Kinfolk

3

MARY READ ALOUD A letter from James at the noon meal. The family was still in New York, although summer had deepened and Dr. Liang was beginning to feel the heat. He sat delicately languid and listened to the letter, dated two weeks earlier and from Peking.

“I shall not crystallize my impressions of our country,” James wrote. “They are too mixed. But I have found this old city reassuring. Even the Japanese respected its ancient beauty. This is not to say that I have seen much of it. I took up my duties at the hospital the day after I arrived, and when night comes I am too weary to sight-see. My view is also somewhat biased by the fact that I see only sick people. Trachoma is frightful. So is tuberculosis. I operate on the eyes but can do nothing for the lungs. Ulcers, gangrene—”

“Spare us, Mary,” Dr. Liang said gently. “We are trying to eat — and it is very hot.”

Mary folded the letter and put it in her pocket.

“You can read it to me when we are alone,” Mrs. Liang said briskly. “Liang, eat some of the beef and peppers! You know you like this dish.”

She dipped her chopsticks into the bowl and picked out a bit of meat and laid it on his plate. He ignored it and ate some rice from his bowl, a mouthful or two. Then he began to talk gently and slowly, each word made clear, as he did when he lectured. “I am happy to hear that Peking is untouched. I hope to spend my old age there, in a quiet lane, in an old house with a garden. I shall be paterfamilias — let us say, grand-paterfamilias. I seem to see myself at the head of our family table and about me are my children, married and living with me under one great roof in the old style, my grandchildren running about my courts. Ah, happy old age!”

He smiled, and Mrs. Liang, who had been listening with lively interest, broke in, “Liang, I tell you, don’t count on it! Children nowadays are unreliable. Suppose they don’t want to live under one roof with us?”

Dr. Liang shook his head gently. “I am a reasonably pleasant person, I believe?” He looked at his children’s faces with a touching trust. “I am not obnoxious, am I? Not repulsive?”

“Of course not, Pa,” Louise exclaimed. She was looking very pretty today. Heat flushed her usually pale face and her eyes, set shallowly under flying brows, were dark and humid. She had a secretive reserve except toward her father. The whole family knew that Dr. Liang loved Louise better than any of the other children, and they accepted it as natural, since she was the youngest.

“You will come and live with me, Little Lou?” Dr. Liang went on, half playfully, half pathetically. “Ma, we will have at least one child with us. We must find a very nice husband for her, some nice young professor, a scholar with whom I can discuss the dreams of Chuangtse and the poetry of Li Po, the charming drunkard.”

Dr. Liang liked to tease his children affectionately with threats of finding husbands and wives for them in the old fashion of Chinese parents. Actually he had declared that while he would introduce suitable young persons to his sons and daughters he would not force his choice upon any of them. He was too modern and he loved them too well.

The mention of marriage roused Mrs. Liang’s curiosity. “Does James say anything about Lili?” she asked Mary. “Nothing,” Mary replied.

“Then he must have heard,” Mrs. Liang exclaimed. “I told him,” Mary said.

Dr. Liang was vexed at this. He spoke with sharpness. “Now, Mary, that was very premature. I was talking with Mr. Li only yesterday and he said that Lili has not made up her mind. Besides Charles Ting there are three other young men who have approached her. It is quite possible that in the midst of so much rivalry she will turn from them all and still choose James.”

Mrs. Liang sniffed. “Liang, I must tell you — at first I thought it would be very nice to enjoy some money from the Li family. Your salary as a professor is not large, and at present your writing is not very useful to us. With conditions bad in our country, the Americans are naturally not interested in us. So I thought it might be necessary some day to have a rich daughter-in-law. But now I don’t like this Lili. I think she would divorce James quickly when she likes. I suggest rather a better type of girl, who is more faithful, someone like Sonia Pan.”

Peter groaned loudly. “Sonia Pan! She’s ugly.” Mrs. Liang would not yield. “Ugly girls can be fixed now. It is not like before. And she is very good. She does not waste money.”

“It would be no use for her to waste money on herself,” Louise murmured.

