He lifted his head at this, reluctantly interested.
“Have you had a letter?”
“Not recently — not from him. But I did have a — a special letter.”
“Why didn’t you tell me when it came?”
“You were too young,” I said. “You wouldn’t have understood. You’d have blamed him.”
“What has he done?”
“Wait,” I said. “I must explain.”
And so I began at the beginning. I told him how we met, Gerald and I. I told him how we fell in love. I couldn’t tell him of our first night together. That belongs to Gerald and to me, a treasure locked in memory. I told him of Peking and how in those, years the love we had begun here in this narrow Vermont valley deepened and widened into a life complete in companionship.
“There are a few such marriages, Rennie,” I said. “My mother told me I could never be happy with Gerald but she was wrong. I was happy and so was he. We delighted each in the other. The ancestors did not matter. Well, the truth is that perhaps they mattered very much. They added their peculiar and fascinating variety. I remember your father and I talked about them sometimes. I remember your father said once that our marriage was all the more complete because the responsibility for it rested solely on ourselves. Our ancestors would not have approved.”
Rennie is too quick for me. “What is it that you really want to say?”
“I want to tell you first that what has happened is not the fault of your father nor is it mine. If the world had not split apart under our feet, we would still be living in the house in Peking and not here.”
“And why aren’t we?” he demanded.
“You know,” I said. “You know and you needn’t ask. It is because of me. It is because I am American, and because your father is half American. And there is no fault in either of us for that. It is the split in the world that has driven us apart, exactly as though a tidal wave had rushed between us on a beach and swept us in opposite directions.”
“He could have left China,” Rennie said.
“He could not.”
“And why not?” Rennie insisted. I saw by his bitter face that he was angry with his father.
“I defend your father,” I said. “He is not here to speak for himself. And besides, if you must blame anyone, blame Baba. He married your Chinese grandmother without loving her, and that was the primary sin.”
With this I got up and I fetched the picture of his grandmother and I told him about her and how the story of Han Ai-lan was imbedded in the story of her country and in the times in which we live.
“She who knew she was not loved by her husband gave her life instead to her country and to what she thought was her duty. And her son — your father, Rennie — ate the sour fruit and your teeth, Rennie, are set on edge.”
“Did she love Baba?” Rennie’s voice was low.
“I am sure she did, for if she had not she could never have given herself so utterly elsewhere. She did not expect to love him but she did love him, and was rejected by him. There is nothing so explosive in this world as love rejected.”
“My father has rejected you,” Rennie said brutally.
I denied this and passionately. “He has not rejected me. He cannot reject me as long as we love each other. Love still works in us its mercies.”
He saw me now, I believe, as someone else than his mother. He saw me as a woman in love, and he could not reply. He has never seen a woman in love and his eyes fell before mine.
“It is time for me to show you the letter,” I said. I rose and I opened the locked box and took out the sealed letter and gave it to him. He broke the seal and opened the letter and read it. I sat in my chair and waited. He read it twice, thoughtfully. Then he folded it and put it back into the envelope and placed it on the small table beside him.
“Thank you, Mother,” he said.
“I have given permission to the Chinese woman,” I said. “I have said that I understand. I have said that I want him to be comforted in his house….So I will also show you her letters.”
Now I opened the drawer of my rosewood desk and gave him the letters from Mei-lan. He read them, his face impassive. He read them quickly and folded them and handed them back to me.
“She has nothing to do with me,” he said. “And I cannot understand why he has let her come into our house.”
His voice was so hard that I could not bear it. “We do not know how much he was compelled, once he had made his choice to stay in Peking.”
“Ah,” Rennie said, “I still ask, why did he make that choice if he loved us? I shall keep on asking. For me there is no answer.”
“You do not love your father enough to forgive him,” I said.
“Perhaps that is true,” Rennie agreed.
He got up suddenly and walked to the window and stood there looking out into the night. The light of the lamp shone through the glass upon the falling snow. The fire burned suddenly blue and a log fell into the ash.
He turned to face me. “Mother, I have something to tell you, too. All that business of Allegra — it very nearly drove me back to Peking. If I am to be rejected because my grandmother was Chinese, I thought, I’d better go back to China. But I’ll never go back now. I’ll stay with you. This shall be my country. I will have no other.”
I cried out, “Oh Rennie, Rennie, don’t decide so quickly. Don’t decide against your father!”
“I am not deciding against him. I am deciding for you,” Rennie said. And he stooped and kissed my cheek and went away.
I shall not follow him. I know my son. The decision has not come quickly. He has been tortured by indecision, he has been torn between his two countries, between his father and me. And he has chosen me and mine. Oh Gerald, forgive me! I pray that you will have other sons. Indeed I do so pray. If I have robbed you of the son that is ours, can I help myself? It is Rennie who decides his own life. And he has as much right to decide as I had when I followed you to Peking and as you had when you would not come home with me. Yes, this is home at last, this Vermont valley, these mountains, the house of my fathers.
When Rennie left me I sat a long time before the dying fire, a weight gone from me. I am no longer alone in my own country. My son is with me. I shall be happy again, some day.
…Even yet there has been no thought of cutting myself off from Gerald. Months have passed after that gay Christmas day. Rennie is nearing the end of his college year. Sam has been twice to see me. He urges me to divorce Gerald, and today he flew in from New York only for an hour, he said, not knowing how this day would end. For it is night and he is here. We have telegraphed for Rennie to come at once, because of what has happened. It was this morning, and Sam was arguing with me, impatient, angry, insistent.
“You must divorce that fellow in Peking — he’s no husband to you, Elizabeth!”
“I shall never divorce Gerald,” I said. “Indeed, I have no cause. He loves me.”
“If you call desertion love,” Sam bellowed.
“He has not deserted me.” I was shouting, too.
“If it is not desertion, I do not know what to call it,” Sam roared.
Of course he does not know the whole story. He surmises, because there is no talk of Gerald himself — and me. I tried to explain without telling anything.
“Gerald has not deserted me nor I him. We are divided by history, past and present.”
“His father is American,” Sam said stubbornly. “He could have come home with you.”
“Ah, but you see this is not home to him!”
“Baloney,” Sam said crossly. “He’s no fool. He could adapt himself. He could have got a job in some university here as well as in Peking.”
“Home is a matter of the heart and the spirit. His would have died here,” I said.