“You must not be afraid,” she said. “He is a very kind man.”
The girl threw her a quick look from under her lowered eyelids, and looked down again.
“You have only to obey him,” Madame Wu said. But she felt somehow cruel even as she said these words. Yet why should she feel cruel? The girl was no longer a child. The man who was to have been her husband had died. Had she lived on in the house of her foster mother, what could she have hoped as her lot except to be married, as a young widow never wed, to some other farmer whose wife had died and left him with many children? Surely this fate was better than that!
So Madame Wu tried to harden herself. But the girl put up her hand stealthily and wiped the sweat from her cheeks and remained silent.
“You had better take her now,” Madame Wu said abruptly to Ying, who stood waiting.
Ying stepped forward and took the girl’s sleeve between her thumb and finger. “Come,” she said.
Ch’iuming rose. Her full red mouth opened, and she began to pant softly and to hang back. Her eyes grew wide and very black.
“Come,” Ying said hardily. “For what else have you been brought into this house?”
The girl looked from Ying’s face to Madame Wu’s. Then, seeing nothing in either face to give her escape, she bent her head and followed Ying out of the room, out of the gate, and so out of the court.
Left alone, Madame Wu sat for some time without moving her body. Nor did a thought stir her mind. She sat in a state of blind feeling, and she let feeling take its course. Did she suffer pain? She knew she did not. Did she regret? No, she had no regrets. In this state of emptiness so might a soul find itself lost in death.
Then she lifted her head. Her mouth quivered. Did not a soul unborn exist also in the womb in just such emptiness? So she, too, might now be born again. She rose and went out into the court and lifted her face to the dark sky. The night was soft and black, and the square of sky above the courtyard was covered with clouds through which no stars shone. There would be rain before morning. But she always slept well on a rainy night.
Ying came back and passed her, not seeing her in the darkness. She went into the empty house and was startled by its emptiness.
“Oh, Heaven!” Madame Wu heard her mutter. “Where has she gone now? Mistress—Mistress!” Ying’s voice screamed out.
“Here I am, stupid,” Madame Wu said tranquilly at the door. “I stepped into the court to see if it would rain.”
Ying was as green as old bean curd. She held her hand to her heart. “Oh, Mistress,” she gasped. “I thought—I thought—”
Madame Wu laughed. “If you would only stop thinking, you would be much happier. You should leave thinking to me, Ying. You have no need of it.”
Ying sighed, and her hand dropped. “Do you want to go to bed now, Mistress, as usual?”
“Why not?” Madame Wu asked in her pretty voice. “It is beginning to rain. I can hear it on the roof.”
An hour later she climbed into the high big bed. Freshly bathed freshly dressed in her white silk night garments, she laid herself down.
Ying suddenly began to sob. “What bride is as beautiful as you?” she cried between her sobs.
Madame Wu had laid her head on her pillow. Now she lifted it again. “How dare you weep when I do not?” she said.
Swallowing her sobs, Ying loosened the curtains and drew them across the bed. And shut behind their satin splendor, Madame Wu folded her hands on her breast and closed her eyes. Upon the tiled roof above her head she heard the steady soothing downpour of the rain.
Ch’iuming had stepped through the darkness in a direction strange to her. She had not once left Madame Wu’s court since entering it. Now sent from it, she felt completely homeless, as orphaned as she had been when the woman who bore her had put her down outside a city wall and left her there. Then she had not known her plight. Now she knew it.
But such had been her life that long ago she had learned to be silent, for no voice would hear her if she called. Ying still held her sleeve by thumb and forefinger, and she felt this slight pull guiding her steps. But she did not speak to Ying.
And Ying, too, had kept silent as she trod the stones through one court into another. Old Lady’s court was quiet, for that old soul went to bed at sunset. From somewhere to the west a child cried. It was the Eldest Son’s child. To the north Ying heard or thought she heard a woman sobbing. She stopped to listen. “Hark!” she said. “Who is that crying in the night?”
