II

Mrs. Butters’s sinless smile was bracketed a little on one side, like a parenthesis. Even her nose was smiling kindly. Yet she was thinking: “These Russians are really not much use. That hemstitching doesn’t look good.” However the baby whom the hemstitching would adorn would not be her first. First babies need first-rate hemstitching. But Mrs. Butters had had four and the baby she expected in October was only having a new outfit made because its four predecessors had fairly worn the original set to rags.

Mrs. Butters looked over Anna’s shoulder. “My dear Mrs. Malinin, how quick you work! It’s just wonderful!⁠ ⁠…”

“Quick but not good,” said Anna in a wistfully challenging voice.

“I think you’re doing fine,” said Mrs. Butters firmly, and then she faltered: “But⁠—my dear⁠—why have you drawn the threads out of this hem? That’s the side hem. We don’t want hemstitching up the side hem.”

“Oi! oi!” cried Anna. “Is that the side hem? Oi! oi!”

“It doesn’t matter,” said Mrs. Butters, and then with gathering conviction: “It really doesn’t matter, Mrs. Malinin. It will hardly show.”

“It will show,” said Anna. “It will show very bad indeed. Oi! what a stupid old woman I am! Can I not weave the threads in again, very watchfully?”

“No, really, Mrs. Malinin; that would look worse still. No, it will be all right. After all, why shouldn’t the side hem be hemstitched? Quite original. Don’t think of it again.”

Anna went on sewing in silence for a moment, bending her fat abashed face over her work. Turning remorse in her tender heart like a sword in a wound, she imagined Mrs. Butters secretly broken with disappointment about the spoiled side hem. In her own affairs Anna was an optimist; disappointment never dwelt long with her. But she imagined the hopes of others as being much more susceptible to blight. She saw herself as an iron Anna living in a world of glass. “She will always see that stupid hem as she shows the baby to her missionary friends,” thought Anna, violently. “She will be able to see nothing else. It will spoil the baby for her completely. I am not worth the money I take from these people. I will refuse today’s two yen.”

Mrs. Butters, seeing that Anna looked sad, hastened to tell a funny story. “Did I tell you what Betty, my quaint second girlie, said after her last Saturday-night bath, Mrs. Malinin? She said, ‘Mummy, I’d like to say drace now⁠—I’d like to say Thank Dod for a dood hot bath.’ ”

“Having done the stupidity now,” said Anna. “Would it perhaps make it better to do another stupidity to match on the other side?” Then she noticed that she was once more disappointing Mrs. Butters, and added, “Ah⁠—she said that? But she is funny⁠—your little Betti!” She gave a boisterous if belated laugh.

“She is a very sensitive, queer child,” said Mrs. Butters. “She cried when the goat died yesterday. And it wasn’t because she liked the milk, either. She said to me, ‘Mummy, I did love dat doatie.’ ”

“My husband also cries for such things,” said Anna. “He cried when the cat broke its neck. We all cried a little, but my husband most loudly. He is blind, you see, so he must value creatures that he can feel, now that he has lost the seeing of them. When he could see, he did not like creatures. So now we have an orphan kitten, Mrs. Butters, and you an orphan kid.”

“An orphan kid! Haven’t you a quaint way of saying things, Mrs. Malinin! But your English is wonderful, I’m sure. How did you learn such good English?”

