15
A PLEASANT HOME, VIOLET Sung told herself, a pleasant woman, this mother of Alec Wetherston, and Louise was lucky. Violet sat in a comfortable chair in a large living room full of too many things and now and then she looked through the wide window in the central garden of the huge apartment house.
“Dr. and Mrs. Liang will be pleased when I tell them how you feel,” she said in her sweet deep voice. With her instinctive gift she appeared a gentle somewhat simple-hearted young woman before this gentle and very simple-hearted older woman. “You can understand that they have been a little troubled at such a quick marriage. Not everyone would be so generous as you have been. We Chinese pay great heed to the mother-in-law. Therefore it was natural that I should offer, on behalf of my friends, to come and see you first.”
Mrs. Wetherston looked troubled. “I do hope,” she said with pathetic emphasis, “that nobody will think of me as a mother-in-law!”
Violet smiled. “To us a mother-in-law is a revered figure. A son honors his mother, and the son’s wife must both honor and obey.”
“Oh, I don’t want to be obeyed!” Mrs. Wetherston exclaimed. She was a small plump white-haired woman whose face was no whit different from that of any plump white-haired woman whom one might pass on the street. She was dressed in a gray wool frock, tight across her ample hips and bosom, and her feet, crossed upon a worn hassock of red velvet, were encased in black kid pumps, too tight across the instep. But she had grown accustomed to such restrictions and there was something pleasant and good about her. She was a woman sheltered and loved for so long that she did not know her own privilege. The mother of five children, of whom Alec was the youngest, she had already eight grandchildren. But the big apartment was empty now. Sons and daughters had scattered.
Mrs. Wetherston saw Violet’s roaming gaze. “I know this apartment ought to be redecorated,” she said apologetically. “But I just can’t bear to have it done. The children grew up here and I want to keep it like this. That spot on the arm of your chair—Rob, that’s my oldest, spilled his ice cream there when he was having his tenth birthday party. Of course it’s been cleaned but I can remember him so well when he was ten. And the piano stool is a sight, but they would kick it when they were practicing—Lilian plays beautifully, but the others got tired of it except Ken, who sings tenor. Not professionally, of course! I’m sentimental, Miss—”
“Violet Sung—”
“Oh, yes, of course. Chinese names are so—but I can call her Louise right away so it doesn’t matter if I can’t remember—”
“Liang,” Violet said gently.
“Oh yes, of course—though we will want to have them all over to dinner.”
“You really don’t mind having a Chinese daughter-in-law?” Violet asked. She gathered up gloves and bag and handkerchief, preparing to go.
Mrs. Wetherston struggled with truth. “I’ve always said that I would love the people my children married and I intend to love Louise,” she said valiantly. She paused and her good, wrinkled face blushed a dull pink. “What really grieves me is that my boy didn’t tell me about the other one—the first wife—who died—you know—the baby’s mother. I can’t understand—” Her lips trembled, and Violet who comprehended all men, hastened to comfort this mother who could never believe that her sons were only men.
“A first love is sometimes very deep,” she said quietly.
Mrs. Wetherston’s eyes filled. “There was even a child.”
Violet felt danger about her. The innocence of American women was frightening and she must not disturb it. Mrs. Wetherston was the mother of five children and yet she was a virgin. She wondered what Mr. Wetherston could be. His business, she had learned, was prosperous and sound. He was the head of an old legal firm. Her mind toyed for a moment with the idea of Mr. Wetherston. Perhaps American husbands enjoyed keeping their wives virginal. It gave men more liberty. Then she shrank from all responsibility for Mrs. Wetherston’s innocence.
“I am sure your son will tell you everything when he comes,” she said, pressing Mrs. Wetherston’s plump hand. “Meanwhile it is perhaps well that Louise is Chinese. She will look like the baby’s mother and if I were in your place, dear Mrs. Wetherston, I should just forget that she is not.”