Dr. Liang coughed. “I am sure Ma is right. Sonia is a very good girl. But the Pan family is not quite — after all, Ma — a Chinatown family, you know—”

“Billy Pan is a good businessman,” Mrs. Liang argued. “That is not everything,” Dr. Liang said gently.

“Sonia would be good for a daughter-in-law,” Mrs. Liang persisted. “She would live in Peking very well with us and she would not be too modern. Lili would not like old-fashioned ways. She would want to live in her own house. Sonia would listen to me.”

Mary interposed. “Father, I think it is no use to talk of Sonia when James has never thought of her.”

“Quite right, my dear,” Dr. Liang said gratefully. “Let us also think of something else. What do you say to a little vacation for all of us? I am feeling the heat. I long for mountains. My spirit always soars when I am in the mountains. Sometimes I wish we could move to the country to live.”

“It would be too inconvenient,” Mrs. Liang said. “You would be lonely, Liang. Who would be there to listen to you talk? And it is too hard to buy the food for you. When you feel like country you can always go to Central Park.”

She rose and began to collect the dishes. Yet as always her heart relented toward her husband. It was true that New York was hot. Certainly it was not so hot as Shanghai was in the summer, but he forgot that. He had forgotten so much about China. It would be no great expense to go to some small place in the mountains to the north. She pattered back into the living room to tell him so. But he was asleep, stretched out on the long sofa, breathing deeply and calmly.

She gazed at him for a moment and wondered if he looked thinner and decided he did not. When they were first married he had been very thin and tall and to her surprise he wept when anything was hard. His mother said he had always wept easily and therefore he must be shielded from distress. It was, she had said, his scholarly temperament. Mrs. Liang, then a ruddy strong young woman, had listened and she did not understand her young husband, but evidently he was some sort of treasure. She still did not understand him, but he was still her treasure. She would not wake him.

So turning away she mounted the stairs slowly to find Mary and then she felt sleepy also and yawned. After all, she was not so young as she had been. The house was very quiet. The children must have gone outside, perhaps to the park. The letter from James could wait. She opened the door of her bedroom softly and then closed it. The room looked cool and pleasant and she took off her silk robe and folded it carefully across a chair. Then she lay down on the bed; her jaw fell, and she was instantly asleep.

On a bench by the river, Mary, Peter, and Louise discussed this first long letter from James. He had sent a cable announcing his arrival in Peking, and they had awaited the letter with impatience. By it they would judge whether China was what they hoped it was or feared it was not. On the whole, the letter was favorable. The journey northward, James wrote, was something to experience rather than talk about. He was inclined sometimes to think that the worst they had heard from Chinese who had fled to New York was not bad enough. Filth and poverty were everywhere. The train was something that could not be imagined and the callousness to death had frightened him. It was not only that an old man had been swept from the ferry, or that the dead lay in the streets of Shanghai. There was some sort of cruelty here, toward the helpless — he was not ready yet to define it. The animals were wretched, even the donkeys and mules carried loads far too heavy and these loads were laid on raw sores on the beasts’ backs. Yet he supposed that animals must share the miseries of men, and men staggered under dreadful burdens.

Mary had been reading the letter aloud solemnly to the two on either side of her. Now she paused and the letter fell to her lap. She gazed at the bridge, shimmering in the afternoon heat. The water in the river was as smooth as oil. “This helps me to understand something about our mother,” she said. “She is cruel to animals, too, though she is kind enough to people. How she hates the little dogs that women make pets of here!”

“They are pretty silly, though,” Peter said.

“She doesn’t like to see animals treated as human beings,” Louise suggested.

“It’s more than that,” Mary said soberly. She took up the letter again and read on.