Ch’iuming lifted her head.
“I cannot hear it now,” Ying said. “Perhaps it was only a mourning dove.”
They went on again. Ch’iuming’s heart began to throb. Every sense was quickened. She felt the air damp on her skin. Yes, she did hear a woman sobbing. But what woman wept in these courts? She did not ask. What could she do if she knew who it was? Her helplessness rose in her and frightened her, and she, too, wanted to weep. She must speak, she must reach out to some living soul and hear an answering voice, though it be only this servant woman’s.
“I think it strange they wanted me,” she gasped. “I should think he would want a girl from a flower house, someone, you know, who knows how to— I have only lived in the country—”
“Our mistress would not have such a girl in our house,” Ying said coldly.
Before Ch’iuming could speak again they were there. The court was full of peonies. A lantern shone down on them, and they glowed in the shadows.
“No one is here,” Ying announced. She led the way, and Ch’iuming followed. She saw a large room, the largest she had ever seen. The furniture was rich and dark, and paintings hung upon the walls. In the doorways the night wind swung satin curtains gently to and fro. They were scarlet against the ivory walls. She stepped in timidly. Here she was to live—if she pleased him.
But where was he?
She did not ask, and Ying did not speak of him. In the same cold fashion Ying helped her to make ready for bed. Only when the girl sat on the edge of the bed, and Ying saw her pale face, did she take pity.
“You are to remember that this is an honorable house,” she said in a loud voice. “If you do your duty here, you have nothing to make you afraid. He is kind, and she is wise as well as kind. You are lucky among women, and so why are you afraid? Have you a home to run to or a mother to receive you back again?”
Ch’iuming shook her head, and the red flooded into her cheeks. She lay down and closed her eyes. Ying drew the curtains and went away.
Behind the curtains Ch’iuming lay alone and full of terror. Within the next hour or two, what would befall her? The great house enclosed her. From somewhere she heard the clacking of mah jong pieces. The servants were gambling—or was it the sons? Or was it he, with his friends? Was ever a concubine brought into such a house in this fashion without having seen him? It was as though she were a wife instead of a concubine. But the elder lady was the wife, not she. And how could she ever be so beautiful as that wife, and how could she please him after that one, whose every look was beauty?
“I am so coarse,” she thought. “Even my hands!” She raised them in the darkness and let them fall again. They were rough, and the fine silk of the quilt caught at them.
She remembered the woman sobbing. Who were the others in the house? Sons and sons’ wives, she must make her peace with them all, lest they hate her. And the many servants, could they be so kind as Ying? And what did one call the servants? She who had nothing to pay them when she wanted a service done, would she be allowed to serve herself?
“I wish I were in my own bed again,” she moaned under her breath. She had slept all her life in a little lean-to, next to her foster mother’s room. Her bed had been boards stretched on two benches, and at night she could hear the breathing of the ox and the flutter of the few fowls that roosted in its stall. On the boards had been a cotton quilt which she had wrapped around her for mattress and covering. Sometimes in the morning she was waked by the droppings of birds on her face, for the s
parrows sheltered under the rafters.
Then she thought of the boy she had grown up with, her foster mother’s son, but never her brother. From the time she knew anything she knew that she had been brought into the house to be his wife. She had not loved him because she knew him too well. He was a farm boy like all the others in the village. She saw his round face and fat cheeks now when she thought of him, as he used to be when she was a little girl. Then he had grown tall and thin and she was just beginning to be shy of him when he died. She had not even made any wedding clothes. He had died so young, before she had begun to think of him really as her husband. When he died her foster mother had blamed her.
“You have brought a curse on my house,” she had said. “I ought to have left you to die by the city wall. You were not meant for my son.”
She remembered how these words had hurt her. The farmhouse was her only home, the woman her only mother. The woman had not been unkind. But when she had said these words Ch’iuming knew that she was no more than a foundling again, and she did not belong to that house. When Liu Ma had come and the bargain had been struck, she had said nothing.
