But Yuan did not forget. In the strangest flash of memory, sitting at this feast and looking all about the table, white-clothed in the new foreign fashion, he suddenly remembered that earthen house and when he remembered it, he liked it, somehow, still. … He was not wholly one of them, he thought slowly — not with Ai-lan, not with Sheng. … Their foreign looks and ways made him wish to be less foreign even than he was. Yet he could not live in that earthen house, either, — no, though he liked something about it very deeply, he knew now he could not live there as his grandfather once had lived in content, and feel it home. He was between, somehow, and it was a lonely place — between, as he was, this foreign house and the house of earth. He had no real home, and his was a very lonely heart which could not be wholly here nor there.
His eyes rested on Sheng a moment. Except for his gold skin, and for his dark, pointed eyes, Sheng might be completely foreign. The very movements of his body now were foreign, and he spoke as a man from the west does. Yes, and Ai-lan liked it, and so did the cousin’s wife, and even the eldest cousin felt Sheng very new and full of something modish, and he was silent and abashed and somewhat envious and for solace he ate heavily in silence.
Then quickly and secretly Yuan looked at Mei-ling, jealous because he had thought of a thing when he saw the praise of Sheng in Ai-lan’s eyes. Did Mei-ling also watch Sheng as the other younger women did and laugh at all he said to make them laugh, and admire him with her eyes, too? He saw her look at Sheng calmly, and turn her gaze away again tranquilly. His heart eased itself. Why, she was like himself! She was between, too, not wholly new, and yet different from the old. He looked at her once more, hot and longing, and he let the waves of talk and laughter break over him and for a moment took his fill of her through his eyes. There she sat beside the lady, and now she leaned and with her chopsticks picked a bit of white meat daintily from a central dish and put it on the lady’s dish, and smiled at her. She was, Yuan said most passionately within himself, as far from Ai-lan and her kind as a lily growing wild beneath bamboos is different from a forced camellia. Yes, she was between, too, — well, then he was not lonely!
Suddenly, Yuan’s heart was so warm and ready that he could not believe Mei-ling would not be ready, too. In this one love of his his heart flowed out and all his many feelings fused most ardently into this one swift course.
That night he went to bed and lay sleepless, planning how he would talk with Mei-ling alone the next day and feel how her heart was to him now, for surely, or so he thought, the many letters he had written must mean some change in her to warmth. He planned how they would sit and talk, or perhaps he might persuade her to a walk with him, even, since many maids walked alone these days with young men whom they knew and trusted. And he bethought himself how he might say he was a sort of brother to her if she hesitated, and then quickly he rejected this excuse and he said stoutly in himself, “No, I am not her brother, whatever else I may not be.” Only at last could he fall asleep and then to dream awry and without completion of any dream.
But who could foretell that this was the night when Ai-lan would give birth to her child? Yet so it was. When Yuan woke in the morning it was to hear confusion through all the house, and the noise of servants running here and there, and when he rose and washed and clothed himself and went to the dining room, there was the table only half set for the meal, and a sleepy maidservant moved to and fro languidly, and the only other in the room was Ai-lan’s husband, who sat there dressed as he had been the night before. When Yuan came in he said gaily, “Never be a father, Yuan, if one’s wife is the new sort of woman! I have had as hard a time as though I bore the child — sleepless, and Ai-lan crying out and making such a wailing I thought her near her end, except the doctor and Mei-ling promised me she did very well. These women nowadays bear their children very hardly. Lucky it is a boy, I say, because Ai-lan has already called me to her bed this morning to swear me there will never be another child from her!” He laughed again, and passed his beautiful smooth hand across his laughing, half-rueful face, and then he sat down to eat with great appetite the food the serving maid set there for he had been father several times before this, and so it was no great thing to him now.
Thus was Ai-lan’s child born in this house, and all the household was absorbed and busied in it, and Yuan caught no glance at Mei-ling scarcely beyond a passing moment here and there. Three times a day the physician came, and nothing would please Ai-lan except a foreign one, and so he came, a tall red-haired Englishman, and he saw her and talked with Mei-ling and the lady and told them what Ai-lan must eat and how many days she must rest. There was the child, too, to be cared for, and Ai-lan would have it that Mei-ling must do this herself, and so Mei-ling did, and the child wept much, because the milk of the nurse they hired at first was not suited to its needs, and so this one and that must be found and tried.
For Ai-lan, like many of her kind these days, would not feed her son from her own breasts, lest they grow too large and full and spoil her slender looks. This was the only great quarrel Mei-ling ever made with her. She cried accusingly to Ai-lan, “You are not fit to have this good sweet son! Here he is born strong and lusty and starving, and your two breasts running full, and you will not feed him! Shame, shame, Ai-lan!”
Then Ai-lan wept with anger, and she pitied herself, too, and she cried back at Mei-ling, “You know nothing of it — how can you know who are a virgin? You don’t know how hard it has been to have a child in me for months and months and my clothes hideous on me, and now after all my pain am I to go hideous another year or two? No, let such coarse work be done by serving women! I will not — I will not!”
Yet though Ai-lan wept, her pretty face all flushed and distraught, Mei-ling would not give in so lightly, and this was how Yuan heard of the quarrel, for Mei-ling carried it to Ai-lan’s husband and Yuan was in the room. While she besought the father Yuan listened in enchantment, for it seemed to him he never had seen how true and lovely Mei-ling was. She came in swiftly, full of her anger and without seeing Yuan she began to speak earnestly to the father, “Will you let this be? Will you let Ai-lan hold back her own milk from the child? The child is hungry, and she will not feed it!”
But the man only laughed and shrugged himself and said, “Has anyone ever made Ai-lan do what she would not? At least I have never tried, and could not dare it, now, most certainly. Ai-lan is a modern woman, you know!”