East Wind: West Wind

I

THESE THINGS I MAY tell you, My Sister. I could not speak thus even to one of my own people, for she could not understand the far countries where my husband lived for twelve years. Neither could I talk freely to one of the alien women who do not know my people and the manner of life we have had since the time of the ancient empire. But you? You have lived among us all your years. Although you belong to those other lands where my husband studied his western books, you will understand. I speak the truth. I have named you My Sister. I will tell you everything.

You know that for five hundred years my revered ancestors have lived in this age-old city of the Middle Kingdom. Not one of the august ones was modern; nor did he have a desire to change himself. They all lived in quietness and dignity, confident of their rectitude. Thus did my parents rear me in all the honored traditions. I never dreamed I could wish to be different. Without thinking on the matter it seemed to me that as I was, so were all those who were really people. If I heard faintly, as from the distance outside the courtyard walls, of women not like myself, women who came and went freely like men, I did not consider them. I went, as I was taught, in the approved ways of my ancestors. Nothing from the outside ever touched me. I desired nothing. But now the day has come when I watch eagerly these strange creatures — these modern women — seeking how I may become like them. Not, My Sister, for my own sake, but for my husband’s.

He does not find me fair! It is because he has crossed the Four Seas to the other and outer countries, and he has learned in those remote places to love new things and new ways.

My mother is a wise woman. When at the age of ten I ceased to be a child and became a maiden, she said to me these words,

“A woman before men should maintain a flowerlike silence and should withdraw herself at the earliest moment that is possible without confusion.”

I remembered what she said, therefore, when I stood before my husband. I bowed my head and placed my two hands before me. I answered him nothing when he spoke to me. But oh, I fear he finds my silence dull!

When I examine my mind for something to interest him, it is suddenly as barren as rice-fields after the harvest. When I am alone at my embroidery, I think of many delicately beautiful things to say to him. I will tell him how I love him. Not, you mind, in the brazen words copied from the rapacious West. But in hidden words like these,

“My lord, did you mark this day how the dawn began? It was as if the dull earth leaped to meet the sun. Darkness. Then a mighty lift of light like a burst of music! My dear lord, I am thy dull earth, waiting.”

Or this, when he sails upon the Lotus Lake in the evening,

“What if the pale wan waters should never feel how the moon draws them? What if the wave should never again be touched to life by its light? Oh, my lord, guard thyself, and return to me safely, lest I be that pale wan thing without thee!”

But when he comes in, wearing the strange foreign dress, I cannot speak these things. Can it be that I am married to a foreigner? His words are few and carelessly spoken, and his eyes slide too hastily over me, even though I wear my peach-colored satin and have pearls in my freshly bound hair.

This is my sorrow. I have been married a bare month, and I am not beautiful in his eyes.

Three days have I pondered now, My Sister. I must use cunning and seek for a way to turn my husband’s eyes to me. Do I not come of many generations of women who found favor in the eyes of their lords? There have been none lacking in beauty for a hundred years save only one, and that one Kwei-mei in the age of Sung, who was pitted with smallpox at the age of three years. Yet it is written that even she had eyes like black jewels and a voice which shook men’s hearts like wind in the bamboos in spring. Her husband held her so dear that though he had six concubines suitable to his wealth and rank, none of them did he love so well as he loved her. And my ancestress, Yang Kwei-fei — she who bore upon her wrist a white bird — held the very empire in the scented palms of her hands, since the emperor, the Son of Heaven, was mad with her beauty. I, therefore, the least of these honorable ones, must yet have their blood in my blood, and their bones are my bones.

I have examined myself in my bronze mirror. It is nothing for my sake but only for his when I tell you I see that there are others less fair than I. I see that my eyes are clearly defined, the white from the black; I see that my ears are small and delicately pressed to my head, so that the rings of jade and gold cling close; I see that my mouth is small also, and makes the approved curve in the oval of my face. I wish only that I were not so pale, and that the line of my brows were carried an eighth of an inch further toward the temples. I correct my paleness with a touch of rose upon my palms rubbed against my cheeks. A brush dipped in black perfects my brows.

I am fair enough then, and prepared for him. But the instant his eyes fall on me I perceive that he observes nothing, neither lips nor brows. His thoughts are wandering over the earth, over the sea, everywhere except where I stand waiting for him!

When the geomancer had set the day for my marriage, when the red lacquered boxes were packed to the brim, when scarlet flowered satin quilts were heaped high on the tables, and the wedding cakes piled like pagodas, my mother bade me come to her room. I washed my hands and smoothed my hair freshly and entered her apartments. She had seated herself in her black carved chair and was sipping her tea. Her long, silver-bound bamboo pipe leaned against the wall beside her. I stood before her with my head drooping, not presuming to meet her eyes. Nevertheless I felt her keen gaze covering my face, my body, my feet. Its sharp warmth penetrated to my very heart through the silence. At last she bade me sit. She toyed with watermelon seeds from a dish on the table beside her, her face quiet in its accustomed expression of inscrutable sadness. My mother was wise.

“Kwei-lan, my daughter,” she said, “you are about to marry the man to whom you were betrothed before you were born. Your father and his were brother-friends. They swore to unite themselves through their children. Your betrothed was then six years of age. You were born within the circle of that year. Thus you were destined. You have been reared for this end.

