“I came to see—to see—how you are, Mother,” Fengmo stammered.
“I am quite well,” Madame Wu replied coldly.
“There was something else, too,” Fengmo said.
Madame Wu rose. “Then come into the library.”
She led the way and he followed, but neither of them sat down. Instead Fengmo moved his hand toward the girl. “Mother,” he said, “is that—the one?”
“Fengmo, why have you come here to ask me?” Madame Wu said severely. “It is not your affair.”
“Mother, it is,” he said passionately. “Mother, how do you think it is for me? My friends will laugh at me and tease me—”
“Is that what you came to tell me?” Madame Wu inquired.
“Yes,” Fengmo cried. “It was bad enough before. But now that I have seen her—she is so young and my father—he’s so old.”
“You will return at once to your own court,” Madame Wu said in the same cold voice. “It was intrusion for you to come here without sending a servant first to find if it was convenient for me. As for your father, the younger generation does not decide for the elder.”
She was accustomed to Fengmo’s stubbornness. She was therefore surprised when this stubbornness wavered. She saw his handsome face flush and quiver. Then without a word he turned and left the room and the court without one backward look.
But Madame Wu was deeply annoyed that these two had seen each other. In spite of many old customs which she had broken, and she did not hesitate to break them when she chose, she had steadfastly followed that one which separated male from female at an early age. In this house her sons had been separated from all women at the age of seven. She had not even rebuked the menservants for their ignorant replies to the questions of the boys. Once she had heard Fengmo ask the steward, “Why am I forbidden to play any more with my two girl cousins?”
“Boys and girls cannot play together or they will have sore feet,” the steward had said half jokingly.
Madame Wu, usually so quick to correct ignorance, had let this pass.
Now Fengmo had seen this girl before she had taken her place in the house and the girl had seen him. Who could tell what fire would blaze out of this? She walked back and forth in the library. Each time she passed the open door she could see the girl’s head bent industriously over the shoe sole and her hand pulling the needle in and out. Her mind was suddenly quite made up. The matter must be decided at once. She would keep this girl. But the girl must understand exactly what her duty was. She went out with a swifter step than was usual to her and sat down again.
“I have made up my mind,” she began abruptly. “You shall stay in this house.”
The girl looked up, held the needle ready to pierce the cloth, but she did not move to take the stitch. She stood up in respect to Madame Wu.
“You mean that I please you?” she asked in a low and breathless voice.
“Yes, if you do your duty,” Madame Wu said. “You understand—you come here to serve my own lord—to take my places—in certain things.”
“I understand,” the girl said in the same half-faint voice. Her eyes were fastened on Madame Wu’s face.
“You must know,” Madame Wu went on, “that our house is in some ways still old-fashioned. There is no coming and going between the men’s courts and the women’s.”
“Oh, no,” the girl agreed quickly. Her hands fell into her lap, but her eyes did not move.
“In that case,” Madame Wu said in the strange abrupt way which was not at all like her usual way of speaking, “there is no reason why the matter should not be concluded.”
“But ought I not to have a name?” the girl asked anxiously. “Shall I not have a name in this house?”
There was something pathetic and touching in this question, and Madame Wu found it so. “Yes,” she said, “you must have a name, and I will give it to you. I will name you Ch’iuming. It means Bright Autumn. In this name I set your duty clear. His is the autumn, yours the brightness.”
“Ch’iuming,” the girl repeated. She tasted the name on her tongue. “I am Ch’iuming,” she said.
IV
MR. WU DID NOT come near Madame Wu, and she let it be so. After the many years, she knew what was going on in his mind. Had he been resolute against the girl, he would have come to tell Madame Wu so, with temper and decision, possibly even with laughter. But that he had stayed away proved to her that he was not unwilling for the girl to come into his court, and that he was secretly ashamed before Madame Wu because he was not unwilling. She knew him well enough to know that he might even be inwardly disgusted with himself, though in a degree too small to help him against his inclination. In short, he was what Madame Wu knew him to be, of a nature able to know what were the qualities of a great man, to admire and wish for all of these qualities, and yet hamstrung in his soul by the demands of his body.
