Kinfolk

21

MRS. LIANG CLIMBED INTO the great plane that was to carry her back to America. She walked to her seat, arranged her belongings, leaned her head back and closed her eyes. Only the fact that she had overstayed her six weeks by more than a month had compelled her again to fly across the sea. She had stayed until the very last moment with her three children. She now thought of Chen as entirely her own. Since Chen’s parents were immured in Communist territory she thought of him as an orphan. She knew nothing about Communists or communism, but she had heard so much from Dr. Liang that she considered it only a matter of time until everybody in Communist territory would be dead. Since no letters came to Chen, nor did he write any letters, there was nothing to contradict this theory. Unless they were dead people wrote to their relatives. Since Chen had no letters, his parents must be dead. It was just as well, she thought privately, since the children could continue in the ancestral village under Uncle Tao’s protection.

She reflected upon Uncle Tao. He was as intolerable as ever but circumstances had changed. That is, he was now old and he had a knot in his belly. Moreover, she also was older than she had been when she had rebelled against him as a girl. Aunt Tao had been alive then, and she had thought Aunt Tao weak and yielding too much to the quarrelsome and domineering man that Uncle Tao had been in those days. Now she realized that it was a rubbery yielding, and that actually Aunt Tao had been tough. But she only understood this from the years of her own marriage.

The most important thing about Uncle Tao nowadays, however, was none of these things. It was the simple fact that Uncle Tao had power. What this power was she did not know. But he had some sort of power over the magistrate, over the country police, even over tax gatherers. His hold over the tenants was of course absolute. She had warned James against defending these tenants too much.

“The men of earth are not what they were when I was young,” she told James. “In those days what could they do? Sometimes they rose up, it is true, and killed the ones they hated. But when that man was dead another came down from the Emperor and when they saw it was no use to kill a man if another came at once to take his place, they endured again for a few generations. Now everything is different. They have heard too much. They even know that in America people can stop work and farmers can refuse to sell their food. It gives them ideas of what they can do also. And now too there are the accursed Communists to whom they can always go. We are pinched between these people and the Communists.”

She had not at all liked the way that James had listened to this. He had not answered but he had smiled. Smiling silence is not a good sign in any man when he has been listening to a woman.

“Now, James,” she had then said with real heat, “I don’t oppose Uncle Tao so much. Everybody is still afraid of him. You better stay in his shadow. These are bad times.”

To this James again had not answered and so she had talked to Mary and Chen. “You two,” she had said to them privately and therefore in English only last night when they came in for a last talk. “Now you are married you have some common sense. I tell you, do not make Uncle Tao angry.”

“I am not afraid of Uncle Tao,” Mary said boldly.

Mrs. Liang looked at her with cold eyes.

“Everybody else is afraid. You better have some sense.”

Chen had pacified her immediately. “Mother, I will not let Mary behave foolishly,” he had promised. “Uncle Tao is a very big man here and certainly we need him, at least until we have established ourselves and the people see what we are doing for them.”

“I hope he does not die first from that knot in his belly,” Mrs. Liang had murmured. Then she had made a confession. “At first when I saw Uncle Tao is growing thinner and more yellow, I thought I better tell him let James cut him up. Then I tell myself, very good idea, but maybe James kills him, then who will protect my children here? Better I let him die slowly by himself.”

Chen roared out great laughter but Mary was shocked. “Ma, how can you be so wicked?” she had demanded. “Poor old Uncle Tao! I swear I like him more now than I did before you said such a thing. I shall try myself to persuade him to let James help him.”

Mrs. Liang sighed now, remembering this scene. Since she was married Mary had grown even more stubborn. If there was fault to be found with Chen it was that he did not deal firmly enough with his young wife. He laughed at her too much instead of scolding her. Mary had none of the softness which was so pleasant in Louise since she had married Alec. Mrs. Liang pondered on the strange contradictions in young people. One would have thought that Mary married to a Chinese husband would have become a docile Chinese wife. Instead, although she lived in the ancestral village, she behaved like an American, and without doubt she was planting rebellion in the hearts of many Chinese wives. But Louise, living in an American house, where women could be as willful as they liked, had grown sweet and obedient, as though she were in China. The world was very mixed nowadays!

