Authors: Pearl S. Buck
And the old lady murmured, for she had sat waiting for his word, “Oh, Yuan, I
knew
it must be wrong!”
But Mary said nothing. Though Yuan did not look at her when he came in, and not now, either, yet he saw her sitting there, silent, her chin resting on her crossed hands, looking at him. But he would not look at her fully. He read quickly down the page, crying over and over, “It is not true—it cannot be true—such a thing could never happen in my country! Or if it did there is some dreadful cause—”
His eye searched for that cause. Then Mary spoke. She said, and now he knew her well enough to perceive her heart from the very way she spoke, her words clipped and clear and seemingly careless, her voice a little hard and casual, “I looked for the cause, too, Yuan. But there is none—it seems they were all quite innocent and friendly people, surprised in their homes and with their children—”
At this Yuan looked at her, and she looked at him, her eyes as clear and grey and cold as ice. And they accused him and he cried out to her silently, “I only did what I could not help!” But they steadily accused him.
Then Yuan, trying to be his usual self, sat down and talking more than was his wont, said eagerly, “I shall call up my cousin Sheng—he will know, being in that large city, what the truth is. I know my people—they could not do a thing like this—we are a civilized race—not savage—we love peace—we hate bloodshed. There is a mistake here, I know.”
And the old lady repeated fervently, “I know there is a mistake, Yuan. I know God could not let such a thing happen to our good missionaries.”
But suddenly Yuan felt his breath stopped by this simple speech, and he was about to cry out, “If they were those priests—” and then his eyes fell on Mary again, and he was silent. For now she was looking at him still and it was with a great speechless sadness, and he could not say a word. His heart longed for forgiveness from her. Yet his very heart drew back, lest in seeking forgiveness it yield to that to which his flesh did not wish to yield.
He said no more, and none spoke except the old man, who, when he was finished, said to Yuan as he rose, “Will you tell me, Yuan, what news you learn?” Then Yuan rose, too, suddenly not wanting to be left alone with Mary, lest the lady leave them so, and he went away very heavy of heart, afraid because he did not want the news to be true. He could not bear to be put to such shame, and this the more because he felt the woman judged him secretly for his withdrawal and counted it for weakness in him. Therefore the more must he show his people blameless of this thing.
Never again were these two near to each other. For as day passed into day, Yuan was swept into this passion to show his country clear, and he came to feel that if he could do it, he would be justified himself. In all the busy ending weeks of that year of school he so busied himself. Step by step he must prove it not his country’s fault. It was true, Sheng said, his voice coming calm and like itself across the wires that first day, it was true the thing was done. And Yuan cried back impatiently, “But why—but why?” And Sheng’s voice came back so careless Yuan could almost see him shrug himself, “Who knows? A mob—communists—some fanatic cause—who can know the truth?”
But Yuan was in an agony. “I will not believe it—there was a cause—some aggression—
something!
”
And Sheng said quietly, “We can never know the truth—” and changing he asked, “When shall we meet again, Yuan? I have not seen you in too long—when do you go home?”
But Yuan was able only to say “Soon!” He knew that he must go home; if he could not clear his country, then he must go home as quickly as he could finish what remained to be done.
Thereafter he went no more into the garden, nor were there hours alone with Mary any more. They were friendly outwardly, but there was nothing to be said between them, and Yuan planned so he need not meet her. For more and more as he could not prove his country blameless, he turned somehow against these very friends of his.
The old pair perceived this and though they were still gentle with him always, yet they drew themselves a little apart, too, not blaming him at all, and sensitive to his distress, though not understanding it.
But Yuan felt they blamed him. Upon his shoulders he carried the weight of all his country did. Now as he daily read the papers and read of things that any army does in victory and marching through a vanquished country, he felt himself in agony. Sometimes he wondered about his father, for the army moved steadily towards the northern plains, everywhere victorious.
But his father seemed very far away. Near, too near, were these gentle silent aliens, to whose home he must sometimes still go, for they would have it so, who never spoke one word of what the papers said, sparing him all mention of what they knew must torture him with shame. And yet in spite of all their silence, they accused. Their very silence accused. The woman’s gravity and coolness, the prayers of the old two, for sometimes before a meal to which they pressed him the old man would say low and troubled words and he would add to his thanks such words as these, “Save them, O God, who are Thy servants in a distant land, who live in such peril of their lives.” And the lady would add to it most earnestly her soft “Amen.”
Yuan could not bear this prayer, nor this amen, and he could bear it less because even Mary, who had warned him against the faith of the old pair, now bowed her head in new respect of them, not, he knew, that she believed more than she did, but only because she felt the dangers against which they prayed. So was she leagued with them against him, or so he thought.
Again Yuan was alone, and alone he worked to the year’s finish and to the hour when with the others he stood for his degree. Alone among them all, the single one of his own people, he received the symbol of his scholarship. Alone he heard his name mentioned for high honors. There were a few who came to give him congratulations, but Yuan told himself he did not care if they came or not.
Alone he packed his books and clothes. At the last it came into his mind that the old pair were even glad to see him go, although their kindness did not change, and then Yuan in his pride thought to himself, “I wonder if they have been uneasy lest I wed their daughter, and so are glad to see me go!”
He smiled bitterly and believed this so. And then thinking of her he thought to himself again, “But I have this to thank her for—she saved me from turning a Christian. Yes, once she saved me—but once, too, I saved myself!”
