“Pa!” Mary said suddenly.
He liked to be calm in the mornings and he heard with some distaste the hint of determination in her voice.
“Yes?” he replied mildly. They spoke in English.
“Pa, I don’t want to tell you this at breakfast because I know you like quiet, but I must tell you before Ma comes down. Louise is in love with Philip.”
Dr. Liang looked surprised. Nellie came in and set his oatmeal before him and he spread sugar on it in a thin even coat. When she had gone out he asked, “Who is Philip?”
“You know, Pa — he is Estelle’s brother — Estelle Morgan.”
Dr. Liang looked shocked. “An American!”
“Yes, Pa. Don’t pretend you don’t know, please, Pa! She has let him kiss her.”
Dr. Liang suddenly had no appetite. He pushed the dish of oatmeal away. “Mary, do you know of what you accuse your sister?”
“That’s why I thought you ought to know. Shall we tell Ma?”
“Tell me what?” Mrs. Liang demanded briskly. She came into the room at this moment, her full eyelids still a little swollen with sleep. “Eh, Liang — what is the matter? Is the oatmeal burned again?”
“No — it is something even worse,” he said angrily.
Mary looked at one parent and then the other. The matter was now in her father’s hands.
“Who has done something?” Mrs. Liang demanded. She sat down, yawned, and poured herself some tea from the pot on the table.
“Your youngest daughter,” he said severely.
“Louise is also your daughter,” Mrs. Liang put in.
“She. has allowed an American man to become — familiar.”
“Oh, Pa, I didn’t say that,” Mary cried.
“It is the same thing,” he said in a lofty voice. He looked at his wife. “I always said that you allowed that girl too much of her own way,” he said solemnly. “She comes and goes as if she were not Chinese. She has no breeding. She is not respectful. Now she insults even our ancestors.”
“Oh, Pa,” Mary said softly. Whenever her father became very Chinese she knew he was really angry.
“Do not interrupt me,” he replied. “And leave the room, if you please. This is for your mother and me to discuss alone.”
He waited until Mary had closed the door and then he began to speak in Chinese. His voice, usually mellifluous and deep, was now high and harsh. He pointed his long forefinger at his wife. “You,” he said, “you! I told you, when we first came here, to watch the girls.”
Mrs. Liang turned pale and began to cry. “How can I watch them?” she asked.
“You have not taught them respect,” he retorted. “They do not obey you. You should tell them what they must do and what they must not do. I have said to you many times we are Chinese. Therefore we must behave as Chinese. What is not suitable for us in China is not suitable here.”
Mrs. Liang continued to sob but not too loudly lest Nellie the maid hear her. She did not know that Nellie had already heard her and was now standing at the door with her ear against it. When she heard nothing but Chinese she looked peevish and when she heard Mrs. Liang’s sobs her lips framed the words, “Poor thing!” Then after a moment, still hearing nothing but Chinese, she went back to her dishes again.
“You have no proper feeling for me as your husband,” Dr. Liang went on severely. “What will people say when they hear that our daughters behave like wantons? They will say that our Confucian ways cannot withstand the ways of barbarians.”
As long as he spoke of Louise Mrs. Liang had only continued to sob but now when he blamed her she wiped her eyes and puckered her lips. “Why then did you come to America, Liang?” she demanded. “At home it was easy to watch the girls. I could have hired amahs to go with them everywhere. How can I go about with them here? Am I an amah? And if I hired two white amahs could they be trusted?”
Dr. Liang pushed back his chair. Their quarrels proceeded always in the same way. He attacked his wife with scolding words until she reached the point of real anger and then he grew majestic and uttered a final sentence. This he did now. “When Louise comes downstairs, send her to my study,” he commanded.
He refused to finish his meal and he walked with dignity out of the room and across the hall to his study and closed the door. Once alone he allowed himself to be as disturbed as he felt. He sat down in his easy chair and cracked his finger joints one after the other and stared at a rubbing of Confucius that hung on the wall. This rubbing he had not valued for a number of years because he had bought it for a dollar in an old shop in Nanking. Since it was paper and could be folded up small he had brought it with other trifles to America to use sometime as a gift. But only a few years ago he had seen one exactly like it in an exhibition and it had been reprinted in a great popular magazine. Then he found his own copy and had it framed in imitation bamboo. When visitors came into his study he pointed to it gracefully. “There is my inspiration,” he said.
Now he looked at Confucius with some irritation. This morning the rubbing merely seemed to be that of a foolishly complacent old man swaddled in too many robes. He turned away from it, closed his eyes, and let his anger against Louise swell to a point where it would be properly explosive. There he maintained it by force of will while he read again his morning portion of the Analects.
Meanwhile Louise had tripped downstairs barefoot, still wearing her nightgown over which she had thrown a pink satin bed jacket. She peeped into the dining room and saw her mother sitting alone at the table. So she came in.
“Oh, Ma,” she said. “I was afraid Pa was here. I am so hungry but I didn’t want to get up. I thought maybe Nellie would bring me up a tray.”
“Your pa wants to see you,” her mother said coldly.
Louise took a bit of toast and nibbled it. “Why, what have I done?” she asked pertly.
Mrs. Liang frowned and pursed her lips. “Pei!” she exploded softly. “Think what it is you have done that you do not want him to know!”
Louise looked alarmed. “Who told him?” she demanded.
“Never mind.”
“It was Mary!” Louise exclaimed.
“Never mind!”
“Oh, Ma!” Louise wailed.
In his study Dr. Liang heard the duet and he rose and opened the door suddenly. Both women looked at him, but he stared only at his daughter. “Go upstairs and put on your clothes. Then come to my study,” he commanded.
“Isn’t she to eat something first?” Mrs. Liang demanded. The presence of one of the children always gave her courage.
“No,” Dr. Liang said and shut the door.
Mother and daughter looked at one another. Then Mrs. Liang spoke. “Go upstairs,” she said softly. “I will fetch you a tray and you can eat while you dress.”
“Scrambled eggs, please,” Louise whispered.
Dr. Liang, listening, heard only the hurrying footsteps of his daughter on the stairs. He leaned back, mollified. He was still obeyed.
Upstairs Louise did not go to her own room. Instead she opened the door of Mary’s room. Mary was at her desk, writing to James, and she saw her younger sister standing with her back to the door, the wide satin skirt of her nightgown whirled around her, and her pretty face pink with anger.
“Mary, what did you say to Pa?” Louise demanded in a loud whisper.
“Peter told me you let Philip kiss you,” Mary said gravely.
“Did you have to tell Pa?” Louise demanded.
“Yes.”
Louise stared at her sister. Something adamant in that soft little face confounded her and she suddenly began to cry. “I hate you!” she sobbed, still whispering, and she opened the door and whirled out.
Mary sat for a long moment, then took up her pen again and wrote, “I think the only thing that can keep Louise from being a fool is for me to bring her to China. If the ocean is between her and Philip perhaps we can guard her.”