Kinfolk

by Pearl S. Buck

  This level had remained undisturbed until Louise came back to New York married to Alec Wetherston. Dr. Liang found the Wetherston family uncongenial and after one dinner party at which he had been extremely uncomfortable he had refused any further meeting. Alec was, he told Mrs. Liang, an empty young man. He would never understand what Louise saw in him. The child they had brought back from China he considered worthy of no notice from himself, and Louise’s child, who had been born in July, was a girl and therefore still unworthy of notice. A girl of mixed blood was the child of misfortune. He could not imagine who would marry her.

  He had remembered Violet Sung at that moment and that she too was of mixed blood. But the French, he believed, were the nearest of all Western peoples to the Chinese. Then, too, it was Violet’s father who had been Chinese, and the Chinese male strength always dominated. His feelings, however, Dr. Liang kept to himself and his wife. He spoke to Louise when she came home and he was kind enough to smile at the plump little creature to whom she had given such mongrel birth. Fortunately the child had dark eyes and hair. Still, it was a Wetherston child, and he had very little part in it. The Wetherstons, he persisted in thinking, were not connections in which to take pride. Mr. Wetherston was undoubtedly honest but he was the ordinary commercial American, thickset, jovial, bald-headed, and given to back-slapping, which made Dr. Liang shiver, and in conversation he was dull and even stupid. Apparently he read no books. Mrs. Wetherston was the sort of woman found in any country, a female who is no more than a mother to children. After she had produced these children little was left in her except residue of flesh. That both the elder Wetherstons and indeed the whole Wetherston family seemed fond of Louise, that they heaped her with gifts and concern, seemed to him no more than just. They acknowledged thus the superiority of the Liang family and indeed of the Chinese.

  When therefore Dr. Liang received a letter from James, another from Mary, and a third from his new son-in-law, he was openly glad that Mary had chosen so well. He examined the handwriting of Chen’s letter. It was not too good. He held the letter up before his eyes and he said to Mrs. Liang, “This fellow is not a scholar. Nevertheless, there is a certain rude strength in his style. He does not merely copy delicate handwriting. He knows the roots of the letters and he writes correctly and with vigor. He has temper and power. I hope Mary will not quarrel with him immediately.”

  Mrs. Liang did not reply. She was absorbed in reading Mary’s letter, which was written simply and plainly so that she might read it easily. “Dear beloved Ma,” Mary had written. “Please forgive me for engaging myself without your or Pa’s knowledge. James will tell you how it all happened. Chen is his best friend. I tell you he is a good man. He is ugly in the face but tall and broad and his mouth is square, which you know is a sign of brains and his ear lobes are long which Uncle Tao says is lucky. Chen laughs a great deal. He is kind to everybody. He is a doctor, but not so good as James, I think. His family lives in a village as ours does. Ma, I wish you could come here for our wedding but I suppose Pa will not let you. Dear Ma, there are many things I would like to ask you before I am a married woman.”

  At these words Mrs. Liang began to weep.

  “What is the matter now?” Dr. Liang asked.

  “Mary needs me,” she said. She did not sob aloud but she allowed tears to stream down her cheeks.

  “What for?” Dr. Liang asked.

  “You would not understand if I told you.”

  Dr. Liang looked dignified at this. “I am not stupid,” he remarked. “I have what is considered a good mentality.”

  She continued to weep. He looked at her from time to time with mounting impatience. “Well, well,” he said at last and with severity, “I suppose you will be crying steadily now for these next few weeks. I had better get used to it.”

  She wiped her cheeks. “Liang,” she said bravely, “let us go back to the ancestral village just for our daughter’s wedding.”

  He looked horrified. “After all these years?” he exclaimed. “In these evil times?”

  “I would like to go back,” she said pleadingly. “There are things I should tell Mary before the wedding.”

  Dr. Liang looked displeased. “You mothers always think you know so much,” he said. “The fact is that all that sort of thing comes naturally. Whatever you tell Mary, she will do what she knows already by instinct. Besides, what can you tell her?” He was moved with a faint curiosity.

