eng intended to paint herself. A touch of 
 rouge, an eyebrow pencil, liquid cream, enamel — Vail 
 was deft enough with those — but these Chinese 
 pigments she doubted her skill to use. Ch'eng Tzu 
 did intend to paint herself. She put her hand out — 
 and drew it back, blushed a little — and walked away. 
 She would wear no paint. She couldn't do it. 
 Loyalty and self -revelation had gone far enough. And 
 she made no doubt she'd look strange enough to 
 English eyes. She almost looked strange to her own. 
 
 Tom Granville saw her first, and hurried to her. 
 "By Jove," he exclaimed, "yo^ ^^^ some picture. You 
 ought to wear this sort of thing always." 
 
 "I believe I ought," Tzii smiled, but there was sad- 
 ness in her smile. 
 
 Ashford had been watching for her for some time 
 — since before the first guest came. It still rained 
 with unabated fury, but the county had come. The 
 great rooms were crowded now. 
 
THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 255 
 
 Jack saw her as she smiled up at Tom, but he did 
 not come to them at once, but stood and watched her. 
 This suited her best — he saw that at once, and recog- 
 nized it with a selfish pang. The barrier hardened 
 and was higher. But his senses ached, as a sick man's 
 for the fragrance of a flower. This was a new Tzii — 
 but even lovelier than the one he knew. He saw that. 
 But even more a girl apart. Was this the girl who 
 had ridden with him neck to neck, and taken a hedge 
 more carelessly than Nell, who knew more of the 
 books in the library than Nell did, as much of his own 
 pictures and flowers and crops as he? Was this the 
 girl who spoke his tongue, and had lived among his 
 people since she was a child? Then he realized, with 
 a throb of pleased but dazed surprise, that she looked to 
 him less un-English so — ^more like some delicate bru- 
 nette girl of his own race wearing "fancy dress." He 
 had seen Elenore as a Turkish lady, an Indian princess 
 and a Persian Houri, — though he suspected a Houri 
 overdressed, — and half the women of his acquaintance 
 in what they thought Eastern dress. Tzu scarcely 
 looked strange to him. He went to her then, and 
 offered her his arm with, "My dance — please." 
 
 "I do not dance. Lord Ashford." 
 
 "But you will — a quadrille — you always do," Captain 
 Granville insisted. 
 
 "No— not to-night." 
 
 "But why not?" Elenore's fiance persisted. 
 
 "Chinese ladies do not dance," she told him. "We 
 hire our dancing-girls, or have slaves to do it." 
 
 "But you are in England," Tom blundered on. 
 
 "No," Ch'eng Tzu said, "I am always in China 
 really." 
 
 "Then let me find you a seat," Ashford begged, 
 
256 THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 
 
 offering her his arm again, "where we can watch the 
 nautch." 
 
 P *'Yes, I shall like to watch/' Tzii answered. "Will 
 you take me to the Duchess? She said I might sit 
 with her, when she had smiled the county in." 
 
 But, because she was in Chinese dress — and her 
 hands bare, she would not take his arm — or even 
 Captain Granville's, whom she treated with a lighter 
 camaraderie than she did any other man. She walked 
 between them through the rooms — until they found 
 the Duchess, flirting with the Dean — or so the Duchess 
 said, and the Dean did not contradict her. 
 
 Men— and women too — buzzed about the Chinese 
 girl, but no one seemed surprised at her dress. English 
 society has few surprises left it. And no one seemed 
 to notice those jade-green trousers. Why should they? 
 Half the girls there rode in divided skirts — or less. 
 And Tzu's trousers were almost as wide and far less 
 revealing than the latest thing in English skirts. Cut 
 to show her shoes, still they kept her stockings private, 
 and were almost hidden by the rose and dragoned 
 tunic. It was a gorgeous, jeweled, girlish figure that 
 paused beside the Duchess w^hen it had curtsied a 
 little proudly to Mr. Dean. But no man spoke pres- 
 ently in the smoking room of her jade-green wistaria- 
 embroidered garment. None thought of it. There 
 was a virginity that veiled this Chinese girl as a cloak, 
 or the miraculous raiment of Saint Agnes. And not 
 the coarsest coster in the East End or at the Docks 
 could have mistaken or disregarded it. No man had 
 ever thought a rudeness of Ch'eng T'ien Tzii. 
 t The Duchess studied her hair with a buying eye, 
 and planned a tableau at Albert Hall for a pet charity. 
 
 Lord Ash ford left them soon. He came back more 
 
THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 257 
 
 than once, but not to stay long. He must play host 
 to-night — in his own house — Nell's dance. But each 
 time he looked at Ch'eng Tzu he wished the more that 
 Sargent might paint her so — or some lesser great who 
 would not scorn to repeat minutely each thread of 
 those embroideries, each pearl and jade, and that the 
 picture might hang forever his — in the gallery up- 
 stairs where she had told him of "fluidity of lines," 
 ''atmospheric effects," old chaps with remarkable 
 names, and the soullessness of Turner and Tintoretto. 
 
CHAPTER XXXVII 
 
 IT was in the garden, almost where he had seen 
 her first, that the end came — the first great punctu- 
 ation in two lives. Tzu was sewing — she often sewed 
 — sitting on an old bench, a little shaded from the sun, 
 the flowers blazing for yards about her. The day 
 was fiercely hot, and the few guests still remaining 
 kept to the dimmer comforts of the house. But the 
 Chinese girl loved the sunshine, and drank its hot 
 wine as greedily as the flowers did. 
 
 Lord Ash ford was not looking for her when he 
 came upon her. He had weighed it all — realizing his 
 dilemma at last — and he had decided against it. That 
 he believed — as he did — that Miss Ch^eng would repulse 
 any suit of his — but whetted his desire to urge it. He 
 came of stock that took joy in difliculties, loved un- 
 tying international knots with suave diplomacy, loved 
 still better cutting them with a ready sword. He liked 
 resistance — his metal rang to it. But he had himself 
 in hand. And his judgment told him nay. Ch*eng 
 Tzu had crept into his heart. He doubted if time or 
 any other woman could ever oust her from it. Last 
 night — balancing it all, fighting it out — ^he had sick- 
 ened a little at the thought of life lived out without 
 Tzu. His heart clamored for her. His arms ached 
 for her. But, if life without Tzu seemed to him now 
 a something of emptiness, and a pain, life with her 
 he saw as a difficulty and a personal satisfaction em- 
 bittered by much ! That their marriage would be the 
 
THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 259 
 
 social sensation of an hour revolted him, but it did 
 not dissuade. For himself he desired this girl above 
 all else on earth, beyond every other possibility of life. 
 The soul-barriers between them he would risk. They 
 might be absorbed and cease to be, in the intimacy 
 of married companionship, begun in love and lived 
 in loyalty — if not, for him, l^er sweetness and her 
 charm would be compensation enough. But for one 
 thing, of which he tried not to think, Tzu was perfect 
 in her lover's sight. But his pride of race was a loyal 
 devoted pride, not a selfish pride. As an Englishman 
 he now saw no abhorrence in marriage with a Chinese 
 wife. As a Selwyn he did. To put it bluntly — as he 
 was clean and man enough to put it to himself — he 
 reasoned that he had no right to subject the current 
 of his family to something of abnormality. For him- 
 self he would accept a Chinese wife — he craved such 
 a wife now, eagerly — but he shrank from a Chinese 
 mother of his children. His children had a right 
 to ask of him — to demand of him — an English mother. 
 His ancestry had its rights. His descendants had 
 theirs. Even for himself — selfishly he shrank from 
 the thought of calling children of parentage so strange, 
 his. He loved Ch'eng Tzu. Would he love her 
 children? He desired her. He did not desire the 
 children she might bear. He faced it squarely. He 
 made his resolve. After Nell's wedding he would 
 travel : travel the one panacea for every young English- 
 man at bay if he has bank account sufficient. Well — 
 it's a wholesome safety-valve, and admirable treatment 
 for half the ills of flesh and hearts and heads and 
 nerves, if not always the last proof of grit. His mind 
 made up he went to bed — but not for some time to 
 sleep. 
 
26o THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 
 
 He breakfasted early and went off with Nero for 
 a tramp. But the growing heat drove man and dog 
 back after an hour or so. He put his dog into its 
 quarters, and, feeling another man for his exercise, 
 and not a little braced and comforted by his resolve, 
 turned down the path that skirted between the trout 
 brook and the tulip beds, where the lilies-of-the-valley 
 and the heliotrope too, kept their fragrant state, — 
 turned down the path and saw Ch'eng Tzu darning 
 butterflies into a piece of crash. 
 
 She was his guest. 
 
 Might he sit dow^n ? 
 
 He was her host. Of course he might. 
 
 "Do you never feel the sun. Miss Ch'eng?" 
 
 "But of course I do. That is why I came out — to 
 feel the sun — that and the flowers. I don't know 
 which I like most." 
 
 "Do you know which flowers you like best ?" 
 
 "Indeed I do not. One day some, others another 
 day. To-day the heliotrope, I think, and those little 
 round lily bells. You like the roses best always, Lord 
 Ashford." 
 
 "How do you know ?" 
 
 "Because you are English." 
 
 "So proscribed as all that are we? But you are 
 wrong for once. I like wall-flowers best." 
 
 "Yes, — they are perfect," Tzu agreed. And how 
 like a flower she looked, he thought, a delicate, sun- 
 loving flower — as brilliant as the day itself, as exquisite 
 as the little white lilies sending their perfume to mingle 
 with the perfume of the heliotrope. She wore 
 European dress again — a dress that was just suggestive 
 of the Orient, but less bizarre than many English 
 women wore that season — a, season of Japanesque 
 
THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 261 
 
 effects and Muscovitish influences. Tzu wore dull, 
 clear blue to-day — probably every woman sun-hidden in 
 the shaded house was wearing white — but above the 
 low-cut neck and the slashings of the tunic brilliant 
 embroidery showed — ^great cut-out flowers of many 
 colors that some mandarin might have worn a century 
 ago. Her shoes were poppy- red (they matched her 
 lips) encrusted with jade and silver threads. But she 
 wore no ornament in her closely wound braids to-day. 
 And he noticed that for once she had no fan. 
 
