But it was no servant who overheard. Louise, always sensitive to Mary’s watchfulness, had seen her sister’s eyes follow her thoughtfully as she left the room that night. She had thrown her good night gaily at the three who sat on after Peter had gone, and when she said she was sleepy Mary had not answered. Mary had only looked at her with large quiet eyes, too full of thought. Therefore Louise knew she would not be able to sleep. In a few minutes she had stolen with noiseless feet along the corridors and had hidden herself behind the curtains which divided one room from another. Now she heard what was being said, and filled with horror, she fled back to her room. There she put on a coat and outdoor shoes and still silent she slipped through the dark court, passed the latticed door of the living room, now closed against the sharp night air, and thus she went on through the gate. In the alley she was frightened but she went on to the street where she waved to a passing ricksha. Seated in it, she directed the puller to the house of Dr. and Mrs. Su.
Mrs. Su was her only friend. At her house she met Alec every day. Dr. Su knew nothing of it, but Mrs. Su welcomed the excitement of the romance. All Mrs. Su’s best friends knew about the rendezvous, and most of them had told their husbands. Therefore in the hospital nearly everyone knew that Dr. James Liang’s younger sister was meeting an American, who had returned to Peking after his discharge as a soldier, because he had been in love with a Chinese girl, a nobody, who had died in the hospital after giving birth to a boy who was now a hospital foundling. Louise thought her secret safe with Mrs. Su, and no one had told James or Mary, and no one told Dr. Su because everybody liked the new little Mrs. Su and nobody liked him. The Chinese gossiped prudently. Where it did not matter all was told and discussed, but beyond prudence no one went.
The danger tonight, Louise reminded herself as the ricksha carried her through the darkness, was that Dr. Su was at home. It was only good fortune that could prevent this. Alas, such fortune was not hers. When she had paid the ricksha man and had entered the brightly lit foreign-style house that stood beside the street, she heard Dr. Su’s voice. It was Mrs. Su, however, who came out to meet her when the servant announced her.
“My brother and sister know!” Louise whispered.
At this moment Dr. Su came to the door. “Miss Liang!” he called with the bantering smile that was his approach to all young and pretty women. “Have you run away from home?”
Louise tried to laugh. “I am really only on my way somewhere else,” she said. “I just stopped to see if Mrs. Su would come with me.”
“Where?” Dr. Su asked with ready curiosity.
“Some foreign friends,” Louise said, frightened that everything she said was too near the truth.
“Don’t go, don’t go,” Dr. Su exclaimed. “Stay here with us.”
“Then I must telephone,” Louise said, seizing upon the chance.
Mrs. Su was immediately helpful. “Su,” she said to her husband, “please return to our other guests. I will take Louise to the study.”
Dr. Su turned away and Mrs. Su led Louise into the small study where the telephone stood on the desk and she closed the door.
“Now,” she whispered, “what will you do? Your brother will be angry with my husband if he finds that I have let you meet Alec here. You know I like to help you, Louise, but I must think of my relations with my husband. Su has a very bad temper.”
“You mean Alec mustn’t come here tonight?” Louise faltered.
“He must not come any more if your brother knows,” Mrs. Su said. Her small pretty face was pale. “You know, Louise, what you do may be all right in America but here it is serious. And I am my husband’s fourth wife. He is not too patient with me. Such a fine man as Su with a good job can get plenty of women to marry him.”
Louise felt her heart grow hard toward Mrs. Su and all Chinese women, but she asked, “May I telephone?”
“Certainly that,” Mrs. Su said quickly.
“Then please—may I be alone?”
Mrs. Su hesitated. “I ought better to stay here,” she said, “but then I like to say I didn’t know anything about it. I will stand outside the door.”
So saying she went out and closed the door and Louise called the hotel where Alec Wetherston was living. His voice answered, a pleasant tenor at whose sound her lips quivered.
“Alec, it’s me—Louise.”
“Why, darling!” His voice took on depth. “Where are you?”