The propellers had been whirling for some time, and now the engines were hammering and Mrs. Liang clutched her quivering stomach. She stopped thinking about her family in the ancestral village and her family in America and prepared to think only of herself.

Alone in his big apartment, except for Nellie rattling faintly in the distant kitchen, Dr. Liang was grateful for the added weeks before Mrs. Liang came back. Had she arrived on the appointed day she would have found him in the midst of his pain and distraction. He was still confused, still sore at heart, but pride and vanity were quelled, and he was able to be grateful that Violet Sung had made the decision. It was the wise decision for them both, although he had rebelled against it with his whole being. Indeed, after these weeks of utter solitude and quiet, he was somewhat astonished to look back on himself as he had been. He was still more astonished that he could have gone to London after Violet, as he had done. He leaned back in his deep red leather chair. Well, he had his memories—

After Mrs. Liang had gone, he had really lost his head. It was the only way he could describe it now. He had felt so free, so gay. The New York season had come on, and since he had no one to think of except himself he went everywhere. The most extraordinary thing was that he learned to dance. This would have been impossible had his wife been at home. Her astounded eyes would have accused him of unseemly behavior in his old age. But Violet had taught him and had praised him for his lightness. His one fault, which it seemed was a grave one, was that he had no sense of rhythm. When he was dancing with Violet, she supplied this for him, so that he had a feeling of dancing rather well. Since he was tall and he knew his own good looks, it was a pleasure to feel that people admired them together.

He supposed that they were together somewhat too much and therefore the Englishman was not to be blamed. Still, there had been nothing physical about it. There was no use denying, even now when everything was over, that there might have been. He had entered into a new phase, he told himself. He had been married so long and suddenly he had felt as though he were young and starting all over again. He refused Louise’s invitations to come to dinner, and he had not invited her and Alec to dinner, simply because he did not want even to remember that he had children.

Yet he had felt no evil. On the contrary, never had he felt so exalted, so noble, so good as he had during those days when he and Violet saw one another every day. Yes, it was every day! He had not tried to write anything, although he had begun a new book, an anthology of Chinese love poetry. He taught his classes, of course, and he felt his teaching was inspired. Marriage, he then realized, had never inspired him.

After nearly three weeks of this well-nigh perfect happiness Violet told him one day over the telephone that she could not see him. She had said something about a headache and a cold. The next day she had called him again, and had said she was flying to London.

All the misery of that moment overwhelmed him again in memory. “But why?” he had kept insisting.

She had answered vaguely that she would write and that it would be better for them not to meet. She would tell him everything.

He had destroyed the letter, but first he had carried it with him to London, and when he had seen her for the last time he had torn it in bits and dropped it from Westminster Bridge where they had met — wishing, but only almost, that he could throw himself after it. The letter had been unsatisfactory to him. She had not told him everything as she had said she would. She had simply said that Ranald Grahame had told her that unless she stopped seeing Dr. Liang, he would cut her off. She had thought about this carefully, she wrote him, and in view of all the lives involved, it seemed better to stay with Ranald. But she was his, always faithfully, Violet Sung. And there was no address below her name.

By the time he had this wretched letter in his hands she was already gone. He was beside himself and so badly did he conceal it that he caught Nellie’s eyes on him hard that day and so he told her he was ill and locked himself in his room. She stopped at the door with the tray and he had to get up and get it, because she declared since they were alone in the house she had better not come into his bedroom. He was insulted at the evil suggestion in this intense virtue but he could do nothing about it, and it insured him privacy when his door was shut.

Twenty-four hours of solitude made the desire to see Violet, to talk with her and to demand her return to him, grow into a ravening hunger in his bosom. He did not care what anyone thought and he would divorce his wife, or at least command her to stay on forever in the ancestral village. He arranged his affairs and told Nellie that he had had a summons from London. This summons he provided for by cabling to old Mr. Li to ask if he might stay with them. The invitation came back at once and he left the cablegram on the dining-room table where Nellie would read it. He used the power of his famous name in the Chinese Embassy and got a priority seat and flew to London within the week.

