“You were good to her always,” he said to Madame Wu. “But I forgot her much of the time.”
Then to comfort him Madame Wu answered thus: “How can a man forget his mother? She gave you breath, and when you breathe it is to remember her. She gave you body, and when you eat and drink and sleep and however you use your body, it is to remember her. I do not ask of my sons that they come running always to me to cry, ‘Ah, Mother, this,’ and ‘Ah, Mother, that.’ I am rewarded enough when they live and are healthy and when they marry and are happy and when they have sons. My life is complete in them. So is it with our Old Lady. She lives in you and in your sons.”
“Do you think so?” he said when he had listened, and he was always comforted so that he went away again and left her.
She, left alone, pondered on many things. Now more than ever her life was divided into two—that part which was lived in the house and that part which was lived inside herself. Sometimes one prevailed and sometimes the other. When the household was at peace she lived happily alone. When there was trouble of some sort she went into it and mended it as she could.
About the middle of that autumn she saw a little trouble begin in the house which she knew would swell big if she did not pinch it off, like an unruly gall bud on a young tree. Linyi and Fengmo began to quarrel. She saw their ill-temper one day by chance when she made her inspection of the house. For all her pert beauty, Linyi was slatternly in her own court. At first Madame Wu had not wanted to speak of this, because Linyi was her friend’s daughter and she knew that Madame Kang, with her great family, could not keep to constant neatness and cleanliness. It could only be expected that her daughters also might be less careful than Madame Wu was herself.
But Meng was Madame Kang’s daughter too, and rather than reproach Linyi, Madame Wu went to the elder sister to take counsel with her.
She found Meng combing her long hair in the middle of the morning. It was a soft gray morning, and the house lay half asleep. Madame Wu did not reproach Meng that she was only now combing her hair, but she thought that it would perhaps aid the elder sister if she knew the younger was reproached.
Meng hastily caught her hair in her hand when she saw Madame Wu. “Is it you, Mother?” she called. “How ashamed I am that I have not combed my hair! I will twist it up.”
“No, child, do it properly,” Madame Wu replied and sat down, and the maid went on combing Meng’s long soft black hair. Rulan and Linyi had short hair, but Meng kept her hair old-fashioned.
“How many more days have you?” Madame Wu asked.
“Eleven, by the moon,” Meng answered. “I hope, Mother, that you will give me your counsel. You know I suffered very much with the first one.”
“When I had my children,” the maid said cheerfully, “I had them in the field where I was helping my man to plow.”
The maid was a woman from the Wu lands, and they had known her always. Even now in summer she went back to the land, and only when the harvests were reaped did she return to the house to serve for the winter. This she did because she was a widow and must be cared for, and yet she loved the land and must go back to it once a year.
“You will not suffer so much with the second one,” Madame Wu said to Meng. “But it cannot be expected that women reared behind walls will bear their children so easily as those who live freely.”
“Will Linyi bear her children better than I do?” Meng asked innocently.
“No, she will do no better,” the woman said. “She is too learned.”
Madame Wu laughed. “That is scarcely true, good soul,” she said. “I have perhaps as much learning as Linyi, but my children came easily. But I have had much fortune in my life.”
“Ah, you are one of the ones that Heaven marks,” the woman agreed.
“Linyi says she wants no children,” Meng said suddenly. “Linyi says she wishes she had not married Fengmo.”
Madame Wu looked up, startled. “Meng, be careful of your words,” she exclaimed.
“It is true, Mother,” Meng said. She stamped her foot at the maid. “You pull my hair, dolt!” she cried.
“Blame your sister, who frightened me,” the woman replied. “I never heard of a woman who did not want a child, except a concubine who was afraid her shape would be spoiled. But in this house even the concubine bears.”
Madame Wu did not listen to this talk with servants. “Meng, I came here to speak of your sister’s being a slattern and to ask you what I should say to her, but what you tell me is more grave than dust under a table. I should have inquired earlier into the marriage. But I have been busy with Old Lady’s death affairs. Tell me how you know.”
“Linyi told me herself,” Meng said. Neither of the two ladies took thought of the woman servant. Indeed, what was there to be hidden? Whatever life brought about in this house was there for all to see and heed, and servants had their place here, too.
“Say what Linyi told you,” Madame Wu commanded.
“She says she hates a big house like this one,” Meng said. “She says she wishes she had not married into it. She says Fengmo belongs to the family and not to her, and she belongs to the house against her will, too, and not to him She wants to go out and set up a house alone.”
Madame Wu could not comprehend what she heard. “Alone? But how would they be fed?”
“She says Fengmo could work and earn a salary if only he knew more English.”
“She wants him to know more English?”
“So that he could get some money for the two of them to live alone,” Meng replied.
“But no one disturbs them here,” Madame Wu declared. She felt outraged that under her roof there should come out this spot of dark rebellion.
“Well, she means the family ways,” Meng said. “The feast days and the death days and the birthdays and the duties of daughters-in-law and the servants who take over the children and all such things. She says Fengmo thinks of the family before he thinks of her.”
