I had never said such a thing before, nor even thought it, but it came to me now, a truth welling through me from the generations of women from whom I have sprung.
“Allegra says you are jealous,” Rennie retorted.
“That is because she knows she is not the one you should love, and she knows that I know it, too.”
We were on the edge of a great bitterness, my son and I, and I drew back from the abyss. I did not want to hear him speak words which would dash us over the precipice together. I did not want to hear him say that he had better go away because I did not understand him. I summoned Gerald to my aid and I tried to speak calmly.
“I suppose the reason I long so much for you to love one who can truly love you is because your father and I have been utterly happy together. From the moment I saw him I knew him for mine. I have never loved another man, nor had he loved a woman before me. It is old-fashioned, I know. It is quite the thing now, I hear, to say that one must experiment in love and that it does not matter how many people one experiments with before the final one is found. Perhaps that is true for the shallow-hearted. But it is not true for the deep in heart. Your father and I are among those few. It made our love complete when we knew that what we gave each to the other was new and never given before. I assure you it did.”
How glad I am now that I have never shown Rennie the letter I have locked in my desk upstairs! For whatever the letter means, I know that what I say is true. I know that Gerald still loves only me. But Rennie could not know. It will be a long time before he can know, and he will never know if he does not find his mate.
“It’s strange then that my father does not even write to you,” he said cruelly.
“Not strange,” I replied. “He knows that I know he loves me, and he knows I love him, unchangingly. There is some reason why he cannot write, a reason that has nothing to do with you and me. There are many such reasons that separate people in the world now. We must not allow them to destroy love. We must wait, still loving.”
I was teaching myself as well as Rennie, but I am not sure he knew it. One can only know a little when one is young. I do wonder that I could know, when I myself was young, that Gerald was the beloved the moment I saw him. It was not wisdom, for I had no wisdom then and not much now.
Rennie got up and came to me and kissed my cheek. “You needn’t worry, Mom,” he said. “And you’re wrong about Allegra. She’s all right. Anyway, I’m not my father and she is not you, and we have to live our own lives.”
To this there could be no reply, and he went upstairs. He reminds me twenty times a day without knowing it of these two facts, that he is not his father and that he has to live his own life. I went upstairs after his window was dark, and that night I slept fitfully. I dreamed that I searched everywhere through the house in Peking and could not find Gerald. He had gone. I woke then in terror, and knew my own house safely about me here in Vermont, but how lonely!
Tonight when Rennie came out of the shadows, I saw him stand for a long last moment with Allegra in his arms. It was so late they did not care, for who was there to see them? The people in our valley go to bed early. He stood, my tall son, with his arms clasped about the slender girl, and her face was lifted to his. They kissed the long passionate kiss of first love and then, wrapped in each other’s arms, they walked slowly up the moonlit road to her house. I lost him at the gate, for he took her to the door and it was a full quarter of an hour before he came to the gate again alone. Then he sauntered up the road, his hands in his pockets. I was on the terrace as usual when he reached the house. I was determined to let him see that I was not comforted, nor was my anxiety assuaged. Allegra tonight was to me what she had been on the other night. He saw me there on the long chair, and this time he called to me.
“Goodnight, Mom!”
“Goodnight, my son,” I said.
I heard him clatter up the backstairs from the kitchen to his room. My father put those stairs in for the hired man, so that the fellow could come and go without disturbing the family. And this summer Rennie moved from the room next to mine, where he has lived since we came home, announcing that he would take the room over the kitchen. It is a pleasant room, low-ceiled but large, and it has a separate bath, my father having been fastidious. “A man who bathes only on Saturday night needs a bathroom for himself alone,” he said.
