Pearl Buck - Kinfolk

Mary had been reading the letter aloud solemnly to the two on either side of her. Now she paused and the letter fell to her lap. She gazed at the bridge, shimmering in the afternoon heat. The water in the river was as smooth as oil. “This helps me to understand something about our mother,” she said. “She is cruel to animals, too, though she is kind enough to people. How she hates the little dogs that women make pets of here!”

“They are pretty silly, though,” Peter said.

“She doesn’t like to see animals treated as human beings,” Louise suggested.

“It’s more than that,” Mary said soberly. She took up the letter again and read on.

When James had reached Peking, he wrote, he had gone straight to the hospital and had found two comfortable rooms ready for him. It was like stepping back into New York. The hospital was very fine and luxurious, built by Americans with American money. The Japanese had left it alone, or very nearly, and the equipment, while not of the latest, was still very good. The view from his windows was superb. The city roofs were delicately shaped and old courtyards were rich with ancient trees. Over the city wall in the distance were the bare outlines of mountains. He had been here only a week and so he had not taken time to do any sight-seeing, but Peking was the way he had dreamed China looked. The streets were wide and the gates were massive and beautiful. Everything had been built with the outlook of centuries in the past and centuries yet to come. The city seemed indestructible. It made him proud to be a Chinese. He had gone to see the marble bridge because their father had told him it was even more beautiful than the George Washington Bridge. It was impossible to compare them. This bridge in Peking was made of marble and stone and there were sculptured lions on it. It was true that the mounting curve was matchless.

The three, reading, lifted their eyes again to the curve of steel beyond where they sat. It soared against the sky, as modern as the century in which they lived. They could not imagine a bridge of marble with sculptured lions.

Peking, James wrote, made him want to send for them all. People told him that the winters were cold and that in the early spring yellow dust floated over the city, borne by bitter winds from the northern desert. Summer was the perfect season. He was really very happy. Something deep in his soul was being satisfied. He worked hard but he did not tire as he had in New York. He felt relaxed. Nobody hurried and yet more work was done, he believed, than he had ever seen done before. People moved at an even, steady pace, their minds at ease. They seemed ready for any fate. They were sturdy and self-confident. He was beginning to understand Americans better than he had even when he was with them. He felt now that Americans suffered from submerged feelings of guilt, as though they knew they were not as good as they wanted to be or wanted people to think they were. But here in Peking people did not care what other people thought, and so they could be only as good as they wanted to be. Life flowed, like a river.

“It sounds like heaven,” Mary said, and her eyes dreamed.

Neither Peter nor Louise answered.

She read on. “I feel that if Lili saw this place she would be willing to come to me,” James wrote. “Houses are not hard to find. We could live very happily — she would not need to work. She could live as idly as a lily, indeed, and being so beautiful who would blame her?”

Mary stopped here. What James commissioned her to do in the next few sentences was only for her eyes. But Peter gave a yelp. He rose and straightened the fold in his trousers carefully. “Tell Jim he is way back in the past so far as that young woman is concerned. She’s been tentatively engaged to three men since she was tentatively engaged to him.”

“Don’t talk so,” Mary commanded him.

“Ting told me,” Peter retorted. “Ting says he is going to get his dad to put pressure on old Li. It’s the only way to pin Lili down.”

“What pressure?” Mary asked.

“Ting says old Li was really a collaborator with the Japs and his dad has the proof. He skipped out just in time to avoid getting put in jail — or coughing up a couple of million to put into certain outstretched hands.”

Both girls stared at him. “Really?” Louise murmured. She enjoyed gossip.

“Tell Jim unless he can put on pressure, too, he had just better forget the whole business,” Peter said. He set his straw hat at an angle. “’By, kids! I promised Ting to meet him. We’re going to run out to the beach with a couple of girls.”

His sisters did not speak. They watched him thoughtfully as he sauntered to the street, hailed a taxi, and disappeared.

“Do you think we ought to tell Mother what he does?” Louise asked.

“She can’t do anything,” Mary said. “He needs to go away from America. I wish Jim would send for him.”

“Peter doesn’t know enough to be of any use anywhere,” Louise yawned. “I’m going home to sleep — Estelle wants me to go to a dance with them tonight.”

“Where?” Mary asked.

“Some roof or other,” Louise answered indifferently. She hid from her shrewd elder sister the excitement of her heart. Tonight she would dance with Philip. Estelle was making it a party of four.

Alone on the bench, Mary read again the letter from beginning to end, trying to imagine scene by scene what it contained. But she had no experience to feed her imagination with reality, and at last she rose and walked home. The house was quiet and in the living room her father still slept, his face handsome and full of peace. She tiptoed into his study and took the receiver from the telephone and dialed.

“Oh, please, is Lili there?” she asked, when she heard Mollie’s voice.

“I’ll call her, miss,” Mollie’s stolid voice answered. She listened and heard Mollie’s heavy footsteps, Lili’s little cry of surprise, Lili’s high heels tripping over bare floors, and then Lili’s sweet voice that sounded falsetto over the wires.

“Yes, ye-es?” That was Lili.

“Lili, this is Mary. I’ve had a letter from Jim. Shall I bring it over?”

There was a pause, and Lili laughed. “Oh, lovelee!” she trilled. “But Mary, just now I am so busy.”

“Then when?” Mary asked firmly.

“Oh ye-es, let me see, Mary — shall I call you?”

Mary’s ready temper flew from her heart. “Don’t trouble — you don’t want to hear it, Lili. Why don’t you say so?”

“But I do, very much!”

“You do not.”

“Ye-es, Mary, please come over now — with the letter, please!”

“You are busy,” Mary said cruelly.

“Ye-es — never mind. You come now, please. I don’t do anything else. I just wait for you.”

The pretty voice was pleading. Mary longed to refuse, but she dared not. She must do what she could for James.

“All right,” she said shortly. “I’m on my way now.”

She put up the telephone and went at once, letting herself out of the house silently. She did not want anyone to know where she was, for she did not want anyone to know what happened — whatever it was to be.

Lili was lying on a couch in her bedroom and there Mollie led Mary. “She says to tell you she’s got only a little while, being as she’s promised to go to a tea,” Mollie said at the door,

“I shan’t need but a little while,” Mary said.

There was no hint of haste in Lili’s calm manner. She put out her soft hand to Mary. “You know, I’m glad you told me about Jim’s letter. I feel so bad here — about Jim.” She held her hand on her left breast. She had taken off her Chinese gown and lay in a delicate lace-trimmed American slip. American dress she considered ugly, but she wore American underwear with joy. Her bare shoulders and arms were exquisite ivory. Mary looked away from them. It seemed in some strange fashion a desecration that she should be here in this intimate room and James so far away.