Kinfolk

10

THE WHOLE THING BEGAN AT the chrysanthemum market on that bright autumn day when James had written the letter which had so disturbed his parents. With some delay they had proceeded with their afternoon’s jaunt. Indeed they were the more impatient to get out of the house and into a change of scene, because they felt helpless. James had written the letter at once and had read it aloud to them, even Chen being there at the demand of everybody except Louise, who had kept silent, and they had waked Peter to listen. The letter was approved. James had made it short but clear.

He had written to his father: “We cannot be sure that Ma has understood you rightly. We think she has not, for we cannot believe that you would take a concubine now when it is illegal by Chinese modern law to do so and would certainly bring disgrace on the family and shame us before all Western peoples, who know your name. Our faith is in you and we hope you will set Ma right on this matter. We are only concerned because she seems unhappy. If, on the other hand, it is we who are wrong, then please let Ma come to us at once, and we will look after her. You can say you have divorced her, and then there will be no public disgrace, at least, since many people in America are divorced.

“We are well and Mary likes her work and Peter to his own surprise enjoys the university—”

Peter had interrupted James to deny this. “I don’t enjoy it,” he said. “But I see there is some sort of a job to be done here. In America the students only have a good time and they do not trouble themselves about other people. But here where the people cannot speak for themselves we have to speak for them. Yesterday, for example, a bunch of us saw a policeman beating a ricksha puller over the head with his club. We stopped and asked him what the man had done, and it seemed he had only let the wheel of his ricksha run by accident over the policeman’s foot. There was no law broken. We made the officer let the miserable fellow go.”

“But that was enjoyable,” Mary said warmly.

“No, it wasn’t,” Peter retorted. “Actually we were more angry at the ricksha coolie than at the policeman. He should have stood up for himself instead of cringing. He hadn’t done anything wrong. We followed him and when he tried to thank us we gave him a couple of whacks over the head ourselves for being such a coward.”

“Peter!” Mary cried. “How wicked of you!”

“It wasn’t,” he insisted. “I get into a rage with our stupid common people, letting themselves be run by anybody with a club or a gun. Why don’t they fight back?”

“Because they have no clubs and guns,” James said quietly. He folded the letter and put it into the stamped envelope, sealed and addressed it. “Come, let us go now to the market and see the chrysanthemums. Mary, you must not spend too much money.”

“What do you call too much?” Mary demanded. “Today a hundred dollars in our paper bills is worth something under ten American cents.”

“I mean you must not pay more than half what the vendors ask,” James replied.

“We’d better get there before they double their prices to get ahead of inflation,” Chen said, laughing still more loudly than the others.

Money had become a joke and yet an inflated paper had to be given for purchases, and so with their pockets stuffed with rolls of bills they had gone to the flower market. Young Wang followed behind them to bring back the flowers. Imperceptibly they had lost their American ways enough so that they yielded to Young Wang’s determination not to allow the members of his master’s household to be seen in public places carrying any load, however pleasant.

They all agreed afterward that there was something peculiar about the day. The air was so still and clear as to seem almost solid. People were magnified by it, faces were sculptured, eyes made bright. Especially beautiful were the faces of old people, for every line seemed drawn with meaning. Since there was not a flutter of wind, the garments the people wore fell in quiet folds, the colors even of faded blues and red were sure and rich, and human flesh looked brown and warm. Smiles and white teeth, the sounds of voices and musical instruments, all were enhanced by the silent magnetic atmosphere.

When James led his brother and sisters and Chen to the great square which was the market place, the scene struck him with all the force of a magnificent stage. An old palace stood in the background, its heavy roof of blue porcelain tiles lifted against the clear sky. Maple trees had been planted on either side of it centuries ago, and these were gold and red with autumn. Since there was no wind the leaves did not scatter, but now and again in the ripeness of the season a leaf loosed its hold upon the parent branch and fell slowly to the ground. In the leaves little children played. They were drunk with happiness, although they were the children of the poor and they wore ragged clothes. Some of the boys had laid aside their shirts and their smooth brown bodies glistened with sweat.

The whole center of the immense court was filled with the chrysanthemums which vendors had brought to be sold. They stood in pots, hundreds together, and each owner with his wife or son watched over his own. Between the pots the people walked, exclaiming and praising until they saw one bloom irresistibly beautiful when reluctantly they felt themselves compelled to buy. Rich and poor were here together, for all alike revered these flowers, imperial in their size and hues. There were even a few foreigners and among them an occasional American soldier, on leave, perhaps, and out to see the sights. Yet here, as everywhere, the poor far outnumbered the rich. They were unable to buy any flowers, they could only stand and admire wistfully, and yet seemingly without envy, the purchases of the rich. Even when a flower by some ill chance was broken off, these poor did not dare to pick it up. They watched while the woman servant of some rich lady took up the flower and thrust it into her hair. It was the same quality in these poor that had made Peter so angry at the ricksha puller, and that James himself had seen in the wards of the hospital, where they received gratefully everything that was done for them, and if one of them died, there was no thought of revenge for his death.

Mary was at his side, and her seeing eyes perceived this difference between the people. “Look at the poor ones,” she said to James. “They think it is enough to gaze at the flowers.”

“I wish I were rich enough to buy a pot for everybody,” James said.

They had separated by chance. Chen and Peter were strolling along one side of the square and Louise was wandering at a little distance alone. Young Wang stood waiting and meanwhile watching a juggler who performed for those who might weary of the flowers.

Mary stopped beside a small group of common-looking men with their wives and children who were staring with wide eyes at the purchase being made by an old lady in satin robes and her two daughters-in-law. A steward called out the pots as the ladies pointed their delicate fingers toward the ones they wanted. The vendors sprang forward to set aside these choices. There was not so much longing in these watching eyes of the poor as a pure and dreamy pleasure that there should be in the world beings who were able to indulge themselves in the possession of beauty. A child touched a flower and his father reproved him in a low voice. “Eh, do not touch, little heart. One flower would take a seven days’ wage.”

“I can’t bear it,” Mary said suddenly. James looked down at her and saw tears flooding into her eyes and shining like crystals in the clear sunshine.

“You can’t change what has been going on so long, Mary,” he told her, and yet understanding all she felt. He too knew very often this catch of the heart, this sense of shame, before the poor here in his own land. Yet what could any of them do? It was all too old. One could not change eternity.

They walked away beyond the square, apart from the others. The square was set in the park belonging to the palace, and huge old trees stood in it here and there. “I am not satisfied, Jim,” Mary said. “I want to go farther into the country. We’re still on the surface here.”

He knew what she meant but he did not answer her quickly. She had their father’s fluency of words and he did not. In his own way he had been thinking and feeling deep under the surface of his daily life. Peking was now a pleasant backwater, a charming ancient pool. But it was not in the stream of life. One could live here and even do some good work and yet never reach the roots and the source.

“I’d like to go back to our ancestral village,” Mary said. “I want to know what kind of people we really are. Behind Pa and Ma who are we?”

She did not ask him the question. She put it to herself am he knew this and did not reply. She went on, “Let’s ask for a week away and let’s go to our village. Then I think I shall know what I want. Maybe it is what you will want, too. As we are now, we are almost as far from our people as we would have been had we stayed in New York.”

He was not prepared to agree altogether to this distance but he felt that with her usual directness Mary had chosen the next step. It would be good for them to go to the village of their origins and see it for themselves. Whether they liked it did not matter. His natural caution kept him from making up his mind too quickly. “I think it a good idea,” he told Mary “Let’s keep it in our heads for a few days and see if it holds. And now we must go to Louise. Do you see that she is talking to an American soldier?”

So indeed it was. Louise, wandering alone, had attracted the eyes of a fair-haired young man in foreign uniform. He had drawn gradually nearer to her, and though she had been aware of it, she had made no sign. Yet so subtle was the perception of their youth, and of sex, that he became confident that she would not repel him, and he had come to her side as she paused to admire a pale lavender flower, huge in its size, with petals curled loosely inward.

“Do you like this one best?” he had asked boldly.

