A House Divided

III

EVEN AS YUAN HAD LOVED and hated his father in his childhood, so now he left that foreign country loving and hating it. He could not but love it, however unwillingly, as anyone must love a thing beautiful and young and strong. He loved beauty and so he must love the beauty of trees upon mountains, and of meadows free from graves of the dead and beasts upon the land fed and healthy and content and cities clean of human refuse. Then he did not love these very things because if they were beautiful he was not sure if there could be beauty in the bare hills of his own country and he felt it wrong that the dead should lie in the good land of the living so that their graves were in the midst of fields, and he remembered such things there. When he looked upon the rich countryside passing him in the train, he thought, “If this were mine I would love it very well. But it is not mine.” He could not, somehow, love wholly a beauty or a good that was not his. He could not like very greatly the people even who possessed this good which was not his.

When once more he went upon the ship and turned to his own country again, he spent much time in questioning himself what gain he had from these six years away. He had gained, doubtless, in learning. His brain was stuffed with useful learning, and he had a small trunk full of notebooks and books of other sorts, and there was a long dissertation he had made himself upon a theme of the inheritance of certain strains of wheat. He had, moreover, little bags of seed wheat, which he had chosen carefully from other seeds he had planted himself in experiment, and he planned to put this seed into his own ground, and raise more and then more until there was enough to give to others, and so might all harvests be improved. Such things he knew he had.

He had more than this. He had some certainties. He knew that when he wed, the woman must be of his own flesh and kind. He was not like Sheng. For him there was now no magic in white flesh and pale eyes and tangled hair. Wherever his mate was she was like him, her eyes black as his, her hair smooth and straight and black, her skin the hue of his. He must have his own.

For, ever after that night beneath the elms, the white woman whom in some ways he knew very well had become to him completely strange. She was not changed, she maintained herself day after day as she had always been, steady, courteous always, quick to understand what he said or felt, but a stranger. Their two minds might know each other, but their minds were housed in two different habitations. Only for one moment had she striven to draw near to him again. She went with him, and the old pair also, to see him at his train and when he put forth his hand to say farewell, she held it for an instant strongly, and her grey eyes warmed and darkened and she cried in a low voice, “Shall we not even write to each other?”

Then Yuan, never able to give pain for any cause, and confused by the pain in her darkening eyes, said, stammering, “Yes — of course — why should we not?”

But she, searching his face, dropped his hand and her look changed, and she said no more, not even when the old mother broke in quickly, “But of course Yuan will write to us.”

Then again Yuan promised that he would write and tell them everything. But he knew, and as the train drew away and he must look at Mary’s face, he saw that she knew also that he would never write and tell them anything. He was going home, and they were aliens, and he could tell them nothing. As though he cast aside a garment no longer to be used, he cast aside these whole six years of his life except the knowledge in his brain and his box of books. … Yet now upon the ship when he thought of the years, there was the unwilling love in his heart, because this foreign country had so much he would have, and because he could not hate these three, since they were truly good; but the love was unwilling because now he was turned homeward he began to remember certain things he had forgotten. He remembered his father, and he remembered small crowded streets, not clean or beautiful, and he remembered the three days he had spent once in prison.

But against these things he argued thus, that in these six years the revolution had come about and doubtless all was changed. Was not all changed? For when he left Meng had been a fugitive, and now Sheng told him Meng was a captain in the army of the revolution and free to go anywhere and everywhere. There was more changed, too, for on this ship Yuan was not the only one of his kind. There were a score or so of young men and women who returned to their own land as he did, and they all talked much together and ate together at the same tables, and they talked of all that was come about, and Yuan heard how old narrow streets were torn away and great streets, as wide as any in the world, were driven through the old cities, and how there were motor vehicles far in the country along country roads, and farmers rode in them who used always to plod afoot, or at best sit across an ass’s back, and he heard how many cannon and how many bombing planes and how many weaponed soldiers the new revolution had, and they told how men and women were equal in these days, and how it was against the new law to sell or to smoke opium, and how all such old evils were now gone.

They told so many things Yuan had not heard that he began to wonder why he ever had those old memories, and he grew more than ever eager to be in his new country. He was glad of his youth, in these days, and among these of his own kind he said one day as they sat at a table together and his heart leaped within him when he spoke, “How great a thing it is that we are born now when we may be free and do as we will with our own lives!”

And they all looked at each other, these young eager men and women, and they smiled in exultation, and one girl thrust out her pretty foot and said, “Look at me! If I had been born in my mother’s time, do you think I could have walked on two good sound feet like these?” and they all laughed as children do over some little joke of their own. But the girls’ laughter had a deeper meaning in it than only merriment, and one said, “It is the first time in our people’s history that we are all free — the first time since Confucius!”

And then a merry youth cried out, “Down with Confucius!” And they all cried, “Yes, down with Confucius!” and they said, “Let’s put him down and keep him down with all those old things which we hate — him and his filial piety!”

Then at other times they talked more gravely and at these times they grew anxious to think and plan what they could do for country’s sake, for there was not one of these companions of Yuan’s who was not filled with yearning so to serve his country. In every sentence they made, the words “country” and “love of country” could be heard, and they seriously weighed their faults and their abilities and compared them to those of other men. They said, “Those men of the west excel us in inventiveness, and in the energy in their bodies, and in their dauntlessness to go ahead in what they do.” And another said, “How do we excel?” and they looked at each other and took thought, and they said, “We excel in patience and in understanding and in long endurance.”

At this the girl who had thrust out her pretty foot cried impatiently, “It is our weakness that we do endure so long! For myself, I am determined to endure nothing — nothing at all I do not like, and I shall try to teach all my countrywomen not to endure anything. I never saw any woman in the foreign country endure anything she did not like and that is how they have come as far as they have!”

And one who was a wag cried out, “Yes, it is the men who endure there, and now it seems we must learn it, brothers!” and then they all laughed together, as the young will laugh easily, but the wag looked secretly with admiration at the bold pretty impatient girl, who must have her own way.

So did all these young men and women and Yuan among them pass the days upon the ship in the highest good humor and most eager expectation of their home-coming. They paid no heed to any except themselves, for they all were filled with the strength of their sureness of their own youth and sufficient to themselves in their knowledge and zest to be going home again, confident each one that he was significant and marked for some special value and service to his times. Yet for all their pleasure in themselves, Yuan could not but see how the very words they used were foreign words, and how even when they spoke their own tongues they must add words of a foreign sort to supply some idea they had for which there was no suited word in their own tongue, and the girls were half foreign in their dress, and the men all foreign, so that if one saw another in the back, it could not be said what his race was. And every night they danced, man and maid together, in the way foreigners did, and even sometimes as shamelessly, cheek pressed to cheek, and hand put into hand. Only Yuan did not dance. In such small ways he held himself apart even from these his own people when they did that which was foreign to him. He said to himself, forgetting he used to do it, “It is a foreign thing, this dancing.” But partly he drew back because now he did not want to take one of these new women in his arms. He was afraid of them because they put out their hands so easily to touch a man, and Yuan was always one who feared a clinging touch.

So those days passed, and Yuan wondered more and more what his country would seem to him after all these years. On the day when he was to reach it, he went alone to the front of the ship and there watched the coming of the land. The land put forth its shadow into the ocean long before it could be seen. Into the clear cold green of ocean water Yuan looked down and saw the yellow line of clay which was the earth the river tore away in its passing through thousands of miles of land, and carried turbulently down to throw into the sea. There the line was as clearly as though a hand had drawn it, so that every wave was pushed back and held away. Yuan one moment saw himself upon the ocean, and the next moment, as though the ship had leaped a barrier he looked down into swirling yellow waves and knew himself at home.

When later he went to bathe himself, for the day was in the midst of summer and of great heat, the water rushed out yellow, and Yuan thought first, “Shall I bathe myself in it?” For at first it seemed to him not clean. Then he said, “Why should I not bathe myself in it? It is dark with the good earth of my fathers,” and he did bathe himself and felt himself cooled and cleansed.

Then the ship crept into the river’s mouth, and there the land was on either side, stolid and yellow and low and not beautiful, and on it were the small low houses of the same color, and there was no making it beautiful, as though that land did not care if men found it beautiful or not. There it was as it always was, low yellow banks the rivers had laid to push the sea back and claim more for their own.

Even Yuan must see it was not beautiful. He stood upon the decks among the many others of every race and kind upon the ship, and they all stood staring at this new country, and Yuan heard some cry, “It’s not beautiful, is it?” “It is not as pretty as the mountains of other countries.” But he would not answer anything. He was proud and thought to himself, “My country hides her beauty. She is like a virtuous woman who puts on sober clothes before strangers at the gates, and only within the walls of her own home does she wear colors and put rings on her hands and jewels in her ears.”

For the first time in many years this thought shaped itself into a small poem, and he felt the impulse to write four lines down, and he drew out a little book he kept in his pocket, and instantly the verse was there, and this flying moment added its point of brightness to the exultation of this day.

Then suddenly out of the flat grave country towers arose, and these towers Yuan had not seen when he went away, awaking as he had within a ship’s cabin at night with Sheng. Now he gazed on them as strangely as all these other travellers did, and they rose glittering in the hot sunshine, tall out of the flatness, and Yuan heard a white man say, “I did not dream it was such a big modern city,” and he marked with secret pride the respect in the man’s voice, though he said nothing and he did not let his face move, but only leaned as he was upon the rail and looked steadfastly at his country.

But even as this pride rose in him, the ship was docked and instantly a horde of common men leaped on the ship, fellows from the wharf and docks who pressed about to find a little work to do, a bag or box to hoist upon their backs, or some such lowly task. And in the harbor small dingy boats crept out into the hot summer sunshine, and in these boats beggars whined and held up baskets on long poles, and of these beggars many were diseased. Among these common fellows, too, many were half naked for the heat, and in their eagerness for work they pressed rudely among the delicately gowned white women, their bodies grimed and sweating.

Then Yuan saw those white women draw back, some afraid of the men and all afraid of dirt and sweat and commonness, and Yuan felt a shame in his heart, for these beggars and these common fellows were his own people. And here was the strangest thing, that while he hated these white shrinking women very much, suddenly he hated the beggars and the naked common fellows, too, and he cried passionately within himself, “The rulers ought not to allow these people to come out and show themselves like this before everyone. It is not right that all the world should see them first, and some never see any but these—”

He resolved he must set himself to right this wrong somehow, for he could not bear it; small as it might seem to some, it was not small to him.

Then suddenly he was soothed. For now he stepped from the ship, and he saw his mother there to greet him, and with her Ai-lan. There among many they stood, but in one look of his eyes, Yuan saw with a great flush of pleasure that there was none among all the many who could compare to Ai-lan. Even as he gave greeting to his mother, and felt the joy of her steadfast hand against his, and the great welcome in her eyes and smile, he could not but see how the eyes of all from that ship turned to Ai-lan, and he was glad they had her to see, who was his own race and blood. She could wipe out the sight of all the poor and common men.

For Ai-lan was beautiful. When Yuan had seen her last he was still a boy and he had not valued all her prettiness. Now as they lingered on the docks he saw Ai-lan truly could have stood among the beauties of the world and lost nothing.

It suited her well that she had lost the kitten-like coquettishness of her young girlhood. Now, although her eyes were bright and quick, her voice as light and flexible as ever, she had learned somehow a softer, finished dignity, from out of which only sometimes her laughter sparkled forth. About her warm lovely face her short hair was black and smoothly shaped. She did not curl it as some do, but kept it straight and smooth as ebony and cut across her forehead. On this day she wore a long straight silver gown of newest fashion, high-collared, but the sleeves short to her pretty elbows, and it was shaped to her body, so that without a breaking line, there flowed the smooth perfection of shoulder, waist, thigh, ankle.

So Yuan saw her proudly, comforted for much by her perfection. There were such women as this in his own land!

A little behind his lady mother there stood a tall girl, no more a child, but still not wholly maiden. She was not beautiful as Ai-lan was but she had a clear and noble gaze, and if Ai-lan had not been by, she would have seemed fair enough, for though she was tall, she moved gracefully and well, and her face was pale and oval, and the black eyes wide and set truly beneath full straight brows. Now no one thought in all the talk and welcoming laughter to say anything to Yuan of who she was. But even as he was about to ask the question, it came to him that she was the child Mei-ling who had cried out at the prison gate that day because she had seen him first. He bowed to her in silence, and she to him in the same way, though Yuan took time to know her face was one not easily forgotten.

There was one other who was the story teller whom Yuan remembered even still, the one surnamed Wu, against whom the lady had asked Yuan to guard his sister. Now he stood confidently among these others, very debonair in western garb, a small moustache beneath his nostrils, his hair as waxed and black as though it had been polished so, and in his whole look a sort of sureness that he was where he had a right to be. This Yuan soon understood, for after the first cries of greeting and the bows were over, the lady took this young man’s hand delicately and took Yuan’s, and she said, “Yuan, here is the man who is to wed our Ai-lan. We have put off the wedding day until you came, for Ai-lan chose it so.”

Now Yuan, remembering very well how the lady felt against this man, wondered that she never wrote of this, and yet now he could say nothing here except kind things, and so he took the other’s smooth hand and shook it in the new fashion and he smiled and said, “I am glad I can be at my sister’s wedding — I am very fortunate.”

