Kinfolk

He lay awake long after Peter was breathing in deep even waves of sleep. He had wanted to get Mary away and ask her about Lili, but he had not dared to leave Louise alone. There was something desperate in her face.

  7

  LONG AGO MRS. LIANG had learned not to open envelopes addressed to her husband. Therefore she did not open the yellow envelope which she hoped brought news of the children’s safe arrival. It came after luncheon when Dr. Liang was taking a nap in his study, and she tiptoed to the door and listened. She could hear him breathing heavily, and she sighed and went back to the living room and sat down by the window. She held the envelope in her hand, for she was not willing for one moment to lay it down. There was so much she wanted to know which of course it would not tell her. There was so much she wanted to know which indeed no one could tell her, because only someone like herself would perceive it. For example, what was it like now really to live again in Peking? She loved Peking. To herself she called it by the old name of Peking, as most Chinese did, although before foreigners she was careful to say Peiping, to show that she was a modern woman and loyal to the present government.

  Still, she had not at all liked Madame Chiang Kai-shek when she came here to New York. She and Dr. Liang had sent a large bouquet of chrysanthemums to Madame Chiang, yellow ones, costing one dollar apiece, but Madame Chiang had not even acknowledged them. Some secretary had merely scrawled a note of receipt. When later among other Chinese they had gone to a reception Liang had taken Madame’s hand very warmly, but she herself had not touched Madame Chiang. She had bowed a little and said in Chinese, “Eh-eh, you’ve come, have you?” exactly as in her old-fashioned home her mother had greeted guests whom she did not like. Madame Chiang’s face had not changed. The Americans thought her beautiful but in China there were many women more beautiful.

  “Eh, why do I think about Madame Chiang?” Mrs. Liang asked herself now.

  Outside in the park the leaves were beginning to fall and this meant that winter would soon come. She dreaded the long cold American winters. It was cold in Peking, too, but the days were always sunny. Even when there came down a snowstorm from the north, it passed quickly. Peking in the snow! Nothing was more beautiful. And how the bright red berries of Indian bamboo used to shine through the whiteness of the snow! She wiped her eyes quietly. That home in Peking, set so firmly upon the earth that no wind could shake it, was still her dearest memory. When the winds blew here the tall building trembled and she was always afraid, although she had learned not to show it because Liang grew so angry with her. Liang was often angry with her and for many things she did not blame him. He is not very happy here, too, she thought. No one is happy away from the earth and waters of his own home. Then why did Liang stay here?

  There was the Li family, also. Why did they stay here? Lili was becoming quite famous now among the Americans. They had taken her up as a fad and only the other day in a picture magazine she had seen Lili’s face, looking at her from a full page. “Chinese Beauty,” was written underneath, and thee there had been a story about her which said she was considered the most beautiful girl in China. But none of the story was true. There were many girls in China more beautiful than Lili. James was lucky not to marry her. Still, if he had married, he would be here and all the children would be here, and the house would not be so quiet. When the children were here she had so much to say, but now she could not think of anything to say to Liang.

  Suddenly she heard him cough. Then she heard his step and she ran to the door again and opened it softly. He was awake but he looked unwell and pale. “Liang, here is an electric letter from the children,” she said. Now that they were alone she had returned to speaking Chinese altogether, unless some foreigner came to visit them. Her English was slipping from her.

  “Give it to me,” he said.

  She stood waiting while he tore open the envelope with his thumbnail and took out the inner sheet. He did not read it aloud. She waited.

  “They have arrived safely and they are well. James sends this word,” he said finally.

  A misty happiness filled her body. “So they are safe,” she murmured.

  “Of course.” He stooped and pulled on his slippers. “You are always so fearful.”

  “But the ocean is terrible,” she pleaded.

  “Not in the great modern ships,” he replied. “You always behave as though there were nothing but old-fashioned junks.”

  She understood that his nap had left him feeling heavy and uncomfortable and so she said, “I will fetch you some hot tea and then it will be good for you to take a short walk in the park. You have to make a talk tonight before American ladies.”

  “I don’t see why I am always compelled to make these talks,” he grumbled.

  She hastened to agree with him. “Nor do I, Liang. Why do you not refuse? It is so foolish for you to waste your time. How can women understand the things you talk about?”

  She hoped to comfort him but instead she made him very angry. “Not all women are like you,” he said coldly. “There are even some women who appreciate the subject to which I have devoted my life.”

  “I am always wrong,” she said and turned and went away to the kitchen. Had the children been here she would have answered him with some temper of her own but indeed she had none now. Well, a woman without children had no courage before a man. In the kitchen alone, for she kept the maid now only half a day, she filled the kettle and lit the gas stove. Secretly she was afraid of the suddenness of the gas lighting, but she forced herself to light the match and hold it to the burner.

  She made the tea and took it into the study. Liang sat before his desk, drowsing over some notes, and he did not speak when she poured the tea into the bowl and set it on the able, and so she tiptoed away to sit by the window again in he living room. The wind was beginning to rise. She saw the eaves falling faster in the park below, and the building seemed to sway in a slow whirling motion. Certainly she heard it creak. A look of terror came over her face and she clutched he edge of the window sill with both hands.

