William Lane paused at the front door of his home and waited. He had tried the door and found it unlocked, but he would not go in. In spite of his instructions the houseboy was not waiting in the hall to take his hat and topcoat. He wished that he dared to carry his malacca stick here as he did at school, but he did not quite dare. His sister Henrietta, two years younger than he, would laugh at him, and there was nothing he dreaded more than laughter. He pressed the bell and waited again. Almost instantly the door opened and Wang, the houseboy, smiled and gestured to him to enter, at the same time taking his hat. “It is the day your mother, the t’ai-t’ai, sits at home,” he said in Chinese. “So many ladies have come that I have been too busy.”
William did not answer this. Wang had been with the family for many years, and William took pains now to make him feel that the old days of childish comradeship were over. A young gentleman did not chatter with servants. “Where is my father?” he asked.
“The Teacher has not come home yet from the big church,” Wang replied. He smiled affectionately at the tall boy whom he remembered first as a baby, staggering about these very rooms. “Little Lord,” the servants had called him. Now he was called Big Little Lord. Sad it was that the family had no more sons, only the two girls.
“Where is my younger sister?” William asked. Of his two sisters he preferred Ruth.
“She is with your mother, and also your older sister,” Wang replied. “Forgive me, young sir. You would be surprised at the speed with which the foreign ladies eat and drink.”
He hung William’s hat upon a large mahogany hat rack, put his coat into the closet under the stairs and hastened smoothly back into the drawing room.
William hesitated. The noise of women’s voices, subdued only by the closed door into the wide hall where he stood, both tempted and repelled him. Most of the women were the middle-aged friends of his mother, who had known him from babyhood. Yet there might be a stranger or two. Peking was full of foreigners these days, tourists and visitors, and his father was one of the most liberal among the missionaries. His mother, he knew, often declared that she herself was not a missionary, she was only a missionary’s wife, and she would not pretend. Privately she had often complained to her son that it was a tragedy that his father had ever chosen to be a missionary in so repulsive a country as China, so distant from New York, where her home was.
“Your father could have been anything,” she told him often. “At Harvard he was brilliant and handsome. Of course everyone thought he would be a lawyer, like his father. Yours is a good family, William, and I do hope that you will remember it. I don’t want you to waste yourself.”
His mother fed him a good deal of private heresy to which he did not make reply but which he stored in his heart. Certainly he would never be a missionary. The English boys at school had seen to that. A merchant prince, perhaps, or a diplomat, he did not yet know which. Although he dreamed of America, he could not see himself living anywhere except in China. It was comfortable here for a white man. He did not like the stories he heard of missionaries on furlough having to do their own cooking and cleaning. Here he never entered the kitchen or servants’ quarters — at least, not now that he was practically grown. When he was small and often lonely and bored, since he was not allowed to play with Chinese children, he had gone sometimes to the servants’ quarters for companionship. Wang had been young then and afraid of the cook, and he had welcomed William’s friendship. Sometimes Wang had even taken him on the street secretly to see a Punch-and-Judy show or to buy some sweets.
That, of course, was long ago. Remembering the sweets, William decided suddenly to go into the drawing room. The cook made irresistible cakes for his mother’s at-homes, two golden ones iced with dark chocolate, two snow-white ones layered with fresh cocoanut. More than mere food tempted him. Since he had come home only a few days ago, many of his mother’s friends would not have seen him for several months, and he could exhibit his extraordinary growth. He had added inches to his height even since the long Christmas vacation and was well on his way, he hoped, to six feet, his father’s height. There were times when he feared he would not reach it for his hands and feet were small. Just now, however, he was feeling encouraged about himself.
He opened the door and went in, holding his shoulders straight and his head high. Upon his face he put his look of stern young gravity. For a moment he stood with his back to the door, waiting.
His mother glanced at him. “Come in, William,” she said in her silvery company voice. “Leave the door open, please; it’s a little warm.”
Her stone gray eyes, set somewhat near together under somewhat too heavy dark eyebrows, grew proud. She looked around the room where at half a dozen small teapoys the ladies were seated. “William is just home from school,” she announced. “Isn’t he enormous? It’s his last term.”
It was a comforting scene to William. The big room was warm and bright. Upon the polished floor lay great Peking rugs woven in blue and gold, and the furniture gleamed a dark mahogany. The pieces were far more valuable than mahogany, however. They were of blackwood, heavy as iron, Chinese antiques stolen from palaces and pawned by hungry eunuchs to dealers. The houses of Americans in Peking were crammed with such tables and screens and couches. Scattered among them were comfortable modern chairs padded with satin-covered cushions. Today sprays of forced peach blossom and two pots of dwarf plum trees provided flowers. Among these pleasant luxuries the ladies sat drinking their tea, and just now turning their faces toward him. Their voices rose to greet him.
“Why, William — how you’ve grown I Come and shake hands with me, you big boy.”
He went forward gracefully and shook hands with each one of ten ladies, ignoring his two sisters. Ruth sat upon a hassock by the grate fire of coals. Henrietta was eating a sandwich on the deep window seat. She did not look at him but Ruth watched him with her pleasant light blue eyes.
“Sit down, William, and have some tea,” his mother commanded. She was a tall woman, lean and large boned, and he had his looks from her, although she was almost ugly. What lacked delicacy in a woman made for strength in a man.
Once he had settled on a chair beside her, Wang handed him sandwiches and cake and in silence he proceeded to feed himself heartily. The ladies began to talk again. He perceived at once that they were talking about the Faith Mission family and saying exactly the sort of things with which he could agree. Mrs. Tibbert, a Methodist and therefore not quite the equal of Episcopalians and Presbyterians, although better than a Baptist, was redeemed by being the wife of a bishop. She was a small pallid woman, bravely dressed in a frock copied by a Chinese tailor from a Delineator model, and she had lost a front tooth and had a lisp.
“It’s stupid, really, talking about trusting God for everything and then collecting, really, from all of us. We can’t let them starve, of course. I wonder if a petition to the Consul—”
“The way they live!” Mrs. Haley exclaimed. She was a Seventh Day Adventist, and even less than a Baptist. It was confusing to the Chinese to be told that Sunday was on Saturday, although immersion, upon which Baptists and Seventh Day Adventists insisted, the Presbyterians and Episcopalians declared was the most confusing of all doctrinal practices. Ignorant Chinese tended to be impressed by much water, and sprinkling seemed stingy, especially in hot weather.
Mrs. Henry Lodge, the wife of the leading Presbyterian minister, was charitable, as she could afford to be, since her house was one of the handsomest in Peking, and her husband the highest paid among the missionaries, besides being related to the Lodges of Boston. “I feel so sorry for the little children,” she said gently. White-haired and pretty and gowned in a soft gray Chinese crepe with rose ruching, she made a picture which the other ladies, though Christians, were compelled to envy. William looked at her with appreciation. So a lady ought to look, and to call her attention to himself, he decided to tell the story of his own recent experience.