When James had reached Peking, he wrote, he had gone straight to the hospital and had found two comfortable rooms ready for him. It was like stepping back into New York. The hospital was very fine and luxurious, built by Americans with American money. The Japanese had left it alone, or very nearly, and the equipment, while not of the latest, was still very good. The view from his windows was superb. The city roofs were delicately shaped and old courtyards were rich with ancient trees. Over the city wall in the distance were the bare outlines of mountains. He had been here only a week and so he had not taken time to do any sight-seeing, but Peking was the way he had dreamed China looked. The streets were wide and the gates were massive and beautiful. Everything had been built with the outlook of centuries in the past and centuries yet to come. The city seemed indestructible. It made him proud to be a Chinese. He had gone to see the marble bridge because their father had told him it was even more beautiful than the George Washington Bridge. It was impossible to compare them. This bridge in Peking was made of marble and stone and there were sculptured lions on it. It was true that the mounting curve was matchless.

The three, reading, lifted their eyes again to the curve of steel beyond where they sat. It soared against the sky, as modern as the century in which they lived. They could not imagine a bridge of marble with sculptured lions.

Peking, James wrote, made him want to send for them all. People told him that the winters were cold and that in the early spring yellow dust floated over the city, borne by bitter winds from the northern desert. Summer was the perfect season. He was really very happy. Something deep in his soul was being satisfied. He worked hard but he did not tire as he had in New York. He felt relaxed. Nobody hurried and yet more work was done, he believed, than he had ever seen done before. People moved at an even, steady pace, their minds at ease. They seemed ready for any fate. They were sturdy and self-confident. He was beginning to understand Americans better than he had even when he was with them. He felt now that Americans suffered from submerged feelings of guilt, as though they knew they were not as good as they wanted to be or wanted people to think they were. But here in Peking people did not care what other people thought, and so they could be only as good as they wanted to be. Life flowed, like a river.

“It sounds like heaven,” Mary said, and her eyes dreamed.

Neither Peter nor Louise answered.

She read on. “I feel that if Lili saw this place she would be willing to come to me,” James wrote. “Houses are not hard to find. We could live very happily — she would not need to work. She could live as idly as a lily, indeed, and being so beautiful who would blame her?”

Mary stopped here. What James commissioned her to do in the next few sentences was only for her eyes. But Peter gave a yelp. He rose and straightened the fold in his trousers carefully. “Tell Jim he is way back in the past so far as that young woman is concerned. She’s been tentatively engaged to three men since she was tentatively engaged to him.”

“Don’t talk so,” Mary commanded him.

“Ting told me,” Peter retorted. “Ting says he is going to get his dad to put pressure on old Li. It’s the only way to pin Lili down.”

“What pressure?” Mary asked.

“Ting says old Li was really a collaborator with the Japs and his dad has the proof. He skipped out just in time to avoid getting put in jail — or coughing up a couple of million to put into certain outstretched hands.”

Both girls stared at him. “Really?” Louise murmured. She enjoyed gossip.

“Tell Jim unless he can put on pressure, too, he had just better forget the whole business,” Peter said. He set his straw hat at an angle. “’By, kids! I promised Ting to meet him. We’re going to run out to the beach with a couple of girls.”

His sisters did not speak. They watched him thoughtfully as he sauntered to the street, hailed a taxi, and disappeared.

“Do you think we ought to tell Mother what he does?” Louise asked.

“She can’t do anything,” Mary said. “He needs to go away from America. I wish Jim would send for him.”

“Peter doesn’t know enough to be of any use anywhere,” Louise yawned. “I’m going home to sleep — Estelle wants me to go to a dance with them tonight.”

“Where?” Mary asked.

“Some roof or other,” Louise answered indifferently. She hid from her shrewd elder sister the excitement of her heart. Tonight she would dance with Philip. Estelle was making it a party of four.

Alone on the bench, Mary read again the letter from beginning to end, trying to imagine scene by scene what it contained. But she had no experience to feed her imagination with reality, and at last she rose and walked home. The house was quiet and in the living room her father still slept, his face handsome and full of peace. She tiptoed into his study and took the receiver from the telephone and dialed.

“Oh, please, is Lili there?” she asked, when she heard Mollie’s voice.

“I’ll call her, miss,” Mollie’s stolid voice answered. She listened and heard Mollie’s heavy footsteps, Lili’s little cry of surprise, Lili’s high heels tripping over bare floors, and then Lili’s sweet voice that sounded falsetto over the wires.

