Kinfolk

12

MARY KNEW THAT HER FATHER’S LETTER had been mailed by her mother, for she had written a postscript. “While your father agrees to let you have his share of the Liang rents do not think it came out of him easily,” she wrote. “I stood at his side and I took the letter at once and I hastened from this foreign pagoda house in which we still live to put it in the box. I will not give it to the man in the up-and-down because doubtless he will steal the stamp. For myself I am glad you and your brother will have this money.”

Mary’s pleasure in being thus one step nearer to the village was tempered, however, by two events which were not so much events as something still going on. Louise was excited and Mary recognized certain signs within a few days after the return from the village. Her sister’s eyes were bright, her cheeks pink, her voice high, and she was easily angry as she had been in the Vermont summer. This could mean only one thing. Louise was falling in love again. It was as plain as though she were about to succumb to an illness, and Mary went to James the first evening that he was free to be at home. She had learned that it was useless to approach him in the hospital. There his mind was too busy to give her heed unless she brought the message of some new illness among the children she taught in the hospital school. Meanwhile she watched Louise who, it seemed, went nowhere and received no visitors.

“What have you done all day, Louise?” she asked each evening when she came home.

The answer was always idle. Louise had made a new dress, or she had washed her hair, or she had read a book or she had slept half the day away. Several times Mary, perceiving her sister’s excitement, wondered if she had had a secret visitor. She was sorely tempted to inquire of Young Wang, but antipathy forbade it. Young Wang still disliked a mistress in the house he served and often he pretended not to hear what Mary told him. When she complained to James of this he only laughed. Of Little Dog no one could inquire for he would lie as the moment demanded. Little Dog’s mother also was too frightened of everybody and everything to be worth talking with. Therefore was Mary constrained to wait until such a day as James came home with the cheerful look on his face which meant that he expected no one in his care to die at least before morning.

On that evening after they had eaten and Louise had gone early to bed and Peter had gone to a meeting of students at the college, Mary found herself alone with James and Chen. She pondered whether she should speak in Chen’s presence, since she imagined him half in love with Louise secretly. When he left them for a moment, therefore, she took her chance and said quickly in English, “Jim, I am sure Louise is in love with somebody again.”

James lifted his eyebrows. “This time with whom?” he inquired. Yet strangely he did not seem surprised.

“Who knows? Unless it is with Chen?”

James shook his head. “Not with Chen.”

At this moment Chen came back, and James went on easily. “Chen, Mary thinks that Louise is in love with someone.”

Chen looked thoughtful at once, as though he knew more than he wished to tell. “I can see that Chen agrees with you,” James said, turning to Mary.

It was an evening too cold to sit in the court, and they were gathered in the main living room of the house. Young Wang had bid Little Dog light a brazier of charcoal, and this was heat enough for the early season although in the corners of the room the air lurked chill enough to make them talk of going to the thieves’ market to find a big American stove.

The oil lamp burned on the table and gave a soft yellow light to the walls. Mary had cut a stalk of Indian bamboo with its scarlet berries, and this stood upon the table in an old brown jar. The room looked cheerful and warm.

To Chen this was exceedingly precious. “I do not like to see any change in this house,” he said sadly, “but we must all perceive now that Louise is not here with her heart.”

“Yet I never see her with anyone,” Mary said.

“Young Wang has already told me that she leaves the house every afternoon,” James said quietly. “He says she meets an American.”

“An American!” Mary echoed, stupefied at Louise and her deception. Then she was hurt. “Why didn’t you tell me?” she demanded of James.

“Because you are such an impetuous little thing,” he replied, looking at her with eyes both fond and humorous, “because you are like a brimming cup, always ready to spill over, or a small firecracker, ready to explode—”

He dodged Mary’s open palm, and Chen put out his hand and pretended to give James a mighty slap. They laughed and settled down again, and Mary’s face took on its look of lively concern.

“But why does Louise hide it from us?”