“Through these seventeen years of your life I have had this hour of your marriage in mind. In everything I have taught you I have considered two persons, the mother of your husband and your husband. For her sake I have taught you how to prepare and to present tea to an elder; how to stand in an elder’s presence; how to listen in silence while an elder speaks whether in praise or blame; in all things I have taught you to submit yourself as a flower submits to sun and rain alike.

“For your husband I have taught you how to decorate your person, how to speak to him with eyes and expression but without words, how to — but these things you will understand when the hour comes and you are alone with him.

“Therefore, you are well versed in all the duties of a gentlewoman. The preparation of sweetmeats and delicate foods you understand, so that you may tempt your husband’s appetite and set his thoughts upon your value. Never cease to beguile him with your ingenuity in different dishes.

“The manners and etiquette of aristocratic life — how to enter and leave the presence of your superiors, how to speak to your inferiors, how to enter your sedan, how to greet his mother in the presence of others — these things you know. The behavior of a hostess, the subtlety of smiles, the art of hair decoration with jewels and flowers, the painting of your lips and fingernails, the use of scent upon your person, the cunning of shoes upon your little feet — ah, me, those feet of yours and all the tears they have cost! But I know of none so small in your generation. My own were scarcely more tiny at your age. I only hope that the family of Li have paid heed to my messages and have bound as closely the feet of their daughter, the betrothed of your brother, my son. But I am fearful of it because I hear she is learned in the Four Books, and learning has never accompanied beauty in women. I must send word to the go-between again regarding the matter.

“As for you, my child, if my daughter-in-law equals you, I shall not complain over-much. You have been taught to play that ancient harp whose strings have been swept by generations of our women for the delight of their lords. Your fingers are skillful, and your nails are long. You have even been taught the most famous verses of the old poets, and you can sing them sweetly to your harp. I cannot see how even your mother-in-law will find anything lacking in my work. Unless you should bear no son! But I will go to the temple and present the goddess with a gift, should you pass the first year without conception.”

My blood rose to my face. I cannot remember when I did not know of birth and motherhood. The desire for sons in a household like ours, where my father had three concubines whose sole interest was in the conceiving and bearing of children, was too ordinary to contain any mystery. Yet the thought of this for myself — but my mother did not even see my hot cheeks. She sat absorbed in meditation and fell to toying again with the watermelon seeds.

“There is only one thing,” she said finally, “he has been abroad to foreign lands. He has even studied foreign medicines. I do not know — but enough! Time reveals all. You are dismissed.”

II

I COULD NOT REMEMBER when my mother had spoken so many words, My Sister. Indeed, she seldom spoke, except to correct or to command. This was right, for no one else in our women’s apartments was equal to her, the First Lady, in position or native ability. You have seen my mother, My Sister? She is very thin, you remember, and her face seems carved from ivory for its pallor and its calm. I have heard it said that in her youth before she was wed, she possessed the great beauty of moth eyebrows and lips of the delicacy of the coral-colored buds of the quince tree. Even yet her face, fleshless though it is, preserves the clear oval of the paintings of the ancient women. As for her eyes, the Fourth Lady has a clever tongue, and she said of them once,

“The First Lady’s eyes are sad jewels, black pearls, dying from over-much knowledge of sorrow.”

Ah, my mother!

There was none like her in my childhood. She understood many things and moved with a habitual, quiet dignity which kept the concubines and their children all fearful in her presence. But the servants disliked while they admired her. I used to hear them grumbling because they could not so much as steal the fragments in the kitchen without her discerning the matter. Yet she never reproved them loudly as the concubines did when they were angry. When my mother saw that which did not please her, few words dropped from her lips; but those words were pointed with scorn, and they fell upon the guilty one like sharp ice upon the flesh.

To my brother and to me she was kind, but still formal and undemonstrative, as indeed was proper for one in her position in the family. Of her six children, four were taken in early childhood by the cruelty of the gods, and she therefore valued her only son, my brother. As long as she had given my father one living son he could have no legal ground for complaint against her.

She was, moreover, secretly very proud of her son for his own sake.

You have seen my brother? He is like my mother, thin of body, delicate-boned, tall and straight as a young bamboo tree. As little children we were ever together, and he it was who first taught me to brush the ink over the characters outlined in my primer. But he was a boy and I only a girl, and when he was nine and I six years of age, he was taken out of the women’s apartments into those where my father lived. We seldom met then, for as he grew older he considered it shameful to visit among the women; and moreover, my mother did not encourage it.

I, of course, was never allowed in the courts where the men lived. When first they separated my brother from the women I crept once in the dusk of the evening to the round moon-gate that opened into the men’s apartments; and leaning against the wall opposite it, I peered into the courts beyond, hoping to see my brother perhaps in the garden. But I saw only men-servants, hurrying to and fro with bowls of steaming food. When they opened the doors into my father’s halls, shouts of laughter streamed out, and mingled with it was the thin high singing of a woman’s voice. When the heavy doors shut there was only silence over the garden.

I stood for a long time listening for the laughter of the feasters, wondering wistfully if my brother were then in the midst of the gayety, when suddenly I felt my arm pulled sharply. It was Wang Da Ma, my mother’s chief servant, and she cried,

“Now will I tell your mother if I see this again! Who has ever seen before such an immodest maid to go peeping at the men!”

I dared not speak more than a whispered excuse for shame.

“I sought my brother only.”

But she answered firmly,

“Your brother now is also a man.”

Therefore I seldom saw him again.

