“I will take him to my mother,” I said. “He will cheer her and turn her mind outward from her distress.”
When I had passed through the guest hall into the Court of Peonies and then through the women’s leisure room, I paused before my mother’s apartments. Usually only the red satin curtain hung in this doorway, but now behind the curtain the door was closed. Then I struck lightly upon it with the palm of my hand. There was no answer. I struck again. It was only when I called,
“It is I, my mother! It is I, thy little child!” that I heard her voice coming as from a great distance,
“Come to me, my daughter.”
Then I went in. I saw her sitting beside the black carved table. Incense was smoldering in the bronze urn before the sacred writing on the wall. She sat with bowed head, and between the fingers of one drooping hand she held a book. When she saw me enter she said,
“You have come? I have been trying to read the Book of Changes. But I find nothing to-day in its pages to comfort me.” She shook her head a little vaguely as she spoke, and the book dropped upon the floor. She let it lie there.
The irresolution of the action alarmed me. My mother has ever been self-possessed, sure, restrained. Now I saw that she had been too long alone, I reproached myself that I had loved my son too well and that his father’s tenderness had comforted me too deeply and too long. It had been many days since I came to visit her. How could I rouse her and divert her thoughts? I took my son and placing him on his fat legs, I folded his little hands and made him bow before her. I whispered to him,
“Thy honored Old One—say it, child!”
“Old One!” he lisped, staring at her unsmiling.
I told you that she had not seen him since his third month, and you know, My Sister, how he is altogether beautiful! Who could resist him? Her eyes fell on him and lingered. She roused herself. She went to the gilded cupboard and took out a red lacquered box. She opened it, and within were tiny cakes covered with sesame seed. These she gave to him, filling his hands. When he saw them he laughed aloud, and she indulged him with faint smiles and said,
“Eat, my little lotus-pod! Eat, my little meat-dumpling!”
Seeing her thus momentarily diverted, I picked up the book and poured a bowl of tea from the pot on the table, and presented it to her in both my hands.
She bade me sit, then, and the child played upon the floor, and we watched him. I waited for her to speak, not knowing whether or not she wished to mention the matter of my brother. She did not immediately approach it. She said first,
“Your son is here, my daughter.”
I remembered then the night when I had told her of my grief. Now the joy of the morning had come.
“Yes, my mother,” I replied, smiling.
“You are happy?” she asked, her eyes still on the child.
“My lord is a prince for his grace to me, his humble wife,” I replied.
“The child is conceived and born as from perfection,” she said musingly, her eyes upon him. “In everything I observe he is ten parts and complete. There is no beauty left to desire in him. Ah—” She sighed and stirred restlessly. “Your brother was such a child! I wish that he had died then, that I might have remembered him as beautiful and filial!”
I understood therefore that she wished to speak of my brother. But I waited to perceive the direction of her thoughts more clearly. In a little while she spoke again, raising her eyes to mine,
“You had my letter?”
“My mother’s letter reached me this morning by the hand of the servant,” I replied, bowing.
She sighed again, and rising, she went to the drawer of the writing-table and drew forth yet another letter. I stood and awaited her return. When she gave me the letter I received it with both hands. She said,
“Read it.”
It was from a friend of my brother’s, surnamed Chu, with whom he had gone to America from Peking. At the request of my brother, the letter said, he, Chu Kwoh-ting, was writing to the honored Old Ones to tell them that their son had betrothed himself according to the western custom to the daughter of one of his teachers in the university. He, their son, sent his filial respects to his parents and begged them to break off the early betrothal with the daughter of Li, which had always made him unhappy, even in contemplation. He acknowledged in all things the superior virtue of his parents and their endless kindness to him, their unworthy son. Nevertheless he wished to say clearly that he could not marry the one to whom he had been betrothed according to Chinese custom, because the times had changed; he was a modern man, and he had decided to adopt the modern, independent, free method of marriage.
The letter closed with many formal and filial expressions of respectful affection and obedience. But none the less the determination in my brother’s heart was written plainly forth. He had asked his friend to write for him only because he wished to spare his parents and himself the embarrassment of direct defiance. My heart burned against him as I read the letter. When I had finished it I folded it and handed it back to my mother without speech.
“He is seized with a madness,” said my mother. “I have sent him the electric letter to command his instant return.”
Then I knew how great was her agitation. For my mother is altogether of the old China. When in the streets of our ancient and beautiful city tall poles were reared which carried wires as the branches of a tree may carry spiders’ webs, she had cried out against the desecration.
“Our ancients used the brush and the ink block, and what have we, their unworthy descendants, to say of greater importance than their august words, that we need such speed?” she said in indignation.
And when she heard that words could travel even under the sea itself, she said,
“And what is there that we wish to communicate to these barbarians? Did not the gods in their wisdom pour out the sea between us in order to separate us from them? It is impious to unite what the gods in their wisdom have put apart.”
But now such need for haste had come even to her!
“I had thought,” she said sadly, “that I should never use these foreign inventions. Nor should I, had my son remained in his own country. But when one deals with the barbarians, one must harness the very devil to one’s mill!”
