A House Divided Read online

  To which the old man smiled a little sadly and answered, “You are just like Mary. You young people—you are like young birds—afraid to try your wings and fly out of the little world you know. Ah, until you cease to cling to reason only and begin to trust to dreams and imaginations there will come forth no great scientists from among you. No great poets—no great scientists—the same age produces both.”

  But Yuan out of all these words remembered most the one saying, “You are just like Mary.”

  It was true he was like Mary. Between these two, born ten thousand miles apart, and of two bloods never mingled, there was a likeness, and it was twofold, the likeness of youth to any youth in any age, alike in their rebellions, and the other likeness, which is that between a man and maid in spite of time or blood.

  For now as the full spring drew near and the trees grew green again and in the woods near the house little flowers sprang out from under the dead winter leaves, Yuan felt in himself a new freedom of the blood. Here surely in this home there was nothing to make his flesh shrink back. Here he forgot he was an alien. He could look at these three and forget their difference, so that the blue eyes of the old pair were natural to him and Mary’s eyes were lovely for their changefulness and no longer strange.

  And she grew more lovely to him. Some mildness came upon her always now. She was never sharp, her voice even not incisive as it used to be. Her face grew a little fuller, her cheeks less pale, and her lips were softer and not so tightly pressed together and she moved more languidly and with some ease she had not before.

  Sometimes on Yuan’s coming she seemed very busy, and she came and went so that he seldom saw her. But as spring came full in this she changed, and, not knowing that they did it, each began to plan to meet every morning in the garden. There she came to him, fresh as the day was, her dark hair smooth about her ears. To Yuan she was most lovely when she was dressed in blue, so one day he said, smiling at her, “It is the blue the country people wear in my land. It suits you.” And she smiled back and answered, “I am glad.”

  One day Yuan remembered, for he came early to take his morning meal with them, and while he waited in the garden for her he bent over a bed of small pansy seedlings to take the weeds carefully from their roots. Then she came and stood there watching him, her face strangely warm and lighted, and as he looked, she put forth her hand and took from his hair a leaf or bit of weed lodged there, and he felt her quick hand touch his cheek as it dropped. He knew she did not touch him purposely, for she was always careful against such touching, so that she seemed to draw away even from an aid given her at some roughness in the road. She did not, as many maids will do, put forth a hand to touch a man for any small cause. It was in truth the first time he had ever felt her hand, except in the cool casual touch of greeting.

  But now she did not excuse herself. By her frank eyes and by the sudden faint red in her cheeks he knew she felt the touch and that she knew he did. They looked at each other quickly, and turned away again, and she said tranquilly, “Shall we go in for breakfast?”

  And he answered as tranquilly, “I must just wash my hands.”

  So the moment passed.

  Afterwards he thought a little of it and his mind flew to bring him the memory of that other touch so long ago, given by the maid now dead. Strangely, beside that ardent open touch, this new light touch seemed less than nothing and still the other burned more real. He muttered to himself, “Doubtless she did not know she did it. I am a fool.” And he resolved to forget it all, and to control his mind more sternly against such thoughts, for he truly did not welcome them.

  So through the months of that last spring Yuan lived in a strange double way. Within himself he held a certain place of his own, secure against this woman. The softness of the new season, the mildness of a moonlight night when he and she might walk together down the street under the budding new-leaved trees into lonely roads leading to the country, or the stillness of a room where sometimes they sat alone while the musical steady rains of spring beat upon the window panes, even such hours alone with her could not break through into that place. And Yuan wondered at himself, not knowing how he could be so stirred as he sometimes knew he was and yet not want to yield.

  For in some ways this white woman could stir him and yet hold him off, and by the same things he loved and did not love. Because he loved beauty and never could escape it, he often saw her beautiful, her brow and neck so white against her dark hair. And yet he did not love such whiteness. He often saw her lighted eyes, clear and grey underneath her dark brows, and he could admire the mind which made them shine and flash, and yet he did not love grey eyes. So, too, with her hands, quick, vivid, speaking, moving hands, beautiful and angular in strength. But he did not love such hands somehow.

