Letters From Peking

  “In fact,” Mr. Woods said, “she was voted the most popular girl in high school last summer.”

  “Some of our friends think she should try for beauty queen in our state,” Mrs. Woods said, “but her father doesn’t like the idea.”

  “No, I don’t,” Mr. Woods said.

  “I agree with you, Mr. Woods,” I said. “It would be a pity.”

  Allegra came in at this moment. She had been sleeping, and her cheeks were rose pink. She had put on a white sleeveless frock, short and tight, and only a young pretty girl could have suffered its severity. She is pretty—I have to grant that. And I can see how my tall dark son might fall in love with her. Ah, but I hope not deeply!

  “Speak to the company, sweetie pie,” Mrs. Woods said. It was pitiful and touching to see how the parents adored this child, their only one.

  “Hello, Mrs. MacLeod,” Allegra said with a quick smile.

  “I’m afraid Rennie kept you up too late, last night,” I said. “I scolded him for it.”

  “Oh, I can always sleep,” Allegra said. She sat on the couch beside her father and he put his arm around her shoulders and squeezed her against him.

  “How’s my honey?”

  “Just fine,” Allegra said and leaned her fair head against his shoulder.

  “You shouldn’t sit up so late. It’s like Mrs. MacLeod says.”

  She pouted at him and did not answer and he squeezed her again. Mrs. Woods watched them tenderly. “They’re such chums,” she murmured, adoring them both as her possessions.

  Nevertheless they were anxious for me to be gone. They would not talk to the child before me. I got up and bade them goodbye, making no haste, as if nothing important had happened, as though we had not rearranged two lives. We lingered on the porch, the three of them following me. We admired the sweet williams along the path. There is no view from their house, just the path and the flowers and the white gate in the fence. And so I went home. And when Rennie came in to supper I said nothing at all of what I had done. He ate in a hurry and in his work clothes, and then rushed to his room to bathe and change. In a few minutes he raced through the kitchen in clean blue jeans and a fresh shirt.

  “Goodnight, Mom,” he called as he went.

  “Goodnight, son,” I said.

  He went to his rendezvous, and when I had washed the dishes and had settled Baba for the night, I went to my room and locked the door. Tonight I would not sit up. Tonight I could sleep. Whatever I had to meet, I would face it in the morning.

  “She has gone,” Rennie said.

  I waked early and got up immediately, knowing what awaited me. When I came downstairs he sat there at the kitchen table. He had made a pot of coffee and was drinking it, black and strong.

  “You haven’t been to bed,” I said.

  He blazed at me. “How could I sleep?”

  I sat down and poured myself a cup of coffee. “Go on. Say whatever you want to say. Let’s have it out.”

  My son was terrible to see. His face was pale and his eyes were burning black. His lips were parched and bitten.

  “You went to her parents. You told them.”

  “Nothing but the truth,” I said quietly.

  “You wouldn’t wait until they knew me!”

  Oh, what bitterness in his voice. How hard, how hard to hear it!

  “It is better for them to know the truth first,” I said. “If she loves you enough to defy her parents, I will say nothing—I swear I will not.”

  “At least you might have warned me,” he cried.

  I would not yield to him. “I had to see how they felt, and see it with my own eyes. What they feel cannot be overcome unless your love and hers are equal. I know—I know!”

  “She does love me,” he muttered. “She told me so.”

  “She loves you all she can, but it is not enough. It will never be enough, because she is small—small, I tell you! I do not blame her. She cannot help what she is born. But you are born big—as big as the world.”

  “Damn you,” he whispered.

  I looked at him. “Now I am glad your father is not here.”

  We stared at each other.

  “Some day you will thank me,” I said and wished I had not. It is the common speech of parents. My mother said it to me when she tried to keep me from marrying Gerald. But we had already loved each other, and nothing could keep us apart. I knew, and I defied my mother. “I shall never thank you if you keep us apart,” I told her.

  And I was right, not she. Even though the letter is locked in my desk, and though I never see my Gerald’s face again I was right and she was wrong.