Once there he had been compelled to submit to maddening delays. He could only say to Mr. and Mrs. Li that he had come on a holiday and he could not say that he wanted to know where Violet Sung was. London was far too huge a place to make it sensible to look for her. He could only pretend to enjoy everything that was done for him and meanwhile ask questions which he hoped sounded innocent. Mr. and Mrs. Li were living comfortably in a villa outside the city, and apparently had no idea of going back to China. If there was another world war, they said they might go to Rio de Janeiro. They were stout and unfashionable, and they were glad of a chance to have a famous visitor to show off and give parties for and provide return for some of the social debts they owed. At none of these parties did Dr. Liang see Violet Sung, and he was in a state of desperation which frightened him.

It was Lili who finally helped him. Lili had not changed at all to the eye. She had no child. She was slender and beautiful in the same pure calm fashion. Her voice was still high, sweet, and childlike, and what she said was still naive and a little stupid. Beneath and behind all this, Lili was neither childlike nor stupid. She had added to the sophistication of Shanghai the sophistication of New York, London, and Paris. She was quite happy with Charlie Ting who was an interestingly degenerate young man and thought nothing was too bad for anybody to do, if it was fun. Indeed, the two words, good and evil, did not exist for him except for diplomatic use. With him Lili lived on several levels of life at once. On one of these levels she heard gossip about Dr. Liang and Violet Sung, and hearing it she had expressed surprise while she instantly and secretly believed all she heard. It explained Dr. Liang’s presence in London and it explained what she saw was his restlessness. Out of indolent curiosity she found that it was true that Violet Sung was in London and that she had a very pretty, though small, flat looking out on a bombed area which was now a new park, and that she went nowhere. She also asked and got the address. Then she went to see Violet Sung.

All this Lili told Dr. Liang one Sunday morning in her sweet tinkling little voice. It came out very naturally. She was spending the week end with her parents and it was easy enough to find Dr. Liang alone after lunch in the garden, walking up and down the narrow flagged path of the small rose plot. She had sauntered out under her pink parasol, for she did not like the fad of being sunburned and kept her skin as pale as a white lotus.

After a few remarks made and exchanged she sat down on a Chinese porcelain garden seat and she said, “Dr. Liang, I saw your old friend yesterday.”

He had looked at her startled and already half guessing.

“Violet Sung,” she said thoughtfully and without a smile. “She is living now in London, do you know?”

“No, I did not,” he had replied. “I have not heard from her for some time.”

“Yes, now she is here,” Lili went on. “I don’t know if you like to have her address.”

“It doesn’t matter,” he lied.

“I think she likes to see you,” Lili persisted. By now she could speak English perfectly but she had discovered that it made her appear more exotic if she did not. “I think she seems somewhat like lonely. She doesn’t talk much, and she looks too thin though quite beautiful.”

He could not trust himself to answer this, for he had no intention of confiding in Lili or in anyone. He knew his own people. They could no more contain gossip than a leaky dish can contain water. They could keep a secret forever but gossip would be told to the next Chinese they met.

Lili opened a small satin bag attached to her diamond bracelet and she took out a bit of paper. “I write it down for you,” she said.

He could not resist taking Violet’s address but he did not look at it. He stuffed it into his pocket. “If I have time I will try to see her,” he said, and hoped Lili could not hear the pounding of his heart.

He had been far too prudent to try to see Violet at once, for he had no intention of meeting the Englishman, whose very name he did not want to remember. He wrote her a letter and sent it by messenger and told the messenger to wait. Not trusting boys, he found an extraordinary old woman with only one arm whose lean rigid face looked reliable.

“Do not come back without an answer,” he had commanded.

“Right you are, sir,” she had replied. Hours later she had come back. “It took a bit of ’angin’ round,” she told him. “The young lydy kep’ tryin’ to put me off like. Said come back tomorrow and all that. I said, me orders is, bring back the arnser. Here it is, sir.”