  Yet was he drawn to her again and yet again by some power in her, so that over and over in that busy spring he would pause in the midst of his work in fields or in his room or in the hall of books, to find her suddenly in his mind. He came to ask himself at such times, “Shall I miss her when I go away? Am I bound somehow to this country through this woman?” He dallied with the thought that he might stay on and study more, and yet he could ask himself plainly, “Why do I really stay? If in truth for this woman, to what end, seeing I do not want to wed one of her race?” Yet he felt a pang when he thought further, “No, I will go home.” Then he thought further that perhaps he would never see her again, once he was gone, for how could he return again? When he thought he might never see her again, then it seemed he must indeed put off his going.

  So might the questioning have dragged itself into an answer and he stayed on, except there came across the sea news which was like his country’s voice demanding him.

  Now these years while Yuan had been away he had scarcely known how his country did. He knew that there were little wars, but to these he paid no heed, for there had been always little wars.

  In these six years Wang the Tiger wrote him of one or two such petty wars he undertook; one against a little new bandit chieftain, and a second time against a lord of war who passed unbidden through his regions. But Yuan passed quickly over such news, partly because he never loved wars, and partly because such things seemed not real at all to him, living in this peaceful foreign country, so that when some fellow pupil called out blithely, “Say, Wang, what’s this new war you’re getting up in China? I see it in the papers. Some Chang or Tang or Wang—” And Yuan, ashamed, would answer quickly, “It is nothing—no more than any robbery anywhere.”

  Sometimes his lady mother, who wrote him faithfully once a season, said in her letters, “The revolution grows apace, but I do not know how. Now that Meng is gone we nave no revolutionists in our family. I only hear that at last from the south the new revolution breaks. But Meng cannot yet come home. He is there among them, for he has written so, but he dares not yet come home, even if he would, for the rulers here are afraid and still very bitter in their hunting of those like him.”

  But Yuan did not lay aside wholly the thought of his own country and as he could he followed all the news he could find of that revolution, and he seized eagerly on every little printed line which told of some change, such as, “The old calendar of the moon is changed to the new western calendar,” or he read, “It is forbidden any more to bind the feet of women,” or he read, “The new laws will not let a man have more wives than one,” and many such things he read in those days. Every change Yuan read with joy and believed, and through all he could see his whole country changing, so that he thought to himself and wrote to Sheng so also, “When we go back next summer we will not know our land. It seems not possible that so soon, in six short years, so great a change has been brought about.”

  To which Sheng wrote back after many days, “Do you go home this summer? But I am not ready. I have a year or two yet I want to live here, if my father will send the money for it.”

  At these words Yuan could not but remember with great discomfort that woman who put Sheng’s little poems to
such languid heavy music, and then he would not think of her. But he wished Sheng would hasten and go home. It was true he had not yet won his degree, although he had spent more time at it than he should, and then troubled, Yuan thought how Sheng never spoke of the new things in their own country. But he excused Sheng quickly, because indeed it was not easy in this rich peaceful land to think of revolutions and of battles for a cause, and Yuan did too forget these things often in his own days of peace.

  And yet, as he knew afterwards, the revolution was even then coming to its height. Surely in its old way, up from the south, while Yuan spent his days upon his books, while he questioned himself what he felt for this white woman whom he loved and did not love, the grey army of the revolution, in which Meng was, crossed through the heart of his country to the great river. There it battled, but Yuan, ten thousand miles away, lived in peace.

  In such great peace he might thus have lived forever. For suddenly one day the warmth between him and the woman deepened. So long they had stood where they were, a little more than friends, a little less than lovers, that Yuan had come to take it as a thing accepted that every evening for a while they walked and talked together after the old pair slept. Before these two they showed nothing. And Mary would have said very honestly to any question, “But there is nothing to tell. What is there between us except friendship?” And it was true there had never been a speech between them which others could not hear and wonder nothing at it.