And the other laughed easily and a little indolently, and he let his eyelids droop in a way he had and he looked at Yuan and drawled out in English of a modish certain sort, “It is I who am fortunate, I am sure!”, and across his hair he passed his other hand, whose strange loveliness Yuan remembered, now he saw it again.

Yuan, not used to this speech, dropped the hand he held, and turned away uncertainly, and then he remembered this man had been already wed to some other woman and he wondered yet more and resolved to ask his mother secretly how all this came about, since now nothing could be said. Yet when a few minutes later they all walked out to the street to where the cars awaited them, Yuan could not but see how very fairly mated these two were, and each like their race, and yet somehow they were not, too. It was almost as though some old sturdy rooted tree had put forth exquisite blossoms from its gnarled and knotted trunk.

Then the lady took Yuan’s hand again and said, “We must go home because the sun is so hot here shining up from the water,” and he let himself be led into the streets, and there were motors waiting for them. His lady mother had her own to which she led Yuan, still clinging to his hand, and Mei-ling walked on her other side.

But Ai-lan stepped into a small scarlet motor shaped for two, and with her was her lover. In that glowing vehicle these two might have been god and goddess for their beauty, for the top of it was thrown back, and the sun fell full upon their black and shining hair, upon the faultless smoothness of their golden skins, and the brightness of the scarlet did not daunt their beauty but only showed more clearly the flawless perfect shape and grace in which their bodies grew.

And Yuan could not but admire again such beauty and feel the pride of race rush to his heart. Why, never once in that foreign land had he seen clear beauty like to this! He needed not to be afraid to come home.

Then even as he gazed a beggar writhed himself out of the gaping multitude who stood to see these rich folk pass, and he rushed to the lordly, scarlet car and laid his hands upon the edge of the door and clung there whining the old cry of his kind, “A little silver, sir, a little silver!”

At this the young lord within shouted very harshly, “Remove your filthy hands!” But the beggar continued to whine yet more earnestly and at last when he would cling so, the young man reached down and slipped from his foot his shoe, his western shoe, hard and leathern, and with its heel he struck down upon the beggar’s clutching fingers and he struck with all his force so that the beggar murmured, “Oh, my mother!” and fell back into the crowd and put his wounded hands to his mouth.

Then waving his beautiful pale hand to Yuan the young man drove off his car in a roar of noise, and the scarlet thing leaped through the sunshine.

In the first days in his own country Yuan let his own heart stay in abeyance until he could see in proportion what was about him. At first he thought with a relief, “It is not so different here — after all, my country is like all other countries of this day, and why was I afraid?”

And indeed so it seemed to him, and Yuan, who had secretly feared to find that houses and streets and people might seem poor and mean to him, was pleased he did not find them so. This was the more true because in these years while he had been away the lady removed herself from the small house where she used to live into a good large house built in a foreign fashion. On the first day when Yuan came with her into it, she said, “I did it for Ai-lan. She felt the other house too small and poor to have her friends come to it. And I have done, moreover, what I said I would. I have taken Mei-ling to live with me. … Yuan, she might be my own child. Did I tell you she will be a physician as my father was? I have taught her all he taught me, and now she goes to a foreign school of medicine. She has two more years to learn, and then she must work in their hospital for more years. I say to her do not forget that for internal humors it is we who know best our own frames. Nevertheless, it cannot be denied that for cutting and sewing up again the foreign physicians are best. Mei-ling will know both. And she helps me besides with my girl babes whom I still find unwanted in the streets — and many of them these days, Yuan, after the revolution, when men and maids have learned to be so free!”

Yuan said, wondering, “But I thought Mei-ling only a child — I remember her only a child—”

“She is twenty years old,” the lady answered quietly, “and very far past childhood. In mind she is much older than that, and older than Ai-lan, who is three years more than twenty — a very brave quiet maid Mei-ling is. I went one day and saw her help the doctor who cut a great thing from a woman’s neck, and her hands were as steady as a man’s to do it, and the doctor praised her because she did not tremble and was not frightened by the gush of blood. Nothing frightens her — a very brave quiet maid. Yet she and Ai-lan like each other, though she will not follow Ai-lan to her pleasures, and Ai-lan would not see the things that Mei-ling does.”

By now they sat in the lady’s sitting room alone, for Mei-ling had gone away at once, and no one was near except the servant who brought tea and comfits in and out, and Yuan asked curiously, “I thought this Wu was bound to another wife, my mother—”

At this the lady sighed and answered, “I knew you would wonder. I have been through such a trouble with Ai-lan! Yuan, she would have him and he would have her, and there was nothing to be said, — no way to persuade her to anything. That was the reason why I took this greater house, because I thought if they must meet it might be here — since meet they would, and all that I could do was to fend off more until he could divorce his old wife and be free. …And it was true she was an old-fashioned woman, Yuan, one his parents had chosen for him and wed to him when he was sixteen. Ai, I do not know whom to pity most, the man or that poor soul! I seem to feel in me the sorrows of them both. I was wed like that, too, and not loved, and so I felt myself her. And yet I promised myself I would let my daughter wed where she would because I know what it is to be not loved, and so it is that I feel the troubles of them both. But it is arranged now, Yuan, in the way such things are arranged — too easily, I fear, nowadays. He is free, and she, poor woman, returns to the inland city of her birth. I went to see her at the last, for she lived here with him — though not really, she said, with him. There she was with her two maids putting her garments in the red leathern boxes she had bought as part of her marriage portion. And all she said to me was, ‘I knew this end must come — I knew this end must come,’—a woman not beautiful and older by five years than he, speaking no foreign tongue, as all must speak these days, and even with her feet once bound, though she strove to hide this in big foreign shoes. For her indeed it is the end — what is left to her now? I did not ask. I must think most of Ai-lan now. We can do nothing in these days, we old ones, except let the new sweep us on as it will. … Who can do anything? The country is upset, and anyhow, and there is nothing left to guide us — no rule, no punishment.”

Yuan only smiled a little when she ended thus. She sat, old and quiet and always a little sad, her hair white, and she said the things the old always say.

For in himself he felt only courage and hopefulness. In the day he had been back, in the few hours even, this city somehow gave him courage. It was so busy and so rich. Everywhere even in his quick passing he saw great new shops were raised up, shops to sell machines, and shops to sell goods of every kind from all parts of the world. No longer were there many humble streets lined with the low-roofed simple shops of homely merchandise. The city was a center of the world, and new buildings heaped on buildings, higher and higher. In the six years he had been gone a score of mighty buildings had flung themselves up against the sky.

That first night before he slept he stood at the window of his room and looked out across the city, and he thought, “It looks almost like the city where Sheng is abroad.” There about him were blazing lights and noise of motors and the deep hum of a million humans and all the rush and throb of restless growing pushing life. This was his country. The letters hung in flame against the moonless clouds were letters of his own tongue, proclaiming goods his own countrymen were making. The city was his own, and great as any in the world. He thought for a moment of that woman pushed aside to make way for Ai-lan, but he hardened himself as he thought, and in his heart he said, “So must all be pushed aside who cannot stand in this new day. It is right. Ai-lan and the man are right. The new cannot be denied.”

And in a sort of hard clear joy he laid himself to sleep.

Now Yuan went everywhere these few first days in this lift of joy through this great city. It seemed to him his fortune was good beyond his dreams, for he left this country from a prison, and now he was truly home again, and it seemed to him that all the prison gates were opened, not only his own prison, but all the bondages. It was an evil dream forgotten that his father had ever said he must wed against his will, and it was an evil dream that youths and maidens had once been seized and shot for seeking freedom. This freedom for which they died, why, now it was achieved for all! Upon the streets of the city he saw the young come and go, their looks free and bold and ready to do what they would, men and women, too, and there was no bondage anywhere. And in a day or two a letter came from Meng which said, “I would have come to meet you, but I am tied here at the new capital. We make the old city new, my cousin, and we tear down the old houses and we have put up a great new road which sweeps through the city like a cleansing wind, and we shall build more streets everywhere, and we have planned to tear down old unwanted temples and put schools in them, for the people have no need of temples any more in these new days. We teach them science instead. … As for me, I am a captain in the army, and near to my general, who knew you once, Yuan, in that school of war. He says, ‘Tell Yuan there is a place here for him to do his work.’ And so there is, my cousin, for he has spoken to a man above him very high, and that one has spoken in a place of influence, and in the college here there is a place where you may teach what you like, and you can live here and help us to build this city.”

Then Yuan, reading these bold swelling words, thought to himself with exultation, “This is from Meng, who was in hiding — and see what he is come to!” It was a warmth in Yuan that already his country had a place for him. He turned it over in his mind a time or two. … Did he indeed wish to teach young men and women? It might be the quickest way to serve his people. He put the thought into his mind to wait a day or two or more, until his duty was fulfilled.

For first he must go and see his uncle and his household, and then there was Ai-lan’s wedding three days off, and then he must go to see his father. Yuan found two letters from his father waiting at the coast for him, and when he saw the square trembling letters, scrawled upon a page or two, big and uncertain as old men write, he was touched with an old tenderness, and he forgot he had ever feared or hated his father, for now in this new day the Tiger seemed as futile as an old actor on a forgotten stage. Yes, he must go and see his father.

Now if the six years had made Ai-lan more beautiful and had led the child Mei-ling into womanhood, they had laid old age heavily upon Wang the Landlord and his lady. For where Yuan’s lady mother seemed to hold herself at much the same place all these years, her hair only a little whiter, her wise face a little more wise and more patient and a little less round, these other two Yuan found were truly old. They lived now no more in their own house, but with their elder son, and thither Yuan went and found them, the house a western house the son had built and set into a pleasant garden.

In this garden the old man sat beneath a banana palm tree, and Yuan found him there as placid and as happy as any aged saint. For now he had given up all his seeking lustful ways, and the worst he did was to buy a picture now and then whereon was painted a pretty maid, so that he had some hundreds of these pictures, and when he felt inclined he called to a servant that they be brought to him, and he turned the pictures over one by one and gazed at them. So he sat when Yuan came, and the maidservant who stood beside him to fan off flies turned the pictures for him as she might have turned pages for a child to see.

Yuan scarcely knew him for his uncle. For this old man had by his very lustiness fended off his age until the last moment, so that whether it was because he now sometimes smoked a little opium as the old will often do, or what it was, when his age was come at last upon him it came as suddenly as a withering blast, shriveling him and driving off his fat, so that now he sat as loosely in his skin as though it were a garment cut too largely for him. Where his fat had stood out firm and full, folds of yellow skin hung down. His very robes he had not changed, and they also hung too loose upon him, very rich in textured satins, but still his old robes cut to suit his old fullness, and now gathered round his heels and the sleeves falling over his hands and the collar hanging to show his lean wrinkled throat.

When Yuan stood before him the old man gave him vague greeting and said, “I sit here alone to look at these pictures, because my lady will have it that they are evil.” And he laughed a little in his old leering way, but it was ghastly laughter somehow on his ravaged face, and when he laughed he looked at the maidservant and she laughed with false heartiness to cheer him, while she stared at Yuan. But to Yuan the old man’s very voice and laughter seemed thinner than they used to be.

And after a while the old man asked again, while he still looked at his pictures, “How long is it since you went away?” and when Yuan told him he asked, “And how does my second son?” and when Yuan told him, he muttered as though it were a thing he always thought when Sheng was in his mind, “He uses too much money in that foreign country — my eldest son says Sheng uses too much money—” And he fell into a gravity until Yuan said to cheer him, “He returns next summer, he tells me,” and the old man murmured, staring at another picture of a maid beneath a young bamboo, “Oh, aye, he says he does.” Then he bethought himself of something and he said suddenly with great pride, “You know my son Meng is a captain?” And when Yuan smiled and said he did the old man said proudly, “Yes, he is a very great captain now, and he has a fine large wage, and it is a good thing to have a warrior in the family somewhere in time of trouble — my son Meng, he is very high these days. He came to see me and he wore a soldier’s garb such as they wear abroad, they tell me, and he had a pistol in his belt and spurs to his heels — I saw them.”

Yuan held his peace, but he could not keep the smile from his face to think how in these few years Meng had turned from a fugitive against whom his father cried aloud into this captain of whom his father boasted.

All the time the two had talked the old man seemed not at ease with Yuan and he kept beginning little courtesies such as one does to a guest and not to a nephew, and he fumbled at his teapot on a little table there beside him, making as though to pour tea for Yuan until Yuan stopped him, and he fumbled in his bosom for his pipe for Yuan to smoke until at last Yuan perceived that indeed this uncle felt him like a guest, staring at him with troubled old eyes, and at last the old man said, “You look like a foreigner somehow — your clothes and how you walk and move make you look foreign to me.”

Now though Yuan laughed he was not overpleased at this, and a constraint came on him since after all he could not answer it. And very soon, even though he had been six years away, he knew he had nothing to say to this old man, nor this old man to him, and so he took his leave. … Once he looked back, but his uncle had forgotten him. He had settled himself in sleep, his jaws moving a little and then dropping open and his eyes closing. Even as Yuan looked at him he was asleep, for a fly settled on his cheek bone while the maid stared at Yuan’s foreignness and forgot to wave her fan, and it wandered down to his old hanging lips and the old man did not move.

