But his wife was exquisite. She was no longer young, and she had had five children, but none would know it, since after every childbirth, as the custom was with such ladies of fashion in the city, she gave her child to some poor woman to be nursed and she bound her breasts and body back again into slenderness. Now Yuan saw her slender as a virgin, and though she was forty years of age, her face was pink and ivory, her hair smooth and black, her whole look untouched by any care or age. Nor did the heat touch her. She came slowly forward, greeting Yuan prettily and gravely, and only in the quick look of distaste which she cast at her huge sweating husband could Yuan see the petulance she used to have. But she was courteous to Yuan for she looked on him no longer as a raw youth from the small old home city, and only a child in the family. He was a man now who had been abroad, and he had won a foreign degree and he saw it mattered to her what he thought of her.
Then to while the time away when they were seated after courtesies, and his cousin had shouted for tea to be brought, Yuan asked, “What do you now, elder cousin? For I see your fortunes have risen.”
At this the man laughed and was well pleased and he fumbled at a thick gold chain hung across his great belly, and he answered, “I am a vice president of a newly opened bank now, Yuan. There is good business these days in banks in this foreign place where wars cannot touch us, and they have opened everywhere. People used to put their silver into land. I remember our old grandfather never rested until all he had was made over into land and yet more land. But land is not so sure as it once was. There are even places where the tenants have arisen and taken land from landlords.”
“Are they not stopped?” asked Yuan, astonished.
And the lady thrust in sharply, “They ought to be killed!”
But the cousin shrugged himself a little in the tightness of his foreign coat and flung up his pudgy hands and he said, “Who shall stop them? Who knows how to stop anything these days?” And when Yuan murmured, “Government?” he repeated, “Government! This new confusion of warlord and student and that we call government! What can they stop? No, each man for himself these days, and so the money pours into our banks and we are safe enough guarded by foreign soldiery and under foreign law. … Yes, it is a good prosperous place I hold, and I have it through the grace of friends.”
“My friends,” his lady put in quickly. “If it had not been for me and that I grew friends with a great banker’s wife and through her came to know her husband and begged for you—”
“Yes, yes,” the man said hastily. “I know that—” and he fell into silence and discomfort of a sort, as though there were something there he would not discuss too clearly, and as though he had paid some secret price for what he had. Then the lady asked Yuan very prettily, for there was a sort of cool polished prettiness in all she said and did now, as though she had said and done everything before a mirror first, “So, Yuan, you are home again and a man and you know everything!”
When Yuan smiled mutely to deny his knowledge, she laughed a little set laugh and put her silken kerchief to her lips and said again, “Oh, I am sure you know much you will not tell of, for you have not come out of such years knowing as little as you did when you began them!”
What Yuan would have said to this he did not know and he felt uneasy, as though his cousin’s wife was false and strange, and as though she were encased about with falseness so he could not know how she really was, but at this moment a servant came in leading her old mistress, and Yuan rose to greet his aunt.
Into this rich foreign room the old lady came, leaning on her servant. She was a thin upright figure, her hair still black, but her face wrinkled into many crossing lines, though her eyes were as they were, very sharp and critical of all they saw. To her son and son’s wife she paid no heed, but she let Yuan bow to her and took his greeting and sat down and called to the servant, saying, “Fetch me the spittoon!”
When the servant had so done, she coughed and spat very decently, and then she said to Yuan, “I am as sound as ever I was, thanks to the gods, except that I have this cough and the phlegm comes up in me especially in the mornings.”
At this her daughter-in-law looked at her with great distaste, but her son said soothingly, “It is always so with the aged, my mother.”
The lady paid no heed to him. She looked Yuan up and down and asked, “How does my second son in that outer country?” And when she heard Yuan say Sheng was well she said positively, “I shall wed him when he comes home.”
Now her daughter-in-law laughed out and said uncautiously, “I do not see Sheng being wed against his will, my mother—not as the young are nowadays.”
The old lady cast a look at her daughter-in-law, a look which showed she had spoken her feelings against her many times and now it was no use, so she said on to Yuan, “My third son is an official. Doubtless you have heard. Yes, Meng is now a captain over many men in the new army.”
This Yuan heard again, and again he smiled secretly remembering how this lady had once cried against Meng. His cousin saw the smile and put down the bowl of tea he had been sipping loudly and he said, “It is so. My brother came in with the triumphant armies from the south, and now he holds a very good high place in the new capital and has his own soldiers under him, and we hear very brave and ruthless tales of him. He could come any day now to see us, for he is safe enough since the old rulers are swept so clean and flown to every foreign land for safety, only he is busy and cannot be spared.”
But the old lady would not suffer any talk but her own. She coughed and spat again loudly and then she asked, “What position shall you take, Yuan, now that you have been abroad? You ought to win a very good high pay!”
To this Yuan answered mildly, “First, as you know, Ai-lan is to be wed three days hence and then I go to my father, and then I shall see how the way opens up before me.”
“That Ai-lan!” said the old lady, suddenly, fastening on the name. “I would not let my daughter wed a man like that! I would put her in a nunnery first!”