  I kept looking at my son’s face and his gaze broke, he so young, so proud in such grief.

  “Why did you ever give me birth?” he muttered, and then he sobbed once and leaped from the room.

  The house is too still. I knew when I opened my eyes this morning that Rennie was gone. It was a grey morning, a soft rain drifting over the trees and misting into my open window. The curtains hung limp. I listened. It was well past dawn and time for milking. By now I should hear Rennie stirring somewhere. I got up and closed the window and stood looking down, the valley half hidden by rain, summoning my courage to go to his room. I tried to think of Gerald but my heart did not call and his did not answer. I could not see his face and when I forced the eyes of my mind toward him, I saw only the stretching miles of land and the terrible grey sea between us.

  To Rennie’s room then I went, I opened the door and looked in. The bed was empty, neatly made but empty. All the room was neat and I was frightened by such order. On any other morning his clothes would have been piled up on the armchair, his shoes scattered, his books open on the table. It was only when he left his room that he made it neat, and never neat as it was now. I ran across the room to his closet lest it be empty too. But it was not. Oh, what joy to see his clothes still hanging there! I counted his suits, the brown second best, his work clothes, the jackets and slacks. No, his best dark-blue suit was gone.

  Then I saw the book on his desk, closed but with an envelope in it. It was addressed to me. Mother. Mother? Not Mom—

  I sat down to read it because I was too weak to stand. “Dear Mother,” Rennie said to me. “I have gone to find Allegra. I have to be alone with her and see for myself why she has changed—if she has. Don’t get in touch with me—don’t telephone, don’t write. See you when I can get home again. Rennie.”

  For Allegra’s parents took her away the day after we talked. Rennie has scarcely spoken to me since. Now there is nothing to do but wait. Blessings on old Baba, who is all I have left! I went back to my room and bathed and dressed and descended to the kitchen and made myself breakfast. How curious my life is—how lonely. Loneliness is what I feel here in my own land. Everyone is lonely, pursuing his lonely way. We do not confide, we do not share. The very size of the land divides us. I am as far from Kansas and that shack where Baba was lost, for he was really lost, as I am from Peking—nay, farther, for I have my memories to travel upon across the seas.

  And then I was disturbed by plaintive sounds from upstairs, and I heard Baba’s voice. I went upstairs at once. He lay in his bed, the covers drawn tight about his neck, his dark eyes bewildered.

  “I can’t get up,” he murmured.

  “Are you in pain, Baba?” I asked.

  “No pain,” he said indistinctly.

  “Lie still,” I said. “I will send for the doctor.”

  So I went to the telephone and dialed and it was early and Bruce Spaulden had not left home.

  “Yes?” His voice was crisp.

  “Bruce, I think Baba has had another stroke.”

  “I’ll be over.”

  “Shall I do anything?”

  “No, just keep him covered and quiet.”

  I put up the receiver and went back to Baba and told him that Bruce was coming and then I made the room tidy. Baba is very clean. He is so old that his flesh has no odor. It is ash clean. He lay there, quiet and good, an
d watched me and I saw his face beginning to draw toward the left. He felt it too and tried to tell me.

  “Never mind,” I said. “Bruce will be here soon.”

  I do not open Baba’s window at night. There is little warmth in his body and he draws his breath lightly. But this morning was glorious and I opened the window and the sunshine flowed in for a few minutes and the air was enlivened. Then I closed the window again.

  Now I heard Bruce’s footsteps in the hall downstairs and he came upstairs and into the room.

  “Good morning, Elizabeth,” he said.

  It was the first time he had called me by my name and I was startled.

  “Good morning,” I said. “Here is my poor Baba, waiting.”

  Baba turned piteous eyes toward the doctor.