“Yes, ye-es?” That was Lili.

“Lili, this is Mary. I’ve had a letter from Jim. Shall I bring it over?”

There was a pause, and Lili laughed. “Oh, lovelee!” she trilled. “But Mary, just now I am so busy.”

“Then when?” Mary asked firmly.

“Oh ye-es, let me see, Mary — shall I call you?”

Mary’s ready temper flew from her heart. “Don’t trouble — you don’t want to hear it, Lili. Why don’t you say so?”

“But I do, very much!”

“You do not.”

“Ye-es, Mary, please come over now — with the letter, please!”

“You are busy,” Mary said cruelly.

“Ye-es — never mind. You come now, please. I don’t do anything else. I just wait for you.”

The pretty voice was pleading. Mary longed to refuse, but she dared not. She must do what she could for James.

“All right,” she said shortly. “I’m on my way now.”

She put up the telephone and went at once, letting herself out of the house silently. She did not want anyone to know where she was, for she did not want anyone to know what happened — whatever it was to be.

Lili was lying on a couch in her bedroom and there Mollie led Mary. “She says to tell you she’s got only a little while, being as she’s promised to go to a tea,” Mollie said at the door,

“I shan’t need but a little while,” Mary said.

There was no hint of haste in Lili’s calm manner. She put out her soft hand to Mary. “You know, I’m glad you told me about Jim’s letter. I feel so bad here — about Jim.” She held her hand on her left breast. She had taken off her Chinese gown and lay in a delicate lace-trimmed American slip. American dress she considered ugly, but she wore American underwear with joy. Her bare shoulders and arms were exquisite ivory. Mary looked away from them. It seemed in some strange fashion a desecration that she should be here in this intimate room and James so far away.

Lili continued in the same plaintive tone. “Every day I wish to write a letter to Jim.”

“It would make him very happy,” Mary murmured. She sat down in a pink satin chair and felt hot and plain. She brushed back her hair with her hands and wiped her temples with her handkerchief.

“Oh, what can I tell him?” Lili asked. “Everything is not sure. Maybe many years before he is ready for me!”

“He is ready for you now,” Mary said. She unfolded the letter and began to read it slowly and clearly. Lili listened, her head leaned on her hand, her great eyes earnest and a tender smile about her mouth. She did not speak. When Mary had finished she lay back and closed her eyes. Then she felt under the satin pillow and found a lace handkerchief with which she slowly wiped her eyes. “I long to go to Peking,” she said in a heartbroken voice.

“Then why don’t you?” Mary asked. She wondered if she had misjudged the beautiful girl. It was so hard to understand the girls who came from China. One knew the blood was the same, but to have grown up in America and in China made two different beings. Lili was so soft, she yielded everywhere — until one knew she had really yielded nowhere.

“I cannot just go to Peking,” Lili said without opening her eyes. Her beautiful lips trembled. “I have to think about many things.”

“If you loved James you would think only of him,” Mary said.

Lili shook her head. She touched the wisp of lace to her lips. “You talk just like American,” she complained. “I am Chinese. I cannot just think about one man.”

At this Mary lost her temper. “I can see that,” she said bitterly. “I guess anybody can see that. You think of a lot of men.”

Tears rolled down Lili’s cheeks. She opened her eyes and gazed at Mary through wet lashes. “You don’t understand,” she whispered. “You are so American!”

“I’ll tell James you can’t just think of him,” Mary said.

Lili gave a soft scream. “Please don’t tell him this! He is American, too, and he can’t understand.”

“What shall I tell him, then?” Mary asked. “I’ve got to tell him something, Lili. He loves you — and you’re being too cruel.”

Lili was silent for a moment. Then she looked sidewise at Mary. “Tell him — tell him — I write very soon!” She clapped her hands and laughed. Then she got up from the couch. “I have to go with Baba and Ma to tea at the Consulate, but I don’t want to go a bit. I much rather sit here with you and listen to the letter all over again. But I must go — they tell me to.”

She smiled lovingly at Mary, and as firmly as though Lili had laid her hands upon her, Mary felt herself pushed from the room.