But I heard that he loved study and early became proficient in the Four Books and the Five Classics, so that my father at last heeded his beseeching and allowed him to go to a foreign school in Peking. At the time of my marriage he was studying in the National University in Peking, and in his letters home he constantly asked to be allowed to go to America. At first my parents would not hear to such a thing, nor did my mother ever agree to it. But my father disliked trouble, and I could see that in the end my brother might prevail by importuning.

In the two vacations he spent at home before I went away, he spoke much of a book he called “science.” My mother felt this to be unfortunate, for she could see no use for this western knowledge in the life of a Chinese gentleman. The last time he came home he wore the clothes of a foreigner, and my mother was much displeased. When he came into the room, somber and foreign-looking, my mother struck her stick on the floor and cried,

“What is this? What is this? Do not dare to present yourself to me in such an absurd costume!”

He was obliged therefore to put on his own clothes, although he was angry and delayed for two days until my father laughed at him and commanded him. My mother was right. In Chinese clothes my brother appeared stately and a scholar. With his legs exposed in the foreign dress, he resembled nothing seen or heard of in our family.

But even on those two visits he seldom talked with me. I know nothing of the books he loved, for I could not spare the time from the many things necessary to fit me for marriage to pursue further the classics.

Of his own marriage of course we never spoke. It would not have been fitting between a young man and woman. Only I knew through eavesdropping servants that he was rebellious against it and would not marry, although my mother had tried three times to set the wedding date. Each time he had persuaded my father to postpone the matter until he had had further study. And I knew of course that he was betrothed to the second daughter of the house of Li, a family well established in the city in wealth and position. Three generations previous to ours the head of the house of Li and the head of our house ruled as governors in adjoining counties in the same province.

Of course we had not seen his betrothed. The affair had been arranged by my father before my brother was a year old. Therefore it would not have been proper for our families to have any coming and going before my brother’s marriage took place. Indeed, nothing was even spoken concerning the betrothed except once when I heard Wang Da Ma gossiping to the other servants thus,

“It is a pity that the daughter of Li is three years older than our young lord. A husband should be superior even in age. But the family is old and rich and—” Then she saw me and fell silent to her work.

I could not understand why my brother refused to marry. The first concubine laughed when she heard of it and cried,

“In Peking it must be he has found a beautiful Manchu!”

But I did not believe my brother loved anything except his books.

I grew up therefore alone in the courtyards of the women.

There were of course the children of the concubines; but I knew my mother considered them only as so many mouths to be fed when she gave out the daily rations of rice and oil and salt, and she paid them no attention beyond ordering the necessary yards of plain blue cotton cloth for their garments.

As for the concubines, they were at heart only ignorant women, always quarreling and mortally jealous of one another’s place in the affections of my father. They had caught my father’s fancy at first through a prettiness which faded like flowers plucked in spring, and my father’s favor ceased when their brief beauty was gone. But they never seemed to be able to perceive that they were no longer beautiful, and for days before his coming they would busy themselves with furbishing up their jewels and gowns. My father gave them money on feast days and when he was lucky at his gambling, but they spent it foolishly on sweetmeats and on the wines they loved; and then having nothing before his coming they borrowed money of the servants to buy new shoes and hair ornaments. The servants were contemptuous when they saw the concubines had lost my father’s favor, and drove hard bargains with them.

The eldest concubine, a fat, pudgy creature, whose tiny features were sunken in the mountains of her cheeks, was notable for nothing except her small and beautiful hands, in which she took the greatest pride. She washed them in oils and stained the palms rose-red, and the smooth, oval nails she painted vermilion. Then she scented them with a heavy magnolia perfume.

Sometimes my mother would weary of this woman’s empty vanity and a little maliciously would bid her do some coarse washing or sewing. The fat Second Lady dared not disobey, but she whined and complained secretly to the other concubines that my mother was jealous of her and wished to spoil her beauty for my father. This she said, nursing her hands the while and examining them with the greatest care to see if the delicate skin were at all bruised or thickened. I could not bear to touch her hands; they were hot and soft and melted in one’s grasp.

My father had long since ceased to care for this woman, but he gave her money when he came and spent a night in her apartment, lest she cry in a loud voice in the courts and tease him with her reproaches. She had, moreover, two sons and thus was entitled to some attention.

Her sons were fat and exactly resembled their mother, and I do not bring them to mind except as eating and drinking continually. They ate fully at the table with the others, yet afterwards they would creep away into the servants’ courtyard and quarrel with the servants for the left-over bits. They went about always with great cunning, fearing my mother, who hated above all else greed for food. She herself never ate more than a bowl of dry rice with a bit of salted fish or a thin slice of cold fowl and a sip of scented tea.

I do not remember more about the Second Lady except that she was always much afraid of dying. She ate many sweet oily sesame cakes and, when she fell ill, lay groaning in great terror. Then she would call in the Buddhist priests and promise her pearl hair ornaments to the temple if the gods would make her well. But when she was well again she continued to eat cakes and feigned to forget the promise.

The second concubine, the Third Lady, was a dim woman, who spoke seldom and took little interest in the family life. She had five children, all girls except the youngest; and this had weakened her spirit and made her disconsolate. For the girls she cared nothing. They were neglected and held little higher than the slaves we bought for service. She spent her time in a sunny corner of the courtyard nursing the son, a heavy, sallow child, three years old and still unable to talk or walk. He cried a great deal and was forever dragging at her long, flabby breasts.

