“My precious ones,” she began after the formal opening. How fortunate she was in having learned to read and write! Well, she must thank Liang for that, for it was only because he had insisted that she had been taught. Even so, she knew she often made mistakes in the radicals of certain characters. But the children could always read her letters.
“I am in deep trouble,” she wrote. “Your pa is thinking of taking another woman into our house. This is too much for me here in America. In China the houses are big and there are many servants and we could live separately. But here how could I bear to cook her food and pour her tea? If he decides to do this thing I will ask for ticket money—”
She paused. The house was certainly swaying in the storm. She felt slightly sick and quickly she took up her pen again. “I am very lonely here. Your pa has gone away to talk to American ladies. I ought not to complain for he earns one hundred American dollars when he does so. But tonight there is a big wind from the ocean side, and I feel the house shaking. Your pa says this is impossible since it is built of iron. Yet I feel it shaking, whatever he says, and I think Heaven is not pleased with these high houses. We are meant to live down upon the earth—”
She meandered on in a long incoherent letter, telling her children everything that came into her mind.
Dr. Liang after an hour and twenty minutes was closing his lecture. The auditorium of the exclusive club was filled with women, all sitting in silence. Lights placed skillfully above and below threw Dr. Liang’s tall slender figure into splendid relief. “As for me,” he said with a slight half smile, “as a Chinese man and a Confucian I prefer the mother type. She is perhaps the true Chinese woman. My own wife is that type, and she and I have sent our children back to China to renew the bond with their mother earth. I want them to be Chinese in the most profound sense, children of the earth — and children of the dawn!”
He ended, his voice reverent, his head high, and he bowed. There was a moment’s silence and then waves of applause brought him back to bow again and again. He did not know exactly what “children of the dawn” meant but the phrase had come to him and he was pleased with it.
8
THE HOUSE IN PEKING which had seemed pleasantly ready when James left it last now looked bare and crudely furnished as he led his sisters and Peter into it. Little Dog and his mother had done their best. They had swept the floors and had wiped away the dust and the kitchen stove was ready to light. Upon a small earthenware charcoal stove a kettle was boiling for tea. Chen had been there also and he had brought two green porcelain pots, each holding a small gnarled pine tree. Upon the table in the middle room of the first court, which was to be the living room, he had placed a round white bowl of small yellow chrysanthemums, of the sort which could be bought at the market for a few pennies.
James glanced at the faces of the three as they stood at the wide door of this room, now open to the court. Louise looked about her with resentful eyes. Peter was smiling tolerantly. Only Mary looked with interest at what she saw. “It’s a fine big room,” she said.
“We are now about to live as our ancestors did,” James said. “We can see for ourselves how valuable modern gadgets are and whether happiness is dependent upon them. There is no running water, but the hot-water coolies will pour boiling hot water into the tin tub in the room I have set aside as the bathroom, and Little Dog will temper it with cold water drawn from the well. The stove in the kitchen is of brick and it burns twists of grass. Little Dog’s mother will cook our food there. For light at night I have allowed kerosene lamps instead of the bean-oil lamps or candles which we really should use. And I have bought American beds in the thieves’ market. I thought that there perhaps we could improve upon our ancestors.”
“It can all be made lovely,” Mary murmured.
“With the lattices we don’t need curtains,” James went on, “and upon these stone floors we can lay carpets in winter if we like. There are fine carpets made here in Peking.”
“It is lovely already,” Mary said.
“But the walls!” Louise cried suddenly. “I hate these walls all around the courts — we can’t see from the windows!”
“We can always walk out of the gate,” James said. “The gate will not be locked. Our ancestors liked walls. You’ll find that everybody here still has walls.”
“Where is my room?” Peter asked.
“We can divide the rooms as we like,” James replied. “But I thought you and I would share this left part of the house, Peter, and the girls will take the rooms on the right. By the way, Mary, if you or Louise see something like a rat, it is only a weasel. I think they are all gone, but in case they aren’t they will not stay long after we move in.”
“Weasels?” Louise shrieked. “I never heard of them in houses!”
“You will hear of many things here,” James said, “some pleasant and some not.”
He had not yet made up his mind how he would treat Louise. Until now she had only been the pretty and spoiled little sister in whom he had a sentimental interest. Now suddenly she had become a woman without any of the lingering years between childhood and womanhood. She was a flower which had not been given time to bloom. The bud had been forced. For Mary had told him at last exactly what had happened. In the hours together in their cabin on the ship she had got from Louise the full story. It had been easy indeed, for Louise spent many evenings in tears, and when she found that Mary was not disposed to scold her, tears had led quickly to confidence, often repeated. Mary had told James everything on the train, while Louise and Peter were in the dining car and James had decided that he was not hungry. James had taken a second-class compartment for the four of them, feeling that the crowded open car was too much to bear so soon after America. While the train swayed and shook over the landscape of small farms and barking dogs and shrieking geese, whose blue-clad peasants stood watching the cars rush past, Mary told James.
“Louise thought Philip would marry her. I excuse her that much,” she said at last.
James had listened amazed and angry with Louise. Strangely, he thought, he could not blame Philip. Americans were not taught as Chinese were. When Louise was willing, it could not be imagined that Philip would not accept.
“Louise was a fool,” he said. Outside the window the hills of central China were flattening into the long levels of the north.
“It was first Estelle’s foolishness,” Mary said. She was watching her brother’s face. James must not be too hard on Louise now. The little sister had suffered from her parents. “Estelle persuaded Louise too much,” Mary went on. “I think she made Louise forget she is Chinese. Such things they can do, but we cannot.”
“Philip wouldn’t marry a Chinese,” James said brusquely.
“Anyway, don’t talk to Louise,” Mary begged. “Pa talked so loud, and Ma cried and cried.”
So James allowed no sign to escape him to let Louise know that now he knew what she had done. But in his heart he agreed that his father had been wise to send her at once thousands of miles away. So young a wound would heal. It would be difficult to marry her now to a man who would forgive her. Yet marriage, it seemed to him, was the only possibility. Louise would not be satisfied to return to girlhood and innocence, even if she could. Everything in her had been forced. A green fruit had been ripened by unseasonable heat.
Yet it seemed to him, after thought, that he must be firm with Louise. She must be treated as a grown woman although as a girl, too, who needed to be watched and restricted. He wished very much that he could arrange a marriage for her in the old-fashioned Chinese way, and transfer to a husband the responsibility for this pretty creature who was no longer a virgin. Only a husband could suffice, even if Louise would scarcely agree to being married off summarily.