She answered in English. “It’s nice.”

He moved to her side. “I’m in luck — you speak English. But somehow I knew you did.”

“How did you know?” she asked, looking at him from under her eyelashes.

“There is something American about you,” he declared, and knew that he had pleased her.

After that it was easy to talk. They exchanged names and ages, and she told him that her real home was in New York and found that he, too, had come from New York. Here in Peking this was a miracle for them both, and they had jus discovered it when James and Mary, Peter and Chen converged on them from different directions. Louise introduced the uniformed boy. “This is Alec Wetherston, and he come from New York, not terribly far from where Pa and Ma live.

“West of the park,” Alec said, smiling frankly and showing fine white teeth.

They bowed, Mary somewhat coldly, and then she said in Chinese, “Now we must buy what we want and go home, Louise. It is nearly sunset and the best flowers will be gone.”

Somehow or other their backs were all turned toward the American. But he was not to be discouraged. His face took on an indignant and set look and he said loudly to Louise, “Where do you live, Miss Liang? I’m coming to see you if I may.”

She gave him the name of the hutung and the number of the house, and he tipped his hat. “I’ll be there one of these days real soon,” he said, and giving a full stare at Mary and Chen and James, and a grin to Peter, he went away.

“Louise!” Mary cried, “how can you?”

Louise shrugged. “I didn’t do anything,” she declared. But all of them saw that the look in her eyes had changed in this short time. The despondency was gone and instead there was a look of life and even of triumph. Chen turned away.

“Come,” James said, “let us buy this white one, this yellow one, and this fine red one.”

“I will choose also this red and gold,” Mary said. She was too indignant to speak again to Louise. Young Wang came forward and argued the price with the vendor, then they gave him handfuls of paper bills and set out for home. Louise, Peter, and Chen went ahead, and Mary and James walked behind. Still farther behind came Young Wang seated in a wheelbarrow he had hired to take himself and the pots home.

They walked along resisting the pleadings of ricksha men to ride. Evening was settling upon the city in sunset colors caught in a mist of dust. Along the street near them a blind violinist walked, playing as he went. He was a tall fellow, stalwart and strong, and his whole heart sang through the two vibrating strings under his bow. The melody was joyful and loud.

“See that man,” James said. “I wonder if he can be cured.” He stepped a little nearer and then back again and shook his head. “No hope,” he told Mary. “The eyeballs are quite gone.”

The musician had passed without hearing him, walking in great powerful strides. People gave way before him, fearing him because he was blind, and had, therefore, so they thought, a special power of magic intuition.

“I cannot bear so much that cannot be helped,” Mary said.

“You are getting too tense,” James answered. “I think that idea of yours is a good one. We need to go back to the place from which we sprang or we’ll not be able to live the life we have chosen.”

Neither felt like talking more deeply. Thoughts were going very deep indeed, and speech must wait.

When they got back to the old house, from which now all weasels had fled, Young Wang set out the chrysanthemum pots and Mary ran about changing them. Young Wang watched an arrangement take form from under hands which he considered only haphazard.

“According to the rules, young mistress,” he said in a lofty voice, “everything should be set in pairs and if there are two on this side the door there must be two on the other side or life has no balance.”

“Thank you for telling me but I have my own ideas,” Mary said without meaning to be unkind.

Young Wang said no more, but he went away to the kitchen where, without any wish to do so, he kicked Little Dog on his left ankle as he stood stirring the rice cauldron for supper, and shouted to Little Dog’s patient mother, who was behind the stove feeding in knots of fuel grass, that yesterday the soup had tasted of kerosene oil, and the person who tended the lamps must not wipe her hands on the dish towel.

Mary, when the chrysanthemums were arranged to her liking, went to find Louise. She was in her own room, experimenting with a new way of combing her hair. Mary sat down, and seeing her sister’s face only from the mirror, she said, “James and I have decided that we ought to pay a visit to our ancestral village.”

“Why?” Louise asked. She had separated the front half of her hair into a long curling bang over her forehead.

“You look like one of those poodles that American ladies lead about on strings,” Mary said. “We want to see the village so as to understand ourselves better.”

“I don’t need to see it for any such reason,” Louise declared. “It has taken me long enough to learn to endure this place and if I see more it will be too much.”

“You cannot stay here alone,” Mary declared.

“Peter will stay with me,” Louise said. “Peter won’t want to go.”

So it proved. After the evening meal they sat about the table in a pleasant mood of satisfied hunger and good exercise and Mary announced again that she and James were going to visit the village. Peter said that he would not be able to leave the university for so much as a day. He spoke so promptly that Mary knew that Louise had already prepared him.

“What is going on at the university?” James asked. He was pleased that Peter had not said any more about going back to America, even though the time would come when of course he must go for his training as an engineer.

“We have been studying our own ancient history,” Peter said earnestly. He seemed to have grown taller since he came and his looks had changed. He had a student haircut and his hair, clipped close at the sides, stood upright on top. Moreover, he had stopped wearing his American clothes, except for special occasions, and he wore instead a blue cotton Sun Yat-sen uniform. James and Mary had both welcomed the change, partly because there was no hope of buying new Western clothes, and partly because it proved that Peter was changing in secret hidden ways. Just what his inner change was they did not know, but certainly he was far more serious than he had ever been in New York.

“Well, what has ancient history to do with you?” James inquired.

He himself felt years older than when he first came a few months ago. It was not only the work at the hospital and the continual presence of the desperately ill. There was something in the air of this city, so old, so stolidly beautiful, that sobered everybody. Yet this soberness was not sadness. He was actually enjoying life more than he ever had. There was time enough here to enjoy the changes of the sky, the goodness of food, the quiet of night, the frolic of kittens — for the two old cats sent by their landlord to fight the weasels had instead devoted themselves to the birth and rearing of large families. So must even the poor here, he thought, savor their days and their hours.

“Scholars in our history have always undertaken the reform of the government,” Peter said in a firm voice.

James was mildly alarmed. “I hope you will undertake nothing so dangerous!” he exclaimed. “Pa put you in my charge and I would fail in my responsibility if I let you get into trouble. You might even lose your life if you go too far.”

Peter looked with disgust at this cautious older brother. “How do you propose to help our country?” he asked in a lofty voice.

“I don’t know,” James said honestly. “But I think it would be of no help if I were killed before I could do anything at all.”

Mary listened, torn between her two brothers. She admired Peter’s fire and forthrightness, and yet she held James in love and respect.

“Peter, you would learn more about the people if you came to the village with us,” she now said.

“The people!” Peter exclaimed impatiently. “You and Jim are always talking about the people. It is their fault that the country is so rotten. Had they had even a little energy, a little less concern only for their daily bowls of rice, things could never have come to this pass. I tell you, reform must be from the top.”

There was no agreement in this argument and the end of it was that some weeks later, before the cold weather set in, James and Mary having received a leave of twelve days, set out for their ancestral village, Anming. Chen, after much indecision, stayed with Peter and Louise, but Young Wang was fearful for his master’s welfare, and with many curses and threats to Little Dog and his mother, he went with James. The baggage he had prepared for the journey was formidable. Insisting that no one could sleep on the beds in the village inns, he had three rolls of bedding, a small portable earthenware cookstove, poker and tongs and tea kettle, earthenware pots and dishes, chopsticks, several pounds of tea, two loads of charcoal, mosquito nets, and foreign flea powder. The journey was by muleback and Mary wore Chinese trousers and jacket and James, too, put aside his Western garments.

The approach to an ancestral village is one of the spirit. Mrs. Liang had told her children a great deal, in her desultory way, about the village and the Liangs who lived in it. Thither she had been taken as a young bride, less than twenty years old. Her own home had been in a suburb outside Peking, although her family had come three generations before she was born from a small town in the province of Hupeh, whose people are noted for their fiery tempers and virile frames. More revolutions have sprung up in Hupeh than in any other part of China, and revolutionary leaders are born there any day in the year. They lead revolutions with equal zeal for large reasons or for none at all, and they eat red pepper with every meal. From this province an obscure ancestor of Mrs. Liang’s had become a traveling peddler of cotton cloth, had married a poor girl, and had settled with her in a cheap mud house outside the city wall. With what was left of his pack he had set up a minute shop which had prospered through the generations to something like modest wealth. There Mrs. Liang had grown up into a girl, so buxom that her father had decided to betroth her early.

