Kinfolk

  “I’ll go on the chance,” he replied.

  “What will you tell her, Jim?” Mary asked. “You can’t very well say that you are going—”

  “Why not?” he asked.

  “But if even Mother wants you to wait?”

  “If Lili is willing, we’ll be married right away—and we’ll go together.”

  “What if—” Mary broke off and shook her head.

  “What if she isn’t willing?” Jim asked. “I’ll face that—if I must. So long—”

  He nodded and walked away, and Mary looked after him thoughtfully. Inside her small neat head her life was planned as carefully as one of the outlines she prepared in her class in child hygiene. She was going to China, too. Jim did not know it yet, but she did. Whether he was married or not, she was going. If he married—well, Lili was helpless and she could help her. Lili knew nothing at all about housekeeping and children. Mrs. Li had always said there were plenty of servants in China and so what was the use of teaching Lili to do things she would never have to do?

  Mary watched her brother out of sight, then she rose, shook her skirts, and tripped back to the big apartment house. She had promised Peter to make shrimp flakes, for no one else would take the trouble, and he loved to eat them while he studied at night. To have the radio turned on full blast, to reach out for handfuls of shrimp flakes while he memorized with such ease the laws of physics—this combination of activities satisfied Peter’s whole nature.

  Mr. and Mrs. Li had found an apartment on the next street in from the river. It was a sublease from a European motion-picture actress who was at present having one of her wrestling matches with Hollywood. It had been impossible to find an apartment on long lease and next to impossible to get a sublease. Almost any American, at the sight of Mr. Li’s fat, kind, yellow face, declared that he had decided not to sublet, after all. Mrs. Liang, who was the interpreter and manager on these occasions, had been filled with fury, but she did not wish to let her new friends know that they were unwelcome in this country of refuge. Besides, she knew that they were not really unwelcome. Shopkeepers would rejoice in Mrs. Li’s easy purchases and Mr. Li’s ready checkbook. The unwillingness lay in some undefined region which Mrs. Liang preferred not to probe.

  Secretly she hated and despised all Americans, but this she kept to herself. Someday when the dreadful discomforts of present China had changed to the solid, pleasantly lazy life of the old normal days, when they had all gone home, and when she had filled her house with servants and once more had nothing to do, she would tell her best friends all that she knew and felt about Americans. It would take a long time and she would not do it until she knew she need never come back to America again. Meanwhile she dared not release herself. She had plodded from agency to agency, had studied the newspapers with her shortsighted eyes, spelling out to herself the advertisements of apartments, and had been rewarded one day by finding this handsome place where the owner had no feeling against Chinese, since she herself was only French.

  Julie de Rougemont had laughed a great deal at Mr. Li, who had been only too charmed with her, and within twenty-four hours the Li family was comfortably settled in a highly modern apartment, whose three baths vied with each other in magnificence. Mrs. Li had disliked the mirrored ceiling in the one she used because she did not enjoy looking at herself as she lay in the tub or, did she chance to look up, the sight of herself moving squatly about on the floor, and so she had ordered the mirrors painted, in spite of the lease which insisted that no alterations were to be made. Of the family only Lili seemed to suit the apartment. Lili, slim in her gorgeous and extreme Chinese gowns, matched the modern settees and tables, the blond rugs, the sleek draperies. The French woman had screamed with pleasure at the sight of Lili.

  “Ah, what beauty!” she had sighed. “What skin—what hands—and the eyes, mon Dieu!”

  Mr. and Mrs. Li had looked at their daughter with new respect, but Lili had given no sign of pleasure. Her red mouth, her dark eyes, had remained sweetly unmoved.

  At the door of this apartment James now pressed a small button, jeweled with luminous glass. He could hear the soft murmur of voices speaking Chinese. At the sound of the bell they stopped. There was silence, and then after a moment Lili herself opened the door.

  “Lili,” he cried. “I was hoping you were at home.”

  Her manner, perfectly decorous, softened. She turned her head and called, “Ma, it is only James.”

  The rooms came to sudden life. Somewhere Mr. Li coughed and spat heartily and groaned. Mrs. Li shouted in Chinese, “Come in, come in—we are drinking tea. Ha, you—Lili, what’s the servant woman’s name?”

