Once there he had been compelled to submit to maddening delays. He could only say to Mr. and Mrs. Li that he had come on a holiday and he could not say that he wanted to know where Violet Sung was. London was far too huge a place to make it sensible to look for her. He could only pretend to enjoy everything that was done for him and meanwhile ask questions which he hoped sounded innocent. Mr. and Mrs. Li were living comfortably in a villa outside the city, and apparently had no idea of going back to China. If there was another world war, they said they might go to Rio de Janeiro. They were stout and unfashionable, and they were glad of a chance to have a famous visitor to show off and give parties for and provide return for some of the social debts they owed. At none of these parties did Dr. Liang see Violet Sung, and he was in a state of desperation which frightened him.
It was Lili who finally helped him. Lili had not changed at all to the eye. She had no child. She was slender and beautiful in the same pure calm fashion. Her voice was still high, sweet, and childlike, and what she said was still naive and a little stupid. Beneath and behind all this, Lili was neither childlike nor stupid. She had added to the sophistication of Shanghai the sophistication of New York, London, and Paris. She was quite happy with Charlie Ting who was an interestingly degenerate young man and thought nothing was too bad for anybody to do, if it was fun. Indeed, the two words, good and evil, did not exist for him except for diplomatic use. With him Lili lived on several levels of life at once. On one of these levels she heard gossip about Dr. Liang and Violet Sung, and hearing it she had expressed surprise while she instantly and secretly believed all she heard. It explained Dr. Liang’s presence in London and it explained what she saw was his restlessness. Out of indolent curiosity she found that it was true that Violet Sung was in London and that she had a very pretty, though small, flat looking out on a bombed area which was now a new park, and that she went nowhere. She also asked and got the address. Then she went to see Violet Sung.
All this Lili told Dr. Liang one Sunday morning in her sweet tinkling little voice. It came out very naturally. She was spending the week end with her parents and it was easy enough to find Dr. Liang alone after lunch in the garden, walking up and down the narrow flagged path of the small rose plot. She had sauntered out under her pink parasol, for she did not like the fad of being sunburned and kept her skin as pale as a white lotus.
After a few remarks made and exchanged she sat down on a Chinese porcelain garden seat and she said, “Dr. Liang, I saw your old friend yesterday.”
He had looked at her startled and already half guessing.
“Violet Sung,” she said thoughtfully and without a smile. “She is living now in London, do you know?”
“No, I did not,” he had replied. “I have not heard from her for some time.”
“Yes, now she is here,” Lili went on. “I don’t know if you like to have her address.”
“It doesn’t matter,” he lied.
“I think she likes to see you,” Lili persisted. By now she could speak English perfectly but she had discovered that it made her appear more exotic if she did not. “I think she seems somewhat like lonely. She doesn’t talk much, and she looks too thin though quite beautiful.”
He could not trust himself to answer this, for he had no intention of confiding in Lili or in anyone. He knew his own people. They could no more contain gossip than a leaky dish can contain water. They could keep a secret forever but gossip would be told to the next Chinese they met.
Lili opened a small satin bag attached to her diamond bracelet and she took out a bit of paper. “I write it down for you,” she said.
He could not resist taking Violet’s address but he did not look at it. He stuffed it into his pocket. “If I have time I will try to see her,” he said, and hoped Lili could not hear the pounding of his heart.
He had been far too prudent to try to see Violet at once, for he had no intention of meeting the Englishman, whose very name he did not want to remember. He wrote her a letter and sent it by messenger and told the messenger to wait. Not trusting boys, he found an extraordinary old woman with only one arm whose lean rigid face looked reliable.
“Do not come back without an answer,” he had commanded.
“Right you are, sir,” she had replied. Hours later she had come back. “It took a bit of ’angin’ round,” she told him. “The young lydy kep’ tryin’ to put me off like. Said come back tomorrow and all that. I said, me orders is, bring back the arnser. Here it is, sir.”
He had paid what she asked and then had opened Violet’s answer. It was brief enough to break his heart. “Now that we have parted,” Violet said, “why should we meet again? It will only make it harder for us both.”
That was all and it made him very angry. He sent a bold telegram, not caring this time whether the Englishman did see it.
“You owe me an explanation,” he wrote. “I will meet you on the near end of Westminster Bridge tomorrow at six p. m.”
Many people came and went on the bridge and at six it was winter’s dusk. He was there at half past five, not daring to hope that she would come. She was quite capable of not coming. But she came. He saw her before she saw him. She wore a dark fur coat and a small fur hat trimmed with violets and fitting closely to her face.
She had come because she saw that he would never believe that she meant to cut herself off from him forever. She told him so in her lovely soft voice whose cadence he would hear as long as he lived. “Wen Hua, you shouldn’t have made me come. It is really dangerous for me. I promised Ranald that I would never see you again alone.”
“Yet you have come, and that means you wanted to come.”
“You are wrong,” she told him.
The evening had been strangely mild and still. Accustomed now to the violence of cold in New York it did not seem possible to Dr. Liang that it was a winter’s night. The air was chill with river damp, but it was soft. Violet’s cheeks under the lamplight were rose pink, like an English girl’s.
“I did not want to come,” she repeated. “I have made my decision, Wen Hua, and I shan’t change.”
“How can you decide against me?” he demanded.
They were leaning against the rail, their backs to the passing people, and looking down into the river she had mused for a moment.
“It isn’t as if you and I could really love enough to give up everything,” she said at last. “You only want to have me, too.”
“That is not true,” he had said instantly.
“Yes, Wen Hua, it is,” she had replied. “And it is true for me, also. I am not better than you. More than that—”
She broke off and he waited. At last he said, “What is more than that?”
“I have thought so much,” she said slowly. “I haven’t much to do except think. People like you and me — we are not real people, you know, Wen Hua.”
“We exist, don’t we?” he asked with some indignation.
“Oh yes. We have these bodies—”
He waited again and this time he did not press her. He was afraid of what she was going to say — whatever it was.
She said, “We live on other people’s roots. Wen Hua, what makes you real is your wife. She is so real that were you and I to — of course she would not tolerate me. No real woman tolerates polygamy. Even in China, where we think we settled all human relationships centuries ago, the real women do not tolerate the concubine. They kill somebody — maybe the concubine — or they stop loving their husbands and then they stop being themselves and become cruel creatures.”