Yuan said, wondering, “But I thought Mei-ling only a child — I remember her only a child—”
“She is twenty years old,” the lady answered quietly, “and very far past childhood. In mind she is much older than that, and older than Ai-lan, who is three years more than twenty — a very brave quiet maid Mei-ling is. I went one day and saw her help the doctor who cut a great thing from a woman’s neck, and her hands were as steady as a man’s to do it, and the doctor praised her because she did not tremble and was not frightened by the gush of blood. Nothing frightens her — a very brave quiet maid. Yet she and Ai-lan like each other, though she will not follow Ai-lan to her pleasures, and Ai-lan would not see the things that Mei-ling does.”
By now they sat in the lady’s sitting room alone, for Mei-ling had gone away at once, and no one was near except the servant who brought tea and comfits in and out, and Yuan asked curiously, “I thought this Wu was bound to another wife, my mother—”
At this the lady sighed and answered, “I knew you would wonder. I have been through such a trouble with Ai-lan! Yuan, she would have him and he would have her, and there was nothing to be said, — no way to persuade her to anything. That was the reason why I took this greater house, because I thought if they must meet it might be here — since meet they would, and all that I could do was to fend off more until he could divorce his old wife and be free. …And it was true she was an old-fashioned woman, Yuan, one his parents had chosen for him and wed to him when he was sixteen. Ai, I do not know whom to pity most, the man or that poor soul! I seem to feel in me the sorrows of them both. I was wed like that, too, and not loved, and so I felt myself her. And yet I promised myself I would let my daughter wed where she would because I know what it is to be not loved, and so it is that I feel the troubles of them both. But it is arranged now, Yuan, in the way such things are arranged — too easily, I fear, nowadays. He is free, and she, poor woman, returns to the inland city of her birth. I went to see her at the last, for she lived here with him — though not really, she said, with him. There she was with her two maids putting her garments in the red leathern boxes she had bought as part of her marriage portion. And all she said to me was, ‘I knew this end must come — I knew this end must come,’—a woman not beautiful and older by five years than he, speaking no foreign tongue, as all must speak these days, and even with her feet once bound, though she strove to hide this in big foreign shoes. For her indeed it is the end — what is left to her now? I did not ask. I must think most of Ai-lan now. We can do nothing in these days, we old ones, except let the new sweep us on as it will. … Who can do anything? The country is upset, and anyhow, and there is nothing left to guide us — no rule, no punishment.”
Yuan only smiled a little when she ended thus. She sat, old and quiet and always a little sad, her hair white, and she said the things the old always say.
For in himself he felt only courage and hopefulness. In the day he had been back, in the few hours even, this city somehow gave him courage. It was so busy and so rich. Everywhere even in his quick passing he saw great new shops were raised up, shops to sell machines, and shops to sell goods of every kind from all parts of the world. No longer were there many humble streets lined with the low-roofed simple shops of homely merchandise. The city was a center of the world, and new buildings heaped on buildings, higher and higher. In the six years he had been gone a score of mighty buildings had flung themselves up against the sky.
That first night before he slept he stood at the window of his room and looked out across the city, and he thought, “It looks almost like the city where Sheng is abroad.” There about him were blazing lights and noise of motors and the deep hum of a million humans and all the rush and throb of restless growing pushing life. This was his country. The letters hung in flame against the moonless clouds were letters of his own tongue, proclaiming goods his own countrymen were making. The city was his own, and great as any in the world. He thought for a moment of that woman pushed aside to make way for Ai-lan, but he hardened himself as he thought, and in his heart he said, “So must all be pushed aside who cannot stand in this new day. It is right. Ai-lan and the man are right. The new cannot be denied.”
And in a sort of hard clear joy he laid himself to sleep.
Now Yuan went everywhere these few first days in this lift of joy through this great city. It seemed to him his fortune was good beyond his dreams, for he left this country from a prison, and now he was truly home again, and it seemed to him that all the prison gates were opened, not only his own prison, but all the bondages. It was an evil dream forgotten that his father had ever said he must wed against his will, and it was an evil dream that youths and maidens had once been seized and shot for seeking freedom. This freedom for which they died, why, now it was achieved for all! Upon the streets of the city he saw the young come and go, their looks free and bold and ready to do what they would, men and women, too, and there was no bondage anywhere. And in a day or two a letter came from Meng which said, “I would have come to meet you, but I am tied here at the new capital. We make the old city new, my cousin, and we tear down the old houses and we have put up a great new road which sweeps through the city like a cleansing wind, and we shall build more streets everywhere, and we have planned to tear down old unwanted temples and put schools in them, for the people have no need of temples any more in these new days. We teach them science instead. … As for me, I am a captain in the army, and near to my general, who knew you once, Yuan, in that school of war. He says, ‘Tell Yuan there is a place here for him to do his work.’ And so there is, my cousin, for he has spoken to a man above him very high, and that one has spoken in a place of influence, and in the college here there is a place where you may teach what you like, and you can live here and help us to build this city.”
Then Yuan, reading these bold swelling words, thought to himself with exultation, “This is from Meng, who was in hiding — and see what he is come to!” It was a warmth in Yuan that already his country had a place for him. He turned it over in his mind a time or two. … Did he indeed wish to teach young men and women? It might be the quickest way to serve his people. He put the thought into his mind to wait a day or two or more, until his duty was fulfilled.
For first he must go and see his uncle and his household, and then there was Ai-lan’s wedding three days off, and then he must go to see his father. Yuan found two letters from his father waiting at the coast for him, and when he saw the square trembling letters, scrawled upon a page or two, big and uncertain as old men write, he was touched with an old tenderness, and he forgot he had ever feared or hated his father, for now in this new day the Tiger seemed as futile as an old actor on a forgotten stage. Yes, he must go and see his father.
Now if the six years had made Ai-lan more beautiful and had led the child Mei-ling into womanhood, they had laid old age heavily upon Wang the Landlord and his lady. For where Yuan’s lady mother seemed to hold herself at much the same place all these years, her hair only a little whiter, her wise face a little more wise and more patient and a little less round, these other two Yuan found were truly old. They lived now no more in their own house, but with their elder son, and thither Yuan went and found them, the house a western house the son had built and set into a pleasant garden.