A House Divided (44 page)

As for Yuan, he went his way hardened against her, and to himself he thought, “Well, then, I
will
be merry. This is my last evening and I will see how to make it very merry.”

And so he did. That night Yuan did what he had never done before. He drank wine freely and whenever anyone called out to him to drink, and he drank until he did not see clearly the face of any maid he danced with, but he only knew he had some maid or other in his arms. He drank so much of foreign wines to which he was not used, that all the great flower-decked pleasure hall grew before his eyes into a sort of swimming glittering moving maze of brightness. Yet for all this he held his drunkenness inside him very well, so that none knew except himself how drunken he truly was. Even Sheng cried out in praise of him, and said, “Yuan, you are a lucky fellow! You are one of those who grow paler as he drinks instead of red as we lesser fellows do! I swear it is only your eyes that betray you, but they burn as hot as coals!”

Now in this night’s drinking he met one whom he had seen somewhere before. She was a woman whom Sheng brought to him, saying, “Here is a new friend of mine, Yuan! I’ll lend her to you for a dance, and then you must tell me if you have found one who does so well!” So Yuan found himself with her in his arms, a strange little slender creature in a long foreign dress of white glittering stuff, and when he looked down at her face he thought he knew it, for it was not a face easily forgotten, very round and dark, and the lips thick and passionate, a face not beautiful, but strange and to be looked at more than once. Then she said herself, half wondering, “Why, I know you—we were on the same boat, do you remember?” Then Yuan forced his hot brain and he did remember and he said, smiling, “You are the girl who cried you would be free always.”

At this her great black eyes grew grave and her full lips, which were painted thick and very red, pouted and she answered, “It is not easy being free here. Oh, I suppose I am free enough—but horribly lonely—” And suddenly she stopped dancing and pulled Yuan’s sleeve and cried, “Come and sit down somewhere and talk with me. Have you been as miserable as I? … Look, I am the youngest child of my mother who is dead, and my father is next to the chief governor of the city. … He has four concubines—all nothing but singsong girls—you can imagine the life I lead! I know your sister. She is pretty, but she is like all the others. Do you know what their life is? It is gamble all day, gossip, dance all night! I
can’t
live it—I want to
do
something—What are
you
doing?”

These earnest words came so strangely from her painted lips that Yuan could not but heed them. She listened restlessly after a while when Yuan told her of the new city and his work there, and how he had found a little place of his own and, he thought, a small work to do. When Sheng came and took her hand to bring her back into the dance, she thrust him pettishly away, and pouted her too full lips at him, and she cried earnestly, “Leave me alone! I want to talk seriously with him—”

At this Sheng laughed, and said teasingly, “Yuan, you would make me jealous if I thought she could be serious about anything!”

But the girl had turned already again to Yuan and she began to pour out her passionate heart to him, and all her body spoke, too, the little round bare shoulders shrugging, and her pretty plump hands moving in her earnestness, “Oh, I hate it all so—don’t you? I can’t go abroad again—my father won’t give me the money—he says he can’t waste any more on me—and all those wives gambling from morning to night! I hate it here! The concubines all say nasty things about me because I go places with men!”

Now Yuan did not like this girl at all, for he was repelled by her naked bosom and by her foreign garb and by her too red lips, but still he could feel her earnestness and be sorry for her plight and so he said, “Why do you not find something to do?”

“What can I do?” she asked. “Do you know what I specialized in in college? Interior decoration for western homes! I’ve done my own room over. I’ve done a little in a friend’s house, but not for pay. Who here wants what I have? I want to belong here, it’s my country, but I’ve been away too long. I have no place anywhere—no country—”

By now Yuan had forgotten this was an evening meant for pleasure, he was so moved by the poor creature’s plight. There she sat before his pitying gaze, gay in her silly shining clothes, and her painted eyes full of tears.

But before he could think of a thing to say for her comfort Sheng was back again. And now he would not have refusal. He did not see her tears. He put his arm about her waist and laughing at her he swept her off with him into the whirling music, and Yuan was left alone.

Somehow he had no heart to dance more, and all the gaiety was gone from the noisy hall. Once the girl came by in Sheng’s arms, and now her face was turned up to his, and it was bright and empty again and as though she had never spoken the words she had to Yuan. … He sat thoughtfully awhile, and let a servant fill his glass again and again, while he sat on alone.