“At the Su house. Alec, my brother and sister know about us.”
There was silence for a long moment and she said anxiously, “Alec, do you hear me?”
“Yes, I was just thinking fast, darling.” His voice was somewhat breathless. “What will they do?”
“I don’t know but I’ve got to see you.”
“Shall I come over there?”
“Mrs. Su is afraid.”
“But what’ll we do, darling? I suppose you couldn’t come here to the hotel?”
“People would recognize me—you know how they are.”
“I could meet you at the hotel door and we could walk.”
“All right—in fifteen minutes.”
She hung up the receiver and went out into the hall. Mrs. Su was still standing there, watching the door of the living room. A burst of laughter pealed out.
“I am going home,” Louise said. “Just tell Dr. Su I had to go on, after all.”
The two young women tiptoed down the hall; Mrs. Su opened the door, and Louise went out. She was beginning to be frightened because for the first time in her life she was acting quite alone. In New York there had always been Estelle to praise her for her independence and here, until now, there had been Mrs. Su. Now she had no one. Estelle was far away and Mrs. Su was a coward, like all Chinese—cowards when it came to real courage. How she hated being Chinese herself! She must go back to America. If she married an American she could be an American, almost. At least her children would be American and she, their mother—it was her only escape.
The dusty wind blew down the wide street. It was several minutes before she could find a ricksha in the dim light. With nightfall and cold the Chinese went inside their houses and put up the boards. All the open gaiety of the city in summer was gone. She felt still more frightened when a wild-looking old man pulling a dirty ricksha offered it to her, but seeing no other she got in. He ran slowly as though he were too weary to walk, and when he let the shafts down at the hotel gate, his face glistened with sweat and his cotton jacket was streaked with damp. She ought to pity him she told herself, but he only repelled her and she gave him as little money as she dared. He was too exhausted to protest beyond a moan and a grimace at the money outspread on his grimy palm. She paid no heed to him and walked quickly up to the door. Then her heart was released. She had been afraid that Alec would not be there but he was waiting for her, his coat collar turned up and his hat pulled down.
“Hello,” he said in a guarded voice. “You were a long time coming. I began to freeze.”
He put his arm into hers and they walked down the street. “Tell me everything,” he said.
Who could have foretold what now happened? Before she could reply six or seven students coming along the half-lit street saw a Chinese girl walking with an American. They surrounded the pair swiftly and a flashlight in the hands of one thrown upon the girl revealed Louise’s pretty face. “You American man!” a student shouted. “Leave our girls alone!”
Then incredibly the students began to hustle them. Alec felt himself pushed against a wall. He put Louise behind him to shield her, but the yelling students were trying to pull her out from behind him.
“We’ll have to cut and run,” he said to her over his shoulder.
Where could they go in this whole city?
“We’ll have to go home,” Louise said.
“When I start, you keep up with me,” Alec commanded. “Come now—get ready—get set—let’s go!”
By the suddenness of their dash, by the swiftness of their pace, they took the st
udents by surprise and got a head start. Both Alec and Louise were strong and long-winded. Good food and care had gone into the making of their young bodies, and the students were underfed and weak. The chase was uneven and one by one the students halted and gave up. When the two reached the hutung no one followed.
“You’d better leave me here,” Louise said.
But Alec Wetherston had been thinking hard while his legs ran. He was deeply attracted to this pretty Chinese girl. Perhaps he was really in love with her—not as he had been in love with his little Lanmei who had died when the baby was born. The baby worried him terribly. He had come back to China when he knew there was going to be a baby and he had made up his mind to marry Lanmei as soon as she got out of the hospital. When he reached here she was dead. He had gone to the two rooms she had shared with another girl, who had told him the story. Lanmei’s room had already been taken by a man whom the girl had accepted as her lover. Alec had listened and gone away again, not knowing what to do. “Better leave the baby in the hospital,” the girl had advised. But his heart clung to the child, although he had never seen it, hesitating to own it as his. What could he do with a baby? He had told no one at home about Lanmei. At last he had told Louise everything, even about the baby, and she had gone to see it.