“I suppose she thinks that since Pa sent her here to get away from Americans, we would prevent her,” James said. He was smoking his old American pipe and suddenly he looked weary.

“We must stop her!” Mary exclaimed.

This James did not answer. He continued to smoke, his eyes very dark.

Now Chen began to talk gravely. “Several things begin to be plain to me,” he said. “That boy child at the hospital — Mary, have you looked at him lately?”

“He is quite well,” Mary said with surprise. “The nurses care for him and not I, as you know, but every day I pass his crib and he is sleeping or eating or lying awake. He cries in such a loud voice.”

“Louise went to see that child,” Chen said cautiously.

James took the pipe from his mouth. “There is no reason why you should shield Mary now,” he told Chen. “We had better tell her everything.” They were still speaking in English, lest a servant overhear them.

But it was no servant who overheard. Louise, always sensitive to Mary’s watchfulness, had seen her sister’s eyes follow her thoughtfully as she left the room that night. She had thrown her good night gaily at the three who sat on after Peter had gone, and when she said she was sleepy Mary had not answered. Mary had only looked at her with large quiet eyes, too full of thought. Therefore Louise knew she would not be able to sleep. In a few minutes she had stolen with noiseless feet along the corridors and had hidden herself behind the curtains which divided one room from another. Now she heard what was being said, and filled with horror, she fled back to her room. There she put on a coat and outdoor shoes and still silent she slipped through the dark court, passed the latticed door of the living room, now closed against the sharp night air, and thus she went on through the gate. In the alley she was frightened but she went on to the street where she waved to a passing ricksha. Seated in it, she directed the puller to the house of Dr. and Mrs. Su.

Mrs. Su was her only friend. At her house she met Alec every day. Dr. Su knew nothing of it, but Mrs. Su welcomed the excitement of the romance. All Mrs. Su’s best friends knew about the rendezvous, and most of them had told their husbands. Therefore in the hospital nearly everyone knew that Dr. James Liang’s younger sister was meeting an American, who had returned to Peking after his discharge as a soldier, because he had been in love with a Chinese girl, a nobody, who had died in the hospital after giving birth to a boy who was now a hospital foundling. Louise thought her secret safe with Mrs. Su, and no one had told James or Mary, and no one told Dr. Su because everybody liked the new little Mrs. Su and nobody liked him. The Chinese gossiped prudently. Where it did not matter all was told and discussed, but beyond prudence no one went.

The danger tonight, Louise reminded herself as the ricksha carried her through the darkness, was that Dr. Su was at home. It was only good fortune that could prevent this. Alas, such fortune was not hers. When she had paid the ricksha man and had entered the brightly lit foreign-style house that stood beside the street, she heard Dr. Su’s voice. It was Mrs. Su, however, who came out to meet her when the servant announced her.

“My brother and sister know!” Louise whispered.

At this moment Dr. Su came to the door. “Miss Liang!” he called with the bantering smile that was his approach to all young and pretty women. “Have you run away from home?”

Louise tried to laugh. “I am really only on my way somewhere else,” she said. “I just stopped to see if Mrs. Su would come with me.”

“Where?” Dr. Su asked with ready curiosity.

“Some foreign friends,” Louise said, frightened that everything she said was too near the truth.

“Don’t go, don’t go,” Dr. Su exclaimed. “Stay here with us.”

“Then I must telephone,” Louise said, seizing upon the chance.

Mrs. Su was immediately helpful. “Su,” she said to her husband, “please return to our other guests. I will take Louise to the study.”

Dr. Su turned away and Mrs. Su led Louise into the small study where the telephone stood on the desk and she closed the door.

“Now,” she whispered, “what will you do? Your brother will be angry with my husband if he finds that I have let you meet Alec here. You know I like to help you, Louise, but I must think of my relations with my husband. Su has a very bad temper.”

“You mean Alec mustn’t come here tonight?” Louise faltered.