How is a son betrothed to a daughter? The Liang family went to Peking often at the festival seasons, especially at New Year, when the theatricals are best, and there the girl’s father, who had come to the city to buy goods, met the boy’s father at a feast with mutual friends. The father, anxious to settle his daughter and hearing of a boy unbetrothed, approached the mutual friend, who approached the other father and thus the parents arranged the lives of their children.

For Mrs. Liang’s family the marriage was an advance, and so fine a one that when Dr. Liang, then a rebellious student, had refused marriage and demanded that his wife know how to read and write, Mrs. Liang went unwillingly and yet of her awn accord to a girls’ school.

“Ah, that was torture,” she told her own children in a solemn voice. “I who knew already how to do all that a wife should do was compelled to sit in a room with small children and learn letters! Only for your father I did it.”

To her children she could not, of course, tell the agonies of marrying a proud, discontented, even scornful young man. So she told them about the Liang village and the gentry into which she had married.

“The Liang village, your ancestral home,” she had often said, “does not lie on low ground where it can be flooded. True, there are no high mountains such as those to the north of Peking. But the ground swells and the village stands upon the swell. It is not a large village but neither is it a small one. A mud wall, strengthened with crushed brick, stands around he village. The gates are of wood, studded with brass nails. They are closed at night. Inside the gates the main street runs across, and there are many alleyways. Our house, your ancestral home, lies to the north, so that the rooms and the courts face south. There are sixteen rooms, four to each court. When I went there the old parents were still living. Ah, my mother-in-law, your grandmother, was very severe! I cried every night. Whenever your grandfather coughed or sneezed, I was blamed.”

Dr. Liang, hearing the tale often, always smiled at this point. “Yes, Liang,” his wife would insist with solemnity, “it is true. You do not know how much I suffered.” She turned again to the children. “When your pa’s feet were cold I had to rub them warm with my hands. When he did not eat I had to find special dishes. I tell you, to be the wife of a learned man is not easy. Your father’s father was, on the other hand, a large easygoing person who, while he never spoke to me, was kind to everybody. When he came into the room I must go out, but he always said to somebody else, ‘Tell her not to hurry herself.’ I wept when he died, I can tell you, because that left me alone with my mother-in-law. When she died, there was only Uncle Tao left. He is still there. Eh, that Uncle Tao!”

Mrs. Liang always began to laugh when she said this name.

“What about Uncle Tao?” the children had demanded.

At this point Dr. Liang always stopped her. “I forbid you to talk about Uncle Tao,” he said.

When she heard this she covered her face with her hand and laughed behind them until Dr. Liang began to grow angry. Then she took her hands away and tried not to laugh but her face was very red. “I cannot tell you about Uncle Tao,” she told them. “Your pa would be angry with me. But some day you must go to your ancestral home, and then you will see Uncle Tao.”

“But suppose he dies first?” they had clamored.

“Uncle Tao will not die,” Mrs. Liang had said. “He will live for one hundred years at least.” And she would say no more.

When James and Mary and Young Wang approached the ancestral village there it was before them, exactly as their mother had told them. It sat upon a swell of the land, and the mud wall surrounded it. The north gate was before them, and inside the gate would be their ancestral house. They were tired, for they had been riding muleback all day and the roads were rough. But in spite of weariness Mary began to laugh quietly.

“What is it?” James asked. They had spent a happy day together, talking of nothing much and enjoying the soaking sunshine. Mary, feeling free and comfortable with James, had sung songs and laughed often, and yawning had all but fallen asleep in her saddle in the afternoon warmth. To hear her now begin suddenly to laugh was only part of the pleasant day. She turned her laughing face to him, for she was riding ahead of him on the narrow earthen path that ran beside the stone road.

“Uncle Tao!” she cried. “Do you remember?”

“The one Pa would never let Ma tell us about,” he answered.

“Now we’ll see for ourselves!”

“Unless he’s dead—” Jim suggested.

“He won’t be dead,” she declared. “Ma said he’d live a hundred years.”

She struck her mule smartly with the braided rawhide whip and he quickened his pace for a few steps and then plodded again.

“Oh, go on!” she said impatiently to the mule. “I’ve wanted all my life to see Uncle Tao!”

Uncle Tao at this moment was sitting on the inner side of the spirit wall, impatient for his supper. The house was in a turmoil, for his third daughter-in-law who was in charge of the kitchen had mistaken his pronunciation of chicken noodles for lichen noodles. She was somewhat stupid at best and terrified of Uncle Tao, and while lichen is easily prepared, a chicken has first to be caught and then killed and plucked and properly stewed. The sun was over the wall before the mistake was discovered and then Uncle Tao declared that he would wait until midnight before eating lichen noodles. He sat down firmly in the large speckled bamboo chair which some ancestor had once brought from Hangchow, and there he waited, smoking his yard-long pipe with ferocity. Meanwhile the lichen noodles were hastily fed to the children and the three daughters-in-law devoted themselves to the chicken, which was hiding in the cabbages.

They were further frightened to discover when the fowl was dead that by some mischance they had killed their best laying hen. The one due to be eaten was a yellow hen who laid eggs only occasionally, storing up her energy in fat. But this good hen laid at least three eggs a week and had for several years hatched and cared for flocks of chicks, whereas the yellow hen could never be kept on the nest long enough to hatch anything.

“At least let us not tell Uncle Tao,” the first daughter-in-law said.

“He will find out,” the second daughter-in-law replied dolefully. “As soon as he sets his five teeth into this fowl’s flesh he will know what we have done.”

They united in turning upon the third daughter-in-law, who, with her face quite pale, was busily getting the cauldrons hot. “How you could be so stupid!” said the eldest.

“Why did you not look at the fowl before you wrung its neck?” said the second.

Thus they cried at the poor soul, who could only tremble. “I caught her under the cabbages,” she faltered, “and I wrung her neck before she could escape again.”

Uncle Tao’s loud voice bellowed from behind the spirit wall. “I want to eat!”

“Hurry,” the eldest daughter-in-law commanded. “We can lay the blame afterward.”

As one woman they proceeded to chop the favorite into small bits, that the flesh might be cooked the quicker. In one cauldron the bits were browned in oil with onion, ginger, soy sauce and a little water added, and all covered tightly under the heavy wooden lid. In the other cauldron the water simmered waiting for the noodles.

“I want to eat!” Uncle Tao bellowed again.

“Coming, Uncle Tao!” the eldest daughter-in-law cried.

Everybody called him Uncle Tao, although properly speaking his own family should not have done so, and in no other village was such a thing to be found. It had begun when he had returned to the village to live, the first of the family to do so in this generation. Dr. Liang’s father had left the ancestral home to study in Peking and he never went back except to pay a visit of duty to his parents and to bury them when they died. He had been given a good post in the Imperial Court in the days before the revolution, and was thought even to have had some influence upon the young Emperor, who lived so pitifully immured by the old Empress, his mother. When the young Emperor died, the Empress exiled Dr. Liang’s father because he was one of those who had urged the Emperor to reform the nation. He had been exiled to Mongolia, but he had gone only as far as his ancestral village. There, by an extravagant use of gifts to the chief eunuch, he was allowed to live and even to visit Peking occasionally and no one told the old Empress that he was not in Mongolia. Before the exile Dr. Liang himself had visited the ancestral village only at the time of his grandparents’ funeral when he had been a boy of fourteen or fifteen. It was during the exile that his father had betrothed him, and there the wedding had taken place some three years later after she had learned to read and write.

