“Pa is very deep,” Peter said. “He is full of Confucianism and all that rotten old stuff. You should hear the fellows here at college talk about Confucius. Why, Confucius was a reactionary, and he kept the old traditions alive that have made the nation weak and the people slaves.”
“Don’t be silly,” Mary said impatiently. “You know the people here are not slaves. Everyone does as he wishes. In the hospital we have signs everywhere that there is to be no spitting but everybody spits just the same wherever he likes.”
“That, too, is because of Confucianism,” Peter declared, with his mouth full of steamed duck. “Hygiene and science are equally unknown here, because Confucius has held back our people.”
“I don’t see what this has to do with Pa!” Mary cried.
“It has everything to do with him,” Peter said, filling his bowl with rice again. “Pa is a reactionary, too. That’s why he doesn’t dare come back to China. He is afraid someone will stab him in the back in a dark alley.”
He said this terrifying thing so solemnly that Mary held her tongue for a half minute. Seeing the impression he had made, Peter went on. “I have already learned a lot at the college. I never knew before how much the fellows here hate Pa. Everybody knows him and everybody hates him. They say he is an old-fashioned intellectual, that he wants to be considered a scholar of the old school, and those old scholars are in league with the warlords, the landlords, and the government to oppress the people.”
“Peter!” Mary cried. “Take care how you speak.”
“I’m only saying what I hear,” Peter said doggedly. “It is not pleasant to be Pa’s son, I can tell you. I have to say openly that I don’t agree with him.”
“You ought to be ashamed of yourself,” Mary said warmly. “Your own father!”
“Yours too,” Peter said. “It was only a minute ago that you were talking about being independent of him.”
Thus caught, Mary lost her temper. “Oh, shut up!” she said in English, and feeling the tears come to her eyes she rose and went into the court to be alone.
Chen, however, was still there. He had sat down on the bench under the great pine to pick his teeth and to consider how he could be useful. When he saw Mary he hid the toothpick in his hand and rose politely. With her he was always formal.
“Do not get up,” Mary said. “I am only passing through the court.”
“Please,” Chen said, “sit down for a moment. I have been thinking about the letter. My conclusion is that your mother has made some mistake. If your father were really considering such a step he could not take it in America, where a concubine is not a recognized person. Whatever he did must be secret there. Since he is so famous, it would be difficult to keep anything secret. Moreover, I have discovered that intellectuals seldom carry on a genuine love affair. They do not have the physical strength for it. Take the doctors in our hospital — they talk a great deal about love and women when we are alone together. Actually I do not know of one who does more than talk. For them love is entirely theoretical. Your father is no longer young. He is the less likely then to undertake a love affair in practical terms. Please write to your mother and tell her that she is probably mistaken.”
Mary had listened to this somewhat long speech without removing her eyes from Chen’s face. Never before had she looked at him so steadily. As he stood there under the pine tree with the sunlight falling through the branches she saw as if for the first time that he had a broad honest face, a square big mouth, a large strong nose, and fine eyes. The look in his eyes was good, friendly, and true. She spoke with involuntary thanks. “Chen, you are very kind to say this to me. I think you are right. I think it is Ma who is old-fashioned and suspects Pa. I shall tell her so.”
Chen smiled somewhat timidly. “Do you think with all this trouble that we must give up our walk to the chrysanthemum market?” he asked.
She had forgotten it, but now when he spoke of chrysanthemums it seemed to her that this visit to the famous market where she could choose pots of her favorite flowers and bring them home would comfort her more than anything. “I don’t see why we should not go,” she exclaimed. “I will go and find James.”
“Wait,” Chen exclaimed. “Listen!”
They stood and listened. They could hear the murmur of James’s voice, and then Louise’s, in earnest conversation.
“They are still in the stream of talk,” Chen said. “Let us give them a little longer.”
“Where is Peter?” Mary asked.
Chen smiled and pointed his forefinger toward the open door. Peter, filled with rice and duck, had thrown himself down on the wicker couch that stood against the wall and was sound asleep lying on his back, his hands folded under his head.
“Come and rest under the pine tree,” Chen said to Mary. “The air is cool and fragrant. You need not talk. Let us just sit in quietness.”
In the other room, a small room which they had made into a study and library, James was listening to Louise, asking a question now and then, guiding her to talk, but saying little himself. This sister of his with whom he had lived in one house for nearly all the seventeen years of her life, he now realized had been a stranger to him. He knew how she looked, and he could even remember how she had looked as a baby and a little girl. In those years she had been for the family a toy and a plaything. Mary had been serious and impetuous, always a person, but Louise had seemed to have no life except as she drew it from others. She had always sat on somebody’s lap until only a year or two ago, when suddenly she had stopped of her own accord, and yet none of them had noticed it. Imperceptibly she had ceased to be a little girl and had become a young woman, and they had not noticed this, either. She had done well enough in school, but it had not mattered that she did no better. None of them expected or indeed wanted Louise to be bookish or brilliant. She had seemed always gracefully unselfish, because she was the one who brought Pa’s slippers, or filled his pipe; she was the one to fetch a book somebody wanted or to bring in the dishes from the kitchen and take them out again. No one noticed that she never did any real work, even to make her own bed. Behind the facade of prettiness and graceful unselfishness she had grown into someone quite different, a small hard separate woman, James now perceived as he let her reveal herself. How had they let her grow up without heeding what she was?
“I hate it here,” Louise was saying. “You may think these crumbling old palaces are wonderful, Jim, but they repel me. I don’t like living in a country where everything is falling to pieces and all that is worth talking about is the past.”
“But, Louise, you are wrong. Something wonderful and new is taking place here.”
“What is it?” she asked doubtfully.
“I don’t know,” he said honestly. “But I feel it. We have finished with one age and we are about to begin another. I stay here because of the future, not the past. I know Pa is always dwelling on the past, but I do not.”
“It happens that I don’t like anything here!” she said passionately. “I don’t like the young men. I don’t like the people on the street. The children are filthy. Jim, I wish I hadn’t been born a Chinese. I wish I could stop being a Chinese. Oh, Jim!”
Here she broke down into tears and he let her cry.
“All this,” he said after a moment, “is because you have let yourself fall in love with an American. At your age love shapes the universe.”
She continued to sob, and he went on gently. “I know, too, what it is to love someone. I think I loved Lili with all my heart. Even now, when I know we shall never marry, when I think of her, or someone speaks her name, the world trembles. But it does not crash about me. I know that there is a life that must be lived happily without Lili. Just now I feel as though for me it would always be lived alone. But I know this is only feeling. I shall marry and have children. I want to marry here and have my children here. And I shall never let them leave our country. They must stay here until there is no possible danger in their going away, because however far they go, they will always come back, and wherever they are they will dream of coming back and whatever they do it will be for our people. And they must marry here, too, and their children must be born here. So much I have decided.”