Because of her visit James understood his place in the ancestral village as he had not before. He and Mary and Chen belonged to the modem age in which they lived. The twentieth century was their atmosphere. But Uncle Tao belonged in the eighteenth century and he kept the village there with him. His mother, James saw, was the bridge between these centuries. Her interest in humanity was eternal, from the beginning of mankind and until the end. None could be too modern for her to approach with lively interest, and none too old for her to comprehend. That she was such a woman was unknown even to herself. She did not think of herself at all. She had no time for such thinking and no interest in it.
So James came to understand his mother in this ancestral village. He saw her in the strange unbalance of the world as it was, a world where new and old had to live together on their differing levels. She became significant to him. He told himself that she was the human creature most essential to men like himself, men who had sped far ahead of their native age.
Therefore when his mother had proposed to him one day that she find a wife for him, James had acquiesced with a sense almost of fatalism. He was unable to choose for himself. He might be misled again and again, and all his life could be spoiled by a wife who did not understand what he wanted to do. He did not need a woman to lead him farther away from their ancestral village. He needed and must have a woman who would root him here firmly by the force of her own life and understanding. When his mother told him, therefore, some six or seven days before she went, that she had found a young woman whom she thought suitable he had said, “I hope she is like you.”
His mother had looked surprised. “Now how did you think of that?” she demanded. “The truth is she does make me think of myself as I was when I came here to marry your pa.”
“Then sign the betrothal papers for me,” he had said. She had been troubled by his sudden willingness and had probed him for a while. “You know, James,” she had said earnestly, “if you marry such a girl as this Yumei, you cannot divorce her. She is not a new-fashioned girl. When she comes here to be your wife, it is for as long as she lives. You cannot put her away.”
“I understand that, Ma,” he had answered.
But she was still not satisfied until she had sent Mary and Chen to him, and from the wisdom of their good marriage they also besought him to think what he did.
“I think Ma has chosen too quickly,” Mary said. “She wants everything settled before she goes back to Pa.”
“Ma’s instincts about her children are surprisingly sure,” James replied. They were in his small living room, the door closed and barred, and they were speaking in English. “But there is so much you know that she will not know,” Mary urged. “Now when Chen and I talk together, our minds are the same. We do not talk across a distance.”
James smiled at this. “You and Chen both like to talk. But as you very well know I talk only a little. I can remember even when we were children, Chen, that this sister of mine complained against me because I did not talk much.”
He did not want to explain everything to them, and indeed he could not. He knew only that his life was to be here in the ancestral village and in the country around it, and if from here the work he did could spread into other parts, then he would be satisfied. He could never live as his father did. Perhaps there was too much of his mother in him. He had to live from his roots up. Well, he had found his roots, and it was time to begin living.
When his mother saw that he was calm and sure, she went on with the betrothal. Of course Uncle Tao must be consulted, and there was no difficulty there. Uncle Tao was pleased except that he felt Mrs. Liang had gone ahead of herself in choosing the girl and that this should have been left to him. But when she told him about the Yang family and he heard that they owned their land and had some cash besides and that Yang Yumei could not read and write, he felt content. “Two like your daughter,” he had declared, “would be too many for our village.”
Mrs. Liang did not tell him that Mary was resolved to teach her new sister-in-law to read immediately after the wedding. With men like Uncle Tao it did not do to tell everything. A little truth at a time was as much as he could bear without losing his temper.
Before she went back to America, therefore, Mrs. Liang had seen to it that the betrothal papers were signed and sealed and the first gifts exchanged. Into the hands of the eldest daughter-in-law of Uncle Tao she put the final plans for the wedding and for the last gifts. Since the parents could not be present at the wedding Uncle Tao must stand in their place, and the wedding should be small. Dearly did she wish that she could stay and do it all herself, but she did not feel it right to hasten the wedding by so much. James should have a month at least in which to prepare his mind, and she dared not leave Liang alone for another month. His letters had been short and unsatisfactory and she had not heard from him for two weeks. Then she controlled her worry. “I cannot worry myself on two sides of the ocean at the same time,” she confided to Mary.
“Oh, poor Ma,” Mary had answered. “You mustn’t worry about us, at least. I can’t promise about Pa.”
Mrs. Liang had bristled. “Your pa is fine,” she had retorted, and was strengthened in her resolve to return quickly to him.
She busied herself after that and arranged for James to have two more rooms for his share of the house and she bought some good furniture from the local carpenter, who was a Liang tenth cousin. Then she had wrenched herself away from the beloved village.
James had set the wedding day. During the holidays he knew he would have no new patients. He did not intend to take a honeymoon, for he knew that nothing would terrify his unknown wife more than that. Nevertheless he did not wish to have all the hours of the day and many hours of the night busy as they now were with the sick. His marriage, incredible as it would seem to Su and Peng and their kind, excited him with curiosity and wonder, and he wanted time to begin it well. It might be successful. Certainly he would love no one again as he had loved Lili. That fire had burned itself out even to the capacity for renewal. He did not want to love like that. It had been a destructive love.
Half amused at himself, he declared to Mary and Chen that there was sound wisdom in the ancestral way of choosing a wife for a man.
“Take Ma,” he said one evening as they idled for an hour before he went back to settle his patients for the night. “Surely she knows me better than I know myself. She knows the family traits. Who could choose better for me?”
They neither agreed nor disagreed with him. They smiled and listened, aware that this marriage was for him more than marriage. It was reunion with his own people.
Thus did James Liang wait for his wedding day. The idea of this marriage pleased him more and more, and it pleased Uncle Tao and the family, for it was like their own marriages. They drew close to James as they had never done, and he felt this and was made happy by it. The tenants on the land and the villagers, who had so long thought him half foreign, now began to tease him and laugh at it and treat him as one of themselves, and James liked this, too. He found himself laying aside his aloof ways, and he was more lively in his talk and bearing than Mary had ever seen. She said nothing to him lest she damage this new nature, but to Chen she said with much wonder, “I believe Yumei is making a new man of Jim, even before they meet.”
“He has chosen his way, and so he can stop thinking about it,” Chen said. He, too, did not speak to James of his new ways, although the two were together constantly.