From his mother, however, James did receive a letter. Like most of her letters, it was so rich with piety and good purpose that he was not able to discern from it what had happened. That it concerned Louise, that she had been foolish and led away by the Americans, that she was after all very young and much prettier than Mary, who had never had American young men admirers, and he must not therefore be too harsh a judge of Louise, who was growing up pretty even to Americans, and this was very difficult and a family problem, and she had been trying to persuade his pa to come to China, too, and they would all be happy again together in a house somewhere in Peking, only of course Pa felt he could not leave his work just low and perhaps in another year or two — so his mother wrote. She had not at all approved the sudden way in which Mary had taken Louise away and Peter, too, just about to enter college to become a great engineer, but the ocean was always there and they could come back if they did not like China nowadays. Only Louise of course had better stay long enough to fall in love with a nice young Chinese. It was the elder brother’s duty to take the father’s place and if James, her dear son, knew any nice young men, Chinese of course, and could arrange a marriage for Louise, undoubtedly that would be the solution, although he must not misunderstand and think that Louise had to get married. Luckily there was nothing like that, but still there might have been and they must all be thankful. Such was the gist of his mother’s letter and James read it over thoughtfully three times and gathered that Louise was somehow a new problem.
Without much enlightenment therefore he asked for a week’s vacation and with Young Wang at his heels he waited the day on the familiar dock in Shanghai for the steamship. The house was ready. He had found work for Mary in the children’s annex of the hospital and he had registered Peter in the college now receiving a fresh life under the leadership of a famous Chinese scholar. For Louise he had planned nothing because he knew nothing. She could always enter a girls’ school. There was also a Catholic convent, kept by six sisters, two of them Chinese and four of them French. He must talk with Mary before deciding for Louise.
The day was windy and gray and the waterside was black. Small boats were pushing about scavenging in the filthy river. Each had its family of man and woman and children and a grandparent or two, and these looked cold and unhappy. He was sorry that the three who were coming to him must see the Bund on such a day. The tall modern buildings looked forbidding and alien, as though they did not belong there. They lifted their heads too high above the boats and the crowded streets.
Even Young Wang seemed subdued. He had left a small underservant in charge of the house with his old mother for amah. Young Wang was proving a stern headboy. He did not allow Little Dog the least latitude for laziness, and the boy was beginning to look harried. Young Wang himself, dressed in a clean uniform of the semi-official sort in which he delighted, stood now just behind his master. He would have preferred no women in the household, for a man was easier to serve. His master’s sisters were Chinese, but they had been in America so long that he feared they had the tedious and fussy ways of American ladies in houses. He felt somewhat diminished and in low spirits when he thought of this. Either he was headboy or he was not, he told himself. He would take orders only from his master. So far as he was concerned there was no mistress. When his master married a wife there would be a rightful mistress. This point was clear in his mind by the time the yelling coolies were lassoing the ship, and he felt better and the grin returned to his face.
James saw them at once. They stood apart from both Chinese and Americans in a small close knot of three. Peter was between the two girls and he was holding his hat with both hands. A fresh autumn wind had sprung up with the dawn and was increasing as the skies grew dark toward noon. This wind blew into the air like a red flag the scarf Louise wore and fluttered her curled hair. Mary had wrapped her blue scarf tightly about her head. He saw their faces quite clearly and he felt concern and yet a sort of warm pleasure that here at last was something of his own.
He would not acknowledge that these months had been lonely but now he knew they had been. He did not know why. He was surrounded with people from morning until night and his work was satisfying and yet discouraging — satisfying because everything done for the crowds of sick amounted to much, and yet discouraging because he was always conscious of the millions beyond all aid. Underneath satisfaction and discontent was the feeling that he was living on the surface of his country and that he had put down no roots into it. He was still alien, and he wanted to lose this feeling of being alien. He wanted to plunge deep into the earth and the waters of his people, and he did not know how. He wanted to belong here so profoundly that he could never go away again. He could not live airily the rootless surface existence of the other doctors. Chen of course was the exception to them. He had grown very fond of Chen and he had begged him to come and share the house with them, but Chen had until now refused. When James had spoken again he had said, “Let us wait and see. It may be that your sisters and brother will not like me and then it will be difficult for both of us if they want me to go away again.”
“How foolish you are,” James had replied.
“No, I am only shy,” Chen had said and had roared out his great laugh. This laugh, James now knew, did in reality cover a very tender shyness, and so he had said no more.
But it was not only doctors who were living unrooted upon the surface of the life here. James discovered that there were many others who also lived thus, young men and women who had lived and studied in France and England as well as in America, and even some who had studied in Russia. But these who had studied in Russia were different from the others. They had not, at least the ones he knew in Peking, allied themselves with the Communists, but they talked in words of force. The people, they declared, should be “forced” to change their medieval ways of thinking and feeling and behaving. What this force was to be they did not say, nor did they know how it was to be applied. James, listening to much talk at their gatherings, had gradually withdrawn from them all and he devoted himself entirely to his work in the hospital. Yet he knew that though he spent his whole life in this work, it would not reach below the surface. Suppose that he had four hundred patients a month, that would be fewer than five thousand persons a year, and if he lived his life out, that would not be half a million people and what were so few among the hundreds of millions? Somehow he must live in larger and deeper ways, which he had not yet discovered.
Meanwhile here was the family responsibility thrust upon him by his father and he must meet it first. There was a shout from the wharf coolies; they threw out the great knots of woven rope and the ship ground against the dock. The gangplank was lowered, and he waited and then felt Mary’s warm arms about him and Louise’s hands in his, and Peter thrust his arm through his brother’s.
“You’re looking well, Jim,” Mary said breathlessly. “A little thin, maybe.”
“Shanghai is some place,” Peter said.
Only Louise said nothing. James saw that she was very much thinner and that she looked as though she had been crying. He had taken rooms at the best of the few good hotels, and he had ordered a good luncheon for this midday and now he was glad that he had done so, for the rain began to fall in earnest and shivering ricksha coolies crowded under the roof of the dock, and the miserable scavenger boats tried to hide themselves under the piers. Louise looked at them and looked away.