The concubine I liked best was the third, a little dancing girl from Soochow. Her birth name was La-may, and she was as pretty as the la-may flower itself, which puts out its pale gold blossoms from leafless branches in early spring. She was like them, dainty and pale and golden. She used to put no paint on her cheeks as others did, but only an emphasis of black on her narrow eyebrows and a touch of vermilion on her lower lip. We saw very little of her at first, for my father was proud of her beauty and took her with him everywhere.

The last year before my marriage she had been at home, however, waiting for her son to be born. He was a lovely boy, chubby and handsome, and she took him and laid him in his father’s arms. Thus she repaid what he had given her of jewels and affection.

Before the child’s birth the Fourth Lady had been in a continual mood of high excitement and tinkling laughter. Everywhere she was praised for her beauty; and indeed, I have never seen a loveliness to surpass hers. She wore jade-green satins and black velvet, with jade in her exquisite ears, and she scorned us all a little in spite of her careless generosity with the cakes and sweetmeats given her at the feasts she attended nightly with my father. She seemed to eat almost nothing herself — a sesame cake in the morning, after my father had left her, and at noon half a bowl of rice with a bit of bamboo shoot or a thin slice of salted duck. She loved foreign wines and coaxed my father to buy her a pale yellow liquid with silver-pointed bubbles darting upward from the bottom. It made her laugh and become very talkative and her eyes sparkle like black crystals. Then she amused my father exceedingly, and he would bid her dance and sing for him.

But when my father feasted, my mother sat in her own apartment reading the stately sayings of Confucius. As for me, when I was a young girl I often wondered at those feast nights and longed to peep, as I once had when I sought my brother, between the carved crevices of the moon-gate into the men’s apartments. But my mother would never allow it, I knew, and I was ashamed to deceive her.

One night, however — I am filled with shame now at my unfilial disobedience! — I crept secretly through the blackness of a moonless summer night and gazed again through the gate and saw into my father’s apartments. I do not know why I did it — I no longer thought of my brother. Some strange fullness of vague desire had made me restless throughout the long hot day, and when the night came, filled with warmth and dusk and the thick scent of lotus flowers, the quietness of our women’s rooms seemed a thing dead of itself. My heart beat hard as I gazed. The doors were flung wide and the light from a hundred lanterns streamed out into the hot, still air. Within I saw men sitting at square tables eating and drinking and servants hurrying back and forth with food. Behind each man’s chair stood the vine-slender figure of a girl. But seated at my father’s side, the only woman at the table, was La-may. I could see her quite clearly, her face smiling a little, shining like a wax-petaled flower, as it turned to my father. She said something in a low voice, scarcely moving her lips, and a roar of laughter went up from the men. Her smile was unchanged, slight, subtle, and she did not laugh.

This time my mother herself discovered me. She seldom left the house even to walk in the courts, but the heat of the night had driven her forth, and her sharp eyes discerned me immediately. She commanded me to retire at once to my room and following me there she slapped the palms of my hands sharply with her folded bamboo fan and asked me scornfully if I desired to see harlots at their work. I was ashamed and wept.

The next day she ordered opaque shell lattices to be placed over the moon-gate, and I never looked through it again.

But my mother was none the less kind to the Fourth Lady. The servants praised her loudly for this forbearance, although I think the other concubines would have been glad to see her cruel, as a first lady so often is to the others. Perhaps my mother knew what was in store.

After her baby was born, the Fourth Lady thought that of course my father would take her about with him again. She did not nurse the child herself lest she spoil her beauty. Instead she gave him to a sturdy slave-woman, whose child, a girl, had of course not been allowed to live. This slave was a thick-bodied woman with a foul mouth, but the little boy slept in her bosom all night, next her flesh, and was carried in her arms all day. His own mother paid little attention to him, except to dress him in red on a gala day and put little cat-faced shoes upon his feet and play with him a brief while. When he cried, she thrust him impatiently back into the slave’s arms.

But the boy gave her an insufficient hold upon my father. Though legally she had repaid him, she had daily to seek cunning devices to capture his senses, as our women have ever had to do. Even her cunning, however, was not enough. She was not so beautiful as she had been before the child’s birth. Her smooth, pearly little face sagged just enough to take away her delicate youth. She dressed herself in her jade-green gown and hung pendants in her ears and gave her little tinkling laugh. My father appeared as pleased with her as ever; only, when he went on his next journey he did not take her with him.

Her astonishment and rage were dreadful to see. The other concubines were secretly pleased and smiled a great deal as they pretended to comfort her. My mother was a little kinder to her than usual. I heard Wang Da Ma mutter angrily,

“Oh, yes, now we shall soon have another idle woman to feed. He is weary of this one already!”

From that day the Fourth Lady brooded. She became discontented, with fits of irritability and profound weariness of the humdrum existence in a women’s courtyard. She had been used to the feasting and the admiration of men. She became very melancholy, and later even tried to throw away her own life. But that was after my marriage. It is not to be supposed from all this that our life at home was a sad one. It was really very happy, and many of our neighbors envied my mother. My father had never ceased to respect her for her intellect and for her capable management of his affairs. She never reproached him for anything.

Thus they lived in dignity and peace.