Mrs. Wetherston was comforted. When Violet Sung first came in she had been afraid of her because she was beautiful and well dressed but now she saw that she was only a dear and charming girl, in spite of being Chinese. “I hope Louise will be like you,” she said, clinging to Violet’s soft ringed hand.
“She is much better than I am,” Violet said, smiling. “Much younger, much prettier—”
“But you are so understanding,” Mrs. Wetherston said. “You really aren’t like a Chinese!”
These words, said so innocently, fell into Violet’s heart like a dart thrown by a child. They made a little wound which she quickly concealed. “Good-by, dear Mrs. Wetherston,” she said. “I will tell my friends how kind you are.”
In the street again she took a passing cab and went directly to Dr. Liang’s apartment. During the family distress Mrs. Liang had subdued her jealousy and now it was she who met Violet at the door.
“Come in, come in,” she said warmly in English. “Tell us all about something.”
She pattered into the living room ahead of Violet and as she passed the closed door of the study she raised her voice. “Eh, Liang! Violet Sung got here.”
There was no answering voice. Dr. Liang heard her and was displeased at the rude summons. He did not therefore move for some five minutes. Had anyone opened the door he would have been sitting at his desk, a brush held upright between his thumb and two fingers as he wrote Chinese letters. But no one opened the door and after the five minutes he got up and walked with slow dignity into the living room.
“Forgive me,” he said to Violet. “I was just finishing a stop-short.”
He had taught her the necessary qualities of the four-line poem thus named, and she smiled at him. “You must let me read it,” she said.
He made a deprecating gesture. “It is far from perfect yet,” he replied. “I have worked on it for four days, but I am not satisfied.”
“Now, Liang,” his wife broke in, “don’t talk some poetry. Sit down. Miss Sung wants to tell us how is Wetherstons.”
In her eagerness she was to Dr. Liang’s perceptions more than usually vulgar. To quiet her therefore he sat down and prepared to listen. Violet, glancing at his sensitive and handsome face, imagined that she saw suffering there. Certainly his pallor was deeper than usual. She proceeded very gently.
“You are fortunate. The home is a good one. It is not too rich, but there is some money. The mother-in-law is kind, and she wishes to do well but she does not know anything. Everything will depend upon Louise. The mother believes that her sons are all good and even great men, and Louise must learn the wisdom of agreeing with her mother-in-law.”
Mrs. Liang cried out at this. “Our Louise? She cannot agree with anybody. What do you say, Liang?”
“Please go on, Miss Sung,” he said.
Violet went on. “The mother-in-law, wanting to be kind and correct, is determined that she does not mind her daughter-in-law being Chinese. But in her heart she minds because it is something strange. It makes her different from other women she knows. Also she is not sure how Louise will fit into the home. I told her Louise was very American—is indeed by birth a citizen—and this comforts her somewhat but not wholly. And she is wounded that her son told her nothing of his first love affair or that a child was born.”
Dr. Liang had been making up his mind rapidly as Violet talked. The Wetherston family was not distinguished. The Liang family was better. It was therefore an honor for the Wetherstons to be connected with him. He would maintain this position.
Violet Sung went on. “She hopes to invite you to dinner.”
Mrs. Liang brightened. “I like to go and see,” she exclaimed.
Dr. Liang rose. “Thank you very much, Mi
ss Sung,” he said formally. “You have done us a great service. Let us be glad that the family is respectable. I suppose we should not hope for more. The man might have been someone from the slums. It is useless to pretend, however, that I am pleased. I shall not feel the same toward my daughter Louise.”
“Please wait,” Violet said. “It may all turn out very well. I believe that blood and body differences do not matter if minds and hearts are the same.”
Mrs. Liang agreed to this with enthusiasm. “Miss Sung, you say true. I also! Of course, it is much better to marry Chinese if possible. If not possible, then American is not too bad. Liang, I am not agreeing. I am happy seeing my daughter, and I am feeling nice to her husband. As for baby, it is boy, and that is some better than girl. I say everything is not too bad.”