  “There are so many things,” Mrs. Liang said vaguely, not looking at him.

  “Whatever you tell her can only be out of your experience with me,” he said with dignity. “This will not help her at all with such a young man as has written this letter.” He touched Chen’s letter lying on the table with his delicate forefinger. “I want to go home,” she said stubbornly. The upshot of all this was that a week or two of steady dejection on the part of Mrs. Liang wore him down to such a low point of resistance that he agreed to let her have her way. He declared that he himself could not possibly leave his students at the college, but that if she felt no like sense of duty toward him and their home, she could go, to be back in a period of three months at the latest. He was deeply wounded at the signs of joy which she showed upon this permission, and he was only comforted when he had talked over the whole matter with Violet Sung.

  They met now quite regularly two or three times a week, varying their meeting places, so that no gossip would rise about them. Each place was a small quiet restaurant in some part of the city. The routine was the same. They ordered a meal, or perhaps only tea, and they sat long, talking about their thoughts and never about their lives.

  On the day when he had finally given his permission to his wife, however, Violet, with her delicate feeling instinct, perceived that he was unhappy. She herself was unhappy most of the time and this mood, so constant in herself, gave her a sensitivity almost abnormal toward all other human beings except Ranald Grahame. Toward him she had no sensitivity whatever. This puzzled her very much, for in hours she was with him more than she was with anyone else. But he remained strange to her. She met him each day, each night, almost as a stranger. She knew every line of his body, every look of his face as she knew her own physical being, but what was in his mind, what were his feelings and his emotions, she did not know. They were content together in a literal physical fashion, and sometimes, indeed, after hours of talk with Wen Hua, as she now called Dr. Liang, she went back to Ranald with a sort of relief that she need not talk or think or feel. What, she often pondered, would have happened if these two men had been one? “I should have been utterly consumed,” she told herself thoughtfully. As it was, between the two, she lived a life which though in some ways unnatural was nevertheless satisfying in its balance.

  “Wen Hua, why are you sad?” she asked him gently today.

  She was looking more beautiful even than usual. She wore a new frock of dull black silk and a black coat lined with scarlet, and a small scarlet hat. He saw this fresh beauty across the small table between them.

  “It is nothing,” he replied, trying to smile.

  “Of course it is something. You cannot deceive me however you deceive others.”

  “Do I deceive others?”

  “Nobody knows you except me.”

  He began therefore to talk. “I suppose I dread loneliness,” he said very gently. “The mother of my children wishes to leave me for a while to return to our ancestral village. My elder daughter is to be married to a young Chinese doctor who is my son’s friend. This is all good. I have no objection. I only wish I could go. But my work keeps me here. Yet I do not like to think of three months in my lonely house.” He sighed. “Ah, I know I am a friendless man. I put my roots deep into only a few people. My children have left me. Now my wife, their mother, wants to leave me.”

  “She will come back,” Violet reminded him.

  “Of course—but still—”

  He broke off. “It is a strange thing that one can live a lifetime with a woman without loving he
r, and yet—” he broke off again.

  “In a way you do love her,” Violet said generously. “Wen Hua, you are so complex. I understand you better than you understand yourself.”

  “Then explain me to myself,” he murmured. It was delightful to lean toward this lovely woman and hear himself explained.

  Her great eyes met his. “You are like the lotus. You need to plant your roots deep into the earth beneath the waters before you can flower and fruit. Your—the mother of your children has been your earth. She has given you a place for your roots.” Her exquisite face turned the palest of pearl pink. “I ought to be grateful to her and I am. I honor her for what she is to you. For it is I who have enjoyed the flower and the fruit.”

  He was much touched by this sweetness and generosity. “You always teach me something good,” he said. “I will be generous too. I will let her go. But be kind to me. While she is gone let us see each other often, very often—Violet!”

  “Yes,” she murmured, “yes.”