When after the Empress died the family returned to Peking, old Mr. Liang as the eldest son and the guardian of the family estates had left Uncle Tao in charge. Uncle Tao was the younger brother, younger only by one half hour, for the two were twins, and all that remained alive of the once large Liang family of the previous generation. There were numerous cousins and remote relatives, who when they were without jobs and were hungry returned to the village to live, but of the Liang family direct there were only these two. They were very different. Dr. Liang’s father was dignified and a scholar. Uncle Tao had no dignity at all. As a boy he had driven his parents to despair with his mischief and his waywardness, and one day when his kind mother swallowed opium because she feared that her younger son would die under a headsman’s ax, her husband had firmly sent the boy away to a distant city, where a third cousin kept a medicine shop. The mother did not die, and the boy came home ten years later to his parents’ funeral. By then he was a handsome red-cheeked man with a loud laugh.

Mr. Liang rather liked his younger twin brother then. He himself had been the dutiful elder, the soul of rectitude and good behavior, and the tenants on the land cheated him continually. It was too easy to cheat Mr. Liang, who believed any who told him that the rains and the excessive sunshine, the heat and the surprising cold of the season had ruined the crops.

Uncle Tao soon saw what was going on. One day after the parents were safely under the earth he said to Mr. Liang, “Elder brother, I can see that if you continue to care for our family estates we shall all be out in the fields one day with the oxen and the tenants will be sitting here in our places. You had better put me in charge. I understand all about cheating.” Mr. Liang was only too happy to agree to this. He began the series of bribes which could make it safe for him to return permanently to Peking, and fourteen months after his son’s wedding, some years after the funeral of the Empress, and after the revolution, the family went to Peking, leaving Uncle Tao in charge. During these fourteen months Mrs. Liang had got to know Uncle Tao so well that she laughed every time she thought of him, while Dr. Liang grew more and more ashamed of him.

Behind the spirit wall Uncle Tao now rolled his head round and round and shut his eyes tight, preparing to shout yet another time that he wanted to eat. Before he could get up his wind, however, a tenant sauntered in from the street. He had been at the wineshop when two strangers and a servant stopped to ask the way to the Liang house. He had purposely misdirected them in order to leave himself time to come and warn Uncle Tao that he was to have visitors.

Uncle Tao opened his eyes. “Who are they?” he asked in his rumbling husky voice.

“They look like foreigners,” the tenant replied. “A man and a woman. The woman has her hair cut short. Perhaps they are only students of some sort. They have no red hair, purple eyes or chalk skin, but they look like city people.”

Uncle Tao hated city people. “Tell them I am dead,” he said, shutting his eyes. In a family of country gentry known for its courtesy and breeding Uncle Tao showed these qualities only when he was in good mood.

It was too late to obey him. At this very moment Young Wang appeared around the spirit wall. Uncle Tao opened his eyes and stared at the dapper young fellow in a strange uniform. Young Wang smiled and for a moment only stood, looking pleasant. Then he coughed to show that he was ready to introduce himself.

“What man are you?” Uncle Tao demanded.

“I am my master’s head servant,” Young Wang began glibly. “He sends me to say that he and his sister wish to pay their respects. They are son and daughter of the Liang family, children of the Honorable One’s elder brother’s son.”

Uncle Tao heard this with stupefaction. So long had it been since he had even thought of these relatives whom he had long considered as dead in some foreign land, that now his fat underjaw hung down. “Where are they?” he demanded.

“At the gate, Honored One,” Young Wang said. He could scarcely keep back laughter. This old gentleman, for it could be seen that Uncle Tao was still a gentleman, was of a sort he knew very well. Every village had someone more or less like him. True, he had never seen any country gentry so huge, so fat, so dirty as Uncle Tao, so like the Buddha in a forgotten temple, except that now he frowned instead of smiled. His great belly creased his soiled gray silk robe and his bare feet were thrust into old black velvet shoes. Upon the vast yellow face were a few sparse white whiskers, and the head, while almost entirely bald, had a handful of hairs at the back which were actually braided into a tiny queue secured with a dingy black cord. This queue should have been cut off more than thirty years ago when the revolution came, and that Uncle Tao had kept it was a sign of obstinacy, for he hated all governments alike. Indeed long after the revolution had come and the Empress was dust he still persisted in declaring that she was alive and in ignoring the new rulers.

“At the gate!” Uncle Tao exclaimed. “How inconvenient!”

“May they come in, Honored One?” Young Wang asked.

“I have not yet eaten,” Uncle Tao replied.

Young Wang began to grow angry and turning his back abruptly he went back to the gate.

“Old One,” the tenant said apologetically, “it is none of my business and I ought to die, but after all they are the children of your elder brother’s son who after all is the first in the next generation after you.”

Uncle Tao lifted himself up by his hands on the arms of the bamboo chair and made as if he were about to heave himself at the tenant who fled at once around the spirit wall and out of the gate. There the miserable man saw the guests who stared at him in surprise. He smiled in a sickly fashion, and jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “The old man is getting his anger up,” he said, hurrying away.

“I thought that old relative looked as though he had temper,” Young Wang said.

A hearty red flew into Mary’s sunburned cheeks. “Why should anybody be angry with us?” she demanded of James. “I’m going straight in. We belong here, too.”

“Wait,” James said. “Perhaps we had better go to the inn.”

“I won’t,” Mary replied. “The inn is sure to be dirty.” So saying she walked briskly up the two cracked marble steps of the gate, went under the portal and around the spirit wall where she came full upon Uncle Tao. She knew at once that it was he. No one else could have looked at the same time so absurd and so formidable. Their eyes met. Uncle Tao frowned and drew down his full lips.

“Uncle Tao!” Mary said.

Uncle Tao did not reply. He continued to stare at her.

“My elder brother and I have returned to our ancestral home,” Mary said. “We are Liangs, and our father is Liang Wen Hua.”

“Little Bookfool, I always called him,” Uncle Tao said suddenly.

Mary laughed, and small wrinkles crossed the severe expanse of Uncle Tao’s flat face. “Go away,” he said. “I never talk to women.”

As he so spoke James appeared at Mary’s side. He bowed slightly. “Uncle Tao, you must forgive us,” he said in his best Mandarin. “We have rudely come here. Yet we think of ourselves as your children also, and of this as our home. If it is not convenient for us to stay here for a few days, please tell us.”

Uncle Tao wagged his head. “Where have you come from?” he asked.

“From Peking today, but some months ago we came from outside the seas, from America.”

“I heard some twenty years ago that the Bookfool had gone there,” Uncle Tao said with some show of interest. His thick lids lifted slightly and he began to breathe through his mouth. “How does he earn his rice?”

“He teaches school,” Mary said.

“Do they pay him well?” Uncle Tao demanded.

“Well enough,” she replied.

At this moment Uncle Tao remembered again that he was hungry. “I have not eaten,” he announced.

“Neither have we,” Mary said.

“We can eat at the inn,” James said quickly. He was a little ashamed that Mary talked so much. Old-fashioned gentlemen did not like to hear women speak.

Before Uncle Tao could answer, his eldest daughter-in-law came briskly to the door. “The fowl is ready, Old Father,” she called. Then she stared.

Uncle Tao heaved himself out of his chair. When he stood up it could be seen that he was a very tall man, in spite of his weight. He pointed a long and dirty thumbnail at the two guests. “These are my brother’s grandchildren,” he told his daughter-in-law. “It is very inconvenient that they have arrived without telling me. Now we have only the thin yellow hen to eat.”

The daughter-in-law felt that this was the moment to confess the grievous mistake that had been made. Uncle Tao would perhaps restrain himself before strangers. She began smoothly, “Old Father, the gods have guided us. Doubtless they saw these two coming hither. We chased the thin yellow hen under the cabbages and the youngest one among us reached her hands under and caught and twisted her neck off before she could escape us. When she brought out the fowl, it was not the thin yellow hen but the fat red one. We longed to die when we saw this, but now I see the meaning of it. The gods know better than we humans can know. There is enough chicken flesh with the noodles and some eggs we found in the hen to make a meal for these two also.”