  In his own way Dr. Liang also was suffering. His philosophy had not deserted him, nor did he feel that he had done anything wrong. Therefore he could not understand why his usual buoyancy had left him and why he felt dry and sad. The house was quiet, but he liked quiet. He had done a great deal of work since the children went and so much indeed that he had made entirely new notes for his course in contemporary Chinese literature. The children’s mother was of course somewhat depressed. That was inevitable. She was the mother type rather than the wife type. He had come to this conclusion long ago. In his own way Dr. Liang thought a great deal about women. No woman could have persuaded him from the path of rectitude and he was a man genuinely chaste. But he thought about women, nevertheless, and he analyzed many women in his mind, without any thought of their relation to him. Indeed he wanted nothing of them, for himself. They were merely interesting specimens of the human race. Confucius had thought little of women, and he had long pondered this aspect of the master’s mind. There must have been reason for this contempt. Perhaps the master had endured a willful wife, and had taken his revenge in private by writing down his wishful hope that women were beneath the notice to men. “Women, children and fools,” he had said, although recently Dr. Liang had been inclined to believe that Confucius was partly wrong in this classification, for he was becoming convinced that not all women were fools.

  There was, for example, Violet Sung. Beautiful in the most truly exotic fashion, cultivated, even learned, Violet had come from Paris a few months ago to take New York by storm. She was besieged by suitors of every nationality, and she would marry none of them. Marriage, she said in her quiet profound way of speaking, was not for women like her. The rumor now, however, was that she had accepted the love of a handsome middle-aged Englishman whose business interests kept him half the year in New York. If this were true, then it was an affair of the utmost good taste. Violet and Ranald Grahame were seen together often but not too often, and they seldom
arrived together at any public place and never went away together.

  Yet Dr. Liang was inclined to believe the rumor if only because of the bitter gossip raging among the Chinese. Not, of course, among the commonplace Chinese of Chinatown who were only tradesmen, but among Chinese society, the rich émigrés. Chinese men were especially bitter, as if they felt that Violet had rejected each of them individually when she accepted an Englishman. Dr. Liang had philosophy enough to enjoy this jealousy and to acknowledge half humorously that he had some of it himself. He would have been thoroughly alarmed had Violet pursued him, for he knew that he was not capable of a violent love affair, nor indeed did he desire it. He was not the physical type. Nevertheless, he enjoyed the deference that Violet had always shown him in public, and before others he indulged in a little domineering flirtation, being so much older than she and besides a very famous man. Once he had found himself alone with her by accident when they arrived not quite late enough at a late party, to which Mrs. Liang had not been invited, and he had been afraid of Violet Sung and entirely correct in his behavior. He had asked her formally where her ancestral home was in China. This question she had evaded somewhat, saying that she came from Shanghai, and that her ancestral home she believed was somewhere in Chekiang, although her father had long lived in Paris. Looking at her after other guests came and remembering her evasiveness, it occurred to him that she might be the daughter of a Frenchwoman and a Chinese. Yes, she had the look of foreign blood, very subtly subdued. It was more original to be Chinese than French. And of course the strong Chinese blood always predominated.

  Thus Violet Sung made a very interesting type for a philosopher to study. Someday he might work up a lecture on the difference between the mother type and the Violet type, and whether a man should have both types in his life, and if so, how such a relationship could be harmonious with the demands of modern life. In old-fashioned China, of course, all had been well arranged. The first wife was the mother. Thereafter a man took as concubine the other type. But this apparently offended the newer civilization of the Americans, who were not so naturalistic as the older peoples of Asia, or for that matter, of Europe. A formula here had yet to be found. The present number of illegitimate children which he understood to be very large—he must look up the annual number, if he went on with the lecture—was proof of the necessity for man even here of the two types of women.

  At this moment Dr. Liang felt the need of an audience. There was no one in the house except Mrs. Liang and although he had no respect for her intelligence his thoughts flowed more clearly when he spoke them aloud.

  He rose and went rather impetuously into the living room. “Eh,” he said, “I want to talk to you.” So absorbed was he that he did not notice that her face was ashen or that she was clutching the window sill in a strange way. When she saw him she let go and leaned back in her chair. “A big storm is coming,” she muttered, but he did not hear her.

  He sat down on the chair opposite her, and leaning forward with his elbows on his knees he linked together loosely his large, exquisitely shaped hands. “I want to ask you a question as a good mother,” he said. “Do you prefer the Western way of having concubines outside the family in secret or our old-fashioned way of bringing them into the family and allowing all the children to be born under one roof?”

  Mrs. Liang was smitten with fear. Was he thinking of taking a concubine now that the children were gone? Her lips went dry and she stared at him. “What thoughts have you?” she demanded.

  But he did not see her fear. He was entirely absorbed in the thread of the lecture that was developing in him rapidly. “I want to know what you think,” he insisted.

  She collected her terrified thoughts. They had been distracted enough by the storm but now here was this distraction also in the house! She began to speak, and her rather thick lips quivered. “Of course our way is better,” she faltered. “Otherwise the man’s seed is sown wild and the children have no name. Why should children suffer for what their father does?”