He had paid what she asked and then had opened Violet’s answer. It was brief enough to break his heart. “Now that we have parted,” Violet said, “why should we meet again? It will only make it harder for us both.”

That was all and it made him very angry. He sent a bold telegram, not caring this time whether the Englishman did see it.

“You owe me an explanation,” he wrote. “I will meet you on the near end of Westminster Bridge tomorrow at six p. m.”

Many people came and went on the bridge and at six it was winter’s dusk. He was there at half past five, not daring to hope that she would come. She was quite capable of not coming. But she came. He saw her before she saw him. She wore a dark fur coat and a small fur hat trimmed with violets and fitting closely to her face.

She had come because she saw that he would never believe that she meant to cut herself off from him forever. She told him so in her lovely soft voice whose cadence he would hear as long as he lived. “Wen Hua, you shouldn’t have made me come. It is really dangerous for me. I promised Ranald that I would never see you again alone.”

“Yet you have come, and that means you wanted to come.”

“You are wrong,” she told him.

The evening had been strangely mild and still. Accustomed now to the violence of cold in New York it did not seem possible to Dr. Liang that it was a winter’s night. The air was chill with river damp, but it was soft. Violet’s cheeks under the lamplight were rose pink, like an English girl’s.

“I did not want to come,” she repeated. “I have made my decision, Wen Hua, and I shan’t change.”

“How can you decide against me?” he demanded.

They were leaning against the rail, their backs to the passing people, and looking down into the river she had mused for a moment.

“It isn’t as if you and I could really love enough to give up everything,” she said at last. “You only want to have me, too.”

“That is not true,” he had said instantly.

“Yes, Wen Hua, it is,” she had replied. “And it is true for me, also. I am not better than you. More than that—”

She broke off and he waited. At last he said, “What is more than that?”

“I have thought so much,” she said slowly. “I haven’t much to do except think. People like you and me — we are not real people, you know, Wen Hua.”

“We exist, don’t we?” he asked with some indignation.

“Oh yes. We have these bodies—”

He waited again and this time he did not press her. He was afraid of what she was going to say — whatever it was.

She said, “We live on other people’s roots. Wen Hua, what makes you real is your wife. She is so real that were you and I to — of course she would not tolerate me. No real woman tolerates polygamy. Even in China, where we think we settled all human relationships centuries ago, the real women do not tolerate the concubine. They kill somebody — maybe the concubine — or they stop loving their husbands and then they stop being themselves and become cruel creatures.”

“I was not thinking of putting away my wife,” he said stiffly.

“No, but you see,” she said, “Ranald is like your wife. I mean, he’s real, too.”

“He doesn’t marry you,” he said with purposeful cruelty.

“No,” she agreed. “But I think I don’t want him to. It doesn’t mean enough to me.”

He had grasped at this. “You don’t love him?”

She shook her head and the little dark curls of her hair, given her by her French mother, danced against her cheek. “No, but I trust him. Some day we will part. Perhaps it will be I who make the parting. But when that day comes he will not leave me destitute. He will provide for me—”

“Money, I suppose you mean,” he had said bitterly.

“Be reasonable,” she had said. “I need a good deal of money and he has a lot of it.”

“Suppose he marries?” He wanted to hurt her but she was not hurt.

“Even if he marries he will be grateful to me. He has a sense of obligation, you know, especially now that I have given you up.”

She had used him to make the Englishman feel an obligation!

When he accused her of this she denied it. “It is not like that,” she replied in her thoughtful musing way. “If you had been quite real, Wen Hua, I might have dared to — do anything. But for two people, both unreal, to leave the people they can trust — it would be very dangerous for us.”

“Why do you not trust me?” he had demanded.

She had lifted her dark eyes to him then. “You know yourself,” she replied.

He had not had the courage to press her. The truth from her lips might have destroyed him and he needed to believe in himself.

She had ended their talk by a soft touch on his hand. “Now you must go away,” she had told him. “You must go back to New York, to your home and to your wife. Please don’t trouble about me. I shall be all right and really quite happy. I like London. I know many people and I don’t lack friends. I am quite clear now in my mind. What has happened is what is better for us.”