“He must not come any more if your brother knows,” Mrs. Su said. Her small pretty face was pale. “You know, Louise, what you do may be all right in America but here it is serious. And I am my husband’s fourth wife. He is not too patient with me. Such a fine man as Su with a good job can get plenty of women to marry him.”

Louise felt her heart grow hard toward Mrs. Su and all Chinese women, but she asked, “May I telephone?”

“Certainly that,” Mrs. Su said quickly.

“Then please — may I be alone?”

Mrs. Su hesitated. “I ought better to stay here,” she said, “but then I like to say I didn’t know anything about it. I will stand outside the door.”

So saying she went out and closed the door and Louise called the hotel where Alec Wetherston was living. His voice answered, a pleasant tenor at whose sound her lips quivered.

“Alec, it’s me — Louise.”

“Why, darling!” His voice took on depth. “Where are you?”

“At the Su house. Alec, my brother and sister know about us.”

There was silence for a long moment and she said anxiously, “Alec, do you hear me?”

“Yes, I was just thinking fast, darling.” His voice was somewhat breathless. “What will they do?”

“I don’t know but I’ve got to see you.”

“Shall I come over there?”

“Mrs. Su is afraid.”

“But what’ll we do, darling? I suppose you couldn’t come here to the hotel?”

“People would recognize me — you know how they are.”

“I could meet you at the hotel door and we could walk.”

“All right — in fifteen minutes.”

She hung up the receiver and went out into the hall. Mrs. Su was still standing there, watching the door of the living room. A burst of laughter pealed out.

“I am going home,” Louise said. “Just tell Dr. Su I had to go on, after all.”

The two young women tiptoed down the hall; Mrs. Su opened the door, and Louise went out. She was beginning to be frightened because for the first time in her life she was acting quite alone. In New York there had always been Estelle to praise her for her independence and here, until now, there had been Mrs. Su. Now she had no one. Estelle was far away and Mrs. Su was a coward, like all Chinese — cowards when it came to real courage. How she hated being Chinese herself! She must go back to America. If she married an American she could be an American, almost. At least her children would be American and she, their mother — it was her only escape.

The dusty wind blew down the wide street. It was several minutes before she could find a ricksha in the dim light. With nightfall and cold the Chinese went inside their houses and put up the boards. All the open gaiety of the city in summer was gone. She felt still more frightened when a wild-looking old man pulling a dirty ricksha offered it to her, but seeing no other she got in. He ran slowly as though he were too weary to walk, and when he let the shafts down at the hotel gate, his face glistened with sweat and his cotton jacket was streaked with damp. She ought to pity him she told herself, but he only repelled her and she gave him as little money as she dared. He was too exhausted to protest beyond a moan and a grimace at the money outspread on his grimy palm. She paid no heed to him and walked quickly up to the door. Then her heart was released. She had been afraid that Alec would not be there but he was waiting for her, his coat collar turned up and his hat pulled down.

“Hello,” he said in a guarded voice. “You were a long time coming. I began to freeze.”

He put his arm into hers and they walked down the street. “Tell me everything,” he said.

Who could have foretold what now happened? Before she could reply six or seven students coming along the half-lit street saw a Chinese girl walking with an American. They surrounded the pair swiftly and a flashlight in the hands of one thrown upon the girl revealed Louise’s pretty face. “You American man!” a student shouted. “Leave our girls alone!”

Then incredibly the students began to hustle them. Alec felt himself pushed against a wall. He put Louise behind him to shield her, but the yelling students were trying to pull her out from behind him.

“We’ll have to cut and run,” he said to her over his shoulder.

Where could they go in this whole city?

“We’ll have to go home,” Louise said.

“When I start, you keep up with me,” Alec commanded. “Come now — get ready — get set — let’s go!”