O my beloved home! My childhood passes before me in pictures illumined as by firelight. The courtyards, where I watched the lotus-buds burst into flower in the pool at dawn, and the peonies bloom in their terraces; the family rooms, where the children tumbled on the tiled floor, and the candles flared before the house-gods; my mother’s room, where I see her stern, delicate profile bent over a book, the huge canopied bed in the background.

Most dear of all is the stately guest-hall, with its ponderous black teak couches and chairs, the long carved table and the scarlet satin curtains in the doorways. Above the table hangs a painting of the first Ming emperor — an indomitable face with a chin like a stone cliff — and on each side of this painting hang the narrow scrolls of gold. The whole south side of the hall is in carved window frames, latticed with rice-paper. This paper sheds a soft moonstone light over the dark dignity of the room, reaching even to the heavy beams of the ceiling and lighting up the vermilion and the gold of their painted edges. To sit quietly in this hall of my ancestors and watch the twilight fall upon it in dusky silence has ever been to me like music.

On the second day of the New Year, which is the day for great ladies to call upon one another, the hall is delicately gay. Into its dim age comes a host of brilliantly dressed ladies; there is light and laughter and bits of formal talk, and the slaves pass tiny cakes in red lacquered sweetmeat trays. My mother presides over it all with grave courtesy. The old beams have looked down upon the same scene for hundreds of years — black heads and dark eyes, rainbow silks and satins, jade and pearl and ruby hair ornaments, and turquoise and gold flashing upon slender ivory hands.

O my beloved home — O dearly beloved!

I see myself, a little solemn figure clinging to my brother’s hand, standing beside the fire in the court, where the kitchen-gods are about to be burned. They have had honey put on their paper lips so that they may ascend to heaven with sweet words and forget thus to tell of the times when the servants quarreled, and when they stole food from the bowls. We are filled with awe at the thought of the messengers to the distant unknown. We do not speak.

I see myself on the Dragon Festival, with my best feast-day gown of pink silk embroidered with plum blossoms, scarce able to wait until evening when my brother will take me to see the dragon boat upon the river.

I see the bobbing lotus lantern that my old nurse brings me at the Feast of Lanterns, laughing at my excitement when night comes and I may light the smoky red candle within.

I see myself walking slowly beside my mother into the great temple. I watch her place the incense in the urn. I kneel reverently with her before the god, and fear is cold within me.

I ask you, My Sister, with years like this to shape me, how have I been prepared for such a man as my husband? All my accomplishments are of no avail. I plan in secret that I will wear the blue silk coat with black buttons cunningly wrought in silver. I will place jasmine in my hair, and upon my feet the pointed black satin shoes embroidered in blue. I will greet him when he enters. But when it has all come to pass, his eyes escape hastily to other things — his letters upon the table, his book. I am forgotten.

Within my heart is a writhing fear. I remember a day before my marriage. It was the day on which my mother wrote two letters swiftly with her own hand, one to my father and one to my future mother-in-law, and dispatched them in great haste by the old gate-keeper. I had never seen her so perturbed. On that day I heard the servants whisper that my betrothed wished to break our engagement because I was uneducated and had bound feet. I burst into tears, and the servants were frightened and swore that it was not I of whom they spoke, but of Lady Tao’s fat second daughter.

Now I remember this and ponder it in great agitation. Could it have been I? Servants are ever liars! Yet I am not untaught. I have been carefully trained in all household matters and in the care of my person. As for my feet, surely no one could prefer huge, coarse ones like those of a farmer’s daughter. It was not I — it cannot be I — of whom they spoke!

III

WHEN I HAD SAID farewell to my mother’s home and stepped into the great red chair to be carried to the home of my husband, I never dreamed I should not please him. For myself, I remembered and was glad that I am small and lightly framed, with an oval face that others are pleased to look upon. At least here he would not be disappointed.

During the wine ceremony I stole a glance at him from under the red silken strands of my veil. I saw him standing there in his stiff, black, foreign clothes. He was tall and straight like a young bamboo. My heart went cold and hot together. I was sick for his secret glance. But he did not turn his eyes to pierce my veil. We drank the cups of wine together. We bowed before his ancestral tablets. I knelt with him before his august parents. I became their daughter, leaving forever my own family and clan. He never looked at me.

That night, after the feasting and bantering laughter had ended, I sat alone upon the couch in the bridal chamber. I was stifled with my fear. The hour I had imagined and dreaded and longed for all my life was come — the hour when for the first time my husband looked on my face, and we were alone together. My cold hands were pressed against each other in my lap. Then he came in, still so tall and somber in those dark foreign clothes. He came to me at once, and in silence he lifted the veil from my face and looked long upon me. Thus he acknowledged me. Then he took one of my cold hands. The wisdom of my mother had taught me thus:

“Be chill, rather than warm. Be the tang of wine rather than the surfeiting sweetness of honey. Then his desire will never fail.”

Therefore I was reluctant to give him my hand. Instantly he withdrew his own and gazed at me in silence. Then he began to speak with grave earnestness. At first I could not comprehend his words for the marvel of his voice in my ears, a quiet, deep man’s voice that made my body flush with shyness. Then I caught his words with astonishment. What was he saying?

“It is not to be supposed that you would be drawn to me whom you behold for the first time, as I behold you also. You have been forced into this marriage as much as I have. We have been helpless in this matter until now. Yet now that we are alone we may create our life according to our own desires. For myself, I wish to follow the new ways. I wish to regard you in all things as my equal. I shall never force you to anything. You are not my possession — my chattel. You may be my friend, if you will.”

