It happened this morning! That man Aunt Gwendolin thought would be so sure to know that I was the Yellow Pearl, came to the house, and was ushered into my uncle's den by the maid, a few moments after I had been sent in there to have the "talk" with him which was spoken about the night before.
"He is a tall man, very, very white," were my thoughts regarding him, as[Pg 18] he bowed politely before me, when my uncle introduced us; and I suppose his thoughts regarding me were: "She is a short woman, very, very, yellow."
He left after a few moments' conversation with my uncle; and turning to me the latter said, "That gentleman who has just gone is professor of ethnology in the State University. He knows all about the peculiarities of all the peoples and tribes that ever have graced or disgraced the face of this planet we call the world—— Has your aunt told you that she thinks it better that you should say nothing about your Chinese ancestry?" he added hastily and awkwardly.
"Have the Chinese done anything disgraceful?" I asked him.
"No, no, I don't suppose they really have," he answered with an air of[Pg 19] annoyance. "A girl like you cannot understand; you had better simply follow instructions. I hope it will not be necessary to mention this subject again," he added meaningly.
I could not mistake him; I must not dare tell Professor Ballington or any one else in this great country that my mother was a Chinese woman.
In the afternoon Aunt Gwendolin took me down into the shops of the city, "to select an outfit," she said.
We stood for hours, it seemed to me, over counters laden with silks and muslins of every colour in the rainbow. Aunt Gwendolin held the various shades up against my face to see which best became my "Spanish complexion." This was said, I suppose, for the ears of the sales-people, and the fashionable customers standing around.
When selections were made among the goods, I was taken to the establishment of a "Parisienne modiste," where I was pinched, puckered, and pulled until I was nearly numb. A sort of a steel waist was put on me, which my aunt and the modiste called a "corset," and was so tightly pulled I could scarcely breathe.
"I can't stand it, Aunt Gwendolin," I whisperingly gasped.
"Yes, you can!" she returned peremptorily, "you'll get used to it; that's nothing like as tight as the girls all wear them in this country."
"I can't breathe," I gasped again, when the modiste had turned her back; (Aunt Gwendolin had signed to me the first time not to let her hear me).
"Hush!" said my aunt; "for pity sake do not let the modiste know that you never had a corset on before."
"I'd rather have my feet bound like the women do in Chi——"
Aunt Gwendolin placed her jewelled fingers over my mouth before I had finished the sentence.
Just as I was through being "fitted," one of Aunt Gwendolin's fashionable friends came in. "Arabella," my aunt called her, but the modiste called her Mrs. Delaney. I was not noticed, and slipped off into a corner, and this newcomer and my relative fell into a deep and absorbing talk about the new style of sleeve. I saw my opportunity and slipped unnoticed out the front door, which fortunately was behind them.
Hurrying down a few blocks I reached a bookseller's window. With one glance I had noticed, when my aunt and I were passing the window on the way to the establishment of the Parisienne[Pg 22] modiste, the word China on the cover of a book. "I'll buy that book," I had said to myself, "and learn what there is about China that makes Americans despise her people."
Entering the store, I found a number of books about China and the Chinese: "One of China's Scholars," "How the Chinese Think," "The Greatest Novels of China," "Chinese Life." I paid for them all and ordered them sent to my grandmother's house.
The bookseller looked at me very curiously for several moments, and then ventured, "You speak English very well."
"Of course I do," I said, tossing my head and trying to act saucily, as my governess had told me the American girls did. I would not have dared to treat a man that way in China.
He did not venture to speak again. It is funny to be able in this America to frighten a man! Confucius says that women should "be always modest and respectful in demeanour, and prefer others to themselves"; but I have not to mind Confucius any longer; I am now in the "sweet land of liberty," as they sing in their national anthem. I heard my father say once that the gentleness and modesty of Oriental women was really beautiful; but it would not be beautiful in America.
I hurried back to the establishment of the Parisienne modiste, and found my aunt and her friend still talking about sleeves. They had never noticed my absence. How very important sleeves are in America! I never heard them talked about in China.
The talkers had evidently forgotten[Pg 24] me, so I slipped out again, and walked several blocks, watching the manners, and catching snatches of the conversation of Americans.