At the end of that night of pleasure, when they went home again, Yuan was steady still, though it was true the wine burned inside him like a fever. Yet he could be strong enough to let Ai-lan’s husband lean on him, for that one could not walk alone any more, he was so drunken, and his whole face was crimson and he babbled like a foolish child.

Now when Yuan struck at the door to be let in that night it opened suddenly and there by the manservant who had opened it was Mei-ling herself, and when the drunken man saw her he seemed to think of something he remembered between Yuan and Mei-ling, and he cried, “You—you—should have gone—there was a—a pretty rival—she wouldn’t—leave Yuan—dangerous, eh?” And he fell to laughing foolishly.

Mei-ling answered nothing. When she saw the two she said to the servant coldly, “Take my sister’s lord to his bed, since he is so drunken!”

But when he was gone she held Yuan there with a sudden blazing gaze. Thus were these two alone at last, and when Yuan felt Mei-ling’s great angry eyes on him, it was like a sobering blast of cold north wind upon him. He felt the heat within him die down quickly, and for an instant he almost feared her, she was so tall and straight and angry, and he was speechless.

But she was not. No, all these days she had scarcely spoken to him, but now she did, and her words leaped from her, and she said, “You are like all the others, Yuan,—like all the other foolish idle Wangs! I have made myself a fool. I thought, ‘Yuan is different—he is not a half-foreign fop, drinking and dancing all his good years away!’ But you are—you are! Look at you! Look at your silly foreign clothes—you reek of wine—you are drunk, too!”

But Yuan grew angry at this and sulky as a boy and he muttered, “You would not give me anything—you know how I have waited for you—and you have made excuses and excuses—”

“I did not!” she cried, and then beside herself this maid stamped her foot and she leaned forward and gave Yuan’s face a swift sharp slap, as though he were indeed a naughty child. “You know how busy I have been—who was that woman he told of?—and this was your last evening—and I had planned—Oh, I hate you!”

And she burst into weeping and ran quickly away, and Yuan stood in an agony, not comprehending anything except she said she hated him. So ended his poor holiday.

The next day Yuan returned to his work, and alone, for Meng had shorter holiday and was already gone. The rains of late winter were begun, and the train drove through the dark day, and the water dripped down the window pane, so that he could scarcely see the sodden fields. At every town the streets ran with, liquid filth and the stations were empty except for the shivering few men who must be there for some duty, and Yuan, remembering how he had not seen Mei-ling again, for he left in the early morning and she was not there to bid him good-bye, said to himself this was the dreariest hour of his life …

At last weary of watching the rain and in restless dreariness he took from his bag the book of verses Sheng had given him the first night, and which he had not read yet, and he began to turn the thick ivory paper, not caring much if he read or not. On each page were printed clear and black a few lines or words, a little group of strung phrases, seeming exquisite, Yuan thought, until he grew curious and half forgot his trouble, and read the book again more carefully, and then he saw these little poems Sheng had made were only empty shapes. They were only small lovely empty shapes, all exquisite and empty although they were so fluent in their line and sound that almost Yuan forgot their emptiness until, the shape seized, he found there was nothing there within them.

He closed the pretty silver-bound book, and put it in its cover again and laid it down. … Outside the villages slipped past, dark and huddled in the rain. At doorways men looked sullenly into the rains that beat through the thatched roofs above their heads. In sunshine these folk could live outdoors as beasts do, and thrive merrily somehow, but days of rains drove them into their hovels and too many days of rain drove them half-mad with quarrelling and cold misery, and now they looked out with hate against heaven who sent such long rains down.

… The verses were of lovely delicacies, the light of the moon upon a dead woman’s golden hair, an ice-bound fountain in a park, a faery island in a smooth green sea, narrow between pale sands …

Yuan saw the sullen beast-like faces, and he thought, very troubled, “As for me, I can write nothing. If I wrote these things Sheng does, which I can see well enough are exquisite, why, then I remember these dark faces and these hovels and all this deep under-life of which he knows nothing and will not know. And yet I cannot write of such life either. I wonder why I am so speechless and troubled?”