Uncle Tao heard this and he glowered for a moment but he did not speak. He lumbered toward the door, rolling his thick lips as he thought of food. There he paused and turned to his daughter-in-law. “I suppose you have filled those rooms of my brother’s with your children and that we have not an empty bed in the house.”

“There is no truth in what you say,” the daughter-in-law retorted. “I can brush the children away like flies.” She turned to Mary. “Come in, do! In a few minutes I shall have two rooms empty for you.”

“We have brought our own bedding,” Mary said gratefully. She liked this honest round-faced country kinswoman.

“Ours is clean,” this kinswoman replied, somewhat hurt. “We have no lice in this house.”

“That I know,” Mary said.

“Do not be offended,” James said. “We are only glad to be under the roof of our ancestors.”

“Then come and wash yourselves and eat,” the woman said and she led them into the house, and Young Wang, who had been standing waiting at the spirit wall, went and led in the mules from the other side of the wall where he had tethered them to a date tree, and tethered them instead in the court to a thick and old pomegranate tree laden with hard red fruit. There he unloaded the bedding and bags and he, too, came in.

In the night rain fell. Mary heard the quiet drip from the tiled eaves above her bed and she woke. The bed was harder than any she had ever slept upon, being only a bottom of boards set upon benches. Nevertheless she felt rested. A thick cotton mattress was under her body and a clean cotton quilt was folded over her. The kinswomen had refused to allow the other bedding to be opened. “We have plenty of everything,” they had insisted. “Is this not your home? Our ancestors would rise against us if we let you sleep under other bedding as though here were only an inn.”

The night was so cool that there were no mosquitoes and Mary had not let down the heavy flaxen bed curtains. She lay in the darkness listening to the rain, breathing in a faint mustiness in the room, the smell of old wood and plastered walls and generations of her family. The house was none too clean — that she had seen during the evening — and her kinswomen, alas, were not often bathed. They had gathered in her room to watch her prepare for bed, cheerful, curious, friendly, and she had not the heart to send them away. They had exclaimed at the whiteness of her undergarments and at the cleanness of her skin.

“We country people,” the eldest had proclaimed, “cannot have time to wash ourselves. In the summer it is true we pour water over our bodies every day. But now with storing the harvest and getting ready for winter we cannot wash every day. In winter of course it is too cold to bathe.”

Why had she not resented their curiosity? It was sweet and childlike. They had admired her much, remarking tenderly upon the natural narrowness of her feet which had never been bound, upon the smallness of her waist, the beauty of her breasts. There was nothing coarse in their eyes, and there was no envy in them.

“Are you betrothed?” they had asked and when she said she was not they felt it a pity and that her parents had neglected their duty. She had tried to explain that she did not want to be betrothed but here they could not understand her. “Ah, but you must be betrothed,” one had exclaimed and the others nodded. She had not argued with them. She could not, indeed. They belonged to another world.

And Uncle Tao! She laughed silently in the dark when she thought of him. He had ruled over the evening. What was that song she had learned in kindergarten long ago in New York? “Old King Cole was a merry old soul and a merry old soul was he!” That was Uncle Tao. Fretful until he was full of food, when he had cleaned the bones of the fat hen and had supped up the final fragments of noodles, had eaten the last of the side dishes and the sweets, he became genial. Around him the family relaxed into ease and the children who had stayed far from him came near and leaned on his enormous knees and laughed at the size of his belly, reposing like a pillow in his lap.

He rumbled with husky laughter and laughing made him cough until he was purple, and while the children ran for the spittoon, his sons rubbed his back. He recovered to emit loud belches and to wipe the tears from his eyes, and everybody relaxed again.

It was James who had persuaded him to talk of the past. “Tell us about our grandfather and the old times, Uncle Tao,” James said.

They had sat far into the night listening, and children went to sleep in their mothers’ arms while Uncle Tao talked. Mary had listened with strange warm feelings. The crude old room with its plastered walls and cobwebby rafters, the open-faced kind of country people, these were real and they were her own. She curled herself down into the huge bed. “I like it here,” she murmured. “I like it better than anywhere in the world.”

On the other side of the wooden partition James too was awake. It had not taken him long to see that his kinspeople were ridden with trachoma. The eyes even of the children were red. No wonder when they used the same gray towel, the same tin basin! If he were not mistaken, the middle son had tuberculosis. And these were the gentry!

Uncle Tao, James saw, would not like any change. Nevertheless change, James decided, was what he would bring to his ancestral village. He got up out of bed and lit the candles on the table. They stood in brass holders wrought in the shape of the character for long life. He would bring long life to them with health. His heart grew soft when he thought of them, even Uncle Tao. “They’re good,” he thought. “They’re really good people.”

The next morning began with a quarrel between James and Mary. When they came out of their rooms and met in the big central room of the house there was only the eldest daughter-in-law there.

“The outside persons,” she said, meaning the men, “have gone to see to the planting of the winter wheat. They asked me to excuse them to you, and to say they would be home before noon and they beg you to eat and be comfortable. Uncle Tao does not get up early. One of the children is by his door listening and when Uncle Tao begins to rumble the little one will come and tell us. It is like this every morning.”

“Please do not trouble yourselves about us, good aunt,” James said.

“It is no trouble,” she replied. “What will you eat? Our food is poor.”

“Anything,” Mary said, “I’m hungry.” Then she said impulsively, “Don’t treat us as guests. Let us come to the kitchen with you and fetch our own food.”

The kinswoman laughed and did not refuse and so they followed her through the courtyard to the kitchen. The morning was clear and bright, and alas, the sunshine showed all too plainly that the kinswomen were not careful housewives. Mary looked at James with meaning, and James said in a low voice and in English, “Never mind, most germs die with heat.”

There was plenty of heat. The kinswoman opened the wooden lid of the great cauldrons, and steam poured from fragrant millet. The iron ladle was so hot it could not be touched without a cloth, and Mary, when she saw the dark rag offered to her, used her handkerchief instead. Cold salted duck eggs still in the shell were clean enough and salted fish was safe, and so they heaped their bowls and went outdoors in the sun to eat. The house was quiet, for the other kinswomen and the older children had gone to the fields and to the ponds to wash clothes, and only the smallest children played about in the dust.

“Let us go to the fields, too,” Mary said to James.

When they had eaten and washed their bowls they found their kinswoman again, who now was weaving cloth in a back room. They heard the clack-clack of the loom and going there they saw her seated high in the loom, hands and feet both at work in the midst of a mighty dust.

“We are going out on the land,” Mary called to her, and she nodded and took up her work again.

Now it was that the quarrel began. So near were brother and sister that their minds came together often as one, and Mary did not doubt that James felt as she did this morning. She turned her glowing face to him as they walked along the village street. “Jim, let’s come here to live!”

Along the street children stopped to stare at them and women ran to the doorways. It was not a small village and there were crossing narrow alleyways running back to the four-square walls. In all there were perhaps a hundred houses. The center of the main street was cobbled with blocks of marble smoothed by generations of Liang feet and the houses were made of home-dried brick and the roofs were of black unglazed tiles. Here and there was a poorer house of earthen walls under wheat thatch. The children were cheerful and dirty.

James looked at them and saw adenoids and tonsils, reddened eyes and bad diet. “What would we live on, Mary?” he inquired. She came to his own conclusions too quickly and though in the night he had made this same decision, it was an irritation to have her announce it first. He would not agree with her at once, without heed to the necessary difficulties.

“We belong to the Liang family, don’t we?” she retorted. “I suppose we can have our food and our rooms as well as Uncle Tao and the others can.”

“We could not do only with food and shelter,” he said prudently. “I would want to set up a hospital and you I suppose would want to do something about these children. That takes money.”

“It wouldn’t take much,” she said, reluctant to grant that he was right. “I could run the school in an empty room and the people could pay for books and things. It wouldn’t cost anything to get these children clean, at least.”

James did not answer for a moment. They had reached the south gate in the village wall, and passing through it they were in the country. All but the biggest of the children had now gone back and with a trail of not more than a dozen or so, they struck off into the paths that led between the fields. As far as the eye could reach the level land stretched brown and shorn under the brilliant blue sky. The harvests had been cut and only cabbages and onions showed green. The blue of farmers’ garb showed pure and clear, and a flock of white geese, strolling across a newly cut field to pick up lost grain, lent an accent of snow.