  Mrs. Liang closed her eyes and sat back in her seat. At the last minute she had decided to take the plane instead of the steamer. Just why this was so she did not know. She only felt it best. Liang had come back one evening quite himself and had said very kindly that she might go. She was surprised and disturbed.

  “Liang, I think I better not go,” she had exclaimed in English.

  “Why not?” he had retorted. “I have myself all prepared and now you don’t go!”

  “I have been thinking—who will look after you?”

  “Nellie will feed me, and I will work hard and expect your return,” he had said too graciously.

  She had stared at him, but he had returned her gaze un-blinkingly. He looked placid and well and she was further alarmed.

  “Then I must fly only,” she said. “I fly there and fly back. Supposing I stay one month, I am satisfied.”

  “You will be seasick on the plane,” he remonstrated. “Remember how in China you were sick even on the train—and for that matter, as a bride, I believe, in your sedan.”

  She refused the disagreeable memory of herself when, long ago, she had come out of the bridal chair, pale and shaken with seasickness. Chair bearers always tossed a bride cruelly, laughing when she was sick, for it was a sign of good luck and early pregnancy.

  “Now I am older,” she said. “If I am sick I will be sick and not mind too much.”

  So it was decided, and she made all preparations. She bought gifts for Mary of American stockings and underwear and a warm sweater and a sweater too for James and her new son-in-law. Had she been on a ship she would have taken boxes, and Dr. Liang was secretly thankful that on a plane she could take very little.

  Yet it was not only in the matter of clothes that she made preparation. She went to see Louise and had loud exclamatory talk with Mrs. Wetherston in which she made known her joy at having another son-in-law. “So nice!” she had said briskly. “One American, one Chinese son-in-law! I am sure American is better, but anyway I take what my girls like. Alec is so nice. Thank you, Mrs. Wellyston, to be such a good mother with a good son. He is too good for Louise. She is such selfish girl, I know.”

  “Louise is a darling,” Mrs. Wetherston said.

  “Thank you too much, but I know,” Mrs. Liang said. “She puts down things anywhere. ‘Louise!’ I say, ‘now you have baby. You cannot to put down everywhere. It is too bad. Pick it up,’ I say. But she is so spoiled. Please excuse me.”

  “I won’t hear a word against our little girl,” Mrs. Wetherston said warmly. She loved Mrs. Liang by now and she spent happy hours describing to her friends how interesting it all was since Alec had married a Chinese girl. “Of course, my dears, the family is exceptional,” she always told them.

  Dr. Liang she respected but disliked. After the one dinner the two families had taken together, Mr. Wetherston had refused to spend any more time with Dr. Liang. “We don’t speak the same language,” he had told Mrs. Wetherston.

  “We ought to try to understand Chinese psychology, I think, dear,” she had said gently.

  This also Mr. Wetherston had refused to do. “I get enough psychology in my clients,” he said firmly. “I don’t want it in my relatives.” He would have preferred that Alec had married a nice American girl and he made no bones about that. “Now, Dorothy,” he had told Mrs. Wetherston, “I’m not going to say anything. For a Chinese Louise is a nice girl. But I’d rather Alec had married a nice American girl instead of bringing home a foreigner. Of course it can’t be helped, and there was already little Alec. We didn’t know about him. I guess I understand the circumstances—well, all I can say is, let’s make Louise American as fast as possible, and forget the rest of them.” Since he left home before nine in the morning and did not come back from his downtown office until after six in the evening, he was able to do this easily.

  Mrs. Wetherston did not have the courage to tell him that she was beginning to enjoy her unique position as the mother-in-law of a pretty Chinese girl, especially one who was a daughter of the Liang family. Nobody had paid any attention to her before and now they did. Her bridge club, where she had always been inconspicuous except for a bad play, now made much of her and asked her many questions. Once even a reporter came for an interview, and the next day she was half proud, half embarrassed to see a picture of herself in an afternoon paper, set in the middle of a column of how it felt to be the mother of a son with a Chinese wife. She felt a hypocrite when Alec thanked her for being so good to Louise.