  Yet every night these two felt the day not ended unless they had been alone a little while together, even though each talked idly only of the day’s happenings. But in this little hour they grew more to know each other’s minds and hearts than by days of other hours.

  One night in that spring, they walked thus together up and down between the rose trees planted by a certain winding path. At the end of this path there was a clump of trees, six elm trees once planted in a circle and now grown large and old and full of shadows. Within these shadows the old man had placed a wooden seat, because he loved to come and sit there for meditation. On this night the shadows were very black, because it was a night of clear moon and all the garden was full of light except where the six elms grew. Once did the two pause within the circle of shadow and the woman said half carelessly, “See how dark these shadows are—we seem lost once we step within them.”

  In silence they stood and Yuan saw with a strange, uneasy pleasure how clear the moonlight was and he said, “The moonlight is so bright one can almost see the color of the new leaves.”

  “Or almost feel the shadow cold and the moonlight warm,” said Mary, stepping out again into the light.

  Yet again they paused when they had walked to and fro, and this time Yuan paused first and he said, “Are you cold, Mary?” For now he spoke her name easily.

  She answered, “No—” half stammering, and then, without knowing how it came about, they stood uncertain in the shadow and then quickly she moved to him, touched his hands, and Yuan felt this woman in his arms, and his arms about her, too, his cheek against her hair. And he felt her trembling and knew he was trembling and then as one they sank upon the bench, and she lifted up her head and looked at him and put up her two hands and held his head, her hands upon his cheeks, and she whispered, “Kiss me!”

  Then Yuan, who had seen such things pictured in amusement houses but never had he done it, felt his head drawn down and her lips hot against his lips, and she was pressed and centered on his lips.

  In that instant he drew back. Why he must draw back he could not tell, for there was that in him, too, which wanted to press on and on, deeper and long. But stronger than that desire was a distaste he could not understand, except it was the distaste of flesh for flesh that was not its own kind. He drew back, and stood up quickly, hot and cold and shamed and confused together. But the woman sat on, amazed. Even in the shadow he could see her white face upturned to him, amazed, questioning him why he drew back. But for his very life he could say nothing, nothing! He only knew he must draw back. At last he said half above his breath, and not in his usual voice, “It is cold—you must go in to the house—I must go back.”

  Still she did not move, and then after a little time she said, “You go if you must. I want to stay here awhile—”

  And he, feeling himself somehow lacking in what he should have been, yet knowing he had done only what he must do, said in attempted courtesy, “You must come in. You will be chilled.”

  She answered deliberately without moving at all, “I am chilled already. What does it matter?”

  And Yuan, hearing how cold and dead her voice, turned quickly and left her there and went away.

  But hour after hour he could not sleep. He thought of her only, and wondered if she still sat there in those shadows alone and he was troubled for her and yet he knew he had done only what he must. Like any child he muttered to excuse himself, “I did not like it. I truly did not like it.”

  How it might have been between them after that Yuan did not know. For as though she knew his plight his country now called him home.

  The next morning he awoke, knowing he must go to see Mary, and yet he delayed, half fearful, for now in the morning still there were these truths clear to him, that he had somehow failed her, though he knew he could have done no other thing than what he did.

  But when at last he went to the house he found the three of them in great gravity and consternation over what they saw in a paper. The old man asked anxiously as Yuan came in with him, “Yuan, can this be true?”

  Yuan looked with them at the paper and there in great letters were the words that the new revolutionists had fallen upon the white men and women in a certain city in his land and had driven them from their homes and even killed some among them, a priest or two, an old teacher and a physician, and some others. Yuan’s heart stopped, and he cried out, “There is a mistake here—”

  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 ne
ws 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.