I know of course why Rennie wants that room. It is so that he can come and go without passing my door. I know ruefully that he has the right to come and go now without telling me. And if Allegra were the girl I dream of for him, I would not care. But Allegra! Yet no mother can save her son. She can only watch and wait and wring her hands. I wonder if he understood when I spoke of deephearted love? I am sure he does not. And now I am sorry for Allegra, too, for if this goes on he will make demands on her far beyond what she is able to give. His passion will mightily exceed hers, and she will be made miserable because she knows she is not enough for him. So thinking, I perceive that it is Allegra I pity and I see that she must be protected, too, from Rennie. She is a woman, however small her heart, and it is wrong for her to be unhappy. I am for women even against my son. I had not thought of it so before. Deeper than motherhood is womanhood.
This discovery, which I have made only now as I write, is bewildering. I do not know what I shall do with it. Yet I feel suddenly eased. I am not thinking of Rennie alone. What I am thinking has to do with men and women. It is chance, beatific and blessed, that made Gerald and me well mated. Had not my father left the money in his will to send me to college, specifying Radcliffe because he had no son to send to Harvard, I might have chosen someone as Rennie has. One takes what one finds at this age. I must save Rennie as my father saved me, but Allegra must be saved, too.
It is long past midnight. I am too tired to think clearly about this new responsibility. Morning will bring light.
Today Rennie is full of joy. He thinks he has clarified his relationship to me. He is free, he thinks, and he came downstairs this morning all life and cheer, his beautiful face aglow, his eyes shining with love. He kissed me briskly on the cheek, careful now never to touch my lips, and sat down at the table to eat a breakfast to match the day.
“I must begin cleaning the brush from the high sugar bush,” he said, his voice loud and clear. “Matt can help me when he has done the barn. The manure should go on the far pasture.”
“I suppose so,” I said.
He was off then, very busy—and I washed the dishes and tended the house. Rennie thinks I should have a dishwasher but I will not. I like the quiet reflective moments after a meal, my hands in the hot soapy water and the view from the kitchen window before my eyes. Then, too, I love my dishes. Some I brought with me from the house in Peking, and the rest are my mother’s and ones that I used as a child, I do not understand women who complain about their houses and their children and their husbands. This is our dear daily work. And I do not like new things. It takes time to become acquainted with possessions, and they should not change. Whenever a dish is lost or broken, something of life goes with it. This morning I used for porringers the blue Chinese bowls lined with yellow porcelain. Alas, when I washed mine, it slipped from my fingers and fell against the sink and broke to pieces. I could not keep the tears from rushing to my eyes. Nor could I bear to throw the bits of lovely pottery into the garbage pail. I carried them outside and buried them under the old apple tree by the front door.
When I came back into the kitchen Baba was there, waiting to be fed. He is growing very old now, and childish. I tucked the napkin in his collar but he would not lift his hand to his spoon, and I fed him. He ate then quite patiently, in silence, his eyes fixed vaguely on the window. He will wear only his Chinese robes these days, and when he speaks it is nearly always in Chinese.
“I go back to my bed,” he said when the dish was empty.
“Sit on the terrace a while in the sun,” I suggested.
He shook his head and I had to coax him. “Do you not remember how the gr
andfathers in Peking always sit against the wall of the houses where the sun shines? They do not get out of bed and eat and go back to bed again. They like the sun, and the air is warm today and without wind.”
He rose obediently after this and I wrapped a scarf about his neck and led him by the hand to the terrace and sat him down on the bench against the wall. He sat there without moving, his eyes closed as though he slept, and I forgot him. At noon, ashamed, I hurried out to find him still there, panting somewhat with the heat, his cheeks pink and his blue eyes open in reproach.
“Shall I go to bed now?” he inquired.
“Indeed you shall,” I said, “after you have had some tea and a boiled egg with your rice.”
He ate without demur, relishing the Chinese tea, and I took him up to bed, and pulled the shades and left him fast asleep. The sun and air did him good, but how could I forget him? How selfish to let my mind dwell only upon my son!