 A giant lady-bird inched across the path. "Look 
 what a big one/' the girl said pointing towards it with 
 her shoe. 
 
 Ash ford nodded, and looked away. The deformity 
 that he knew snuggled within that little Chinese shoe — 
 was always a revulsion to this Englishman. He never 
 saw that pretty Chinese shoe without visualizing the 
 hideousness within. He chid himself for the lib- 
 erty his thought took with that poor httle maimed 
 naked foot, a mangled stump of what had been 
 a foot. But he could not mask the thought. He shrank 
 from the thought, and knew that he would shrink 
 from the veritable sight — from seeing what was 
 to him her only defect — a terrible defect. And then 
 he cursed himself again for the caddish liberty he 
 took. 
 
 The girl caught something of the shadow on his 
 face. 
 
 "It seems terrible to you ?" she said simply. "It does 
 to me sometimes. England has done that one un- 
 kindness to me. And I think that I shall hate it — and 
 to think of how it hurts them — when they bind my 
 baby daughters' feet." 
 
 Ashford flushed a little — but it was impossible to 
 
262 THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 
 
 misunderstand her. Her maidenliness was unmvstak- 
 able. But he bit his lip a little, man-like a little 
 dashed, because her saying that told him that she 
 considered marriage with him impossible, or, evermore 
 probably, had never thought of it at all. 
 
 Ch'eng Tzu did not catch his thought this time, 
 and chatted on happily. For thousands of years the 
 girls of her race have spoken to each other of such 
 things quite simply. They speak to no man, th% 
 maidens of Ch'eng Tzu's caste. They are born for 
 marriage, and live in preparation for it. Maternity is 
 the apex of every Chinese girl's hope. The tiniest 
 girl toddling across the sheltered courtyard longs for 
 and loves the babies she is some day to bear her 
 unknown lord. And she prattles of them as innocently 
 as of her dolls. And, because for thousands of years 
 the women of her clan had had no casual speech with 
 men, transplanted Ch'eng Tzii spoke to men as she 
 did to women. Even Lady Mary had been unable to 
 impress that habit away. But it had mattered but 
 little, since the nature of the Chinese girl was crystal- 
 pure, and all her speech immaculate. 
 
 **But it hurts less than you would think. The little 
 bones are so soft then, like supple cartilage. And we 
 have our opium pipes, you know. Oh ! It is a good 
 thing our opium, much better than your English beer." 
 
 "You do not like beer?" 
 
 Ch'eng Tzu made a face. "Let us not speak of it — 
 on such a day. But oh ! I like your English flowers.'* 
 
 IWell — let her talk about the flowers. Flowers were 
 safe enough. He had no excuse to leave her yet. And 
 he had no wish. Another hour with her in the old 
 garden his mother had loved — she'd taught him to walk 
 
THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 263 
 
 in the cherry-walk — would be but one memory more to 
 treasure — and to curse. 
 
 "Tell me of your flowers," he said. 
 
 "At home? We have all your flowers, I think, in 
 Ho-nan, and many that I have never seen in Europe. 
 Oh ! I shall be good to the flowers, when I go home. 
 It hurts me to see how flowers are neglected here. Two 
 things hurt me here — ^where I have had such kindness, 
 and admire so truly — the way you treat flowers, and 
 the way you treat women." 
 
 "Women! By jove. I say. Miss Ch'eng, you are 
 pulling my leg." 
 
 "It is a thing I do not do." 
 
 "But English women rule the roost now. Why 
 they^ll have the vote yet, I think." 
 
 Ch'eng Tzft shrugged a pitying shoulder. "The 
 vote!" she said with indescribable contempt. "And 
 men speak rudely to them sometimes. I have heard 
 it." 
 
 "How do we mistreat our flowers?" Ashford said 
 hurriedly. He felt safer with the flowers. 
 
 "You do not make friends with them. You never 
 even speak to them, or listen to them." 
 
 Lord Ashford was speechless. But he tried to 
 look less dumbfounded than he felt. And Tzu talked 
 on. She loved her theme. She liked her listener. 
 Every Chinese woman is a born chatterbox. Ch'eng 
 Tzu had kept her tongue tied for ten long years. But 
 an affinity she did not analyze, an attraction she could 
 not resist, a propinquity that both soothed and stimu- 
 lated, and a place that had seemed to her from the first 
 something of "home," gave her a feeling of easy com- 
 radeship, and a naturalness that until now she had left 
 behind — in Ho-nan. 
 
264 THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 
 
 And in that hour Jack Selwyn learned mare of 
 Ch'eng Tzii — and more of China — than he had in the 
 picture gallery. Because he loved her, and too because 
 there were artist and poet in his convention-cloaked 
 soul ; he understood her, and learned in an hour what 
 few Europeans ever learn — he learned what a living, 
 throbbing intimacy the Chinese have with nature, an 
 intimacy so quick and convinced that the Chinese know 
 that flowers have loves and hates, the wind and mist 
 temper and mind, birds souls, and every natural phe- 
 nomenon or plant or tree or creature, friendships, 
 destiny and immortality. 
 
 "And that is what I mean by being good to the 
 flowers. One of our Emperors" — even now, though 
 for centuries he had been a guest on high, she did not 
 speak his name — "I often make obeisance to his spirit 
 for it— used when the flowers were budding, to hav6 
 music made to them, that they might enjoy it, and 
 be the more beautiful and fragrant when they bloomed: 
 Was it not a great and gracious thing to do? When 
 I go home, I think I shall do that. Yes, I shall have 
 the flutes played and the guitar to all the baby flowers, 
 and the young mother flowers, when the Feast of 
 Lanterns is near — when I go back to Ho-nan — soon.'* 
 
 And the man saw that Ch'eng Tzii's thought was in 
 Ho-nan as she spoke. 
 
 He bent toward Tzii, and laid his hand softly on hers. 
 "Tzu," he said, "you must not go. Stay here with 
 me. 
 
 The girl's face quivered. She paled, and then she 
 flushed. She looked him shyly, bravely in the eyes — 
 her eyes were full of tears, and at that his filled — and 
 then she spoke. 
 
 "My lord," she said. 
 
CHAPTER XXXVIir 
 
 'T^HE garden swayed about them. The flowers were 
 -■- nothing to Ch'eng Tzu. She had forgotten China. 
 He had forgotten England. Why not? There was 
 no longer Earth — but only Heaven, the reeling music 
 of the spheres, and life's great elemental passion. 
 
 An hour ago no man ever had touched her ungloved 
 hand. And now a man had kissed her lips — her lover 
 had kissed her mouth. A Chinese girl had learned 
 what kissing was — and found no displeasure in it. It 
 could not have happened in China. 
 
 He held her close. He put her from him a space 
 to drink her loveliness the better, to learn anew her 
 face. 
 
 When he found his voice, and could spare his lips 
 for mere words, and said to her the passionate, tender 
 things that men say at such hours, perhaps she heard, 
 perhaps she understood. At least she understood his 
 voice, and the message of his touch. And when he 
 begged her, ''Speak to me, Tzu!" she looked up with a 
 
 great shyness, and said, "My lord " as Ting Tzu 
 
 had looked up, and said to Chii-po in a Ho-nan court- 
 yard once. 
 
 No one had taught Ch'eng Tzu the immemorial 
 phrase of Chinese womanhood — the vow of life-long 
 fealty, Chinese-old when Caesar came to Britain. San- 
 pan women use it on boats in the crowded harbors and 
 on the Chinese rivers. Peasant women say it, wading 
 ankle-deep in the wet paddy fields. Probably Ching 
 
266 THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 
 
 Kimi's mother said it to Kublai Khan almost a thou- 
 sand years ago, and surely Tze Hsi said it in her 
 crimson-veiled girlhood to Hsien-Feng — the great oath 
 of Chinese wifehood, rarely broken or smirched, tell- 
 ing a people's history, telling perhaps the secret of that 
 people's strengths — and giving perchance in all the tur- 
 moil and welter of ill-considered change and bastard 
 upheaval, a nation's best promise, sanest hope of re- 
 crudescence and permanence. 
 
 Ch'eng Tzu said it, because it came — said it in- 
 stinctively. And, had they known it, the old Chinese 
 words were to them a promise — and a menace — of 
 much. 
 
 "My lord," the girl said when he bade her stay 
 with him. "My lord," she whispered when he laid 
 his face upon her hair. And when his kisses crushed 
 at last too sweet upon her lips, she pushed him from 
 her, laughing a little, and rebuked him tenderly, "My 
 lord!" And then Ashford slipped down, one knee 
 on the path, at her feet, and laid his head upon her 
 knees, crushed her hands to his lips, kissed the blue 
 tunicas linen hem, and called her — as indeed she was — 
 at least to-day — "My Queen." 
 
 The house-party, a remnant now — ^heard it cordially. 
 To-morrow the last of them were leaving. And they 
 would take with them two new things to talk about 
 — the terrible adventure of Lord Ash ford's awful, 
 murderous dog, and the English nobleman's engage- 
 ment to a Chinese girl "who eats like one of us, dear, 
 fabulously rich, and wears such clothes, ripping good 
 fun." Yes, on the whole, the County liked it — even 
 if Mr. Dean did shake his head a little sadly — and the 
 London papers liked it even better, good for any 
 
THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 267 
 
 number of varied, almost sensational, and quite inac- 
 curate, silly-season pars. 
 
