Alone on the bench, Mary read again the letter from beginning to end, trying to imagine scene by scene what it contained. But she had no experience to feed her imagination with reality, and at last she rose and walked home. The house was quiet and in the living room her father still slept, his face handsome and full of peace. She tiptoed into his study and took the receiver from the telephone and dialed.
“Oh, please, is Lili there?” she asked, when she heard Mollie’s voice.
“I’ll call her, miss,” Mollie’s stolid voice answered. She listened and heard Mollie’s heavy footsteps, Lili’s little cry of surprise, Lili’s high heels tripping over bare floors, and then Lili’s sweet voice that sounded falsetto over the wires.
“Yes, ye-es?” That was Lili.
“Lili, this is Mary. I’ve had a letter from Jim. Shall I bring it over?”
There was a pause, and Lili laughed. “Oh, lovelee!” she trilled. “But Mary, just now I am so busy.”
“Then when?” Mary asked firmly.
“Oh ye-es, let me see, Mary — shall I call you?”
Mary’s ready temper flew from her heart. “Don’t trouble — you don’t want to hear it, Lili. Why don’t you say so?”
“But I do, very much!”
“You do not.”
“Ye-es, Mary, please come over now — with the letter, please!”
“You are busy,” Mary said cruelly.
“Ye-es — never mind. You come now, please. I don’t do anything else. I just wait for you.”
The pretty voice was pleading. Mary longed to refuse, but she dared not. She must do what she could for James.
“All right,” she said shortly. “I’m on my way now.”
She put up the telephone and went at once, letting herself out of the house silently. She did not want anyone to know where she was, for she did not want anyone to know what happened — whatever it was to be.
Lili was lying on a couch in her bedroom and there Mollie led Mary. “She says to tell you she’s got only a little while, being as she’s promised to go to a tea,” Mollie said at the door,
“I shan’t need but a little while,” Mary said.
There was no hint of haste in Lili’s calm manner. She put out her soft hand to Mary. “You know, I’m glad you told me about Jim’s letter. I feel so bad here — about Jim.” She held her hand on her left breast. She had taken off her Chinese gown and lay in a delicate lace-trimmed American slip. American dress she considered ugly, but she wore American underwear with joy. Her bare shoulders and arms were exquisite ivory. Mary looked away from them. It seemed in some strange fashion a desecration that she should be here in this intimate room and James so far away.
Lili continued in the same plaintive tone. “Every day I wish to write a letter to Jim.”
“It would make him very happy,” Mary murmured. She sat down in a pink satin chair and felt hot and plain. She brushed back her hair with her hands and wiped her temples with her handkerchief.
“Oh, what can I tell him?” Lili asked. “Everything is not sure. Maybe many years before he is ready for me!”
“He is ready for you now,” Mary said. She unfolded the letter and began to read it slowly and clearly. Lili listened, her head leaned on her hand, her great eyes earnest and a tender smile about her mouth. She did not speak. When Mary had finished she lay back and closed her eyes. Then she felt under the satin pillow and found a lace handkerchief with which she slowly wiped her eyes. “I long to go to Peking,” she said in a heartbroken voice.
“Then why don’t you?” Mary asked. She wondered if she had misjudged the beautiful girl. It was so hard to understand the girls who came from China. One knew the blood was the same, but to have grown up in America and in China made two different beings. Lili was so soft, she yielded everywhere — until one knew she had really yielded nowhere.
“I cannot just go to Peking,” Lili said without opening her eyes. Her beautiful lips trembled. “I have to think about many things.”
“If you loved James you would think only of him,” Mary said.
Lili shook her head. She touched the wisp of lace to her lips. “You talk just like American,” she complained. “I am Chinese. I cannot just think about one man.”
At this Mary lost her temper. “I can see that,” she said bitterly. “I guess anybody can see that. You think of a lot of men.”
Tears rolled down Lili’s cheeks. She opened her eyes and gazed at Mary through wet lashes. “You don’t understand,” she whispered. “You are so American!”
“I’ll tell James you can’t just think of him,” Mary said.
Lili gave a soft scream. “Please don’t tell him this! He is American, too, and he can’t understand.”
“What shall I tell him, then?” Mary asked. “I’ve got to tell him something, Lili. He loves you — and you’re being too cruel.”
Lili was silent for a moment. Then she looked sidewise at Mary. “Tell him — tell him — I write very soon!” She clapped her hands and laughed. Then she got up from the couch. “I have to go with Baba and Ma to tea at the Consulate, but I don’t want to go a bit. I much rather sit here with you and listen to the letter all over again. But I must go — they tell me to.”
She smiled lovingly at Mary, and as firmly as though Lili had laid her hands upon her, Mary felt herself pushed from the room.
4
IN HIS ROOM AT the end of a hot day James read Mary’s letter. She confessed that she was writing too quickly after she had seen Lili. She ought to have waited for a few days until her anger was cooled. “But you know how hard it is for me to wait,” she said, “especially when it has to do with you, Jim. Lili did not say she would not marry you or that she was going to marry anyone else. She just said she had many things to consider. I don’t know whether she is hard or soft. Somehow she does manage to get her way.”
James folded the letter. It was a long letter covering many pages, and Mary had put into it family news and scraps of gossip about their friends and she had mailed it before the family went to the mountains. By now they would be in the cool green hills of Vermont. He thought with homesickness of the clear streams of cold water running over round brown stones, and the winds fragrant with pines. Yet when he was there he had not thought of it as home. Home, then, had been China. By what contrary whims of the soul was he always to feel homesickness wherever he was? Were Lili here, he thought restlessly, then his heart would be settled.
He no longer thought of going back to America. Lili must come to him. He knew now that here was where he must stay. He was a doctor first, and he was already entangled in the needs of the people who came to the hospital in terror and desperation. No one came for foreign medicine, as it was called, unless death were the alternative, and each day’s work was the saving of creatures already committed to death. He handled bodies bruised with the pinching fingers of old wives and punctured with the needles of old-fashioned doctors. Many of his gangrene cases began as poison from unsterilized needles thrust into shoulders and limbs and breasts to exorcise devils. He tried to teach health while he healed, but the dark eyes of the sick were dull and unheeding. He began to dream of health education in schools, among the young. Yet how could he do more than he was doing? A dozen operations in a day were routine. The hospital was understaffed. American doctors had not yet returned and the Chinese doctors trained abroad were constantly being tempted to easier jobs. It took courage to operate when the death of an already dying person might mean a lawsuit, if he were a rich general or a millionaire. Only the poor were grateful and only the poor did not want revenge.
In his growing anger against his rich patients he found himself turning to the poor who came to the clinics and crowded the charity wards. His first quarrel with the hospital came over the question of the charity wards which were daily squeezed smaller to provide more private rooms. When he saw beds touching one another and pallets on the floors he went to the office of his superiors and opened the door abruptly.