When Yuan had left him thus he went in search of his aunt, to whom also he must pay his respects, and while he waited he sat in the guest hall and looked about him. Since he had returned he found himself measuring everything he saw in new ways, and always, although he did not know it, the standard by which he measured was what he had seen in the foreign country. He was very well content with this room, which it seemed to him was finer than anything he had seen anywhere. Upon the floor was a large carpet covered with beasts and flowers in a very rich confusion, red and yellow and blue together, and on the walls were foreign pictures of sunny mountains and blue waters, all set in bright gold frames, and at the windows were heavy curtains of red velvet, and the chairs were all alike, red, very deep and soft to sit upon, and there were little tables of fine black carven wood set about here and there, and the very spittoons were not a common sort, but were covered with bright blue painted birds and gold flowers. At the farther end of the room between the windows there were hung four scrolls painted for the four seasons, red plum blossoms for spring, white lilies for summer, golden chrysanthemums for autumn, and the scarlet berries of heavenly bamboo lying under snow for the winter.

To Yuan this seemed the gayest richest room he had ever seen, full enough of things to amuse a guest for hours, for on every table were set little carven images and toys of ivory and silver. It was far more to see than that distant worn brown room he had thought warm and friendly for a while. He walked about, waiting for the maidservant to return and tell him he might go in, and while he waited a roar of a vehicle stopped at the doors, and his cousin and his wife came.

Both these two looked prosperous beyond anything Yuan had remembered. The man was in his middle years, and gaining all his father’s flesh, and he looked even fatter than he was, since he wore the foreign dress, which hid nothing of his shape, and above its severity, which shaped clear his large belly, his round smooth face was like a ripe yellow melon, for against the heat he had shaved away even his hair. Now he came in mopping the sweat from himself, and when he turned to give his straw hat to a servant, Yuan saw his neck in three great rolls of flesh beneath his shaven crown.

But his wife was exquisite. She was no longer young, and she had had five children, but none would know it, since after every childbirth, as the custom was with such ladies of fashion in the city, she gave her child to some poor woman to be nursed and she bound her breasts and body back again into slenderness. Now Yuan saw her slender as a virgin, and though she was forty years of age, her face was pink and ivory, her hair smooth and black, her whole look untouched by any care or age. Nor did the heat touch her. She came slowly forward, greeting Yuan prettily and gravely, and only in the quick look of distaste which she cast at her huge sweating husband could Yuan see the petulance she used to have. But she was courteous to Yuan for she looked on him no longer as a raw youth from the small old home city, and only a child in the family. He was a man now who had been abroad, and he had won a foreign degree and he saw it mattered to her what he thought of her.

Then to while the time away when they were seated after courtesies, and his cousin had shouted for tea to be brought, Yuan asked, “What do you now, elder cousin? For I see your fortunes have risen.”

At this the man laughed and was well pleased and he fumbled at a thick gold chain hung across his great belly, and he answered, “I am a vice president of a newly opened bank now, Yuan. There is good business these days in banks in this foreign place where wars cannot touch us, and they have opened everywhere. People used to put their silver into land. I remember our old grandfather never rested until all he had was made over into land and yet more land. But land is not so sure as it once was. There are even places where the tenants have arisen and taken land from landlords.”

“Are they not stopped?” asked Yuan, astonished.

And the lady thrust in sharply, “They ought to be killed!”

But the cousin shrugged himself a little in the tightness of his foreign coat and flung up his pudgy hands and he said, “Who shall stop them? Who knows how to stop anything these days?” And when Yuan murmured, “Government?” he repeated, “Government! This new confusion of warlord and student and that we call government! What can they stop? No, each man for himself these days, and so the money pours into our banks and we are safe enough guarded by foreign soldiery and under foreign law. … Yes, it is a good prosperous place I hold, and I have it through the grace of friends.”

“My friends,” his lady put in quickly. “If it had not been for me and that I grew friends with a great banker’s wife and through her came to know her husband and begged for you—”

“Yes, yes,” the man said hastily. “I know that—” and he fell into silence and discomfort of a sort, as though there were something there he would not discuss too clearly, and as though he had paid some secret price for what he had. Then the lady asked Yuan very prettily, for there was a sort of cool polished prettiness in all she said and did now, as though she had said and done everything before a mirror first, “So, Yuan, you are home again and a man and you know everything!”

When Yuan smiled mutely to deny his knowledge, she laughed a little set laugh and put her silken kerchief to her lips and said again, “Oh, I am sure you know much you will not tell of, for you have not come out of such years knowing as little as you did when you began them!”

What Yuan would have said to this he did not know and he felt uneasy, as though his cousin’s wife was false and strange, and as though she were encased about with falseness so he could not know how she really was, but at this moment a servant came in leading her old mistress, and Yuan rose to greet his aunt.

Into this rich foreign room the old lady came, leaning on her servant. She was a thin upright figure, her hair still black, but her face wrinkled into many crossing lines, though her eyes were as they were, very sharp and critical of all they saw. To her son and son’s wife she paid no heed, but she let Yuan bow to her and took his greeting and sat down and called to the servant, saying, “Fetch me the spittoon!”

When the servant had so done, she coughed and spat very decently, and then she said to Yuan, “I am as sound as ever I was, thanks to the gods, except that I have this cough and the phlegm comes up in me especially in the mornings.”

At this her daughter-in-law looked at her with great distaste, but her son said soothingly, “It is always so with the aged, my mother.”

The lady paid no heed to him. She looked Yuan up and down and asked, “How does my second son in that outer country?” And when she heard Yuan say Sheng was well she said positively, “I shall wed him when he comes home.”

Now her daughter-in-law laughed out and said uncautiously, “I do not see Sheng being wed against his will, my mother — not as the young are nowadays.”

The old lady cast a look at her daughter-in-law, a look which showed she had spoken her feelings against her many times and now it was no use, so she said on to Yuan, “My third son is an official. Doubtless you have heard. Yes, Meng is now a captain over many men in the new army.”

This Yuan heard again, and again he smiled secretly remembering how this lady had once cried against Meng. His cousin saw the smile and put down the bowl of tea he had been sipping loudly and he said, “It is so. My brother came in with the triumphant armies from the south, and now he holds a very good high place in the new capital and has his own soldiers under him, and we hear very brave and ruthless tales of him. He could come any day now to see us, for he is safe enough since the old rulers are swept so clean and flown to every foreign land for safety, only he is busy and cannot be spared.”

But the old lady would not suffer any talk but her own. She coughed and spat again loudly and then she asked, “What position shall you take, Yuan, now that you have been abroad? You ought to win a very good high pay!”

To this Yuan answered mildly, “First, as you know, Ai-lan is to be wed three days hence and then I go to my father, and then I shall see how the way opens up before me.”

“That Ai-lan!” said the old lady, suddenly, fastening on the name. “I would not let my daughter wed a man like that! I would put her in a nunnery first!”

“Ai-lan in a nunnery!” cried her son’s wife, hearing this, and she laughed her little false and bitter laugh.

“If she were my daughter, so I would!” the old lady said firmly, staring at her daughter-in-law, and she would have said more except that she choked suddenly, and she coughed until the servant must rub her shoulders and strike her back to let her breathe again.

At last Yuan took his leave, and when he went homeward through the sunny streets, choosing to walk this fair day, he thought how good as dead this old pair were. Yes, all the old were good as dead, he thought joyously. But he was young and the times were young, and on this brilliant summer’s morning it seemed to him he met none but young in this whole city — young laughing girls in light-colored robes, their pretty arms bare in the new foreign fashion, and young men with them free and laughing. In this city all today were rich and young, and Yuan felt himself one of these rich and young, and his life was good to him.

But soon none had time to think of anything these days except Ai-lan’s wedding. For Ai-lan and the man were well known everywhere among the young rich of the city not only of their own race, but among those of other peoples too, and there were bidden to the marriage more than a thousand guests, and to the feast afterwards very nearly as many. Yuan had no time for any speech with Ai-lan alone, except for a little hour on the first day when he came back. Yet even then he felt he did not truly talk with her. For her old teasing laughing self was gone, and he could not penetrate into the lovely finish and assuredness that wrapped her about now. She asked him with what seemed her old frank look, “You are glad to be home, Yuan?” But when he answered he saw that her eyes, for all they looked at him, did not see him at all, but were turned inward in some thought of her own, and they were only lovely shapes of dark liquid light. So through all the hour, until Yuan was bewildered by the distance all about her and he asked uneasily, blurting out the words, “You are different — you do not seem happy — do you want to marry?”

But there the distance still was. She opened her pretty eyes very widely and made her voice very cool and silvery and laughed a small clear laugh and said, “Am I not so pretty, Yuan? I have grown old and pale and ugly!” And Yuan said hastily, “No — no — you are prettier, but—” and she said, mocking him a little as she used to do, “What — shall I be so bold as to say I want to be wed and must be wed to this man? Did I ever do anything I did not want to do, brother? Have I not always been naughty and willful? At least I hear my aunt say so, and mother is too good to say it, but I know she thinks it—”

But Yuan, although she made her eyes mischievous and arch in shape and twisted her pretty brows above them, still saw her eyes were empty and he said no more. Thereafter he spoke no more alone with her, for each night of those three days she went forth in a new dress and wrapped about with silks of every hue, and even if Yuan was bidden with her as a guest, he saw her only in the distance, a lovely, brilliant figure, strange to him these days, engrossed in her own self and seeing everyone as in a dream. She was silent as she had never been before — her laughter only smiles now, her eyes soft instead of bright, and all her body round and soft and gentle, moving slowly and with cool grace, instead of with her old light leaping merriment. She had cast aside the charm of her gay youth, and had learned this new charm of silence and of grace.

By day she slept exhausted. Yuan and the mother and Mei-ling met and ate alone, and moved gently about the house and all noise was shut out until nightfall when, again Ai-lan came forth to meet her love and go forth with him to some house where they were bidden as guests. If she rose earlier it was only that she might have fitted to her form, by the many tailors who came for this, the gowns of silk and satin that she wanted, and among them was the pale peach-hued satin wedding gown with its trailing silvery foreign veil.

Now Yuan noted how silent and how grave the mother was through the few days before the marriage. She spoke very little to anyone except to Mei-ling, and on her she seemed to lean for many things. She said, “Did you take the broth in to Ai-lan?” Or she said, “Ai-lan must have soup to drink or that dried foreign milk she likes when she comes in tonight. I thought her pale.” Or she said, “Ai-lan wants two pearls to hold the veil, you know. Bid a jeweler send what he has for her to see.”

Her mind was full of all these many small things for Ai-lan, and Yuan knew it natural for a mother to be so and he was glad she had this young girl to help her. Once when the mother was not there and they two happened to be alone in the room and waiting for the meal to come, Yuan said to Mei-ling, not knowing what to say and feeling something must be said, “You are very helpful to my mother.”

The girl turned her honest look on him and said, “She saved me in my babyhood.” Yuan answered, “Yes, I know,” and he was surprised because there was no shame at all in the girl’s eyes, such shame as she might have had to say she was a foundling, of what parents she did not know. And then Yuan, feeling her like one of his house, because of her feeling to his mother, said, “I wish she seemed happier to see my sister wed. Most mothers are glad, I thought, if their daughters wed.”

But to this Mei-ling answered nothing. She turned her head away and at that moment the servant came in with bowls of meats, and she went forward herself to set them on the table. Yuan watched her do it, and she did it very simply and not at all as though she shared a servant’s task. He watched her, forgetting that he did so, and he saw how slight yet strong her lithe body was, how firm and quick were her hands, not making one useless movement, and he remembered how not once when his mother asked if a thing were done or not, had it been undone.

Thus the days drew on quickly to Ai-lan’s marriage day. It was to be a very great wedding, and to the largest and most fashionable hotel in the whole city the guests were bidden to come at an hour before noon. Since Ai-lan’s father was not there, and since the old uncle could not stand so long, her elder cousin took his place, and beside her was her mother, who never left her at all.

This marriage was according to a new fashion, and very different from the simple way in which her grandfather Wang Lung had taken his wives, and very different too from the old formal weddings of his sons in ways set and appointed by the forefathers. In these days the city people wed their sons and daughters in many ways, in some more old and in some more new, but be sure Ai-lan and her lover must have the very newest. Therefore there was much music from foreign instruments hired for the day and there were flowers set everywhere, and these alone cost many hundreds of silver pieces. The guests came in all the various garb of their races, for Ai-lan and her lover counted such people among their friends. These all gathered in a vast hall of the hotel. Outside, the streets were choked with their vehicles and with the idle and the poor who pressed to see what they could, and to try what they could do to gain something from the day, to beg or to slip their hands unseen into pockets of the throng and take what they found there, although guards had been hired to hold them back.

Through this great throng Yuan and the mother and Ai-lan rode, the driver incessantly sounding his horn lest some be crushed, and when the guards saw their vehicle and the bride, within, they darted forward shouting out, “Make way — make way!”

Through all this din Ai-lan rode proudly, silent now, her head bent a little beneath the long veil held to her head by the two pearls and by a circle of small fragrant orange flowers. She held between her hands a great cluster of white lilies and small white roses, very fragrant.

