“Exactly like a moth and a candle,” Mrs. Liang thought.
She decided that the time had come for her to be active and so she rose and walked rather stiffly to where Dr. Liang stood talking to Miss Violet Sung. They were a handsome pair, and others had fallen back to let them talk alone.
“Eh, Liang!” Mrs. Liang said loudly in Chinese. “I begin to grow hungry.”
She came near and he looked at her. His face, so lighted with happiness a moment before, grew cold. “Ah, yes, yes,’ he said.
Mrs. Liang stared at Violet Sung, then she put out he plump hand. “How do you do, Miss Violet Sung,” she said in English. “I have heard your name. I am Mrs. Liang, and this is my husband.”
Violet Sung’s slim hand touched hers. “Oh, how do you do Mrs. Liang — we were just going to get something to eat.”
“Come with us,” Mrs. Liang said, “there is food enough for everybody.”
“Thank you,” Violet Sung said. She had a sweet deep voice. “But please excuse me—”
She smiled and slipped away, and they saw her join the Englishman and go toward the dining room. Mrs. Liang stood solidly beside Dr. Liang. “She is mistress to that Englishman,” she said.
“Please don’t speak so loudly,” Dr. Liang replied, with too much politeness. He led her to the dining room, however, and they ate in silence, each determined to show independence and displeasure.
As the evening proceeded, Mrs. Liang found two old friends whom she had known in China and the three ladies sat in a quiet corner and told each other of their difficulties with white servants and the thieveries of American grocery clerks with shortweight scales. In China everyone took his own scales to market. There was also the problem of squeeze.
“At home,” Mrs. Liang said plaintively, “I expected a ten-percent squeeze by my head cook. Here, although I must do my own cooking if I want food fit for my husband to eat, I am squeezed at all places. If I ask the elevator man to buy something for me, I find he has charged me half again what it costs. Even my female servant Neh-lee takes something from the laundry and the tailor.”
“White people are all dishonest,” Mrs. Meng said in a loud voice. She was the wife of an attaché at the Embassy and with her husband had come from Washington for the occasion.
“If the government at home would only kill all the Communists and bring peace, how quickly we would all go home!” Mrs. Chang sighed. She was a small sweet-looking woman who had been one of the famous Wu sisters of Soochow, about whom Hsiang Lin, the poet, had written three of his most popular pieces. Now, as the wife of a rich retired banker, she had almost forgotten her girlhood and Hsiang Lin was dead.
All of the ladies had children and the rest of the evening was happily spent talking about them. Mrs. Liang confided that her eldest son James was the most brilliant student ever to have graduated from his medical college here in New York, that now he was in Peking where he was to be the head of the hospital next year, and that once he had thought himself in love with Lili Li. This had been only a momentary feeling, however, for he soon saw that while Lili was very pretty, she was also spoiled and selfish, and not at all the wife for a man who would one day be famous.
“It is difficult, indeed, to be the wife of a famous man.” Mrs. Liang sighed. “For example, my husband — what he will eat and what he won’t eat, the sort of undershirts he will wear and he won’t wear, the color of his ties, the texture of his socks, the hours when he cannot be disturbed and the hours when he must be amused, what is too hot, what is too cold; one day the bed is too soft, another day it is too hard — all these tortures cannot be imagined. And I assure you everything is the wife’s fault. Look at him!”
The two listening ladies looked at Dr. Liang who was now talking with the Englishman. Violet Sung was not near either of them. She was dancing with a young Frenchman and so beautifully that people were standing about to watch.
“He looks all spirit and good nature,” Mrs. Liang continued, seeing only her husband. “But tomorrow — eh! I tell you, I dread tomorrow.”
“I don’t think you can expect the return of Hong Kong,” the Englishman was saying to Dr. Liang. “In fact, Britain needs Hong Kong rather more than before. Now that India is to be free, we must contain her, you know. And besides there’s Burma free, too, also to be contained. And one doesn’t know just what will happen in the East Indies — or, for that matter, in Indo-China. We’re rather more responsible than before the war for the peace of the East, especially with Russia kicking Burma free, too, also to be contained. And one doesn’t know about in Manchuria. And there are your own Communists, my dear sir — what are you going to do about them?”
Dr. Liang smiled gracefully. “I’m a mere man of letters,” he said softly. “I don’t occupy my mind with such things.”
“Ah, yes, well,” Ranald Grahame said, “somebody has to, you know.” His eyes wandered about the room and fell on Violet dancing with that chap Pierre du Bois. He watched them in silence so suddenly grave that Dr. Liang with his delicate intuition felt alarmed. He would not like that English look directed against him! Thus thinking, he said that he must be going home, and then he drifted across the room and found Mrs. Liang.
“I’m feeling a little tired,” he said. “Shall we go home?”
She rose at once, bade her two friends a warm good-by with many promises of early meetings and invitations to meals, and Dr. Liang bowed twice and they went home, stopping only to thank Mr. and Mrs. Li who were sitting side by side on a settee near the door. Lili was now dancing with the Englishman, and Mrs. Li, disapproving, could only nod her head to her guests.
“Does it not cast some reflection on Lili to dance with this Englishman who owns Violet Sung?” she asked Mr. Li after the Liangs had gone.
“Well, well,” Mr. Li said, “I see Charlie is about to take her away. He will take care of her now — we can rest.” Even as he spoke Charlie Ting cut in on his lovely fiancée and Ranald Grahame was left alone on the floor. He looked half angry for a moment and then he went to the bar. Violet was still dancing with the Frenchman.
Dr. and Mrs. Liang rode home in total silence and Mrs. Liang leaned her head in a corner of the taxi and dozed. When they got home they found two bills and a letter on the hall table and the letter was from James.
“It is from the children,” Mrs. Liang cried with pleasure. “Come, let us read it at once.”
“I would like a cup of hot tea,” Dr. Liang said. “While you make it I will just cast my eyes over the letter.”
She looked wistful, but being anxious to keep him in good humor, she went obediently to the kitchen, lit a match, and shut her eyes while she applied it to the gas range, jumped when there was a loud report, and then set the kettle on to boil. She longed to go back and hear at least part of the letter but she waited until the kettle had boiled and she had infused the tea. Then with teapot and two bowls she went to the study.
What she saw caused her to set the teapot down hastily on the table. “Liang, what is wrong?” she cried.
He was tearing the letter into small pieces. “So,” he said, between set teeth, “you think I am about to take a concubine!”
She turned pale and sat down. “I did think so,” she faltered, “and I told the children I could not stay here if you did.”
“And whom would I take as a concubine?” he demanded.
“I don’t know,” she said. She was terrified at the look on his face and the children were not here to protect her. She faltered on. “One day you came and asked me what I thought about concubines—”