By the suddenness of their dash, by the swiftness of their pace, they took the students by surprise and got a head start. Both Alec and Louise were strong and long-winded. Good food and care had gone into the making of their young bodies, and the students were underfed and weak. The chase was uneven and one by one the students halted and gave up. When the two reached the hutung no one followed.

“You’d better leave me here,” Louise said.

But Alec Wetherston had been thinking hard while his legs ran. He was deeply attracted to this pretty Chinese girl. Perhaps he was really in love with her — not as he had been in love with his little Lanmei who had died when the baby was born. The baby worried him terribly. He had come back to China when he knew there was going to be a baby and he had made up his mind to marry Lanmei as soon as she got out of the hospital. When he reached here she was dead. He had gone to the two rooms she had shared with another girl, who had told him the story. Lanmei’s room had already been taken by a man whom the girl had accepted as her lover. Alec had listened and gone away again, not knowing what to do. “Better leave the baby in the hospital,” the girl had advised. But his heart clung to the child, although he had never seen it, hesitating to own it as his. What could he do with a baby? He had told no one at home about Lanmei. At last he had told Louise everything, even about the baby, and she had gone to see it.

“The kid is cute,” Louise had reported. “He has big eyes and he smiles when you look at him.” The father in him wanted to see his child.

Now he took Louise by the shoulders and pinned her against the wall. “Look here,” he said. “I’m not going to leave you, darling. I’m coming in to see that big brother of yours and tell him I want to marry you.”

Louise looked up at him wistfully. She would never love anyone as well as she had loved Philip. She had told Alec about Philip, too. They had exchanged the stories of their sorrows. He even knew that Philip did not want her, and it was sweet of him not to mind. But before she could speak they heard footsteps in the hutung. In the darkness they stood quite still, waiting. Again a flashlight was thrown upon them and in the beam they saw Peter.

“Peter!” Louise gasped.

Without a word Peter jumped on Alec and tore him away.

“You devil!” he cried.

Alec leaped at him. In a second the two young men were rolling on the ground locked together and Peter struggling up seized Alec by the hair and beat his head against the cobbles. Louise shrieked and fell upon Peter.

“Jim, Jim!” she screamed for help.

Down the hutung doors opened. Their landlord’s servant came running out. “These foreigners are fighting,” he shouted, and he hastened into the rented house and beat on the closed door of the living room. “Your brother and sister are killing a foreigner!” he yelled.

So it happened that the next instant James and Chen and behind them Mary carrying the lighted lamp saw three disheveled young people rising from the ground. Louise was crying.

“You leave my sister alone!” Peter was bellowing, and Alec leaped on him again.

It was James who separated them, James who commanded Louise to get into the house and who led the young men into the house behind her. He locked the gate firmly upon the gaping crowd and they stared a while at the closed gate and went home telling each other that a house haunted by weasels could give no happiness even to foreigners.

Into the living room James led his captives and Young Wang came out of his room and Little Dog and his mother followed.

“Get us some food,” James commanded them, “and fetch hot tea. Then we will talk quietly.” He turned to Peter. “What were you doing?”

Peter, his eyes still blazing at Alec, replied, “I had just passed a crowd of the fellows who said they had run after an American going with one of our girls. They can’t stand that now, after all the things Americans have done here. I didn’t dream the girl was my own sister.”

“And you?” James said still more quietly to Alec.

“I was coming here to ask your permission to marry Louise,” Alec said bluntly.

“Who are you?” James asked with the same fearful quietness.

“Alec Wetherston, formerly of the U.S. Army,” Alec said in a firm voice. “Louise and I met the day she came to the chrysanthemum market. You won’t remember me.”

“I do,” Mary said. She saw that she was still holding the lamp and she set it down on the table.

Alec looked at her. “Yes — well, I know you, too. I wanted Louise to tell you about us, but she seems to be afraid of you all, for some reason.”

“Because they don’t want me to marry an American,” Louise put in, beginning to cry again.

“Mary, take Louise away,” James said.