“Oh, but it’s beautiful,” Mary sighed. They were speaking in English as they always did now when they were alone. In New York instinctively they had spoken Chinese when they were alone.

“Why don’t you say something, Jim?” she demanded.

She looked at him and saw as she never had before how handsome a man he was. He had put on old clothes this morning, an old pair of brown trousers and a faded red sweater. He looked foreign and young, and yet his profile, strong and smooth, belonged to the landscape.

“I am thinking,” he replied. “I know very well that we have to do something about this, Mary. I felt it coming over me in the night, as you did too, I suppose. It’s a strange thing. We exiles coming home seem to take two directions. Some of us, like Su and Peng and Kang and those fellows and their wives and girls and all that, want to ignore and escape. Then there are those like us. We are stunned, because nothing is like what we thought it was, yet we can’t separate ourselves.”

“Do you suppose Pa knew it was really like this?” she asked.

“Like what?”

“Well — to put the worst of it — dirty,” she said frankly. “Dirty and the children filthy and the people ignorant.”

“I imagine Pa has forgotten all that except in his secret heart,” James replied. “There are dirty people everywhere — plenty of them in New York.”

“Jim, you know what I mean! You know as well as I do that you didn’t expect so many poor, so many dirty, so many ignorant people as we’ve found. We’ve lived well enough, but we haven’t lived among them.”

“I don’t think Pa thought any of this was his business. What makes you think it is ours?”

“Because it is ours,” Mary insisted.

“I am not so sure,” James replied.

Here the quarrel began. While Mary argued, James resisted, until at last in a passion she stood her ground and refused to let him walk another step.

“But why are you so angry with me?” he protested.

“Because you know, and I know that you know, that you are not saying what you really think,” Mary said loudly. A flock of crows that had settled in the field by the road looked up startled and with a great flutter they whirled away.

“You’ve even scared the crows,” James said, laughing.

“Jim!” she cried, stamping her foot in the dust. “Answer me!” But James did not answer, and throwing him a flashing look Mary walked ahead.

Now they reached a wall temple to an earth god, a tiny dwelling scarcely taller than Mary was herself. Within, looking through the opening, they saw the little god and his wife. Upon the low surrounding wall Mary sat down and James sat beside her. Behind this temple were grave mounds.

“Our ancestors, I suppose,” James said. “They put them anywhere in the fields, apparently.”

Mary looked at them only for a second and returned to her quarrel. “Jim, if you don’t come to live in the village, I shall come alone.”

He looked grave at this. “My dear, I am sure you would,” he said. “But I am not saying I won’t come. I am only asking how — and perhaps when — and with what. Merely to come here to live among ignorant people might make us ignorant, too. We have to think how we can make our lives here. We don’t want just to bury ourselves — with our ancestors.”

His gravity, his gentleness, subdued her. She sat still for a long moment, curbing her eager thoughts. He was right. There was a world of difference between themselves and these kinfolk, centuries of difference, space and time crowded together into a single generation.

James went on. “I want to talk with Uncle Tao, first of all. We would have to get his help, you know. If he were against us, we could do nothing. He’d have to understand.”

“Do you think he understands anything except his food and his sleep?” Mary demanded.

“Underneath that mountain of flesh I think he understands a great deal,” James said.

The quarrel had faded away like a mist but she could not quite let it go. “As long as I know you are thinking about it,” she said, “as long as I know you really want to come back to our people and not just drift along with those Sus and Pengs and Kangs and people like that—”

“I don’t want to drift,” James said.

“As long as you are thoroughly discontented with everything, as I am,” Mary went on with a hint of laughter.

“I am quite discontented,” James replied.

Mary laughed. “Then let’s enjoy ourselves.” She got up and peered into the tiny temple. “Poor little gods,” she murmured. “They look terrified!”

When they got back at noon Uncle Tao was awake and walking slowly up and down the courtyard, digesting his late breakfast. The harvesting being over, the three meals of working days had been cut to the winter schedule of two, and there was as yet no preparation for the next meal. On the table in the main room were a plate of persimmons and a square sweetmeat dish divided into compartments which held watermelon seeds, pumpkin seeds, and some stale sweets.

“Eh, eh,” Uncle Tao said negligently when James and Mary came in.

“How are you, Uncle Tao?” James asked.

“Busy, busy,” Uncle Tao said, putting his fat hands to his stomach. “Where have you been?”

“Out in the fields,” James replied. “But we saw none of our kinsmen.”

“They went to a distant part of our land,” Uncle Tao said carelessly. “I sent them there to measure seed wheat. These old men of the earth will cheat the landlord every time if they can.”

“How do you decide the rent?” James asked.

“We take half,” Uncle Tao said. Now that he saw there was to be some real conversation, he sat down in his bamboo chair which no one else used. “Half the seed we furnish, half the harvest we get. The land is ours, the oxen are theirs. They have the easy work, we have the hard.”

“How is that, Uncle Tao? You look easy enough sitting here.”

“Ah, you don’t know the truth of our life here,” Uncle Tao said with vigor. Now that he was awake his huge body was responsive to his mood. His large head stood round and bald upon his wide shoulders, and his brown neck rose thick from his unbuttoned collar. He never bothered with buttons. His gray robe was held about him by a wide soft girdle of old silk and from the long sleeves his big hands moved in unison with his talk, gesturing with peculiar grace. These hands were smooth, though dirty, and the knuckles were dimpled.

“All you young people,” he said in a loud voice, as though addressing millions. “You do not understand. You think the old men of earth are all good and honest. Nothing is less true. I tell you these sons of hares who rent our Liang land, they are thieves. They sell the seed wheat and then complain of a poor harvest. They harvest early and sell our part of the harvest. I and my three sons, we trudge everywhere watching and weighing and measuring. Now when the seed is given we must see that it is sown. When it comes up we must judge the harvest month by month. At harvest we must be everywhere at once, lest the grain be cut before we can know how heavy it is. Pity the landlord, pity the landlord!”

Young Wang had come in during this talk, and not daring to break in, he had stood waiting. When Uncle Tao said this his face grew red and the veins on his smooth temples stood out. James saw this and understood it very well. Young Wang belonged to the men of earth. He turned aside to hear him. “What do you want?” he asked.

Young Wang began without noticing Uncle Tao. “Master, I see you are very well off here. How long do you stay?”

“Seven or eight days, if Uncle Tao will allow us,” James said.

“Stay, stay,” Uncle Tao said indulgently.

‘Then it is long enough for me to go and visit my old parents,’ Young Wang said. “I ought to have gone long ago, for I left them in the city after the floods. The water will be gone now and they will be back in their houses, if these have not melted into the water. If so, they will be making new ones. They have a very evil landlord who will not help them, and I must go back to see that he does not compel them to sell the very oxen who must plow the land if all are not to starve.”

James knew well enough that Young Wang said this for Uncle Tao, and he said at once, “Do go, and we will plan to leave here on the eighth morning from now.”

“I go then,” Young Wang said, and without more ado he went.

Uncle Tao had shut his eyes during this interruption and seemed to be asleep. Now he opened them and took up where he left off. “Had it not been for me,” he announced, “the Liang family would have no place on the earth today. Your grandfather, my older brother, was nothing but a scholar. He understood no more than a child about life. Full of good talk he was, and anybody could cheat him by agreeing with him. I suppose your father is the same way.”

“Perhaps,” James said.

“How does he make his real living over there?” Uncle Tao inquired with lively interest. “School teaching cannot fill the stomach. I send him so much of the rent each year, but I suppose it is also not enough.”

“You send him rent?” Mary exclaimed.

“His share,” Uncle Tao said, without looking at her. He never looked at any female creature in the daylight. “Before New Year each year I divide everything in exact proportion, to each his share according to his place in the family. Thus your father gets what my elder son gets in the same generation.”