“Ai-lan in a nunnery!” cried her son’s wife, hearing this, and she laughed her little false and bitter laugh.
“If she were my daughter, so I would!” the old lady said firmly, staring at her daughter-in-law, and she would have said more except that she choked suddenly, and she coughed until the servant must rub her shoulders and strike her back to let her breathe again.
At last Yuan took his leave, and when he went homeward through the sunny streets, choosing to walk this fair day, he thought how good as dead this old pair were. Yes, all the old were good as dead, he thought joyously. But he was young and the times were young, and on this brilliant summer’s morning it seemed to him he met none but young in this whole city—young laughing girls in light-colored robes, their pretty arms bare in the new foreign fashion, and young men with them free and laughing. In this city all today were rich and young, and Yuan felt himself one of these rich and young, and his life was good to him.
But soon none had time to think of anything these days except Ai-lan’s wedding. For Ai-lan and the man were well known everywhere among the young rich of the city not only of their own race, but among those of other peoples too, and there were bidden to the marriage more than a thousand guests, and to the feast afterwards very nearly as many. Yuan had no time for any speech with Ai-lan alone, except for a little hour on the first day when he came back. Yet even then he felt he did not truly talk with her. For her old teasing laughing self was gone, and he could not penetrate into the lovely finish and assuredness that wrapped her about now. She asked him with what seemed her old frank look, “You are glad to be home, Yuan?” But when he answered he saw that her eyes, for all they looked at him, did not see him at all, but were turned inward in some thought of her own, and they were only lovely shapes of dark liquid light. So through all the hour, until Yuan was bewildered by the distance all about her and he asked uneasily, blurting out the words, “You are different—you do not seem happy—do you want to marry?”
; But there the distance still was. She opened her pretty eyes very widely and made her voice very cool and silvery and laughed a small clear laugh and said, “Am I not so pretty, Yuan? I have grown old and pale and ugly!” And Yuan said hastily, “No—no—you are prettier, but—” and she said, mocking him a little as she used to do, “What—shall I be so bold as to say I want to be wed and must be wed to this man? Did I ever do anything I did not want to do, brother? Have I not always been naughty and willful? At least I hear my aunt say so, and mother is too good to say it, but I know she thinks it—”
But Yuan, although she made her eyes mischievous and arch in shape and twisted her pretty brows above them, still saw her eyes were empty and he said no more. Thereafter he spoke no more alone with her, for each night of those three days she went forth in a new dress and wrapped about with silks of every hue, and even if Yuan was bidden with her as a guest, he saw her only in the distance, a lovely, brilliant figure, strange to him these days, engrossed in her own self and seeing everyone as in a dream. She was silent as she had never been before—her laughter only smiles now, her eyes soft instead of bright, and all her body round and soft and gentle, moving slowly and with cool grace, instead of with her old light leaping merriment. She had cast aside the charm of her gay youth, and had learned this new charm of silence and of grace.
By day she slept exhausted. Yuan and the mother and Mei-ling met and ate alone, and moved gently about the house and all noise was shut out until nightfall when, again Ai-lan came forth to meet her love and go forth with him to some house where they were bidden as guests. If she rose earlier it was only that she might have fitted to her form, by the many tailors who came for this, the gowns of silk and satin that she wanted, and among them was the pale peach-hued satin wedding gown with its trailing silvery foreign veil.
Now Yuan noted how silent and how grave the mother was through the few days before the marriage. She spoke very little to anyone except to Mei-ling, and on her she seemed to lean for many things. She said, “Did you take the broth in to Ai-lan?” Or she said, “Ai-lan must have soup to drink or that dried foreign milk she likes when she comes in tonight. I thought her pale.” Or she said, “Ai-lan wants two pearls to hold the veil, you know. Bid a jeweler send what he has for her to see.”
Her mind was full of all these many small things for Ai-lan, and Yuan knew it natural for a mother to be so and he was glad she had this young girl to help her. Once when the mother was not there and they two happened to be alone in the room and waiting for the meal to come, Yuan said to Mei-ling, not knowing what to say and feeling something must be said, “You are very helpful to my mother.”
The girl turned her honest look on him and said, “She saved me in my babyhood.” Yuan answered, “Yes, I know,” and he was surprised because there was no shame at all in the girl’s eyes, such shame as she might have had to say she was a foundling, of what parents she did not know. And then Yuan, feeling her like one of his house, because of her feeling to his mother, said, “I wish she seemed happier to see my sister wed. Most mothers are glad, I thought, if their daughters wed.”
But to this Mei-ling answered nothing. She turned her head away and at that moment the servant came in with bowls of meats, and she went forward herself to set them on the table. Yuan watched her do it, and she did it very simply and not at all as though she shared a servant’s task. He watched her, forgetting that he did so, and he saw how slight yet strong her lithe body was, how firm and quick were her hands, not making one useless movement, and he remembered how not once when his mother asked if a thing were done or not, had it been undone.
Thus the days drew on quickly to Ai-lan’s marriage day. It was to be a very great wedding, and to the largest and most fashionable hotel in the whole city the guests were bidden to come at an hour before noon. Since Ai-lan’s father was not there, and since the old uncle could not stand so long, her elder cousin took his place, and beside her was her mother, who never left her at all.
