“Everything is nice,” Mary said politely. Indeed the little house with curtains at its windows and wicker chairs with cushions in the living room seemed a palace of comfort to her.
Mrs. Su moved her chopsticks to a pot of pork bits simmering with chestnuts. “Louise is really very lucky,” she said next. She did not know whether Mary knew that Louise had met the American here, and she could not be easy until she found out. “Of course it is better to marry a Chinese — we all agree to that. But Alec is a good American — not roughly chewing gum and swearing words all the time. He is nice family, I am sure. And I think Louise can never be happy here. She is really quite American herself.”
Mary, slicing big white winter pears for a dessert before the meal, did not answer this.
Mrs. Su felt that by her silence she assuredly knew. Therefore she plunged into a half confession. She laughed first to show that she thought it nothing. Then she said, “You know Louise begged me so hard to come here and see Alec sometimes — of course always I was here with them. I felt very unhappy. I should have come and told you first. But I did not know how to say it to Louise. And they are so modern — we are all modern, of course. But I must ask you to excuse me if I did wrong.”
Mary looked up with her large too truthful eyes. “I didn’t know anything about it,” she said. “Louise didn’t tell me.”
Mrs. Su regretted her queasy conscience and she made haste to talk about something else. “It does not matter now, with such happy ending,” she said quickly. “Of course I knew Alec would be good husband and not just fooling. Now tell me, do you really leave our city?”
“We want to go to our ancestral home,” Mary said. She began piling the thin slices neatly in a pyramid on a flowered dish.
“I am sorry,” Mrs. Su said. She covered the pork and uncovered a skillet of shrimp and bamboo shoots. “And I think you will be sorry, too. For people like us, well educated, village is very hard. I never was in some village. That is, not for sleeping. Sometimes in spring and summer we go outside the city for picnic and of course we stop at village to rest. Even then it is too dirty for us. Su will not eat food there. The people are very wild and dirty and all the children are sick with something.”
Mary did not reply to this. “Shall I take the pears in now?” she asked.
“Yes, please,” Mrs. Su said briskly. “Just ask them to eat with watermelon seed and small things and in few minutes dinner is there.” She began to spoon the shrimps into a bowl and Lao Po, seeing that the moment had arrived, brought bowls for other food.
“Lao Po!” Mrs. Su said loudly in Chinese. “I told you, put on a clean coat and wash your face and brush your hair!”
The old woman put down the bowls on the table and went away. By the time Mrs. Su had the bowls full of food, Lao Po came back looking quite clean. “Lao Po, you take the bowls, and put them on the table. I will put the rice in the bowls. Then you can serve us all.”
Mrs. Su was a busy little figure in all the pride of her kitchen. Over her neat Chinese dress of rose-red silk she wore a white apron and her plump and creamy arms were bare.
Mary came back from the dining room. The men had greeted her pleasantly but with reserve. There was much gossip in the hospital that Mary was more willful than James and not so easy in temper, and that she, rather than he, guided the family destiny. It was for this reason that Dr. Su had invited only men to the feast.
“Shall I take in these dishes, too?” she asked Mrs. Su. “No, Lao Po will do everything now,” Mrs. Su said, taking off her apron. “I don’t mind to cook, but I don’t like to appear servant.”
She led the way to the study and they sat down. Mrs. Su enjoyed a friend with whom to talk. Mary was not so pliable a friend as Louise had been, but she was a woman and a listener. “Sit down, please,” Mrs. Su said. “Have some tea. Then our stomachs will be ready for the food. Lao Po will bring us the dishes when the men finish.”
So sipping the fragrant tea, Mary sat and listened. Long ago she knew that women like Mrs. Su were of a kind to which she did not belong.
“Now, really,” Mrs. Su began. Her round little face was not so pretty as it had been in the days before her marriage. It was less delicate and her eyes were no longer shy. “What shall we talk?” she asked in a bright voice.
“You talk,” Mary said, smiling, “and I will listen.”
Mrs. Su smoothed down her short skirt. “Shall I tell you how I marry Su?” Her voice was at once demure and cozy.
“If you like.”
“It all begins like this,” Mrs. Su said. “I was teaching English in Kunlun girls’ school. Naturally I don’t have to teach since my father is head of the bank, but still I cannot do nothing. One day my father say to me, ‘Someone say Dr. Su, very famous and rich doctor, is going to divorce. Of course he cannot live always divorcing. He must have wife and how would you like to be that one?’ At first I didn’t like. I told him, ‘Baba, suppose he has divorcing habit how I feel if then some day he also divorcing me?’ But Baba say, ‘No! All his other wives have been too stupid. They think only he is husband, they don’t think also I am wife. Now you are not so stupid. When you marry, you think of him first.’ So I say all right. Then my father asking Su’s friend Dr. Kang to suggest Su I am rather nice. Of course my father gives something. Then at a party Dr. Kang introduces me and I look rather nice, I must say. Su is very handsome. There are two sons, but they are nice and they don’t live here.”
The cheerful little voice chirped along like a cricket at the door.
In the dining room, crowded with the doctors, James and Chen were listening to a steady chorus of disapproval and dissuasion. The food was excellent. Mrs. Su was a good cook, and Lao Po faithfully watched for an empty bowl.
“You will waste yourselves in a village,” Dr. Su declared loudly. His last marriage was turning out well and he was beginning to put on weight. His handsome oval face was no longer thin and intellectual looking. He had a prosperous air, he smiled often and his voice carried the dominating note of the well-satisfied man. He heaped shrimp upon James’s bowl as he went on talking. “Now, you know, Liang, the Generalissimo was very wise when in the recent war with Japan he decreed that our educated men were to stay in the colleges and not to go to the front. The youths from the villages were made into soldiers. We have too few educated men. We should conserve ourselves. We must live long. We must breed children.”
“Eh, Liang!” Dr. Peng called jovially across the table. “You are not even married yet!”
“Liu Chen is not married, either,” Kang retorted. “Two bachelors! We must penalize them! They must get drunk!”
“Of course they do not live in continence,” Peng said with some malice. “Look at Liang — see, he is blushing! Eh — eh — everybody look at Liang!”
Dr. Su as host took pity. “Now, now, Peng — because you make love to every pretty nurse does not mean that all men are like you. Come, Liang — come, Liu Chen — you two fellows — tell us what you think you can do in this village!”
James had been all but silent until now. He was heartily enjoying his food. The cost of good food made this dinner a pleasure. He had not tasted pork and shrimp and sharks’ fins for a long time. Where did Su get so much money?
“Perhaps I am only going to the village to learn.” His voice was cool and quiet.