 Captain Granville was distressed — but hid it. 
 Elenore was hopeful, and cried a little. The servants 
 were vexed — it seemed to them a lowering of their 
 caste. The Duchess was neutral but kind. She had 
 a high-bred gift for minding her own immediate busi- 
 ness, a gift the fairies do not always bestow with the 
 strawberry's pretty leafage, she had no foolishness to 
 weep for milk already spilt. She could stand it, if 
 Jack could; the girl was lady-like, and, best of all, 
 was a compatriot of her Grace's own dear darling 
 doggies. China and Japan were all one to Ann, 
 Duchess of Killshire. 
 
 Three Chinese in London, when they heard it, liked 
 it less. Sheng-Liu frowned at the Morning Post, 
 and then turned to the editorials. Sheng-Liu shared 
 the Duchess' attitude to milk already spilled. Wang 
 No cried out in rage, threw himself upon the ground 
 and writhing there clawed a rug until its worthless 
 tatters looked as if some wild beast had shredded them. 
 Mung Panii liked it even less. She made no sound. 
 She gave no sign. But her despair was great and 
 cold. She had failed her mistress Ch'eng Shao Yiin 
 — that crime not less, but more, because the lady Yiin 
 no longer lived. Only suicide was left for Mung 
 Panii — she would not live on in England, she could 
 not go home without Ch'eng Tzu with whom Ch'eng 
 Yun had bade her stay. Suicide alone, remained — 
 but first she'd kill the English lord that had stolen 
 Ch'eng Tzu's sanity and despoiled her pride. And the 
 slave woman meant both these gruesome, desperate 
 acts, and intended them calmly. 
 
268 THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 
 
 John Selwyn and Ch'eng T'ien Tzu were very happy. 
 From his first word Tzu had had no doubt. And he 
 had none now. Ecstasy and content had taken the place 
 of reason and of doubt. If doubt still skulked near — 
 ready to his call — he never looked doubt's way. To 
 have doubted now would have been disloyal to Tzu, 
 unchivalrous to the woman he had chosen and wooed, 
 the girl so alone in England but for him, so soon to 
 be his wife. Loyalty was irradicably of his blood. 
 He was chivalrous with the perfect quiet of long gen- 
 erations gone and to come. 
 
 Ash ford urged almost immediate marriage. (Was 
 he afraid to wait?) Tzu consented readily. It was 
 her Chinese instinct, that marriage should precede 
 courtship. She agreed readily, and left all the rest 
 to him. 
 
 The enormity of the girl's wealth aggrieved him. 
 When he told her so she smiled and said that when 
 she was his wife Sheng Liu should journey to China 
 for her, and give back her vast estate to some kinsman 
 of her blood — unless indeed some act of her great 
 grandmother's had already confirmed it to Ch'eng 
 Wen. Tzu thought that was not so. And it was not. 
 Wen would have his ample fortune — through his wife 
 — ^but not before their marriage. 
 
 Two days they spent in their garden, with the 
 flowers. And then Ch'eng Tzii hurried back to Lon- 
 don — the time was brief — and John gave himself up 
 to lawyers and bailiffs. 
 
 In the month that followed, they met but twice. 
 And from each of these short times Miss Ch'eng 
 returned to her letters and her dressmakers with a 
 dimpling face, and from them her lover took a deeper 
 contentment, a strengthened assurance — which had 
 
THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 269 
 
 needed no strengthening — that he had made no mistake, 
 and he rested on it as on a great rock. 
 
 When they were together she yielded herself to his 
 caress more than a Chinese girl should have done. 
 But Fate had thrust her far from China when she was 
 but a child. She yielded herself to his caress less 
 than any English girl who loved him would have 
 done — granting Ash ford but a tithe of what Elenore 
 Selwyn granted to Tom. But Tzu had centuries of 
 Chinese conduct and ideal behind her. And John 
 Selwyn did not love her less, long for her less, because 
 of the distance she kept. 
 
 Ch'eng T'ien Tzu loved with a great love. It surged 
 and claimed her. Ashford was splendidly lovable 
 — and she had known — beyond formal acquaintance — 
 no other man. 
 
 And in the soul-things, the traits of character, that 
 deeply matter, the Chinese and the English are of all 
 races the two closest of kin. 
 
 And the girl was greatly softened, all the delicate 
 hardness that exile and loneliness had crusted on her 
 warmed and gone. And her love was exquisitely 
 loyal. An unsavory matrimonial cleavage enthralled 
 May fair just then. "Mary Chester of all people! 
 And Lord Westlake, dear ! What are we coming to ?" 
 
 But Ch'eng Tzu aiade no comment — least of all, 
 "It could not have happened in China." She thought 
 it. But the phrase would not pass her lips again. 
 
 No one saw Wang No. 
 
 Mung Panii watched and waited, and plotted. 
 
 Tzu*s wedding day was fixed for mid-October, Ele- 
 nore's two weeks later. 
 
 Early in October Lord Ashford kept his birthday 
 
270 THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 
 
 at Ashford Manor, — the largest, stateliest, of his 
 places, a terraced, feudal place, that looked a castle and 
 a fortress with its draw-bridge, moat, and turrets. 
 
 Tzu spent his birthday there, trebly chaperoned by 
 the Duchess, Mrs. Marston and Lady Mary. No one 
 of her race was with her, but Nell clung to her lov- 
 ingly. And Ashford's kin and friends were gathered 
 from all the Kingdom to wish him luck and to meet 
 his bride. 
 
 Ashford Manor sheltered by trees and hills, on the 
 warm South coast, faced the sea. And it was warmer 
 now than October often was even here. 
 
 Ch'eng Tzu had not seen this new home of hers 
 before. She admired it greatly. Any girl must have 
 done so. But she thought that she should love the 
 Grange best always — ^perhaps, because — and she told 
 Jack so ; and he caught her to him, and kissed her. 
 
 She had come just before lunch, and was to leave 
 the next day after breakfast — ^they not to meet again 
 until she went to him in Church. 
 
 London had wondered how and where Miss Ch'eng's 
 wedding would be. She had often attended church 
 with the other girls at Lady Mary's. But Lady Mary 
 knew, and so did all the girls, that nothing of the 
 Christian faith had ever claimed Ch'eng Tzu. She 
 had spoken of it to Ashford some weeks ago, and 
 had told him how entirely, in observance, she wished 
 to follow him. And he had kissed her, and said that 
 that was quite all right, and had added that his wife 
 need never play the hypocrite. John Selwyn was no 
 zealot. Loyalty and riding-straight were a nearer re- 
 ligion to him than was his church. 
 
 London wondered if Miss Ch'eng would have a 
 Chinese wedding. London rather hoped she would. 
 
THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 271 
 
 And Fleet Street and all its E.C.4 offshoots prayed 
 heaven it might — and polished up their cameras. 
 
 But when he spoke to her of the where and how, 
 she said, "In your Church — just as your mother was." 
 And had added, smiling in his face, "You would make 
 a queer sort of 'Chinaman,* Jack, so I intend to be al- 
 together an Englishwoman." 
 
 Tom was booked best man, of course. 
 
 Captain Worthing was to give the bride away. Lady 
 Mary had suggested the Chinese Minister — but Tzu 
 had smiled, a Httle sadly, and shaken her head. 
 
 Tzu was to be married in a traveling dress — she 
 could not bring herself to begin her new life in the 
 white that Chinese widows wear — and there was to 
 be no reception. But it would be a very splendid trav- 
 eling dress, and the church a dream and feast of 
 flowers. 
 
 Ch'eng Tzii wore no rings now-— only the one great 
 gem that Jack had given her. 
 
 He had begged that to-night she would wear her 
 Chinese dress again — and she had promised, not too 
 willingly, that — well, perhaps she would, for the last 
 time. 
 
 And when she came to him, in the library, as he 
 had begged, there was compromise most un-Chinese 
 in her Chinese toilet. She wore only one color, a 
 lemon that showed her skin almost white. Her robe 
 was long; it hid her feet. Her hands were gloved — 
 only one ring stretched her left glove out of shape. 
 And the pearls were twisted English-fashion in her 
 hair. And she wore no other ornament, except an 
 English rose that he had picked for her. And, most 
 un-Chinese of all, a train was slung free from her 
 
272 THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 
 
 shoulders, a long, straight train of lace, lemon-lined. 
 
 "Take me into the garden, Jack," she said. "We've 
 almost half an hour to spare." 
 
 "No," Ashford told her — his first refusal of any- 
 even hinted wish of hers — "not until after dinner, 
 dear. There is something there you must not see, 
 until after dinner." 
 
 Tzu laughed and went with him to the drawing- 
 room, and was very gracious to his guests. And all 
 the men admired her mightily. 
 
CHAPTER XXXIX 
 
 >T0W/' Ashford said, following her from dinner, 
 ^ leaving Granville to shepherd the tipplers at the 
 table the women had left. 
 
 Vail at Lord Ashford's order was waiting for them 
 in the hall. He took the wrap the maid had been 
 holding, and tucked the soft, silvery chinchilla about 
 Miss Ch'eng, caught the long lacy train over one arm, 
 put his other arm about Ch'eng Tzu's shoulder, and 
 led her so along the hall, out through the door onto 
 the wide stone loggia. 
 
 The moon rode high and clear, cutting the dark, 
 distant sea with a wide belt of rippled gold; but the 
 moon looked far and pale; a painted inanimate thing 
 compared with the thousands of living lights that 
 glowed on every branch of every tree. Even the tall 
 autumn flowers had every plant its tiny lantern. The 
 terraces were picked out with light, the outlines of the 
 great house sparkled with blue and green and ruby 
 lights. Each tree and shrub was heavy with a fruitage 
 of radiant lanterns. They swung fairy-like above the 
 grass. A junk of lanterned lights rode on the moat. 
 The draw-bridge was jeweled with a net-work of lan- 
 terns, each lantern lit. 
 