  Bruce sat down by the bed and made his examination. There is something wonderful in the way a good doctor examines his patient, his mind concentrated, his hands sure in exploration. I stood respectful, admiring Bruce. He is very American. I wonder why he has never married. He would make a good husband for a woman of integrity and sensitive enough to understand him. He is lean, as most Vermonters are, tall, and serious when he is grave. It is difficult to remember the color of his eyes—grey, I think, changing toward blue. His hair is brown, an ordinary brown, and straight, and his nose is straight and his mouth is firm. When he smiles his face changes altogether. It is quietly mischievous and almost gay. He is even-tempered, inclined to silence and meditation, all good qualities in a husband. I have absorbed a Chinese curiosity into my being and I wanted to ask him why he was not married. To a Chinese mind, anything can be asked, as between friends.

  He covered Baba carefully. “Not too serious,” he said. “There will be more of these little shocks. Let him rest. He’ll sleep a lot. Let him sleep.”

  Indeed Baba was already sleeping, breathing softly aloud. We left him there and went downstairs into the living room.

  “Have you had breakfast?” I asked.

  “No,” Bruce said.

  “Nor have I. So let us breakfast together. I’m lonely because Rennie has gone—”

  “Gone?”

  “For only a few days, I hope, but I don’t know.”

  And I told him about Allegra. Bruce smiled rather grimly. “He’ll be back. We always come back to our mothers. Unless the girl is like you, so you aren’t needed!”

  “I am sure Allegra is not like me,” I said.

  I was busy getting the breakfast on the table. Eggs for him, two to my one, and the hens are laying well and I am glad of that. I dislike hens but I like fresh eggs and one cannot be had without the other. Coffee and toast and fruit—I would have my usual good breakfast, let Rennie do what he would.

  When we were sitting at the table, I at the end, since it is my table, and Bruce at the side, I asked my question.

  “Because I am so happily married, Bruce, I ask why you have never married.”

  “Too busy,” he said, buttering toast.

  “It’s not my business—but—”

  “Go on,” he said. “I lead a simple life. No secrets.”

  “Wouldn’t a wife actually save you time?”

  “No. I’d have to think about her—be a companion.”

  “Are you happy as you are?”

  “I don’t know. I suppose so. I haven’t asked myself.”

  I poured his second cup of coffee. What he did not wish to tell he would not tell, however I asked. That is a Vermonter, too.

  When he was gone, suddenly and to my own surprise I gave myself over to weeping for Gerald and for him only. It has been months since I wept, and even as I was weeping, I knew it was useless. The doors of the house in Peking are shut against me.

  I crept upstairs to look at Baba and found him deeply asleep. Even he does not need me now.

  …This morning, coming home from my Saturday shopping, a small business now that I am alone, for Baba has returned to the food of childhood and seldom eats more than milk and bread or rice and a little fruit, I was charmed by the sight of a black mother ewe and her twin white lambs, cropping green grass in a roadside pasture. The sight gave me a small inexplicable pleasure and I stopped the car and got out merely to watch the mother and her children. The sunlight was bright and mild, Vermont sunshine, never hot as the Chinese sun was hot. The spot was lonely and I sat down on a round grey rock. At this the mother ewe was gently alarmed and bleated softly. Immediately the baby lambs came to her side and stood trembling on their slender legs, and peered at me.

  “Don’t be afraid of me—”

  Now I am really too lonely, for the words come out of my mouth aloud. And I am too lonely, for the next thought was that I would like to own the black ewe and her white lambs and have them live with me. They can crop the short grass on the hillside about my house and keep the semblance of a lawn.

  Upon decision I went to find the farmer who owns the ewe and after some search I found not a farmer but one of the wry individuals who cling to the soil of Vermont, a man who farms a little and tinkers somewhat more at whatever job comes his way. He waits in poverty until the job comes and when it is offered he may not even put forth his hand to grasp it. This man was of that breed. He was puttering at mending an unpainted kitchen table when I came from behind his small frame house, neatly painted white with green shutters. He was bending over his work and he straightened when he saw me.

  “Well?” he inquired without good morning.

  “I’d like to know if your black ewe and white lambs are for sale,” I said, also without greeting.

  “Might be,” he said.