“What did the Englishman say?” he demanded.

She seemed surprised. “Do you really want to know? He is very honest and he just said to me that he had heard we were meeting almost every day and he would not forbid it — only I had to make the final choice. He said I could leave him or stay with him — he would not play second fiddle. If I stayed with him, he would look after me as long as I lived. There would be enough for me in his will, if he died in the next war, which he thinks will be quite soon. But if I chose to see you, ever, he would cut me off at once.”

“Yet you have seen me,” he had urged.

“Yes, I am going back now to tell him so,” she had said. “It will be hard for a bit to make him understand that I did not want to see you, but that there was no other way. Then I shall promise never to see you again. I haven’t quite made that promise yet. Tonight I’ll make it — and keep it.”

There was the soft touch again on his hand, and she turned and lost herself in the crowd. He had stayed on, staring down into the misty gently flowing river, and toying with the idea of throwing himself from the bridge. But a passing policeman looked at him once or twice and he grew self-conscious. He did not really want to die.

He had stayed on with Mr. and Mrs. Li for a few days more, accepting now an invitation from Charlie Ting’s parents to visit them. To his surprise he found he quite enjoyed diplomatic life. It was gay and expensive, and money for everything was provided. He had a handsome Rolls-Royce at his disposal and a smart English chauffeur. He might, he thought, offer himself some day as a diplomat — an ambassador, perhaps. The idea gave him a new interest and while he considered it, he could stop thinking for a moment or so about Violet. Somewhere in the few days he found a chance to speak to Lili.

“By the by, I called upon Miss Violet Sung. She seems quite well and happy. I stayed only a few minutes because I was so busy that day.”

The coolness of his voice astonished her but she only smiled. Then he told her that he was going home, that he was quite anxious to see his wife who had been to visit his two elder children in the ancestral village where they were enjoying the old home, and that Mary was married.

Lili gave a little scream, “Oh, can they enjoy such old-fashioned things? And what man is there to marry Mary?”

He had laughed with her. “They will grow tired of the village,” he said. “I should not be surprised if they come back with their mother. My son-in-law, I hear, is a brilliant doctor of Peking — a friend of my son’s, I believe. You remember James?”

Lili dimpled perfunctorily. “Of course, and Charlie thinks he is doing some wonders in China. I am sure it is true.”

Dr. Liang did not believe that Charlie Ting had so spoken, but he inclined his head with the dignity usual to him when he received a compliment.

So he had come home again. In London he thought he had got over everything, but when he reached home he knew he had not. Mingled in his hurt love for a beautiful woman were her words: “You know yourself.” He did not want to know himself. She had shaken him very badly indeed. The affair might have ended sublimely. It might have been a splendid rejection of a selfish love; it might have been a noble acceptance of the obligations life had already put upon them. But she had taken away both splendor and nobility. She had said merely the few words, “You know yourself.” They included these few words more which she had not quite spoken, “and I know you.”

He felt fretful in his loneliness and he began to long for Mrs. Liang to come home. He could be cross with her and she would not mind because he was her husband.

When he got her telegram saying that she would arrive at three o’clock the next day, unless there were storms, he immediately began to feel better. It was something like having been ill or away or out of his usual routine. Now soon his house would be what it had always been. He felt more kindly even toward Louise and he rang her up to invite her, with Alec, to dinner. It was the hour when she was putting her baby to bed and she was abstracted but good-natured.

“Sure we’ll come, Pa,” she said. “I think Alec would like it.”

Before he knew what he was doing he was also inviting Mr. and Mrs. Wetherston. “We may as well make it a real party,” he told Louise. “If you think your parents-in-law would enjoy hearing the latest news from China, then bring them along.”

Since her father had shown no interest in the existence of any of them ever since her mother went away, Louise was pleased. “I don’t believe they have anything planned,” she said. “I’m sure they’ll want to come. It’ll be nice. It’ll be lovely to see Ma again.”

“Indeed it will,” he said with unusual warmth.