Never had there been so beautiful a creature. Even Yuan was awed by her beauty. A little cool set smile hung on her lips, though she would not let it out, and her eyes glittered black and white beneath her lowered lids, for well she knew her own beauty, and there was not one whit of it she did not know and had not fostered to its utmost height. The very crowd fell silent before her, and when she stepped out, its thousand eyes fastened on her hungrily and drank in all her beauty, at first silently and then with restless murmurings, — ”Ah, see her!” “Ah, how fair, how fair!” “Ah, never such a bride was seen!” And be sure Ai-lan heard it all, but she made as if she did not.

So, too, when she came into the great hall, when the music set the moment, did all the crowded guests turn their heads and that same wondering silence came upon them. Yuan, who had gone first and stood with the man who was to wed her, saw her corning slowly between the guests, two little white clad children before her scattering roses for her to tread upon, and maidens with her, too, clad in silks of many hues, and he could not but share the wonder at her beauty. Yet, even so, even at that moment, although he did not know it until afterward, he saw Mei-ling very clearly, for she was with Ai-lan as attendant.

Yes, after all the wedding was over, and the contract read between the two, and when they had bowed to those who stood for the two families, and bowed to the guests and all to whom such courtesy was due, when all was over, the mighty feast and the merry-making and the wedded pair were gone to have a holiday together, then thinking of it all upon his return to his home, Yuan remembered, and he was surprised he did, the girl Mei-ling. She had walked alone before Ai-lan, and even Ai-lan’s radiance had not made Mei-ling seem unnoticeable. Now Yuan remembered very well she wore a soft long robe of apple green, the sleeves cut very short, and the collar high, so that above the color her face looked clear and somewhat pale and resolute. The very difference to Ai-lan made her hold her own against such beauty. For Mei-ling’s face owed nothing to its color or to its changefulness or sparkling eyes or smile, as Ai-lan’s did. Its good high look was from the perfect line of bone beneath the firm clear flesh, a line which, Yuan thought, would keep its strength and nobleness long past its youth. She looked older now than her age was. But some day in her age her straight low nose, her clean oval cheeks and chin, her sharp-cut lips, the straightness of her short black hair shaped smoothly against her head, would give her youth again. Life could not greatly change her. Even as now a certain gravity was hers, so in her maturity she would still be young.

Yuan remembered this gravity. Of all that wedding party only two were grave, the mother and Mei-ling. Yes, even at the feast, when wines of every foreign sort were poured out, and all the tables full of guests were crying out such wit as they did not know they had before, when glass was lifted high to glass, and the bride and groom joined in the laughter as they made their way between the guests, even then Yuan saw at his table that the mother’s face was grave, and so was Mei-ling’s. These two talked together in low tones often and directed the servants here and there, and took counsel with the master of the hotel, and Yuan thought they were grave because of all these cares, and he let it pass and looked about the brilliant hall.

But that night when they were alone after all was over, and the house was silent save for servants passing here and there to set covers right again and bring order everywhere, the lady sat in her chair so silent and downcast that Yuan felt he must say something to make her lift her heart up somehow, and so he said kindly, “Ai-lan was beautiful — the loveliest I ever saw — the loveliest woman.”

The lady answered listlessly, “Yes, she was beautiful. She has these three years been counted the most beautiful among the young rich ladies of this city — famous for her beauty.” She sat awhile and then she said with strange bitterness, “Yes, and I wish it had not been so. It has been the curse of my own life and of my poor child’s that she has been so beautiful. She has needed to do nothing. She has not needed to use her mind or hands or anything — only to let people look at her, and praise flowed in upon her and desire and all that others work to gain. Such beauty only a very great spirit can withstand, and Ai-lan is not great enough to bear it!”

At this Mei-ling looked up from a piece of sewing she had in her hands and cried softly and beseechingly, “Mother!”

But the lady would say on, as if for once her bitterness was more than she could bear, “I say only what is true, my child. Against this beauty have I fought my whole life, but I have lost. … Yuan, you are my son. I can tell you. You wonder that I let her wed this man. So may you wonder, for I do not like or trust him. But it had to be — Ai-lan is with child by him.”

So simply did the lady say these dreadful words. Yuan, hearing them, felt the beating of his heart stop. He was yet young enough to feel the horror of this thing, that his own sister…He glanced in great shame at Mei-ling. Her head was bent over the bit of cloth she held, and she said nothing. Her face was not changed, only more grave and quiet.

But the lady caught Yuan’s glance and understood it. She said, You need not mind, for Mei-ling knows everything. I could not have borne my life if I had not had her. She it was who helped me to plan and know what I must do. I had no one, Yuan. And she stayed a sister to my poor pretty foolish child, and that one leaned upon her, too. She even would not let me send for you, Yuan. Once I thought I must have a son to help me, for I am not used in all these new ways of divorce, and I could not tell your eldest cousin even, not anything, for I was ashamed. But Mei-ling would not let me spoil your years abroad.”

Still Yuan could not say a word. His blood flushed up to his cheeks and he sat confused and shamed, and angry too. And the lady, understanding very well this confusion, smiled sadly and said once more, “I dared not tell your father, Yuan, whose only simple remedy is killing. And even if he had not been so, I could not tell him. It is a sorry end to all my care for Ai-lan, to train and school my daughter in such freedom as this! Is this the new day, then? In the old days the two would have suffered death for such a sin! But now they will suffer nothing. They will come back and live merrily and Ai-lan’s child will come too soon, but none will whisper more loudly than behind their hands, because today many children come too soon. It is the new day.”

The lady smiled a mirthless smile but there were tears in her eyes. Then Mei-ling folded up the bit of silk she sewed and thrust her needle in it and came and said soothingly, “You are so tired you do not know what you say. You have done everything for Ai-lan and well she knows it and so do we all. Come and sleep and I will fetch a broth for you to drink.”

Then the lady rose obedient to the young girl as though it were a thing she had often done, and went out leaning on her shoulder gratefully, and Yuan watched the two go, still having nothing he could say, so confounded was he by what he had heard.

So Ai-lan, his own sister, had done so wild a thing! Thus had she used her freedom. Into his own life through her had come again this hot wild thing which he had twice escaped. He went slowly to his own room, very troubled, and troubled in his old divided way, as though nothing could ever come clearly and simply to him, neither love nor pain. For now half he was ashamed of Ai-lan’s recklessness, because such things ought not to happen to his own sister, in whom he wanted to have nothing but whole pride, and yet half he was troubled because there was a hidden sweetness in this wild thing and he wanted it for himself. It was the first doubtfulness to fall upon him in his own country.

When this marriage day was over Yuan knew he must not in decency delay his going to his father, and he was eager to be gone, and the more eager because he found it sad in this home now. The mother was more quiet even than she ever had been and Mei-ling devoted her time steadfastly to her school. In the two days while Yuan made ready to go away, he scarcely saw the girl. Once he thought she avoided him, and then he said to himself, “It is because of what my mother said of Ai-lan. It is natural for a maid so modest to remember that,” and he liked this modesty. Yet when the time came when he must set forth and take the train north, he found he wanted to bid Mei-ling good-bye, and not leave to be away the month or two and not see her again. He even waited, therefore, and chose a later train by night, so that he could see her come home from her school, could dine alone with the lady and with her and talk a little quietly with them before he went.

And as they talked he found he listened for the girl’s speech, very clear and soft and pleasant, always, and not shy and giggling as the laughter of maids is sometimes. She seemed always busy at some bit of sewing, and once or twice when a servant came in to ask a question of the next day’s meats or some such thing, Yuan heard her ask Mei-ling instead of the lady, and Mei-ling gave directions as though she had done it many times. Nor was she shy in speech. This night, since the lady was more quiet than usual, and Yuan silent, too, Mei-ling talked on and told of what she did in school, and how she had long hoped to be a doctor.

“My foster mother made me think of it at first,” she said and threw her quiet beaming look upon the lady. “And now I like it very well. Only it has meant a long time to study, and a great cost, and this my foster mother has done for me, and I shall always care for her in return; where I am she shall be, too. I want a hospital of my own one day in some city, a place for children and for women, and I want a garden in the center, and round it buildings full of beds and places for the sick, — not too large, not more than I could do, but all very clean and pretty.”

So this young woman planned out her wish and in her earnestness she let her sewing lie, and her eyes began to beam and her lips to smile, and Yuan watching her, his cigarette between his fingers, thought in surprise, “Why, this maid is fair enough,” and he forgot to listen to her while he looked at her. Suddenly he felt he was not pleased and when he looked into himself to see why it was, he found he did not like to hear this maid plan out a life alone for herself and so sufficient that she needed no one else in it. It seemed then to him that women ought not to think it well to have no thought of marriage in their minds. But even as he was so thinking, he saw the lady’s face. For the first time since the marriage day her eyes were lit with interest and she heard all the young girl said. And now she said warmly, “If I were not too old I would myself do something in that hospital. It is a better day than mine was. It is a very good day when women are not forced to wed!”

This Yuan heard her say, and while he believed it, or would have said he did, still it made him feel a little strangely, too. Somehow he took it as a thing not to be gainsaid or questioned that all women ought to wed, although it was not what a man could talk about with two women. Yet their eagerness for freedom left a little coolness in him, so that when he said farewell he felt less warmly than he thought he would and bewildered in himself because he was hurt somewhere within him, but he did not know just where or how the hurt was.

Long after he had lain himself down in the narrow berth of the train he thought of this, and of the new women of his country, and of how they were, Ai-lan so free she made her mother sad, and yet this same mother rejoiced in all Mei-ling’s great free plans for her life. Then Yuan thought with a little bitterness, “I doubt she can be so very free. She will find it hard to do all she plans. And she will want a husband and children some day as all women do, doubtless.”

And he remembered the women he had known, how in any land they turned at least secretly to a man. Yet, when his memory searched Mei-ling’s face and speech, he could not truly say he had ever seen one sign of that searching in her look or voice. And he wondered if there were some youth she dreamed about, and he remembered that in the school she went to there were young men, too. Suddenly as a wind blows out of a still summer’s night he was jealous of those youths he did not know, so jealous he could not even smile at himself or ask himself why he should care what Mei-ling dreamed. He planned soberly how he must hint to the lady that she ought to warn Mei-ling, and how she ought to guard the young woman better, and he took a heed for her he never had taken for any living soul, and never once did he think to ask why he did.

So planning, as the train swayed and creaked beneath him, he fell into a troubled sleep at last.

There came much now to drive all these thoughts from Yuan’s mind for a while. Since his return from the foreign country he had lived only in the great coastal city. Not once had he seen any other thing than its wide streets, filled by day and night with vehicles of every sort, with motors and with public tramways and with people warm and brightly dressed and busy each in his own way. If there were poor ones, the sweating ricksha pullers, the lesser vendors, yet these in summer seemed not so piteous and there were not the winter beggars, who had fled from flood or famine to try a life in city streets. Rather the city seemed very gay to Yuan, a place measuring well beside any he had seen any where, and in it there was the comfort and the wealth of his cousin’s new house and the display of the marriage and all the shining wedding gifts. And as he left the lady had pressed into his hand a thick folded heap of paper which he knew was money, and he took it easily, thinking that his father sent it to her for him. He had almost forgotten now that there were poor even in the world, his own house seemed so rich and easily fed.

But when he woke in the train the next day and looked out of the window, it was not to see such a country as he thought was his. The train had stopped beside a certain mighty river, and there all must descend and cross in boats and take up their journey again on the other side. So Yuan did also, crowding with the others on an open, wide-bottomed ferry boat, which still seemed not wide enough for all the people on it, so that Yuan, coming last, must stand upon the outside near the water.

He remembered very well that he had crossed this river when he went south before, but then he did not see what he now saw. For now his eyes, long shaped to other sights, saw these things newly. He saw upon the river a very city of small boats, tightly packed together, from whence a stench rose that sickened him. This was the eighth month of the year, and though it was scarcely more than dawn the day was thick with heat. There was no great light from the sun, the sky was dark and low with clouds, pressing down so that it seemed to cover the water and the land, and there was no least wind anywhere. In the dull sluggish light the people pushed their boats aside to make way for the ferry, and men scrambled out of little hatches, nearly naked, their faces sunk and sodden with the sleepless night of heat, and women screamed at crying children and scratched their tangled hair, and naked children wailed, hungry and unwashed. These crowded tiny boats held each its fill of men and women and many children, and from the very water where they lived and which they drank the stench arose of filth they had poured into it.

Upon this, then, Yuan suddenly opened his eyes that morning. The picture lasted scarcely a moment and was gone, for the ferry boat swung clear of the little boats against the shore, into the cleanness of the middle of the river, and as suddenly Yuan was looking no more into sodden faces but into the swift yellow water of the river. Then almost before he could grasp the change, the ferry half turned against the current, and crept past a vast white-painted ship, rising as clean as a snowy peak against the grey sky, and Yuan and all the crowd looked up to see above them the prow of a foreign ship, and the hanging blue and red of a foreign flag. But when the ferry had crept through to the other side, there were also the black points of cannon and these were foreign cannon.