And so he fell to brooding and to thinking perhaps that no man can create anything who lives not wholly anywhere. He remembered how on that feast day he had thought himself between the old and the new. And then he smiled sadly, thinking how foolish he had been to think himself not alone. He was alone.

… So it rained on to his journey’s end, and he came down from the train in rain and dusk, and in the rain the old city wall stood grim and black and high. He called a ricksha and climbed in, and sat chill and lonely while the man dragged the vehicle along the slippery running streets. Once the man stumbled and fell, and while he righted himself and waited for a moment to pant and wipe the rain from his dripping face, Yuan looked out and saw the hovels still clinging against the wall. The rains had flooded them and the wretched helpless folk within sat in the flood and waited silently for heaven to change.

Thus began for Yuan the new year, which he had thought would be his best and happiest year. Instead it began in every sort of evil. For the rains held that spring beyond all bearing, and though priests in temples made many prayers, nothing came of all their prayers and sacrifices except new evil, for such superstitions stirred up ardent angers in the young rulers who believed in no gods at all except their own heroes, and they commanded the temples in those parts to be closed, and ruthlessly they sent soldiers to live in those temples and drive the priests into the smallest worst rooms. Then this in turn made angry the farmer folk, who could be wroth enough against those selfsame priests for one cause or another when they came begging, but who feared now that the gods might be angry anew, and they cried that doubtless all these evil rains were because of these new rulers, and so for once they joined the priests against the young rulers.

For a month the rains held, and still they held, and the great river began to swell and rise and flow into the lesser rivers and canals and everywhere men began to see the coming of the same ancient floods, and if flood, then famine. Now the people had believed that the new times would bring them somehow a new heaven and a new earth, and when they found this was not true, and heaven behaved as carelessly as ever it did, and the earth gave forth no more for harvest in flood or drought than ever it did, they cried out the new rulers were false and no better than the old ones, and old discontents, stilled for a while by new promises of new times, began to rise again.

And Yuan found himself divided again, too, for Meng was pent in his narrow quarters all these many days and not able to spend the vigor of his young body in his usual training of his men, and he came often to Yuan’s room and quarreled with everything Yuan said and he cursed the rains and he cursed his general and he cursed the new leaders whom every day he said grew more selfish and careless of the people’s good. He was so unjust sometimes that Yuan could not forbear saying one day, very mildly, “Yet we can hardly blame them that it rains so much, and even if there is a flood, we cannot blame them for that.”

But Meng shouted savagely, “I will blame them, nevertheless, for they are no true revolutionists!” And then he let his voice drop and he said restlessly, “Yuan, I’ll tell you something no one else knows. But I tell you because though you are so spineless and join in no cause clearly, still you are good enough in your way and faithful and always the same. Hear me—when one day I am gone, you are not to be surprised! Tell my parents not to be afraid. The truth is within this revolution there grows now another—a better, truer one, Yuan—a new revolution! And I and four of my fellows are determined to go and join it—we shall take our loyal men, and go into the west where the thing is shaping. Already thousands of young good eager men have joined secretly. I’ll have my chance yet to fight against this old general who keeps me down so low!” And Meng stood glowering for a moment until suddenly his dark face grew bright, or bright as it ever did, for it was a sullen face at best, and then he said thoughtfully and more quietly, “That true revolution, Yuan, is for the people’s good. We shall seize the country and hold it for the common people’s good, and there shall be no more rich and no more poor—”

And so Meng talked on and Yuan let him talk in half-sad silence. He had, he thought heavily, heard these words all his life somewhere, and still there were these poor, and still there were these words. He remembered how he had seen the poor even in that rich foreign country. Yes, there were always the poor. He let Meng talk, and when at last he was gone, Yuan went and stood by the window for a while and watched the few people trudging through the rain. He saw Meng come out and stride along the street, his head high even in the rain. But he was the only proud one. For the most part the only figures were the rain-soaked ricksha pullers, struggling over the slippery stones. … He remembered again what he never could wholly forget, that Mei-ling had not written to him once. Nor had he written to her, for, or so he said simply to himself, “There is no use in writing if she hates me so.” And this set the seal of sadness to the day.