So in the days that followed, under Young Wang’s interest this house became a shelter again for human beings. He it was who harried carpenters and plasterers and cleaning women until the place was new again and its stale odor of the past was gone. He it was who went to the thieves’ market at dawn and bought tables and chairs and pots and bowls and kitchen ladles of beaten iron and cauldrons for the brick stoves in the kitchen. James and Chen together went to old furniture shops and bought heavy blackwood tables for the main rooms and they bought Western beds.
“My sisters will never be able to sleep on boards, however good Chinese they become,” he told Chen. “And I myself—I prefer American springs under me.”
He indulged himself and bought a few fine scrolls for the wall and an old piano that some Westerner had left behind when he went away before the war. “It is a palace,” Chen said proudly, and did not notice that James did not reply. In such indulgence James took no great pleasure. If he had been preparing a home for Lili, he thought solemnly, how different it might have been! But then, none of this would have been good enough.
The days drew on and the expected letter from his father did not arrive. James was not surprised. He could imagine, as well as though he were in that New York apartment, how his father rose each morning contemplating the writing of the letter, how after contemplation he postponed, and how meanwhile he went to his classes on Chinese literature and came home exhausted, how he refreshed himself with a short nap, some tea which in private he liked to drink with cream and sugar, although publicly he declared these things only spoiled good tea, and how after reading a little while to refresh his spirit it was too late to write a letter that day.
From his mother, however, James did receive a letter. Like most of her letters, it was so rich with piety and good purpose that he was not able to discern from it what had happened. That it concerned Louise, that she had been foolish and led away by the Americans, that she was after all very young and much prettier than Mary, who had never had American young men admirers, and he must not therefore be too harsh a judge of Louise, who was growing up pretty even to Americans, and this was very difficult and a family problem, and she had been trying to persuade his pa to come to China, too, and they would all be happy again together in a house somewhere in Peking, only of course Pa felt he could not leave his work just low and perhaps in another year or two—so his mother wrote. She had not at all approved the sudden way in which Mary had taken Louise away and Peter, too, just about to enter college to become a great engineer, but the ocean was always there and they could come back if they did not like China nowadays. Only Louise of course had better stay long enough to fall in love with a nice young Chinese. It was the elder brother’s duty to take the father’s place and if James, her dear son, knew any nice young men, Chinese of course, and could arrange a marriage for Louise, undoubtedly that would be the solution, although he must not misunderstand and think that Louise had to get married. Luckily there was nothing like that, but still there might have been and they must all be thankful. Such was the gist of his mother’s letter and James read it over thoughtfully three times and gathered that Louise was somehow a new problem.
Without much enlightenment therefore he asked for a week’s vacation and with Young Wang at his heels he waited the day on the familiar dock in Shanghai for the steamship. The house was ready. He had found work for Mary in the children’s annex of the hospital and he had registered Peter in the college now receiving a fresh life under the leadership of a famous Chinese scholar. For Louise he had planned nothing because he knew nothing. She could always enter a girls’ school. There was also a Catholic convent, kept by six sisters, two of them Chinese and four of them French. He must talk with Mary before deciding for Louise.
The day was windy and gray and the waterside was black. Small boats were pushing about scavenging in the filthy river. Each had its family of man and woman and children and a grandparent or two, and these looked cold and unhappy. He was sorry that the three who were coming to him must see the Bund on such a day. The tall modern buildings looked forbidding and alien, as though they did not belong there. They lifted their heads too high above the boats and the crowded streets.
Even Young Wang seemed subdued. He had left a small underservant in charge of the house with his old mother for amah. Young Wang was proving a stern headboy. He did not allow Little Dog the least latitude for laziness, and the boy was beginning to look harried. Young Wang himself, dressed in a clean uniform of the semi-official sort in which he delighted, stood now just behind his master. He would have preferred no women in the household, for a man was easier to serve. His master’s sisters were Chinese, but they had been in America so long that he feared they had the tedious and fussy ways of American ladies in houses. He felt somewhat diminished and in low spirits when he thought of this. Either he was headboy or he was not, he told himself. He would take orders only from his master. So far as he was concerned there was no mistress. When his master married a wife there would be a rightful mistress. This point was clear in his mind by the time the yelling coolies were lassoing the ship, and he felt better and the grin returned to his face.
James saw them at once. They stood apart from both Chinese and Americans in a small close knot of three. Peter was between the two girls and he was holding his hat with both hands. A fresh autumn wind had sprung up with the dawn and was increasing as the skies grew dark toward noon. This wind blew into the air like a red flag the scarf Louise wore and fluttered her curled hair. Mary had wrapped her blue scarf tightly about her head. He saw their faces quite clearly and he felt concern and yet a sort of warm pleasure that here at last was something of his own.