These were the words I heard on my bridal night. At first I was amazed beyond understanding of their meaning. I equal to him? But why? Was I not his wife? If he did not tell me what to do, then who would? Was he not my master by law? No one had forced me to marry him — what else could I do if I did not marry? And how could I marry except as my parents arranged it? Whom could I marry if not the man to whom I had been betrothed all my life? It was all according to our custom. I did not see wherein lay any force.

Then his words burned again in my ears. “You have been forced into this as much as I have.” I was suddenly faint with fear. Did he mean to say he did not wish to be married to me?

O My Sister, such anguish — such bitter pain!

I began to twist my hands in my lap, not daring to speak, not knowing how to reply. He placed one of his hands over both of mine, and we were silent for a while. But I only wished that he would take his hand away. I felt his eyes on my face. At last he spoke, his voice low and bitter,

“It is as I feared. You will not — cannot — show me your real mind. You dare not break away from what you have been taught you should say and do at this time. Listen to me — I do not ask you to speak. But I beg of you this small token. If you are willing to try the new path with me, bend your head a little lower.”

He watched me closely; I could feel his hand pressing down steadily. What did he mean? Why could not things proceed in the expected way? I was ready to be his wife. I desired to be the mother of sons. Oh, then my sorrow began — this heaviness that never leaves me by day or night! I knew not what to do. And in my despair and ignorance I bent my head.

“I am grateful,” he said, rising to his feet and removing his hand. “Rest quietly in this chamber. Remember you will have nothing to fear, now or ever. Be at peace. I will sleep this night in the little chamber adjoining.”

He turned swiftly and went away.

O Kwan-yin, Goddess of Mercy, pity me — pity me! Such a child — so young, so terrified in my loneliness! Never had I slept away from my home before. Now to lie in solitude, knowing at last that I found no favor in his eyes!

I ran to the door, thinking in my wildness that I might escape and return to my mother’s home. But my hand upon the heavy iron bar recalled me. For me there could never be any return. Even though by miracle I escaped through the unknown courtyards of my new home, there was the strange street; even though by miracle I found my way to the familiar gate, it would never open to receive me. If my voice moved the old gateman so that he allowed me to stumble through the doors of my childhood, my mother would be there waiting to send me back to my duty. I could see her, inexorable, sorrowful, commanding my instant return to my husband’s house. I no longer belonged to her family.

I took off the wedding garment slowly then and folded it away. I sat for a long time on the edge of the great curtained bed, fearing to creep into the shadows within. His words tumbled madly about in my mind without meaning. At last tears rushed to my eyes, and I huddled under the coverings and sobbed for weary hours until a restless sleep fell lightly upon me.

At dawn I waked, at first in wonder as I saw the strange room, and then with a rush of miserable memory. I arose hastily and dressed myself. When the servant came in with the hot water, she smiled and glanced inquiringly about. I drew myself straight. I was glad I had learned dignity of my mother. At least no one should know that I had not pleased my husband. I said,

“Take the water to your master. He robes himself in the inner chamber.”

I clothed myself proudly in brocade of crimson, and I hung gold in my ears.

A moon of days has passed since we met, My Sister! My life is confused with strange events.

We have moved away from his ancestral home! He dared to say that his honored mother was autocratic and that he would not have his wife a servant in the home.

It all came from a small matter indeed. When the wedding festivities were over, I presented myself to his mother thus: I rose early and, calling a slave, I desired her to bring hot water and I poured it into a brass basin and then, the slave proceeding before me, I went into the presence of my husband’s mother. Bowing, I said to her,

“I beg that the honorable one will consent to refresh herself with bathing in this hot water.”

She lay in her bed, a huge, mountainous mass under the satin quilts. I dared not look at her as she sat up to lave her hands and face. When she had finished she motioned me without speaking to remove the basin and withdraw. I do not know whether my hand caught in the heavy silken curtains of the bed, or whether — being frightened — my hand shook, so that when I lifted the basin it tipped, and a little water spilled upon the bed. I felt my blood stop with fright. My mother-in-law cried angrily in a hoarse voice,

“Now then! What is this for a daughter-in-law!”

I knew I must not speak to excuse myself. I turned therefore and bearing the basin unsteadily because of tears blinding my eyes, I went out from her presence. When I stepped from the door my husband was there, passing by, and I saw that for some reason he was angry. I feared that he would blame me because on the first occasion I did not please his mother. I could not lift my hands to wipe my tears off, and I felt them gather and break and run down my cheeks. I murmured foolishly like a child,

“The basin was slippery—”

But he interrupted me.

“I do not blame you. But I will have no more of this servant’s work for my wife. My mother has a hundred slaves!”

I tried to tell him then that I wished to give his mother the proper obedience. My mother has instructed me carefully in all those attentions due from a daughter-in-law to the mother of her husband. I rise politely and remain standing in her presence. I lead her to the most honorable seat. I rinse her tea-bowl and pour slowly the freshly infused green tea and present it carefully with both hands. I may refuse her nothing. I must cherish her as my own mother, and her reproaches, however unjust, I must bear in silence. I am prepared to subject myself to her in all things. But his determination was fixed. He heeded nothing I said.

