Hudson taylor, god’s venturer

Chapter 11

The European commnity thought so too. While they did not attribute the earthquake to her, knowing full well that the bottle contained nothing more devastating than smelling salts, they felt that she did something more noteworthy than that every day of her life. At five o’clock in the morning, winter or summer, wet or fine, she went for a walk on the city wall. It mattered not to her if it were pitch dark. She merely instructed a servant to accompany her with a lantern, and sallied forth as usual for her daily constitutional. Af five o’clock in the morning! It would have required more than a mere earthquake tremor to induce the European community to do likewise! Yes, if for that feat alone, they agreed she was a wonderful woman. But that was not all. The pioneer woman missionary of Ningpo, founder of the first Protestant school for girls in China, she had a capacity for work which left frailer mortals breathless. She would listen to her pupils reading their lesson to her even while was eating her meals. And as for holidays, she would none of them. Other missionaries might go off to the seaside to regain health and strength after their exertions, but Miss Aldersey got the sea breezes by climbing to the ninth story of a tall pagoda, and sniffing them from there. Some of her pupils accompanying her, she was thus enabled to continue imparting knowledge to them unhindered. A remarkable woman, without doubt, and if the British Consul did not always do exactly what she wanted, he certainly would not have dared to let her know!

It was most unfortunate for Hudson, therefore, that such an influential and awe-inspiring person as the admirable Miss Aldersey should have taken a deep, strong and rooted dislike to him. Such, however, was the case. The very mention of his name was sufficient to stiffen her frail little body with what she considered wholly righteous indignation. For Hudson Taylor had actually had the temerity, that audacity, the unmitigated effrontery, to propose to Maria!

Maria was the orphan daughter of a missionary, and she was one of the teachers in Miss Aldersey’s school. A very useful teacher she was, too, fond of children, and speaking Chinese like a native. She was rather pretty, and Hudson was not the first young man who felt that the name Maria would look better in front of his surname than in from of her own. However, Miss Aldersey did not hold that against her, for after all, the girl could not help it. To give Miss Aldersey her due, she was quite prepared to part with her attractive, efficient young teacher if a really suitable man appeared on the scene. But Hudson Taylor! That young man who always wore Chinese clothes and a pigtail! A pigtail of his own hair, mark you, dangling from the crown of his head! Who was he, anyhow? A poor, young, unconnected nobody! A fanatic, completely undependable, whom no reputable missionary society would ever employ! Marry Maria! Never! He was merely after her money!

Poor nineteen-year-old Maria was overwhelmed. As far as her own feelings were concerned, the idea of marrying Hudson, pigtail or no pigtail, appealed to her strongly. Truth to tell, it had occurred to her several weeks before Hudson had even mentioned it, although, needless to say, she had kept it to herself. Now, however, in the face of Miss Aldersey’s wrath and powerful reasons, she felt helpless. At that lady’s dictation she sat down and wrote a curt letter to say that the proposal was wholly impossible, adding that if Hudson had any gentlemanly feeling at all, he would never again refer to the subject. Miss Aldersey took the letter off in triumph, Maria went to her room and burst into tears, and Hudson, who had expected a more favorable reply, felt as though a door had been slammed, loudly and finally, in his face.

It was not easy to settle down to live and work in Ningpo after that rebuff, but Hudson knew that he must do so. He had already obstained possession of a shop which made an excellent preaching-hall, and was living, not with the Parkers, who were in charge of a hospital but with a young couple, Mr. and Mrs. Jones, who had recently arrived in China. Hudson’s days were full, preaching, visiting Chinese who were inquiring about this “Jesus religioun” and doing medical work. It was well for him that they were. He was very lonely. His hopes of companionship all seemed to crash, one by one. When first he came to China he had hoped that before very long his sister Amelia would come and join him. He was fond of Amelia, for all his teasing, and felt she would have been just the one to run the home for him, and work among the Chinese women. Then he had been encouraged by letters from his friend Ben, who was evidently deeply interested in his experiences. Perhaps he would come! It was somewhat of a shock, therefore, when he received the news that Amelia and Ben were engaged, and were settling down at home. Now that Maria who, it must be admitted, he had felt would make an even better companion than either of them, had turned him down, he was bereft indeed.

The days of early summer, therefore, were not without their sadness for him. He was perplexed. He had prayed a great deal about the matter before he had gone so far as to propose to Maria. It was strange that things should have taken the turn they had, when he had felt convinced he was doing the right thing. And somehow, try as he would, the feeling that it was the right thing still persisted. He would have been quite certain about it, had he been able to hear Maria’s daily prayers, as she knelt by her bedside, morning and night! She very much wanted to be Mrs. Hudson Taylor!

