“In that case I will stay here,” I retorted.
“You must go,” Gerald said, “and Rennie must go with you.”
And then reluctantly he said what we both knew and had never spoken aloud. “Your lives will not be safe here if you stay.”
I saw him glance about him as he spoke the words. For the first time Gerald was afraid. He had gone through war and bombing without a qualm. If he had ever been afraid he had hid his fear so that it seemed not to exist. But this fear he could not hide.
“What of you?” I asked and certainly I was afraid.
“Half of me is Chinese,” he said. “I shall make that serve.”
“But will They?” I muttered. We were already calling the Communists “They.”
“I shall become indispensable,” he replied.
I wished with all my heart that this conversation had taken place when we were alone, when we were at home in Peking, in our house, in our bedroom, the doors locked, the windows closed. Then I could have thrown myself on his breast and forced the truth from him. Yet when could one force anything from Gerald? He has a will, a logic, which he alone can wield. I was standing beside him that day on the dock, the wind blowing my hair, and I could only ask in a stupid low voice that conveyed no passion, “And why, Gerald, do you wish to make yourself indispensable here?”
“One has to choose,” he said.
There was no time for more. The tug was waiting to take us to the ship, and in the silent crowd upon the small vessel it would not have been safe to talk. I kept thinking, I remember. When had it become dangerous to talk? At what moment had the people, and among them ourselves, ceased to be gay and communicative, hiding nothing from each other? When had they become silent and afraid? I do not know the moment. The change was gradual, but when it came it was absolute. And it had culminated in the silence between Gerald and me when we parted.
I cannot sleep the nights through. I get up and prowl about the house, careful not to wake Rennie. His ear is too quick toward me. He guesses that something is wrong, but still I do not tell him about the letter. He thinks I grieve because I have not heard from his father for so many months. He says to me,
“Mother, I am sure there are many letters waiting in some forgotten place. You know how the postmen are over there. They sit down to eat a bowl of hot rice, or they lie under a tree to sleep.”
Actually this is not true. The postal service to and from Peking was always excellent, and I suppose it is no worse now. It was organized by the English, who are always thorough. I smile when Rennie tries such comfort. I say, “Of course you are right, and I will not worry. No news is good news.”
It is a true old proverb. How much better it would be now if I had not this letter lying like a live thing in the secret drawer of my desk! I have sealed it with red sealing wax, lest by some impossible chance Rennie might be rummaging one day and find it. And having sealed it, I swear to myself that even I will never read it again.
…Last night I was too lonely. Oh, there is a loneliness which befalls me now and then and it is something more than death. I am still a wife, but without my husband. When a man dies, his widow dies by so much, too, perhaps. If her love has been great enough, a part of her dies and it can never be reborn with another man. But I am not a widow. In the night I wait and I lie in my solitary bed and all my dreams fly across the sea, annihilating time and space to seek the beloved. I walk the well-known street to our gate. It is barred against petty thieves but, bodiless, I go through and cross the courtyard and enter the locked door. The gateman does not wake. He cannot hear me, nor could he prevent me if he did. There is my home. It is as I left it, believing that surely I would come back. Gerald and I cannot be parted. That is what I believed.
I said to the servants, “Keep everything as I have it.”
“We will,” they promised.
“Do not forget,” I said. “Our master must have hot food when he comes in at night, however late the hour.”
“Never, never can we forget,” they promised.
“I shall return,” I said.
“Our mistress will return,” they said.
Now, remembering, my soul passes swiftly through the rooms to the bedroom where Gerald lies asleep. Surely he lies asleep. Is he alone? Is he still alone?
My soul stands fearful at the door. In a moment it flies back to me here. What, what was the day when Gerald wrote the letter? Does the letter tell the day? I am not sure. Soul in my waiting body, I get out of bed and I open the secret drawer of the desk. It is I who break the seal I set. I read the opening words again.
“Let me tell you that I love only you.”
I bend my head and weep. Is it not enough that he has written these words? What does it matter whether tonight he sleeps alone — or does not? I fold the letter, my heart unanswered, and I seal it once more and once more I put it away in the secret drawer in the locked box.
I cannot return to my bed. When a woman is widowed by death, does passion die? Or does the body live on, clamoring for what is buried in the grave? But Gerald is not dead. He lives in more than memory. He is there, in our house. He comes home at night, he eats and sleeps and wakes to rise again. He looks upon this same moon which shines outside my window now. The awareness of his body sets my blood mad. Desire reaches for him, claims him, for he is not dead but living. Surely, surely he knows. He knows that I stand here by the window, that I look out at the moon, rising above the mists of a spring night. I remember, I remember—
For it was in this house that we first consummated our eternal love. We were not yet married. I write it down. I have never told our heavenly secret, nor has he. I am sure he has not. He says he loves only me, whatever happens, and so he has not told. Say it may have been wrong, but I am glad now for what I chose to do. For Gerald, always too sensitive, was obsessed with a strange terror in those first days when he had barely spoken to me of love. He feared that I might be offended by his Chinese flesh. It is true that sometimes he looks more Chinese than American.
I cried out against him. “Oh darling, how silly you are!”
I was saying “darling” long before he could bring himself to speak the word. When he began to call me by endearing names, it was not easily at any time and in the presence of others, never.
I remember the look in his grave dark eyes. “I can live without your love,” he said, “but I could not live if, having had it, I should lose it. This is why I dare not ask you to marry me.”
It was true. He had not asked me, and he refused to let me say we were engaged.
“I shall always love you,” I cried, impetuous.
“You do not know,” he said. “You cannot be sure. The flesh has a will of its own.”
It was on such a night as this, a moonlight night, that we spoke. The spring was late that year and we had lingered under the birch trees to be alone and away from my mother, and I was cold and he opened his coat and put it about my shoulders and I walked in his shelter.
“It is you who are not sure,” I told him.
And then I pondered how to make him sure.
“If you think I shall not love you for some hidden reason I do not now know,” I told him, “then come to my room tonight. Let us hide nothing from each other. Let us make sure before we marry.”
I felt him quiver. I knew he was shocked and yet moved.
“No,” he said, “I cannot do that.”
It was June before he was willing. He had his degree then from Harvard. My mother came to Commencement and I was singing proud to hear the honors he received. “Summa cum laude—” the words were spoken again and yet again. My mother was warmer than I had ever seen her toward him when he came striding toward us, still in his cap and gown. There was no man there to equal him in beauty. For the moment his reserve was gone. He was triumphant and happy and he caught our hands, my mother’s and mine.