They gazed at him with blank looks and he rose to his feet impetuously. “Oh, I don’t belong here and we all know it. The sooner I go back to the city the better it will be for us all. I can board at the college.”
He went into his own room and shut the door. They were silent for a moment after this. Chen looked very grave. He sat on the high wooden threshold of the door, his hands clasped about his knees, and he gazed out into the barren court surrounded by the low earthen wall. “The innocents!” he murmured. “We must pity them. But they are terrible in their innocence — and dangerous.”
“What do you mean?” Mary asked.
“Peter is American,” Chen said. “He has been brought up innocent. He believes that anything can be done and done quickly. You do it by force, either of money or arms. What can the innocent understand of the long slow years, the thousands of years? What can they know of the incorruptible people?”
“Are the people incorruptible?” Mary asked. Her voice was troubled and wondering and not at all like Mary’s voice, usually brisk and firm.
“There are corruptible men but no corruptible people,” Chen said.
“You give me hope,” James said.
They talked long together that day without Peter. They planned how they would begin, in what small ways, with what few people. They would begin at once, tomorrow, Mary gathering the children together, James setting up his small clinic. They would let the people of the ancestral village lead them, and as they themselves were led, they would lead again.
“And Peter?” Mary asked.
“Peter must decide for himself,” James said.
Young Wang was much troubled. He had been told to go with Peter to the city and see him settled in his room at the college and then come back again. This he would do. But should he first tell his master about the marble bridge? So long as Peter was safe in the village he had felt no need to tell. Yet were Peter to be alone in the city should there not be warning to the elder brother?
He took his chance to talk with Peter himself as they wound along the country roads northward. “Now, young master,” he argued, “I am older than you, though a serving man only, and I beg you to have nothing to do with such students as do not read their books and who instead spend their time complaining against the government. All governments are devouring beasts, and they feed upon the people. Avoid officials, I pray you. This we are taught even when we are children. And especially now, avoid our present officials, who are beside themselves with greed, since money is worthless. They will destroy all who complain. The nearer a government is to its end, the more cruel and hungry it becomes. Was it not so in the days of the old empire?”
Peter did not answer this and Young Wang, stealing a look at his sullen face, went on. “I have not told your elder brother anything about the marble bridge, and I will not if you will promise me only to read your books and not mix yourself with those who read no books.”
“I do not need to promise anything to you,” Peter said rudely. “Let me tell you this — I do not care what you say to my brother.”
Young Wang did not say any more after this. He became again only the good silent servant and he went with Peter to the college and there they found no room empty. But after some search Peter found a friend, a youth from the province of Hupeh, whose name was Chang Shan, and this friend said, “There is space in my room for another bed, and you are welcome to the space if you can find the bed.”
So Young Wang ran to the thieves’ market and found a bed and put it up in the narrow room and he spread quilts and he bought some fruits and sweets and did all he could for his young master. When there was nothing more to do, he waited until he could find the Hupeh youth alone for a few minutes and then he said, “This young master of mine is wholly ignorant, coming from America, and he does not understand anything here. I beg you to shield him and watch over him and warn him and do not let him fall into evil hands. He walks with his head high and he does not see where his feet are going.”
The Hupeh youth smiled at this and said, “Yes, yes,” and Young Wang gave him a parcel of food he had bought as a gift and then having indeed done all he could, he returned to the village. There he made no report to James beyond saying that he had seen Peter safely to the college and had bought him a bed and that he was among friends. Young Wang was a prudent man and he was loath to make trouble in the family he served. It might be that Peter would heed his warning. At least he would wait and see. Meanwhile the affairs of his own marriage began to press him. His father-in-law was a canny man who did not wish to yield up his authority in the inn too easily. The first necessity therefore, Young Wang decided, was to marry the daughter and get her with child and so establish himself secure in this family.
Young Wang’s wedding day dawned clear and calm, a good day in the midst of days of wind and sandstorm and this he took to be a favorable omen. The wedding was a common one without extra show, but Young Wang in his thriftiness considered it money soundly spent to pay for a meal at the inn for everybody. The gentry ate apart from the others, and the Liang family were put in the inner rooms. Uncle Tao let his hunger loose and he ate and drank mightily, and all admired his capacity.
Chen, delicately perceiving what was his proper place, did not sit down long with the Liangs and yet he did not sit anywhere else. He wandered about among the guests making jokes and teasing the bride, who ran here and there with the feast dishes as though it were any wedding except her own. James sat near to Uncle Tao but at the outer edge of the tables, and from here he looked at the villagers and country folk. They were hearty people and good, ignorant of letters and yet wise in the ways of human life. They were not innocents. They did not expect much and they were happy with what they had. Yet they would gladly be more happy if it were possible. They liked Uncle Tao and they despised him, too. They bore with such gentry; they did not wish them dead, but they watched their own scales when they measured seed rice and harvested grain. No, they were not innocents. They granted to every man his own right to the life he liked best, or the life that he had been given by Heaven.
From this wedding feast James returned to his own room late that night and he sat thinking and alone for a long time. He was not here, he perceived, only to do what good he could. Perhaps he was not here to do good at all. He was here to release some force of life now hidden in his people. To heal their bodies was to release force, to teach them to read and to write was to release yet more of such force. What was this force? It was good sense and strong wisdom, and it was an inheritance. It was also his inheritance. While he gave his people the tools of health and letters, he gave himself the means of learning what their wisdom was, and when he knew them he could enter into his inheritance, from which he had been cut off. Thus would he find his own roots.
In this humility he began his new life.
Spring delayed that year, and week after week the cold winter nights covered the city. On one such night the sky clouded soon after sunset and snow began to fall. Many poets of ancient times had written poems about snow falling upon the roofs of the palaces, but Peter could not read these poems and he did not even know of their existence. And the peaceful times in which they had been written were gone. It was one thing to look out from a snug and comfortable house set in a prosperous nation and see the snowflakes drifting upon imperial roofs. Today the palaces were empty and poet and emperor alike were dust. The city was desolate, the people without good rulers and the enemy only newly driven away. The past was no more, and the future could not be seen.
Peter, pressing his face against the small dirty windowpane of his friend’s room, saw the lamplight reflected only upon large wet snowflakes that tomorrow would make the day’s work harder, the classrooms more chill and damp, the streets slippery. Here inside this heatless room the temperature was already freezing. Like most students, his friend Chang Shan had contrived a small stove upon which to boil hot water to drink, or at best for making a little tea. The stove was only an oil can bought from someone who had followed the American army and had salvaged all tin cans. But Chang Shan, being inventive, had lined the tin with clay and had made a frame of heavy wire to support a small copper kettle. The hot water, poured into cheap pottery bowls, kept their hands from being too chilblained for writing, and the same hot water in their stomachs gave them momentary warmth within.