E
VEN AS YUAN HAD LOVED
and hated his father in his childhood, so now he left that foreign country loving and hating it. He could not but love it, however unwillingly, as anyone must love a thing beautiful and young and strong. He loved beauty and so he must love the beauty of trees upon mountains, and of meadows free from graves of the dead and beasts upon the land fed and healthy and content and cities clean of human refuse. Then he did not love these very things because if they were beautiful he was not sure if there could be beauty in the bare hills of his own country and he felt it wrong that the dead should lie in the good land of the living so that their graves were in the midst of fields, and he remembered such things there. When he looked upon the rich countryside passing him in the train, he thought, “If this were mine I would love it very well. But it is not mine.” He could not, somehow, love wholly a beauty or a good that was not his. He could not like very greatly the people even who possessed this good which was not his.
When once more he went upon the ship and turned to his own country again, he spent much time in questioning himself what gain he had from these six years away. He had gained, doubtless, in learning. His brain was stuffed with useful learning, and he had a small trunk full of notebooks and books of other sorts, and there was a long dissertation he had made himself upon a theme of the inheritance of certain strains of wheat. He had, moreover, little bags of seed wheat, which he had chosen carefully from other seeds he had planted himself in experiment, and he planned to put this seed into his own ground, and raise more and then more until there was enough to give to others, and so might all harvests be improved. Such things he knew he had.
He had more than this. He had some certainties. He knew that when he wed, the woman must be of his own flesh and kind. He was not like Sheng. For him there was now no magic in white flesh and pale eyes and tangled hair. Wherever his mate was she was like him, her eyes black as his, her hair smooth and straight and black, her skin the hue of his. He must have his own.
For, ever after that night beneath the elms, the white woman whom in some ways he knew very well had become to him completely strange. She was not changed, she maintained herself day after day as she had always been, steady, courteous always, quick to understand what he said or felt, but a stranger. Their two minds might know each other, but their minds were housed in two different habitations. Only for one moment had she striven to draw near to him again. She went with him, and the old pair also, to see him at his train and when he put forth his hand to say farewell, she held it for an instant strongly, and her grey eyes warmed and darkened and she cried in a low voice, “Shall we not even write to each other?”
Then Yuan, never able to give pain for any cause, and confused by the pain in her darkening eyes, said, stammering, “Yes—of course—why should we not?”
But she, searching his face, dropped his hand and her look changed, and she said no more, not even when the old mother broke in quickly, “But of course Yuan will write to us.”
Then again Yuan promised that he would write and tell them everything. But he knew, and as the train drew away and he must look at Mary’s face, he saw that she knew also that he would never write and tell them anything. He was going home, and they were aliens, and he could tell them nothing. As though he cast aside a garment no longer to be used, he cast aside these whole six years of his life except the knowledge in his brain and his box of books. … Yet now upon the ship when he thought of the years, there was the unwilling love in his heart, because this foreign country had so much he would have, and because he could not hate these three, since they were truly good; but the love was unwilling because now he was turned homeward he began to remember certain things he had forgotten. He remembered his father, and he remembered small crowded streets, not clean or beautiful, and he remembered the three days he had spent once in prison.
But against these things he argued thus, that in these six years the revolution had come about and doubtless all was changed. Was not all changed? For when he left Meng had been a fugitive, and now Sheng told him Meng was a captain in the army of the revolution and free to go anywhere and everywhere. There was more changed, too, for on this ship Yuan was not the only one of his kind. There were a score or so of young men and women who returned to their own land as he did, and they all talked much together and ate together at the same tables, and they talked of all that was come about, and Yuan heard how old narrow streets were torn away and great streets, as wide as any in the world, were driven through the old cities, and how there were motor vehicles far in the country along country roads, and farmers rode in them who used always to plod afoot, or at best sit across an ass’s back, and he heard how many cannon and how many bombing planes and how many weaponed soldiers the new revolution had, and they told how men and women were equal in these days, and how it was against the new law to sell or to smoke opium, and how all such old evils were now gone.
They told so many things Yuan had not heard that he began to wonder why he ever had those old memories, and he grew more than ever eager to be in his new country. He was glad of his youth, in these days, and among these of his own kind he said one day as they sat at a table together and his heart leaped within him when he spoke, “How great a thing it is that we are born now when we may be free and do as we will with our own lives!”
And they all looked at each other, these young eager men and women, and they smiled in exultation, and one girl thrust out her pretty foot and said, “Look at me! If I had been born in my mother’s time, do you think I could have walked on two good sound feet like these?” and they all laughed as children do over some little joke of their own. But the girls’ laughter had a deeper meaning in it than only merriment, and one said, “It is the first time in our people’s history that we are all free—the first time since Confucius!”
And then a merry youth cried out, “Down with Confucius!” And they all cried, “Yes, down with Confucius!” and they said, “Let’s put him down and keep him down with all those old things which we hate—him and his filial piety!”
Then at other times they talked more gravely and at these times they grew anxious to think and plan what they could do for country’s sake, for there was not one of these companions of Yuan’s who was not filled with yearning so to serve his country. In every sentence they made, the words “country” and “love of country” could be heard, and they seriously weighed their faults and their abilities and compared them to those of other men. They said, “Those men of the west excel us in inventiveness, and in the energy in their bodies, and in their dauntlessness to go ahead in what they do.” And another said, “How do we excel?” and they looked at each other and took thought, and they said, “We excel in patience and in understanding and in long endurance.”
At this the girl who had thrust out her pretty foot cried impatiently, “It is our weakness that we do endure so long! For myself, I am determined to endure nothing—nothing at all I do not like, and I shall try to teach all my countrywomen not to endure anything. I never saw any woman in the foreign country endure anything she did not like and that is how they have come as far as they have!”
And one who was a wag cried out, “Yes, it is the men who endure there, and now it seems we must learn it, brothers!” and then they all laughed together, as the young will laugh easily, but the wag looked secretly with admiration at the bold pretty impatient girl, who must have her own way.