It is not to be supposed that the change was accomplished easily. His parents even commanded him to remain, according to the ancient custom, within the ancestral home. His father is a scholar, small and slight and stooped with learning. Sitting at the right of the table in the living hall, under the ancestral tablets, he stroked his spare, white beard three times and said,

“My son, remain in my house. What is mine is yours. Here is plenty of food and space. You need never waste your body in physical labor. Spend your days in dignified leisure and in study that suits your pleasure. Allow that one, the daughter-in-law of your honored mother, to produce sons. Three generations of men under one roof is a sight pleasing to Heaven.”

But my husband is quick and impatient. Without stopping to bow to his father he cried,

“But I wish to work, my father! I am trained in a scientific profession — the noblest in the western world. As for sons, they are not my first desire. I wish to produce the fruit of my brain for my country’s good. A mere dog may fill the earth with the fruit of his body!”

I, myself, peeping through the blue curtains at the door, heard the son speak thus to the father, and I was filled with horror. Had he been the eldest son, or had he been reared in the old ways, he could never have resisted his father thus. The years away in those countries, where the young do not revere the aged, have made him unfilial. True, he has spoken courteous words in parting to his parents; he has promised them that he has the heart of a son to them forever. Nevertheless, we have moved!

This new house is like nothing I have ever seen. It has no courtyard. There is only a tiny square hall from which the other rooms open, and from which a stair rises swiftly up. The first time I climbed this stair I was afraid to come down again, because of the steepness to which my feet are not accustomed. I sat down, therefore, and slipped from step to step, clinging to the wooden rail. I saw afterwards that a little of the fresh paint had come off upon my coat, and I hastened to change, lest my husband should ask about it and laugh at my fear. He laughs quickly and suddenly with a loud noise. I am afraid of his laughter.

As for the arranging of the furniture, I did not know how to place it in such a house. There was no room for anything. I had brought as part of my dowry from my mother’s house a table and chairs of massive teak wood and a bed as large as my mother’s marriage bed. My husband placed the table and chairs in a secondary room he calls “dining room,” and the great bed I had thought would be the birth place of my sons cannot even be put up in any of the small upper rooms. I sleep upon a bamboo bed like a servant’s, and as for my husband, he sleeps upon an iron bed as narrow as a bench and in another room. I cannot become accustomed to so much strangeness.

In the main room, or what he calls “parlor,” he placed chairs he bought himself; curious, misshapen things they are, no one like the others, and some are even made of common reeds. In the center of this room he placed a small table and upon it, a cloth of pongee silk, and then some books. Ugly!

On the walls he hung framed photographs of his schoolmates and a square piece of felt cloth with foreign letters on it. I asked him if this were his diploma, and he laughed very much. He showed me his diploma then. It is a piece of stretched skin inscribed with strange black characters. He pointed out his name with crooked marks after it. The first two signified his big college, and the second two his ability as a doctor in western medicine. I asked if these marks were equal in degree to our ancient “han-lin,” and he laughed again and said there was no comparison. This diploma is framed behind glass and hangs in the honored place upon the wall, where, in the guest hall at my mother’s house, is the stately painting of the old Ming emperor.

But this hideous western house! How, I thought, shall I ever feel it my home? The windows have large panes of clear glass instead of latticed carving with opaque rice paper. The hard sunlight glitters upon the white walls and startles each bit of dust upon the furniture. I am not accustomed to this merciless light. If I touch vermilion to my lips and smooth rice powder upon my brow as I have been taught to do, this light searches it out so that my husband says,

“Do not, I beg, paint yourself for me in this way. I prefer women to appear natural.”

Yet not to use the softness of powder and the warmth of vermilion is to leave unfinished the emphasis of beauty. It is as though I should consider my hair brushed without the final smoothness of oil, or should place upon my feet shoes that had no embroidery. In a Chinese house the light is dimmed by lattice and carving and falls gently therefore upon the faces of women. How am I to be fair in his eyes in a house like this?

Moreover, these windows are foolish. My husband bought white cloth and told me to make curtains, and I marveled that first a hole is made in the wall and then glass set in and then that glass hung over with cloth!

As for the floors, they are of wood, and at every step my husband’s foreign shoes clattered back and forth. Then he bought some heavy flowered woolen material and placed it on the floors in large squares. This astounded me very much. I was afraid we should soil it or that the servants would forget and spit upon it. But he was most indignant when I mentioned this, and he said we would have no spitting on the floor.

“Where then, if not on the floors?” I asked.

“Outside, if it must be done,” he replied briefly.

But it was very difficult for the servants, and even I forgot sometimes and spat the shells of watermelon seeds upon the cloth. Then he bought small squat jars for every room and compelled us to use them. Strange, he himself uses a handkerchief, returning it to his pocket, even. A filthy western habit!

IV

AI-YA, THERE ARE HOURS when I would flee away if I could find the means! But I dare not return to my mother’s face under such circumstances, and there is nowhere else to go. The days drag past, one after the other — long lonely days. For he works as though he were a laborer who must earn what rice he eats, instead of being what he is, the son of a wealthy official. Early in the morning, before the sun has even gathered the warmth of the fullness of day, he is gone to his work, and I am left alone until evening in this house. There are only the strange servants in the kitchen, and I am ashamed to listen to their gossip.

Ah me, I think sometimes it would be better to serve his mother and live in the courts with my sisters-in-law! At least I should hear voices and laughter. Here silence hangs over this house all day like a mist.

I can only sit and think and dream how to seize hold of his heart!

