They walked toward the hospital somewhat solemnly, thinking of that strange lost household, whose sons came home no more.
“In these times the old are piteous, too,” Chen said suddenly. “Doubtless that old pair had thought their sons would care for them as they had taken care of their own parents. Doubtless they dreamed of grandchildren running about. Oh, it wasn’t all perfect in the old days — don’t mistake me! Old people grew tiresome and plenty of sons wanted to be rid of them. But duty would not allow it. Well, it was called duty but actually it was pride and shame. If a man’s parents were not cared for and happy it was his shame. If they were cared for and happy it was his pride. Now pride and shame have gone to other matters and so the old are lost.”
“What other matters?” James asked. He was not so much curious for the answer as to hear what Chen would say. He was beginning to feel a warm sort of love for this honest, thinking fellow.
Chen shook his head. “How do I know? I can’t understand. It seems to be getting rich, getting a pretty-modern woman for a new wife, living in a house with electricity and running water — stupid things.”
He sighed loudly. “Well, here is the hospital gate again. We part here, do we not? Shall we meet tomorrow here at the same time in the afternoon? Or do you need me any more?”
He was so eager, so anxious to come that James said very heartily, “Come with me, please. I dare not face the ghostly old lady alone.”
Chen laughed and so they parted, and James went back to his room. There Young Wang waited for him impatiently, for he had promised the gateman to have a feast with him tonight.
“Here you are, master,” he exclaimed. “I thought you had fallen down a well somewhere or that you had been beset by thieves.”
“No, I have rented a house.”
Young Wang’s jaw dropped. “A house!”
“Yes. Tomorrow you will go with me to see it. It will have to be cleaned.”
“I shall have to hire servants under me,” Young Wang exclaimed. “It would give me no face were I the only servant in a whole house.”
James saw himself already beset with household difficulties. “Tomorrow,” he said, “when we have seen the house we will decide on such matters.”
The next afternoon he and Young Wang went together to the stone lions and James was glad to see the strong square-shouldered figure of Chen waiting for him there. It seemed natural enough today to call him Chen.
“Have you the money?” Chen asked at once. He nodded to Young Wang, who grinned.
“I have it and a little more with which to buy a good lock for the door.”
“We must not buy any furniture until the house is clean and the carpenters and plasterers have done their work,” Chen said briskly. “There is no use in giving them places to sit down and rest themselves.”
They walked away quickly, again setting up a roar of anger among the waiting rickshas, and were soon at the gate of their landlord.
The gate was open and the manservant and woman servant were both waiting for them, wearing clean garments. Young Wang took a dislike to them at once. “These are wild people,” he told James in a low voice, but James only smiled.
After they had entered the house Young Wang was even more distressed when he saw the master and mistress. For today the old gentleman had somehow been persuaded to get up and he appeared wrapped in an old soiled gray satin robe that was now much too large for him, and although his hair had been brushed and his face washed, nothing could hide the dreadful ashen color of his skin that was stretched over his fleshless frame. Beside him and a little behind was the old mistress. Young Wang pulled at James’s sleeve. “Master, this is very evil,” he whispered. “A landlord who eats opium is like a leech fastened to your belly!”
“Perhaps I can cure him some day,” James replied. He had set his heart upon the house and he was not inclined to listen to Young Wang’s fears.
“Where is the document of rental?” Chen asked.
“Here,” the manservant said and pulled from his sleeve a small scroll which he unrolled; it was handwritten in shaky letters and James read it with difficulty. But Chen read it over his shoulder easily and quickly and he pointed out two places which did not please him.
“The rent is not to be paid two months in advance,” he said. “One month is sufficient.”
The old gentleman’s jaw fell ajar but he nodded and the brush and the ink block were fetched and with much trembling preparation he made the change.
“Now,” Chen said, “you are not to say that you take no responsibility for the house. We will make the repairs but if it is found that a beam is rotten or the foundation yields, that is to be your business.”
Once more in silence the old man made the change.
“I will add one more thing myself,” Chen said, looking very stern. And bending he wrote in a fluent style this sentence, “The landlord agrees never to ask for the rent in advance.”
“Good, good,” Young Wang murmured.
“Now for the seal,” Chen said.
The manservant brought out the red family seal from the table drawer and he stamped it upon the paper, and James wrote his own name beneath it and Chen wrote his as a witness, and so now the money could be given over. James gave it to the old gentleman, who, not having spoken one word all the time, put out his two hands together like a bowl and received it. When he felt the money in his hands he clenched them together and rose and hurried out of the room blindly, his robes dragging after him. The old lady went after him and then the woman servant and there was only the manservant left to see them away. It was so sad a sight that James felt depressed by it and Chen sighed. “These are among the many lost,” he said gently, and they went once again to look at the house that now belonged to James.
Only Young Wang was not sad. He took lively interest in the house and discovered a cistern beyond the well, and he found a good drain, stone lined though very ancient, which could carry the household waste water through the back wall to a creek that ran behind the house. Nor was he afraid of the weasels. He took a fallen tree branch and clubbed one long lank fellow to death where it hid behind a door! “Some big female cats will chase these devils away,” he exclaimed. “Leave it to me, master. Cats are better than exorcists. But they must be big ones who will fight, or the weasels will suck even their blood.”
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.