“I was for many years a governess in England. I lived in a part of London called Kensington. The little girl I taught was also called Betti; her mother was called Honorable Mrs. Atkinson and wore always pink silk undervests of the most expensive kind. I taught Betti French and German, but I also learned a pretty good deal of English. How cheerfully I remember London! Climbing up the colored stairs on to the roofs of buses, I remember, and sitting on the right-hand corner seat, because in London all carriages drive on the left side, and therefore, sitting so, one may look down on the tops of all carriages going in⁠—out⁠—in⁠—run⁠—stop⁠—in⁠—out, like the ice in our rivers here in April. My little pupil, Betti, had a dog in London and always that dog catched buses before us, and climbed up skippingly to the roof, and sat on the right-hand corner seat.⁠ ⁠… Even if strangers were already there, that dog sat down on the strangers! Ha-ha-ha! A clever dog, called Paddy. Oh, the Kensington Gardens, Mrs. Butters! Crocuses⁠—such things we never have in this damn country⁠—purple some and white others⁠—all in the green grass. Oh, pretty!⁠ ⁠… There is a lake in the Kensington Gardens, where Betti and I sailed a boat; sometimes many hours that boat went round foolishly in the middle of the lake, and we wait on the shore, saying, well, give her five more minutes⁠ ⁠… but sometimes⁠—oh, the wind there! hairs, boats, skirts, dog’s fur, all blowing one way, and sun⁠—cloud⁠—sun⁠—cloud⁠—running across that so rough pond.⁠ ⁠… And once a duck bit our boat⁠—she was called Die Lustige Witwe.”

“You Russians are such wonderful linguists,” murmured Mrs. Butters. “And I suppose you married then and had a little boy of your own to teach.”

“Yes I marry before Seryozha comes, because I think it is good for a child to have a father⁠—even a father like my old husband. So I marry. We go back to Russia. I have taught Seryozha English as good as I can.” Anna sighed gustily. A few hairpins dropped out as she sighed. “I thought English is the most useful business language in China⁠—and now China is our country, since there is no Russia any more. But he will never be a business man, Seryozha. His father had no business gifts. Also Seryozha was born when I was too old. I was thirty-six. If a woman over thirty bears a child⁠—”

Mrs. Butters was a little puzzled by parts of this sentence. Also she preferred the actual bearing of babies to talking about it.

“But Mr. Malinin must have some business gifts. That little shop flourished well, before his misfortune, didn’t it?”

“It did not,” said Anna, with a bursting laugh. “Nothing that my family does is ever flourishing. Somehow we always bought too much of what nobody wanted and none of what all customers would be asking for. We had much scent last year, and only two Japanese ladies ever bought⁠—each one small bottle at reduced price. They smell of it always⁠—it is never finished. They came in the shop stinking of our scent and asked for German camera films, which we have not. It is true my husband was⁠—how do you say?⁠—compradore? to the Tao-yin for some years, he has buyed for him his foreign goods⁠—woolens, wines, jewels⁠—but he has made very many mistakes, and after that Tao-yin has been dead, the new one wants not my blunderous old man’s help.⁠ ⁠… Then this new Tao-yin is murdered (do you know people have said it is the two sons of his not-loved concubine have murdered him?); then comes this modern chap who wants no old men anywhere. He buys his foreign goods through our nephew, Andrei Malinin. Our nephew is very trusted by the now Tao-yin. It is Andryusha who has helped my old husband in our trouble by entreating for him. But he cannot entreat our business back. Pitying is kind, yes? but it is not business. Well, it doesn’t matter. My husband has never been good business fellow; now it does not matter, for we have no more business to blunder with.”

“But surely,” said Mrs. Butters, “with your nephew’s help you can get some compensation for the looting of your shop. They had no right to do it.”

“Everyone has the right to do all things to Russians now,” said Anna. “Besides, my husband was certainly very silly. He beat some Chinese soldiers, and so angered them.”

Mrs. Butters tried for a moment, with confused missionary charity, to imagine Old Sergei beating anybody. “I suppose he did it in righteous anger,” she said, hopefully.

“Oi! He did it in foolishness,” said Anna. “There is no need for so much defending of dead Russian heroes. Once a man is dead he is dead and has not much honor to defend. But my husband runs always after dead men; he beat these Chinese for interrupting the peace of Russian dead soldiers⁠—so the Chinese interrupt the peace of his alive wife and son. But alive ones don’t matter to my husband. He is a man full of folly.”

