The letter, when it came, was as I-wan thought it would be. Mr. Wu wrote to Mr. Muraki that he was honored to deepen the new peace between the two countries. “We ought,” he wrote, “to bind these two brother countries together, and what better way than this?”
To I-wan he wrote, “There are no better trained women in the world than the Japanese. They are docile, humble, obedient, home-keeping. You will have a good family life. When a little more time has passed, bring her to us to see. But not yet — the people here have an unreasoning hatred against Japan because of the recent troubles. But the common people are always ignorant and mistaken. The Manchurian situation will be adjusted reasonably. Nevertheless, wait a little while before bringing back a Japanese wife to China.”
I-wan smiled as he folded his father’s letter. He did not want to go back with or without Tama. Certainly he would not go back without her.
For Tama’s sake he had waited without seeing her again until the wedding day, which was appointed as soon as his father’s letter came. And then he went to his wedding, held in the same hotel where the betrothal had been acknowledged. Here in strange cold formal rooms, half Japanese, half foreign, he found the same people waiting. And soon Mr. Muraki came and Madame Muraki and Shio and with him a small quiet gray-toned woman who was his wife, and at last Tama. They drank the mingled wines and obeyed the rules which the old matchmaker set for them.
He felt inexplicably lonely for a little while, though Tama was at his side. But this was the silent painted Tama he did not know, and not for weeks had he heard her voice or seen her as she was. He had to tell himself even as he felt her stiff silk-covered shoulder touch his as they stood together, that indeed it was she and that only by obeying the old rules had he won her. For Mr. Muraki would never have wanted him for a son-in-law if he had taken his own way and married Tama as he would like to have married her, simply and quietly and as though it were their own marriage. No, marriage belonged to a family.
When it was over he looked about at them all, these small grave courteous people behind Mr. Muraki and Madame Muraki, aunts and uncles and cousins, all staring at him and smiling anxiously and shyly. They looked alike, he thought. Even Tama looked like them just now, he thought. He had, he felt suddenly, married not Tama, but Japan. He felt in some strange sickening fashion that he had betrayed something or someone, somehow. Then he heard the old matchmaker at his elbow.
“If you will now change your garments,” the old man said in his matter-of-fact way, “the bride will be ready. The automobile is at the door.”
This recalled him. He had decided, he remembered, that they would go into the mountains to the small hotel by the hot spring, and there he and Tama would spend the first week of their marriage. He had forgotten in his daze of the moment what lay ahead. Now he turned, instantly restored to himself. The wedding was over. When he and Tama were alone at last, their marriage would really begin. He forgot everything in this thought and rushed to the room in the hotel, where upon the bed he had carefully spread out only this morning before he dressed for the ceremony the new dark blue foreign suit he had bought. It was the fashion for a bridegroom to wear western clothes. Everything was new, even the red silk tie which lay beside it. He hurried into it and taking his new hat, rushed downstairs. Tama was waiting for him. He found her in the closed and curtained automobile. Someone had opened the door in time for him to leap inside, and then the door slammed and the car started with a great jerk and they were thrown at each other. She laughed, and when he heard her laughter everything turned in that instant warm and real.
“Tama!” he cried.
She had washed the red and white paint from her face, and her hair was drawn smoothly back again, and she had on a plain dark green dress and leather shoes.
“Do you know me?” she asked, still laughing. Here was her own face, rosy and brown and pretty in the old way.
He put out his arms, speechless, and she came into them and for the second time he felt the shape of her, strong, a little square but still slender, in his arms. She was more real than anything in life. That was her quality, a strong reality. She had no perfume even upon her. He put his cheek against her and smelled the faint smell of clean soap-washed flesh, and from her hair a piny smell of the wood oil with which it had been brushed.
“Tama,” he whispered, half suffocated with happiness, “are we married?”
She nodded. He felt the strong quick nod of her head.
“Yes, of course,” she said in her pleasant practical voice.
He did not answer. In his arms he felt the affirmation suddenly run over her body, a quiver through her blood.
“Now I-wan,” Tama was saying sternly, “it is necessary in our marriage that you always remember this — I am a moga.”
He laughed and she turned on him with mischief bright in her eyes. “You don’t believe me?” she demanded.
“Yes — yes, I do,” he said quickly. “I believe anything about you.”
“Ah,” she said, “that is a good beginning.”
He laughed again as he lay on the bed watching her. She was combing out her long black hair. It was still slightly wet from the bath they had taken in the pool of the hot springs, though she had coiled it up on her head to keep it dry. But they had laughed and played and splashed each other so much.
Now they were back in their rooms and he had sent the bathmaid away impatiently so that he could be alone with Tama. He knew the maids were all laughing at him, but he did not care. He had tipped them well to keep other bathers waiting until he and Tama had finished. He had not told her, but he had made up his mind before they went in that Tama was never to bathe in any other presence than his own. He was Chinese and he would not have it.
She was standing now, quite naked, as she brushed out her long hair. It was an innocent nakedness, he could see, as innocent as had been that peasant girl’s the day they had climbed the mountain with Bunji. It was as if she were unconscious of any difference in being covered or not. He felt vaguely jealous of this innocence. It was too childish. He could not endure the thought that she might have stood like this even before servant maids. But it was impossible to explain this to her. He knew by instinct that she would not understand.
“Let me see your wrist,” he said suddenly.
She came over to him and held out her wrist. Upon it was the long scar, still red. He laid his cheek upon it.
“Do mogas often cut their wrists to get their own way?” he asked. If ever he grew impatient with Tama — though it was impossible — but if he ever did, he would only need to see this wrist of hers.
“It was what my father understood best,” she said quietly. “When I did that he knew I meant what I said — that I would marry you.”
This was sweet enough, he thought, to fill a man’s heart. But he wanted more.
“And even if there had been a war,” he said, coaxing her, “you would have married me — I know you would.”
He looked up at her, still holding the wrist, to see her eyes when she acknowledged it.
But she shook her head, her eyes too candid not to be believed.
“No, I wouldn’t, I-wan,” she said. “If there had been a war I would have married General Seki. Don’t you know I said I would?”
He could not believe even her eyes.
“I can’t believe you,” he said.
“Then you still don’t understand,” she replied quickly. “If there had been a war, I-wan, I would not have belonged to myself, but to my country. In times of war everyone belongs to the country.”