Hudson, however, knew nothing about that. All he had go to on was Maria’s letter, and that had been final—apparently. Certainly, he knew he was intended to regard it as such, but the more he thought about it, the more he felt he couldn’t. It was her writing, but it was not her way of putting things. He began to wonder if it was not more like Miss Aldersey’s of putting things...If only, thought Hudson, it were possible to see Maria when Miss Aldersey was not around. But in old China, where custom forbade an unmarried man to try to meet an unmarried woman, his hands were tied. Their paths rarely crossed. The one effort he had made to talk to her misfired, and he found himself left with someone else, while Maria was whisked away in a sedan chair! Eventually he decided there was nothing he could do about it. His pigtail dangled disconsolately through the hot, sticky June days, as he went about the narrow streets, and preached for an hour or so each in the “Jesus Hall.” He could not but realize that were he to cut if off, he would be regarded as being a much more suitable match for Maria. But if he cut it off, it would mean he could no longer move about freely among the Chinese, who regarded him almost as one of themselves. And he knew why he had heard that Voice “Go for Me to China.” There was a work for him to do in this land, and that work was to spread abroad the knowledge of the only One who can save from eternal death. There were towns and cities, villages, and hamlets lying in the interior, that were waiting for that news, and he must go...The pigtail must remain. But as Hudson knelt by his bedside, night and morning, praying for the Chinese, the name of “Maria” was also mentioned with fervent supplication, before he rose from his knees.

And then, quite suddenly in the middle of July, the whole situation was changed by a waterspout.

It was an amazingly well-timed waterspout. It came sweeping up the river one afternoon when Mrs. Jones was entertaining all the lady missionaries in Ningpo in her home. It broke over Ningpo in a startling deluge, followed by torrential rain. In no time all the streets were running with water and emptied of people. Water poured off roofs and formed ponds and pools in unexpected places, and the ladies looked out of the windows of Mrs. Jones’ drawing room and wondered how and when they would get home again. It was indeed much later than usual that some sedan-chair carriers eventually arrived at the front gates, their trousers rolled up over their knees, and water dropping from the wide brims of their coolie hats. And even then, there were more ladies than sedan chairs. So, naturally, some ladies had to stay behind, while some were carried home. Among those who were carried home was Miss Aldersey. Among those who still awaited sedan chairs was Maria. And there she was when Hudson and Mr. Jones arrived home from the preaching hall!

A smallish drawing room in which three or four people are sitting is not considered an ideal place for a proposal of marriage, especially from someone who has already been rejected. Hudson realized that, and his first intention when it dawned on him that here at last was Maria without Miss Aldersey, was merely to ask politely if he might write to her guardian in London for permission to cultivate her acquaintance! However, once he started, he found himself saying more than that, in spite of onlookers. And Maria, usually rather quiet and reserved, responded with surprising and encouraging warmth! In a remarkably short time the position was made quite clear. When the sedan chairs arrived to convey the remaining ladies through the muddy streets to their homes, no one in the drawing room was left in any doubt as to how matters stood. Young Hudson Taylor had Maria’s full permission and approval to write to her guardian. And although no such sentiment was expressed in words, it was evident to all that not even one of Miss Aldersey’s earthquake would him prevent him doing so!
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Although Hudson wasted no time in writing to Maria’s guardian, it was over four months before he received a reply, for his was not the only letter that the mailboat carried from Ningpo to London addressed to Mr. Tarn. Miss Aldersey wrote to him, too! Mr. Tarn felt it necessary to make a few discreet inquiries from people in London who knew Hudson before committing himself, but when he had done that he decided that if his niece and ward wanted to marry this young missionary with a pigtail, there was no reason he knew of why she should not do so. He merely stipulated that as she was now already over twenty, she should wait until she came of age before taking the step. Less than a year after the occasion of the waterspout, therefore, Hudson and Maria were married and had settled into the attic over the preaching chapel in Bridge Street.

Bridge Street, Ningpo, was suitably named, for it was a narrow thoroughfare which started with a bridge and ended with a bridge. As one of them spanned a canal, which ran along at the back of his home, Hudson had plenty to remind him of the old days. He had first taken up his abode in this attic when he was a lonely bachelor, and one morning had awakened to find it covered with a thin film of snow, which had drifted in through the tiled roof during the night. He had waited long enough to trace his initials on the coverlet before he stepped gingerly out of bed and get dressed! However, he decided that the place probably needed doing up a bit before he could bring Maria there, so when she arrived, as Mrs. Hudson Taylor, it was to find it partitioned off into four or five little rooms, all of which had ceilings! And there, living right among the Chinese, dressing as they did and speaking their language, they settled down to their work.