He was very much absorbed the rest of the evening in planning the dinner. After some thought he decided to order it sent in hot from a Chinese restaurant and he had a long talk over the telephone with the proprietor about special dishes and their preparation. When this was over he felt he should go to bed in order to be fresh for the next day. But he found it difficult to sleep. His mind, instead of being absorbed with memories of Violet Sung, returned to the earlier years of his life when Mrs. Liang had first come to his father’s house. She had been a fresh-faced lively-looking girl with a full red mouth. His first disappointment had been that she was not pretty. But somehow or other she was living and strong in the house, simple creature though she was, and he had soon learned to depend on her. When there was something unpleasant to be done, such as asking a permission of Uncle Tao, it was always she who did it. She had many faults, and each one irritated him separately, but they did not combine to change her quality, which was that she never thought of herself. She was not interested in herself or in her own moods. She had very few moods and they were because of some external circumstance which could easily be changed. Usually she changed it herself and restored her own good humor, or she took a long nap or she bought herself a bag of chocolate drops which she enjoyed. She liked sweets, he now remembered, and he determined to buy her a large box of them tomorrow.

Mrs. Liang saw her husband waiting for her at the airport and she thought he looked tired. She blamed herself for having been away so long, and although she felt very tired herself after this dreadful journey, she braced herself to seem better than she was.

When he saw her she was smiling and cheerful as ever. She looked younger than he remembered and her hair was becomingly loosened by the wind. When she saw him her face turned quite pink and this touched him. He took her hand openly. “Louise couldn’t come,” he told her, not knowing what to say at first. “She has the children and so on. But they are all coming to a welcome dinner.”

“How nice!” she exclaimed. With him she began instinctively to speak in English. “You look a little bit of tired, Liang. Are you feeling quite well? Now I shall feed you something good.”

“I am well enough,” he replied with a touch of pathos. “Nellie has done her best. I gave her a little vacation, by the way, because I had an invitation to visit the Li family in London and I thought it would be a good way to pass the time until you came home. I got leave from the college.” He wanted to tell her about London at once.

“I am glad you took some rest,” she said briskly. She longed to get home and crawl into her own bed and put a hot-water bottle to her poor stomach. But if there was to be a welcome dinner she must not think of such things.

In the cab they sat hand in hand. He had put her suitcase on the floor so that she could use it as a footstool. He was surprised at his sense of comfort as he held her plump hand. He had not done such a thing in years.

“Eh, Liang,” she said, smiling at him, “I think you do want me to come home again!”

He gave her his slight smile. “I was only afraid you would not want to leave the ancestral village and all its delights to come back to New York and your poor old scholar.”

She began unexpectedly to chatter in Chinese. “Liang, nothing is changed! Can you believe that after all these years Uncle Tao is just the same, but more fat, except, poor old man, for the knot in his belly which must come out, James said, as soon as he is willing. And the street, Liang, even more dirty! Of course it is winter and so I did not see flies. But the children run everywhere as before, their faces dirty and their pants — well, you know. Mary teaches a school now and maybe things will be better in a few years. All the relatives are the same except some are dead.” She counted off on her fingers the dead Liangs and what they had died of and when.

“Of course there are bandits everywhere now,” she went on, “but even they are somewhat afraid of Uncle Tao because he takes dinner with the magistrate and he is friends with the police and the tax men. In fact, Liang, Uncle Tao is quite useful and though he is troublesome, nobody dares any more to wish him dead. Later when government is better perhaps it will be all right for Uncle Tao to die. But just now—”

He laughed for the first time in days. “Nothing you say makes me want to go back there,” he told her when they reached the apartment.

Now that she had been away and had returned she was surprised to find as she went from one room to the other that there was a strange feeling of home here, too. She could not have believed it possible, but so it was. The Wetherstons had sent flowers of welcome, and Louise called on the telephone almost immediately and Mrs. Liang listened avidly to details of baby’s teeth and how much little Alec could say. Then she looked at the clock and screamed, “Louise, please! Only one hour or so and there is the dinner coming. Tell me something more, dahling, when you are here.”

She hung up and then remembered Mrs. Pan and telephoned to her. It was just the time when Mrs. Pan was cooking supper and when she heard her friend’s voice she cried out with joy.

