NOW HAS OUR FATHER decided, My Sister! It is hard to receive his decision, but it is better to know it than to remain in false hope.
Yesterday he sent a messenger to my brother, a third cousin-brother, an official in the clan of my father’s house. He bore our father’s will to my brother in these words, when he had taken tea and refreshment in the guest hall.
“Hear, son of Yang. Your father replies plainly to your petition thus, and the members of the clan agree with him; even to the lowest they uphold him. Your father says,
“‘It is not possible that the foreign one be received among us. In her veins flows blood unalterably alien. In her heart are alien loyalties. The children of her womb cannot be sons of Han. Where blood is mixed and impure the heart cannot be stable.
“‘Her son, moreover, cannot be received in the ancestral hall. How could a foreigner kneel before the long and sacred line of the Ancient Great? One only may kneel there whose heritage is pure, and in whose flesh is the blood of the Ancients unadulterated.’
“Your father is generous. He sends you a thousand pieces of silver. When the child is born, pay her, and let her return to her own country. Long enough you have played. Now resume your duties. Hear the Command! Marry the one chosen for you. The daughter of Li becomes impatient at this long delay. The family of Li have been patient, preferring to allow the marriage to wait until your madness—known throughout the city, so that it is a scandal and a disgrace to the clan—is past. But now they will wait no longer; they demand their rights. The marriage can no longer be postponed. Youth is passing, and the sons begot and borne in youth are best.”
And he handed to my brother a heavy bag of silver.
But my brother took the silver and threw it upon the ground. He bent forward, and his eyes were like double-edged knives, seeking the other’s heart. His anger had been mounting under his icy face, and now it burst forth as terrible as lightning unforeseen out of a clear sky.
“Return to that one!” he shouted. “Bid him take back his silver! From this day I have no father. I have no clan—I repudiate the name of Yang! Remove my name from the books! I and my wife, we will go forth. In this day we shall be free as the young of other countries are free. We will start a new race—free—free from these ancient and wicked bondages over our souls!”
And he strode out of the room.
The messenger picked up the purse muttering,
“Ah, there are other sons—there are other sons!”
And he returned to my father.
Ah, My Sister, do you see now why I said it was well that my mother died? How could she have endured to see this day? How could she have endured to see the son of a concubine take the place of her only son, the heir?
My brother has nothing now, therefore, of the family estates. With his share they will placate the house of Li for the outrage done them, and already, Wang Da Ma says, they are looking for another husband for that one who was my brother’s betrothed.
With what a sacrifice of love has my brother loved this foreigner!
But he has told her nothing of the sacrifice, her, the expectant one, lest it darken her happiness in the future. He said only,
“Let us leave this place now, my heart. There can never be a home for us within these walls.”
And she was glad and went with him joyfully. Thus did my brother leave forever his ancestral home. There was not even one to bid him farewell, except old Wang Da Ma, who came and wept and bowed her head into the dust before him, crying,
“How can the son of my mistress leave these courts? It is time that I died—it is time that I died!”
They live now in a little two-story house like ours on the Street of the Bridges. My brother within this short time has grown older and more quiet. For the first time in his life he has to think where food and clothes must come from. He goes every day early in me morning to teach in the government school here, he who never rose in the morning until the sun was swinging high in the heavens. His eyes are resolute, and he speaks less often and smiles less easily than he used. I ventured to say to him one day,
“Do you regret anything, my brother?”
He flashed one of his old quick looks at me from under his eyelids, and he replied,
“Never!”
Ah, I think my mother was wrong! He is not the son of his father. He is wholly the son of his mother for steadfastness.
Now what do you think has happened, My Sister? I laughed when I heard of it, and suddenly without understanding it I wept.
Last night my brother heard a mighty knocking on the door of his little house. He went to open it himself, since they keep but one servant in these days, and to his amazement, there stood Wang Da Ma. She came on a wheelbarrow, and with her she brought all her possessions in a large woven bamboo basket and a bundle tied in a blue cloth. When she saw my brother she said with great calmness and self-possession,
“I have come to live with my lady’s son and to serve her grandson.”
My brother asked her,
“But do you not know that I am no longer accounted my mother’s son?”
Wang Da Ma answered obstinately, grasping the bundle and the basket firmly in either hand,
“Now then! Do you stand there and say that? Did I not take you from your mother’s arms into these arms when you were scarce a foot in length and as naked as a fish? Have you not fed from my breasts? What you were born, that you are, and your son is your son. Let it be as I say!”
My brother said he scarcely knew what to reply. It is true that she has known us all our lives and is more to us than a servant. While he hesitated she moved her bundle and her basket into the little hall, and grumbling and panting, for she grows old and fat now, she fumbled within herself for her purse. When she had found it she turned to quarrel mightily with the wheelbarrow man over the price of the fare, and thus she established herself as in her home.
This she has done for my mother’s sake. It is absurd to notice over-much the behavior of a servant, nevertheless my brother laughs with an edge of tenderness in his laughter when he speaks of her. He is pleased that she is come and that in her arms his son will sleep and play.
This morning she came to pay her respects to me, and she was as always. One would think she had lived with my brother in this foreign house for years, although I know she is secretly astonished at many things. My brother says she pretends to notice nothing strange, although she distrusts especially the stairs, and nothing will induce her to climb them, for the first time, in the presence of others. But to-day she told me that she could not swallow the changes that have taken place in my mother’s house.
She said that the fat concubine has become the First Lady in my mother’s place. It has been declared in the ancestral hall before the sacred tablets. She walks proudly about clad in red and purple, and on her fingers are many rings. She has even moved into my mother’s rooms! Hearing Wang Da Ma tell of this, I know I can never go there again. Ah, my mother!
He is tender to her, his wife, more tender now than ever since he has given up everything for her sake. He who has lived in ease all his life on his father’s wealth has now become poor. But he has learned how to make her happy.
Yesterday when I went to see her she looked up from a page on which she was writing long twisting flowing lines. When I came into the room with my son she looked up smiling as she always does when she sees the child.
“I am writing to my mother,” she said, her eyes suddenly illumined as they are when she smiles. “I can tell her everything at last. I shall tell her that I have hung yellow curtains at the windows and that there is a bowl of golden narcissus on the table. I shall tell her that to-day I have lined a little basket with pink silk for him to sleep in—silk the color of American apple-blossoms! She will see through every word and know how happy—how happy I am, at last!”
Have you ever seen a lovely valley, My Sister, gray beneath a heavy sky? Then suddenly the clouds part, and sunshine pours down, and life and color start out joyous and shouting from every point of that valley. It is so with her now. Her eyes are things alive in themselves for joy, and her voice is a continual song.
Her lips are never still. They are always curving and moving with little smiles and fragments of quick laughter. She is really very beautiful. I have always doubted her beauty before, because it was not like anything I had seen, but now I perceive it clearly. Storm and sullenness have gone from her eyes. They are blue like the sea under a bright sky.
As for my brother, now that he has done what he decided to do, he is quiet and grave and content. He is a man.
When I think that these two have left, each of them, a world for the other’s sake, I am humbled before such love. The fruit of it will be a precious fruit—as marvelous as jade.
As for their child, I am moved in two ways. He will have his own world to make. Being of neither East nor West purely, he will be rejected of each, for none will understand him. But I think, if he has the strength of both his parents, he will understand both worlds, and so overcome.
But this is only as I think, when I watch my brother and his wife. I am only a woman. I must speak to my husband of it, since he is wise, and he knows without being told where the truth lies.
Ah, but this I do know! I long to behold their child. I wish him to be a brother to my son.