Dr. Liang ignored this. He spoke only to Violet. “I suppose,” he said with a slight smile, “that it is only natural for me to maintain certain superiorities. Will you forgive me if I go back now to my studies?”
He bowed and walked out of the room, conscious that Violet was looking at him thoughtfully.
16
IN THE ANCESTRAL VILLAGE the four sat talking. James, Chen, and Peter had three rooms leading one into the other and facing south upon a small barren court. James kept for his own the central and slightly larger room which, having no windows, had a wide door that was now open to the winter sun. Here they were gathered. There was no other heat than the sunshine, and they were all clothed in padded Chinese garments and Mary sat with her feet on a small brass footstove within which were coals imbedded in ash. All of them wore half gloves which Mary had knit from gray camel’s-hair yarn.
They had been here for nearly a month and under James’s command had done nothing, apparently, except receive all who wished to come and see them. Yet within the house they had been quietly busy, except for Peter who read and studied much alone. The monotony of the country food had persuaded Mary to bid Young Wang to buy an earthen portable stove shaped like a jar with a small iron grate at the top. He put it in a sheltered corner of the barren court, and buying small pond fish and white cabbage and soy bean vermicelli with an occasional scrawny chicken, he set before them private and pleasant dishes. Other members of the family did the same in their part of the rambling earthen house and it was not taken amiss.
No one had expected Young Wang to remain in the village since he so enjoyed city life, but he had surprised all of them by falling in love with the daughter of the village innkeeper. Chen had first suspected it in the careless service and generally absent-minded behavior which Young Wang began to show soon after their arrival. Upon inquiry Young Wang confessed that he felt it was time for him to start a family for himself, and that it would be convenient if he settled here. He reminded himself and James that he had always dreamed of returning to the sea to be a ship’s cook, but now that he had seen the innkeeper’s daughter, he preferred to be a land cook. The inn was a good business, he further explained, and it was his luck that the innkeeper’s two sons had died, one as a child and the other last year of smallpox, leaving the daughter the only offspring. This meant that her husband would be accepted in place of a son, and he could step into the business as heir.
“I suppose you care nothing about the girl herself,” Chen had said teasingly.
Young Wang had grinned. “I have seen her once or twice,” he admitted. “She is not too ugly.”
Anybody could see the innkeeper’s daughter any day as she served at the tables and Chen had laughed loudly. “You need a marriage broker,” he told Young Wang. “Allow me to offer myself. I will ask no fee except a good meal cooked by your own hands and served by your wife after the wedding.”
Young Wang was much pleased, and Chen had gone to the innkeeper and had made so handsome a picture of Young Wang that both parents had soon agreed to accept him.
“Shall we not also ask the young woman if she will consider him as a husband?” Chen had suggested daringly.
“No,” the innkeeper said with decision. “It is none of her business. The inn is mine.”
Nevertheless Chen took care one day before the betrothal papers were written to eat a meal at the inn and to ask for wine, which the girl always served. The hour was early and he sat alone at a table. When she poured the wine from the long slender spout of the pewter winepot, he leaned toward her and without looking at her he said these words in a low voice. “If there is any reason why you do not wish to proceed with the papers which bind you to Young Wang, remove the lid of the winepot as a sign.”
He did this in order to spare the feelings of a young girl. But she was no shy and modest creature. All her life had been spent in the inn and she saw new men every day. Therefore she answered smartly though not loudly, “A woman has to marry some man or other, and if he has his two eyes and his two arms and two legs, he is as good as any.”
Thus did she say that her heart was pleased with Young Wang, and so the wedding was set for the first lucky day after the opening of spring. Chen felt proud at this first achievement in the village and word went around that he had been a go-between and people praised him for his good common ways. He himself foresaw that his function in the years to come, if these two young Liangs persisted in staying here as they now swore themselves to do, would be to stand as bridge between the old and the new. With all the good intent in the world, James was too cautious and Mary too quick. James could not easily understand these country people in the very excess of his sensitive wish to do so, and Mary did not wait on understanding. If a child’s face was dirty she wiped it clean without perceiving that the jealous mother was wounded thereby.