 It was a carnival of colored lights. Half the shops 
 in Britain that stocked Chinese lanterns had been ran- 
 sacked for these. An army of decorators had hung 
 them up, busy at it from sunset till now. Round 
 paper lanterns, tall cylinders, odd shaped ones, great 
 
 273 
 
274 THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 
 
 and small, alone, festooned, in flower-like groups, 
 bouquets of lanterns — and every lantern lit, solitary 
 lanterns skillfully suspended as if floating in the air, 
 crinkled lanterns, boat-shaped lanterns, smooth lan- 
 terns, painted lanterns, tasseled lanterns, fluted lan- 
 terns, bell-shaped lanterns — from every point and crev- 
 ice, w^here string v^ould catch or venire hold, some 
 Chinese lantern swung and glowed ; for glowing acres 
 the old place glittered with their light. 
 
 Her lover felt Ch'eng Tzu tremble. 
 
 "I thought you'd like it, dear," he whispered fondly. 
 "Isn't it beautiful!" he said exultantly. 
 
 On the hill slope where the great yew trees grew a 
 monster paper dragon sprawled radiantly, its mouth 
 yapping one trunk, its tail strangling another. Ch'eng 
 Tzu saw it, and shrank back a little against the wall. 
 
 Ashford did not see her close her eyes. She was 
 shutting out the sight — the sight of this costly, tawdry 
 display that he had planned and had made for her. 
 She was watching another carnival of light — the Feast 
 of Lanterns as she had watched it last in Ho-nan, her 
 childish hand in Ch'eng Shao Yiin's. And she felt the 
 hand of China clutching at her heart — and the Chinese 
 blood surged madly through her veins. 
 
 "Look, dear," he said as a pagoda suddenly flashed 
 out on the tennis court. Then a bridge — twisted, camel- 
 backed — spanned the dahlia bed. 
 
 And Tzu looked, and understood, and slipped her 
 hand again in his, and smiled up at him. "Thank 
 you. Jack," she told him softly, "you are very, very 
 good to me." 
 
 And when the others came out, she still left her 
 hand in his, and let him keep his arm about her 
 shoulder. 
 
THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 275 
 
 And when they "oh'd," and "ah'd," and "my^d," 
 and "dear me'ed" and the women screamed a little 
 with delight, she joined softly in their praise, and was 
 very gracious. 
 
 They scattered presently, running here and there to 
 exclaim again at this, cry out at that ; and Ch'eng Tzu 
 let Lord Ashford lead her down the steps, and about 
 the grounds. 
 
 Looking up at the Manor house, they some distance 
 from it now, she saw flying from the old round tower, 
 where she knew his race's pennant had flown in Cceur 
 de Lion's day, a Chinese flag fashioned of paper lan- 
 terns. 
 
 Ch'eng T'ien Tzu caught her lip beneath her teeth, 
 and her face was pinched and gray. 
 
 Jack Selwyn was happier than a schoolboy, and 
 prouder even than kings are said to be. 
 
 Lord Ashford' s pretty Chinese fiancee was the gay- 
 est — though not the noisiest — of all the gay gathering 
 in the drawing-rooms. The sweetness of her smile, 
 the sweetness of her voice were irresistible. The 
 Duchess was pleased. Lady Mary was proud of Ch'eng 
 Tzu. Captain Granville determined that it was all 
 right, after all. And several women liked Miss Ch'eng 
 who had not liked her before. 
 
 There was dancing, after supper, in the great white 
 ballroom with its thousand candles, its ropes of roses, 
 and a string-band in a gilded balcony. 
 
 Jack put his arm about her. "With meT he whis- 
 pered — and Tzu kept step with him. It was a waltz 
 they played — the musicians up in the open, begilded 
 balcony — a slow waltz tune, a tender throbbing thing, 
 more like a passionate love-song than a dance. 
 
276 THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 
 
 From her mullioned, ivied window Ch'eng Tzu 
 watched the moon go, and the sunrise come. 
 
 "It's colder, very much colder," Ashford told her. 
 "I've put fur rugs in your car." 
 
 Tzu was cloaked and hatted. Her gloves were on 
 a chair. Lord Ashford would take her to the waiting 
 motor-car, of course, — and stand and watch her go. 
 Mrs. Marston was already in the car. Ashford had 
 drawn Tzu here — to say "good-by" more privately. 
 
 "Our last good-by," he whispered, "until " his 
 
 voice choked a little. 
 
 "Our last good-by," Ch'eng Tzu said. Her voice was 
 like a silver bell. Her eyes were very tender. 
 
 At the library door she turned and pushed back a 
 little into the room. 
 
 "Jack!" she said. She took his face in her little 
 hands, smiled again into his eyes, and kissed him lin- 
 geringly. 
 
 Ch'eng Tzu had kissed him on his lips. 
 
 John Selwyn trembled — and his eyes flashed his 
 gratitude. He could not speak to her. 
 
 Only the flowers in the garden knew how often 
 he had kissed Ch'eng Tzu — on face, on hands, on hair, 
 or sweet, curved crimson lips, and only a man's heart 
 and a girl's knew how tenderly. But Ch'eng Tzu had 
 never kissed him before. And she had kissed him on 
 his hps. 
 
 He trembled, and he could not speak to her. 
 
 Ch'eng T'ien Tzu had given him her first kiss. She 
 had suffered kisses, plump, impersonal baby kisses from 
 the twins. She had felt his kisses, and had not shrunk ; 
 after the first she had not felt them strange. A race- 
 prejudice, a natural abstinence founded in a people's 
 
THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 277 
 
 innate taste had kept her from returning the English 
 baby kisses she had endured, or at the best accepted, 
 but never welcomed — it had not kept her from a pleased 
 acceptance of the lip caresses of the Englishman she 
 loved. But Ch'eng Tzu had never kissed before. 
 
 If the Chinese lose much in missing one of Love's 
 intimate, tender communions, possibly they gain even 
 more in escaping the degradation and the cheapness of 
 the indiscriminate, casual, meaningless — or worse — 
 kissing that is a crime and an ill-taste of races v/hiter 
 skinned — and whiter of blood. 
 
 That first kiss said more than the man who trem- 
 bled at it could ever know. Mothers sometimes kiss 
 sons so, whom they send for the first time forth to 
 battle. 
 
CHAPTER XL 
 
 I^ROM the sea — past the hop fields of Kent, on into 
 -■■ Surrey, up towards London, the luxurious motor 
 sped — Tzu under the fur Lord Ash ford had wrapped 
 carefully about her, huddled back against her cushions, 
 gray- faced, drawn lipped. Neither woman spoke. Mrs. 
 Marston looked at the girl shocked and amazed. How 
 terribly ill she looked. What was it? No quarrel 
 with Lord Ashford — not even a misunderstanding. 
 The look he had given Tzu as he heaped the rug about 
 her had been unmistakable, and she had seen the girl's 
 eyes drink it in almost greedily. What on earth had 
 happened — and in an instant? Tzu had been all right 
 as the motor moved. Before it reached the lodge her 
 face had looked like death — or worse — and aged in- 
 credibly. Miss Ch'eng must be terribly ill — some des- 
 perate seizure. Well — they were rushing to London, 
 and to home — and home and bed were the only place 
 for any one who looked as ill as this. Poor thing! 
 How terrifying — and the wedding day but two weeks 
 off! Mrs. Marston was experienced, and she was sen- 
 sible. She pushed a cushion a little more comfortably 
 behind Miss Ch'eng's head, lowered a window — and 
 waited quietly. To her surprise the girl walked beside 
 her steadily when the car stopped at the door in Curzon 
 Street and went upstairs naturally. And at lunch she 
 seemed so much herself that the older woman thought 
 with relief that the seizure had passed. But she was 
 anxious. Ought she to write to Lord Ashford? She 
 had been his mother's closest friend. But she knew 
 
 578 
 
THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 279 
 
 how Miss Ch^eng would resent such a liberty. She 
 would wait till morning. 
 
 And in the morning she wondered if by any possi- 
 bility she could have been mistaken, deceived by some 
 trick of the frosting October air. Ah! perhaps that 
 was it! The change of temperature had been ap- 
 palling. It had chilled her to the bone — and made 
 her almost nervy. And Ch'eng Tzii had never liked 
 the cold. 
 
 Ch'eng Tzu went from breakfast back to her own 
 room and rang for Mung Panii. 
 
 "Come here," she told her. "Come close. We go 
 home at once — to Ho-nan — just you and I. No one 
 must know. We go to-night. Pack nothing of my 
 English things. I forget England when I reach our 
 boat. You understand?" 
 
 "My honorable mistress," Mung Panii spoke in Chi- 
 nese, as Tzu had done, they always spoke to each other 
 so. "Thy worm understands." And she tried to keep 
 from her voice the joy racing through her veins. She 
 regretted that she need not kill the English lord. She 
 was glad she need not commit suicide. But all else 
 was nothing to the thought of going home — to see 
 her people, to live again a normal life, to live decently, 
 eat decently, be decent again, with decent people in a 
 decent place, — to see the buffaloes pulling the water- 
 wheels, to crack the melon seeds between her teeth, 
 to sit and gossip, in the women's courtyard, to hope 
 again for marriage — Ch'eng Yiin had promised it on 
 their return, marriage well-dowered, a first wife's place 
 in some v/ell-reputed farmer's house, or a merchant's. 
 Oh! she would pack! And she'd be swift and secret. 
 No need to caution her — Mung Panii bent down and 
 laid her forehead on Ch'eng Tzu's shoe. 
 
28o THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 
 
 A lawyer for whom Miss Ch*eng had sent — she had 
 written notes busily the night before — was closeted 
 with her for an hour — inscrutable when he came, in- 
 scrutable, unperturbed still, but greatly puzzled when 
 he went. 
 
 And after lunch Tom Granville came. 
 
 Ch'eng Tzu saw him in the Chinese room in which 
 Ma Yuan's herons hung. 
 