“So he should,” Madame Wu declared, “and so should she. Is she a prostitute that she does not belong to this house?”
Meng kept silent, seeing that Madame Wu did not like what she heard. The woman, too, knew that the matter was too deep for a servant to speak about. She finished her young mistress’s hair, put in two pearl ornaments, and cleaned the hair out of the comb and wound it around her finger and went outside and blew it off.
Madame Wu and Meng were alone. “Have you such thoughts as these, too?” Madame Wu asked severely of this round pretty creature.
Meng laughed. “Mother, I am too lazy,” she said frankly. “I like living in this house. It is kept clean and ordered without my two hands. And I am glad when a servant takes my child if he cries, and I am happy all day. But then I never went to school, and I do not care if I read books or not, and my son’s father tells me everything I ought to know, and what more do I want to know than what he wants me to know?”
“Liangmo is good to you?” Madame Wu asked.
Meng’s soft cheeks turned very pink. “He is good to me in everything,” she said. “There was never so good a man. Thank you, Mother.”
“Is Fengmo not good to Linyi?” Madame Wu asked.
Meng hesitated. “Who can tell which is the hand that slaps first when two take up a quarrel?” she asked. “But I think it is Rulan’s fault. She is always with Linyi. She and Linyi talk together about their husbands, and each adds the faults of the other’s husband to her own.”
Madame Wu remembered Rulan’s sobbing on that night now long past. “Is Rulan also discontented?” she now asked.
Meng shrugged her shoulders. “Linyi is my sister,” she replied, after hesitating for a second or two. “I have no talk with Rulan.”
“You do not like Rulan!” Madame Wu exclaimed. It seemed to her that she was pursuing her way through a maze and sinking deeply into something which she had not suspected in her house. How monstrous it was for these to quarrel who should be the next after herself and Mr. Wu!
�
�I do not like Rulan,” Meng said without change or hint of hatred in her voice.
“Must women always quarrel?” Madame Wu said severely.
Meng shrugged her shoulders again. “Not liking somebody is not to quarrel with them,” she said. “I do not like Rulan because she is always behaving as though she were right and others wrong. And she behaves so to Tsemo, too, Mother, and I wonder you have not seen it. I have told Liangmo he should tell you, but he always says he does not want you to be troubled. But Old Lady knew—she used to slap Rulan.”
“Slap Rulan!” Madame Wu cried. “Why was I never told?”
“Tsemo would not let Rulan tell,” Meng said. She was now beginning to enjoy all this telling. “Rulan is too learned,” she went on. “She is more learned than Linyi, and so Linyi listens to her. She is always talking about things women should not know.”
“What things?” Madame Wu inquired.
“Constitution and national reconstruction and unequal treaties and all those things,” Meng said.
“You seem to know about them,” Madame Wu said with a hint of a smile.
“Liangmo knows, but I do not,” Meng said.
“Do you not want to know what Liangmo knows?” Madame Wu asked.
“There are too many other things for us to talk about together,” Meng replied.
“What things?” Madame Wu asked again.
But Meng did not answer this with words. Instead she dimpled her cheeks with a smile and looked away.
And Madame Wu pressed her no more. She rose after a little while and went back to her court with this new knowledge in her of fresh turmoil in the house. But some sort of weariness fell upon her that day. She felt as one does who must run a race without food. These young, these men and women whose lives were dependent upon her, she was not strong enough for them. Her wisdom was too ancient for them—the wisdom of the unchanging human path from birth to death. She thought of Brother André. He had a wisdom that went far beyond these walls. She would call Fengmo and suggest to him that he begin again his studies. Then when Brother André came she could share with him the troubles of these young who leaned upon her.
She sent Ying to call Fengmo to her, and he came at once, having nothing to do and happening at that moment to be at home. There was a look about him that Madame Wu did not like. Had he not been properly wed, she would have said he was dissolute. He looked sullen and dissatisfied and yet satiated and overfed.
“Fengmo, my son,” she said in her pleasant voice, “I have been too busy all these days since your grandmother left us. I have not asked how things have gone with you. I have seen you and Linyi in your places in the family, but I have not considered you alone. Now, son, talk to your mother.”
“There is nothing to talk about, Mother,” Fengmo said carelessly.
“You and Linyi,” she said, coaxing him.
“We are well enough,” he said.
She looked at him in silence. He was a tall young man, spare in the waist, fine in the wrists and the ankles. He was lightly made but exceedingly strong. His face was square, his mouth full and easily sullen.
She smiled. “How much you look as you did when you were a baby,” she said suddenly. “It is strange how little men change after they are born, while women change so much. Sometimes when I look at each of you, it seems to me that you are just as you were when you were first put into my arms!”
“Mother, why are we born?” he asked.
She had asked this question of herself often enough, but when her son asked it she was alarmed. “Is it not the duty of each generation to bring the next into being?” she replied.