Then Yuan forgot the stench of the poor and their little crowded boats. He looked up and down the river as he went on and upon its yellow breast he counted seven of these great foreign ships of war, here in the heart of his country. He forgot all else for this moment as he counted them. An anger rose in him against these ships. Even as he stepped on shore he could not but look back on them with hate and question why they were there. Yet they were there, white, immaculate, invincible. Out of those black cannon, aimed steadily at shore and shore, had more than once leaped fire and death upon the land. Yuan remembered very well that it was so. Staring at the ships, he forgot everything except that out of those cannon fire could come upon his people and he muttered bitterly, “They have no right to be here — we ought to drive them out of all our waters!”, and remembering and in bitterness he mounted into another train and took up his way again to his father.

Now here was a strange thing that Yuan found in himself; so long as he could maintain his anger against these white ships and remember how they had fired on his people, and so long as he could remember every evil thing whereby his people had been oppressed by other outer peoples, and these were many, for he had learned in school of evil treaties forced upon the emperors of old by armies sent to ravage and to plunder, and even in his lifetime had there been such things, and even in the great city while he had been away young lads had been shot down by white guards for crying out their country’s cause — so long as he could remember all these wrongs that day, he was happy enough and filled with a sort of fire, and he thought in all he did, while he ate, and while he sat and looked out over the passing fields and villages, “I must do something for my country. Meng is right and better than I am. He is more true than I am because he is so single. I am too weak. I think them all good because of one good old teacher or — or a woman clever with her tongue. I ought to be like Meng and hate them heartily, and so help my people by my strong hating. For only hate is strong enough to help us, now—” So he thought to himself, remembering the alien ships.

But even as Yuan would have clung to this wish of his, he could not but feel himself grow cooler, and this coolness grew in little subtle ways. A great fat man sat in the seat across from him, so near that Yuan could not always keep his eyes away from his mighty bulk. As the day wore on to greater heat, the sun burning through the windless clouds upon the metal roof of the train, the air within grew burning, too, and this man took off all his garments, save his little inner trousers, and there he sat in all his naked flesh, his breasts, his belly rolls of thick yellow oily flesh, and his very jowls hanging to his shoulders. And as if this were not enough, he coughed, in spite of summer, and he made much of his cough and rumbled at it all he could and spat his phlegm out so often, that stay where he would Yuan could not avoid it always. So into his right anger for his country’s sake crept his petulance against this man who was his countryman. At last a gloom came into Yuan. It was almost too hot for life in this shaking train, and he began to see what he did not want to see. For in the heat and weariness, the travellers were past caring for anything except how to live to the journey’s end. Children wailed and dragged at their mothers’ breasts and at every station flies flew into open windows and settled on the sweating flesh and on the spittle upon the floors and on the food and on the children’s faces. And Yuan, who never noticed a fly in his youth because flies were everywhere and why should they matter, now that he had been elsewhere and learned the death they carried, was in an agony of daintiness against them, and he could not bear to have one settle on his glass of tea or on a bit of bread he bought from a vendor or on the dish of rice and eggs he bought at noon from the servant in the train. Yet he could not but ask himself what use was all this hatred against the flies when he saw the blackness of the servant’s hands, and the sticky grime upon the cloth with which the man wiped the dish before he poured the rice in. Then in his bitterness Yuan shouted at him, “Leave the dish unwiped rather than touch it with such a rag as that!” At this the man stared and grinned most amiably and then at this moment feeling how very great the heat was, he took the cloth and wiped his sweating face and hung it on his neck again where he carried it. Now Yuan indeed could scarcely bear to touch his food. He put down his spoon and cried out against the man and he cried out against the flies and all the filth upon the floor. Then the man was outraged at such injustice and he cried out for heaven to witness and he said, “Here am I, one man, and I have only one man’s work to do, and floors are not my work and flies are not my work! And who can spend his life in summer to kill flies? I swear if all the people in this nation spent all their lives to kill the flies they could not prevail against them, for flies are natural!” Then rid of his anger thus the man burst out laughing very heartily, for he was of a good temper even under anger, and he went his way laughing.

But all the travellers, being so weary and ready to look at anything or listen anywhere, had listened to everything said, and they all took part against Yuan and with the servant and some cried out, “It is true there is no end of flies. They come from none knows where but they have their life to live too, doubtless!” And one aged lady said, “Aye, and they have a right to it. As for me, I would not dare to take life even from a fly!” And another said scornfully, “He is one of those students come back from abroad to try his little foreign notions on us!”

At this the large fat man near Yuan, who had eaten mightily of rice and meats and was now drinking tea very gravely, belching loudly as he drank, said suddenly, “So that is what he is! Here I have sat my whole day through staring at him to see what he was and making nothing of him!” And he gazed on at Yuan in pleased wonder, now that he knew what he was, drinking as he stared and belching up his wind until Yuan could not bear to see him, and looked steadfastly away into the flat green country.

He was too proud to answer. Nor could he eat. He sat on looking out of the window hour after hour. Under the hot cloudy sky the country grew more poor, more flat, more flat with wastes of water as the train sped north. At every station the people looked to Yuan more wretched, more plagued with boils and sore eyes and even though there was water everywhere they were not washed, and many of the women had their feet bound still in the old evil way he thought was gone. He looked at them and he could not bear them. “These are my people!” he said bitterly within himself at last, and he forgot the white foreign ships of war.

Yet there was one more bitterness that he must bear. At the far end of the car sat a white man whom Yuan had not seen. Now he came past to descend from the train, at a certain little mud-walled country town where he lived. And as he passed Yuan he noted him and his young sad face, and he remembered how Yuan had cried out against the flies, and he said in his own tongue, meaning to be kind and seeing what Yuan was, “Don’t be discouraged, friend! I fight against the flies, too, and shall keep on fighting!”

Yuan looked up suddenly at the foreign voice and words There he saw a small thin white man, a little common-looking fellow in a grey cotton suit of clothes and a white sun helmet, and with a common face, not newly shaven, though the pale blue eyes were kind enough, and Yuan saw he was a foreign priest. He could not answer. This was the bitterest thing to bear, that here was a white man to see what he had seen, and know what he had known this day. He turned away and would not answer. But from his seat he saw the man get off the train and trudge through the crowd and turn towards the mud-walled city. Then Yuan remembered that other white man who had said, “If you would live as I have lived—”

And Yuan asked himself accusingly, “Why did I never see all this before? I have seen nothing until now!”

Yet it was only the beginning of what Yuan must see. For when at last he stood before his father, Wang the Tiger, he saw him as he never knew he was. There the Tiger stood, clinging to the door post of his hall waiting for his son, and all his old strength was gone, even his old petulance, and there was only an old grey man, whose long white whiskers dropped down sparsely on his chin, and whose eyes were red and filmed with age and with too much wine-drinking, so that until Yuan came near he could not see him, but must listen for his voice.

Now Yuan had seen with wonder how weedy were the courts that he came through and how few the soldiers were who stood about, a few ragged idle fellows, and how the very guard at the gate had no gun and let him come in as he would and asked no questions and gave no courteous greeting as he should to his general’s son. But Yuan was not ready to see his father look so gaunt and thin. The old Tiger stood there in an old robe of grey stuff, and it was even patched upon the elbows where his bones had worn through upon the arm of his chair, and on his feet were slippers of cloth and the heels turned under, and his sword was not in his hand now.

Then Yuan cried out, “My father!” and the old man answered trembling, “Is it really you, my son?” And they held each other’s hands, and Yuan felt tears rush to his eyes to see his father’s old face, the nose and mouth and dimmed eyes all somehow bigger than they used to be and too big in the shrunken face. It seemed to Yuan, staring at the face, that this could not be his father, not the Tiger whom he used to fear, whose frowns and black brows were once so terrible, whose sword was never far from his hand, even when he slept. Yet it was the Tiger, for when he knew it was Yuan he called out, “Bring the wine!”

There was a slow stirring and the hare-lipped trusty man, himself aged now, but still his general’s man, came forward, and he gave his greeting to his general’s son, his crooked face beaming, and he poured out wine, while the father took the son’s hand and led him in.

Now did another show himself, and yet another whom Yuan had not seen before, or thought he had not, two grave little prosperous men, one old, one young. The elder was a small, shriveled man, dressed very neatly in an old fashion of long robe of dark grey small-patterned silk, and on his upper body was a sleeved jacket of dull black silk, and on his head a little round silk cap and on it a white cord button denoting mourning for some near relative. About his ankles, too, higher than the black velvet shoes he wore, his trousers were tied with bands of white cotton cloth. Above this sombre garb his small old face peered out, smooth as though he still could not grow a beard, but very wrinkled, his eyes as shining sharp as a weasel’s eyes are.

The young man was like him except his robe was dull blue, and he wore the mourning that a son wears for his dead mother, and his eyes were not sharp, but wistful as an ape’s little hollow eyes are when it looks at human men to whom it is akin and yet not near enough to understand them or be understood. This was the other’s son.

Now as Yuan looked at them uncertainly, the elder said in his dried high voice, “I am your second uncle, nephew. I have not seen you since you were a lad, I think. This is my eldest son, your cousin.”

At this Yuan gave surprised greeting to the two, not too gladly, because they were very strange to him in their staid old-fashioned looks and ways, but still he was courteous, and more courteous than the Tiger, who paid no heed to them at all, but only sat now and stared joyfully at Yuan.

And indeed Yuan was much moved by this childlike pleasure his father had in his return. The old Tiger could not take his eyes from Yuan, and when he had stared awhile he burst into silent laughter, and rose from his seat and went to Yuan and felt his arms and his strong shoulders and laughed again and muttered, “Strong as I was at his age — aye, I remember I had such arms I could throw an eight-foot spear of iron and wield a great stone weight. In the south under that old general I used to do it of an evening to amuse my fellows. Stand up and let me see your thighs!”

Yuan stood up obediently, amused and patient, and the Tiger turned to his brother and laughed aloud and cried in some of his old vigor, “You see this son of mine? I’ll swear you have not one to match him out of all your four!”

Wang the Merchant answered nothing to this, except he smiled his little forbearing meager smile. But the younger man said patiently and carefully, “I think my two younger brothers are as large, and my next brother is larger than I, since I am smallest of them all, although the eldest.” And he blinked his mournful eyes at them as he made his report.

Now Yuan, listening, asked curiously, “How are these other cousins of mine and what do they do?”

The son of Wang the Merchant here looked at his father, but since that elder sat silent, and wore the same small smile, he took courage and answered Yuan. “It is I who work to aid my father with his rents and grain shop. Once we all did it, but the times are very evil now in these parts. The tenants have grown so lordly that they will not pay the rents they should. And the grain, too, is harvested in lesser quantities. My elder brother is your father’s, for my father gave him to my uncle. And my next brother, he would go out to see the world and he went and is in a shop in the south, an accountant, because he fingers the abacus very well, and he is prosperous, since much silver passes through his hands. My third brother is at home, and his family, and the youngest, he goes to school, for we have a school now in our town of a new sort, and we expect him to be wed as soon as it is decent, for my mother died a few months back.”

Then Yuan remembering, remembered a great blowsy lively country woman he had seen in his uncle’s house the once his father took him there, and how she made merry always, and he wondered to think she must lie still and dead while this little creeping man, his uncle, lived on and on so little changed. He asked, “How did it happen?”

Then the son looked at his father and they were both silent until the Tiger hearing what was asked answered, as if here were a thing which had to do with him, “How did it happen? Why, we have an enemy, our family has, and now he is a little wandering robber chieftain in the hills about our old village. Once I took a city from him in the fairest way, by open guile and siege, but he has not forgiven me for it. I swear he settled near our lands on purpose and he watched for my kin, I know. And this brother of mine is cautious and found out this robber hated us, and he would not go himself to take his share of crops and taxes from the tenants, but he sent his wife, she being only a woman, and the robbers caught her on her homeward way, and robbed her and cut her head off and rolled it down beside the road. I tell my brother, ‘Wait a few months now until I gather up my men again. I swear I’ll search that robber out — I swear I’ll — I swear I’ll …’ ” The Tiger’s voice dragged in weakening wrath and he put out his hand blindly, searching, and the old trusty man standing near put a wine bowl in it and said drowsily, as if from long habit, “Quiet yourself, my general. Do not be angry, lest you grow ill.” And he shifted on his tired old feet and yawned a little and stared happily at Yuan, admiring him.

Now though Wang the Merchant had said nothing during all this tale, when Yuan looked at him to speak some courteous comfort, he was surprised to see his uncle’s little old shining eyes were wet with tears, and still silent, the old man took the edge of first one sleeve and then the other and carefully wiped each eye, and then in his spare stealthy fashion he drew his dry old hand across his nose and Yuan was so astonished he could not speak, to see this cold old man shed tears.

The son saw it, too, and with his small wistful eyes upon his father he said mournfully to Yuan, “The servant who was with her said if she had been silent and more obedient to them they would not have been so quick to kill. But she had a very swift loud tongue and all her life long she had used it as she liked, and she had a temper always quick to boil, and she shouted at the very first, ‘Shall I give you my good silver, you sons of cursed mothers?’ Yes, the servant ran as fast as his feet could take him when she cried so loudly, but when he looked back her head was off already, and we lost the whole of those rents with her for they took everything.”

Thus the son spoke in the evenest little garrulous voice, the words running out one like another in flatness, as though he had his mother’s loose tongue inside his father’s body. But he was a good son, too, who had loved his mother, and now his voice broke and he went out to the court and coughed to ease himself and wipe his eyes and mourn a little.

