The most important thing about Uncle Tao nowadays, however, was none of these things. It was the simple fact that Uncle Tao had power. What this power was she did not know. But he had some sort of power over the magistrate, over the country police, even over tax gatherers. His hold over the tenants was of course absolute. She had warned James against defending these tenants too much.
“The men of earth are not what they were when I was young,” she told James. “In those days what could they do? Sometimes they rose up, it is true, and killed the ones they hated. But when that man was dead another came down from the Emperor and when they saw it was no use to kill a man if another came at once to take his place, they endured again for a few generations. Now everything is different. They have heard too much. They even know that in America people can stop work and farmers can refuse to sell their food. It gives them ideas of what they can do also. And now too there are the accursed Communists to whom they can always go. We are pinched between these people and the Communists.”
She had not at all liked the way that James had listened to this. He had not answered but he had smiled. Smiling silence is not a good sign in any man when he has been listening to a woman.
“Now, James,” she had then said with real heat, “I don’t oppose Uncle Tao so much. Everybody is still afraid of him. You better stay in his shadow. These are bad times.”
To this James again had not answered and so she had talked to Mary and Chen. “You two,” she had said to them privately and therefore in English only last night when they came in for a last talk. “Now you are married you have some common sense. I tell you, do not make Uncle Tao angry.”
“I am not afraid of Uncle Tao,” Mary said boldly.
Mrs. Liang looked at her with cold eyes.
“Everybody else is afraid. You better have some sense.”
Chen had pacified her immediately. “Mother, I will not let Mary behave foolishly,” he had promised. “Uncle Tao is a very big man here and certainly we need him, at least until we have established ourselves and the people see what we are doing for them.”
“I hope he does not die first from that knot in his belly,” Mrs. Liang had murmured. Then she had made a confession. “At first when I saw Uncle Tao is growing thinner and more yellow, I thought I better tell him let James cut him up. Then I tell myself, very good idea, but maybe James kills him, then who will protect my children here? Better I let him die slowly by himself.”
Chen roared out great laughter but Mary was shocked. “Ma, how can you be so wicked?” she had demanded. “Poor old Uncle Tao! I swear I like him more now than I did before you said such a thing. I shall try myself to persuade him to let James help him.”
Mrs. Liang sighed now, remembering this scene. Since she was married Mary had grown even more stubborn. If there was fault to be found with Chen it was that he did not deal firmly enough with his young wife. He laughed at her too much instead of scolding her. Mary had none of the softness which was so pleasant in Louise since she had married Alec. Mrs. Liang pondered on the strange contradictions in young people. One would have thought that Mary married to a Chinese husband would have become a docile Chinese wife. Instead, although she lived in the ancestral village, she behaved like an American, and without doubt she was planting rebellion in the hearts of many Chinese wives. But Louise, living in an American house, where women could be as willful as they liked, had grown sweet and obedient, as though she were in China. The world was very mixed nowadays!
The propellers had been whirling for some time, and now the engines were hammering and Mrs. Liang clutched her quivering stomach. She stopped thinking about her family in the ancestral village and her family in America and prepared to think only of herself.
Alone in his big apartment, except for Nellie rattling faintly in the distant kitchen, Dr. Liang was grateful for the added weeks before Mrs. Liang came back. Had she arrived on the appointed day she would have found him in the midst of his pain and distraction. He was still confused, still sore at heart, but pride and vanity were quelled, and he was able to be grateful that Violet Sung had made the decision. It was the wise decision for them both, although he had rebelled against it with his whole being. Indeed, after these weeks of utter solitude and quiet, he was somewhat astonished to look back on himself as he had been. He was still more astonished that he could have gone to London after Violet, as he had done. He leaned back in his deep red leather chair. Well, he had his memories—
After Mrs. Liang had gone, he had really lost his head. It was the only way he could describe it now. He had felt so free, so gay. The New York season had come on, and since he had no one to think of except himself he went everywhere. The most extraordinary thing was that he learned to dance. This would have been impossible had his wife been at home. Her astounded eyes would have accused him of unseemly behavior in his old age. But Violet had taught him and had praised him for his lightness. His one fault, which it seemed was a grave one, was that he had no sense of rhythm. When he was dancing with Violet, she supplied this for him, so that he had a feeling of dancing rather well. Since he was tall and he knew his own good looks, it was a pleasure to feel that people admired them together.