He would not acknowledge that these months had been lonely but now he knew they had been. He did not know why. He was surrounded with people from morning until night and his work was satisfying and yet discouraging—satisfying because everything done for the crowds of sick amounted to much, and yet discouraging because he was always conscious of the millions beyond all aid. Underneath satisfaction and discontent was the feeling that he was living on the surface of his country and that he had put down no roots into it. He was still alien, and he wanted to lose this feeling of being alien. He wanted to plunge deep into the earth and the waters of his people, and he did not know how. He wanted to belong here so profoundly that he could never go away again. He could not live airily the rootless surface existence of the other doctors. Chen of course was the exception to them. He had grown very fond of Chen and he had begged him to come and share the house with them, but Chen had until now refused. When James had spoken again he had said, “Let us wait and see. It may be that your sisters and brother will not like me and then it will be difficult for both of us if they want me to go away again.”
“How foolish you are,” James had replied.
“No, I am only shy,” Chen had said and had roared out his great laugh. This laugh, James now knew, did in reality cover a very tender shyness, and so he had said no more.
But it was not only doctors who were living unrooted upon the surface of the life here. James discovered that there were many others who also lived thus, young men and women who had lived and studied in France and England as well as in America, and even some who had studied in Russia. But these who had studied in Russia were different from the others. They had not, at least the ones he knew in Peking, allied themselves with the Communists, but they talked in words of force. The people, they declared, should be “forced” to change their medieval ways of thinking and feeling and behaving. What this force was to be they did not say, nor did they know how it was to be applied. James, listening to much talk at their gatherings, had gradually withdrawn from them all and he devoted himself entirely to his work in the hospital. Yet he knew that though he spent his whole life in this work, it would not reach below the surface. Suppose that he had four hundred patients a month, that would be fewer than five thousand persons a year, and if he lived his life out, that would not be half a million p
eople and what were so few among the hundreds of millions? Somehow he must live in larger and deeper ways, which he had not yet discovered.
Meanwhile here was the family responsibility thrust upon him by his father and he must meet it first. There was a shout from the wharf coolies; they threw out the great knots of woven rope and the ship ground against the dock. The gangplank was lowered, and he waited and then felt Mary’s warm arms about him and Louise’s hands in his, and Peter thrust his arm through his brother’s.
“You’re looking well, Jim,” Mary said breathlessly. “A little thin, maybe.”
“Shanghai is some place,” Peter said.
Only Louise said nothing. James saw that she was very much thinner and that she looked as though she had been crying. He had taken rooms at the best of the few good hotels, and he had ordered a good luncheon for this midday and now he was glad that he had done so, for the rain began to fall in earnest and shivering ricksha coolies crowded under the roof of the dock, and the miserable scavenger boats tried to hide themselves under the piers. Louise looked at them and looked away.
“Young Wang!” James called. “You take care of the baggage, please!”
Young Wang appeared smiling. “I will do it, master. And please, here is the carriage.”
He had hired a carriage whose cushions had been newly covered with khaki and whose horse was something less starved than others. The driver was huddled under an oilcloth on his high seat but when he saw his customers he jumped down and took away the old newspapers which he had spread over the cushions.
It seemed even a little cozy inside the carriage, especially when the big oilcloth apron smelling of tung oil had been fastened to hooks in the umbrella top and the horse trotted away from the dock.
“Well,” James said, smiling on them all. “This is nice.”
They smiled at him wanly, or so he thought.
“Louise was seasick,” Mary said.
“So were you,” Peter said.
“Not much, really,” Mary retorted. “You are too proud of yourself, Peter.”
The long sea voyage had worn down their tempers a little. “I wish I could have ordered a good day for you,” James said, trying to be cheerful. Still, he told himself, it was well enough to go through the streets behind this oilcloth curtain. Chinese people seemed always unprotected against rain and snow. Their cotton garments melted like wet paper, and while in the sunshine they looked gay enough all of them were miserable in rain. And the Bund lasted for so short a distance. Too soon the streets became crowded and disheveled. The hotel entrance was pleasant and a smart doorman received them. Their rooms, taken for a day and a night, had made inroads upon his funds but James was grateful for temporary comfort. The lobby was warm and lined with palms, and sheltered at least from the weather. Well-dressed Chinese and a few foreigners sat upon the imitation-leather chairs. It was not too different from what they were used to, James thought. Upstairs the rooms were clean. He had taken two, one for himself and Peter and one for the girls, with a connecting bath.
“What measly towels!” Louise said when she looked in.
“I believe they are made in the factories here,” James said.
“Why is it we can’t do anything as well as other people?” Louise muttered.
“Now, Louise,” Mary said, “don’t begin by being disgusted with everything.”
“We’d better have some food,” James said. “We’ll all feel better. Then we can go to a movie this afternoon, if you like. That sounds like New York, doesn’t it? Let’s get ready.”
He wanted very much an hour alone with Mary but he knew that there would be no chance for this. In his room with Peter he did not know whether to ask questions or not. He began tentatively enough as he watched his younger brother brush his hair carefully before the mirror.