As for Yuan, not knowing what else to do, he rose and poured a bowl of tea for his uncle and felt himself in a dream here in this room, a stranger with these folk who were his own blood. Yes, he had a life to live they could not conceive, and their life was small as death to him. Suddenly, though why he did not know, he remembered Mary, of whom for a long time he had no thought. … Why now should she come to his mind as clearly as though a door were opened to show her there, as he had been used to see her on a windy day in spring across the sea, her fine dark hair blown about her face, her skin white and red, her eyes their steady grey? She had no place here. This place she could not know. The pictures of his country she had been used to speak of, the pictures she had made for her own mind, were only pictures. It was well, Yuan thought passionately, staring at his father and at these others, sunk back in themselves, now that the first keen edge of meeting was over, — oh, it was very well he had not loved her! He looked about the old hall. There was dust everywhere, the dust long left by a few old careless servants. Between the tiles upon the floor, the green mold grew, and there were stains upon the tiles of spilt wine and of old spittle and of ashes and of dripped greasy food. The broken lattices of shell had been mended with paper, hanging now in sheets, and even in this daylight rats ran to and fro upon the beams above. The old Tiger sat nodding, his warm wine drunk, and his jaw dropped and all his great old body slack and helpless. Above him on a nail his sword hung in its scabbard. Now for the first time Yuan saw it, although he had missed its shining nearness the first moment when he saw his father. It was still beautiful, though sheathed. The scabbard was beautiful in spite of dust in all the carven patterns on it and although the red silken tassels hung down faded and gnawed by rats.

…A h, he was very glad he had not loved that foreign woman. Let her keep her dreams of what his country was! Let her never know the truth!

A great sob rose in Yuan’s throat. … Had the old passed forever from him? He thought of the old Tiger, and of the little shriveled mean-faced man, his uncle, and his son. These, these were still his own and he was tied to them by the blood in his own veins, which he could not spill out if he would. However he might long to be free of all their kind, their blood must run in him so long as he lived.

It was very well that Yuan should know his youth was over and that he must be a man now, and look only to himself, for on that night while he lay alone in the old room where he had slept as a child and as a lad, his guards about him, and where he had sat alone and wept himself to sleep when he ran home from the school of war, the old trusty man came creeping in. Yuan had but just lain himself down to sleep, for his father had made a little feast for him that night and he had bidden his two captains in and they had eaten and drunk together for welcome to Yuan. Afterwards Yuan had let his father lean on him and taken him to his own door before he came to bed himself.

For a while, lying in his bed before he slept, he listened to what he never used to hear, the night sounds of the little town where his father had lived so long encamped. He thought to himself, “If I had been asked I would have said there were no sounds in this little town at night.” And yet there were the barking of the dogs up the street, the crying of a child, a murmur of voices not yet stilled in sleep, a solitary tolling note now and again of some temple bell, and clear and waning above it all, although not near, the crying agony of some woman’s voice seeking for the wandering soul of her child now dying. No sound was loud, for there were silent courts between him and the gate, and yet Yuan, somehow newly keen to everything because he felt himself a stranger here where once he was not strange, heard each separate sound.

Then suddenly there was the squeak of his door upon its wooden hinges and the flare of a candle, and he saw the door open and there was the old trusty man, who bent and set his candle carefully on the floor, and panting a little because his back was stiff he stood again and closed the door and thrust the bar through. Yuan waited, wondering in surprise what he had to say.

He came on his slow old feet up to Yuan’s bed, and seeing Yuan had not drawn the curtains he said, “You are not sleeping, young sir? I have something I must say.”

Then Yuan, seeing how this man’s old body bent at the knees, said kindly, “Sit, then, while you speak.” But the man knew his place and was unwilling for a while, until at last he yielded to Yuan’s kindness, and sat down on the footstool beside the bed and he began to hiss and whisper through his split lip and though his eyes were kind and honest, he was so hideous that Yuan could not bear to see him, however good he was.

Yet soon he forgot how the old man looked, in his dismay at what he heard. For out of a long, winding, broken story Yuan’s mind began to discern something more and more clearly, and at last the old man put his two old hands upon his dried old knees and whispered loudly, “So every year, little general, your father has borrowed more heavily of your uncle. First he borrowed a great sum to set you free out of that prison, little general, and then every year to keep you safe abroad he borrowed more. Well, and he let his soldiers go and let them go until now I swear he has not a hundred left to fight with. He could not go to war; his men have left him for other lords of war. They were but hirelings and when the wage is stopped, shall hirelings stay? And the handful he has left are not soldiers. They are ragged thieves and wastrels of his army who live here because he gives them food, and the townspeople hate them because they go from door to door demanding money, and having guns they must be feared. Yet they are only armed beggars. Once I told the general what they did, because he has always been so honorable, he has never let his men take more than their due for booty, and never did he let them take from people in times of peace. Well, and then he went out and roared and drew his brows down and pulled his whiskers at them, but what of that, little sir? They saw him old and shaking even while he roared, and though they pretended to be afraid, when he was gone I saw them laugh and they went straight out again to their begging and still they do as they like. And what use to tell my general more? It is better for him to have peace. And so he borrows money every month, I know, because your uncle comes here often now, and he would not if it were not something for money. And your father gets money somehow, because he has it and I know people do not give him much tax these days, and his soldiers who force what is given keep most of it, and he could not have enough if your uncle did not give it.”

But Yuan could not believe it all at once and he said in dismay, “Yet if my father has dispersed his army as much as you say he has, and he gives only food to his men now, he cannot need so much money as he did. And his father left him land, I think.”

Then the old man bent close and he whispered piercingly, “That land is all your uncle’s now, I swear — or else as good as his, for how will your father pay him what is owed? And, little general, do you think it has cost nothing for you to go to foreign countries? Yes, he has let your own mother do with little enough, and your own two sisters have been wed to tradesmen in this little town, but every month your father has sent this money to that other lady for you.”

In this moment Yuan perceived how childish he had been all these years. Year after year he had taken it as a thing not to be doubted that his father should pay for all he had wanted. He had not been wasteful and he had not gamed or wanted many fine garments or done those things that young men sometimes do to waste their parents’ goods. But year after year his least needs had cost his father hundreds of pieces of silver. And now he thought of Ai-lan’s silken gowns and of her wedding, yes, and of the lady’s house and of her foundlings. And while Yuan knew the lady had some silver left her from her own father, whose only child she had been, so that he left her no mean sum of money, yet Yuan doubted if it could pay for all.

Then Yuan felt his heart rush out to his old father that all these years he had made no complaint, but by borrowing and contriving he had not let his son suffer for a want of silver. And Yuan said in the gravity of his new manhood, “I thank you that you have told me. Tomorrow I will see my uncle and my cousin and know what has taken place and what their hold is on my father—” and then as though this suddenly came to him as a new thought he added, “and on me!”

Through the night Yuan could not forget this thought. Again and again he woke and though he might comfort himself and remember that after all they were of one blood, and therefore debt is not really debt, yet Yuan felt a weight upon him when he thought of these two. Yes, they were his flesh and blood though he felt himself as alien from them as though his were another race. Once, pondering on this in the black loneliness of night, it came to him that here in his own childhood bed, within his father’s house, he felt as foreign as he had across the sea. It struck with a sudden bleakness, “How is it I have no home anywhere?” And all the days upon the train and all he had seen rose up to sicken him again and make him shrink away and he said suddenly aloud in a low whispering cry, “I am homeless!”

Then he hastened his heart from that cry, for it was dreadful to him and he could not bear to understand it.

So on the next day he reminded himself many times that these were his own blood after all, and that he was no true stranger, and this his own blood could not harm him. Nor would he blame his old father. He told himself he knew easily how his father had been compelled by age and by his very love for his son to go into debt, and who better to borrow of than his own brother? So in the morning Yuan comforted himself. But he was glad it was a fair day, very fair and cool with little winds of coming autumn, for he felt it easier to find comfort when the sun shone into the courts, and the heat was blown out of the rooms by the stirring winds.

Now after they had eaten, on the next morning the Tiger went out to see his men, and this day he made a show before Yuan that he was very busy for his men, and he took down his sword and shouted to the trusty man to come and wipe it clean and he stood quarrelling because it was so dusty, so that Yuan could not but smile and comprehend a little sadly, too, what was the truth.

But when he saw his father gone it came to Yuan that here was a good time to talk privately with his uncle and his cousin and so he said frankly, after courtesies, “Uncle, I know my father owes you certain moneys. Since he is older than he was, I want to know what burdens are on him, and do my share.”

Now Yuan was prepared for much, but he was not prepared for such obligations as he now found. For those two men of business looked at each other and the younger went and fetched an account book, such a book as is used to tally moneys in a shop, a large soft paper-covered book, and this he gave with both hands to his father, and his father took it and opened it and began to read forth in his dry voice the year, the month, the day, when the Tiger had begun to borrow sums from him. And Yuan listening, heard the years begin with that one when he had gone south to school, and it continued even until now, the sums mounting every time and with such interest that at the end Wang the Merchant read forth this sum, “Eleven thousand and five hundred and seventeen pieces of silver in all.”

These words Yuan heard and he sat as though he had been struck down by a stone. The merchant closed up the book again and gave it to his son and his son placed it on the table and the two men waited. And Yuan said in a voice smaller than his was usually, though he tried to make it his own, “What security did my father give?”

Then Wang the Merchant answered carefully and drily, scarcely moving his lips at all, as his way was when he spoke, “I did naturally remember that he is my brother, and I required no such security as I might from a stranger. Moreover, for a while your father’s rank and army were a safeguard for me, but now no longer. For since my son’s mother died as she did, I feel my safety is all gone when I go out into the countryside. I feel no one fears me any more, and all know your father’s power is not what it once was. But truly, no war lord’s power is what it once was, with the new revolution in the south and threatening to press its way even here to the north. The times are very evil. There is rebellion everywhere and tenants are bold upon the land as they have never been. Yet I remember that your father is my brother, and I have not even taken his land for security, though indeed it is not enough for all the silver I have given your father for you.”

At these last two words, “for you,” Yuan looked at his uncle but he said nothing. He waited for the uncle to go on. And the old man said, “I have preferred to put my moneys out for you, and let you be security in what ways you could be. There are many things you can do for me, Yuan, and for my sons, who are your kin.”

So this old man spoke, not unkindly, either, but very reasonably and as any elder in a great family may to his junior. But when Yuan heard these few words and heard the dry small voice and saw his uncle’s little weazened face, he was dismayed, and he asked, “And what can I do, uncle, who have not even any work yet fixed for myself?”

“You must find that work,” the uncle replied. “It is well known these days that any young man who has been to foreign countries can ask a very high wage, as much wage as in the old days a governor could hope for. I have taken pains, before I lent so much for you, to know this from my second son who is accountant in the south, and he tells me it is so, that this foreign learning is as good a business nowadays as can be found. And it is best of all if you can find a place where money passes by, because my son says there are higher taxes taken now for all the new things to be done than ever have been taken from the people, and the new rulers have the highest plans of great highways and mighty tombs for their heroes and foreign houses and every sort of thing. If you could find a good high place where silver must go in and out, it would be easy for you and a help to us all.”

This the old man said, and Yuan could answer nothing. He saw before him in this clear instant the life his uncle planned for him. But he said nothing, only stared at his uncle, yet not seeing him, either, only seeing the narrow mean old mind shaping these plans. He knew that according to the old laws his uncle might so plan and might so claim his years, and when he remembered this, Yuan’s heart rose as it never had against the miserable rights of those old times, which had been like logs chained to the feet of the young, so that they might never run swiftly. Yet he did not cry this forth. For when he thought of this, he thought of his old father, too, and how not in any willfulness the old Tiger had bound his son like this, but only because there was no other way whereby he could find money to give Yuan his desire. So in uncertainty Yuan could only sit and loathe his uncle secretly.

But the old man did not catch the young man’s loathing. He went on again in the same flat little voice, “There are also other things that you may do. I have my two younger sons who have no livelihood. The times are so ill now that my business is not what it was, and ever since I heard how well my elder brother’s son does in a bank, I have wondered why my sons should not, too. So when you have found a good place for yourself, if you will take my two younger sons with you and find places for them under you, it will be part payment of the debt, and so I shall consider it, depending on the size of the sum they have each month.”

Now Yuan cried out bitterly, and he could no longer hold back his bitterness, “So I am sold as security — my years are yours!”

But the old man opened his eyes at this and answered very peaceably, “I do not know how you mean those words. Is it not a duty to help one’s own family as one can? Surely I have spent myself for my two brothers, and one of them your father. I have been their agent on the land these many years, and I have kept the great house which our father left us, and paid all taxes, and done everything for the land which our father left to us. But it has been my duty and I have not refused to do it, and after me this eldest son must do it. Yet the land is not what it was. Our father left us enough in lands and rents so that we were accounted rich. But our children are not rich. The times are hard. Taxes are high and tenants pay little and they fear no one. Therefore my two younger sons must seek places for themselves even as my second son has, and this is your duty in your turn to help your brother-cousins. From ancient times the most able in a family has helped the others.”

So was the old bondage laid upon Yuan. He could make no answer. Well he knew that some young men in his place would have refused the bondage, and they would have run away and lived where they pleased and cast aside all thought of family, for these were the new times. And Yuan wished most passionately that he could be free like that; he longed, even as he sat there in that dark old dusty room, looking at these two who were his kin, to rise and shout out, “The debt is not mine! I owe no debt except to myself!”

