Upon this, with secret anger, he led them to the rooms, dreading the possibility that the Camerons were there. But the rooms were empty, and his grandmother sat down in Jeremy’s easy chair and slipped her shoe from her heel. “I bought new shoes for the big day,” she said in apology. “You know what they do to your feet.”
He did not reply to this dreadful remark, and was restless until he got them up again. Yet not in time, for at the moment when they reached the door Jeremy came in and William could not refuse introductions. Jeremy, with his usual grace, stood talking to the elders and Ruth joined them. Henrietta waited in her stolid fashion.
It lasted but a moment, and he was leading them on again, now toward the gate and the hack. Then they were gone and he felt exhausted and yet he could not show exhaustion, for men he did not know stopped to congratulate him on his honors. He tried to accept their praise modestly, to seem careless as though honors meant nothing to him, but he imagined that they saw through his pretense, and then he grew brief and proud and he felt hurt and weary. He was hot and he wanted a bath and a few minutes’ sleep.
Half an hour later, stretched on his bed in his room alone, the shades drawn to shut out the sun, when he tried to think of Candace he found himself thinking instead of Aunt Rosamond. It might be very easy indeed to get money from an old lady like that, perhaps a great deal of money. Then after some deep thinking of this sort he felt that he would like honestly to be ashamed of it, but he could not be. He had nothing and no one to help him. There was not one person in his own family who could be anything but a hindrance to him, and the sooner he separated himself from them the better. He toyed with the memory of Aunt Rosamond’s invitation. It meant nothing He knew by now that the rich could speak pleasant words as easily as they breathed, with as little significance. It was hard to be the friend of rich men and their sons, but it was the only way to get what he needed for his own independence. Some day, when he had all he wanted, he would let them know how he despised them.
4
ALONE IN HER SMALL HOT ROOM in the suburban house, Henrietta was writing a letter to Clem Miller. She was desperately tired and as usual, after she had been with William, melancholy wrapped her about. His first glance at her had been enough to tell her that she was still ugly, still all that she did not want to be. It was a sign of greatness in her which she did not recognize that she loved Ruth tenderly and humbly in spite of William’s preference. Why, she asked herself again tonight, did it matter what William thought? But she did care and would always care what he thought of her. It had begun in the old days in the mission house in Peking when the amah who had served them all had taught her that girls must always yield to the precious only son of the family.
“You,” Liu Amah had said, “you are only a girl. Weelee is a boy. Girls are not so good as boys. Men are more valuable than women.”
Henrietta sighed. It was late and she should have been sleeping but she could not. Her grandparents and Ruth had gone to sleep, or else by now her grandmother would have tapped at her door to inquire why her light was still on. Swept by the bottomless misery of youth, Henrietta had reached out into the night and had thought of Clem. His letter was still in her handbag and she read it through twice, carefully and slowly. Then she began to write.
Dear Clem:
You do not know me, but I am William Lane’s sister. William is too proud to write to you. He has always been a very proud boy and now he is worse than ever, although he is no longer a boy. He considers himself a man. I suppose he is a man since he has finished college. He is very smart. He was graduated yesterday with highest honors. I am sorry to say I don’t think he will ever write to you. But I think someone should, since you knew each other in old Peking, and so I am writing to you.
I don’t know anything much about you, and so I will tell you about myself. I am eighteen and next autumn I will go to college, I hope. I am not at all pretty — I had better tell you that right away. It is strange, for I look a good deal like William, and he is thought to be very handsome. I suppose it is not the way for a girl to look. My sister Ruth is pretty.
She paused and realized that she had nothing to say. This was another of her miseries. She felt so much, she was so racked with vague sorrows and longings and infinite loneliness and yet none of this could she put into words to anyone. She and Ruth went to a public school, since all the money had been needed for William, but she had found no special friends there. The girls thought her queer because she had grown up in China. Perhaps she was. She bit the end of her wooden pen and then went on.
Do you ever think of Peking? I do, often. From the window of my room there in the house where my parents live I used to look out upon a sweet little stubby pagoda — a dagoba, I think it was called. There were bells on the corners, and when my window was open and I lay in bed I could hear them ringing. Please tell me whether you think of such things. And shall you go back one day? I would like to but I cannot think how to earn my living there, not wanting to be a missionary.
Beyond this she could not go and so she signed herself sedately, sincerely his. When the letter was sealed it seemed to her that she must post it at once, even though it was now midnight. The small clock on her mantle gave this severe notice to her but she did not heed it. She put a dress over her nightgown, and with her feet slippered she went silently down the stairs and out of the back door to the street, where stood a postbox. At seven o’clock, she knew, the mail was collected and by breakfast time the letter would be on its way to the small Ohio town that seemed as far away as Peking. She heard the envelope rustle softly behind the shutter, and then she went back home and to her room again. Now she could go to bed. She had put forth a hand into the darkness and perhaps someone would reach out and clasp it. Comforted by hope she flung herself upon her bed and fell into a sleep that led her back into childhood dreams of a walled compound in Peking, a big shadowy mission house, where soft-footed brown servants came and went, bringing smiles and gentle encouragement to a shy and plain-faced American child.
When the letter reached Clem he was in the grocery store. It was the middle of the morning, and Owen Janison, the owner and his employer, came in from his daily trip across the street to the post office. Clem’s letters were few and until now they had borne Chinese stamps and postmarks.
“You got a letter from some place in New York, looks like,” Mr. Janison said. He was a tall thin man, whose mustaches hung down his chin and joined a faded yellow beard. He wore a gray suit and a stiff white shirt with a celluloid collar.
Clem was shirtsleeved behind the meat counter. He took the letter and looked at it carefully without opening it. “Thanks, Mr. Janison,” he said. He slapped a piece of corned beef on the scrubbed wooden counter and trimmed off some porous fat.
“A pound, did you say, Mrs. Bates?” he inquired.
“Mebbe a pound and a half,” the customer replied, hesitating. “Mr. Bates is terrible fond of the stuff though I don’t eat it myself, more’n a bite.”
Clem did not answer this remark. In the years since he and Bump, one weary morning, had walked into New Point, Ohio, he had learned to live upon two levels, the immediate and the real. Mrs. Bates was immediate but not real. Even Mr. Janison, upon whom he and Bump were dependent for their living, was immediate and not real. Real was the past and real the future, both equally clear to him alone. To recapture the past he had written to Yusan, Mr. Fong’s son, and he had received the letter from Dr. Lane. Yusan had forgotten his English and had given Clem’s letter to the missionary. From Dr. Lane had come a friendly letter, mainly about William and only a little about Yusan. Dr. Lane took it for granted that a youth in America named Clem Miller must be interested in his son William.