Thus, as he was never able to resist a well-seasoned dish at the table, so he would not be able, however he longed for perfection, to deny himself the pleasure of a young woman. He was not austere, although he had been able for years to be satisfied with Madame Wu as his wife. But Madame Wu without conceit knew that, had she been less beautiful and less conscientious as a wife, he might have been led elsewhere. She had been careful to keep him satisfied in all things. Did he feel a desire for knowledge concerning any matter to be found in books, she informed herself and then told him. Did he mention a curiosity concerning foreign things, she learned and let him know. In all their years he had not an unsatisfied desire. But she knew without pain that this was because she had studied his wishes and when they were vague, by careful discourse she helped them to emerge clearly, even to himself, and when they were sharp and immediate she wasted no time in satisfying him. She had been a good wife.
Nor had she been discontented with him. She had no sudden disappointment in him. At first she had taken his willful curiosities as the stirrings of a mind impeded because his mother had indulged him from the moment he was born. Old Lady had never allowed Old Gentleman any power over their only child, unduly precious because he was the one left alive out of several births. At first Old Lady had quarreled openly and violently when Old Gentleman wished to discipline his son. This occurred when the boy was seven years old. Until that time, after the custom of all such families, Old Gentleman had allowed the boy to live in his mother’s courts. But at seven, he told Old Lady, it was time the boy came into his own court.
One excuse after another did Old Lady then put out. First the boy had a weak throat and she must have him where he could be watched at night, and next he had a small appetite and must be coaxed at meals. When Old Gentleman grew stern she wept, and when he was angry, she was more angry. But Old Gentleman was harder than a rock, and she was compelled to yield. When their child was nine years old he had been moved into a small room next to his father’s bedroom, and Old Gentleman undertook the teaching and discipline of his only son.
Alas that this small room had also a side door through which the handsome, willful boy could creep at night to his mother! Old Gentleman patiently and tenderly instructed his son to no avail. For instead of the self-discipline which he taught, she, out of the excess of her love, helped him play when he should have been studying. She gave him rich and delicate foods, and when his young belly was overstuffed and ached she taught him to puff an opium pipe to relieve the pain. It was only the boy’s own health and restlessness which saved him from this opium smoking. As it was, by the time he was twenty, Old Gentleman perceived that Old Lady had won over him, and with a last hour of admonition he had yielded up his son.
“My son,” thus he had ended his admonition, “you have chosen woman over man, your mother rather than your father, ease rather than achievement. Let it be so. It now remains for the sake of our house to find you a wife who will give strength to your weakness.”
The boy had been frightened by the gravity of his father’s voice and, as he always did when he was frightened, he had hastened away as q
uickly as he could to his mother, and in a few minutes he had forgotten his discomfort.
Madame Wu had come to the house soon afterward. On the tenth day after the marriage, Old Gentleman had sent for her to come to his library, and had talked with her thus about his son: “He is what you will make him. Some men make themselves, but he will always be made by women. Yet you must not let him know this. Never reproach him with his own weakness, for then he will become wholly weak. Never let him feel that but for you he would be useless, for then he will indeed become useless. You must search for the few strong threads in him and weave your fabric with those, and where the threads are weak, never trust to them. Supply your own in secret.”
She had been very young then, and her bridegroom was handsome and gay, and she was drunk with marriage. She was afraid of nothing.
“I love him,” she had said simply to Old Gentleman.
He had looked startled, for it was not usual for a woman to speak so boldly. But the voice in which she had uttered these extraordinary words was very soft and pretty, and she had looked so delicate and innocent as she spoke them that he had not the heart to reproach her.