 "I am going home to China," she told him almost 
 without prefix. ''And I have sent for you — because 
 I trust you." 
 
 "Jack " he began. 
 
 "You will tell him for me" — Ch'eng Tzu's lip trem- 
 bled a little — "after I have sailed. I cannot write tc 
 Lx)rd Ash ford, Captain Granville. I cannot see him 
 again. I cannot tell him good-by. I told him good-by 
 yesterday, in the library at the Manor," she added 
 with a quivering smile — all the Chinese immobility 
 torn from her face by the pain that clutched her 
 heart. 
 
 "But— does Jack know?" 
 
 Ch'eng Tzu shook her head — sadly. "Nothing. Bui 
 I knew — I knew that I was — telling — ^him good-by. 1 
 knew — when I saw the Chinese lanterns illuminating 
 all the house and place." 
 
 Tom Granville stared his amazement — ^too dumb- 
 founded to speak, too puzzled to say, "Why?" 
 
 But Ch'eng Tzu told him. 
 
 "But they were not Chinese lanterns," the girl said 
 passionately. "You might hunt the bazaars of Ho- 
 nan for such lanterns ! Perhaps coolies may hang such 
 at their marriage festivals — or some strolling players 
 at a village theatrical — I cannot say. But the dragon 
 — the dragon was a worm. It was a travesty of China 
 
THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 281 
 
 — a. mockery — almost an insult to the most sacred 
 festival of China. And he had done it for me!'* A 
 sob escaped her — but she choked its fellows back. "And 
 just such travesty/' Ch'eng Tzu continued sternly, "our 
 life together would be, a disappointment, racial insult, 
 and clash — ^where only love was meant. There can be 
 no marriage between East and West — I know that 
 now.'* 
 
 "He loves you dearly," Granville said. 
 
 "And I," Ch'eng Tzu said, "love more." She turned 
 away — towards the window. 
 
 Granville waited. 
 
 *Ah, well ! we both are brave. It will pass. And — 
 in the meantime — the gods help us both — his God him, 
 and my gods me !" 
 
 "But the fifteenth " 
 
 "Our wedding day! I shall be at sea. And you 
 must be with him." 
 
 "I don't think Jack will get over it," the Guardsman 
 told her. 
 
 Tzu smiled sadly. "Oh — yes. He is a man. He 
 will care — again. I shall not." 
 
 "Are you sure that you are doing right?" 
 
 Ch'eng Tzu drew a stool, and sat down near Gran- 
 ville, and faced him, her hands knotted on her knee 
 — her right hand almost lamed with its weight of 
 rings, John Selwyn's ring alone on her other hand. 
 "Quite sure. I wish that I could doubt — if only for 
 an hour. I would give my soul to be back where I 
 was two days ago. But I understand now. Then 
 I only felt. I must keep faith with my blood. And 
 I must keep faith with — Jack " 
 
 "But, I say! This will be a nasty jolt for him!" 
 
 Tzu smiled, and the Englishman turned his eyes 
 
282 THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 
 
 from the sorrow on her face. "It will hurt, I know. 
 Ask his forgiveness of that, for me. It is a kindness 
 that I do him. Captain Granville. If I did not know 
 that, I could not have the strength. I cannot tell you 
 what my revulsion was, or the hideous sickness of it, 
 when I saw that English garden hung with those lan- 
 terns. I cannot explain. Only a Chinese could un- 
 derstand. It took me home, as surely as the P. and O. 
 will do." 
 
 "But — think how it will hurt Jack," the man pleaded, 
 — "and the shame of it — all the talk — and all that. Is 
 there no other way?" 
 
 "No other way," Tzu said ; "there never is but one 
 right way — and usually," she added with a sigh, "it is 
 the hardest way of all." 
 
 "But I must find Jack," Granville said desperately. 
 "He must have his chance. He would never forgive 
 me, if I let you get away without seeing him — and, if 
 you do, he'll be after you on the next boat." 
 
 "You forget. He went to Paris last night. No 
 one has his address there but I. I shall be gone before 
 you can find him." Granville groaned. "I have for- 
 gotten nothing, I think. Captain Granville. I have 
 sent Mrs. Marston for a week-end with her sister. I 
 have given my English maid a holiday. My lawyer 
 has been here. He will close this house — and all those 
 chings " 
 
 "He will follow you," Granville said doggedly. 
 
 "Not when you tell him what I ask. You must not 
 let him follow me. Captain Granville — and it would be 
 of no use. I shall not waver." 
 
 "By Jove," he began bitterly, "you are asking " 
 
 he halted. 
 
 "A great deal of you — a hard thing. I know. But 
 
THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 285 
 
 you will do it — for Jack. It will hurt him least from 
 you. Tell him what you like — as much or as little as 
 you like — just what you think will hurt him least. 
 Cure him quickly, if you can. Say anything of me 
 or from me. Help Jack ! That is why I sent for you." 
 
 "And you, Miss Ch'eng?" 
 
 "Thank you,'* she said — and for a moment her eyes 
 brimmed. "I go back to China — to do my work. I 
 do not know what it is. But I know that it is there — 
 something my great-grandmother destined me for. 
 And every true Chinese is needed at home now. I 
 have forgotten China! But it has called me back. 
 These last few weeks Fve scarcely known what was 
 happening there. Even the throne may be in peril — 
 from what the papers say." 
 
 "And if it is — ^what can you do? A girl " 
 
 "I am Chinese. At least I can wait and watch — ^keep 
 one homestead in China loyal — and Chinese. It is not* 
 European armies — or even European statescraft — that 
 I fear for my country, but the increeping of European 
 thought and ways." She laid her left hand on her 
 breast, and looked down at it. "I shall not send back 
 his ring," she said, "or anything that he has given 
 me. It does not seem to me a nice thing to do. He 
 will understand. And — I want to keep my ring — ^and 
 to keep it will hurt no one — but me — yet. Some day, 
 perhaps, I must put it away. But — I wish I might 
 give you this — but he would know it — and remember. 
 We want him to forget." She pointed to the Herons. 
 Captain Granville mumbled an attempted thanks, and 
 said that he was just as much obliged — which he was. 
 He thought Ma Yuan's herons "rummy birds." 
 
 "Good-by." Ch'eng Tzu held out her hand. 
 
 And Granville left her. 
 
^84 THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 
 
 He felt deuced queer. He had always liked her. 
 And he foresaw high- jinks before him — with Jack. 
 But in his honest English soul he was sturdily sure 
 that Ch'eng Tzu was right. And his English spirit 
 liked her Chinese pluck. 
 
CHAPTER XLI 
 
 TT was the only "good-by" Ch'eng Tzu said in Eng« 
 ^ land. 
 
 At night time, in rain and cold, they went silently 
 from the house, and slipped away in the dark. 
 
 Ch'eng Tzu did not speak once to Mung Panii in; 
 the motor. 
 
 In wind and rain, in sleet and angry hissing storm, 
 the car sped on to the seaport town. But the angry 
 storm was nothing to Ch'eng Tzu. Her heart was 
 keeping tryst in an English garden, with red roses at 
 her feet, and a man's hand on hers. 
 
 And it was less than nothing to Mung Panii — Mung 
 Panii was gossiping in a courtyard, cracking melon- 
 seeds between her sturdy little white teeth, giggling 
 while the women hung a red veil about her painted 
 face— waiting for the flowery bridal-chair to come. 
 
 They went from the motor to their cabin. Tzu 
 sat silently and immovable on the couch. Panii huddled 
 on the floor at her lady's feet. Neither spoke. 
 
 And when — at last — the great boat moved, neither 
 made a sign, or showed to know it. 
 
 Tzu would not look again at England. But she 
 knew that her struggle had but begun — and that she 
 must fight her lonely fight for years — perhaps forever. 
 She had as little illusion concerning the hardness and 
 the pain and of the struggle before her as she had of 
 its wisdom and its justice. Ch'eng Tzii was in tor- 
 ture. And her heart cried out for England — where she 
 had known her red-rose hour of love. 
 
 2^5 
 
286 THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 
 
 She was going back to China. 
 
 But she had left her man behind her. 
 
 Mung Panii dug her nails into her flesh when the 
 vessel moved, that she might not cry out with the 
 ecstasy that throbbed in her at the first throb of the 
 engines. She was going back to China — where pork 
 was fit to eat, where the poorest coolie woman could 
 make a curry and dress a salad, where man respected 
 woman, and the sun knew how to shine, flowers how 
 to grow, fruits how to ripen. She was going back 
 to gossip in the courtyard — she was going back to 
 home. 
 
 From Southampton to Hong Kong the two Chinese 
 girls scarcely spoke, and Ch'eng Tzu never left the 
 cabin. 
 
 She was veiled when they landed. 
 
 They stayed a week in Hong Kong. And Hong 
 jvong did Ch'eng Tzu good — because it angered her, 
 and the anger braced her. 
 
 China's tragedy had fallen. The Manchu had been 
 dragged and beaten from his throne. A republic had 
 been proclaimed! The very cooHes at their barrows 
 looked to her like cockneys; and some of them were 
 dressed so — Chinese merchants were dressed like Brix- 
 ton bank clerks or house-agents at Hanwell — and Chi- 
 nese gentlemen wore tweed and broadcloth with garde- 
 nias in their button-holes. 
 
 They carried her across China in her palanquin. 
 Much of the journey the railways could have speeded. 
 But Ch'eng T'ien Tzu would have none of them. She 
 traveled as the Ch'eng women had traveled for two 
 thousand years. And her nostrils quivered to the smell 
 of Chinese flowers. Her face flamed back at it whe» 
 
THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 287 
 
 she saw the brilliant fire-weed flaming on the gorges. 
 She saw flowers she had never seen before, and she 
 recognized and hailed them. Why not? They had 
 bloomed for her blood for untold centuries. 
 
 She was heavily veiled when they carried her 
 through the South Gate. 
 