He supposed that they were together somewhat too much and therefore the Englishman was not to be blamed. Still, there had been nothing physical about it. There was no use denying, even now when everything was over, that there might have been. He had entered into a new phase, he told himself. He had been married so long and suddenly he had felt as though he were young and starting all over again. He refused Louise’s invitations to come to dinner, and he had not invited her and Alec to dinner, simply because he did not want even to remember that he had children.
Yet he had felt no evil. On the contrary, never had he felt so exalted, so noble, so good as he had during those days when he and Violet saw one another every day. Yes, it was every day! He had not tried to write anything, although he had begun a new book, an anthology of Chinese love poetry. He taught his classes, of course, and he felt his teaching was inspired. Marriage, he then realized, had never inspired him.
After nearly three weeks of this well-nigh perfect happiness Violet told him one day over the telephone that she could not see him. She had said something about a headache and a cold. The next day she had called him again, and had said she was flying to London.
All the misery of that moment overwhelmed him again in memory. “But why?” he had kept insisting.
She had answered vaguely that she would write and that it would be better for them not to meet. She would tell him everything.
He had destroyed the letter, but first he had carried it with him to London, and when he had seen her for the last time he had torn it in bits and dropped it from Westminster Bridge where they had met—wishing, but only almost, that he could throw himself after it. The letter had been unsatisfactory to him. She had not told him everything as she had said she would. She had simply said that Ranald Grahame had told her that unless she stopped seeing Dr. Liang, he would cut her off. She had thought about this carefully, she wrote him, and in view of all the lives involved, it seemed better to stay with Ranald. But she was his, always faithfully, Violet Sung. And there was no address below her name.
By the time he had this wretched letter in his hands she was already gone. He was beside himself and so badly did he conceal it that he caught Nellie’s eyes on him hard that day and so he told her he was ill and locked himself in his room. She stopped at the door with the tray and he had to get up and get it, because she declared since they were alone in the house she had better not come into his bedroom. He was insulted at the evil suggestion in this intense virtue but he could do nothing about it, and it insured him privacy when his door was shut.
Twenty-four hours of solitude made the desire to see Violet, to talk with her and to demand her return to him, grow into a ravening hunger in his bosom. He did not care what anyone thought and he would divorce his wife, or at least command her to stay on forever in the a
ncestral village. He arranged his affairs and told Nellie that he had had a summons from London. This summons he provided for by cabling to old Mr. Li to ask if he might stay with them. The invitation came back at once and he left the cablegram on the dining-room table where Nellie would read it. He used the power of his famous name in the Chinese Embassy and got a priority seat and flew to London within the week.
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.”
“I was not thinking of putting away my wife,” he said stiffly.
“
No, but you see,” she said, “Ranald is like your wife. I mean, he’s real, too.”
“He doesn’t marry you,” he said with purposeful cruelty.
“No,” she agreed. “But I think I don’t want him to. It doesn’t mean enough to me.”
He had grasped at this. “You don’t love him?”
She shook her head and the little dark curls of her hair, given her by her French mother, danced against her cheek. “No, but I trust him. Some day we will part. Perhaps it will be I who make the parting. But when that day comes he will not leave me destitute. He will provide for me—”
“Money, I suppose you mean,” he had said bitterly.
“Be reasonable,” she had said. “I need a good deal of money and he has a lot of it.”
“Suppose he marries?” He wanted to hurt her but she was not hurt.
“Even if he marries he will be grateful to me. He has a sense of obligation, you know, especially now that I have given you up.”
She had used him to make the Englishman feel an obligation!
When he accused her of this she denied it. “It is not like that,” she replied in her thoughtful musing way. “If you had been quite real, Wen Hua, I might have dared to—do anything. But for two people, both unreal, to leave the people they can trust—it would be very dangerous for us.”
“Why do you not trust me?” he had demanded.
She had lifted her dark eyes to him then. “You know yourself,” she replied.
He had not had the courage to press her. The truth from her lips might have destroyed him and he needed to believe in himself.
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