Instead of reproach he had merely inclined his head and said, “Then you have a woman’s sharpest weapon in your hand.”
It had been perhaps ten years before Madame Wu had come to the full comprehension of the man to whom she was married and whom she loved still, with tenderness. So slowly, so gradually that she had not felt the pain of disappointment, she had found all the boundaries of his mind and soul. The space within these boundaries was small. The curiosities and questions which had at first excited her because she had taken them to be stirrings of intelligence, she saw now had no root. They were no more than ways to pass the time. They led to no end. At any moment he might grow weary of a question and cease to pursue it, and then she must discover the way the next wind blew.
It was at this time that she herself had stepped out beyond his boundaries and had let her own spread as far as they would. But this she did not tell him. Indeed, why should she, since he would not have understood what she said? Enough of her remained within his boundaries so that he thought she was still there with him. But she had already begun to dream of her fortieth birthday and to plan for what she would do when the day came.
Now she made up her mind that she must go and tell Mr. Wu herself that Ch’iuming had been found and was ready. He would have heard it from servants, but still she must tell him. There should not be delay, since Fengmo had seen the girl. For a young man to see a young woman might mean nothing, but it might mean much. There is a moment in the tide of youth when any such meeting, however accidental, may be as dangerous as a rendezvous. If Mr. Wu were in the right mind, she would send Ch’iuming to him as quickly as she could get her ready.
Ch’iuming was happy enough on this bright summer morning. Madame Wu had sent Ying to a cloth shop for flowered cotton cloth of good quality and silk of medium quality, and a clerk had brought bolts of such goods. From these Madame Wu now chose enough to make Ch’iuming three separate changes of garments. She wished to please the girl, and so she allowed her to point out which were her favorite colors and patterns, and she was pleased that the girl chose small patterns and mild colors. She was still more pleased when the girl set to work at once to make the garments herself.
Ch’iuming stood at the square table and spread the printed cotton on the table first. Then she paused, the iron scissors uplifted.
“Shall I cut them like your garments, Elder Sister?” she asked. Her own clothes were wide-sleeved and short in the coat as country people’s are.
“Ying will help you to make the proper fashion for this house,” Madame Wu replied.
So Ying had measured and marked with a piece of chalky white stone and then had cut the cloth to fit Ch’iuming’s slender curved body.
And while this was going on the girl stood in a trance of pure pleasure. “In my whole life I have never had a garment from new cloth,” she murmured.
When the pieces were cut she threaded her needle and slipped the brass ring of her thimble over her forefinger and sat down in a dream of joy. Slowly and carefully she stitched, while Ying looked on to examine the stitches for smallness and evenness. Watching Ch’iuming, Madame Wu felt again that strange pang of vague guilt, as though she were about to do this girl a wrong. She decided at once to go and find Mr. Wu and beckoned to Ying to come aside for a moment in the other room. There beyond the hearing of the girl she said:
“You must help her. See that she has a full set of undergarments quickly, and one outer set. I may send her from here tomorrow, depending on what the day shows me.”
“Yes, Lady,” Ying said, guarding her face and her voice against showing pleasure or sadness.
Now Madame Wu went out of her own court for the first time since she had moved here. In duty she stopped to see Old Lady. She found her well, sitting in the sun outside her door, and unusually cheerful while a maid rubbed oil into her feet and ankles which happened that day to be a little swollen.
“It was crabs,” Old Lady said. “Crabs always make my feet swell. But since I am about to descend into the grave at any moment, shall I refuse crabs for this cause? My feet and ankles are little good to me anyway. I drank much wine with the crabs, too, to take away the poison.”
Old Lady seemed to have forgotten entirely that she had been angry with her daughter-in-law about the concubine, and Madame Wu did not remind her. She stopped and examined Old Lady’s swollen feet and bade the maid rub them upward so that the blood would ascend rather than descend. Then she went on her way.