 The cymbals clashed — a temple bell was tinkling 
 from the rhythm of its mallet in the distance. A 
 wild duck screamed above a sycamore tree. And her 
 people crowded by the path-side, prostrating themselves 
 before her litter. The Ch'eng had come home. 
 
 Ah Song rose from her mat, and tottered from 
 the courtyard, and held out her withered hands in 
 reverence and in greeting. And the retainers called it 
 a miracle — for Ah Song had not left her mat for many 
 moons. 
 
 In the morning when she walked through the garden 
 to the silkworm house, four-footed creatures came and 
 rubbed against her sleeve, and clawed her, and a host 
 of silky doggies danced and yapped about her, clamor- 
 ing for her notice — gold and amber coated doggies of 
 the stock from which English King Charles* spaniels 
 had been bred — gold and amber silk-haired doggies, de- 
 scendants of Ti-to-ti, who was playing pranks on high 
 now, while his venerable bones moldered near the coflin 
 of his mistress in the graveyard of the Ch'engs. And 
 the little yellow children ran and tumbled to her skirts 
 — and the larkspurs nodded to her, and the poppies, 
 and the yellow lilies on their polished stalks. 
 
 She gave the babies sweetmeats, and she gave her 
 gods an oath. 
 
 And as soon as she could do it decently she gave 
 Mung Panii a loud and a sumptuous bridal cavalcade : 
 lor Ch'eng Shao Yiin had promised it, and Ch'eng 
 
288 THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 
 
 Tzu longed to be rid of the girl who had been with 
 her in England — the girl who reminded her of Eng- 
 land. 
 
 She needed no reminding of England — with its 
 granges and its gardens, its manors and its roses, and 
 its clean-limbed, blue-eyed men. 
 
 Ch'eng T'ien Tzu knew that she would not forget. 
 And often in the twilight she wondered how long 
 John Selwyn would remember. 
 
 For Ch'eng Tzu knew that in Asia or in Europe a 
 man rarely remembers, a woman never forgets. 
 
 And she was glad that he would forget — for she 
 was generous and big. 
 
 A Chinese man followed Ch'eng Tzii from England. 
 But when the elder Wang sent the matchmakers to 
 her, she sent them back to him with many a costly 
 present and a wealth of honied words — and a message 
 saying that her honorable great-grandmother had be- 
 trothed her long ago. She did not know that this was 
 true, though Sheng Liu — at her request returning soon 
 to her service — could have told her; but she allowed 
 herself the courteous lie because it was a kindness. 
 
 Ch'eng Tzu did not purpose to keep Sheng near 
 her when he came — ^he had been too close to her in 
 England, he had known Lord Ash ford — but to charge 
 him with watching home events at Pekin, at Hankow 
 and at Shanghai, and to have his advice and service 
 near at hand, should she need them. 
 
 Captain Granville had said truly that she could do 
 nothing to stem the debacle of her country. But she 
 kept her Chinese state in Ho-nan, and held her home 
 a stronghold, nursing there a tiny mustard seed of 
 
THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 289 
 
 loyalty that might grow some day into yellow verdure 
 that would spread, and cover all the festered gashes in 
 the China that she loved. 
 
 All that Ch'eng Shao Yiin had done before her, 
 Ch'eng Tzu did — and more. 
 
 But the Chinese girl was homesick for the England 
 she had left — with a sicker aching than she had ever felt 
 in Europe for the courtyards and the garden of her 
 childhood. It was here in China that she learned how 
 much she had liked England. And every day she had 
 to fight her heart. 
 
 It was struggle, struggle all the way. Often her 
 heart grew faint, and the little ring-heavy, apricot- 
 tinted hands grew cold and listless. But her will never 
 grew faint ; and neither heart nor will failed her. 
 
 She had been alone in England — until a man had 
 kissed her. She was alone in China now — more alone 
 than she had been in exile. In London and at the 
 Vicarage she had warmed herself with thinking of the 
 going-home to come. Now she knew that she should 
 never go back — to England. And there was no one 
 to whom she could speak of her trouble — or hint. But 
 for her, the courtyards of the ladies were empty, 
 never clattering softly with the footfall of golden 
 lilies, never ringing with the laughing of the children 
 or the babies. 
 
 Worst of all, perhaps — she did not always feel quite 
 at home here. Gardeners transplant seedlings when 
 the young roots — still lightly fixed in earth and flexible 
 — feel little pain from the fingers that uproot them : 
 or the gardener waits until the plant has reached a 
 sturdier growth, and can take new grip with seasoned 
 strenuous fibers of the second ground. Ch^eng Tzu 
 had been transplanted too late or too soon: too late 
 
290 THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 
 
 to take honest root in England, too soon to take — as 
 Wang No had — none there. And a fiber of her being 
 still bled and perished for the homeland of the Selwyns. 
 
 Or perhaps even worse was her entire lack of com- 
 panionship with any of her own caste. But she found 
 her solace and her strength, as the Chinese always do, 
 in a fellowship with nature. Whatever her hand found 
 to do, she did with her might, cherishing her heritage 
 and enriching it — spreading, slowly, silently the subtle 
 propaganda of her hope and ambition for the healing 
 of an Empire. But she made playmates of the daisies, 
 and took counsel of the clouds. She listened to the 
 winds, and leaned against the bamboo and the oak- 
 trees, sitting — for hours — silent, a communicant with 
 nature, on the grassy slope where the spotted tiger 
 lilies quivered by a lazy, lagging river, on the moss- 
 worn rocks where the pink arbutus glistened with the 
 spray the rushing, tumbling cascade threw it, and tht 
 wild white roses told that this was China, and per- 
 fumed the air for leagues. 
 
 But. if she took communion with the grasses and 
 the stars, Ch'eng Tzu neglected no material interest 
 of her little kingdom. 
 
 The very by-products of her piggeries had her 
 earnest consideration and her strict supervision. She 
 watched over her school, her granaries, and her fac- 
 tories. Her tea-plants knew her. She bred a new rose 
 in her gardens, and a new dye in her vats. She added 
 the juice of cherries to the crushings of her peaches 
 and her apples, making a sweetened wine that sold well 
 in Shanghai, and reminded her when she sipped it 
 of the tang of sherry she'd tasted after soup in London. 
 She gathered fortune from her soap trees and silver 
 from her bees. She watched and taught the girls that 
 
THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 291 
 
 sang at their embroidery frames while the great silk 
 flowers grew from their needles. Scarcely a day but 
 she lingered with her artists — the ivory-carvers and the 
 men who wrought in bronze, those who mixed the lac- 
 quer's sumptuous colors, and those who spread it, 
 and the master-workers who inlaid the trays and boxes 
 with silver and with gold, and those who inlaid the 
 great lacquer screens with mother-o'-pearl and lead, 
 and framed them with carved cut-out lace of camphor- 
 wood and sandalwood and jasper, those who en- 
 crusted ornaments with the blue Kingfisher feathers, 
 and the patient workers in malachite and cornelian. 
 She directed the lantern-makers and the lantern-paint- 
 ers, painting one sometimes herself. To the silkworms' 
 houses she went oftenest, lingering longest, watching 
 and directing and dreaming. When the new eggs pulse 
 out from the mother-moth's bursted belly she flutters 
 down to death. In that myriad child-birth every 
 mother dies. But such death is not without its beauty. 
 And in the Hereafter in which every pulse shall be 
 perpetuated, every atom gathered up and perfected 
 perchance those mother-moths will find a longer flight 
 and a compensation. Ch'eng Tzu believed so. 
 
 She was careful of her women, and very tender to 
 their babies. She tended the sick, and gave their 
 milk-names to the new-born. And all her people feared 
 and loved her. And the little gold and amber pug- 
 doggies fawned upon her shadow when they saw it. 
 
 The girl fought. And she took counsel. 
 
 Her conscience was her task-master, but her con- 
 science approved her. And her character — be- 
 queathed her by Ch'eng Shao Yiin — was her destiny. 
 
CHAPTER XLII 
 
 ON her mat Ah Song lay dying. 
 In a last obedience to Ch'eng Shao Yun she 
 had lived on these few years longer than Ch'eng Yiin. 
 For nine years were but few in the long tally of Song's 
 days. 
 
 Bom a Shao slave, gifted from the cradle with 
 second-sight, early skilled in simples, widowed after a 
 few moons of marriage, her son had been born a 
 month before the birth of Shao Yiin, and had died 
 in the cottage by the wayside just as the girl was born 
 to the great house. Pitying the slave so doubly be- 
 reaved, knowing hen trustworthy and skilled, Shao had 
 called her to his wife, and had bidden her to her first 
 attendance on their new-born daughter. The slave- 
 woman took the baby in her arms, and the child took 
 instant root in the torn heart, and had grown there 
 — with a hold that had never loosened. Every hour 
 since then Song had been in attendance on her lady 
 Yiin. She was in attendance on her now — husbanding 
 her last breath and her last strength to obey Shao 
 Yun*s last command. Life had ended for Ah Song 
 when it had ended f oi Ch'eng Shao Yiin — but duty and 
 obedience had remained. And she had breathed on to 
 perform them. 
 
 The blind slave-woman had been invaluable to her 
 lady, and chiefly had been so through two assets of 
 personality — not her fidelity, for fidelity is a com- 
 monplace in China, a matter-of-course, to be had on 
 
 «)3 
 
THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 293 
 
 every hand — her silence and her second-sight. Almost 
 all Chinese have psychic gift, and they have it in a 
 quality above all other peoples. But among the Chi- 
 nese there is no uniformity of psychic gift — all have 
 it, but in degrees greatly differing. And it sinks to its 
 lowest degree, and is smallest in quantity, in the pro- 
 fessional psychics — who, in China as elsewhere, strain 
 and fray it thin, and often to nothingness. Blind 
 Ah Song was psychic far beyond the average of her 
 country's genuine and unspoiled psychics. And she 
 had never overused, or overtold her gift. It came to 
 her, she never sought it. And even of normal, every- 
 day things she had been all but speechless — unique in 
 this in a country where women are more incessantly 
 talkative than they are anywhere else, and where their 
 license of speech has no limit. 
 