  “Mollie,” said Lili.

  “Mah-lee,” Mrs. Li shouted in English, “more watah, velly hot! Teapot!”

  A maid with a scared white face hastened in, fetched the teapot and hurried out again. Mrs. Li looked after her with kindly contempt. “These foreigners,” she said confidentially to James, “they are not good servants. They do not understand proper relations. This Mah-lee, she does not ask me how I feel in the morning. She gives me no small attentions. Naturally, I give her no wine money—only her wages. She is discontented, I can see, but why should I pay for what I do not get?”

  She looked about and laughed. Then she patted the chair next her. “Sit down,” she told James. “How is your mother? And your learned father, is he working? He works too hard!”

  James bowed first to Mr. Li and then to Mrs. Li. “Both my parents are well, and you, sir? And you, madame?”

  “He,” Mrs. Li pointed her chin at Mr. Li, “he coughs a great deal. It is this damp river air.”

  “I coughed in Shanghai, too,” Mr. Li said.

  “So you did,” Mrs. Li agreed. “It was the damp river air there, also. All rivers are alike, full of water, which is damp.”

  No one could deny this. The maid brought in the teapot and Lili poured the tea in silence and handed bowls to everybody prettily with both hands.

  It was ill luck indeed, James told himself, that he had found Mr. and Mrs. Li both here. It would not occur to them, he knew, to leave him alone with Lili. Why, they would ask themselves, should anyone wish them gone? However long he stayed they would continue to sit in amiable conversation. Nor would Lili move to leave them or to suggest their leaving. She sat gracefully leaning against the back of a green satin chair and looking completely beautiful.

  “It is such a nice day,” James said helplessly. “I came to see if Lili would take a little walk with me.”

  Lili looked at her mother and Mrs. Li nodded. “It is bright daylight,” she observed. “I see no reason against it. The sunshine will be healthy for you but do not let it burn your face. If you sit down, let it be in the shade.”

  “I cannot understand these Americans,” Mr. Li said in his husky rumbling voice. “They dislike their black people yet they let the sun burn them all as black as white people can get.”

  “Everybody likes darker people best,” Mrs. Li said briskly. “It is only that the white people are rough and like to order others here and there.”

  “Shall we go?” James asked Lili.

  She rose and went to a closet and brought out a pink silk parasol and a black patent-leather handbag.

  “Have you money in your purse?” Mr. Li inquired.

  “Only about twenty dollars,” Lili replied.

  “Give her a little more,” Mrs. Li coaxed. “She might see a bit of jewelry.”

  Mr. Li reached into the depths of his loose Chinese robe and pulled out a bulging wallet and peeled off eight ten-dollar notes. “Anything over one hundred American dollars you had better let me look at, lest the foreigners cheat you,” he told his daughter in Shanghai dialect.

  She took the money, pouting a little. James bowed his farewells and Mrs. Li demanded that he return to eat his midday meal with them.

  “Eat with us and I will make a dish myself—say shrimps and cabbage,” she said.

  “Another day,” James replied
courteously. “Today I am not very hungry.”

  He went out with Lili, conscious of her beauty, and they stood side by side as they went down in the elevator, their shoulders barely touching. In the street he scarcely knew how to begin. He was sure that Lili would not speak until he introduced some subject, and whether he should begin to speak at once about going to China he did not know. He looked at her and she turned her head and smiled at him slightly. She wore her hair long on her shoulders in the American fashion, and a fringe curled over her forehead. Under this fringe her eyes, set shallowly beneath her penciled brows, were large and wide open and very black. This pretty face, so flowerlike, comforted James with its calm. In spite of the quiet surface of his own family there were sharp tensions between them all, and the sharper because they were so earnestly hidden until they burst forth in some uncontrollable crisis. Mary, he often felt, for all her helpfulness and adoration for him, was too strong natured and stubborn for a girl. Her smallness was entirely deceiving, for when her will was set she was overpowering. Even their father sometimes shrugged his shoulders and yielded to her tearless determination. She never cried, however angry or hurt she was.