Yet the hours of thought while I tended my house have cleared my mind. There is no better time to think and ponder than in the hours when a woman sweeps and dusts and makes beds. The physical activity sends blood coursing through her frame and the brain awakes. Yes, I shall go to see Allegra’s mother. I do not know how much she can comprehend of what I wish to say. And when I come back I shall tell Rennie what I did. I will have no secrets. And I shall maintain that it is my right to be free to act—if his, then mine.
Mrs. Woods was sitting on the porch of her house when I opened the gate. The house is a pleasant one, white painted and the shutters green, a conventional house even to the flower beds and the walk between them. She was sewing needlepoint, an art my mother tried to teach me, but I never cared for it and forgot what I was taught.
Mrs. Woods rose when I came to the steps. She is a plump, middle-aged woman, not fat, a round friendly face, curled hair, the sort of woman to be seen on any porch anywhere, a good woman, somewhat timid, as American women often are, and I do not know why they are. Chinese women may be shy or pretend they are, and it is nine-tenths pretense, because they think women should be shy, or because men like them shy, but they are never timid.
“Come in,” Mrs. Woods said, seeming flustered.
“I am Mrs. Gerald MacLeod,” I said, “and I live up the road.”
“I know your boy Rennie,” she said. “Come along in. We’d best sit inside, I think, because the mites are bad today. I was just about to move.”
We went inside a narrow hall with a red carpet, the straight stairs leading to the second floor. To the right was a neat dining room and to the left a largish living room, furnished as most living rooms are. It was pleasant and comfortable. There were a few magazines on the table beside the couch but no books. How could Rennie live in a house without books?
“Take that chair,” Mrs. Woods said. “It’s my husband’s, and so it’s the most comfortable.”
There was suddenly a mild twinkle in her grey eyes that I liked. I sat down and came to the point at once.
“I’m sure you know that Rennie and Allegra are going together. I want to know what you think about it. They’re so young, and there aren’t any other young people very near.”
Her round face grew concerned. She has a round little mouth and round eyes and her nose turns up enough to show her two round nostrils. It is a sweet childish face. She must have been a pretty baby. Allegra is much prettier. The father, perhaps, has straightened the lines of her face. But she has her mother’s curved figure, rounded hips and full breasts, enchanting now but not forever. Mrs. Woods is tightly corseted. These foolish details swarmed in my mind while I waited for her to speak.
“They are young,” she agreed. “Mr. Woods and I have been worried some. Of course we want Allegra to feel free. But she’s only a senior in high school next year. We live in Passaic, New Jersey. The schools are good there. We wouldn’t want Allegra to think she didn’t want to finish high school.”
“Heavens, no,” I said in horror. “And Rennie will have to go to college—it’s Harvard, where his father and grandfather went—and after that he will have still more years somewhere, perhaps in Europe, or perhaps in China, where his father is.”
Real horror broke over my neighbor’s face. “China? Nobody can go there, can they?”
“Not now,” I said, “but hopefully Rennie may join his father there some day, when the world is better.”
“Is his father—a Chinese?” Mrs. Woods spoke the word apologetically.
“No,” I said, “at least, not altogether, or my name wouldn’t be MacLeod. His father, Rennie’s grandfather, is American. He lives with us. He’s old—and he’s not well. He never leaves home.”
I had said so much that she waited for me to say more, and I went on. “My husband is president of a great university in Peking. We had hoped that he could join us here, but he feels it his duty to stay by his work.”
“Isn’t China communist?” Her voice was vaguely reproachful.
“Yes,” I said, “and my husband is not communist, I can assure you. But he still feels he must stay by his work and do it the best he can.” Then the truth forced itself from me. “You see, his mother was Chinese—and so—”
“She was?” Mrs. Woods’ voice was an exclamation. “Then that’s why Rennie—we thought maybe he had Indian blood.”
“Didn’t Rennie tell Allegra?”
“No, no, I’m sure he didn’t. Allegra tells me everything. I know she’d have told me.”
“Then I am glad I told. It is better for you to know before they fall too much in love.”
“I should say so.”