 Ah Song had lost her physical sight in the service of 
 Shao Yiin — in Kwangtung long ago. At the Feast of 
 Lanterns, little Yiin had run, clapping her hands, 
 towards a gilded fish-shaped lantern that had caught 
 fire, as the pretty painted things often do, and always 
 to the watching crowd's noisy ecstasy. A flaming frag- 
 ment had caught her scarf and flared up to her throat. 
 But Ah Song had caught the child in her arms, and 
 smothered the fire against her own breast, beating it 
 out with her own face. Yiin had taken no harm — 
 beyond the ruin of a little festal finery, but Ah Song 
 had lost her sight. 
 
 She had only done her duty, and no one held it 
 more — she herself least of all. But even so it had 
 counted for another link between slave and mistress, 
 and had served Ah Song for many a privilege ; for no 
 Chinese is ever ungrateful. Heaven forbid that we 
 should praise them for it No praise is due. For 
 
294 THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 
 
 it is merely that to a normal Chinese ingratitude is an 
 impossibihty. 
 
 Song's sense of touch had been increased by her loss 
 of sight. Everywhere the blind see through their 
 fingers. She could embroider. She could detect the 
 slightest variation of shade in silks or tissues. She 
 could card silks accurately, and even pick up with 
 the needle's eye the fine end in the broken cocoon, and 
 wind it off and reel it with a hand that never wavered 
 or mismoved ; she knew a change of temperature before 
 the thermometers could record it. She was invaluable 
 in a dozen ways in the worm-houses. And blind Ah 
 Song almost as much as Ch'eng Shao Yiin herself had 
 achieved for one estate — in a province of inferior and 
 wild silks — a sericultural preeminence that was ac«» 
 knowledged in the fabric markets of the world. 
 
 And her hearing had been as extraordinary as her 
 touch. 
 
 Ah Song lay dying on her mat, and Ch'eng Tzu sat 
 on the floor beside her — and held her hand. 
 
 For weeks the old slave had not spoken, and had 
 scarcely moved. 
 
 Now she raised herself a little, and turned her sight- 
 less eyes on Tzii. And Ch'eng Tzu slipped an arm 
 about the wasted form, and listened while Ah Song 
 told her — ^pausing often for breath, but missing noth- 
 ing of the message she had lingered to give — all that 
 Ch'eng Shao Yun had planned and hoped in sending 
 Tzu to England. 
 
 She told again the story — the glorious unbroken 
 story of the women of the Ch'engs. She told again 
 the old tradition that when China's need should be 
 sorest, China's fate lowest, a Ch'eng woman should 
 give herself and all her days to China, saving her coun- 
 
THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 295 
 
 try, restoring it to brighter, firmer greatness. She 
 told how Ch'eng Yiin, as Ch'eng Yiin's father before 
 her, had sensed, and then seen clearly, China's peril 
 from foes without and dolts within, and seeing, had 
 set herself to avert — and when that failed had dedi- 
 cated Ch'eng T'ien Tzu to restore. 
 
 *'It will not be in thy time, O jade-like. But it will 
 come. Nurse the pearl-like seed of China's sanity 
 within thy breast — suckle it as a mother a babe. This 
 is no time to strike. That time is far. But keep one 
 bit of China Chinese. Let no alien influence creep 
 within our gates to taint and poison. Bar socialism 
 and anarchy out — with thy soul; if need be, with thy 
 body. Love is the greatest force. Love China well. 
 Wealth is almost an omnipotence. Thy great wealth 
 can buy thee undisturbed seclusion for thy people, 
 and the privilege to govern here as thou likest. Keep 
 China alive in thy domain. Keep thy courtyards clean 
 and garnished with old things. Keep the home life 
 in the thousand huts true and sweet with old ways. 
 Let thy men and thy women and all the little children 
 live as their ancestors lived. Lean on our sages. Learn 
 from the foaming waters, the quivering flowers, the 
 mantling sky, the great trees and the whispering breeze. 
 Keep the Feast of Lanterns. Keep it each year more 
 sacredly: it is the very soul of China — China cannot 
 perish while the Feast of Lanterns lives." 
 
 She rested. 
 
 Then Ah Song told of Ch'eng Yiin's death (not 
 calling it that), details that Tzu had not heard before. 
 
 Ch'eng Shao Yiin had spent a busy morning with 
 the lacquer-workers, and in the silkworm houses. 
 Towards sunset she had gone to watch her reapers at 
 the grain, encouraging and admonishing them — join- 
 
296 THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 
 
 ing in their labor even — for there was little in all 
 the vast estate that she could not do better than her 
 serfs. She had sickened there, at the harvest, among 
 her people — her patient people who feared and loved 
 her. She had cried out in sudden pain, and had swayed 
 a little on her feet. And they had run to catch her, 
 but she had driven them back with an old imperious 
 gesture. And even in her dying they had not dared 
 to disobey her. A little longer she had stood so, lean- 
 ing on her ivory staff — Ti-to-ti whimpering at her 
 feet. Then she had spoken some last direction to the 
 reapers, a message to the charcoal-burners. And her 
 last speaking had been of Ch'eng Tzu and of China — 
 while pain had twisted her face, her voice sweet and 
 clear even while death choked it. Then a great joy 
 had lit Ch'eng Yiin's face, her stick had fallen at her 
 feet, and she had stretched out her arms towards the 
 sunset, and had cried out, "My Lord !" and had fallen 
 among her golden grain. They had carried her across 
 the acres she had ruled, through the gardens she had 
 loved, across the courtyard that had been hers since 
 a bride, through the chamber in which she had borne 
 her children, and had laid her on the dais in the Ko- 
 tang. And at midnight, Ti-to-ti had gone to her on 
 high, and they had coffined him at her feet, and not in 
 the dog's cemetery, feeling that his heart-break de- 
 served it, and that their lady would so have commanded 
 them. 
 
 Again Ah Song rested. 
 
 Then she spoke again. 
 
 "Wait. Watch. Work. And always watch. The 
 time will come. China cannot perish. Thy slave's 
 toothless gums have sucked the honey of China's sacred 
 breath, since great Ch'eng Shao Yiin's most honorable 
 
THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 297 
 
 father was a toddling boy, and I can taste it in my 
 hour of glad departure. China is immortal, lady. Im- 
 mortal bees gods-sent stored that imperial honey fron^ 
 the flowers of heaven. Store it here. Keep it alive, 
 and unpolluted, here in thy home — the bridal home of 
 celestial Shao Yiin." 
 
 The slight form was growing a little heavy in the 
 girlish arms that held it. 
 
 Tzu thought Song dozed. She laid her face against 
 her slave's. Ah Song smiled, and made a sign of 
 obeisance with one feeble, claw-like hand. 
 
 Then — it was the last — she told of what Ch^eng 
 Shao Yiin had sacrificed; Chii-po, Lo Yuet, and then 
 the companionship of Tzu, — Tzu, the girl-child so- 
 waited-for, so-despaired-of, so riotously welcomed, so 
 passionately loved, so tended, so yearned over, and 
 missed in such long torture when Sheng Liu had taken 
 the child to England, leaving Ch'eng Shao Yiin bereft 
 — alone in China, grieving but invincible. With labor- 
 ing, straining breath dying Song spoke of the marriage 
 Ch'eng Yiin had planned for Tzu — that Tzu might 
 remain a Ch'eng, be the mother of Ch'engs, and live 
 and rule while she lived, here in her ancestral home. 
 
 With a convulsive spasm of her spent strength, Ah 
 Song raised herself again a little on her lady's arms, 
 and, with again the gesture of obeisance, laid her hand 
 on her lady's sleeve. 
 
 Death rattled in Ah Song's stiffening throat. 
 
 Ah Song had gone, to be again in attendance on 
 Shao Yiin. 
 
 Ch'eng Tzii took no counsel of the necromancer as 
 to where or how the body of the blind woman should 
 be laid. 
 
298 THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 
 
 They carried Ah Song — to dash of cymbals, beat of 
 drum — incense drenching her costly coffin — through the 
 avenue of stone figures that denoted the approach to 
 the tombs of nobles — noble figures, beautiful in exe- 
 cution and significant in subjects — ^mandarins, minis- 
 ters of state, sages, priests, tigers and warriors, camels, 
 and elephants, dragons and sheep, horses, dogs, birds 
 and troubadours, colossal in size, standing on slabs of 
 onyx, bronze and porphyry — to the family burial 
 ground inside its guarding belt of great cypress trees, 
 and laid it beside the tiny tomb of Ti-to-ti at the feet 
 of Ch'eng Shao Yiin. 
 
 Ch'eng T'ien Tzii walked behind the coffin of the 
 slave. 
 
 And on the temple wall Tzu put a tablet marked, 
 *"Ah Song, the Slave of Ch'eng Shao Yim." 
 
CHAPTER XLIII 
 
 AND when the Feast of Lanterns had passed Ch*eng 
 Tzu sent the matchmakers to Ch'eng Wen. And 
 she sent Sheng Liu with them, and charged him to tell 
 Wen all he knew of her stay in England — and to re- 
 mind Ch'eng Wen that, even if he did not wed her, by 
 the will of Ch'eng Shao Yun — as it now proved — Yiin's 
 adopted son would have great wealth, and that, while 
 Ch'eng Yun's wish for their marriage was clearly in- 
 dicated, she had not enforced it by formal betrothal; 
 they both were free. 
 
 Wen did not like what Sheng told him of Ch'eng 
 Tzii's engagement to an Englishman. But he had no 
 idea of the detail of actual acquaintance customary 
 between fiances in England, and Sheng Liu felt no 
 need to explain it. Even so Wen winced, but he put 
 it from him — and sent the matchmakers back to Ch'eng 
 Fzu with his troth and a long length of gifts. 
 