“The kid is cute,” Louise had reported. “He has big eyes and he smiles when you look at him.” The father in him wanted to see his child.
Now he took Louise by the shoulders and pinned her against the wall. “Look here,” he said. “I’m not going to leave you, darling. I’m coming in to see that big brother of yours and tell him I want to marry you.”
Louise looked up at him wistfully. She would never love anyone as well as she had loved Philip. She had told Alec about Philip, too. They had exchanged the stories of their sorrows. He even knew that Philip did not want her, and it was sweet of him not to mind. But before she could speak they heard footsteps in the hutung. In the darkness they stood quite still, waiting. Again a flashlight was thrown upon them and in the beam they saw Peter.
“Peter!” Louise gasped.
Without a word Peter jumped on Alec and tore him away.
“You devil!” he cried.
Alec leaped at him. In a second the two young men were rolling on the ground locked together and Peter struggling up seized Alec by the hair and beat his head against the cobbles. Louise shrieked and fell upon Peter.
“Jim, Jim!” she screamed for help.
Down the hutung doors opened. Their landlord’s servant came running out. “These foreigners are fighting,” he shouted, and he hastened into the rented house and beat on the closed door of the living room. “Your brother and sister are killing a foreigner!” he yelled.
So it happened that the next instant James and Chen and behind them Mary carrying the lighted lamp saw three disheveled young people rising from the ground. Louise was crying.
“You leave my sister alone!” Peter was bellowing, and Alec leaped on him again.
It was James who separated them, James who commanded Louise to get into the house and who led the young men into the house behind her. He locked the gate firmly upon the gaping crowd and they stared a while at the closed gate and went home telling each other that a house haunted by weasels could give no happiness even to foreigners.
Into the living room James led his captives and Young Wang came out of his room and Little Dog and his mother followed.
“Get us some food,” James commanded them, “and fetch hot tea. Then we will talk quietly.” He turned to Peter. “What were you doing?”
Peter, his eyes still blazing at Alec, replied, “I had just passed a crowd of the fellows who said they had run after an American going with one of our girls. They can’t stand that now, after all the things Americans have done here. I didn’t dream the girl was my own sister.”
“And you?” James said still more quietly to Alec.
“I was coming here to ask your permission to marry Louise,” Alec said bluntly.
“Who are you?” James asked with the same fearful quietness.
“Alec Wetherston, formerly of the U.S. Army,” Alec said in a firm voice. “Louise and I met the day she came to the chrysanthemum market. You won’t remember me.”
“I do,” Mary said. She saw that she was still holding the lamp and she set it down on the table.
Alec looked at her. “Yes—well, I know you, too. I wanted Louise to tell you about us, but she seems to be afraid of you all, for some reason.”
“Because they don’t want me to marry an American,” Louise put in, beginning to cry again.
“Mary, take Louise away,” James said.
Louise allowed herself to be led as far as the door. There she paused, the tears wet on her cheeks. “I tell you I will marry Alec,” she declared.
Mary pulled her away, and James went on quietly. “Mr. Wetherston, sit down, please. I have no objection to my sister’s marrying the man she wants to marry, but he must be a good man.”
They were all sitting down now except Peter, who stood with his hands in his pockets, his hair on end. Chen had sat down. His face was very pale and he had said nothing.
“I guess nobody is perfect—not these days,” Alec said frankly. He was beginning to feel better. Louise’s brother looked like a regular fellow.
“Please tell me everything,” James said sternly.
Alec looked startled. “How do you mean—everything?”
Chen spoke. “The little boy in the hospital—”
Alec leaned his arm on the table. “I guess you know,” he said simply. “I guess it’s nothing different from lots of other fellows during the war. Only I came back—I guess that was my mistake.”
“Listen to him!” Peter said contemptuously.
