“What can I do?” she asked. “Do you know what I specialized in in college? Interior decoration for western homes! I’ve done my own room over. I’ve done a little in a friend’s house, but not for pay. Who here wants what I have? I want to belong here, it’s my country, but I’ve been away too long. I have no place anywhere — no country—”
By now Yuan had forgotten this was an evening meant for pleasure, he was so moved by the poor creature’s plight. There she sat before his pitying gaze, gay in her silly shining clothes, and her painted eyes full of tears.
But before he could think of a thing to say for her comfort Sheng was back again. And now he would not have refusal. He did not see her tears. He put his arm about her waist and laughing at her he swept her off with him into the whirling music, and Yuan was left alone.
Somehow he had no heart to dance more, and all the gaiety was gone from the noisy hall. Once the girl came by in Sheng’s arms, and now her face was turned up to his, and it was bright and empty again and as though she had never spoken the words she had to Yuan. … He sat thoughtfully awhile, and let a servant fill his glass again and again, while he sat on alone.
At the end of that night of pleasure, when they went home again, Yuan was steady still, though it was true the wine burned inside him like a fever. Yet he could be strong enough to let Ai-lan’s husband lean on him, for that one could not walk alone any more, he was so drunken, and his whole face was crimson and he babbled like a foolish child.
Now when Yuan struck at the door to be let in that night it opened suddenly and there by the manservant who had opened it was Mei-ling herself, and when the drunken man saw her he seemed to think of something he remembered between Yuan and Mei-ling, and he cried, “You — you — should have gone — there was a — a pretty rival — she wouldn’t — leave Yuan — dangerous, eh?” And he fell to laughing foolishly.
Mei-ling answered nothing. When she saw the two she said to the servant coldly, “Take my sister’s lord to his bed, since he is so drunken!”
But when he was gone she held Yuan there with a sudden blazing gaze. Thus were these two alone at last, and when Yuan felt Mei-ling’s great angry eyes on him, it was like a sobering blast of cold north wind upon him. He felt the heat within him die down quickly, and for an instant he almost feared her, she was so tall and straight and angry, and he was speechless.
But she was not. No, all these days she had scarcely spoken to him, but now she did, and her words leaped from her, and she said, “You are like all the others, Yuan, — like all the other foolish idle Wangs! I have made myself a fool. I thought, ‘Yuan is different — he is not a half-foreign fop, drinking and dancing all his good years away!’ But you are — you are! Look at you! Look at your silly foreign clothes — you reek of wine — you are drunk, too!”
But Yuan grew angry at this and sulky as a boy and he muttered, “You would not give me anything — you know how I have waited for you — and you have made excuses and excuses—”
“I did not!” she cried, and then beside herself this maid stamped her foot and she leaned forward and gave Yuan’s face a swift sharp slap, as though he were indeed a naughty child. “You know how busy I have been — who was that woman he told of? — and this was your last evening — and I had planned — Oh, I hate you!”
And she burst into weeping and ran quickly away, and Yuan stood in an agony, not comprehending anything except she said she hated him. So ended his poor holiday.
The next day Yuan returned to his work, and alone, for Meng had shorter holiday and was already gone. The rains of late winter were begun, and the train drove through the dark day, and the water dripped down the window pane, so that he could scarcely see the sodden fields. At every town the streets ran with, liquid filth and the stations were empty except for the shivering few men who must be there for some duty, and Yuan, remembering how he had not seen Mei-ling again, for he left in the early morning and she was not there to bid him good-bye, said to himself this was the dreariest hour of his life …
At last weary of watching the rain and in restless dreariness he took from his bag the book of verses Sheng had given him the first night, and which he had not read yet, and he began to turn the thick ivory paper, not caring much if he read or not. On each page were printed clear and black a few lines or words, a little group of strung phrases, seeming exquisite, Yuan thought, until he grew curious and half forgot his trouble, and read the book again more carefully, and then he saw these little poems Sheng had made were only empty shapes. They were only small lovely empty shapes, all exquisite and empty although they were so fluent in their line and sound that almost Yuan forgot their emptiness until, the shape seized, he found there was nothing there within them.
He closed the pretty silver-bound book, and put it in its cover again and laid it down. … Outside the villages slipped past, dark and huddled in the rain. At doorways men looked sullenly into the rains that beat through the thatched roofs above their heads. In sunshine these folk could live outdoors as beasts do, and thrive merrily somehow, but days of rains drove them into their hovels and too many days of rain drove them half-mad with quarrelling and cold misery, and now they looked out with hate against heaven who sent such long rains down.
… The verses were of lovely delicacies, the light of the moon upon a dead woman’s golden hair, an ice-bound fountain in a park, a faery island in a smooth green sea, narrow between pale sands …
Yuan saw the sullen beast-like faces, and he thought, very troubled, “As for me, I can write nothing. If I wrote these things Sheng does, which I can see well enough are exquisite, why, then I remember these dark faces and these hovels and all this deep under-life of which he knows nothing and will not know. And yet I cannot write of such life either. I wonder why I am so speechless and troubled?”
And so he fell to brooding and to thinking perhaps that no man can create anything who lives not wholly anywhere. He remembered how on that feast day he had thought himself between the old and the new. And then he smiled sadly, thinking how foolish he had been to think himself not alone. He was alone.
… So it rained on to his journey’s end, and he came down from the train in rain and dusk, and in the rain the old city wall stood grim and black and high. He called a ricksha and climbed in, and sat chill and lonely while the man dragged the vehicle along the slippery running streets. Once the man stumbled and fell, and while he righted himself and waited for a moment to pant and wipe the rain from his dripping face, Yuan looked out and saw the hovels still clinging against the wall. The rains had flooded them and the wretched helpless folk within sat in the flood and waited silently for heaven to change.
Thus began for Yuan the new year, which he had thought would be his best and happiest year. Instead it began in every sort of evil. For the rains held that spring beyond all bearing, and though priests in temples made many prayers, nothing came of all their prayers and sacrifices except new evil, for such superstitions stirred up ardent angers in the young rulers who believed in no gods at all except their own heroes, and they commanded the temples in those parts to be closed, and ruthlessly they sent soldiers to live in those temples and drive the priests into the smallest worst rooms. Then this in turn made angry the farmer folk, who could be wroth enough against those selfsame priests for one cause or another when they came begging, but who feared now that the gods might be angry anew, and they cried that doubtless all these evil rains were because of these new rulers, and so for once they joined the priests against the young rulers.
For a month the rains held, and still they held, and the great river began to swell and rise and flow into the lesser rivers and canals and everywhere men began to see the coming of the same ancient floods, and if flood, then famine. Now the people had believed that the new times would bring them somehow a new heaven and a new earth, and when they found this was not true, and heaven behaved as carelessly as ever it did, and the earth gave forth no more for harvest in flood or drought than ever it did, they cried out the new rulers were false and no better than the old ones, and old discontents, stilled for a while by new promises of new times, began to rise again.