 But the actual marriage took long to do. Tzu had 
 kept her year of mourning for Ch'eng Yiin, as best 
 she could, in England. But she kept it here again in 
 China, and with a fuller punctilio. And before she 
 could wed with Ch'eng Wen, by adoption now her 
 kinsman, it was obligatory that she herself should 
 cease to be a Ch'eng. To become in marriage a Ch'eng 
 she must cease to be a Ch'eng maiden. A Chinese 
 must not marry one of his own family name. It is a 
 law sometimes evaded — but not by such loyalists as 
 she. The new republican dispensation had cast the old 
 
 200 
 
300 THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 
 
 law aside perhaps. But as to that, she neither knew 
 nor cared. She gave neither courtesy nor heed to the 
 aew edicts — scorning even to know them. For her 
 every old law was more stringent and more sacred 
 than it had been — and she would fulfill and obey it to 
 the last article. 
 
 She gave herself in adoption to Sheng Liu — who, 
 though neither rich nor powerful, belonged to a fam- 
 ily as noble as her own. And the ratification of the 
 adoption, and all its forms took time. 
 
 But at last the marriage was accomplished. 
 
 When Ch'eng Tzu found that Wen her husband 
 Toved her, he did not find it hard, she took up that 
 added cross, and bore it meekly. Presently she came 
 to bear it gayly. His companionship was pleasant. 
 And their children brought her content. 
 
 Presidents came and went in China, but in Ho-nan, 
 Ch'eng Tzu watched, waited and worked. And in her 
 domain the Manchu still reigned. 
 
 She served her lord meekly, but she ruled him. 
 Sheng Liu knew that the new movement might have 
 lured Ch'eng Wen had not his wife so held him in her 
 keeping. But Wen knew no will but Tzu. He or- 
 dered — under her — the tilling of her fields, he lived her 
 life, he thought her thoughts, and, for her bearing of 
 his children, he worshiped her. 
 
 And she knew that for her life was better so. But 
 she had a memory in her heart — sometimes a hidden 
 secret sweetness, sometimes a pain that rankled. 
 
 She sometimes wondered what had come in England 
 — to those she had known. But she was loyal to her 
 own determination: and she never learned. She sent 
 
THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 301 
 
 a thought to old friends sometimes — but she never sent 
 a message, or let one reach her. 
 
 But within her gates no word might be spoken that 
 disparaged the English land sheM lived in. As the 
 years passed she compared the two countries and the 
 two people shrewdly, and for a woman, strangely with- 
 out prejudice. And each day she grew more confirmed 
 in her conviction that China and the Chinese excelled. 
 But she saw a spiritual kinship in them — the Chinese 
 and English, — at their best and smiled to think how 
 droll it was that none else had ever seen and sensed 
 that kinship. 
 
 She lived the hfe of a great lady of the old feudal 
 days. No I Kung Moy ever saw her face unveiled. 
 Only Ch'eng Wen ever saw the face that once an Eng- 
 lishman had kissed. Ch'eng T'ien Tzu lived more 
 strictly conventional than Ch'eng Shao Yiin had been. 
 
 Sorrow touched her sometimes. But she was not 
 unhappy. 
 
 She lived for China's regeneration. She believed it. 
 She watched for it, waited for it, and worked for it 
 tirelessly. And Ch'eng Wen was her good right- 
 hand. Every hour of all her days was packed. That 
 was part of her unswerAdng patriotism of which her 
 husband was but an appanage — dutifully served, scru- 
 pulously, as a Chinese wife should serve. 
 
 Her sorrow for her country dwarfed her sorrow for 
 herself. But even in her country's woe and peril, its 
 momentary degradation, she saw a promise and a hope. 
 In the universal dismay and resentment at the alien 
 encroachments — now too potent to 4>e overlooked even 
 by the common people — she saw and hoped a knitting 
 up of the scattered loyalties that heretofore had made 
 
302 THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 
 
 the individual Chinese devoted to family, clan and prov- 
 ince more than conscious of national needs or national 
 duty. She knew that her countrymen were fundament- 
 ally pacific. But she knew how they could fight — their 
 history told it — that patient, plodding people — and she 
 smiled grimly, quoting to herself a Christian text she'd 
 learned in England, "Beware the fury of a patient 
 man." And her longing burned for the day when 
 China should turn and rend the intruders from without 
 and the usurpers from within. 
 
 Travel is the test of patriotism — a terrible, acid test 
 sometimes. But Chinese patriotism is justified to pass 
 through it unaltered and enhanced. Travel and for- 
 eign sojourn had served to strengthen and quicken the 
 patriotism of Ch'eng T'ien Tzu. She gloated over her 
 country. She yearned over her people. And all the 
 old Chinese traditions lived and glowed in her heart. 
 She was more intensely Chinese for the years that she 
 had spent in England — ^more uncompromisingly 
 Chinese than Ch'eng Shao Yiin had been. 
 
 When Tzu's little daughter was three and a moon, 
 Tzu's son was born. And when she snuggled the little 
 downy head against her face, she thanked Kwanyin 
 Ko that she need never apologize to her son for having 
 brought him into life disfigured and discounted by 
 mixed race-blood. She knew that she might have 
 loved her boyling even a little more perhaps if — but 
 she kept the thought in leash. And she knew too that 
 in another way she must have loved her son a little 
 less had any blood of Europe flowed in his veins, must 
 have respected him less, been less proud of him, and 
 been less glad in motherhood — less rested — if 
 
THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 303 
 
 Ch'eng T*ien Tzu sat lazy in the grass beside the 
 quiet river where Chii-po had sat the day Ting Lo 
 brought Ting Tzii ta visit Ch'eng Ping-yang. A 
 single narcissus grew beside a stone. The sun was 
 fading to the twilight. A crane, on the other bank, 
 was drinking peacefully, throwing the woman and her 
 babies a friendly glance, as he lifted his long neck to 
 let the liquid coolness trickle down his throat. 
 
 Her girl was playing with her girdle. Her boy was 
 sleeping in her arms. Far on the hoary mountains a 
 bell tinkled from the striking of its mallet. Buddhist 
 monks were trooping in to prayer. From somewhere 
 on a hillside — nearer, clearer a gong sounded : in a con- 
 vent on the hillside Taoist nuns were going to their 
 rice. The gods of China are a brotherly crew, and 
 live in amity on high ; and creed smiles on creed, rarely 
 clashing, in the land of the pagoda. 
 
 Ch'eng T'ien Tzu often came here — and here no one 
 ever sought her. That was a law. To-day she found 
 it very good to rest here, and watch the narcissus petals 
 grow gold then pink in the "good-by" of the sun, for 
 Tzu was frankly tired to-day. The Feast of Lanterns 
 was at hand, and from dawn she had been toiling with 
 her women, giving directions to her men. 
 
 The little girl — ''Flower o' Jade" was her milk name 
 — was very quiet. Across the river a bird called to 
 his mate. 
 
 Tears gathered in Ch'eng T'ien Tzu's eyes. The 
 ripple of an old pain and an old parting crumpled her 
 face. She laid her face down on her baby's, hiding it 
 on his. "J^ck,'* she said with a sob. And the child 
 woke, and the little Chinese girl wondered, at a word 
 they'd never heard before. 
 
304 THE FEAST OF LANTERNS 
 
 Ch'eng Tzu rose and shook out her wide crumpled 
 trousers, and moved towards the house, one baby cling- 
 ing to her hand, one cuddled at her neck ; went smiling, 
 carrying them to their women, went in tc serve her 
 lord meekly at his rice. 
 
 And the soul of Ch'eng Shao Yun lived and ruled ic 
 the homestead of her clan. 
 
 THE END 
 
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 Master Mummer, The. E. Phillips Oppenheim. 
 
 Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes. A Conan Doyle. 
 
 Men Who Wrought, The. Ridgwell Cullum, 
 
 Meredith Mystery, The. Natalie Sumner Lincoln. 
 
 Midnight of the Ranges. George Gilbert. 
 
 Mine with the Iron Door, The. Harold Bell Wright, 
 
 Mischief Maker, The. E. Phillips Oppenheim. 
 
 Missioner, The. E. Phillips Oppenheim. 
 
 Miss Million*s Maid. Berta Ruck. 
 
 Money, Love and Kate. Eleanor H. Porter. 
 
 Money Master, The. Gilbert Parker. 
 
 Money Moon, Tha Jeffery Farnol. 
 
 Moonlit Way, The. Robert W. Chambers. 
 
 More Limehouse Nights. Thomas Burke. 
 
 More Tish. Mary Roberts Rinehart. 
 
 Moreton Mystery, The. Elizabeth Deieans. 
 
 Mr. and Mrs. Sen. Louise Jordan Miin. 
 
 Mr. Grex of Monte Carlo. E. Phillips Oppenheimo 
 
 Mr. Pratt. Joseph C. Lincoln. 
 
 Mr. Pratt's Patients. Joseph C. Lincoln. 
 
 Mrs. Red Pepper. Grace S. Richmond. 
 
 Mr. Wu. Louise Jordan Miln. 
 
 My Lady of the North. Randall Parrish. 
 
 My Lady of the South. Randall Parish. 
 
 Mystery Girl, The. Carolyn Wells. 
 
m 14 DAY USE 1 
 
 RETURN TO DESK FROM WHICH BORROWED 
 
 LOAN DEPT. 
 
 This book is due on the last date stamped below, or 
 
 on the date to which renewed. 
 
 Renewed books are subject to immediate recall. 
 
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 REC'D LD 
 
 
 DEC 7 - 1959 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 J 
 
 
 1 
 
 
 
 
 
 rM\Y4-s5ST4tai^ Univ^^£igSL.i. 
 
IB 33443