“Very good of him, I’m sure,” said Mrs. Butters vaguely, though she did not really think Old Sergei good. He had some inconvenient foreign religion which inspired him to talk about God at missionary high-tea parties almost before the canned clam chowder was on the table, but he never came to church. “He did suffer for his championship of his dead friends, didn’t he, for I suppose in the tussle he got a blow on the head which finally made him go blind.⁠ ⁠…”

“His head was not in the least blowed,” said Anna in a high, rather exasperated voice. “He came home very happy, smacking his chest for pride, saying, ‘I have beaten these sacrilegious openers of heroes’ graves⁠—I have beaten them well’⁠ ⁠… and then some Russian man came and told us that the soldiers would come and beat him or perhaps put him in prison, for revenge. So my husband went away quickly, out of fear. Fortunately, it was good weather⁠—in wet weather he becomes stiff and painful in his sitting down and must not go out, but this time the weather was dry and the poor silly old man went forty li to the house of a Korean cow-grower who is his friend. When he was gone the Chinese soldiers come to our house and ask where he is. My Seryozha knows Chinese people well⁠—better than his father or I know them⁠—and he can make Chinese laugh. So the soldiers laugh and go away. But in the night they come back, and they break the shutters and the door and took away all the tobacco and then the tins of vegetables and fruits, and the sweets and the cheap jewelry, but the bottles of hairwash and medicine and scent they broke after they had tasted. They took also eighty yen worth of cotton stuffs. The letter-paper they make dirty by treading on it, they spill the ink over the books, and the complexion oils they throw through the window. I would have beaten them myself. They were little soldiers and my hands are hard⁠—I would rather use my hands to protect my properties than to protect dead men⁠—but Seryozha would not let me. All the time he stood in the shop door and pretended to say different ideas what to do next, and pretended to remind them of goods they were forgetting⁠—but really he tried, by talk, to pull their notice away from things more precious. He is a clever boy, Seryozha.”

“But it was very wrong of the soldiers,” said Mrs. Butters. “Somebody ought to do something about it. Surely you can get them punished and claim some redress.”

“We are Russians,” said Anna with an unintentionally loud snort. She had her limbs, her larynx, her stomach, her imagination under poor control, and often found herself doing things that she had not intended. “In the morning Seryozha and I went to the magistrate’s yamen and complained, but we only saw an under man, and he said he will inquire of the colonel and ask to have the soldiers punished, and he would send our askings for the price of our goods to Kirin to be thought about. But there will be little thinking, I think, and no paying. Especially since the Tao-yin who knew my husband, is now dead. The new Tao-yin knows nothing about our complaints. My husband’s nephew, Andrei Malinin, who is a friend of the new Tao-yin and builds bridges and trains horses and buys automobiles for him, said to us, ‘Let Dyadya come back now to his home; no one will hurt him now. But let him ask no more for compensations.’ So my husband came back.”

“But I don’t understand,” said Mrs. Butters, who was saving up all this to tell her husband in the evening, entitled, “The Truth of the Malinin Story.” “What made Mr. Malinin go blind so suddenly, if the soldiers did not hurt him?”

“God alone understands why he went blind,” said Anna. “My husband, poor old man, thinks he understands too, but all he says is folly. That same day he came home he began again his follies. I had a good dinner for him that day⁠—bortsch and a fine fat chicken⁠—and when my husband saw, he said to Seryozha, ‘Run now and fetch Alyosha; he loves good food and has no money.’ But that was a very strange thing, Mrs. Butters, for my husband does not often love poor men⁠—while they live. Seryozha went to the house of Alexei Vassileievitch, and there he was⁠—the saddlemaker, you remember?⁠—making bets with all his friends that he could drink more beer more fastly than they could drink. Perhaps you remember hearing⁠—it was a very hot day, and Alexei Vassileievitch fell down dead⁠—”

“I remember,” said Mrs. Butters, shuddering. “Such a terrible judgment⁠—a terrible death⁠—with his sins upon him.”

