“Tell us about Louise,” James said, seeing his mother was growing agitated.
To tell all about Louise occupied many miles, and by the time they understood the happy state of their younger sister, it was time to stop for the afternoon meal. Mrs. Liang let her appetite have its way and she consumed several bowls of noodles, steamed vegetable dumplings, steamed meat roll, bean curd with chopped raw onion, and salt fish. Clearly she was happy. Both James and Mary were alarmed for her digestion but she was triumphant. “Many years my stomach is homesick also,” she said. “Now I feel too good.”
She slept for a while when they got in the cart again and it was twilight when they drew near to the inn where they were to spend the night. There when they were in their rooms, the door closed and barred after they had washed and had eaten a snack of bread in a thin sheet some twenty inches in diameter but rolled about garlic, they made ready for bed. Then Mrs. Liang delayed James as he was going into the next room. Alone with them she spoke Chinese.
“I had told myself I would not ask about your younger brother,” she said sighing, “but I find him always in my thoughts. Tell me all you know, and then I will think of him in the night and be ready to put my sorrow aside tomorrow.”
“Ma, you should sleep,” Mary said. But Mrs. Liang shook her head. “I know my old heart.” So James sat down on the edge of the hard board bed and he told his mother everything he knew. It was all too little, and because it was so little she wept bitterly. “At least we know where he is buried,” she said at last. “When the times are good again, we will move him into the place where our ancestors have their graves and where he belongs because living or dead he is still a Liang.”
She bade James leave her then, and when he was gone she said to Mary, “If you hear me weeping in the night, let me weep.”
Mary promised, but she told herself that she would lie awake and listen for her mother’s weeping. With all will to do so, nevertheless with health and youth and happiness and the long day’s riding across the country in the cold clear air, she fell quickly asleep. When they woke in the morning her mother was her usual cheerful self, and when they had washed and eaten they climbed into the cart and set forth again.
Who could have known that the carter was an evil fellow? James had chosen him for his fresh face and his ready smile and for the agile way in which he leaped upon the cart. But like most men in evil times, he was made up of many parts. He earned a fair living by his mule cart but money was almost worthless, and he took goods too as tender. Thus he managed to feed himself and his young family and his old parents. Had the Liangs been ordinary traveling folk he would have dealt fairly with them, and had they been official folk he would have been fearful. But to him as he listened to the clack of some language he had never heard upon, their tongues they were only foreigners.
Toward afternoon, having heard this clack for many hours, he leaned toward James and said, “What is this talk that you make?”
James smiled. “It is English,” he said.
The carter stared at him. “Yet you have all the same color of hair and eyes that I have and your skin is like mine except that you are not under the sun and wind every day, and I can see you are always washing yourselves. What is your country?”
James was surprised. “We are Chinese, also, and the only reason we know a foreign language is because we have spent some years on the other side of the sea.”
“What did you there?” the carter asked.
When James told him, he went on to ask many more questions, wanting to know how rich Americans were and what they ate and how they looked.
In the goodness of his heart James told him much, and the carter listened. Now Mrs. Liang did not like the way the carter began to look and so she broke in upon this talk in English.
“James, don’t talk too much,” she exclaimed. “I think this fellow is maybe bad.”
“Why, Ma, how suspicious of you!” Mary cried.
“Maybe,” Mrs. Liang conceded, “but he has something I don’t like.”
James smiled and ended the talk by saying he was sleepy, as indeed he was. Through the night before he had been wakeful after talking about Peter. But it was not only Peter. His mother had brought other memories with her, too, memories of his childhood and his boyhood in the comfortable American city. He thought of the great bridge by the river, and how he used to dream of what lay beyond it. Now he knew. There was no magic homeland. Here were poverty and oppression, and indifference to both. He began to sink again into the morass of despondence about himself and his life. Was he not throwing himself away, after all? Well, perhaps his mother would help him to answer that question. With some sort of return to childhood, which he fully recognized, he wondered if he should let her tell him, before she went back to his America, what he ought to do with his life.
Now the steady swing of the cart soothed him. They were traveling over dusty country roads now, and there were no stones. He fell asleep.
Out of deep sleep he was wakened by the sudden swerve of the cart off the road and by the shouts of men. Then he heard his mother’s loud firm voice. He opened his eyes. The cart came to a standstill and he sat up. At the open end he saw a crowd of heads, rough and dark. An arm reached in and pulled him. He did not see his mother or Mary. He scrambled out of the cart, kicking aside the arm. Mary and his mother stood by the cart. Mary’s face was fixed into angry calm but Mrs. Liang was talking loudly across her arms, folded on her bosom. Half a dozen young men in ragged garments stood pretending not to listen, yet hesitating as they stood. They looked half impudent, half sheepish. Clearly they had not counted on Mrs. Liang.
“Your mothers!” she said to them severely. “Where have you been taught morals? Have you no reason in your skulls? Can you behave like common robbers? Are we rich folk? No! We are not rich. I have no money on me at all that can be useful to you. Look at me — have I any jewels?”
She turned one ear and the other, and held out her hands. “That ring is my wedding ring and I have not taken it off in twenty years. Yes, you can cut off my finger but if you do, your head will be cut off.”
The carter stood half turned away, pretending himself helpless. “You!” she shouted at him, “do not pretend anything!”
James broke across this torrent. “Ma, why didn’t you wake me? You men! Who are you?”
“They are robbers and bandits, that is what they are!” Mrs. Liang bawled. “They do not know we are Liangs! Wait until I tell Uncle Tao about them!”
At the name of Uncle Tao alarm spread over the face of the tallest and darkest young man. He turned to the carter and said in reproach, “How is it you did not tell us they are the Liang family?”
“How did I know?” the carter replied.
“You rice bucket!” the other retorted. “Now the old man will not want to pay us his yearly guarantee because we have attacked his relatives.”
“You had better tell us that you have offended and for once we will let the matter pass,” Mrs. Liang said in a hard voice. “If you get out of our way at once, I will not tell Uncle Tao, but if there is any delay—”
There was no delay. The tall rough young man spread out his arms as a barrier between his men and the travelers and with much dignity Mrs. Liang commanded Mary to take her seat in the cart and she herself climbed into it with James’s help. Then James stepped in and the carter took up his whip sulkily.
“Wait,” the young robber cried. “I have something to say.”
Mrs. Liang looked at him with cold eyes. “Say it then, quickly,” she commanded. “Can I waste all this time?”