  Lili, James felt, was entirely different and therefore adorable. She was soft and yielding and she cried easily. He had seen tears swim into her great eyes when Mr. Li was impatient with her over some trifle. This made him angry and he promised himself that he would always be a patient and kind husband. How could he be otherwise? He longed to take her hand, but she was impeded by the parasol and her handbag.

  “Let me hold the parasol,” he urged.

  She gave it to him, and he reached for her hand and placed it in his arm. “Not in the street!” she exclaimed.

  “Here it is quite proper,” he assured her. “Where shall we go?”

  “To Radio City, please,” she replied.

  “But I thought you and Mary went there only yesterday?”

  “Please, I want to go again today,” she pleaded.

  He had not the heart to refuse her, and yet it would be impossible to talk if they were watching a picture. She would sit completely absorbed, oblivious to all except the wonder of the story upon the screen, of which, he often discovered, she had comprehended only the more spectacular effects.

  “It is either too late or too early,” he said playfully. “If we go now we cannot return in time for the midday meal. It is too early for the afternoon picture. Let us just walk along the streets and sit down perhaps on a bench and watch the river. Besides, I want to talk to you, Lili, very seriously.”

  She did not protest this decision, and he led her to a bench on the river front, and they sat down. He leaned the open parasol on the back of the bench and it shielded them pleasantly from the street. Before them the river spread a sheet of tumbled silver. She looked at the river but he looked at her. He had never kissed her, to his own surprise. It was simply because he did not know what she would think of it. Yet she had seen kisses between men and women on the screen.

  “Lili,” he said gently.

  She turned her long-lashed eyes toward him. The lashes were straight, not curled as were the lashes of American girls, and they were very thick. Her lips did not move.

  “Will you let me kiss you?” he asked in the same gentle voice.

  She looked to the right and left. No one was near. She opened her bag, took out a paper tissue, wiped the red from her lips, and with an air of patience she put up her face to be kissed. He hesitated, confounded by her performance. Then he could not resist the ready lips and he bent his head and kissed her. Her head pressed against his arm on the back of the bench and she closed her eyes. Her lips were cool and she did not open them. He smelled the gardenia scent of her skin. Then he lifted his swimming head.

  “You don’t find it strange—to kiss?”

  Now that the kiss was over she took a small mirror and a lipstick from her handbag and reddened her lips carefully and examined her hair. Then she shook her head. “Oh, no, James,” she said.

  Cold horror fell upon him. “You have kissed other men?”

  “Only Americans!” she said.

  “Americans!” he cried. “But where?”

  “In Shanghai,” she replied. “Some soldiers and two officers.”

  “Did they all kiss you?”

  “Of course I only allowed the officers more than one time,” she said. She was gazing at the river again and he could look at her pure and perfect profile.

  “But Lili, you didn’t love them!” He pressed her hand to his breast.

  “No, not at all,” she replied.

  “Then why, dear?”

  “They asked me, and I said why, and they said for good feeling between Americans and Chinese, and so courteously I did.”

  He laughed loudly at this, and then silently cursed the men who had taken advantage of her ignorance. “Please promise me you will never kiss any other man but me, Lili. It is not right, you know. Only engaged people and husband and wife should kiss.”

  She looked at him now with some alarm. “You mean, the officers were bad men?”

  “I’m afraid so, dear.” He did not want to hurt her, or disillusion her too quickly.

  She pondered this for a moment, her face moved with distaste. “They did smell very bad,” she said. “And I do promise you, James. For I do not like to kiss very much.”

  “Only me,” he insisted.

  She smiled at this and lifted her hand. “Kiss my hand, please, so I don’t have so much trouble to take off and on lipstick.”

  He laughed, detecting in the corners of her long eyes the hint of a sparkle, and he put the delicate scented hand to his lips and then held it while he talked.

  “Lili, now that we are alone, I must tell you what I want more than anything in the world after we are married. I want to go back to China, dear, and do my work there in our own country.”

  There was not a quiver in the narrow hand he held.

  “Are you willing for that, Lili?” he asked gently.

  “Oh, yes,” she said readily. “If my parents agree.”

