Part 7 (1/2)
The cook brings the fowl to be weighed, with a look of the sweetest simplicity on his face. Such a thing as guile could never exist behind such a bland and childlike countenance as his. The mistress, who is up to all his dodges, is unmoved by the seraphic air his face wears. She feels the fowl that is hanging by its legs from the hook on the steelyard, and she remarks how thin it is, and then points to the distended crop, and asks him what he means by such cruelty, and how he dares to try and cheat her by such a transparent device. The cook at once a.s.sumes an air of surprise, and looks at the swollen crop with the utmost indignation. ”Oh!”
he exclaims in a truly theatrical tone, ”I have been cheated. This was done in the shop, and, as it was dimly lighted, I did not perceive how I was being taken in. I shall give that man that sold me the fowl a piece of my mind when I next see him.”
The lady is accustomed to such tricks as this, and she says, ”I shall deduct two ounces from the weight you have given me.” The man puts on an injured air and in a plaintive voice says, ”You surely do not wish me to be a loser by my purchase, I am a poor man and I cannot afford that.” The lady, however, is firm, and by and by his usually placid look once more overspreads his sphinx-like countenance, whilst his admiration for his mistress' ability is vastly increased.
One day a cook brought in a round of beef to his mistress to be weighed.
There was an ingenuous look about him that disarmed suspicion. There was evidently no deception there, and she was just about to accept it, when the instinct of suspicion that lingers in the mind whenever you have to do with the Chinese about money prompted her to say, ”Undo the string that ties this beef and let me see inside.” A sudden flush ran through the man's face, and he hesitated for a moment to carry out her orders, but knowing that any delay would only excite her anger, he cut the string, when out rolled a stone of fully half-a-pound in weight. A look of surprise and indignation swept across the face of his mistress, for even she, with all her knowledge of the fertility of the Chinese brain, had never dreamed of such a cunning device to cheat her.
She looked at the cook with flas.h.i.+ng eyes, but he was apparently unmoved.
No flush of shame mantled his cheeks. Instead of that an innocent air crept over his countenance, and a look of wonder stole into his eyes, as he exclaimed, ”Dear me, however did that stone get there? The people of the shop must have put it in whilst my head was turned. How dishonest of them! I really must give up dealing with them. The principles of Heaven are evidently unknown to them.” The withering tones of indignation uttered by his mistress seemed to make no impression upon him, and he left her presence, muttering to himself, ”How wrong of that butcher to cheat me as he has done to-day, and to cause me to lose face, and to make me a laughing-stock to every one that may hear this story.”
The steelyard is an invention that is intended to promote honest dealing.
It is sometimes, however, the unconscious instrument of a systematic deceit, which is all the more effective because it is so entirely unsuspected. On one occasion a young fellow had been engaged as cook. He was a man of engaging manners, with a pleasant open face, and a winning disposition that made one unconsciously have great faith in him. He was consequently greatly trusted by his employers, though they never forgot the terrible temptations to which as a cook he was exposed.
It seemed that after a while the spell of money spun its subtle web over him, and he succ.u.mbed to its fatal fascination. With the implicit faith that his mistress had in him, the opportunity for making money on all his purchases became enlarged. This led him into gambling, and as the gambler nearly always loses, he had to look around for some method that would give him a larger revenue than could be secured by his squeezes on the articles he bought every day for the use of the home.
In this dilemma, a bright idea occurred to him; he would so manipulate the steelyard that it should serve his purpose, and enable him to pay his gambling debts, and still give him funds to pursue his favourite vice. He accordingly filed off two ounces from the iron weight attached to it, and which acted as a counterpoise to the goods that were being weighed at the other end of the yard, and by a single stroke he secured to himself twelve and a half per cent. on every purchase that he made.
The mistress had no suspicion of this deep-laid scheme, for she never dreamed of testing the iron weight, and the cook with guileless looks and childlike smiles gathered in his gains, feeling confident that he had now struck a mine that would never be exhausted. But a Nemesis was at hand, and one day his treachery was revealed by a person with whom he had quarrelled, when he was instantly dismissed as a man with a mind too original and too dangerous to be allowed to hold any position in the household for the future.
From the above it will have been inferred that the difficulty of controlling a cook in China is one that no foreigner ever hopes to cope with successfully, and the same thing only in a milder form exists with regard to all the other servants that are employed in the running of a home in this land. If the Chinaman was less expert in disguising his thoughts, the matter would be simpler. Ages of practice, however, have taught them to conceal their feelings from the keenest scrutiny to which they may be subjected. Looks and language, which in other peoples are usually an index to the condition of the mind, are in their case no guide whatsoever.
