Pearl Buck - A House Divided

But the old Tiger was so pleased to see Yuan turn his face about and cease his weeping that he answered merrily, “You shall — you shall — only tell me who she is, my son, and let me send the go-between and do it, and I will tell your mother — after all, what cursed country maid is worthy of my son?’

Then Yuan, staring at his father while he spoke, began to see a thing in his own mind he had not known was there. “I do not need a go-between,” he said slowly, but his mind was not on these words. He began to see a face shape in his mind — a woman’s young face. “I can speak for myself. We speak for ourselves, these days, we young men—”

Now it was the Tiger’s turn to stare, and he said severely, “Son, what woman is there decent who can be so spoken to? You have not forgotten my old warnings against such women, son? Have you chosen a good woman, son?”

But Yuan smiled. He forgot debts and wars and all the troubles of these days. Suddenly his divided mind joined upon one clear way he had not seen at all. There was one to whom he could tell everything, and know what he must do! These old ones never could understand him nor his needs, they could not see that he belonged no more among them. No, they could not see any more than aliens could. But he knew a woman of his own times, not rooted in the old as he was and forever divided because he had no power to pull the roots up and plant them in the new and necessary times wherein his life must be — he saw her face clearer than any face in his whole life, its clearness making every face grow dim, dimming even his father’s face that was before his very eyes. She only could set him free from himself — only Mei-ling could set him free and tell him what he ought to do. She, who ordered everything she touched, could tell him what to do! His heart began to lift within him out of its own lightness. He must go back to her. He sat up quickly and put his feet to the floor. Then he remembered his father had put a question to him and he answered out of his dazing new joy, “A good woman? Yes, I have chosen a good woman, my father!”

And he felt such an impatience as he had not known before in all his life. Here were no doubts and no withdrawals. He would go at once to her.

And yet for all his sudden new impatience Yuan found he must stay his month out with his father. For when Yuan thought how he might find excuse to go away, the Tiger grew so hurt and downcast that Yuan could not but be moved and draw back the hints he had put forth of some business calling him to that coastal city. And he knew it was not fitting that he should not stay to see his mother, who during these days had been in that country where her old home once was. For this woman, ever since she had gone to the earthen house for Yuan, had returned to her childhood love of country life, and now that her two daughters were wed she went often to the village where once she had been a maid, and she found a home there with her eldest brother who suffered her willingly enough because she paid out silver and made a little lavish show as wife of a lord of war, and her brother’s wife liked the show because it set her up above the other village women. Though the trusty man sent a messenger to tell the mother Yuan was come, yet she had delayed a day or two.

And Yuan was the more willing and even anxious to see his mother and make plain to her that he would choose his own wife, and that he had chosen her already, and it only remained that he tell her so. Therefore he could and did live on the month, and this more easily because his uncle and the son went back soon to the old great house and Yuan was alone with his father.

But this joyful knowledge of Mei-ling made it easier for Yuan even to be courteous to his uncle, and he thought secretly with deep relief, “She will help me to find a way to settle off this debt. I will say nothing angry now — not until I have told her.” And so thinking he could say to his uncle steadily at parting, “Be sure I shall not forget the debt. But lend us no more moneys, uncle, for now my first care when this month is past, will be to find a good place for myself. As for your sons, I will do what I can for them.”

And the Tiger hearing it said stoutly, “Be sure, brother, that all will come back to you, for what I cannot do by war my son will do by government, for doubtless he will find a good official place, with all his knowledge.”

“Yes, doubtless, if he tries,” returned the merchant. But as he went he said to his son, “Put in Yuan’s hand the paper you have written.” And the son pulled a folded paper from his sleeve and handed it to Yuan and said in his little wordy way, “It is only the full counting out, my cousin, of those sums. We thought, my father and I, that you would want to know it all clearly.”

Even men Yuan could not be angry with these two little men. He took the paper gravely, smiling inwardly, and with every outward courtesy he sent them on their way.

Yes, nothing was so confused now as it had been for Yuan. He could be courteous to these two, and when they were gone he could be very patient with his father in the evenings when the old man told long garrulous tales of his wars and victories. For his son the Tiger lived his life over, and made much of all his battles and while he talked he drew down his old brows and pulled at his ragged whiskers and his eyes grew bright, and after all to him it seemed as he talked to his son that he had lived a very glorious life. But Yuan, sitting in calmness, half smiling when he heard the old Tiger’s shouts and saw his drawn brows and the thrust he made to show how he had stabbed the Leopard, only wondered how he ever could have feared his father.

Yet in the end the days passed not too slowly. For the thought of Mei-ling had come so suddenly to Yuan that he needed to live with only the thought for a while, and sometimes he was glad for the delay, even, and for the hours when he could sit and seem to listen to his father’s talk. Secretly he wondered to himself that he had been so dull to his own heart that he had not known before, even on the day of Ai-lan’s wedding, when, while he watched the marriage procession and had seen Ai-lan’s beauty, he had seen Mei-ling and thought her still more beautiful. That moment he should have known. And he should have known a score of times thereafter, when he had seen her here and there about the house, her hands ordering all, her voice directing the helping servants. But he had not known, not until he lay weeping and in loneliness.

Across such dreaming broke again and again the Tiger’s happy old voice, and Yuan could bear to sit and listen as he never could have done, had he not this new growing love inside himself. He listened in a dream to all his father said, not discerning at all between wars past or wars his father planned for the future, and his father prattled on, “I still do have a little revenue from that son my elder brother gave me. But he is no lord of war, no real lord. I dare not trust him much, he is so idle in his love of laughter — a born clown and he will die a clown, I swear. He says he is my lieutenant, but he sends me very little, and I have not been there now these six years. I must go in the spring — aye, I must make my rounds of battle in the spring. That nephew of mine, well I know he will turn straight over to any coming enemy, even against me he will turn—”

And Yuan, half listening, cared nothing for this cousin of his whom he scarcely could remember except his elder aunt liked to say, “My son who is a general in the north.”

Yes, it was pleasant to sit and answer his father a little now and then, and think of the maid he knew he loved. And many comforts came to him in these thoughts. He told himself he would not be ashamed to have her see these courts, for she would understand his shames. They both were of a kind, this was their country, whatever its shames were. He could even say to her, “My father is an old foolish war lord, so full of tales he does not know which is false and which is true. He sees himself a mighty man he never was.” Yes, he could say such things as those to her, and know she would comprehend. And when he thought of this simplicity she had he felt the false shames fall away from him. Oh, let him go to her, and be himself again, no more divided, but as he was those few days on the land, in that earthen home of his grandfather’s, when he had been alone and free! With her he could be alone and free and once more simple.