But he knew he could not shout it. Meng could have said it for his cause’s sake, and Sheng could have laughed and seemed to accept the bondage, and then he would forget it, and live as he liked in spite of it. But Yuan was differently shaped. He could not refuse this bondage which in ignorant love his father had set upon him. Nor could he blame his father still, nor when he pondered yet more upon it, think of any other way his father could have done.

He stared down on a square of sunlight falling through the open door, and in the silence he heard a twittering quarrel among the little wild birds in the bamboos in the court. At last he said somberly, “I am really your investment, then, my uncle. You have used me as a means to make your sons and your old age safe.”

The old man heard this and considered it and poured out a little tea into a bowl and sipped it slowly and then he wiped his dried old hand about his mouth and said again, “It is what every generation does and must do. So will you when your own sons come.”

“No, I will not,” said Yuan quickly. Never had he seen in his mind a son of his until this moment. But now these words of the old man seemed to call the future into life. Yes, one day he would have sons. There would be a woman for him and they would have sons. But those sons — they should be free — free of any shaping from him who was their father! They should not be made for soldiers, nor shaped for any destiny, nor bound to any family cause.

And suddenly he hated all his kind, his uncles and his cousins, — yes, and even his own father, for at this moment the Tiger came in, weary from his rounds among his men and eager to sit down before his bowl and look at Yuan awhile and hear him talk of anything. But Yuan could not bear it. … He rose quickly and without a word he went away to be alone.

Now in his own old room upon his bed Yuan lay weeping and shivering and weeping as he used to do when he was a lad, but not long, because the old Tiger stayed behind him only long enough to discover from the other two what had gone amiss, and he came after Yuan and pushed the door open and came as fast as his two old feet would carry him to Yuan’s bed. But Yuan would not turn to his father. He lay with his face buried in his arms and the old Tiger sat beside him and smoothed his shoulder with his hand and patted it and poured forth eager promises and broken pleadings, and he said, “See, my son, you are not to do anything but what you like. I am no old man yet. I have been too idle. I will gather up my men once more and sally forth again to a battle and make the region mine again and have the taxes that robber lord has taken from me. I downed him once and I can again, and you shall have everything. You shall stay here with me and have everything. Yes, and wed whom you like. I was wrong before. I am not so old-fashioned now, Yuan — I know how young men do now …”

Now the old Tiger had truly said the thing most needed to strengthen Yuan out of his weeping and his pity for himself. He turned over and he cried violently, “I will not let you battle any more, father, and I—”

And Yuan was about to cry out, “I will not wed.” He had so long said it to his father that the words ran off his tongue of their own accord. But in the midst of all his misery he stopped. A sudden question came to him. Did he indeed not wish to wed? But not an hour ago he had cried out that his sons should be free. Of course one day he would wed. He delayed his words upon his tongue and then more slowly he told his father, “Yes, some day I will wed the one I want to wed.”

But the old Tiger was so pleased to see Yuan turn his face about and cease his weeping that he answered merrily, “You shall — you shall — only tell me who she is, my son, and let me send the go-between and do it, and I will tell your mother — after all, what cursed country maid is worthy of my son?’

Then Yuan, staring at his father while he spoke, began to see a thing in his own mind he had not known was there. “I do not need a go-between,” he said slowly, but his mind was not on these words. He began to see a face shape in his mind — a woman’s young face. “I can speak for myself. We speak for ourselves, these days, we young men—”

Now it was the Tiger’s turn to stare, and he said severely, “Son, what woman is there decent who can be so spoken to? You have not forgotten my old warnings against such women, son? Have you chosen a good woman, son?”

But Yuan smiled. He forgot debts and wars and all the troubles of these days. Suddenly his divided mind joined upon one clear way he had not seen at all. There was one to whom he could tell everything, and know what he must do! These old ones never could understand him nor his needs, they could not see that he belonged no more among them. No, they could not see any more than aliens could. But he knew a woman of his own times, not rooted in the old as he was and forever divided because he had no power to pull the roots up and plant them in the new and necessary times wherein his life must be — he saw her face clearer than any face in his whole life, its clearness making every face grow dim, dimming even his father’s face that was before his very eyes. She only could set him free from himself — only Mei-ling could set him free and tell him what he ought to do. She, who ordered everything she touched, could tell him what to do! His heart began to lift within him out of its own lightness. He must go back to her. He sat up quickly and put his feet to the floor. Then he remembered his father had put a question to him and he answered out of his dazing new joy, “A good woman? Yes, I have chosen a good woman, my father!”

And he felt such an impatience as he had not known before in all his life. Here were no doubts and no withdrawals. He would go at once to her.

And yet for all his sudden new impatience Yuan found he must stay his month out with his father. For when Yuan thought how he might find excuse to go away, the Tiger grew so hurt and downcast that Yuan could not but be moved and draw back the hints he had put forth of some business calling him to that coastal city. And he knew it was not fitting that he should not stay to see his mother, who during these days had been in that country where her old home once was. For this woman, ever since she had gone to the earthen house for Yuan, had returned to her childhood love of country life, and now that her two daughters were wed she went often to the village where once she had been a maid, and she found a home there with her eldest brother who suffered her willingly enough because she paid out silver and made a little lavish show as wife of a lord of war, and her brother’s wife liked the show because it set her up above the other village women. Though the trusty man sent a messenger to tell the mother Yuan was come, yet she had delayed a day or two.

And Yuan was the more willing and even anxious to see his mother and make plain to her that he would choose his own wife, and that he had chosen her already, and it only remained that he tell her so. Therefore he could and did live on the month, and this more easily because his uncle and the son went back soon to the old great house and Yuan was alone with his father.

But this joyful knowledge of Mei-ling made it easier for Yuan even to be courteous to his uncle, and he thought secretly with deep relief, “She will help me to find a way to settle off this debt. I will say nothing angry now — not until I have told her.” And so thinking he could say to his uncle steadily at parting, “Be sure I shall not forget the debt. But lend us no more moneys, uncle, for now my first care when this month is past, will be to find a good place for myself. As for your sons, I will do what I can for them.”

And the Tiger hearing it said stoutly, “Be sure, brother, that all will come back to you, for what I cannot do by war my son will do by government, for doubtless he will find a good official place, with all his knowledge.”

“Yes, doubtless, if he tries,” returned the merchant. But as he went he said to his son, “Put in Yuan’s hand the paper you have written.” And the son pulled a folded paper from his sleeve and handed it to Yuan and said in his little wordy way, “It is only the full counting out, my cousin, of those sums. We thought, my father and I, that you would want to know it all clearly.”

Even men Yuan could not be angry with these two little men. He took the paper gravely, smiling inwardly, and with every outward courtesy he sent them on their way.

Yes, nothing was so confused now as it had been for Yuan. He could be courteous to these two, and when they were gone he could be very patient with his father in the evenings when the old man told long garrulous tales of his wars and victories. For his son the Tiger lived his life over, and made much of all his battles and while he talked he drew down his old brows and pulled at his ragged whiskers and his eyes grew bright, and after all to him it seemed as he talked to his son that he had lived a very glorious life. But Yuan, sitting in calmness, half smiling when he heard the old Tiger’s shouts and saw his drawn brows and the thrust he made to show how he had stabbed the Leopard, only wondered how he ever could have feared his father.

Yet in the end the days passed not too slowly. For the thought of Mei-ling had come so suddenly to Yuan that he needed to live with only the thought for a while, and sometimes he was glad for the delay, even, and for the hours when he could sit and seem to listen to his father’s talk. Secretly he wondered to himself that he had been so dull to his own heart that he had not known before, even on the day of Ai-lan’s wedding, when, while he watched the marriage procession and had seen Ai-lan’s beauty, he had seen Mei-ling and thought her still more beautiful. That moment he should have known. And he should have known a score of times thereafter, when he had seen her here and there about the house, her hands ordering all, her voice directing the helping servants. But he had not known, not until he lay weeping and in loneliness.

Across such dreaming broke again and again the Tiger’s happy old voice, and Yuan could bear to sit and listen as he never could have done, had he not this new growing love inside himself. He listened in a dream to all his father said, not discerning at all between wars past or wars his father planned for the future, and his father prattled on, “I still do have a little revenue from that son my elder brother gave me. But he is no lord of war, no real lord. I dare not trust him much, he is so idle in his love of laughter — a born clown and he will die a clown, I swear. He says he is my lieutenant, but he sends me very little, and I have not been there now these six years. I must go in the spring — aye, I must make my rounds of battle in the spring. That nephew of mine, well I know he will turn straight over to any coming enemy, even against me he will turn—”

And Yuan, half listening, cared nothing for this cousin of his whom he scarcely could remember except his elder aunt liked to say, “My son who is a general in the north.”

Yes, it was pleasant to sit and answer his father a little now and then, and think of the maid he knew he loved. And many comforts came to him in these thoughts. He told himself he would not be ashamed to have her see these courts, for she would understand his shames. They both were of a kind, this was their country, whatever its shames were. He could even say to her, “My father is an old foolish war lord, so full of tales he does not know which is false and which is true. He sees himself a mighty man he never was.” Yes, he could say such things as those to her, and know she would comprehend. And when he thought of this simplicity she had he felt the false shames fall away from him. Oh, let him go to her, and be himself again, no more divided, but as he was those few days on the land, in that earthen home of his grandfather’s, when he had been alone and free! With her he could be alone and free and once more simple.

At last he could think of nothing else than pouring out his need before her. So steadily did he know that she would help him, that when his mother came at last, he could greet her as he should and look upon her without suffering to think she was his mother and yet one to whom he had nothing to say. For she was now, for all her withered rosy healthy looks, a very plain old country woman. She looked up at him, leaning on a peeled staff she used these days to walk with, and her old eyes asked, wondering, “What is this I have for a son?”

And Yuan, tall and different in the foreign clothes he wore, looked down upon the woman in her old-fashioned coat and skirt of black cotton stuff and asked himself, “Was I indeed shaped in this old woman’s body? I feel no kinship in our flesh.”

But he did not suffer or now feel ashamed. To that white woman, had he loved her, he would have said with great shame, “This is my mother.” But he could say to Mei-ling, “This is my mother,” and she, knowing that a thousand men like him had sprung from such mothers, would not think it strange, for nothing was strange to her. To her it would be enough that it was so. … Even to Ai-lan he might feel shame, but not to Mei-ling. He could uncover all his heart to her and never be ashamed. This knowledge made him tranquil therefore, even in his impatience, and later on a certain day he told his mother plainly, “I am betrothed, or good as betrothed. I have chosen the maid.”

And the old woman answered mildly, “Your father told me so. Well, I had talked of a maid or two I knew, but your father has always let you do what you wished. His son you have ever been, and scarcely mine, and he with the hottest temper ever was so I cannot go against him. Aye, that learned one, she could escape it and go out, but I have stayed and let him use me for his anger. But I hope she is a decent maid and can cut a coat and turn a fish as it should be turned, and I hope I may see her sometimes, though I know very well these new times are anyhow, and the young do what they will, and daughters-in-law do not even come to see their husband’s mothers as they ought to do.”

But Yuan thought she seemed glad she need not bestir herself beyond this and she sat and stared at nothing in a way she had and moved her eyes and jaws a little and forgot him, and slept gently, or seemed to do so. They were not of the same world, these two, and that he was her son was meaningless to him. In truth, everything was meaningless to him now, except that he come again into the presence of that one.

When his farewells had been said to his parents, and he forced himself to say them courteously and as though he grieved to leave them, he went again on the train south, and now it was strange how little he saw the travellers on that train. Whether they behaved fittingly or not was all one to him. For he could think of nothing but Mei-ling. He thought of all he knew of her. He remembered that she had a narrow hand, very strong, but narrow across the palm, the fingers very delicate, and then he wondered to think that hand could be swift and stern to cut away an evil growth in human flesh. Her whole body had this slender strength, the strength of good bones well knitted under the fine pale skin. He remembered again and again how able she was in everything and how the servants looked to her, and how Ai-lian had cried out that Mei-ling must say if a coat hung well about the edge, and only Mei-ling could do for the lady what she liked to have done. And Yuan said, comforting himself, “At twenty she is as able as many a woman ten years older.”

For the maid had this double charm for Yuan when he remembered her. She had sedateness and gravity as the older women had, whom he looked to, his lady mother, his aunt, and all those reared in the old ways for rearing maids. And yet she had this new thing, too, that she was not shy and silent before men. She could speak openly and plainly anywhere, and be as easy, in her different way, as Ai-lan was. Thus in the turmoil of the train and while the fields and towns went past, Yuan saw nothing. He only sat and shaped his dreams of Mei-ling, and in his mind he gathered every least word and look of hers and made the precious picture whole. When he remembered all he could, he let his mind leap to the moment when he would see her and how he would speak and what he would tell her of his love. Perfectly as though the hour were there he could see her grave good look, watching him while he spoke. And afterwards — oh, he must remember still how young she was, and that she was no bold, ready maid, but gentle and very reticent. But still he might take that narrow hand of hers, that cool kind narrow hand …

Yet who can shape an hour to his wish, or what lover knows how the hour will find even himself? For Yuan’s tongue, which shaped the words so easily upon the train, could shape nothing when the hour was come. The house was quiet when he came into its hallway, and only a servant stood there. The stillness struck him like a chill.