“So what could I do but come here?” she now asked herself.
At this moment she heard a footstep, and her blood stopped in her veins. She snatched the silk quilt and drew it to her chin and stared at the closed curtains. They parted. She saw a handsome heavy face, neither young nor old, and reddened with drinking. The smell of wine spread into the alcove of the bed. He stared at her for a full minute, then he closed the curtains again softly.
For a long time she heard nothing at all. Had he gone away? She dared not move. She lay in the close darkness waiting. If he did not like her, she would be sent away tomorrow. But where could she go? If they sent her away would they give her a little money? What happened to concubines who did not please? She grew so frightened of such a fate that now it seemed anything would be better than that.
She sat up impetuously and parted the curtains with one hand and looked out. There he sat motionless in a great chair. He had taken off his outer garments and had on only his inner ones of white silk. But how had he moved so quietly that she had not heard?
She looked at him and he at her. Then she closed the curtains quickly and lay down and hid her face in her hands. He was coming! She heard his soft heavy footstep upon the tiles of the floor. The silk curtains opened as though they were ripped, and then she felt his hands pulling her hands away from her face.
V
MADAME WU WOKE OUT of the deepest sleep she had ever known. It was morning, and she had slept all night without waking once. She could not remember when she had done this. The new candle which Ying had put on the table last night beside her bed had still its white wick.
Her first feeling was one of complete rest. Fatigue was gone out of her body and out of her soul. But there was something familiar, too, in this relief. She sent her mind backward over her rich life and found the memory. Thus she had felt after each of her children had been born. Each time through the ten moon months the burden within her had grown heavier, closer, and more invading until only her most careful self-control had made it possible for her to keep the gentle poise which was her atmosphere. Then had come the birth of the child. But to her it was not birth so much as reclaiming her own body. Her first thought when the pain stopped abruptly and when she heard that sharp cry of the separate child was always of her own freedom. As soon as the child was brought to her, washed and dressed, she began to love him for what he was, but never because he was a part of herself. She did not, indeed, wish for any division of herself. She wanted only to be whole again.
So this morning she felt the same wholeness, but deeper and more complete. All her duty was now fulfilled. No one in this house lacked anything which he needed.
… But her third son Fengmo came into her mind. Alas, until he was wed she was not quite free!
She rose at this thought and put her little narrow feet into the embroidered black satin slippers which Ying always set on the long bench by the bed. Madame Wu’s feet were a little narrower than they might have been by nature. This was because many years ago when she had been a child of five her mother had begun to bind them. Her father was then traveling in foreign countries with Prince Li Hung Chang. She had looked at her father’s pictures taken in those foreign countries, and her nurse had told her about his wisdom and his goodness. Her mother, too, spoke of him often, but always to correct some waywardness in her. “What would your father say to you now?” her mother had inquired often. Because the little girl could not answer this, since she did not know, she always gave up her waywardness. When the mother called the child to her one day, and the child saw the long white bandages of cotton cloth she began to cry. She had seen all this happen to her older sister, that sister who had once run and played so joyfully and now sat all day silent over her embroidery, unwilling even to stand upon the sore bound feet.
The mother had stopped to stare at her second daughter severely. “What would your father say if he came home and found your feet splayed like a farmer’s wife’s feet?” she had demanded.
The little girl’s sobs had sunk into a whimper, and she had let her feet be bound.
To this day Madame Wu remembered the month of that agony. Then the letter came saying her father was coming home. She endured half a month more, for her father’s sake. When he came home she had forced herself to walk to him on those little feet. What joy was like to the joy that came next? Before she had had time to see his face or to call his name, he had given a harsh cry and had lifted her in his arms.