  “Do you think they will agree?” he asked anxiously.

  “Oh, no,” she said in the same ready voice. “I think they will not. We had too much trouble in Shanghai.”

  “Then, darling,” he exclaimed, “what shall we do?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Please, James, you think of something else.”

  “You mean—not go?”

  “Yes, please!”

  She took his hand and suddenly pressed it to her cheek. “Please stay here,” she begged. “Radio City is so nice!”

  “But darling, I have work to do,” he urged.

  “You will have a good job,” she reminded him.

  She was so lovely in her childlike sweetness that he had not the heart to reproach her. “But China needs us, dear. Think how few hospitals there are! I want someday to make a big hospital where sick people can come and be healed.”

  “Chinese people are too poor to pay hospitals,” she said.

  “But in my hospital the rich will help pay for the poor,” he urged.

  She laughed at this. “Rich people don’t want to pay for them,” she said shrewdly.

  He felt himself caught in some sort of a net, so soft as to be intangible, and yet he was floundering in it. “Lili, answer me straight. Will you come to China with me?”

  “If my father says so,” she told him.

  “Is that a promise, darling?”

  “I promise,” she said in her sweet ready way.

  “We’ll live in Peking,” he murmured.

  “I like Peking,” she agreed. “Such nice shops there! Oh, that remembers me—I haven’t spent my money.” She rose and smiled down at him with the witchery of a child. “Come, please—I want to buy something. A taxi, please!”

  He rose and called a cab and she sat down luxuriously.

  “Fifth Avenue near the park,” she called.

  They were put down below Central Park and
with the ease of many such trips she went into one expensive shop and then another. At the end of an hour and a half she returned to the first shop she had entered and bought a set of costume jewelry that cost exactly one hundred dollars including the tax. She laughed while she waited for the package. “I was so stupid when I came to New York, James,” she confided to him. “I thought I must offer half the price as asked. Now I know with Americans it is not so. You always give them what they want.”

  He saw the saleswoman gazing at her with admiration and even astonishment at her beauty, and he was proud that she was Chinese—and that she was his. He bent to whisper in her ear, “Only—not kisses!”

  She shook her head. “No—only not that.”

  It was long past noon when he returned her to her parents. Mr. Li was restless with hunger, and he exclaimed at the sight of his daughter. “How long you have been! My belly is thundering.”

  “What did you buy?” Mrs. Li asked.

  It was, James saw, no hour to talk with Mr. Li, and he bade them farewell. Lili followed him to the door. “I will come tonight and ask your father,” he said.

  “Please do,” she said sweetly and shut the door.

  At the door of his own home Mary met him, as silent as a little cat. “Will she go?” she demanded in a whisper.

  “Yes,” James said, “if her father will let her.”

  “And if he will not?”

  “He must,” James replied.

  “Ha!” Mary cried under her breath.

  “Come!” their mother’s voice sang at them from the dining room. “Come, eat—the food is hot—don’t let the food get cold. Father doesn’t like cold food.”

  “Coming,” Mary cried.

  “Coming, Mother,” James echoed.

  There could be no talk or argument at the table. Dr. Liang insisted on perfect calm at his meals. He stood behind his chair in abstracted silence waiting for his family to gather. Mrs. Liang bustled through the rooms calling and compelling.

  When James and Mary entered the dining room she was hurrying upstairs, her somewhat thick figure toiling its way on half-bound feet. In her childhood her feet had been bound, but when her family discovered that the little boy to whom they had betrothed her years before had grown up into a fastidious and modern young man who swore with ferocity that he would not marry a woman with bound feet, they had hastened to unbind them as far as it was possible. Dr. Liang had never acknowledged that his wife once had bound feet. He had declared to Americans until he believed himself that the custom of binding the feet of young females had died out of China sometime in the last century. “Somewhat earlier than you Westerners stopped binding the waists of your women,” he was fond of saying with his charming smile. “I flatter myself,” he said next, “that our race was less injured than yours, since important organs were not, luckily for us, located in the feet of our women!” Nothing enraged him more profoundly than to have a luckless missionary, newly home from China, maintain that there was still foot-binding going on in remote villages.