Dr. Liang heard only his wife’s end of the talk. “Yes, Mrs. Pan, I am here. … Oh fine, everything is fine. … Not so much as you think, Mary is fine — very nice man. James also is being married. … Yes, yes, I tell you everything. Tomorrow? Oh fine!”

“What’s this about James being married?” Dr. Liang demanded. He had changed his coat for his old smoking jacket and had dragged out a pair of old slippers that he had not worn since she went away. He was smoking and reading and feeling almost entirely normal.

“I tell you later,” she said. “It is surprise, but good. Now, Liang, you must dress yourself early. I and Neh-lee set the table. Supposing I am somewhat late you can be polite.”

She was bustling about, but she found time to be alone in the kitchen with Nellie.

“How is everything went?” she inquired in a low voice.

“Good,” Nellie replied. “For a while I thought something was funny, but I guess he was just restless. He went over to London and come back like a lamb and hasn’t hardly left the house since.”

“Thank you, Neh-lee. Now better we use the second-good tablecloth on account Chinese dinner slops around fiercely.” Together they searched for the second-best tablecloth. Mrs. Liang had not seen a tablecloth since she left.

It was a very successful evening. Dr. Liang was at his best, dignified and quiet. He was courteous to Mr. and Mrs. Wetherston, a little distant perhaps with his son-in-law, and condescending and pleasant to his daughter. Mrs. Liang did most of the talking. Mr. Wetherston asked many questions of a practical nature, as he explained. These questions had to do with what she thought of Chiang Kai-shek, whether the graft was as bad as he had heard it was, how Communist the Chinese Communists really were, whether she thought the Chinese people would ever get together, and so forth. She answered everything briskly, declaring that Chiang Kai-shek was no better and no worse than any man in his position and with his history, that government graft was always bad wherever it was found but perhaps inevitable, that Communists were Communists, that Chinese people had been together on the same piece of land for four thousand or so years and probably would continue there. When Mrs. Wetherston ventured a question about the private life of Madame Chiang, Mrs. Liang laughed heartily behind one hand and said, “Madame Chiang is so special, isn’t he?” Mrs. Liang was always weak on gender, and at this point Dr. Liang felt it necessary to explain. “In our language,” he said, “we do not denote gender in the personal pronoun. Thus ‘he’ and ‘she’ are represented by a single third personal pronoun, namely, ta.”

Mrs. Wetherston turned to her son with reproach. “Alec, you never told me that before.”

“You never asked me, Mother,” he replied, laughing lazily.

Alec, lounging his long frame on the divan, enjoyed the evening hugely. His marriage was turning out well. Chinese wives made a cult of marriage. He felt sorry for his friends who were coping with American girls in their houses. The Chinese had things right. Everything depended on relationships between people.

The many dishes which the Chinese restaurant chef served with a flourish provided conversation for two hours and more, and the last hour of the evening Mrs. Liang used in describing the fabulous ancestral village, its walls, its gates, the home of the Liangs with its courts and many rooms, the hospital which James was building, the school which Mary had already established, the relatives in all their beauty and cleverness and finally Uncle Tao, who presided over them all like a god.

“You make it sound wonderful, Ma,” Louise said with some astonishment.

“In its way, it is also wonderful,” Mrs. Liang declared.

She had not mentioned cold or filth or scald-headed children or beggars or rebellious tenants or quarreling relatives or Uncle Tao’s tantrums or any of those things which Dr. Liang had feared she would. When he perceived she was creating a beautiful China before these foreigners, he felt for her a new and profound tenderness. This woman of his, this old wife, was doing it for him!

That night when she had made honest love to him in her downright wifely fashion, and after he had yielded pleasantly to her inclinations, they lay talking for a long time and she told him about her visit and each detail of each conversation with each relative. But most of all she talked about James and the girl she had found for his wife. The betrothal had been very quick — too quick maybe, she admitted. She had left the day after, which in itself was very bad, for she had not been able to divine anything from James’s face. Of course he had said she was not to worry. Mary and Chen had promised privately to tell her everything.

