“You are so late,” his mother said.
“We had a meeting after school,” he replied.
“What are these meetings?” his father asked in Chinese.
“Political meetings,” I-wan answered, still in English.
“Don’t get yourself entangled,” his father said. Now he spoke in English, too, as he did only when he wanted to be sure the servants could not understand. He spoke English fluently but badly, confusing his l’s and r’s and n’s, as he did in French and German also. “Young students can do nothing to change those in control. But those in control can cut off your heads.”
“I-wan!” his mother cried. “Promise me—”
His father went on without heeding her.
“The government is not going to hear any nonsense from boys and girls,” he said warmly. “Besides, none of you understands all that is involved in running a country. You are full of criticisms and rebellions. But what do you understand of money and banking, of foreign loans, for instance?”
“Why do we need foreign loans?” I-wan burst out. They had been talking about foreign loans this afternoon in the meeting and En-lan had got up and in the quietest way had offered his life to their cause, as a protest. Until that moment they had not understood the importance and danger of the new million-dollar loan from Japan, for which the surety was to be a certain great iron mine in the north.
“This latest loan from abroad,” En-lan had said, “is not given freely any more than any other loan. There are certain privileges that go to the foreign nation that lends us money. The students have protested to the government officials but they pay no attention to us. With your permission, I will conceal a pistol in my sleeve and shoot the Minister of Finance as he goes home for dinner with his new concubine.”
No one spoke. They were all staring at him. And he drew back his lips in a snarl, and between his shining white teeth he hissed, “His new concubine cost him ten thousand dollars! Only Ministers of Finance can keep buying new concubines!”
It was the first time one of their group had offered his life to kill an enemy. It had been done often enough elsewhere so that well-known men were doubling their bodyguards, especially since a student had broken into the office of the Minister of Foreign Affairs. That was after the twenty-one demands that Japan had made…. They broke into excited talk. But then it was decided that En-lan could not be spared yet — too much was to come.
Nevertheless what he had offered to do had made the hour intense for their cause.
“Why do we need foreign loans?” his father repeated. “Because every country in reconstruction needs foreign loans.”
He was a large man with a handsome flat-cheeked face, and he prided himself on being a modern man. Among his friends were many foreigners of all nations, but chiefly Japanese. Mr. Wu was one of those Chinese who believed in close friendship with Japan. “Asia for the Asians,” he liked to quote, after the Japanese Minister of Foreign Affairs had first used these words in a speech before the League of Nations.
“You cannot understand,” he now said to his son kindly, “because you are at the idealistic age. I also at twenty had certain ideals. I was a secret follower of the Young Emperor and his reforms. Most young men were. I daresay you also follow some such cult with your fellows.”
“I-ko never was like this,” his mother murmured.
“I-wan is more like me,” his father said sharply.
I-wan sat down. He did not answer his parents. Long ago he had learned that trick. It was at once filial in respect and by it he told nothing. His mother had taken up her embroidery again, and his father his pen. He did not care what his father said, he told himself, and yet — his father could so easily prick something in him with a few words, and make him feel small and young. As if the revolutionists now could be compared to whatever those young men had been under the weak Emperor! His father was busy and rich and successful now, though he had been a spoiled child, coaxed and coddled as I-ko had been when for so long he was the only son. The old servants still in the house were full of stories about his willfulness as a child. But somehow his father had not been made weak by spoiling. Instead he only continued to be opinionated and domineering and to do as he liked. I-wan knew that sometimes his parents quarreled bitterly, but he did not know about what. His mother had been a rich man’s only daughter and there were few women so well educated as she had been in her youth. But still she obeyed her husband, even though they quarreled. Everyone obeyed him, even his parents, although he made a show of yielding to them, since that was suitable.
“May I go now, Father?” I-wan asked.
“In a moment,” his father replied.
So he sat waiting, but rebellion grew hot in him.
“My father,” he thought, “has nothing to say to me, but he keeps me waiting to show that he can. He never wants to give me permission at once to go away. He wants to show his power over me.” His lips curled a little. When he renounced them all—
“Have you any plans?” his father asked suddenly in Chinese.
I-wan looked up. His father had put down his pen.
“I have been thinking for some time we ought to plan your future,” he said. “Your mother, too, has plans.”
“Twenty,” his mother said. “You are a man.”
I-wan felt himself turn scarlet. His father went on, kindly, observing his son.
“Let your mind rest,” he said. “We shall not force you or your brother in anything. We have not betrothed you and shall not. Long ago we talked of it, and we decided to leave you and I-ko free to choose your own wives.”
“Thank you, sir,” I-wan murmured.
Of course he knew they had done this. I-ko loitered in his room sometimes at night, talking of girls he knew whom he might marry if he liked. He could never decide which of these girls he wanted to marry, and sometimes he ended by laughing at himself.
“There is still no law against more than one wife,” he would say, “though the women are growing so independent they want you to promise you won’t marry anybody else! How can a man promise that?”
Nevertheless, although he had always taken his freedom for granted, for the first time now I-wan felt gratitude toward his parents. Plenty of his schoolmates were already betrothed because their parents compelled them. That also was one of the things they were to fight for — the freedom of choice in marriage. The girls, especially, were excited for this. They said over and over at the meetings, “We must have the right to marry whom we like, or not marry at all, even, if we do not wish to do so.”
“Of course,” everybody had agreed.
Sometimes when two or three young men were alone together they discussed this determination of the girls. They agreed still that the girls were right. Nevertheless, they asked themselves, what would happen if women began to refuse to be married? It would be very embarrassing to a man to ask a young woman to marry him and have her refuse.
Once En-lan had grinned at I-wan. “Calm yourself,” he said. “Do you remember the girl who spoke loudest and longest for freedom?”
He did. She was a pretty, fiery girl from the southern province of Fukien. En-lan put his hand in his pocket and pulled out a letter and handed it to him. It was a passionate love letter, signed with her name. I-wan was amazed and secretly a little envious. “Shall you marry her?” he asked En-lan. En-lan shook his head. “Why should I marry when as a revolutionist any day I may be dead?” he asked. “Besides, she does not ask for marriage.”