“It’s a great surprise, all this,” he said. “Ma’s letter didn’t make anything very plain, either, and I haven’t heard from Pa.”
“It’s a big fuss about nothing, if you ask me,” Peter grunted. He took out a cigarette rather ostentatiously. He had not smoked when James was at home, because this doctor brother had objected to his smoking before he had stopped growing. Now he wanted James to know that he did as he liked and expected to continue doing so. James understood and said nothing.
“Louise made Pa angry,” Peter went on. “I never thought he really meant to ship us off, though. He threatens so many things he never does. But there was no question about this. He went himself and bought the tickets and he wouldn’t pay for any tuition for us. I want to turn right around and go back, of course. I can make up the few weeks that I am missing at college. I’m still going to be an engineer.”
James smiled. “Better stay a few months anyway, now you’re here,” he said. “Half a year doesn’t matter at your age. And I’ve fixed up rather a nice house in Peking for us all. It’s a fine old city—makes you proud.”
“Is it better than Shanghai?”
“I think so anyway.”
There seemed nothing to say for a few minutes. Then James returned to the effort. “So you don’t know really what Louise did?”
“Oh, I know,” Peter said. “She’s in love with Philip Morgan, and Phil doesn’t want to marry her. That’s about it. I know Phil. He doesn’t want to marry anybody now. When he does he will probably marry some debutante.”
He was careful not to say that Philip probably did not want to marry a Chinese. He thought of himself as an American. Now something occurred to him. “Say, I heard something interesting on the ship. We had a fellow on board from Hollywood. He’s coming out here to shoot some pictures. It’s a story about a GI—sort of a Chinese Madame Butterfly story he said, only the GI doesn’t go away. He takes his gal home. He said that while they don’t want stories about white met and Negroes getting married they don’t mind Chinese any more. Pretty good, isn’t it?”
James smiled. He could not speak, watching this brother of his. Peter was utterly and completely foreign. He had nothing to help him here, no shred of knowledge, no hour of experience, to help him endure being Chinese. For it would be a matter of endurance. Peter had never absorbed either atmosphere or ideas from their father, and now James realized, though grudgingly, that the atmosphere of ancient Chinese philosophy which his father had so persistently built around them had helped only him and Mary. Even after they understood its artificiality, and then perhaps its uselessness in these swift modern times, it had become a part of them, thinly spun, indeed, but there, nevertheless, its mild silvery thread running through the structure of their beings. But Peter and Louise had absorbed none of it. Instead they had come to despise it, and they were never deceived for an instant by its unreality. Nor did they understand or care that once it had been a reality.
“So Louise was sent here to get over a love affair,” James said.
“Something like that,” Peter said briskly. He got up, bored by Louise. “Jim, if I stay for this autumn will you promise to make Pa let me go home in time for midyears?”
“If you won’t call it home,” Jim replied. “This is home, you know.”
“Oh well—you know what I mean,” Peter said. He stood restlessly, his hands jingling some change in his pockets. “I don’t want to waste time, even if I have plenty of it.”
“I think you ought to go back at midyears,” James said, getting to his feet. “There is no good place here to get engineering. The country needs fellows like you—needs them now, if this eternal quarrel would ever end between the government and the Communists. We’re all held up by that. But maybe by the time you’re through, it will be settled one way or the other.” He paused. “Of course there’s always the chance you may not want to go back. Something steals into you. I don’t want to go back—though there’s much I don’t like here, I can tell you.”
“I know I’ll want to go back,” Peter said. “Come on, let’s eat.”
It was the end of talk, and they joined Mary and Louise in the hall and went downstairs to a he
arty lunch of barley broth, boiled beef, cabbage and potatoes and a cornstarch pudding. It was the standard hotel meal for foreigners.
But it was quite pleasant in the motion-picture theater. The building had been designed by an American and the seats were still new enough not to have their upholstery torn and the springs exposed. The air was thick with the smell of Chinese food, for everybody seemed to be munching something, but they grew used to that. It was still raining when they came in and it was pleasant to get under shelter. The picture was American, too. It was a Western, and after it was finished there was an old Harold Lloyd comedy, so old that to the four young people sitting together it was new, and they laughed at it. When they came out it was nearly dark and again the hotel seemed shelter. Young Wang had brought their baggage and when they came in he served tea with small cakes and sandwiches from the hotel kitchen. These tasted good and they began talking as they ate. James told them about the house in Peking, which perhaps sounded better than it was as he told of it, and Peter heard about the college and Mary about the hospital. Louise, James said, could make up her mind about what she wanted to do when she got there. Maybe she would just want to keep house for them for a few weeks until she saw everything. None of them talked about America. They did not unpack very much because they were to take the train before noon the next day. The trains were better now and they did not need to go more than an hour before theirs started. Young Wang would go early and spend a little money.
They parted, brothers and sisters, with a warm family feeling. It was good to be together. Before he went to bed James sent a cablegram to his parents. “Children arrived safely. All well. We go north tomorrow. Love and respect. James.”