“Where is she?” he cried to the servant, and then remembering, he said more quietly, “Where is the lady, my mother?”

The servant replied, “They are gone to the foundlings home to see to a babe newly left there who is ill. They may be late, they said.”

So then Yuan could only cool his heart and wait. He waited and tried to turn his thoughts here or there, but his mind was not his own — it would turn back of its own will to the one great hope it had. Night came and still the two did not come, and when the servant called the evening meal, Yuan must go to the dining room and eat there alone, and the food was dry and tasteless on his tongue. Almost he hated the little child who so delayed the hour he had longed for all these weeks.

Then even as he was about to rise because he could not eat, the door opened and the lady came in, very weary and spent and downcast in her look, and Mei-ling with her, silent and sad as Yuan had never seen her. She looked at Yuan as though she did not see him and she cried out to him in a low voice, as though Yuan had not been away at all, “The little baby died. We did all we could, but she died!”

The lady sighed and sat down and said, grieving too, “You are back, my son? … I never saw a lovelier little newborn child, Yuan — left three days since on the threshold — not poor, either, for its little coat was silk. At first we thought it sound, but this morning there were convulsions, and it was that old ancient woe that curses newborn babes, and takes them before the tenth day is gone. I have seen the fairest, soundest children seized by it, as by an evil wind, and nothing can prevail against it.”

To this the maid sat listening, and she could not eat. Her narrow hands were clenched upon the table and she cried angrily, “I know what it is. It need not be!”

But Yuan, looking at her angry face, more moved than he had ever seen it, perceived her eyes were full of tears. That anger and those tears were ice upon his hot heart. For he saw they closed the maid’s mind against him. Yes, he thought of her and her only, but at this moment she did not dream of him; although he had been weeks away, she did not think of him. He sat and listened, therefore, and answered quietly questions that the lady mother put to him of his father’s house. But he could not but see that Mei-ling did not even hear the questions or how he answered them. She sat there strangely idle, her hands quiet in her lap, and though she looked from face to face, she said nothing at all. Only more than once her eyes were full of tears. And because he saw her mind was very far from him, on that night Yuan could not speak.

Yet how could he rest until he had spoken? All night he dreamed brokenly, strange dreams of love, but never love come clear.

In the morning he woke exhausted by his dreams. It was a grey day, too, a day when summer passes certainly into autumn. When Yuan rose and looked out of the window he saw nothing but greyness everywhere, a still smooth grey sky curved above the flat grey city and upon the grey streets the people moving sluggishly, small and grey upon the earth. His ardor seeped from him under this lifelessness, and Yuan wondered at himself that ever he could have dreamed of Mei-ling.

In such a mood he sat himself down to eat his breakfast, and while he ate listlessly, for the very food on this day seemed to him saltless and without flavor, the lady came in, too. She had not eaten or exchanged much more than morning greetings with Yuan before she saw something was wrong with him. So she began to press him gently with her questions. And he, feeling it not possible to speak of his new love, told her instead of how his father had borrowed so much silver of his uncle, and she was very taken back by this and cried out, “Why did he not tell me he was so hard pressed for money? I could have used less. I am glad I have used my own silver for Mei-ling. Yes, I had a sort of pride to do that, and my father left me enough, since he had no son, before he died, and he put his moneys in a good sound foreign bank where they have lain safely all these years. He loved me very well, and sold many of his inherited lands even, and turned them into silver for me. If I had known, I might have—”

But Yuan said dully, “And why should you have done it? No, I will seek out a place where what I have learned will serve me, and I will save my wage, as much as I can, and return it to my uncle.”

Then it came to him that if he did this, how could he have enough to wed on and set up his house and do all those things for which a young man hopes? In the old days the sons lived with the father, and son’s wife and son’s children ate from the common pot. But Yuan in his day could not bear to do this. When he thought of the courts where the Tiger lived and of that old mother who must be Mei-ling’s mother-in-law, he swore he would not live there with Mei-ling. They would have their own home somewhere, a home such as Yuan had learned to love, pictures on the walls and chairs easy to sit upon and cleanliness everywhere — and only they two in it to make it what they liked. And thinking of all this he fell into such longing before the lady’s very eyes that she said very kindly, “You still have not told me everything.”

Then suddenly Yuan’s heart burst from him and he cried, his face all red and his eyes so hot he could feel them burning underneath their lids, “I have more to tell — I do have more to tell! I have somehow learned to love her and if I do not have her I shall die.”

“Her?” asked the lady, wondering. “What her?” And she cast about in her mind. But Yuan cried, “And who but Mei-ling?”

Then the lady was full of astonishment, for she had not dreamed of such a thing, since Mei-ling was to her only a child yet, the child she had lifted up from the street one cold day and taken into her own home. Now she looked at Yuan and was silent for a while and she said thoughtfully, “She is yet young and full of her plans.” And then she said again, “Her parents are unknown. I do not know how it will be with your father if he knows she was a foundling.”

But Yuan cried in impatience now, “My father can say nothing on this thing. In this day I will not be bound by their old ways. I will choose for myself.”

The lady bore this mildly, being by now very well used to all such talk, since Ai-lan had cried it often, and she knew from talk with other parents that all young men and women said the same thing and their elders must bear it as they could. So she only asked, “And have you spoken to her?”

Then Yuan forgot his boldness straightway and he said, shy as any old-fashioned lover, “No, and I do not know how to begin.” And after a little thought he said, “It always seems as though her thoughts are set on some busy matter of her own. Other maids begin somehow with eyes or even touch of hands, or so I have heard, but she never does.”

“No,” the lady answered proudly, “Mei-ling never does.”

Now even as Yuan sat in his dejection this came to him. He would ask the lady to speak for him. And after all, his mind said swiftly to itself, it was really better so. Mei-ling would listen to the lady whom she so loved and honored and it would be something for him.

So it seemed better to him suddenly not to say the words himself in spite of the new times. This would be a sort of new and yet an old way, and the maid, being so young yet, might like it more, too. All this Yuan thought, and he said to the lady very eagerly, “Will you speak for me, my mother? It is true she is very young. It may be if I speak it would frighten her—”

At this the lady smiled a little and she gazed with some tenderness at Yuan and answered, “If she wants to marry you, my son, let it be so, if your father will let it be. But I will not compel her. That one thing I will never do — compel a maid to any man. It is the only great new good these times have brought to women — that they need not be compelled to marriage.”

“No, no—” cried Yuan.

But he did not dream the maid would need compelling, because it is natural for all maids to wed.

Now while they talked and finished the meal as they did, Mei-ling came in, very fresh and clean to see in her robe of a dark blue silk she wore to school, and her short straight black hair brushed behind her ears and no jewels in her ears or on her hands, such as Ai-lan must always wear or feel herself unclothed. Her look was quiet, the eyes cool and steady, and her mouth curved and not very red in hue, as Ai-lan’s always was, and her cheeks pale and smooth. Yet though Mei-ling was never ruddy, she had always a clear gold skin which was full of health, it was so fine and smooth. Now she gave greeting courteously, and Yuan saw the night’s sleep had taken the yesterday’s distress away from her, so that she was tranquil again and ready for this day.

Even as he watched her seat herself and take up her bowl to eat, the lady began to speak out, a small half smile upon her lips and in her eyes. Suddenly if Yuan could have stopped her or chosen another hour, he would have done so. He wished any how to put the moment off, and a shyness rushed upon him and he dropped his eyes and sat all hot with misery. But the lady said, and the secret smile was shining in her eyes now for she saw how Yuan was, “Child, here is a question I have to put to you. This young man, this Yuan, for all he is a mighty modern and will choose his wife, turns weak at the last moment and goes back to old ways and asks a go-between after all. And I am the go-between, and you are the maid, and will you have him?”

As baldly as this the lady put it, in a very dry bald voice, and Yuan almost hated her because it seemed to him it could not have been worse done, and enough to frighten any maid.

And Mei-ling was frightened. She set her bowl down carefully and put her chopsticks down and stared at the lady in a panic. Then in a very small low voice she whispered, “Must I do it?”

“No, child,” the lady answered and now she was grave. “You need not if you do not wish it.”

“Then I will not,” the maid answered joyfully, her face all lit with her relief. And then she said again, “There have been others of my schoolmates who have to wed, mother, and they weep and weep because they must leave school to wed. And so I was frightened. Ah, I thank you, mother,” and this young woman Mei-ling, who was always so quiet and contained, rose quickly from her seat and went and fell before the lady in the old obeisance of gratitude and bowed herself down. But the lady lifted her up and held her by an arm about her.

Then the lady’s eyes fell on Yuan, and there he sat, his hot blood all flying from his face and leaving him pale, his very lips pale that he bit between his teeth to hold them still, for he would not weep. And the lady pitied him, and she said kindly, looking at the girl, “Still, you like our Yuan, Mei-ling?”

And the girl answered quickly, “Oh, yes, he is my brother. I like him, but not to wed. I do not want to wed, mother. I want to finish school and be a doctor. I want to learn and learn. Every woman weds. I do not want only to wed and take care of a house and children. I have set my heart to be a doctor!”

Now when Mei-ling said these words, the lady looked at Yuan in a sort of triumph. And Yuan looking back at the two women, felt them leagued against him, women leagued against a man, and he could not bear it. There was something good about the old ways, after all, for it was the natural right thing that women should be wed and bear children and Mei-ling ought to want to marry, and there was some perversion in her that she would not. He thought to himself, angry in his manhood against these women, “It is a strange thing if women are like this nowadays! Whoever heard of a girl not marrying when the time comes? A very strange thing if young women are not to wed — a sorry thing for the nation and the next generation!” He thought, after all, how foolish even wisest women are, and he looked and met Mei-ling’s calm eyes and for once he thought them hard and cold to be so calm and sure, and he looked at her angrily. But the lady answered for her very certainly, “She shall not marry until she wishes. She shall use her own life as seems best to her, and you must bear it, Yuan.”

And the two women looked at him, even hostile in their new freedom, the younger held within the circle of the elder’s arm. … Yes, he must bear it!

Later in that gloomy day Yuan left his room where he had thrown himself upon the bed, and he went wandering through the streets, his mind all confusion once again. He had even wept and wept in his distress, and his heart sat in his side aching with an actual pain, as though it had been too hot and now was too cold and could not beat as it should.

What should he do now? Yuan asked himself in dreariness. Here and there about the streets he wandered, pushed and pushing, and seeing no one. … Well, and if joy was gone, his duty still remained. There was the debt he owed. At least alone he could fulfill his debt. He had his old father left to think of and he cast about to think what he could do, and where find a place to work and live, and save his wage to pay his debt. He would do his duty, he said to himself, and felt himself most hardly used.

So the day wore on and he wandered everywhere throughout that whole city, and it grew hateful to him. He hated all its foreignness, the foreign faces on the streets, the foreign garments even his own kind wore, the very garb upon his own body. It seemed to him at this one hour at least that old ways were better. He cried furiously to his cold, stopped heart, “It is these foreign ways that set our women to all this stubbornness and talk of freedom, so that they set nature aside and live like nuns or courtesans!” And he remembered with a special hatred that landlady’s daughter and her lewdness and Mary, whose lips had been too ready, and he blamed even them. At last he looked at every foreign female that he passed with such hatred that he could not bear them and he muttered, “I will get out of this city somehow. I will go away where I shall see nothing foreign and nothing new and live and find my life there in my own country. I wish I had not gone abroad! I wish I had never left the earthen house!”

And suddenly he bethought himself of that old farmer whom he once knew, who had taught him how to wield a hoe. He would go there and see that man and feel his own kind again, not tainted with these foreigners and all their ways.

At once he struck aside and took a public vehicle to hasten on his way, and when the vehicle was gone as far as it would, he walked on. Very far he walked that day searching for the land he once had planted and for the farmer and his home. But he could not find it until nearly evening, for the streets were changed and built up and full of people. When he reached at last the place he knew and recognized, there was no land to plant. There on the earth which only a few years ago had borne so fertilely, where the farmer had been proud to say his family had lived for a hundred years, now stood a factory for weaving silk. It was a great new thing, large as a village used to be, and the bricks new and red and many windows shone upon its roofs, and from its chimneys the black smoke gushed. Even as Yuan stood and looked at it, a shrieking whistle blew, the iron gates sprang open, and out of their vastness came a slow thick stream of men and women and little children, spent with their day’s labor and with the knowledge of tomorrow’s day to come and many days and many days which they must live like this one. Their clothes were drenched with sweat, and about them hung the vile stench of the dead worms in the cocoons from which the silk was wound.

Yuan stood looking at these faces, thinking half fantastically that one of them must be the farmer’s face, that he must be swallowed, even as his land had been, by this new monster. But no, he was not there. These were pale city folk, who crept out of their hovels in the morning and returned to them at night. The farmer had gone elsewhere. He and his old wife and their old buffalo had gone to other lands. Of course they had, Yuan told himself. Somewhere they lived their own life, stoutly as they ever had. And thinking of them he smiled a little, and for the moment forgetting his own pain, he went thoughtfully to his home. So would he also somehow find his own life.