She went away and Mrs. Liang sat alone and thinking, the lines of her face growing kind and soft. She would go down to Chinatown and find Mrs. Pan and tell her everything. It was so nice to have a woman friend again.
Behind his closed study door Dr. Liang sat moodily staring out of the window. Nothing in his philosophy, so closely derived from Confucius, prepared him for what had now happened. He did not know what to do. Louise had suddenly become no longer important to him. She was not a favorite child now that she had chosen to defy him and marry an American. Neither was the man important. Dr. Liang could, for his own part, live as though neither of them existed. He would not disown his daughter or dignify her by any such notice. The young couple could come here and pay their respects to him and he would greet them carelessly, as though nothing they did mattered to him. Children were disappointing. One produced them and cared for them and taught them and paid huge sums in school fees and then they did what they liked. It was America that spoiled them. In China — the old China — children remained subject to their parents as long as the elders lived. For this they were recompensed by becoming elders in their turn. Thus society was sound and the generations proceeded in order. That China, he knew, was gone. It was already passing when he himself was young, and had insisted that he would not have an illiterate girl for his wife. But he believed that the old wise ways would return. A nation that did not organize its generations in proper relationships was doomed to disintegration.
All this philosophy did not help him at the moment. The important thing, he discovered after he had sorted his thoughts, was what the Wetherston family was like. Were they entirely mediocre? How could he approach them? Should he approach them or should he wait for them to approach him? He could answer none of these questions, and his wife, he knew, would not even understand why he asked them. It would be her nature to rush over at once to see the new family and get on a footing of immediate and absurd friendliness which might involve him later in all sorts of obligations unsuitable to his position. If the Wetherstons proved to be poor and crude, for example, they might even seize at the chance to be connected with a famous man, though a Chinese.
In his indecision he took up the receiver of the telephone and dialed the number of Violet Sung’s apartment. They had never mentioned Ranald but Violet had said, “It is quite safe to telephone me in the morning, but please not at night.”
So he waited for a moment and then heard her voice, still rather drowsy. “Yes?”
“Violet?” he said very softly, for Mrs. Liang had an acute ear.
“Oh, yes,” she replied, recognizing him.
“Please forgive me for calling you so early. I have had bad news. I need you.”
“Tell me,” she said with the warmth in her voice which was so charming to him.
“My youngest daughter has unexpectedly married an American. The letter came this morning. His family, unfortunately, is here in New York.”
“How strange,” she murmured.
“Yes, so I feel it,” he agreed. “Now I must have your advice. What shall I do?”
She hesitated a moment, then she repeated his question. “What shall you do? But what can you do if they are already married?”
“Yes, that I know,” he said a trifle impatiently, “but how shall I behave with the family? How can I know what they are and how they will feel? Doubtless by now they know what their son has done and perhaps they will be expecting me to — or ought I wait for them?”
“Where do they live?” Violet asked.
He gave the mediocre address and she considered it thoughtfully and so long that he asked rather piteously, “Can you suggest anything?”
“I will go to see them,” she said at last. “I will call upon them, saying that I am a friend of your family.”
He was relieved and deeply grateful, for he had not thought of such a thing. Yet it was in excellent Chinese tradition — a go-between, so to speak, someone who would break the blow of compulsory acquaintance.
“Who but you—” he murmured, breaking his sentence there. “Who but you would be so kind, so beautiful, so understanding—” any of these things could be said. But he preferred not to be explicit.
She laughed a soft wistful laugh. “I am really not much use in the world,” she said. “I’d like to be of use to you.”
“Of such use,” he said gravely, “that I cannot live without you.”
He put the receiver down upon that.
14
THE HOUSE FELT EMPTY after Louise had left it. While she was there each separate member of the family had felt her discontented presence and each had tried to please her in some small way, to make her smile at least for the moment. Now there was no more need for such effort. When the four came home at their various times, they could go their own ways, give greeting or not, and they had no duty to a lonely little sister.
Yet they missed her. Because of her very loneliness Louise had compelled them all, James and Mary, Peter and Chen, to come out of themselves and to enter into her being. And there were times when she was not sulky, times when she played with the kittens and laughed, times when she found a fledgling bird, or a new flower growing in the ancient court. She was so pretty, her little face so pleasant to see when she was happy, that they remembered her tenderly now that she was gone. Only Peter seemed careless, and when the others spoke of her he put his mind elsewhere and sat silent.
That Louise was gone made only one of the reasons for restlessness through the winter that now came upon the city. The old landlord, who had during those months kept prudently to his promise not to ask for the rent in advance, forgot himself in his need and became troublesome to them. The manservant had come to Young Wang and had put to him the matter of money.
“My old lord and mistress are very poor,” he told Young Wang. “It would be a good deed if your master were to forget the signed paper and give him the month’s rent in advance.”
At first Young Wang refused but the man came back again with a present in his hand of two pieces of jade which he gave to Young Wang, saying, “My mistress gives these to you as a present that you may sell. Only plead with your master for a month’s rent.”
The jade was a worthless pair of ornaments such as in old times were once sewn on the sides of a woman’s crownless cap. They were thin as paper. When the man was gone Young Wang took them to James. He opened his hand and there were the jade bits on his palm. “These things were given me by the landlord as a bribe to ask you to advance the rent,” he told James. “I could not give them back because it would cause offense. Here they are.”
“What can I do with them?” James replied. “Give them away or sell them. As for the request, I will think of it.”
So he saved Young Wang, who when the man came back again was able to say, “My master considers it.”
When Chen came home, and it was a cold bitter dry night at the end of the year, James told him what the landlord asked, and Chen grew angry. “We had better move away,” he said. “Once these old opium lovers swallow down their shame and begin to beg we shall have no peace.”
But James was more tender, and he decided that he would go to see the old pair and persuade them if possible to go into the hospital to be cured. So a few days after that when he had an hour he came house earlier than usual and he knocked at the landlord’s gate and was admitted by the manservant who was all smiles at the sight of him.
“Is your master at home?” James asked.
“My master is always at home,” the man replied smartly. “Where has he to go?”
James did not answer this impudence and he followed the man into the middle room of the house. It was a dreary room. Everything of worth was gone from it, and a few cheap benches and a broken bamboo table were all that remained. The manservant left him there and after a long while he came back, bringing his master. The old landlord tottered into the room, the manservant supporting him from behind, his hands under his arms like crutches. He was a pitiable figure. His padded winter robes were torn and the cotton was hanging out in a dozen places. On his feet he wore farmer’s shoes of woven reeds, the woolly tassels twisted inside for warmth. On his head was a felt cap, once black but now rusty brown, and it had a hole at the side whence a tuft of gray hair came out. So wasted was the old man, so yellow, so withered, that he was all but dead. He tried to give greeting to James and was in such distress that he could not speak.