“Our sins are always upon us,” said Anna. “They are more tight buttoned upon us than our clothes. Whenever we die⁠—drinking at the first supper or the Last Supper⁠—our sins are always upon us, Mrs. Butters. I did not like Alyosha the saddlemaker; he bought a floor mat from us and would not pay because it had a small smell. I am not sorrowing because of his death but only because of the more trouble it brought upon us. Seryozha was a long time away, watching the drinking game, and at home my old husband would not eat, though the soup became cold⁠—waiting, waiting⁠—for a poor man he never thinks of feeding in his life before. So Seryozha comes running to say, ‘Alyosha is dead.’ ‘Sht boy,’ I say, ‘shsht⁠—he will hear,’ but my old husband has already heard. Oi, what folly begins at once. My husband runs to Alyosha’s house and I runs after him⁠—though the dinner would spoil and spoil⁠—and there were Chinese policemen asking and examining in Alyosha’s house and Alyosha himself lying on the floor with his tongue out all crookedly and a bluely red swollen face. My old Sergei pushed away the police, saying, this man is of my race, he is mine to bury. Oi! what a curse are these drunkard dead that they must be made so honorable. Two friends helped to carry Alexei Vassileievitch’s body to our house; the Chinese police did not stop them, though they talked much, thinking perhaps Alyosha had been murdered, so they followed behind, talking angrily to my old fool, saying, ‘Always you interfere with Chinese police officers doing their duties.’⁠ ⁠… My husband made Alyosha be carried in our house and all my nice dinner be swept off the table and the body be laid down on it, all red and dirty and dead, and no friend of ours, Mrs. Butters⁠—just a drunken saddlemaker, God forgive him. I tell you he smelled of leather and horses, but he was on our table, like a joint of meat that was no meat, so all day we ate our meals on the bed, though the goodness of the dinner I had prepared was all gone. And in the evening my husband buried that poor damn man in the open green space behind our house⁠—after dark, that thieves might not know. Because he had it fixed in his thoughts that the Chinese would again try to open the grave. So all night long he lay on a blanket outside, against the wall of our yard. Three times⁠—four times⁠—five times⁠—I went out and said, ‘Come in, stupid man; you will have rheumatism again; tomorrow you will not have power to bend,’ but he is stubborn like a goat, and early in the morning, as the sun rose up, I heard him scream, high like a child⁠—like this⁠—‘E‑e‑e‑e! Oi! I am blind!’⁠ ⁠… It was when he felt the sun on his cheek, then he knew it was day and he was blind. He says it was the sparrows’ droppings from the top of the wall, but the Japanese doctor says no, it cannot be. The Japanese doctor says it is a nervous⁠—a hysteric. I do not know⁠—but sparrows I do not blame. So now my poor old fool he sits there all the time sorrowing. There is no amusement or interest he can do⁠—only feel with his hands things that are alive, and that makes him cry, but he always loves being made to cry. He was in love with dead men when he could see⁠—but now that he must sit at home, the dead do not come to him.⁠ ⁠… So now he cries over alive things that he can feel⁠—it is all the same really⁠—he only seeks tears. He feels Seryozha’s ankle, and the cat, and puppies, and Seryozha found some little small young birds in a nest⁠—anything that moves he must feel, that he may think the sad thoughts he wants to think.”

“It is all very sad,” said Mrs. Butters. “It must make life very difficult for you, Mrs. Malinin.”

“Oh, not so difficult. Seryozha works⁠—not every day, but sometimes⁠—on the new bridge. Our nephew, Andrei Malinin⁠—that engineer who I told you is friend to the new Tao-yin⁠—he helps us a little. I think he arranged, too, so that my old husband was not attacked by the Chinese policemen for taking Alyosha’s body. And I come and sew⁠—oi! but how bad I sew⁠—for you and the other mission families.”

“You certainly have known a great deal of trouble,” said Mrs. Butters, who had been punctuating the story with clickings of her tongue and low abstracted moans. Then she remembered the Christian duty of reassurance. “Oh, but I think you sew very nicely.”

“Hemstitching all down the baby’s ribs⁠—oh yes⁠—very nice,” mourned Anna. The imperfection made a sore place in her self-esteem. “How easy it would have been to think before⁠—not to pull those threads out. Never, never do I think before. All my life is full of being sorry for not thinking before.”

“Oh, please don’t worry yourself,” said Mrs. Butters, almost irritated by this extreme remorse.

One of the Butters children came in, talking in the aggrieved whine peculiar to the children of missionaries.

“Mah-mah!”