  “Mom, you could have been so different,” he said gratefully.

  “But I enjoy her, dear,” she protested. “And the baby is so good—and so pretty, Alec. And it was so sweet of Louise to name her Dorothy.”

  The marriage was turning out well. If Louise was growing more rather than less lazy, she was sweet tempered and content, for she had fallen easily in love with her husband. She had taken up her friendship with Estelle again and had laughed at her childish infatuation for Philip. Philip was married, too, but he had gone to California because his brilliant blond wife wanted to act in pictures, much to his father’s disgust. Louise never went to the Morgan house, but Estelle, who was still single and working in radio, had at first come often to see Louise.

  “Philip was only a boy,” Louise had mused, smiling, and her long Chinese eyes were full of rich secrets which Estelle could not divine.

  Then somehow the friendship began to dwindle. Louise, married to a handsome young American, nursing their pretty child, taking care of her lively little stepson, had become unendurable to Estelle. Since the war, girls married young. To be twenty-four and then twenty-five and still not married! It wasn’t as if there weren’t plenty of Chinese that Louise could have married. American men ought to marry American women. When Estelle stopped coming Louise did not miss her. She did not miss anybody.

  “Louise,” Mrs. Liang said when the door had closed behind her. “Now I want your listening.”

  Since Louise belonged to the Wetherston family, Mrs. Liang felt it her duty sometimes to speak in English to her.

  Louise, changing the diapers of her adorable baby, did not look up. Little Alec was emptying the pin tray and she kept an eye on him. “Yes, Ma,” she murmured.

  “Now I am leaving your pa for nearly two months. Anyway six weeks,” Mrs. Liang went on. “You must not just stay here and not see him. Every day or two days you must go to apartment and see what is Neh-lee cooking.”

  “All right, Ma,” Louise said. She had no intention of such faithfulness, but she did not want to disturb her mother by truth. She lifted her baby tenderly in her arms, unbuttoned the front of her dress, and presented her full young breast to the child’s obedient mouth. Sitting in a low chair thus she made a pleasant picture which moved Mrs. Liang’s heart.

  “Like I was with you,” she murmured, her eyes swimming.

  Louise smiled, unbelieving. Her mother could never have been pretty, even as a young mother. “Go on, Ma,” she said.

  Mrs.
Liang hitched her chair nearer and began to speak in a low rapid voice in Chinese. “Eh, Louise, I tell you, your pa is a man, naturally. All men are the same. They like women too much.”

  Louise looked away. “Oh, Ma, when Pa is so old!”

  Mrs. Liang looked indignant. “He is not too old. To you, yes, but to any woman over thirty, no! And I tell you—” She broke off and considered. Should she or should she not mention the name of Violet Sung? She could not control herself and she went on in English again. “You know Violet Sung? She is always—well, I don’t say! But when I am away, your pa will be very weak.”

  “Oh, Ma,” Louise murmured again.

  “You don’t need to keep saying so,” Mrs. Liang said with irritation. “I will tell you later when you are not so young, and you will understand better. Now all I say is, sometimes see your pa, and listen to some friends, and hear if there is any talk. It is for Pa’s sake. He is too famous and well known for talk.”

  Louise laughed. “All right, Ma. But you’re funny.”

  Mrs. Liang laughed, too. She felt better. She had little time and she rose, remembered she had brought a pair of new rubber pants for the baby and fumbled for them in her bag. “Of course don’t tell Alec. Your pa is not his family. Maybe I am suspicious but I know your pa too much. Now such pants like I got you haven’t for the child. They button, like so, and when you wash, buttons out, and so—” Mrs. Liang demonstrated. “Good, isn’t it not?” She laughed again heartily. “Well, now I go back to ancestral village, and I must get used to small watercloths holding to babies’ bottoms and open pants to make some water on the ground. Never mind—in China it is not bad. Here, of course, it cannot. Carpets on the floor and so on. I think Americans are troubling themselves sometimes too much.”