Pearl Buck - A House Divided

Now all these days Mei-ling had not seemed to see Yuan, so busy had she been, but that one night when he came out of his room dressed in his black foreign clothes which he had been used to wear at evening, she happened to pass him, holding in her arms the little new boy who was asleep. She asked wonderingly, “Where are you going, Yuan?” He answered, “To an evening’s merry-making with Sheng and Ai-lan’s husband.”

He fancied at that moment he saw a look change in Mei-ling’s face. But he was not sure, and then he thought he must be wrong, for she only held the sleeping child more closely to her and said quietly, “I hope you have a merry time, then,” and so she went on.

As for Yuan, he went his way hardened against her, and to himself he thought, “Well, then, I will be merry. This is my last evening and I will see how to make it very merry.”

And so he did. That night Yuan did what he had never done before. He drank wine freely and whenever anyone called out to him to drink, and he drank until he did not see clearly the face of any maid he danced with, but he only knew he had some maid or other in his arms. He drank so much of foreign wines to which he was not used, that all the great flower-decked pleasure hall grew before his eyes into a sort of swimming glittering moving maze of brightness. Yet for all this he held his drunkenness inside him very well, so that none knew except himself how drunken he truly was. Even Sheng cried out in praise of him, and said, “Yuan, you are a lucky fellow! You are one of those who grow paler as he drinks instead of red as we lesser fellows do! I swear it is only your eyes that betray you, but they burn as hot as coals!”

Now in this night’s drinking he met one whom he had seen somewhere before. She was a woman whom Sheng brought to him, saying, “Here is a new friend of mine, Yuan! I’ll lend her to you for a dance, and then you must tell me if you have found one who does so well!” So Yuan found himself with her in his arms, a strange little slender creature in a long foreign dress of white glittering stuff, and when he looked down at her face he thought he knew it, for it was not a face easily forgotten, very round and dark, and the lips thick and passionate, a face not beautiful, but strange and to be looked at more than once. Then she said herself, half wondering, “Why, I know you — we were on the same boat, do you remember?” Then Yuan forced his hot brain and he did remember and he said, smiling, “You are the girl who cried you would be free always.”

At this her great black eyes grew grave and her full lips, which were painted thick and very red, pouted and she answered, “It is not easy being free here. Oh, I suppose I am free enough — but horribly lonely—” And suddenly she stopped dancing and pulled Yuan’s sleeve and cried, “Come and sit down somewhere and talk with me. Have you been as miserable as I? … Look, I am the youngest child of my mother who is dead, and my father is next to the chief governor of the city. … He has four concubines — all nothing but singsong girls — you can imagine the life I lead! I know your sister. She is pretty, but she is like all the others. Do you know what their life is? It is gamble all day, gossip, dance all night! I can’t live it — I want to do something — What are you doing?”

These earnest words came so strangely from her painted lips that Yuan could not but heed them. She listened restlessly after a while when Yuan told her of the new city and his work there, and how he had found a little place of his own and, he thought, a small work to do. When Sheng came and took her hand to bring her back into the dance, she thrust him pettishly away, and pouted her too full lips at him, and she cried earnestly, “Leave me alone! I want to talk seriously with him—”

At this Sheng laughed, and said teasingly, “Yuan, you would make me jealous if I thought she could be serious about anything!”

But the girl had turned already again to Yuan and she began to pour out her passionate heart to him, and all her body spoke, too, the little round bare shoulders shrugging, and her pretty plump hands moving in her earnestness, “Oh, I hate it all so — don’t you? I can’t go abroad again — my father won’t give me the money — he says he can’t waste any more on me — and all those wives gambling from morning to night! I hate it here! The concubines all say nasty things about me because I go places with men!”

Now Yuan did not like this girl at all, for he was repelled by her naked bosom and by her foreign garb and by her too red lips, but still he could feel her earnestness and be sorry for her plight and so he said, “Why do you not find something to do?”

“What can I do?” she asked. “Do you know what I specialized in in college? Interior decoration for western homes! I’ve done my own room over. I’ve done a little in a friend’s house, but not for pay. Who here wants what I have? I want to belong here, it’s my country, but I’ve been away too long. I have no place anywhere — no country—”

By now Yuan had forgotten this was an evening meant for pleasure, he was so moved by the poor creature’s plight. There she sat before his pitying gaze, gay in her silly shining clothes, and her painted eyes full of tears.

But before he could think of a thing to say for her comfort Sheng was back again. And now he would not have refusal. He did not see her tears. He put his arm about her waist and laughing at her he swept her off with him into the whirling music, and Yuan was left alone.

Somehow he had no heart to dance more, and all the gaiety was gone from the noisy hall. Once the girl came by in Sheng’s arms, and now her face was turned up to his, and it was bright and empty again and as though she had never spoken the words she had to Yuan. … He sat thoughtfully awhile, and let a servant fill his glass again and again, while he sat on alone.

At the end of that night of pleasure, when they went home again, Yuan was steady still, though it was true the wine burned inside him like a fever. Yet he could be strong enough to let Ai-lan’s husband lean on him, for that one could not walk alone any more, he was so drunken, and his whole face was crimson and he babbled like a foolish child.

Now when Yuan struck at the door to be let in that night it opened suddenly and there by the manservant who had opened it was Mei-ling herself, and when the drunken man saw her he seemed to think of something he remembered between Yuan and Mei-ling, and he cried, “You — you — should have gone — there was a — a pretty rival — she wouldn’t — leave Yuan — dangerous, eh?” And he fell to laughing foolishly.

Mei-ling answered nothing. When she saw the two she said to the servant coldly, “Take my sister’s lord to his bed, since he is so drunken!”

But when he was gone she held Yuan there with a sudden blazing gaze. Thus were these two alone at last, and when Yuan felt Mei-ling’s great angry eyes on him, it was like a sobering blast of cold north wind upon him. He felt the heat within him die down quickly, and for an instant he almost feared her, she was so tall and straight and angry, and he was speechless.

But she was not. No, all these days she had scarcely spoken to him, but now she did, and her words leaped from her, and she said, “You are like all the others, Yuan, — like all the other foolish idle Wangs! I have made myself a fool. I thought, ‘Yuan is different — he is not a half-foreign fop, drinking and dancing all his good years away!’ But you are — you are! Look at you! Look at your silly foreign clothes — you reek of wine — you are drunk, too!”

But Yuan grew angry at this and sulky as a boy and he muttered, “You would not give me anything — you know how I have waited for you — and you have made excuses and excuses—”