He did this in order to spare the feelings of a young girl. But she was no shy and modest creature. All her life had been spent in the inn and she saw new men every day. Therefore she answered smartly though not loudly, “A woman has to marry some man or other, and if he has his two eyes and his two arms and two legs, he is as good as any.”
Thus did she say that her heart was pleased with Young Wang, and so the wedding was set for the first lucky day after the opening of spring. Chen felt proud at this first achievement in the village and word went around that he had been a go-between and people praised him for his good common ways. He himself foresaw that his function in the years to come, if these two young Liangs persisted in staying here as they now swore themselves to do, would be to stand as bridge between the old and the new. With all the good intent in the world, James was too cautious and Mary too quick. James could not easily understand these country people in the very excess of his sensitive wish to do so, and Mary did not wait on understanding. If a child’s face was dirty she wiped it clean without perceiving that the jealous mother was wounded thereby.
Yet Mary was more fortunate than James. She paid little heed to the elders but she had witchery over children. She was full of stories and songs and games, and following James’s command she did not try to teach anything for a full month. The two dozen and more Liang children allowed her to wash them and to tend their scratches and cuts and soon they followed her everywhere, so that she had not one moment to herself.
Her danger was that she was impatient with Uncle Tao. She refused to respect him. She told him boldly that he would feel better if he washed himself all over with hot water and soap even though it was winter, and while he was washing she would put a powder into his clothes that would kill the lice.
Uncle Tao listened to her with astonishment. He was not quite angry for his real anger he never wasted on women. But he pursed his lips and rolled his eyes around and refused to wash himself. “I have never washed in the winter,” he declared. His sleeves were wide and he withdrew his arms from them the better to scratch remote parts of his body. “As for lice, they are a sign of good health.”
“They are a proof of dirt,” Mary said severely.
Uncle Tao rolled his head round and round on his short neck to signify rage. “You know nothing about lice! I tell you, they will not stay on a sickly person or on any person about to die. I am healthy and I have many lice.”
Mary walked away, her cheeks flaming and her head high. When Chen begged her to remember that this was China and not America, that it was country and not city, Mary flouted him. She said, “Uncle Tao is just a fat dirty old man.”
Had she been a boy she might have suffered. But it was accepted in this household as in all others that women were like children and must be allowed a license which a man as a superior being could not have. Therefore although no other woman dared to quarrel with Uncle Tao, it became a matter for family respect that Mary was not afraid of him and that he, although he roared at her, did not demand that she be beaten.
Peter remained unknown and aloof. It was plain to all that something secret weighed upon the boy’s mind. James, probing him, could not find what it was, for Peter would not tell him anything.
“I think you should go back to America, Peter,” James said one day.
“I don’t want to go,” Peter replied.
“Then what do you want to do?” James asked with something as near impatience as he allowed himself.
Peter had shrugged his shoulders. “Leave me alone,” he said.
So this day, too, he sat in silence while the others talked together. The first small sign of the northern spring had shown itself. Young Wang had found in the village market some lily bulbs and he had brought them home and had shown Mary how by keeping the water tepid about their roots they could be forced, though the room was cold. Now the flowers hung in rich golden-hearted clusters and their fragrance filled the room. In the court, too, a small bare lamay bush had begun to show buds of waxen yellow even before there was a leaf, and the brown buds on the plum tree were beginning to swell. “I must begin to do something,” Mary declared. As usual when they were together they spoke in English and as usual James reproved them.
“Please,” he said, “there is nothing we need hide, and if they hear us speaking a foreign language it makes them think us foreign.”
“You are overcareful,” Chen said lazily. He sat in the sun and the warmth was creeping into his heart. “They know we speak English.”
“I shall begin by teaching a few of our own Liang children how to read,” Mary said. “Then others will join us. And I shan’t ask Uncle Tao.”
“I think I shall not begin on our own family,” James said thoughtfully. “And I will ask Uncle Tao.”
Chen laughed. “We will see how far each of you goes,” he said.
Peter had been listening and now he suddenly broke forth as though he could not contain what was in his thought. “You are all foolish — as if it matters what you do in one little village to a handful of people among so many millions!”
His angry young voice stilled them in the midst of their pleasure in the coming spring and in each other.
“What do you suggest?” Mary asked. She put the bitter question in English for Peter had cried out in that tongue.
“It’s all rotten,” Peter cried. “Nothing will be any use except a clean sweep from top to bottom.” He got up and walked about the room and sat down again but this time out of the sunshine and beside the table.
“Go on,” James said, “tell us what you think. None of us know.”
“I don’t know what to think,” Peter said. “I have been trying to find out. The dirt — the disease — the stupidity!” He stared at them all in a sort of rage. “I shall never forgive Pa as long as I live — letting us believe that everything was wonderful, hiding it all under a Confucian mist! No wonder he doesn’t come back!”
“I suppose you wish you hadn’t come back,” Mary flung at him.
But Peter would not accept this. “I don’t wish that. I am glad I came back. If this is the way things are in my country I’d rather know it.”
“Still you wish they weren’t,” Mary argued.
“Of course I wish they weren’t!” Peter reared his head like a young stallion and glared at them. “I wish the president of my college weren’t a pussy-footing old fool! I wish he didn’t love tea parties and flattering sycophantic professors — and women! I wish we had a decent government! I wish we needn’t be afraid of secret police sneaking everywhere like rats in sewers! I wish I didn’t have to see my college mates jailed — tortured — killed! I wish we even had the guts to rebel — and stand together — which we haven’t — because we’re all rotten through and through—” His voice broke, tears rushed to his eyes, and he turned away his head.
James had listened, his eyes steadily on his young brother’s flushed face. Now he spoke. “We all wish that some things were different. It is like coming home from college and discovering that your parents can’t read and write. But they are still your parents. We have to take our people as they are and change them as we can.”
“They won’t change,” Peter muttered.
“I suppose we have to prove to them that change would be better,” James said reasonably.
“How can you prove anything to a lot of village dolts?” Peter demanded.
“What else can you do?” Mary demanded in return.
Peter gave her a strange dark look. “There are other ways,” he said.