“But why?” he persisted. “Why should any of us exist?”
“Can we cease to be, now that we are made?” she replied.
“But if I exist only to bring forth another like myself, and he but to bring forth another like us two, then of what use is this to me?” he went on. He did not look at her. His thin young hands were loosely clasped in front of him. “There is a me,” he said slowly, “that has nothing to do with you, Mother, and nothing to do with the child to come from me.”
She was frightened. Such questions and such feelings she herself had, but she had not dreamed to find them in a son.
“Alas,” she cried. “I have been a bad mother to you. Your father never had such thoughts. I have poured some poison into you.”
“But I have always had these thoughts,” he said.
“You never told me before,” she cried.
“I thought they would pass from me,” he replied. “Yet I continue to think them.”
She grew very grave. “I hope it does not mean that you and Linyi do not go well together,” she said.
He frowned. “I do not know what Linyi wants. She is restless.”
“You are with her too much,” she declared. “It is not well for husband and wife to be continually together. I see that she does not come and sit among the women as Meng does. She stays inside your court. Naturally she grows weary there, idle, restless—”
“Perhaps,” he said, as if he did not care.
She continued to look at him anxiously.
“Fengmo, let us invite Brother André here again. While you were with him it seemed to me you were happy.”
“I might not be now,” he replied listlessly.
“Come,” she said firmly. She had learned long ago that listlessness must be met with firmness. “I will invite him.”
He did not answer.
“Fengmo,” she began again, “if you and Linyi wish to go out of this house, I will not forbid it. I desire the happiness of my sons. You are right to ask why you should only be a link in the chain of the generations. I have other sons. If you wish to go out, speak and tell me so.”
“I do not know what I want,” he said again in the same listless fashion.
“Do you hate Linyi?” she asked. “This can only be you are entirely unhappy. How long have you been married to her? Only three little months. She is not pregnant and you are listless. What does this mean, Fengmo?”
“Mother, you cannot measure us by such things,” he declared.
But she was too shrewd. “By this alone I will not measure you,” she said, “but I know that if man and woman are not well mated in the body first, there is no other mating. If the body is mated, then other mating will come, or if it does not the two can still live as one. But the body is the foundation of the house the two build. Soul and mind, and whatever else, is the roof, the decoration, whatever one adds to a fine house. But all this fails without the foundation.”
Fengmo looked at her. “How does it happen my father has a concubine?”
She would not accept this rudeness. “There is a time for everything,” she said severely, “and one time passes into another.”
He knew that he had overstepped the boundaries of a son, and he rubbed his short-cut hair and passed his hands down over his cheeks.
“Well, let Brother André come,” he said at last. He thought again awhile and then he said: “He will be my only teacher. I shall stop going to the national school.”
“Let it be so, my son,” she said.
VIII
IN THIS WAY BROTHER André came again into the house of Wu. He made no mention of the time since he had been here, nor of anything that had happened since. Fengmo came in the evening for his lesson and went away again. But when Brother André was passing through the court after the lesson, Madame Wu called to him gently. She was sitting in her accustomed place where she always sat in the evening until the autumn grew too cold. It was cold tonight, but because she was reluctant to let the summer escape her, she held fast to a night or two longer. Ying had complained against her for sitting outdoors, and now in the library a brazier of coals burned ready to cure the chill which Ying declared was ready to fall upon her.
“Good Brother André,” Madame Wu called.
Brother André’s tall figure stopped. He turned his head and saw her.
“Did you call me, Madame?�
� he asked.
“Yes.” She rose as she spoke. “If you have some time, please spare it to me to talk for a little while about this third son of mine. I am not pleased with him.”
Brother André inclined his great head.
“Bring tea, Ying,” Madame Wu told her, “and stay to mend the coals.” She remembered that Brother André was a priest, and she wished to spare him uneasiness at being alone with a woman.
If he was uneasy, he did not show it. He sat down when she motioned him to a chair and waited. His deep eyes were fixed on her face, but she knew that he did not think of her. The eyes might have been looking down out of heaven upon her.
“Why is Fengmo unhappy?” she asked him directly.
“He is too idle,” Brother André replied simply.
“Idle?” Madame Wu repeated. “But he has his duties. Every New Year’s Day I assign duties to each son and to each daughter-in-law. This year my eldest son is responsible for the oversight, under me, of the lands. And Tsemo must look to the buying and selling, and Fengmo is learning about the grainshops where we market our grains in the city. Since he has left school, he is busy at this for several hours every day.”
“Still he is idle,” Brother André said. “Fengmo has an unusual mind and a searching spirit. He learns quickly. You bade me teach him English. But with all he learns of the English, he takes in something more. Today, I found he had forgotten nothing. The knowledge I gave him months ago has rooted in him and has sent up tendrils like a vine, searching into the air for something upon which to climb and flower and fruit. Fengmo will always be idle, although you fill every hour of the day, until he has found the thing which uses his mind and his spirit.”
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