The robber smiled, showing white teeth. “Lady, please know that we are not evil men. The times are very bad for poor folk like us. We belong to the earth and did we have good rulers and a kind Heaven we could work the land and find food for ourselves and our families. But the rulers are evil and Heaven looks the other way. Even so we rob only the rich.”
Now this was the usual speech which robbers made when they had done their work, and so it had been from ancient times until now and Mrs. Liang was not deceived by it. “Did all do as you do,” she said severely, “there would be nothing but robbers and then whom would you rob?”
The robber had no answer to this and he scratched his jaw and grinned and Mrs. Liang sat very straight and bade the carter go on. While they traveled the rest of that day she talked very much to the carter, until he became thoroughly frightened, and wanted to give them up as his passengers.
He stopped the mule and threw down his whip and turned to James as a man.
“Your honorable ancestor here has said so much good talk that I dare not take you to your village. Please hire another carter.” Only then did James intervene.
“Ma, let him alone,” he said. “To change carts now would be to invite a fresh band of robbers.”
So she subsided into muttering and then into silence and toward the end of the day they drove into the ancestral village.
Uncle Tao had not gone to bed. He had bade his sons help him put on his best clothes and his appetite for his night meal had been poor. Feeling that none of his children, who had lived all their lives in the village, could be of use to him in meeting a lady who had lived years in a foreign country, he had sent for Chen, who came with pleasure.
Chen knew far better than James the mass of iniquity, humor, and kindness that was Uncle Tao, for there was this difference between the two young men. James expected the best of all human beings and Chen expected nothing at all. Therefore he neither pitied Uncle Tao nor grew angry with him. He enjoyed the old man, good and evil alike, and laughed a great deal over what Uncle Tao said.
“I do not know how our honest Liang family got into all these foreign ways,” Uncle Tao grumbled. “Until my generation we did not think of leaving our ancestral home and wandering around the four seas. My brother, the father of this bookworm Liang fellow, who now does not come home at all — well, my brother went to the northern capital but no further. In the city his children heard of foreign countries and nothing would do but this bookworm Liang must run over there, taking his wife and two small children, who have grown up as bad as foreigners, and then his wife gives birth to two more who are foreigners because they were born on foreign earth. All this has happened to us Liangs! Now they come back, these foreigners. The woman who is the mother of them — I remember her. She was a big mouth.”
“On the other hand,” Chen said, “I am grateful for everything, since it will give me a good wife.”
“Old-fashioned wives are best,” Uncle Tao grumbled. “When I frowned my wife trembled. When I shouted she wept. When I urged her she smiled. I did not praise her more than two or three times a year, for women and children cannot be praised. It makes them impudent. But this granddaughter of my brother whom you want to wed! Eh, I tell you, your life will not be too good. Begin strong, that is my advice to any man. Do not ask women anything. Do not tell them anything that is in your mind. I had a good wife, but I made her good.”
Chen listened to all this, keeping back laughter. Uncle Tao looked magnificent, as he sat in the most honorable seat in the main room. He wore an ancient yellow brocaded satin gown which was frayed about the edges with age. It hung to his heels and though it was cut full, the sleeves covering his hands, yet it was tight across shoulders and belly. He wore new white cotton stockings which his elder daughter-in-law had made for him and a pair of large black shoes of quilted satin on thick padded soles.
Thus they were conversing of many things in the universe when a hubbub at the gate where the other members of the family waited in their best clothes told them that the expected ones had arrived. Chen got up quickly and left the room. He should not be the first to greet the newcomer, and he stepped into a side court.
Uncle Tao did not stand up when they came in. He sat like an old emperor in his big carved chair by the table, his long pipe in one hand. He stared hard at Mrs. Liang and nodded his head.
“Eh — eh,” he mumbled, “so you have come back!”
Mrs. Liang stared back at him. “Uncle Tao, are you well?” she asked in a loud clear voice.
“At least I am not deaf,” he said tartly. “Where is your outside person — where is Liang Wen Hua, my nephew?”
“He could not come, Uncle Tao. He teaches school, you know, and they would not let him come.”
“What do they pay him?” Uncle Tao inquired.
She evaded this question. “He sent his obedience to you, Uncle Tao, and he bade me say that if there is anything you would like from the foreign country he will send it within his humble means.”
“I have no foreign wishes,” Uncle Tao replied with majesty. “Have you eaten?”
“Not yet, Uncle Tao,” Mrs. Liang replied.
All the daughters-in-law clustered about. “Come and eat, come and eat,” they clamored and she went with them.
Mary had not followed her mother. Instead she had gone to her room, pausing for a moment beside Chen who waited for her at the inner gate of the side court. They felt safe for this instant since everyone was with Mrs. Liang.
“Are you tired?” he asked in a low fond voice.
“Not too tired,” she replied, looking at him from under her lashes. “You must go and see Ma.”
“Now that she is come, I am frightened.”
“Silly,” she said softly. “She likes you already.”
“Then you have said too much about me.”
Mary gave him a little push. “Go on.”
“All by myself?”
“All by yourself,” she decreed.
She waved her hand and went on, and he turned aside into his own room to take a last look at his hair and he stared at his face in a small old metal mirror that hung on the wall above his table. An ugly fellow, he told himself!
He shrugged his shoulders then and went to find Mrs. Liang. In a large side room, she was surrounded by relatives, men and women, who sat down to give her company while she ate, for the family had already eaten. James was with her and he rose when he saw Chen.
“Ah, here he is,” he called. “Ma, this is Chen.”
Mrs. Liang rose, her hands hanging at her side, and she looked at Chen. The first look was doubtful, her eyes grew warm, and next she smiled.
“So this is you,” she said kindly. Then as though she were a foreigner she put out her hands and took his hand between both of them while the relatives stared. It was a good and warm clasp and Chen liked her then and there. If this was the woman that Mary would one day be, he was pleased.
“Eh, eh—” he said in Chinese. “You must sit down and eat your food while it is hot. I will sit down here.”
Properly and modestly he sat down at some distance away and she sat down again and the relatives began their chatter. In the midst of the hubbub she stole glances at him sitting there and half the time their eyes met, with increased content.
James saw his mother take her place in this Liang household as though she had never been away. Despite the years she had been gone her roots were not disturbed. She was correct in all her relationships, and never once did her tongue slip into the wrong title for sisters-in-law, elder and younger, and for their husbands and their children. They liked her. What had been sharp in her as a young girl was gone. What had been sharp even in her life in her own home, James saw was gone. She had become mellow and mild.