I spoke then to soothe her.
“My mother, do not grieve overmuch. My brother is obedient. He will listen and turn from this folly of running after a foreign woman.”
But she shook her head. She leaned her brow upon her hands. A sudden anxiety fell upon me to see it. She was looking really ill! She had never been full-fleshed, but now she was wasted away, and her hand, supporting her head, trembled. I leaned forward to observe her with more care, when she began to speak slowly.
“I have learned long ago,” she said, her voice coming faintly and with great weariness, “that when a woman has crawled into a man’s heart, his eyes are fastened inward upon her so that he is blind for a space to anything else.” She paused to rest, and then went on, her words coming at last like sighs. “Your father—is he not accounted an honorable man? Yet have I long resigned myself to this thing; when a woman’s beauty seizes him and catches his desire, he is mad for a time and understands nothing reasonable. And he has known a score of singing girls, beside these idle mouths he brings home as concubines—three of them we have had, and the only reason we have not another is because his lust failed for the Peking girl before the negotiations were finished. How then can the son show greater wisdom than the father?
“Men!” She roused herself suddenly. She curled her lips until her mouth seemed a thing alive of its own scorn. “Their inner thoughts are always coiled like snakes about the living body of some woman!”
I sat in horror at her words. Never had she spoken before of my father and the concubines. I saw suddenly into the inner halls of her heart. The bitterness and suffering there were bowels of fire within her. I had no words wherewith to comfort her—I, the beloved of my husband. I tried to imagine his taking a Second Lady. I could not
. I could only remember the hours of our love, and my involuntary eyes fell upon our son, playing still with the little sesame cakes. What had I to say of comfort to my mother?
Yet I longed to speak.
“It may be that the foreign woman—” I began timidly.
But she struck her long pipe upon the floor. She had just taken it from the table and had begun to fill it with hasty, trembling fingers.
“Let us have no talk about that one,” she said sharply. “I have spoken. Now it is for my son to obey. He shall return and marry the daughter of Li, his betrothed, and of her shall his first seed come. Thus can his duty be fulfilled to the Ancient Ones. Then he may take whom he likes for a small wife! Shall I expect the son to be more perfect than the father?—But be silent now and leave me. I am very tired. I must rest awhile upon my bed.”
I could say no more. I saw indeed that she was very pale, and that her body drooped like a withered reed. I took up my son, therefore, and withdrew from her presence.
When I had returned to my home I told my husband with tears that I had not been able to soften the sorrow of my mother. He comforted me with his hand upon my hand, and bade me wait with patience the coming of my brother. When he talked gently with me thus, I took hope for the future. But the next morning when he was gone to his work I fell into doubt again. I cannot forget my mother!
Out of the sadness of her life these many years she has had this great hope of the future—the hope of all good women; she has thought of her son’s son to stay her old age, to fulfill her duty to the family. How is it that my brother has placed his careless desire before his mother’s life? I shall reproach my brother. I will tell him all that my mother said. I will remind him that he is my mother’s only son. Then I will say,
“How can you place upon our mother’s knees the child of a foreigner?”
XI
WE HAVE HEARD NOTHING yet, My Sister! Every day I send the gardener to my mother’s house to inquire of her health and to know whether or not word has come of my brother. Every day now for fifteen days he answers,
“The Honorable Old One says she is not ill, but to the eyes of her servants she wastes. She cannot eat. As for the young lord, there is no word. Doubtless for this reason her heart is eating her body. At her age anxiety cannot be easily endured.”
“Oh, why does not my brother send word? I have prepared delicate food for my mother and set it in fine porcelain bowls; I have sent it by the hands of servants and I have said,
“Eat of this poor meat, my mother. It is tasteless, but because these hands have prepared it, deign to eat a little.”
They tell me she begins to eat, and then she puts down her chopsticks. She cannot release her heart of its anxiety. Is my brother then to be allowed to kill my mother? He should know that she cannot endure the unfilial ways of the West. It is shameful that he does not remember his duty!
I spend many hours meditating and wondering. I cannot decide what my brother will do. At first I did not question his final obedience to our mother. Are not his body and his skin and his hair derived from her? Can he therefore contaminate this sacredness with a foreigner?
Moreover, my brother has been taught from his first youth that wisdom of the Great Master which says, “The first duty of a man is to pay careful heed to every desire of his parents.” When my father returns and hears what my brother is about to do, surely he also will forbid it. I persuaded myself therefore into calm.
Thus I reasoned at first. But to-day I am as a stream unsettled and shifting its waters upon the sands beneath it.
My husband, My Sister, he it is who makes me doubt the wisdom of the old ways. By the hold of love upon me he makes me doubt! Last night he said strange things. I will tell you; it was like this—
We sat upon the little brick terrace he has had placed to the south of the house. Our son was asleep upstairs in his bamboo bed. The servants had withdrawn to their own affairs. I sat upon the porcelain garden seat a little apart from my lord, as was fitting. He lay in a long reed chair.
