There was, for example, Violet Sung. Beautiful in the most truly exotic fashion, cultivated, even learned, Violet had come from Paris a few months ago to take New York by storm. She was besieged by suitors of every nationality, and she would marry none of them. Marriage, she said in her quiet profound way of speaking, was not for women like her. The rumor now, however, was that she had accepted the love of a handsome middle-aged Englishman whose business interests kept him half the year in New York. If this were true, then it was an affair of the utmost good taste. Violet and Ranald Grahame were seen together often but not too often, and they seldom arrived together at any public place and never went away together.
Yet Dr. Liang was inclined to believe the rumor if only because of the bitter gossip raging among the Chinese. Not, of course, among the commonplace Chinese of Chinatown who were only tradesmen, but among Chinese society, the rich émigrés. Chinese men were especially bitter, as if they felt that Violet had rejected each of them individually when she accepted an Englishman. Dr. Liang had philosophy enough to enjoy this jealousy and to acknowledge half humorously that he had some of it himself. He would have been thoroughly alarmed had Violet pursued him, for he knew that he was not capable of a violent love affair, nor indeed did he desire it. He was not the physical type. Nevertheless, he enjoyed the deference that Violet had always shown him in public, and before others he indulged in a little domineering flirtation, being so much older than she and besides a very famous man. Once he had found himself alone with her by accident when they arrived not quite late enough at a late party, to which Mrs. Liang had not been invited, and he had been afraid of Violet Sung and entirely correct in his behavior. He had asked her formally where her ancestral home was in China. This question she had evaded somewhat, saying that she came from Shanghai, and that her ancestral home she believed was somewhere in Chekiang, although her father had long lived in Paris. Looking at her after other guests came and remembering her evasiveness, it occurred to him that she might be the daughter of a Frenchwoman and a Chinese. Yes, she had the look of foreign blood, very subtly subdued. It was more original to be Chinese than French. And of course the strong Chinese blood always predominated.
Thus Violet Sung made a very interesting type for a philosopher to study. Someday he might work up a lecture on the difference between the mother type and the Violet type, and whether a man should have both types in his life, and if so, how such a relationship could be harmonious with the demands of modern life. In old-fashioned China, of course, all had been well arranged. The first wife was the mother. Thereafter a man took as concubine the other type. But this apparently offended the newer civilization of the Americans, who were not so naturalistic as the older peoples of Asia, or for that matter, of Europe. A formula here had yet to be found. The present number of illegitimate children which he understood to be very large — he must look up the annual number, if he went on with the lecture — was proof of the necessity for man even here of the two types of women.
At this moment Dr. Liang felt the need of an audience. There was no one in the house except Mrs. Liang and although he had no respect for her intelligence his thoughts flowed more clearly when he spoke them aloud.
He rose and went rather impetuously into the living room. “Eh,” he said, “I want to talk to you.” So absorbed was he that he did not notice that her face was ashen or that she was clutching the window sill in a strange way. When she saw him she let go and leaned back in her chair. “A big storm is coming,” she muttered, but he did not hear her.
He sat down on the chair opposite her, and leaning forward with his elbows on his knees he linked together loosely his large, exquisitely shaped hands. “I want to ask you a question as a good mother,” he said. “Do you prefer the Western way of having concubines outside the family in secret or our old-fashioned way of bringing them into the family and allowing all the children to be born under one roof?”
Mrs. Liang was smitten with fear. Was he thinking of taking a concubine now that the children were gone? Her lips went dry and she stared at him. “What thoughts have you?” she demanded.
But he did not see her fear. He was entirely absorbed in the thread of the lecture that was developing in him rapidly. “I want to know what you think,” he insisted.
She collected her terrified thoughts. They had been distracted enough by the storm but now here was this distraction also in the house! She began to speak, and her rather thick lips quivered. “Of course our way is better,” she faltered. “Otherwise the man’s seed is sown wild and the children have no name. Why should children suffer for what their father does?”
Why indeed? Her heart yearned over her own. Of course if Liang wanted another woman he must bring her into this house. It would be shameful for him to descend to the sort of thing that foreigners did. Yet could she endure another woman here? No! if she came, let her come. She herself would ask for enough money to buy a ticket home and she would go to her children. She was about to rise with dignity from her chair and tell Liang that in this case she wanted to go to the children.
He gave her no time either to rise or to speak. Instead he himself rose briskly. “Thank you,” he said with unusual courtesy. “I wanted to know what you would think — the mother type—” he murmured.
He hastened back to his study and closed the door firmly and at once sat down and began to write fluently at his desk. He wrote for two hours, and when he had finished he felt pleased with himself and very hungry. He came out of his study to find that Mrs. Liang had his supper on the table. She said she did not wish to eat and she served him in silence. The meal was good. She had heated chicken broth and dropped noodles into it, and she had mixed shelled shrimp and salted turnip tops with eggs into an omelet and she had made rice congee. This with salted fish made him a meal. He ate it with enjoyment, although he missed the tinge of garlic with which she would have seasoned the food had he not been going out that night. Long ago he had impressed on her that she must never put garlic in his food when he was going out to lecture to American ladies. They disliked the odor, and he could not sufficiently protect himself from their eagerness in pressing about him after his lecture was over. He drank two cups of tea in silence while he reviewed what he was going to say. Mrs. Liang was accustomed to this silence before he went into public life and she did not break it. When he rose she went into the hall and held his coat and hat ready for him.
“Do not stay up for me,” he told her kindly and he went out without waiting for her answer.
After he had gone she stood uncertainly for a moment and then she went upstairs to her room and took out a sheet of paper and began to write to the children.