"I'm going to have mine eighteen gores——"
"Pleating down the front, frills at the side——"
"Pocahontas hat, and Prince Chap suit——"
"Front panel, and revers turned——"
"Frills and pipings all around——"
"Gored, or cut in one piece——"
"Oh, pompadour, by all means, with——"
These were the snatches of conversation which I caught from the women as they passed me. The men were mostly silent and glum.
This curious country, that Aunt Gwendolin says has gone away ahead of the[Pg 25] rest of the world, why do its women talk more about dress than anything else? And why have its men such pushing, hurrying, knock-you-down-if-you-stand-in-my-way faces?
When I got back to the establishment of the Parisienne modiste I found my aunt ready to take me to the milliner's to be "outfitted with hats."
Walking a block or two we entered a much-decorated room, and at my aunt's request an attendant brought several hats for our inspection—curious-looking things like straw bee-hives, or huge wasps' nests, covered over largely with wings and the heads of poor little dead birds, ends and loops of ribbon, roses and leaves, looking as if they were only half sewed on and liable to tumble off if touched, and long feathers, buckles, and pins. My aunt selected several,[Pg 26] fitted them on my head, and declared they were very becoming to my Spanish style of beauty. I, almost in tears, whispered into her ear, so the attendant would not hear me, "I shall not have to wear them where any one can see me, shall I?" Aunt Gwendolin smiled (the attendant was looking) and replied sweetly, "Yes, they are very pretty, indeed."
We in China could never kill our birds and wear them on our heads—the breasts of our beautiful mandarin ducks, the wings of our gold and silver pheasants, the heads of our pretty parrakeets—we never could do it—we would feel like murderers. Our majestic-looking wild geese, that fly over our heads in flocks sometimes thirty miles in length, going south in the autumn and north in the spring, we never molest them.[Pg 27] The Buddhists believe that all geese perform an aerial pilgrimage to the holiest of the lakes in the mountains every year, transporting the sins of the neighbourhood, returning to the valley with a new stock of inspiration for the people in the locality where they choose to alight. Here in this civilised country—I have been reading in one of their magazines that grandmother loaned me—they catch the beautiful water-fowls, kill them, and hack off their downy breasts to make ladies' hats. And the little young birds starve in the nest, because the mother never returns to feed them. Ugh! Civilised countries are dreadful!
When the hats were selected my aunt conducted me to the furrier's.
"The cold weather is not over yet," she said, "and while we are about it I shall select some necessary furs."
I had noticed as we were passing through the streets that the ladies had curious looking things around their necks and shoulders, capes trimmed with heads of animals, and tails and paws of the same. I wondered the dogs did not bark at them. They looked like some hunters who had been out shooting and had thrown their dead game over their shoulders.
The furrier whose shop we had entered seemed to know my aunt, and as soon as she said, "I want you to show me some of your best fur garments suitable for a young lady," he brought down from some shelves the greatest quantity of fur articles, ermine, mink, seal, sable, all covered with heads, tails, paws, claws, eyes, mouths, teeth, whiskers. I shuddered and drew back when my aunt went to place one around my neck.
"Oh, auntie!" I cried, "don't touch it to me!"
"Ha, ha, ha," softly and politely laughed the shopkeeper, "the young lady has not become acquainted with the newest thing in furs, so beautiful and realistic—so charming!"
Aunt Gwendolin frowned. She evidently did not like my display of nerves, and resolutely fastened around my throat an ermine scarf with seven or eight heads, and twice as many tails. "There!" she said, "that will do nicely, it is very becoming to her creamy Spanish."
"It could not be better," said the polite shopkeeper.
A muff was then chosen to match the scarf, with just as many horrible grinning heads, and little snaky tails; and paying for them, my aunt ordered them sent home.
On my return home I dropped a silver coin into the housemaid's hand, and told her when the parcel of books arrived she was to carry it up to my room and say nothing about it. She seemed to understand, and asked no questions.
An hour later she came to my door with the books in her arms, and found me examining my new set of furs.
"Betty," I cried, throwing wide the door of my room, "come in and tell me all about my furs—how the man that sells them gets all those little heads and tails. Where do they get them? And how do they catch them? I want to know it all."