“Be quiet, Peter,” James said. He leaned forward and looked at the American. He liked this tall angular young man. His brown hair was mingled with the street dust and his face was grimy. But it was an honest face and for an American the features were delicate and quite good. It might be true that Louise would never marry a Chinese. Perhaps the first human perceptions stamped by life upon a newborn child were the ones which finally seemed most real. He and Mary had been born in China but Louise and Peter were American born. Some American nurse in a hospital in New York had lifted her from the bed of birth and had cared for her in the first weeks, and at home Nellie had taken her place. The first instincts of the child’s flesh had entwined themselves with blue eyes and blond hair and white skin. Louise could not change these instincts now.
“You really want to marry my sister?” James said to Alec.
Alec lifted his head. “I’ve been thinking it all out,” he said. “I want to marry her and go home. We’ll take the baby with us. She’s told me all about herself and she knows all about me. Lanmei was the first girl I was ever in love with and I’ll be happier with Louise than I would with any regular American girl. Besides, the baby will be easier to explain. And people aren’t as old-fashioned as they used to be. You can’t marry a Negro, but most people don’t mind a Chinese.”
Peter burst at this. His clenched hands flew from his pockets. “Don’t mind a Chinese!” he bellowed. “But we mind Americans, let me tell you! We’ve had about enough of Americans, I tell you! At the school tonight we framed up a protest to the government—about the way Americans are interfering in China. Gosh, when I tell them my sister is marrying one of them!” His anger ended in a wail.
James turned on him with forbidding eyes, but Peter gave him look for look. Then he yielded and rushed from the room.
Alec tried to smile. “You can’t blame them, I guess,” he said. “But what they don’t see is that fellows like us can’t help what any government does. We’re helpless, too. I want to get the hell out of here myself.”
James had been thinking hard and swiftly. Now he spoke with sudden clarity. “I think it is what you ought to do. Tomorrow you can come and tell me about your family and your situation. If I am satisfied I will tell Louise
that so far as I am concerned, she may marry you.”
Alec lifted his head. “I want to thank you, sir,” he stammered. “I wish I knew how to thank you.”
Chen said, “Jim, what about your parents?”
“I stand in my father’s place,” James replied. “He has put my sisters and my brother in my care.”
Alec was on his feet. “I’ll come around tomorrow—here?”
“To my office in the hospital, please,” James said. “Then we will see the child together. Louise is very young for the care of so small an infant. But I suppose she can learn.”
They stood while Alec shook their hands and while he went to the door, smiled back, and went away. Then James turned to Chen. “Tell me I have done right,” he pleaded.
They sat down opposite each other at the table. “I think you have done right,” Chen admitted. “Yet how do I know?”
There was a footfall at the door and Mary came in.
“Done what right?” she asked. She sat down at the third side of the table between them.
“I have told him he can marry Louise,” James said simply.
She sat for a long moment. Then she got up and said, “I’ll go and tell her. She keeps crying.”
But she paused a moment and looked at Chen. “I thought you were going to be in love with Louise,” she said bluntly. Chen opened his eyes wide. “I? In love?” He gave a great shout of laughter, and she left him still laughing.
The wedding took place quietly. Alec and Louise wanted no guests. They were both American citizens and they went to the American Consulate one afternoon with James and Mary as witnesses and there, before an acquiescent though unwilling consul, the marriage was performed. Peter would not go and Chen had refused, saying that only two witnesses were needed and he would stay with the baby. The baby was at the hotel waiting for them in Chen’s care when the wedding party came back.
“I am a good amah,” Chen declared. “A better amah than a doctor.”
He had the baby in his arms, and the baby, dressed in new yellow rompers that Mary had made for him, was holding Chen’s thumb tightly and staring into his rugged face. The few days before the wedding had been busy with new clothes not for the bride but for the baby, everything made American. Louise and Alec had devoted themselves to the study of formulas and schedules, and Mary had lined a Chinese basket with cotton padding and blue silk for a traveling cradle. Another basket with a lid carried bottles and sterilizer and all that a child would need for a long journey.
Kinfolk Page 27