Louise allowed herself to be led as far as the door. There she paused, the tears wet on her cheeks. “I tell you I will marry Alec,” she declared.

Mary pulled her away, and James went on quietly. “Mr. Wetherston, sit down, please. I have no objection to my sister’s marrying the man she wants to marry, but he must be a good man.”

They were all sitting down now except Peter, who stood with his hands in his pockets, his hair on end. Chen had sat down. His face was very pale and he had said nothing.

“I guess nobody is perfect — not these days,” Alec said frankly. He was beginning to feel better. Louise’s brother looked like a regular fellow.

“Please tell me everything,” James said sternly.

Alec looked startled. “How do you mean — everything?”

Chen spoke. “The little boy in the hospital—”

Alec leaned his arm on the table. “I guess you know,” he said simply. “I guess it’s nothing different from lots of other fellows during the war. Only I came back — I guess that was my mistake.”

“Listen to him!” Peter said contemptuously.

“Be quiet, Peter,” James said. He leaned forward and looked at the American. He liked this tall angular young man. His brown hair was mingled with the street dust and his face was grimy. But it was an honest face and for an American the features were delicate and quite good. It might be true that Louise would never marry a Chinese. Perhaps the first human perceptions stamped by life upon a newborn child were the ones which finally seemed most real. He and Mary had been born in China but Louise and Peter were American born. Some American nurse in a hospital in New York had lifted her from the bed of birth and had cared for her in the first weeks, and at home Nellie had taken her place. The first instincts of the child’s flesh had entwined themselves with blue eyes and blond hair and white skin. Louise could not change these instincts now.

“You really want to marry my sister?” James said to Alec.

Alec lifted his head. “I’ve been thinking it all out,” he said. “I want to marry her and go home. We’ll take the baby with us. She’s told me all about herself and she knows all about me. Lanmei was the first girl I was ever in love with and I’ll be happier with Louise than I would with any regular American girl. Besides, the baby will be easier to explain. And people aren’t as old-fashioned as they used to be. You can’t marry a Negro, but most people don’t mind a Chinese.”

Peter burst at this. His clenched hands flew from his pockets. “Don’t mind a Chinese!” he bellowed. “But we mind Americans, let me tell you! We’ve had about enough of Americans, I tell you! At the school tonight we framed up a protest to the government — about the way Americans are interfering in China. Gosh, when I tell them my sister is marrying one of them!” His anger ended in a wail.

James turned on him with forbidding eyes, but Peter gave him look for look. Then he yielded and rushed from the room.

Alec tried to smile. “You can’t blame them, I guess,” he said. “But what they don’t see is that fellows like us can’t help what any government does. We’re helpless, too. I want to get the hell out of here myself.”

James had been thinking hard and swiftly. Now he spoke with sudden clarity. “I think it is what you ought to do. Tomorrow you can come and tell me about your family and your situation. If I am satisfied I will tell Louise that so far as I am concerned, she may marry you.”

Alec lifted his head. “I want to thank you, sir,” he stammered. “I wish I knew how to thank you.”

Chen said, “Jim, what about your parents?”

“I stand in my father’s place,” James replied. “He has put my sisters and my brother in my care.”

Alec was on his feet. “I’ll come around tomorrow — here?”

“To my office in the hospital, please,” James said. “Then we will see the child together. Louise is very young for the care of so small an infant. But I suppose she can learn.”

They stood while Alec shook their hands and while he went to the door, smiled back, and went away. Then James turned to Chen. “Tell me I have done right,” he pleaded.

They sat down opposite each other at the table. “I think you have done right,” Chen admitted. “Yet how do I know?”

There was a footfall at the door and Mary came in.

“Done what right?” she asked. She sat down at the third side of the table between them.

“I have told him he can marry Louise,” James said simply.

She sat for a long moment. Then she got up and said, “I’ll go and tell her. She keeps crying.”