“Pa never told us that!” Mary exclaimed.

“Eh,” Uncle Tao said. “Now why not?”

“I suppose he didn’t think of it,” James said reasonably. “What he earns at teaching is a good deal more.”

“Is it?” Uncle Tao exclaimed, his eyes lively. “Does he teach the foreigners how to read and write?”

“They know already,” Mary said.

“Not our language,” Uncle Tao replied.

Mary seized upon this change of subject. “Uncle Tao!” she said, firmly.

Uncle Tao looked at the ground. “What now?” he asked.

“Do you believe in reading and writing?”

“I can read and write,” he replied.

“But for other people,” Mary insisted.

“Not for women,” Uncle Tao said firmly. “When a woman gets her belly full of characters there is no room for a child.”

“For men, then,” Mary said, swallowing her pride for the moment.

“It depends upon what men,” Uncle Tao said. “For men like me and my sons, certainly we all read and write. Not too much, you understand, but enough.”

James looked at Mary with warning in his eyes. “Proceed slowly,” these eyes advised her. “Leave it to me,” they said. She rose. “I will go and see if I can help in the kitchen.”

Uncle Tao looked slightly in the direction of her voice. “Very good,” he said, “very right, entirely proper.”

He waited until she was gone and then he looked at James. “You must get this sister married quickly,” he said in a solemn voice. “To allow a female to run hither and thither is tempting the devils. Come, come, what have you done?”

“She wants to teach school,” James said boldly.

“Now you see,” Uncle Tao said triumphantly. “I told you — no reading and writing for women. None of my daughters-in-law can read. I insisted on that. Your father, I remember, would have your mother read. Well, I suppose she runs about everywhere. Never at home, eh? How many children?”

“Four of us.”

“Do you teach school, too?” Uncle Tao asked.

“No, I am a doctor.”

“A doctor!” Uncle Tao exclaimed. “A cutting doctor or a medicine doctor?”

“Cutting,” James said, “although sometimes I treat first.”

“Cutting!” Uncle Tao said darkly. “I don’t believe in it. I have never seen anyone who was cut who lived.”

“Have you ever seen anyone at all who was cut?” James asked, smiling a little.

“No,” Uncle Tao said flatly. “I don’t believe in it.”

He yawned, fell silent for a moment, and then began to rub his belly slowly round and round with his right hand.

“What is it?” James asked.

“Nothing, nothing,” Uncle Tao said. But without opening his eyes he added somewhat anxiously, “There are times when I could think I was a woman about to have a child. Being a man, it is impossible.”

He continued to sit with his eyes closed while he rubbed his belly and James waited.

“Eh, isn’t it?” Uncle Tao said suddenly opening his eyes.

“I think it is impossible,” James said, trying not to laugh.

“Then what is here?”

Without further warning he pulled at his girdle, and jerked open his robe. His enormous belly sat revealed. “Feel this,” he told James.

James bent over him and pressed the huge soft mass.

“Do you feel something like the head of a child?” Uncle Tao asked anxiously.

“Yes, but it is not that,” James said gently.

“What is it?”

“A lump and it should not be there.”

“Crabs,” Uncle Tao said dismally. “I ate too many crabs one year, and soon afterward this began.”

“It is not crabs.”

“Then what is it?”

“I do not know. I should have to look at it through a special glass.”

“You can see through me?”

“Only partly.”

“And then what?”

“I should probably have to cut,” James said very gently.

Uncle Tao wrapped himself up again. “I don’t believe in cutting,” he said. “Let us talk of something else. The men of earth, for example.”

But James was not listening. Everything seemed to fall quite clearly into place. The future, which had been confused this morning when he talked to Mary, came near, and he saw it step by step before him. Uncle Tao, with a tumor in his belly, would lead the way and without knowing it.

Young Wang came back after seven days and in unwonted silence he packed the bags and retied the bedding which had never been used and brushed the mule which he had ridden south to his own village and reclaimed the other two which had been at the inn stables while he was away. The next morning he appeared soon after dawn, for the return to the city, and James and Mary were ready for him. Everybody in the house had got up to see them off and to cry out invitations for their return. Even Uncle Tao with heroic effort hauled himself out of bed, and tousled and bleary he staggered to the door to nod his head and murmur vaguely, “Eh, eh, meet again — meet again!”

As soon as the two had gone he fell upon his bed to slumber. Sleep was the one way in which he could escape the horrible fear which now sat in his heart every waking hour. The young man who was his grandnephew had said he must be cut! He thought of this for one instant before he fell asleep and the withers melted in his enormous mass. Then he spoke stoutly to himself. “Whatever is in me is mine, and no one can take it away from me unless I allow it.” Upon this momentary comfort he was carried down into sleep again.

Dawn was breaking over the village as they left it. The sky was illuminated with many small golden clouds, for the sun had not yet come over the horizon. The street looked fresh in the new light, and the smoke curling from kitchen roofs was purple. Children’s voices were cheeping behind doors, like waking chicks, and only the white geese were up and about their business. They came home at night, as decent as good men, and took shelter under the walls, but at dawn they bestirred themselves and walked in dignity and silence to the fields, in contrast to the noisy quacking ducks who went anyhow and kept no ranks. Between geese and ducks there is no communication.

The village gate was already ajar and James had to bend his head, he sat so tall upon his mule. Outside the wall the land lay with that pristine glitter of dew which is gone as soon as the sun rises full. The fields were richly brown, for in these days they had been plowed for winter wheat, and the willow trees were golden about the villages which dotted the plain.

“Look at these villages,” James said, “we can reach fifty of them within a day’s journey.”

“We will begin with our own,” Mary said.

They had talked very little in the last days they had spent in their ancestral house. Both were fermenting with ideas, and until these were clear they kept themselves separate. Mary had joined in the life of the kinswomen. She had worked with them and sat with them, answering their constant questions about herself, her clothes, her parents, her education, about America and all the strange folk there and their strange ways. Wherever they had got it, the women had heard something of the outer seas and the farther lands, but their information was woven upon dream and myth and imagination. Thus they thought that in the outer lands children were born with white hair which grew dark with age, and they thought that men and women did not mate and produce children in human ways — that is their own ways — but in some unaccountable mystic fashion. The food in the outer lands horrified them, for they had heard that it was raw meat and cow’s milk which disgusted them. They had heard that the people were covered with hair from head to foot and that their skin was of all colors and that their eyes were blue and purple and yellow like the eyes of wild beasts. With the passion of one born to teach Mary told them what she thought was the truth and in her turn she asked them questions. She learned that the elder daughter-in-law alone dared to speak to Uncle Tao, and then only since the death of Uncle Tao’s wife, a mild gentle small woman whom everybody had loved and who had disobeyed Uncle Tao in everything without rousing his anger.

“Ah, Uncle Tao’s wife, our mother!” the middle daughter-in-law sighed. “How good she was! She was even famous as a mother-in-law. Some women fear the mothers of their husbands, but we did not fear her. She thought of us as her own flesh and blood and she would tell us not to work too hard, and so we worked the harder.”

The eldest daughter-in-law laughed aloud. “She was too wise for any man! Whenever Uncle Tao scolded any of us she would resign from her position as his wife. ‘Tao!’ so she called him. ‘Eh Tao, I am no use to you. I see that I cannot manage your house. I beg of you to get yourself a good strong concubine and I will retire and let her control everything.’ So she said.”

“Did he never do it?” Mary asked. She found undying interest in these small affairs of which the kinswomen told her.

“He?” the daughters-in-law cried in chorus. They fell into fits of laughter.

It was a merry household, and the fear of Uncle Tao’s anger only added liveliness to the day. He was a god under his own roof, and his wrath, while it cast them into terror, made them proud also, for they believed there was no other like it in the world. Even his sons boasted of their father’s rage and fatness, of his bellow and his roars of laughter. They loved him well, while they cherished their fear of him and he gave direction to their lives.