Her mind was busy in her face. She flushed with thought, she bit her small full lips, she forgot me. Her plump small hands were clenched together on her lap. Suddenly she looked up and her eyes met mine.
“You poor thing,” she said, “it’s dreadful for you, isn’t it?”
“What—Rennie?”
“The whole business—marrying somebody way off—a Chinese!”
“My husband is American,” I said. “His father registered his birth at the American Embassy in Peking. Rennie was registered there, too.”
“Still and all—it’s different, somehow.”
“I’ve been completely happy,” I said. “So happy that I must make sure Rennie will be happy, too. I couldn’t let him marry a girl who merely tolerated his being partly Chinese. She must be glad of it. She must be proud of it. She must understand that he is the richer for it, as a man and a person—yes, even as an American.”
She could not follow me. She tried, bless her, for somehow I could not keep from liking her more and more. She is simple and honest. I hope she will continue as my friend, whatever happens. I would like to know someone like her intimately, so that we could talk as woman to woman. I miss a good friend. Matt’s wife is good, but she is ignorant and besides she and Matt quarrel over some past grief which neither tells me. They live alone on the mountainside opposite ours, their children gone now, and they quarrel constantly. Matt groans sometimes on a grey morning, “Oh, that woman has been the death of me these forty years!” And when I take a lettuce to Mrs. Matt she tells me of Matt’s wickedness and how he won’t shave but once a week however she tells him, and she declares that he’s been torture these forty years. She has no capacity for friendship. But Mrs. Woods is a happy wife and mother. I can see that. It is not her fault that her heart holds only a cupful.
And it is her fortune that her husband needs no more. For he came in after a while, a thin, bald man, his eyes very blue. This is his vacation, he told me. He works in an accountant’s office in Passaic and he has two weeks a year free to do what he likes. I suddenly pitied him. Two weeks!
“Do you enjoy your work, Mr. Woods?” I asked. This was after we had been introduced, and he told me what he did, and how good it was just to loaf.
“I like my job, but I’m glad not to work,” he said.
“Though there’s plenty of work to be done about the place,” his wife said in reproach. But she spoke
gently and even lovingly, and he smiled at her. He was not afraid of her, and she would not urge him. It was an amicable marriage between equals, and therefore pleasant to contemplate. They would understand, to the extent of a cupful, what I mean when I talk about happiness.
“I am your neighbor, Mr. Woods, and frankly I came to see you and Mrs. Woods about my son and your daughter. They are both so young,” I said.
He was instantly embarrassed as only good American men can be embarrassed when anyone mentions male and female together in the presence of their wives or mothers or middle-aged women. For all their adolescent interest in physical sex, they are singularly pure and unsophisticated. They scatter their seed around the earth these days, begetting children in Europe and Asia as innocently and irresponsibly as young tomcats in spring. They pause to mate, and then wander on.
“Mrs. MacLeod tells me her husband is Chinese,” Mrs. Woods said significantly.
“No, no,” I cried. “I said that he is American, an American citizen, although his mother was Chinese. She was a lady of high birth, her family one of the great families of Peking. She is dead now.”
“No kidding,” Mr. Woods exclaimed in a low voice. “Well, now! I don’t know as I ever heard of anyone mixed like that.”
He was bewildered. It was obvious that he was shocked and at the same time was too kind to show it. He did not want to hurt me. He was sorry for me, and couldn’t put it into words. He looked at his wife helplessly. They were both sweet people and I began to love them, knowing while I did so that they could not understand me now and would never understand me. Gerald had been right to stay in Peking.
But I had Rennie to think of and I got up. “Thank you both,” I said as cheerfully as I could. “Please don’t worry. Rennie will be going off to college soon, and young people forget easily. I don’t think it has gone very deep. As for Allegra, she is so pretty that she must have a lot of boy friends.”
They grasped at the suggestion. “She is very popular,” Mrs. Woods said proudly.
Letters From Peking Page 8