She had expected to find Mr. Wu in her old courts rather than in his, and so there she went. In that court her silver orchids were fading. She stooped to see if there were aphids on the leaves, but there were none. It was at this moment that she saw Mr. Wu sitting inside the room in his easy garments. Because of the heat he wore a pair of white silk trousers loose around the ankles, and a silk jacket unbuttoned over his smooth chest. He was fanning himself with a white silk fan painted with green bamboos, and in his hand was a tea bowl. The empty dishes of his breakfast were on the table. She discerned embarrassment and some sullenness on his well-fed, handsome face, and out of old habit she spoke cheerfully to him, “I think it is time we planted peonies again in this court. What do you say, Father of my sons?”
“I never cared for those little gray orchids,” he replied. “I like something with color.”
“I will have them taken away and peonies planted this very day,” she went on. “If we buy them in pots, they will go on blooming without being disturbed.”
He rose and sauntered out of the room and into the court and stood at her side, looking down at the orchids. “Red and pink peonies,” he said judiciously, “and a white one to each five, say, of the red and pink.”
“A good proportion,” she agreed. “Where is Yenmo?” she asked. Her youngest son was usually somewhere near his father.
“I sent him yesterday to the country,” Mr. Wu said with solemnity. “He is too young for the turmoil in this house.”
“That was thoughtful of you,” she told him. “You are entirely wise.” She looked up at him affectionately. He was a tall man, somewhat fat, for he was fond of food. “How are you this morning?” she asked. “You look like a prince of Chu.”
“Well,” he replied, “very well.” But she discovered a certain impatience in him. She smiled.
“I have not forgotten you,” she said. Her pretty voice was rich with tenderness.
“I feel as though you had,” he grumbled. He opened his jacket and fanned his bare breast swiftly and hard for a moment. “I have been very lonely, waiting for you to make up your mind. I am a good husband, Ailien! Another man would not have stood for this separation for so long. All these days! Enough, I say!”
“I have not forgotten you for one moment,” she said. “I have diligently searched, and the young woman is here.”
A fine red sprang into Mr. Wu�
�s face. “Ailien,” he said, “do not speak of that again.”
“You must have heard she was here,” Madame Wu went on in her clear voice.
“I pay no heed to servants’ talk,” he said and looked lordly. But this she knew as merely his picture of himself. He listened to all his manservant told him and laughed at his jokes, for the man was a clown and knew that his master liked to laugh.
Madame Wu moved gracefully to a garden seat. “The young woman is truly suitable,” she murmured. Her delicate hands fell into their usual tranquillity upon her lap. “Healthy, young, pretty, innocent—”
“Do you have no jealousy whatever?” he interrupted her harshly. The clear sunlight fell upon him as he stood, and she appreciated the picture it made of him—shining black hair, smooth golden skin, handsome lips, and large bold eyes.
“You are so handsome,” she said smiling, “that I might be jealous were she not so much a child, so simple, so less than nothing between you and me.”
“I cannot understand why you have grown so monstrously cold overnight,” he complained. “Ailien, last week you were—as you have always been. This week—”
“I have passed my fortieth birthday,” she said for him, still smiling. Then she motioned to the seat beside her. “Come,” she coaxed him, “sit down.”
He had scarcely taken his seat when she saw Fengmo pass the door. He looked in, saw his parents side by side, and went away quickly.
“Fengmo!” she called. But the boy did not hear her and did not return.
“We must marry that third son of ours,” she told Mr. Wu. “What would you say if I spoke to Madame Kang at once—perhaps tomorrow—and asked for Linyi?”
“You have always chosen the boys’ wives,” he returned.
“Tsemo chose his own,” she reminded him. “I wish to avoid that mistake with Fengmo.”
“Well enough,” he said. She was pleased to see that there was no interest in his voice at the thought of Linyi. He had forgotten her. He was thinking only of himself. She decided to speak directly, as though she had ordered him a new suit of clothes or a pair of shoes.
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