  “How much will you take for them?” I asked.

  I do not doubt that he knows who I am, the widow woman from over the mountain, or as good as widow, since her husband is in China. But he made no sign of knowledge.

  “Don’t know as I want to sell,” he said, and measured his ruler against a strip of wood.

  “I don’t know that I want to buy,” I said. “Yet maybe I might, to keep the grass down around the house.”

  “I’ll think it over,” he said.

  “Do,” I said. “I’ll be at home this afternoon.”

  He did not come that afternoon, of course, since I had designated it, but he did come this morning, two days later, leading the ewe and the lambs on a dirty rope.

  “Ten dollars in cash and the rest in maple syrup,” he announced.

  We argued for a half hour or so over the quantity of syrup but I yielded, since, being a Vermonter, he would not, and now the ewe and the lambs are cropping the grass on my hillside. The ewe did not settle down at once and I have the rope around her neck and the other end tied to the apple tree, but she is less alarmed than she was, and in a few days I can throw the rope away. And it is quite true that she, with the lambs, do provide me with a comfort I cannot fathom. It is a small comfort, but deep, a mother tie to this earth. I own something more, something alive. I shall have to attach myself by all these small cords lest I be rootless, now that the tap root is gone. No, it is not gone, but it is not here. It is buried far away in my life with Gerald and our love. I have somehow to plant again with this soil. Can this be done when I am alone? I have no word from Rennie.

  …“I am not religious,” I once told Gerald.

  This was when he said one doubting evening, “But will you be satisfied with the Chinese gods?”

  “Are you?” I asked.

  “I have learned to live in two ways,” he replied. “There are days when I believe in no gods. There are other days when I believe in all gods.”

  “Of the two, I shall probably learn to believe in all gods,” I said.

  A woman in love loses herself and I lost myself. I longed to believe what Gerald believed, to worship as he worshiped. When I found that he worshiped not at all, his belief a matter of mind and will and not the deep involuntary movement of the soul, I did not discuss further the matter of God. Sometimes wandering the Chinese country roads outside our city, we came upon a peasant standing
in quiet reverence before a small wayside shrine. Inside the shrine two gods sat, male and female, a married pair, for so the peasants conceive their gods to be. They cannot imagine a solitary god, a male without a female. That, they believe, would be against the law of life. So before the divine pair the peasant stood to light a stick of incense and speak in his heart a wish. It was a sight simple and good. I said to Gerald,

  “Would that we could pray in this fashion and believe!”

  “It is not that we cannot believe,” he replied. “It is that we do not want anything enough. Faith rises from necessity. We have no necessity.”

  This is true. For out of my necessity now, I find that I must pray. Out of my intense anxiety for my son I have gone each night to his room and standing in the dreadful empty silence I pray for him. How far the prayer rises I cannot guess. Whether there is a listening ear I do not know. But at least the prayer crowding my heart to agony is released and I am relieved. I believe, out of my necessity, that some of the burden is lifted.

  Thus far I have resisted the possibility of lifting the receiver of the telephone and calling Allegra’s home. It would be easy to ask, “Is Rennie there?” and then, “May I speak to him?” But I will not. It is not only that he would not forgive me. It is also that I must learn to live alone.

  At this moment I heard Baba calling. I went to him and found him on the floor. He had slipped to the floor in getting out of bed and he lay there pleasantly helpless, wondering how he got there. He lives from moment to moment, not concerned beyond his present need. He had waked, he had decided to get up and then he fell. I helped him to his feet, and he waved me away. Uncertain as he is in every movement, he will not let me stay near him while he washes himself and puts on his garments. Only when he has the Chinese robe about him does he call upon me to fasten the buttons at his collar. So I waited outside his door, and when he called I went in again and buttoned his collar and he declared himself ready for his noonday breakfast. He is happy, he is serene, he has no fears, no anxieties, no need to worship or to pray. A small damage to his brain, the explosion of a minute blood vessel, Bruce tells me, has relieved him of every care. Who says the gods are not kind?