Pearl Buck - Patriot

He looked at them grimly.

“They make me think of wasps,” he told Tama. “They are determined not to leave us alone. But I shall not leave you until I know you are safe — in yourself, I mean. For I know if you make up your mind—”

She looked at him steadily, her dark eyes large. She was very pale. In his agitation he had not noticed this until now.

“If there is to be no war,” she said, “of course I will not marry him.”

So at last he had her promise!

“Then I shall ask your father for you,” he said gravely. “Count upon that. I shall be as old-fashioned as he likes. I’ll find a go-between and make the proper presents. You will hear nothing until it is all arranged.”

She put the silver grasses to her cheek and said nothing. He bowed, looked deeply into her eyes, and went away. When he turned back once to see her, she was surrounded zealously by the maidservants, and in the garden he saw Madame Muraki, hurrying so fast her robes seemed to weave about her as she glided. But he did not care. All that needed to be said was said.

With no further farewells and seeing no one, he left the house and returned to Yokohama.

At last the newspapers declared and it was cried upon the streets that there would be no war in Manchuria. As he had guessed, “arrangements,” the papers said, would be made. The League of Nations had been invoked. That meant the government — that was Chiang Kai-shek — did not want to fight. He could see his father behind this, manipulating peace.

He turned his thoughts away — no use thinking of those things which he could not control or change! Peace! Peace for him meant only Tama — Tama and long happy quiet years together. He was glad now that he had not come to love Tama quickly or impulsively, but slowly through four years of acquaintance and friendship and love. He had had time to face everything in that marriage before it took place. Now when it came, as it must, with this peace, it would be eternal. He would live his own sort of life apart, working, studying, enjoying, he and Tama together, years of individual peace and fulfillment. Let the nations take care of themselves. In such a world an intelligent being had no hope of life unless he enclosed himself in a small world of his own making.

He said nothing to anyone, but he went about his private plans, sure of Tama. He had already found an old professional matchmaker and now he went to him, and for a fee the man agreed eagerly to go to Mr. Muraki and put forth I-wan’s request.

“But your photograph!” the old man cried.

I-wan was about to say, “They know how I look.” Then he was silent. Let it all proceed according to custom. In seeming conformity a man was safe. He had had enough of rebellions. They had brought him nothing. He went out and had a picture taken and when it was finished — and he paid to have it quickly done — he gave it to the old man. There was nothing unusual about his pictured face, he thought. He looked pale and solemn and commonplace in his western clothes, and the Japanese photographer, trying to improve him, had retouched his features and given them a curious Japanese look. His eyes seemed to stare and his mouth was drawn out of its real likeness, but these things did not matter.

“And I will bring you back her picture, too,” the old man said slyly.

“No need,” I-wan replied quickly, “I have seen her.”

“No, but a picture is your due,” the old man insisted. “Besides, you can look at it as long as you like. That’s better than peeping at her.”

He was making a great show of justice to be done his client, and I-wan smiled and let it pass and went away.

No war! Life fell out wryly enough, he thought, walking along the gay, narrow streets. He stopped and bought a newspaper and read it as he strolled along. But he could make nothing of it. He knew by now that the papers said only what men like General Seki wanted them to say. There were headlines here about renegade battalions, bandits that were creating disturbances because they would not surrender to the Japanese. If En-lan were alive, he would have been among them. But doubtless he was dead. Because of these bandits, the paper said, the Japanese had only with difficulty restored order and safety for their nationals. It was impossible to know what those words meant — order and safety!

At least, they meant peace, and above everything now he wanted peace and the things of peace. He wanted Tama to be his wife, to make his home. He was done with all causes. When it was all settled he would write to his father. He tossed the newspaper away and the wind caught it merrily as though it were a kite and rushed it flying and crackling down the street.

He did not expect an old man to move quickly, and he waited for a while, therefore, in some patience. In the night when he awoke and lay thinking, the darkness oppressed him and he feared that he had been too hopeful and that Tama was not so sure as he had counted. But when day came he remembered again how sure she had looked when he left her. He felt an enormous stability in her. There was none of Peony’s light waywardness and teasing. If Tama said she would do a thing he could be sure of it. Duty she would do, as she would have married General Seki, for she had been trained to do her duty. Yet she was not like an old-fashioned Japanese woman who gave blind obedience to the man over her. The same stubbornness which could carry Tama one way, could carry her away from it, too, if she thought it right. He trusted her and was comforted and went quietly about his work.

New shipments came in every day and others went out. He grew hardened to seeing boxes unpacked and pouring out all sorts of Chinese treasures. He grew used to Shio hovering over everything and choosing what he wanted to keep. Shio’s instinct never failed him. Whatever was priceless he kept.

“Those white men,” he explained to I-wan, half apologetically, “do not know the difference between what is merely rare and what is unique and perfect. I will keep in Japan that which is perfect. Here it belongs, and here is its home. In times to come, all that is perfect in the world will find its home with us. No one values beauty as we do.”

I-wan did not answer. He never answered Shio. It was true that he had never seen any one eat and drink beauty as Shio did. He did seem actually to feed upon the porcelains and the ivories, the paintings and the tapestries which he loved. When he was tired, and he was easily tired, for he worked long hours and ate little and was a small thin man by nature, if he sat for a while caressing a jade or a smooth pottery bowl or a bottle vase, a sort of peace came over him and he looked stronger, as though he had been fed. In the palm of his hand he held continually a piece of old white jade, oily smooth with long handling and as warm as flesh. When he sat counting and muttering over his figures, he leaned his cheek upon the hand holding this jade. He said it kept his head from aching.

I-wan, looking at him with a new curiosity now, saw nothing in his pallid face of Tama’s round cheeks and healthy looks. Yet they were of one blood, and he must call Shio brother, and something of Shio would go into his children, perhaps. Well, he was a harmless man, at least, and if he went dazed with beauty, there were others who went dazed for less. This whole country was a little mad for beauty, I-wan thought. Men so poor they ate a handful of cold rice for a meal found a few cents somehow to buy a flower pot and seeds to plant. Tama would keep his house beautiful with flowers, too, because she had been taught that a room was empty if it held no flowers.

It was not until the eighteenth day of the next month that the old matchmaker came back, and I-wan was beginning to lie half his nights awake, wondering what had gone wrong. He had all but decided to go himself and see, when suddenly one night when he went to his room he found the old man there in the one big chair, smoking his pipe peacefully enough.