Together we watched the full-faced moon, swinging high in the heavens. The night wind had sprung up, and across the sky a procession of white clouds whirled with the speed of great snowy birds, now obscuring, now leaving magically clear, the face of the moon. So swift were the clouds that it was as if the moon itself were spinning above the trees. The smell of rain clung to the night air. Delight in this beauty and peace welled up within me. I was suddenly greatly content with my life. I raised my eyes, and I saw that my husband gazed at me. Exquisite and shy pleasure trembled in me.
“Such a moon!” he said at last, his voice moved with his own content. “Will you play the old harp, Kwei-lan?”
I teased him with mock reproach.
“The harp has six abhorrences and seven prohibitions, according to our ancients who made it,” I said. “It will not give forth its voice in the presence of mourning, in the presence of festive instruments, when the musician is unhappy, when his person is defiled, when incense has not been freshly lighted, or when in the presence of an unsympathetic listener. If it will not sing to-night, my lord, which of these abhorrences is present?”
He became grave then, saying,
“No, my heart; I know that once it would not give forth its voice because I was that abhorrence, an unsympathetic listener, But now? Let your fingers sing the old songs of love, the songs of the poets.”
Then did I rise and fetch my harp, and laying it upon the little stone table beside him, I stood and touched its strings while I meditated what to sing to him. At last I sang thus,
“Cool is the autumn wind,
Clear is the autumn moon.
The dead leaves fall and scatter again;
A raven, frost-smitten, starts from the tree.
Where are you, Beloved?
Shall I meet you once more?
Ah, my heart weeps to-night—
I am alone!”
Then did this sad refrain echo again and again from the strings, long after my fingers ceased to touch them. “—Alone—Alone—Alone—” The wind caught the echo, and suddenly the garden was full of the mournful sound. It vibrated in me strangely and called up my sadness which had rested forgotten for an hour. It was the sadness of my mother. I laid my hands softly upon the strings to cease their moaning. I said,
“It is I, my lord, who am the abhorrence to-night. I am grieved, I, the musician, and the harp moans on of its own accord.”
“Grieved?” He rose, and coming to me he took my hand.
“It is my mother,” I said faintly, daring to rest my head for an instant against his arm. “She grieves, and her grief speaks to me through the harp. It is my brother. I feel the restlessness in her this night. Everything is restless, waiting for his coming. She has no one now except him. It is long since there was anything between my father and her, and even I am of another family now—yours.”
My husband said nothing at first. He took from his pocket a foreign-tobacco and lit it. He spoke at last in a calm voice.
“You must be prepared,” he said. “It is better to face the truth. He will probably not obey your mother.”
I was alarmed.
“Oh, why do you think this?” I asked.
“Why do you think he will?” he questioned in return, puffing out lengths of tobacco smoke from his mouth.
I drew away from him.
“No, do not reply with questions. I do not know—I am not clever, and never at reasons! If I have a real reason it is that he has been taught to know obedience to parents as the foundation of the state, and a son’s duty—”
“Old foundations are breaking—have broken.” He interrupted me with a significant look. “There must be stronger reasons than that in these days!”
I was filled with doubt as he spoke. Then I remembered a secret comfort of my own—a thing I had not spoken aloud. This was my inner thought.
“But foreign women are so ugly,” I whispered. “How shall a man of our race marry among them? The
ir own men have no recourse, but—”
I fell silent, for I was ashamed to speak of men thus before my husband. Yet how could a man desire such women as that one we had seen before my son’s birth? Such light flat eyes and faded hair, such coarse hands and feet? I knew my brother! Was he not the son of my father, and had not my father ever loved above all things in the world beauty in women?
But my husband laughed shortly.
“Ha! Not all Chinese women are beautiful, and not all foreign women are ugly! The daughter of Li, to whom your brother is betrothed, is not a beauty, I hear. They say in the tea-shops that her lips are too wide—that they are curved downward like a rice-sickle—”
“What have the idlers of the tea-shops to do, speaking of such a thing?” I cried in indignation. “She is a respectable maiden, and her family is noble!”
He shrugged his shoulders.
“I only mention what I hear and what your brother must have heard,” he replied. “It may be that such talk has made it more easy to fix his wandering heart upon another woman.”
We were silent an instant.
“And these foreign women!” he continued, smoking and musing. “Some of them are like the White Star for beauty! Clear eyes—free bodies—”
I turned, and I opened my eyes wide at my husband. But he did not see me. He went on,
“Those beautiful, bare arms of theirs—they have none of the artificial modesties and the reserves of our women, I can tell you. They are free as the sun and the wind are free; with laughter and dancing they pluck out a man’s heart and let it run through their fingers like sunlight, to waste upon the ground.”
My breath ceased for a moment. Of whom did he speak then, my husband? What foreigner had taught him thus? I felt a sudden bitter anger rising in me.
“You—you have—” I faltered.
But he shook his head, laughing a little at me.
“What a woman you are! No—none ever wasted my heart thus. I kept it somehow until—” His tone dropped into tenderness, and my heart recognized it, and I was eased.
“But it was hard?” I whispered.
East Wind: West Wind Page 8