  Why indeed? Her heart yearned over her own. Of course if Liang wanted another woman he must bring her into this house. It would be shameful for him to descend to the sort of thing that foreigners did. Yet could she endure another woman here? No! if she came, let her come. She herself would ask for enough money to buy a ticket home and she would go to her children. She was about to rise with dignity from her chair and tell Liang that in this case she wanted to go to the children.

  He gave her no time either to rise or to speak. Instead he himself rose briskly. “Thank you,” he said with unusual courtesy. “I wanted to know what you would think—the mother type—” he murmured.

  He hastened back to his study and closed the door firmly and at once sat down and began to write fluently at his desk. He wrote for two hours, and when he had finished he felt pleased with himself and very hungry. He came out of his study to find that Mrs. Liang had his supper on the table. She said she did not wish to eat and she served him in silence. The meal was good. She had heated chicken broth and dropped noodles into it, and she had mixed shelled shrimp and salted turnip tops with eggs into an omelet and she had made rice congee. This with salted fish made him a meal. He ate it with enjoyment, although he missed the tinge of garlic with which she would have seasoned the food had he not been going out that night. Long ago he had impressed on her that she must never put garlic in his food when he was going out to lecture to American ladies. They disliked the odor, and he could not sufficiently protect himself from their eagerness in pressing about him after his lecture was over. He drank two cups of tea in silence while he reviewed what he was going to say. Mrs. Liang was accustomed to this silence before he went into public life and she did not break it. When he rose she went into the hall and held his coat and hat ready for him.

  “Do not stay up for me,” he told her kindly and he went out without waiting for her answer.

  After he had gone she stood uncertainly for a moment and then she went upstairs to her room and took out a sheet of paper and began to write to the children.

  “My precious ones,” she began after the formal opening. How fortunate she was in having learned to read and write! Well, she must thank Liang for that, for it was only because he had insisted that she had been taught. Even so, she knew she often made mistakes in the radicals of certain characters. But the children could always read her letters.

  “I am in deep trouble,” she wrote. “Your pa is thinking of taking another woman into our house. This is too much for me here in America. In China the houses are big and there are many servants and we could live separately. But here how could I bear to cook her food and pour her tea? If he decides to do this thing I will ask for ticket money—”

  She paused. The house was certainly swaying in the storm. She felt slightly sick and quickly she took up her pen again. “I am very lonely here. Your pa has gone away to talk to American ladies. I ought not to complain for he earns one hundred American dollars when he does so. But tonight there is a big wind from the ocean side, and I feel the house shaking. Your pa says this is impossible since it is built of iron. Yet I feel it shaking, whatever he says, and I think Heaven is not pleased with these high houses. We are meant to live down upon the earth—”

  She meandered on in a long incoherent letter, telling her children everything that came into her mind.

  Dr. Liang after an hour and twenty minutes was closing his lecture. The auditorium of the exclusive club was filled with women, all sitting in silence. Lights placed skillfully above and below threw Dr. Liang’s tall slender figure into splendid relief. “As for me,” he said with a slight half smile, “as a Chinese man and a Confucian I prefer the mother type. She is perhaps the true Chinese woman. My own wife is that type, and she and I have sent our children back to China to renew the bond with their mother earth. I want them to be Chinese in the most profound sense, children of the earth—and children of the dawn!”

  He ended, his voice reverent, his head high, and he bowed. There w
as a moment’s silence and then waves of applause brought him back to bow again and again. He did not know exactly what “children of the dawn” meant but the phrase had come to him and he was pleased with it.

  8

  THE HOUSE IN PEKING which had seemed pleasantly ready when James left it last now looked bare and crudely furnished as he led his sisters and Peter into it. Little Dog and his mother had done their best. They had swept the floors and had wiped away the dust and the kitchen stove was ready to light. Upon a small earthenware charcoal stove a kettle was boiling for tea. Chen had been there also and he had brought two green porcelain pots, each holding a small gnarled pine tree. Upon the table in the middle room of the first court, which was to be the living room, he had placed a round white bowl of small yellow chrysanthemums, of the sort which could be bought at the market for a few pennies.

  James glanced at the faces of the three as they stood at the wide door of this room, now open to the court. Louise looked about her with resentful eyes. Peter was smiling tolerantly. Only Mary looked with interest at what she saw. “It’s a fine big room,” she said.

  “We are now about to live as our ancestors did,” James said. “We can see for ourselves how valuable modern gadgets are and whether happiness is dependent upon them. There is no running water, but the hot-water coolies will pour boiling hot water into the tin tub in the room I have set aside as the bathroom, and Little Dog will temper it with cold water drawn from the well. The stove in the kitchen is of brick and it burns twists of grass. Little Dog’s mother will cook our food there. For light at night I have allowed kerosene lamps instead of the bean-oil lamps or candles which we really should use. And I have bought American beds in the thieves’ market. I thought that there perhaps we could improve upon our ancestors.”

  “It can all be made lovely,” Mary murmured.

  “With the lattices we don’t need curtains,” James went on, “and upon these stone floors we can lay carpets in winter if we like. There are fine carpets made here in Peking.”