Yet Mary was more fortunate than James. She paid little heed to the elders but she had witchery over children. She was full of stories and songs and games, and following James’s command she did not try to teach anything for a full month. The two dozen and more Liang children allowed her to wash them and to tend their scratches and cuts and soon they followed her everywhere, so that she had not one moment to herself.
Her danger was that she was impatient with Uncle Tao. She refused to respect him. She told him boldly that he would feel better if he washed himself all over with hot water and soap even though it was winter, and while he was washing she would put a powder into his clothes that would kill the lice.
Uncle Tao listened to her with astonishment. He was not quite angry for his real anger he never wasted on women. But he pursed his lips and rolled his eyes around and refused to wash himself. “I have never washed in the winter,” he declared. His sleeves were wide and he withdrew his arms from them the better to scratch remote parts of his body. “As for lice, they are a sign of good health.”
“They are a proof of dirt,” Mary said severely.
Uncle Tao rolled his head round and round on his short neck to signify rage. “You know nothing about lice! I tell you, they will not stay on a sickly person or on any person about to die. I am healthy and I have many lice.”
Mary walked away, her cheeks flaming and her head high. When Chen begged her to remember that this was China and not America, that it was country and not city, Mary flouted him. She said, “Uncle Tao is just a fat dirty old man.”
Had she been a boy she might have suffered. But it was accepted in this household as in all others that women were like children and must be allowed a license which a man as a superior being could not have. Therefore although no other woman dared to quarrel with Uncle Tao, it became a matter for family respect that Mary was not afraid of him and that he, although he roared at her, did not demand that she be beaten.
Peter remained unknown and aloof. It was plain to all that something secret weighed upon the boy’s mind. James, probing him, could not find what it was, for Peter would not tell him anything.
“I think you should go back to America, Peter,” James said one day.
“I don’t want to go,” Peter replied.
“Then what do you want to do?” James asked with something as near impatience as he allowed
himself.
Peter had shrugged his shoulders. “Leave me alone,” he said.
So this day, too, he sat in silence while the others talked together. The first small sign of the northern spring had shown itself. Young Wang had found in the village market some lily bulbs and he had brought them home and had shown Mary how by keeping the water tepid about their roots they could be forced, though the room was cold. Now the flowers hung in rich golden-hearted clusters and their fragrance filled the room. In the court, too, a small bare lamay bush had begun to show buds of waxen yellow even before there was a leaf, and the brown buds on the plum tree were beginning to swell. “I must begin to do something,” Mary declared. As usual when they were together they spoke in English and as usual James reproved them.
“Please,” he said, “there is nothing we need hide, and if they hear us speaking a foreign language it makes them think us foreign.”
“You are overcareful,” Chen said lazily. He sat in the sun and the warmth was creeping into his heart. “They know we speak English.”
“I shall begin by teaching a few of our own Liang children how to read,” Mary said. “Then others will join us. And I shan’t ask Uncle Tao.”
“I think I shall not begin on our own family,” James said thoughtfully. “And I will ask Uncle Tao.”
Chen laughed. “We will see how far each of you goes,” he said.
Peter had been listening and now he suddenly broke forth as though he could not contain what was in his thought. “You are all foolish—as if it matters what you do in one little village to a handful of people among so many millions!”
His angry young voice stilled them in the midst of their pleasure in the coming spring and in each other.
“What do you suggest?” Mary asked. She put the bitter question in English for Peter had cried out in that tongue.
“It’s all rotten,” Peter cried. “Nothing will be any use except a clean sweep from top to bottom.” He got up and walked about the room and sat down again but this time out of the sunshine and beside the table.