Pearl Buck - Kinfolk

She was out in the street at last. It was hot and dusty with the late summer lingering into autumn and people looked tired. She walked slowly toward the river, biting her lips and trembling as she went. She longed exceedingly for James. Yet how could this ever be put into a letter? And what could she do indeed? Her parents, she knew, were worse than useless. They would be utterly bewildered. In old China Louise would have been put to death. But old China was gone. Young Chinese women since the war — well, there had been plenty of American GI babies with Chinese mothers. That would be no argument with her parents. In a strange mixed fashion, for all her father’s modernity, he still belonged to the old China because for him China was something Confucius had made, and Confucius would have said that certainly Louise ought to die, because she had dishonored the family. Her father would not say Louise had to die, but he would make up his mind never to forgive her.

Mary sat down on a bench by the river and lifted her eyes toward the bridge. It shimmered a beaten silver, and in the haze of noonday the arch lifted high above reality and the distant end was miragelike. James seemed lost to her, as though he were in another world. China was another world, a better one than this, she ardently believed. She felt profoundly lonely without her brother, the only person in the family with whom she could communicate. She had never, as Louise had, thrown herself into her school life. Around her was always the cloak of indifference, of being Chinese, and on guard alike against hostility or too lavish adoration, she had maintained herself separate. Only James had crossed that barrier and with him alone had she found friendship and companionship. Since he had gone, she had scarcely spoken to anyone beyond the casual talk of small necessities.

Now her pent-up heart demanded frankness, and as she sat there, a small solitary figure, resolutely ignoring the tentative eyes of curious men as they strolled past and yet feeling them with a sort of subdued anger, residual from her disgust with Louise, she began to think of Philip. There was Philip. He, too, had been responsible, and he ought to know what he had done to their family. A Chinese girl was part of her family until she married and became part of another family, and nothing could separate her. What had happened to her brought its weight upon them all. She ought to go and talk to Philip. If James were here he would talk to him, without doubt or hesitation, but James was not here, and Peter was too young, and so she must do it, for obviously her father could not. Her father could be angry and he could even beat Louise but he would not lower himself to talk to Philip. He would say and perhaps rightly that Louise was to blame because the woman is always to blame.

She sighed and then got up and crossed the street to a drugstore. There at the pay telephone she called Estelle Morgan. A maid answered. Miss Estelle was not back yet from the sea-shore. Was Philip there? Mr. Philip was just leaving for an appointment at his father’s office. Could she speak to him, then? It was urgent. A moment later Philip’s fresh tenor voice came over the wires.

“Hello?”

She knew him a little, not much. She had seen him two or three times when he came for Louise, but usually Louise met him outside. She remembered him as tall, and somewhat too slender for his height, and she remembered that his face looked too young and perhaps too fine-featured for a man.

“Philip Morgan?”

“Yes.”

“This is Mary Liang. Could you — may I — talk with you for a few minutes? Not over the telephone, I mean. It’s — it’s quite important.”

A second pause, then two and three before he answered. “Yes, of course, Mary. Only it just happens that I have to meet my father. He’s waiting at the office for me.”

“If I got into a taxi, could you wait for me and we could drive downtown together?”

There was a second’s pause again, then two, then three.

“All right, Mary.”

He hung up the receiver and she flew to the door and caught a passing taxi and gave the address while she slammed the door.

In ten minutes she drew up before the quiet house in Sutton Place, and then she saw Philip come out of the door. He smiled in answer to the doorman’s greeting, and she caught a fleet look of surprise on that doorman’s face when he opened the taxi and saw her there.

“Hello, Mary,” Philip said. He sat down beside her.

“Hello,” she replied, and felt his wary diffident mood.

“Stays hot, doesn’t it?” he asked, trying to be casual.

“Yes,” she replied. Then she took her heart in her hands. She had only a few minutes. But she needed only a few minutes to find out all she needed to know.

“Philip,” she began impetuously, “I have to hurry because I know you haven’t much time. But I must tell you that my father has found out about you and Louise. He is very angry. He has told her that she must go to China right away. She doesn’t want to go. I think you know why. But I want to know how you feel. I mean — what I want to say is — if you are in love with Louise—”

Her face burned scarlet and she turned her head away. The taxi was racing downtown. She wished it would go more slowly. There had to be time. A light changed to red and the taxi stopped. She forced herself to look at Philip. His pale face had turned even more pale.

“I’m not in love — with anybody,” he said.

“Then why did you—” she began, and could not go on.

His eyes were downcast and he had dropped his head so that she could not look at him. His profile was gentle and his lips were trembling. She could see how Louise had come to love him. He was not coarse and big-nosed as so many Americans were, and his skin was smooth and delicate, his hair and eyes were brown. She felt rather sorry for him.

“I don’t know how it happened,” he stammered. “Gosh, I like Louise awfully. We were all having too good a time, I guess. It was pretty late. I’m afraid I was a little tight—”

“When was it?” she asked in a faint voice.

“Only a couple of weeks ago—” he muttered. “We were all at a roadhouse. I’m awfully sorry. I could kick myself. The funny thing is — I guess it was the first time for both of us. We were both — scared.”

The light changed and the taxi jerked them forward. He caught her arm and she shrank from his touch. She would have got out before the light changed, because now she knew everything she had to know. No, there was one more thing.

“I suppose your family wouldn’t want you to marry — a Chinese girl, even if you did want to?”

“My mother wouldn’t like it,” Philip said huskily. “My dad is more — broadminded. Of course we all like Louise awfully. She’s pretty and smart and all that.”

There was no sign whatever of love in his voice or his eyes. She stopped feeling sorry for him and she grew angry enough to want to defend her sister. “I suppose you don’t know what you have done to our family,” she said bitterly. “It is easy for you Americans, but for us — it just spoils her chances of a good marriage — I mean, it would have to be told. And it would always be between her and her husband.”

“Gosh,” he said miserably, “I’m sorry.”

She wanted to wound him and she did not know how. “If it had been in the old times in China you’d both be killed,” she went on.

“Gosh,” he said again. “I guess we ought to be glad it’s not old times.”

To her surprise when he said this she wanted to cry. Her throat grew tight and her eyes filled with tears. He did not know what he had done and nothing could make him know because he had nothing with which to understand what he had done. It had simply been, with him, an evening’s drunkenness, then something more of fun, and now something he was vaguely sorry for. In her fury she imagined that he would have taken it more seriously had Louise not been Chinese, though it was a hundred times more serious for that very reason. But he would not understand that either — or care.