All this Mary saw, but she herself could not like Uncle Tao. “For example, Uncle Tao,” she now said to James as their mules jogged along the narrow footpaths to the main highway to the city. “What is he but a mass of ignorance and dirt? I shall not be thwarted by him. He despises women but I despise him. I shall go my own way and do what I plan to do.”

“What do you plan to do?” James asked, smiling at his downright sister. She made a picture anything but formidable. Her short hair was blowing in the sharp autumn wind and her cheeks were red and her eyes bright and dark. Her profile, against the horizon of earth and sky, was young and exquisite and she held her small body lightly straight upon the shambling bony mule.

“Whatever you do, Jim,” she said briskly, “I am going back to the village to live.”

“On what?”

“On Pa’s rents,” she said calmly.

James was mightily amused at this but he kept his face grave. “How do you think you will get the rents out of Uncle Tao?” he asked.

“I shall tell Pa to write to him that I am to have them. If Uncle Tao doesn’t listen to Pa, I will make him miserable until he listens to me. After all, I belong to the family and I have a right under that roof.”

“Until you are married,” James reminded her.

“I shan’t marry.”

“You are declaring eternal war against Uncle Tao,” James said.

“Yes!”

They pulled their mules aside for a few moments, for they now met a long line of farmers carrying their grain to the city. It was heaped into baskets made of bamboo, and carried at either end of a limber wooden pole. Although the air was cold, the men were already sweating and they had thrown open their cotton jackets, showing brown bodies rippling with muscles.

“We are a handsome race,” James said as he watched the men.

“We are wonderful,” Mary agreed. They exchanged a long look of pleasure in themselves and then they went on again.

“You know,” James said thoughtfully, “Uncle Tao is also wonderful in his way.”

“He likes you because you are a man,” Mary retorted.

“Well, he is a man, too, and perhaps in the bottom of their hearts men do like men best,” James said. A glint of mischief showed itself in his eyes. “So do women like men best, Mary, and here is the root of the quarrel between men and women.”

She rejected this lapse into theory. “Uncle Tao is more of a mountain than a man,” she said heartlessly. “What you found in that lump of meat I cannot imagine. I never heard him say anything worth hearing.”

“He did not talk when you were around,” James replied.

She refused to be moved. “Jim, please don’t pretend you really like Uncle Tao. You know that he will be your chief obstacle and enemy when you go there to live.”

“Who said I was going there to live?” James demanded.

“I know you are. You may say even to yourself that you haven’t decided. But you have. I can feel it in you.”

James yielded gracefully. “You are right, Mary, though I don’t know how you know. I am going back there to live out my life. I don’t know how or when. I scarcely know why. But I am.”

All Mary’s good humor returned. “And how do you think you will make your living?” she asked with loving sisterly malice.

“I don’t know. I haven’t gotten that far yet. But I have an idea that somehow Uncle Tao will help me.”

Mary shouted with laughter. “Oh Jim, oh Jim!” she cried. “Jim the Silent Dreamer!”

It was night when they drew near to the house in the city. The hutung was quiet, for rain had begun to fall, the cold rain of autumn, and children were inside their homes. At the gate they had got off their mules stiffly, first shouting for Little Dog to come and fetch the baggage, and Young Wang led the beasts away to the owner. Little Dog came running and then Peter and Louise and lastly Chen came out to meet them. Chen had been somewhat distressed when he was left in the house with Louise, having only Peter to be a third, but they had laughed at him for being old-fashioned. Nevertheless he had been very scrupulous and so busy at the hospital that he had not been alone with Louise while James and Mary were away. A strange thing had shown itself at the hospital and he was disturbed by it and he was glad to see James home again. But he said nothing of it now.

“Eh, you two,” he said amiably, his spiky hair standing on end about his big honest face, “you’ve come back safely from your ancestors, have you?”

“You both smell of garlic,” Louise declared.

Peter stood grinning, his hands in his pockets. “I thought maybe you wouldn’t come back,” he suggested.

“We’d have to come back for a bath if nothing else,” James said gaily.

They walked together into the house. A rich smell of cooking hung about the rooms. Little Dog’s mother ran out, her face black with soot. “Oh, Heaven, let it be that you have not eaten yet!” she cried. “I have the meal ready.”

“We have not eaten,” Mary replied. “But wait, good mother, until we have washed ourselves.”

“Little Dog shall run to the hot water shop quickly and buy hot water,” the woman promised.

So it was that in a very few minutes the hot water was brought in great steaming buckets and poured into the glazed pottery tub in the washroom. This was for James, and Little Dog’s mother fetched a wooden tub and put it in Mary’s room for her, so that the meal need not be held back too long.

How good was the hot water, and what a blessing the soap! “When I get to the village,” Mary mused in the midst of this comfort, “I shall make a bath house first of all for the women.”

In his pottery tub James sat cross-legged like a smooth young Buddha. “A bath house for the men,” he thought. “That will be the first thing for the village.”

They came to the table with monstrous appetites, eager to tell everything, and to hear all. “First to hear,” James said, “and then to tell.”

But it seemed there was not much to hear. Louise was very silent. Questioned, she said that she had read some books Chen had brought her from the hospital library, and she had gone to a party the new Mrs. Su had given, where there was dancing — the first time she had danced since she left home, as she persisted in calling New York. Neither James nor Mary corrected her. Home for them was now becoming the brown walls of the village rising out of the brown plain. They could not imagine Louise there.

“I want to talk to you alone about the college,” Peter said abruptly to Jim. “There’s stuff going on there that I don’t like.”

Chen made a brief report of the hospital. “The healthy season is coming in, and we have had no more cholera. We’ve had the usual number of childbirths already half ruined by stupid old midwives, and Peng is threatening to resign because foreign auditors want to examine the books he kept during the war.” He hesitated and then went on, “Later, Jim, when you have time, I want to tell you something.”

“Why have each of you secrets?” Mary demanded.

“I have no secret,” Louise said quickly. She glanced at Chen who did not look at her or speak, and Peter paid no attention. His appetite was always excellent. He had his bowl to his mouth, and he was ladling in a combination of rice, gravy, cabbage, and duck livers which he had arranged in the exact proportions he considered perfection.

And James, sensitive to some entanglement here which could not now be unraveled, began to speak of the village.

“I don’t know how to explain to you Uncle Tao—” He began to laugh and everybody laughed with him as he went on.

Sitting around the table lit by candles they all listened to him and Mary did not interrupt. When this tall brother of hers set himself to a task, he did it supremely well. Chen was deeply moved. He opened his hands upward upon the table. “All that you say is as known to me as the palms of these two hands,” he said when James had finished. “Yet I never understood before that it had anything to do with me.”

“We can do all that I have said,” James went on, “but we must move in ways that seem slow at first. The people must be with us.”

“Slow!” Peter cried. “So slow that we’ll all be dead before we see the change.”

Only Louise was not moved. Her face was set in its lines of prettiness. “It all sounds horrible,” she said and wiped her hand daintily on the napkin, which to the astonishment of Little Dog’s mother she insisted on having fresh at every meal.

Alone that night for a few minutes after the others had gone to their rooms, Chen said to Jim, “Do you remember the child that was born while you were away in Shanghai, whose mother died, to my shame, because she was my patient?”

“The one I gave into Mary’s charge?” Jim asked.

Chen nodded. “Rose came to me a few days ago and asked me to come and see him. It is a boy, you know.”

Jim nodded.

“That child,” Chen said with peculiar emphasis, “is not all Chinese.”

“No!” James cried. “But you said the mother—”

“The mother was certainly Chinese. She was a young girl — not a student, not a girl of good family, but one of these young moderns — you know them, Jim. She had left her family. I supposed she was a prostitute but she was quite clean and the child is healthy. Well, that’s not too strange, But—” Chen pressed his lips together.

“Go on,” Jim said. “How can there be anything you fear to tell me?”

Chen said, hesitating very much and turning red. “Here it is, then. After the dance, late that night, Louise went to see this child.”

“But why?” James exclaimed.

“I don’t know why,” Chen said. “She came alone and she asked the nurse in charge to show her the child. She used your name to get in.”