This marriage was according to a new fashion, and very different from the simple way in which her grandfather Wang Lung had taken his wives, and very different too from the old formal weddings of his sons in ways set and appointed by the forefathers. In these days the city people wed their sons and daughters in many ways, in some more old and in some more new, but be sure Ai-lan and her lover must have the very newest. Therefore there was much music from foreign instruments hired for the day and there were flowers set everywhere, and these alone cost many hundreds of silver pieces. The guests came in all the various garb of their races, for Ai-lan and her lover counted such people among their friends. These all gathered in a vast hall of the hotel. Outside, the streets were choked with their vehicles and with the idle and the poor who pressed to see what they could, and to try what they could do to gain something from the day, to beg or to slip their hands unseen into pockets of the throng and take what they found there, although guards had been hired to hold them back.
Through this great throng Yuan and the mother and Ai-lan rode, the driver incessantly sounding his horn lest some be crushed, and when the guards saw their vehicle and the bride, within, they darted forward shouting out, “Make way—make way!”
Through all this din Ai-lan rode proudly, silent now, her head bent a little beneath the long veil held to her head by the two pearls and by a circle of small fragrant orange flowers. She held between her hands a great cluster of white lilies and small white roses, very fragrant.
Never had there been so beautiful a creature. Even Yuan was awed by her beauty. A little cool set smile hung on her lips, though she would not let it out, and her eyes glittered black and white beneath her lowered lids, for well she knew her own beauty, and there was not one whit of it she did not know and had not fostered to its utmost height. The very crowd fell silent before her, and when she stepped out, its thousand eyes fastened on her hungrily and drank in all her beauty, at first silently and then with restless murmurings,—”Ah, see her!” “Ah, how fair, how fair!” “Ah, never such a bride was seen!” And be sure Ai-lan heard it all, but she made as if she did not.
So, too, when she came into the great hall, when the music set the moment, did all the crowded guests turn their heads and that same wondering silence came upon them. Yuan, who had gone first and stood with the man who was to wed her, saw her corning slowly between the guests, two little white clad children before her scattering roses for her to tread upon, and maidens with her, too, clad in silks of many hues, and he could not but share the wonder at her beauty. Yet, even so, even at that moment, although he did not know it until afterward, he saw Mei-ling very clearly, for she was with Ai-lan as attendant.
Yes, after all the wedding was over, and the contract read between the two, and when they had bowed to those who stood for the two families, and bowed to the guests and all to whom such courtesy was due, when all was over, the mighty feast and the merry-making and the wedded pair were gone to have a holiday together, then thinking of it all upon his return to his home, Yuan remembered, and he was surprised he did, the girl Mei-ling. She had walked alone before Ai-lan, and even Ai-lan’s radiance had not made Mei-ling seem unnoticeable. Now Yuan remembered very well she wore a soft long robe of apple green, the sleeves cut very short, and the collar high, so that above the color her face looked clear and somewhat pale and resolute. The very difference to Ai-lan made her hold her own against such beauty. For Mei-ling’s face owed nothing to its color or to its changefulness or sparkling eyes or smile, as Ai-lan’s did. Its good high look was from the perfect line of bone beneath the firm clear flesh, a line which, Yuan thought, would keep its strength and nobleness long past its youth. She looked older now than her age was. But some day in her age her straight low nose, her clean oval cheeks and chin, her sharp-cut lips, the straightness of her short black hair shaped smoothly against her head, would give her youth again. Life could not greatly change her. Even as now a certain gravity was hers, so in her maturity she would still be young.
Yuan
remembered this gravity. Of all that wedding party only two were grave, the mother and Mei-ling. Yes, even at the feast, when wines of every foreign sort were poured out, and all the tables full of guests were crying out such wit as they did not know they had before, when glass was lifted high to glass, and the bride and groom joined in the laughter as they made their way between the guests, even then Yuan saw at his table that the mother’s face was grave, and so was Mei-ling’s. These two talked together in low tones often and directed the servants here and there, and took counsel with the master of the hotel, and Yuan thought they were grave because of all these cares, and he let it pass and looked about the brilliant hall.
But that night when they were alone after all was over, and the house was silent save for servants passing here and there to set covers right again and bring order everywhere, the lady sat in her chair so silent and downcast that Yuan felt he must say something to make her lift her heart up somehow, and so he said kindly, “Ai-lan was beautiful—the loveliest I ever saw—the loveliest woman.”
The lady answered listlessly, “Yes, she was beautiful. She has these three years been counted the most beautiful among the young rich ladies of this city—famous for her beauty.” She sat awhile and then she said with strange bitterness, “Yes, and I wish it had not been so. It has been the curse of my own life and of my poor child’s that she has been so beautiful. She has needed to do nothing. She has not needed to use her mind or hands or anything—only to let people look at her, and praise flowed in upon her and desire and all that others work to gain. Such beauty only a very great spirit can withstand, and Ai-lan is not great enough to bear it!”
House Divided Page 25