In this mood of weakness he arose early, having not slept at all, and he went to find the lady and he roused her at her door and when she came to open it, he gave the letter to her mutely and waited while she read it. Her face changed at the words. She said quietly, “You are exhausted. Go and eat your breakfast. And force the food a little, son, for its heat will restore you, even though I know now you think you cannot swallow. But eat. I will come quickly.”
Yuan did obediently what she said. He set himself before the table, and when the serving maid had brought the hot morning gruel of rice and the condiments and the foreign breads the lady liked to eat, he did force himself. Soon the hot food sent its heat into him, and he began to feel more cheered, and less hopeless than he had been in the night, so that when the lady came he looked at her and said, “Almost I am ready to say I will not go.” The lady sat down then, too, and took up a little loaf and ate it slowly, thinking while she ate, and then she said, “If so be you can say this, Yuan, I will stand by you. I will not put strength into you, to force your decision, for it is your own life and he is your father. If you feel your old duty to him stronger than the duty to yourself, then return to him. I will not blame you. But if you will not go back, then stay on, and I will help you somehow at every step. I am not afraid.”
At these words Yuan felt courage coming into him again, a good rising courage, almost enough to make him dare against his father. But still it needed Ai-lan’s recklessness to finish out his courage. When he came home that noon there Ai-lan was, playing in the parlor with a little dog she had had given her by the man Wu, a tiny furry black-nosed toy which she loved very well. When Yuan came in she looked up and cried out, “Yuan, my mother told me something today and bade me talk with you because I am young, too, and she thought it would be only just that you know what a maid would say these days. Why, Yuan, you would be a fool to listen to that old man! What if he is our father? How can we help that? Why, Yuan, not I nor any of my friends would think of such a folly as to go and wed a person we had never seen! Say you will not — what can he do? He cannot come and fetch you here with his armies. In this city you are safe — you are not a child — your life belongs to you — some day you will wed rightly as you like. You are too good for an ignorant wife who cannot write her name — and even she might have her feet bound! And do not forget these days that we new women will not be concubines. No, that we will not. If you marry such a woman as your father chooses, you are married to her. She is your wife. I would not bear to be a second wife. If I chose a man already married, then he must turn away his first wife and live with her no more, and I must be the only one. I have so sworn it. Yuan, we have a sisterhood, we new women, and we have so sworn that we will never marry rather than marry to be concubines. Better then if you do not obey your father now, for it will not be easier in the end.”
These words of Ai-lan’s did what Yuan could not do for himself. Listening to her voice, now made so earnest for all its soft willfulness, and thinking of the many like her in this city, he came to think under the magic of her brilliant, willful beauty, “It is true I do not belong to my father’s time. It is true he has not this right nowadays over me. It is true — it is true—”
And under this new strength he went straight to his room and he wrote quickly while he felt courageous, “I will not come home for such a thing, my father. I have my right to live these days. These are the new times.” And then Yuan sat and thought awhile, and doubted perhaps that the words were too bold, and he thought it might help them if he added a few milder ones and so he added, “Besides, it is the end of the term of school, and it is a very ill time for me to come, and if I come I miss the examinations, and my work of many moons is lost. Release me, therefore, my father, though the truth is I do not want to wed.” So though he put at the first and last of the letter the proper courteous words, and he added these few mild words, still Yuan wrote his meaning plain. And he would not trust the letter to a serving man. He put the stamp on and himself went down the sunlit city street and thrust the letter in the box for it.
Once it was gone he felt stronger and at ease. He would not recall what he had written, and going homeward again he was glad, and among all these modern men and women walking to and fro upon the streets he felt yet stronger and more sure. It was true that in these times what his father had required of him was an absurdity. These people on these streets, if he told them, would only laugh at such old dead ways, and cry him for a fool to feel any fear. Mingling thus among them Yuan felt suddenly very safe. This was his world — this new world — this world of men and women free and free to live in each his own way. He felt a darkness lifted from him, and suddenly he thought he would not go home yet to sit and study. He would be amused awhile at something. There beside him on the street was the great glitter of a pleasure house, and in letters of many languages a sign said, “Showing Today the Greatest Film of the Year, ‘The Way of Love.’ ” And Yuan turned and joined the many who went into that wide-flung door.
But the Tiger was not so easily denied as this. In less than seven days he had written his answer back, and this time he wrote three letters, one to Yuan, one to the lady, and the third one to his elder brother. But they all said the same thing in different ways, although he had not written the letters himself, so the language was more smooth. Yet the very smoothness seemed to make the words more cold and angry. What they said was this, that his son Yuan would be wed on the thirtieth of that same moon, for the geomancer had said this was the lucky day to wed him. Because the young man his son could not return to his home on that day, since the examinations of the school were set for then, the parents had decided that he must be wed by proxy, and so a cousin would stand up for him who was Wang the Merchant’s eldest son and who could answer in his place. But Yuan would be truly wed upon that day, as truly as though he came himself.
These words Yuan read in his letter. So did the Tiger have his will, and Yuan knew his father never could have been so cruel except that he was forced to it by anger, and Yuan felt that anger and was afraid of it again.
And now indeed the thing was too strong for Yuan. For by the old law the Tiger did no more than he had right to do, and no more than many fathers have done always. Yuan knew this very well, and that day when he had this letter, and the servant had given it to him as he came within the door, so that he stood there in the little hall alone and read it, he felt all his courage ebb away from him. What was he, one lone youth, to do against the gathered power of all these old centuries? He turned slowly and went into the parlor. Ai-lan’s little dog was there and came and rubbed against him, snuffling, and when Yuan paid no heed to it, barked a short high bark or two. Still Yuan did not heed it, though commonly he could laugh at this little fierce lion of a dog. He sat down and leaned his head in his hands and let the dog bark on.
But the barking called the lady, and she came in to see what was wrong and if a stranger had come in, and when she saw Yuan, very well she knew what was wrong. She said soothingly, for she had her letter earlier, “You are not to give up, son. This is more than a matter for you now. I will ask your uncle here and your aunt and your elder cousin, and we will talk it over in a council to see what shall be done. Your father is not the only one in this family, nor even the eldest one. If your uncle will be strong, it may be we can divert your father’s will by some persuasion.”