But she paused a moment and looked at Chen. “I thought you were going to be in love with Louise,” she said bluntly. Chen opened his eyes wide. “I? In love?” He gave a great shout of laughter, and she left him still laughing.

The wedding took place quietly. Alec and Louise wanted no guests. They were both American citizens and they went to the American Consulate one afternoon with James and Mary as witnesses and there, before an acquiescent though unwilling consul, the marriage was performed. Peter would not go and Chen had refused, saying that only two witnesses were needed and he would stay with the baby. The baby was at the hotel waiting for them in Chen’s care when the wedding party came back.

“I am a good amah,” Chen declared. “A better amah than a doctor.”

He had the baby in his arms, and the baby, dressed in new yellow rompers that Mary had made for him, was holding Chen’s thumb tightly and staring into his rugged face. The few days before the wedding had been busy with new clothes not for the bride but for the baby, everything made American. Louise and Alec had devoted themselves to the study of formulas and schedules, and Mary had lined a Chinese basket with cotton padding and blue silk for a traveling cradle. Another basket with a lid carried bottles and sterilizer and all that a child would need for a long journey.

That night the bride and groom with the little boy took the train southward to Shanghai. It was a strange wedding party, and yet a happy one. James and Mary and Chen saw them off and stood until the train disappeared into the night, shades drawn against possible bandits and only the great engine headlight flaring.

Gazing after the moving train, James buttoned his coat about him tightly. “Now I must cable Pa,” he said.

Mary clung to his arm as they turned to go home again and Chen fell in beside her. “I know we have done right,” she said with her old sweet stubbornness. “It doesn’t matter what Pa says.”

“Louise would never have been happy here,” Chen said. They began to trudge together in common step down the half-empty street. The night was cold and there would be frost. People walking by gathered their robes together and hurried on.

“It takes a certain kind of person to live in China now,” Chen mused.

“What kind of person?” Mary asked.

“Someone who can see true meanings; someone who does not only want the world better but also believes it can be made better, and gets angry because it is not done; someone who is not willing to hide himself in one of the few good places left in the world — someone who is tough!”

They were passing an ironmonger’s shop and the ironmonger being behind with his work had not yet put up the boards. Upon his anvil he beat a piece of twisted iron that he was making into a knife which a student had ordered that day. The flaming metal threw out sparks and lit up his black face in a grimace of effort. His white teeth gleamed. This same light fell on the three and Chen looked down into Mary’s upturned face as they passed.

“Somebody tough,” he repeated half teasingly, “somebody like you — and me — and Jim.” Mary laughed and she took her other hand out of her pocket and put it in Chen’s arm, and they marched along, in step.

Peter stayed in his own room during the wedding. Young Wang had been amazed and horrified and when the others had gone he went to Peter’s door. He liked this younger son of the family and longed to come to good terms with him. He imagined them almost friends, rather than master and servant. Sometimes, brushing Peter’s large shoes after a rain and cleaning cakes of Peking mud from under the soles, he imagined himself talking thus and even saying Peter’s name. “Pe-tah, hear me! I am older than you, although born in a low family. Your family are gentry, mine are small farmers only. Nevertheless in these new times who is high and who is low? Let us be friends. I tell you, students are no good. In the old days we common folks looked up to scholars and students. They were the governors. I tell you,” here Young Wang brushed the shoes with fury, “now we know that it is we common folk who must resist scholars and warlords and rich men and magistrates. These four are the enemies of the people.”

Was Peter a Communist? That was what Young Wang continually wished to find out. He himself was not, since the government cut off all Communist heads or else shot them dead. But he listened sometimes in the corners of the teashops and winehouses. At his village when he had gone to rescue his family from the island to which they clung he had heard a young man and woman who came together and helped them move and stayed while they put up fresh earthen houses on their fields, and they had kept saying, “Where are your landlords? Where are your wonderful students? Where is your government? Does no one come to help you? Only we help you, we the Communists.”