“Liang,” she now said earnestly, “I tell you, James is spoiled for common marriage. He loved that Lili too much, and yet it is a strange thing he does not love her now. She has killed the love power in him. If he did not marry a woman in an old-fashioned way, he would not marry at all. I saw that after a while. Now, Liang, you know a man cannot live without a wife. Any wife is better than no wife. But I did not take just any wife for our son. I went very carefully through our whole region and found a girl who is not blood kin to the Liangs. Her father came from Shantung when she was small but he never bound her feet because he had heard women do not any more, and he is a good man and he was glad to keep her feet free. They are farming people only, and their lands are beyond the Liang lands, and he owns his land. How he had money is this way: the Americans wanted some land to build a camp during the war and they bought his land and he moved far enough away from there so he would not see Americans and Communists and such strangers any more. I think our place is safe enough maybe, too.”

“What sort of a girl is she?” Dr. Liang inquired.

“A big girl, maybe you would say,” Mrs. Liang replied. “She is not fat, but very strong and she has a round face and big black eyes. She is old-fashioned, you know, Liang. She combs her hair as I did when I was a girl. She wears country clothes — no long robe. But she is quiet and she is very honest and she will think only of James, and their children will be very healthy. The family has five sons and she is the only girl, so maybe she will have plenty of grandsons for us.”

He was so silent that she began to be fearful lest he did not approve.

She spoke in the darkness somewhat shyly. “Liang, I do not know how you think, but for my part I have been very satisfied in our old-fashioned marriage. I know that now our young people like to love by themselves, as for example, Louise and Alec. But Mary is somewhat more Chinese. Judging by everything, Liang, however, I don’t think so much of love.”

“Nor do I,” he said, and then he added firmly, “very little indeed!”

She was so pleased that she could have cried, but she knew this would have been to show too much feeling. “Liang, you must go to sleep, please,” she commanded him. “Tomorrow is your class day.”

To him it was sweet to hear her voice thus bidding him what he wanted to do anyway and he obeyed.

Underneath all she had said Mrs. Liang felt the old bleeding wound that had been left in her by Peter’s death. She did not speak of it because she wanted her return to her children’s father to be without sadness. She had written to Dr. Liang the facts as she knew them, and she had not gone to see where Peter lay under the big pine in the imperial gardens. Later, when times were better, she wanted to go back and see that his young frame was brought back to the village and buried among the ancestors.

She heard Liang’s deepened breathing and she knew he was asleep, and so, lying very still, she wept silently for the dead son. Then she lifted one hand carefully and turning her head she wiped her eyes on the edge of the pillowcase. What was past was gone, she told herself, and for the sake of the living she must think of the future.

She lay thinking instead of the village. Life was wonderful there, so warm and close, all the human beings so close and everybody knowing everybody else, good and bad. The days were crowded with life. It had been so good to be flat on the earth. When she got out of bed in the morning her feet were on the real earth, beaten solid by the feet of Liang ancestors. How intensely did she hate this living high up in the air, and knowing that above and underneath them were strangers!

Yet she knew well enough that Liang could never live in the ancestral village again. Without electricity or running water, he could not live. She understood that now. The fleas alone, jumping down out of the thatched roofs, would be too annoying for him. But nothing could clean the fleas out of the thatch of old ancestral roofs. Perhaps the next time she went back she could take some of this new stuff the Americans used for spraying flies. Of course she would go back again and again. She would not tell Liang so at once — maybe not for many months. But when James and Mary began to have children she must fly back to see them. Perhaps by that time the Americans would have better planes or at least medicines to hold down the stomach. She would go back and forth between the kinfolk, for she belonged to all of them.

She sighed as a truck rumbled by in the night; upon the river a steamer shrieked. In the ancestral village night was as quiet as heaven. A child’s crying, a dog’s barking — these were sounds of life and they did not wake the sleeping. Here the trucks, the ships — then it came to her suddenly that these were sounds of American life. Perhaps they did not waken Americans. They had not waked Liang. He had begun to snore delicately and at the familiar sound she too fell into old habit and dozed off into her own slumber.