"Oh, miss," said Betty, stepping briskly into the room, nothing loath to accept the invitation to examine the new furs, "they lives out in the wild woods—these little critters, an' men[Pg 31] poisons 'em, an' traps 'em. An' when they is dead, they skins 'em, tans the skins, an' makes 'em up into muffs, an' boas, an' tippets, an' fur coats, an' so forth, an' so forth."
"Poison and trap them!" I cried, "doesn't that make the little creatures suffer?"
"You bet!" said Betty.
"How cruel!" I added.
"Yes, miss, ain't it awful?" returned Betty, making a wry face. "They's a book just been throwed in at the door to-day telling all as to how it is done. The American Humane Association has wrote the book—they don't approve of killin' things. I'll bring it up an' let you read it."
Suiting the action to the thought Betty rushed away down to the kitchen for the book.
She returned in a few moments with a small pamphlet, and thrust it hastily into my hand—my aunt was calling her—and hastened away.
I glanced down at a picture on the front page—a hare caught by the hind leg in a trap. A most agonised expression was on the little animal's face. Below the picture was the title of the story, "The Cost of a Skin." I dropped into a rocking-chair and read the story:
"Furs are luxuries, and it cannot be said in apology for the wrongs done in obtaining them that they are essential to human life. Skins and dead birds are not half so beautiful as flowers, or ribbons, or velvets, or mohair. They are popular because they are barbaric. They appeal to the vulgarians. Our[Pg 33] ideas of art, like our impulses, and like human psychology generally, are still largely in the savage state of evolution. No one but a vulgarian would attempt to adorn herself by putting the dead bodies of birds on her head, or muffling her shoulders in grinning weasels, and dangling mink-tails. Indeed, to one who sees things as they are, in the full light of adult understanding, a woman rigged out in such cemeterial appurtenances is repulsive. She is a concourse of unnecessary funerals; she is about as fascinating, about as choice and ingenious in her decorations, as she would be, embellished with a necklace of human scalps. She should excite pity and contempt. She is a pathetic example of a being trying to add to her charms by high crimes and misdemeanours, and succeeding only[Pg 34] in advertising her indifference to feeling.
"Of all the accessories gathered from every quarter of the earth to garnish human vanity, furs are the most expensive; for in no way does man show such complete indifference to the feelings of his victims as he does in the fur trade.
"The most of the skins used for furs are obtained by catching their owners in traps, and death in such cases comes usually at the close of hours, or even days, of the most intense suffering and terror. The principal device used by professional trappers is the steel-trap, the most villanous instrument of arrest that was ever invented by the human mind. It is not an uncommon thing for the savage jaws of this monstrous instrument to bite off the leg of their would-be captive at a single stroke. If the leg[Pg 35] is not completely amputated by the snap of the terrible steel, it is likely to be so deeply cut as to encourage the animal to gnaw or twist it off. This latter is the common road to escape of many animals. Trappers say that on an average one animal in every five caught has only three legs."
"We'd never do it in China—never!" I cried, throwing the leaflet from me. "It is only this horrid, civilised America that could be so terribly cruel! I shall never wear my furs—never! I shall beg grandmother—she seems to be the only civilised being I know that has any heart—to allow me to go without them!"
I looked again at my leaflet, which I had picked from the floor, and continued to read the words of the author:
"I would rather be an insect—a bee or a butterfly—and float in dim dreams among the wild flowers of summer than be a man and feel the wrongs of this wretched world."
I rose from my chair and thrust my headed and tailed ermine scarf and muff into a box, and pushed them far back on the closet shelf.
"Stay there! Stay there!" I cried. "The Yellow Pearl will have nothing to do with civilisation!"
"Yellow Pearl," I said to myself, accusingly, half an hour later, "you know that they have fur in China, that the rich wear fur-lined garments." "Yes," I replied to that accusing I, "the rich wear fur-lined garments, but they procure the fur from animals that have to be killed for food, or for man's self-preservation. They are not caught in[Pg 37] the cruel steely traps of America. Linings, mind you, linings," I reiterated, "to keep them warm, not the heads, tails, paws, claws, eyes, teeth of the little animals to bedizen their persons."