The villagers had been much troubled by their help, well knowing that in this world no one does anything for nothing, and they had been casting about in their minds as to why this young pair with such bold faces had come to their aid. When they found they were Communists they fell into awful terror, for no one in these regions could be Communist and live, seeing that the government sent armies every day against Communists. Worse even than their own government, for they were used to their own, were the Americans, who now demanded, the villagers were told, that every Communist be killed. So Young Wang and his family had joined with the villagers in driving these two young Communists away with hoes and rakes and bamboo poles. The two had gone off singing one of their songs and they shouted back at the villagers.

“We offered you peace, but now you reject us and we will come back with swords and guns!”

Young Wang had been as frightened as the rest. Nevertheless, this stuck in his mind as truth — no one did anything for men like him and their families. They struggled along as best they could, starving in famine, dying with sickness, their children were dirty and unlearned, and all this was in spite of their continual labor. Who indeed had helped them build anew their houses after the flood?

That Peter was angry at something Young Wang well knew. He had heard the young man argue with his calm older brother and with Chen. “You with your tolerance and your patience,” Peter had said bitterly to those two. “The only way to wake our people up is to use violence on them.”

“You mean kill them?” Chen had inquired politely. “Alas, people do not wake from the dead!”

“I mean kill everyone who will not change,” Peter had declared.

“Oh, Peter, don’t be silly,” Mary had exclaimed.

James had listened in his usual thoughtful manner. Then he said, “When men start killing other men, a craving for death enters their heart, and to kill becomes the solution for every difficulty, however small.”

“There is something of Pa’s Confucius in you,” Mary exclaimed.

“Perhaps there is,” he had replied.

Now Young Wang walked softly to Peter’s room and looked into the window. The young man sat by his desk writing furiously. Even as Young Wang looked at him he put down his pen and sat frowning and troubled. Young Wang went to the door and coughed.

“Go away,” Peter said, recognizing the cough. “I am busy.”

Young Wang opened the door enough to put in his head. “Will you not even go to the train to see them off?” he asked in a mild voice.

“Get out,” Peter replied.

Young Wang weighed the tone of his voice. The words were harsh like an American’s, but the voice was not too much so. He came in looking meek and stood with his back to the door. “I said get out, didn’t I?” Peter cried, looking up with high impatience.

“I will get out,” Young Wang promised. “But first I tell you what I heard today. Something is being planned at the marble bridge.”

Peter shot him a sharp look. “Where did you hear that?”

“A chestnut vendor told me.”

Peter had taken up his pen but now he threw it down again. “Go on,” he commanded, “tell me what you heard.”

“He passed by at midnight a few nights ago,” Young Wang said in a low voice. “He had been to a theater to sell his chestnuts. That is why he was so late. He passed by and he saw some people under the bridge. Of course he thought they were beggars sheltering there. Then one of them cried out with pain. One of the others had let a spade or a hoe fall on his foot. And this cry was no beggar’s cry, the vendor said. It was the voice and the curse of a student.”

Young Wang paused.

“Well, what of that?” Peter asked.

“The vendor went back the next night and the next,” Young Wang went on, “and he goes every night. He is being paid now by the secret police.” Young Wang looked down at Peter’s shoes. “I brush your shoes every day,” he said suddenly. “Yesterday they were clean. But tonight there was yellow clay on them. I know there is yellow clay under the bridge. Our soil elsewhere is sandy and dusty. But under the bridge there is clay. Doubtless when our ancestors sank the great stones into the bowels of the river, they brought yellow clay here from the south to hold hard the foundation.”

Peter leaped from his chair and rushed at Young Wang. But Young Wang slipped through the door like a tomcat.

Nevertheless Peter locked the door after him and went to the desk and taking the sheets of paper upon which he had been writing, he tore them across again and again and he emptied the bottle of ink upon them and threw them into the wastebasket. Then he began most restlessly to pace the floor.