The boy, for example, who really is a full-grown man, comes to you one morning, and in a low, melodious voice informs you that he wishes you to engage another servant, as he is compelled to leave you. You are surprised, for no intimation of anything of the kind has come to you till the present moment. You ask him why this sudden decision, and if there is anything in the home with which he is dissatisfied. He says, ”No, you have been very kind to me, and I am exceedingly unwilling to leave you, but I have had a letter from my father, and he is very urgent that I should go home as quickly as I can. The fact is,” he continues, ”he is getting old, and he needs my help on the farm, and I must ask you to let me go.”
He tells his story in such an easy, natural manner, that you are inclined to believe him, though lingering doubts will run through your mind. You remember that his family is desperately poor, and depend very largely upon this son for the wages he earns to keep them from starvation. You are perplexed to know what to do, but finally you pay him the wages due to him, and with many bows and a genial smile lighting up his yellow features, he bids you good-bye.
Not long after he has gone, the true secret of his desire to leave his employ comes out. The letter from his father, and the need of his help on the farm, are myths that his fertile imagination conjured up, and never had any existence in fact. The real truth is he had a row with the water coolie, who comes from a village in the country contiguous to his own, and who belongs to a more powerful clan than his. He dreads any further collision with this man, who might send word to his relatives there, who would speedily take measures to avenge their wrongs on their weaker neighbours, and so, to save himself and the family, he resigns.
Chinese servants, taking them all in all, may be considered to be honest.
It is true that from a ten commandments point of view, and the higher morality we have been accustomed to in England, they cannot in a strict sense be said to be so. Of course they have never heard of the Decalogue, and therefore they cannot be blamed for not knowing what it demands. The training they have been subjected to during the past two thousand years has taught them to look with very different eyes upon certain subjects from what ours do.
Overcharges, for example, and skilful manipulations of the steelyard to make it lie, are not considered so much moral defects as tokens of an unusually active brain. A man who does not know how to do such things is not looked upon as one who has a higher standard of life, but one who is, in the expressive language of the vernacular, ”idiotically honest.” It is not a question of conscience with such a man, but rather a lack of brain power, which has made him less mentally fit for those keen and rapid movements of thought that are essential in the conflict of mind with mind.
It is not simply, however, in the question of overcharges and the manipulating the steelyard that the servants' ideas of morality differ materially from our own. There are a good many other points where they certainly look with leniency upon certain questionable actions that we should never dream of doing. Small things, for example, of comparatively little value, will mysteriously disappear. The Chinese would repudiate the idea that they were stolen. They simply vanished, and no trace is left of them. A kerosine tin, for example, has been emptied and placed in the yard for a short time. The mistress is aware of the peculiar idiosyncrasies of the Chinese with regard to articles of the kind, and she keeps a sharp look out upon it. She happens to have to go to another part of the house for a few minutes, and when she returns it is gone. She calls each of the servants, and asks them all where is it. They all feign surprise, and remark to each other about the daring of the man that had carried it off.
”Very remarkable,” says one. ”Why, I saw it myself only a moment ago!
Where can it have got to?” ”The men of the present day are not to be compared with those of ancient times,” remarks another sententiously, as though he were one of the sages of China. They gather round the spot where the tin stood and peer into the ground, as though some sprite had bewitched it into the earth.
The acting of the servants on this occasion is inimitable. Not only is the one that absorbed it present, but each of the others knows that he is the culprit; yet not a twinkle of the eye, nor a movement in the muscles of the face of any one of them can be discerned to show that they are either moved by the absurdity of the matter, or indignant that the honesty of the whole should be called in question by the act of one of them.
Again, a half-dozen empty bottles are left on a table. One by one they slowly disappear, and n.o.body knows where they have gone, though the itinerant rag merchant who makes his daily rounds could tell you exactly how much he gave for them, and from whom he bought them. If there is one thing, however, more than another that has a fascination for the Chinese, it is a pocket-handkerchief.
The nation as a whole knows nothing of this useful article. The ancient worthies that founded the Empire never dreamt of such luxuries. Their descendants, however, have taken to it with an avidity that is perfectly amazing, and whenever they can get a chance they quietly absorb them. You buy a dozen and have them marked with the blackest of indelible ink. The ident.i.ty of those handkerchiefs can never be disputed, so you feel satisfied that you will have a fair service out of them.
A week pa.s.ses by, and you suddenly find two of them have vanished. You are staggered, for you remember that handkerchiefs have a fatal facility for disappearing. You put off the decision of the question by a.s.suming they have gone to the wash, or they are hidden away in some of your pockets, and they will turn up by and by. Another week goes by, and others vanish, till in the course of no very long period only one is left. You question the servants, but blank and child-looking faces meet you at every inquiry that you make.
It is never suggested that the cat has walked off with them, as might be in England, where all kinds of unspeakable immoralities are put down to that animal. Chinese civilization has never yet produced a cat that has got the reputation of the same species in the West. Everybody simply denies that he ever saw the handkerchiefs, or knew indeed that they existed; and yet it is quite probable that if you were to visit their homes, you would find the lady members of their families sporting them on all public occasions, and making their female members green with envy because they could not have the same.