“It is so difficult for our finite minds to understand,” said Mrs. Butters, “the omnipotent wisdom which sometimes sees fit⁠—”

“Mah-mah.”

“⁠—to load so many grievous burdens on one⁠—”

“Mah-mah.”

“⁠—shrinking sinner’s shoulders. All we can do is⁠—”

“Mah-mah.”

“⁠—to feel that behind it all shines⁠—”

“Mah-mah.”

“⁠—a love that⁠—”

“Mah-mah.”

“Surely your child wishes to speak with you,” said Anna, with difficulty restraining her hands from boxing the ears of both mother and child. A conflict of noises could always crack her temper as, it is said, some discords can crack a glass.

“Mah-mah’s busy, lovey,” said Mrs. Butters. “What does mah-mah’s lovey want to ask mah-mah?”

“Mah-mah⁠ ⁠… it won’t eat no ackles.”

“Won’t it, darling?⁠ ⁠… And it seems to me, Mrs. Malinin, that if⁠—”

“But, mah-mah.”

“⁠—we could only learn to cast all our troub⁠—”

“Mah-mah.”

“⁠—bles on that great heart that is so ready to bear them, we could turn and face the world with a perfect⁠—”

“Mah-mah.”

“Your child seems still to have some matter on its mind,” said Anna between ground teeth.

“What is it, mah-mah’s prettybird?”

“Mah-mah, it won’t eat no ackles.”

“No, darling, just fancy that!⁠ ⁠… And another thing, Mrs. Malinin⁠—”

“But, mah-mah.”

“For God’s sake, child,” said Anna, hoarsely, glaring at the child, “what will not eat what?”

Mrs. Butters put a protective arm round her child and directed a reproachful glance toward Anna. “These foreigners,” she thought. “Even quite nice foreigners⁠ ⁠… so different.⁠ ⁠…”

“Betty is talking of the little kid,” she said gently. “The mother goat⁠—we call her Nannie⁠—died yesterday⁠—didn’t she, loveybird? Mah-mah’s loveybird’s poor Nannie doatie went to heaven, and we are wondering if we can rear the kid. It is so difficult to make it take the bottle.”

“And what has your child been giving it?”

“What has mah-mah’s Bettybird been giving poor Nannie doatie’s nitty tiddy to nyum-nyum?”

“Ackles, but it won’t eat no ackles, mah-mah.”

“Oh, she doesn’t know any better, of course; she’s been trying to make the poor little creature eat apples. Ackles, she calls them.⁠ ⁠…”

“Mah-mah, I opened the tiddie’s moufie, and I pushed little bits of ackle down wiv my finger, and⁠—”

“For God’s sake!” shouted Anna, springing to her feet and knocking down her chair. “Is the child altogether without sense? Can it be possible⁠—”

“Oh, Mrs. Malinin, she’s just a wee thing⁠—only six. How should she know?”

“Mrs. Butters, when I was five my mother and I used to bring up with our hands all the delicate lambs and calves. I could milk good long before that, and when I was seven I have helped my father’s groom to accoucher my mare of a dead colt. All nature’s ways were known by me as they should be by any child who lives in the country and is not blind or imbecile⁠—”

“Mah-mah’s own Bettylove must run away now,” said Mrs. Butters. “And better not give nitty tiddy any more ackles just now, lovey.”

Mrs. Butters, free of Betty’s innocent presence, breathed several deep forgiving breaths through her nose before overcoming her indignation at Anna’s vehemence and vulgarity. “I had no idea you were such a farmer, dear Mrs. Malinin,” she said, folding up her sewing as a sign of mild dismissal. There was only just a trace of reproachful emphasis on the word farmer. “I believe I shall have to give you the little kid to rear. Evidently you know more about it than we do.”

Anna was crossing the room at the moment to fetch a reel of cotton from a drawer. And, although she was fifty-four years old, when she heard that the kid might be hers she leaped into the air and smacked the top of her head. The floor shook. “Oh, how I should enjoy that! How I should enjoy it! And my poor old man to have a kid to stroke and a kid’s heart to feel beating⁠—most joyfully I accept, Mrs. Butters, most joyfully.⁠ ⁠…”