“Take these bands from off the child’s feet!” he had commanded. There had been hubbub and outcry. She could never remember a single word of that battle between her elders, but she never forgot the storm. Her mother had cried and her grandmother had screamed with anger and even her grandfather had kept shouting. But her father had sat down and kept her on his knees, and with his own hands he had taken off the bandages and made her feet free. She could still remember the pain, the joy, of the freed feet. He took them in his hands, one and then the other, and rubbed them gently to bring in the blood again, and the blood running into the pinched veins had been first agony and then joy.
“Never—never,” he had muttered.
She had clung to him crying. “What if you had not come home!” she had cried into his breast. He had come in time to save her. She could run again in a few months. But it was too late for her sister’s feet. The bones were broken.
After this there had been nothing but disturbance for three years in the household. Her father had learned new ways in new countries, and he had insisted that she be taught to read. When he died of a sudden cholera at the end of a hot summer three years later, it was too late to bind her feet again, and too late for ignorance because she already knew how to read. She was even allowed to keep on with her reading because she was betrothed and Old Gentleman was pleased that she could read and that her feet were not bound. “We are very lucky,” her mother had said, “to find a rich family so lenient.”
Now she remembered her father at this moment when she put her narrow feet into her slippers. Something of that joy of freedom was in her again, too. She smiled, and Ying came and caught her smiling.
“You, Mistress,” Ying chided her. “You are too happy this morning!” She looked at her and against all her wish to behave decorously she could not keep from smiling. “You do look like a mischievous child,” she said.
“Do not try to understand me, good soul,” Madame Wu said gaily. “Why should you harass yourself? Let us only be as we always are. Tell me, is the day fair?”
“As though there had never been rain,” Ying replied.
“Then,” Madame Wu said, “dress me for visiting. I shall go to see Madame Kang as soon as I have eaten. I have a matter to talk about with her. What do you think of her Linyi for our Fengmo?”
“Two knots on the same rope,” Ying replied musingly. “Well, Mistress, better to repeat a good
thing than a bad one. Our eldest young lord is happy enough with the eldest Kang daughter. But our second lord beat his wife last night.”
“Tsemo beat Rulan?” Madame Wu exclaimed.
“I heard her sobbing,” Ying said. “It must be she was beaten.”
Madame Wu sighed. “Will I never have peace under this roof?”
She ate her breakfast quickly and rose and went to Tsemo’s court. But Tsemo had risen even earlier and was already gone. Rulan was still in bed sleeping, the servant said. Madame Wu would not ask a servant why her son had beaten his wife, and so she said, “Tell my son I will see him tonight.”
She went on then as she usually did each day to inspect the kitchens and family courts, and when she had examined all parts of the house, had praised here and corrected there, she returned to her own court.
Two hours later she stepped out of the gate of the Wu house. Mr. Wu had some two years before bought a foreign motorcar, but the streets were so narrow that Madame Wu would never willingly use it. She disliked to see the common people flatten themselves against the walls of the houses while the big car spread itself across the street. At the same time she did not enjoy the openness of the ricksha which Mr. Wu had once given her as a present. She still liked best the privacy of this old-fashioned sedan chair which had been part of her wedding furniture. She told Ying, therefore, to follow in the ricksha. Then one of the four bearers lifted the curtain and Madame Wu stepped in and sat down and he let the curtain fall. From the small glass window in this curtain she could see enough of the streets for her own interest and yet not be seen.
Thus borne through the crowded streets by the four bearers, she felt she did harm to no one. Her weight was easy for the men, and the sedan was so narrow that none was pushed from his path. Moreover, she liked the courteous call of the head bearer as he cried out to those in his way, “I borrow your light—I borrow your light!” So ought the rich to be courteous to the poor and the high to the low. Madame Wu could never bear oppression of any sort. Since she had been mistress in the Wu house no slave had been beaten nor any servant offended. Even though it was sometimes necessary to dismiss an unfaithful or incapable servant, it was never done on this ground but on some other which, though he knew it was false, yet comforted him before his fellows. She was the more distressed, therefore, when she considered what Ying had told her—that Tsemo had beaten Rulan.
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