Pearl Buck - Gods Men

“Well, Henry?” she called, softening her melody without stopping it.

“Please, madame, Mr. Lane’s brother-in-law is here.”

“Mr. Jeremy Cameron?”

She had met Jeremy and William’s rather sweet sister Ruth. She had found it difficult to get on with Ruth’s soft effervescence, but Jeremy she thought charming, although it was unfortunate that he was also the brother of William’s first wife.

“I do hope you won’t mind it that I am Candace’s brother,” Jeremy had said directly when they were first alone. “I assure you that Candace entirely understands about things. She wouldn’t mind meeting you, as a matter of fact — she’s a warmhearted sort of creature.”

“I don’t mind in the least your being her brother,” Emory had replied.

“It’s not Mr. Jeremy, please madame,” Henry now said. “It’s the other brother-in-law — a Mr. Miller, I believe.”

“Oh—” Lady Emory rose from the piano. She knew about Henrietta who, William said, had married a strange sort of man named Clem, who had made an odd success in food monopolies. While she stood in the middle of the floor somewhat uncertain as to how she would receive Clem or whether she should receive him at all, he was at the door looking altogether shadowy, with his sandy gray hair blown about.

“Do come in,” she said.

She was struck by his excessive thinness and the startling blue of his eyes.

“You look cold!” she said with her involuntary kindness. “I think you should have some hot tea.”

To Henry, still hovering in the doorway, she said with distinctness, “Please fetch a pot of hot tea, Henry.”

“Yes, madame.” Henry’s voice breathed doubt as he disappeared.

Clem saw a woman, a lady, who was all gentleness and kindness. It was true that he felt ill for a moment when he first came in. He had eaten nothing since morning.

“I guess I am a little hungry,” he said and tried to smile.

She had him in a comfortable chair instantly and put a hassock under his feet. The fire burned pleasantly and the vast room was quiet about him. Everything was comforting and warm and he sighed away his haste and intensity. In his taut body one muscle and another relaxed. The man came back with hot tea and she poured him a cup.

“Bring him a soft-boiled egg,” she told the man.

“I can’t eat eggs,” Clem protested.

“Indeed you can,” she replied with firmness. “You want an egg — you are so pale.”

“No milk in my tea, please,” Clem said.

While he waited he drank two cups of the delicious hot tea and ate one of the hot biscuits she called scones, and when the egg came it was two, served in a covered cup. There were triangles of toast with it and he ate and felt renewed to the soul.

“Wonderful what food can do,” he said and smiled at her and she smiled back.

“I don’t know what to call you,” he said next.

“Emory, of course. You’re Clem, I know.”

“Aren’t you a lady or something?”

“In a way. Never mind that, though, now that I’m an American.”

Clem folded a small lace-edged napkin with care and put it on the tray.

“I see you believe in feeding folks and that’s what I came to see William about. Maybe he’s told you about me?”

“I believe he said you deal in foods?”

“I like to put it that I deal with people and getting them fed.”

He leaned forward, looking extraordinarily restored and reminding her somehow of the young men in London who were always talking in Hyde Park. She had never stopped to listen to any of them but often they had the same sandy look and shining, too blue eyes. While she sat gazing at him and thinking this, Clem was fluent in preaching his own gospel to this kindly, attentive woman. He had all but forgotten that she took Candace’s place and that he ought not to like her so much, but he did like her. Candace had been kind, too, but it was with a child’s kindness and he had never been sure she understood him. But this woman did understand and she was not at all a child. There was even something sad about her dark eyes.

“You see what I mean?” he paused to ask.

“I do see indeed,” she replied. “I think it is a wonderful idea, only of course you are far ahead of your times. That’s the tragedy of great primary ideas. You won’t live to see it believed or practiced that people have the right to food as they have the right to water and air. The holy trinity of human life!”

He could not bear to have her merely understand him or even believe in him. When one believed, one must act.

He put forth his effort again. “We’ve got to get people to see this, though. That is what I came to William for. He has such power over people.”

Emory looked at him with new and sudden interest. “Has he really?”

He was entirely sensitive to this interest and anxious to make the most of it. “I can’t tell you how great his power is. His newspapers go into every little town and household — little easy papers that everybody can read. And then there’s the pictures. If people don’t want to read they can look at the pictures. I read them, too, and look at all the pictures. The queer thing to me is that you don’t learn anything, though — Miss — Lady—”

“Just Emory,” she reminded him.

He could not quite manage it. “I mean that it’s all amusing and nice but you don’t learn anything from it. You don’t learn why it is that the people in Asia want a better life and you don’t learn why it is that things don’t look so good even with the new government in China.”

At the thought of China Clem fell into thought. “I don’t know—” he murmured. “I can’t tell. I don’t think things are going right over there. Maybe I’ll run over as soon as I see this depression through.” He lifted his head. “What I wanted to talk to William about — if he could get converted, so to speak, to this idea of feeding people. It won’t be charity. It won’t cost us money.”

He began to explain the golden rule of his restaurants and somewhere in the midst of it they looked up and saw William at the door, upon his face surprise and disgust.

“Come along in, William,” Emory said at once. “I am listening to the most fascinating man. It’s Clem.”

Thus she conveyed to William that he was to take from his face that look calculated to wound, and that he must come in and sit down and be kind to Clem, because she wished it. Their eyes met for a brief full second and William yielded. He yielded to Emory as he had never yielded to anyone.

“How do you do,” he said to Clem.

“Fine,” Clem said, “How’s yourself?”

William did not answer. He sat down and took from Emory’s hand a cup of tea.

“I really came to see you,” Clem said looking at him. “But I have surely enjoyed talking to your good wife here. She has treated me well — fed me up and all. I didn’t eat lunch today.”

William did not show interest.

“Will you have a sandwich or a scone?” Emory murmured.

“Neither, thank you,” William said.

Clem felt the atmosphere of the room change and he made haste to say what he had come for. Probably they wanted to be alone and anyway he had been here long enough. “I don’t want to waste your time, William, but I do want to give you an idea. Or set it before you, anyway. I read your editorials every day and I see that you put in one idea every day, I guess an idea of your own. I can’t agree with most of them but that’s neither here nor there. It’s a free country. But I notice that people take your ideas pretty nearly wholesale. I move around a lot through the country and I hear men say things that I can see come right out of your mouth, so to speak. I can see you understand how most people are. They don’t know much and they talk a lot and naturally they have to have something to say and so they say what they hear somebody else say or what they read in the newspaper. I admire the way you can lay down something in a short plain way.”