In the morning I rise early to prepare myself to appear before him. Even though I have not slept for restlessness in the night I rise early and wash my face in steaming, scented water and smooth it with oils and perfumes, longing to catch his heart unaware in the morning. But however early I rise, he is always at his table studying.

Each day it is the same. I cough softly and turn ever so slightly the round handle of his door. — Ah, those strange hard knobs, how I have had to turn and turn many times to learn their secret! He is impatient with my fumbling, and I practice therefore in his absence. But even then sometimes in the early morning my fingers slip upon the smooth, cold porcelain, and then my heart sinks as I try to make haste. He dislikes slowness and he moves his body so rapidly when he walks that I am afraid he will injure himself.

But he does nothing to protect his body. Day after day when I present the hot tea in the chill of the morning he accepts it without lifting his eyes from the book. Of what use is it then that I sent a servant at dawn to buy fresh jasmine for my hair? Even its fragrance does not creep through the pages of the foreign book. Eleven mornings out of twelve when I return in his absence to see if he has drunk his tea, he has not moved the lid from the bowl and the leaves float undisturbed in the pale liquid. He cares for nothing except his books.

I have pondered everything that my mother taught me concerning my husband’s pleasure. I have prepared savory food to beguile his palate. I sent a servant, and he bought chicken freshly killed and bamboo shoots from Hangchow and mandarin fish and ginger and brown sugar and the sauce of soybeans. All morning I prepared the dishes, forgetting nothing that I had been told would increase the fullness and delicacy of flavor. When all was prepared I directed that the dishes should be brought in at the end of the meal that he might exclaim,

“Ah, the best has been kept until the last. It is food for an emperor!”

But when the dishes came he took them as part of the meal without question. He scarcely tasted them and made no speech of them. I sat watching him eagerly but he said nothing, eating the bamboo shoots as though they were cabbage from a farmer’s garden!

That night when the pangs of my disappointment were past, I said to myself,

“It is because it is not his favorite dish. Since he never speaks his preference I will send to his mother and inquire what he liked in his youth.”

I sent a servant therefore but his mother answered,

“Before he crossed the four seas, he loved duck’s flesh roasted brown and dipped in the jellied juice of wild haws. But since his many years of feeding upon the barbarous and half-cooked fare of the western peoples, he has lost his taste and cares no more for delicate foods.”

I tried no longer, therefore. There is nothing that my husband desires of me. He has no need of anything I can give him.

One evening after a fortnight in the new house we sat together in the parlor. He was reading one of his large books when I entered, and I glanced at the picture on the page as I passed to my seat and saw that it was an upright human form but, to my horror, without the skin — only the bloody flesh! I was shocked and wondered that he read such things, but I dared not ask him about it.

I sat there in one of the queer reed chairs, not leaning back because it seemed undignified to recline thus in public. I was weary for my mother’s home and recalled that at this hour they would be gathering at supper, the concubines and their clamoring little children, in the flaring candle light. My mother is there in her place at the head of the table, and the servants under her direction are placing the bowls of vegetables and steaming rice and scattering chopsticks for all. Everybody is busy and happy over the food. My father will come in after the meal and play a bit with the concubines’ children, and after the work is done the servants will sit on tiny stools in the courtyard, whispering together in the dusk. My mother takes accounts with the head cook at the dining table, a tall red candle sputtering its fitful light upon her.

Oh, I was sick to be there! I would walk about among the flowers and examine the lotus-pods to see if the seeds were ripe within. It was late summer and nearly time for them. Perhaps, as the moon rose, my mother would bid me fetch my harp to play the music she loves; the right hand singing the air, and the left hand drifting into a minor accompaniment.

At the thought I rose to get my instrument. I removed it carefully from the lacquered case, upon which, inlaid in mother-of-pearl, are the figures of the eight spirits of music. Within, upon the harp itself, various woods are fitted together beneath the strings, each bit of wood adding its own note of richness when the strings are swept. The harp and its case had belonged to my father’s mother and had been brought from Kwangtung for her by her father when she had ceased to weep at the binding of her feet.

I touched the strings softly. They gave out a thin and melancholy sound. This harp is the ancient harp of my people, and it should be played under the trees in the moonlight beside still water. There it gives out a sweet and faërie voice. But in this silent, foreign room it was stifled and weak. I hesitated — then played a little song of the time of Sung.

My husband looked up.

“That is very nice,” he said kindly. “I am glad you can play it. I will buy you a piano some day and you can learn to play western music, too.” He turned back to his reading.

I looked at him as he read the ghastly book, and continued to touch the strings very softly without knowing what they sang. I had never even seen a piano. What would I do with the foreign thing? Then suddenly I could play no more. I put the harp away and sat with drooping head and idle hands.

After a long silence my husband closed his book and looked at me thoughtfully.

“Kwei-lan,” he said.

My heart leaped. It was the first time he had called me by my name. What had he to say to me at last? I lifted my eyes timidly to him. He continued,

“I have wished ever since our marriage to ask you if you will not unbind your feet. It is unhealthful for your whole body. See, your bones look like this.”

He took a pencil and sketched hastily upon the leaf of his book a dreadful, bare, cramped foot.

How did he know? I had never dressed my feet in his presence. We Chinese women never expose our feet to the sight of others. Even at night we wear stockings of white cloth.

“How do you know?” I gasped.

“Because I am a doctor trained in the West,” he replied. “And then, I wish you to unbind them because they are not beautiful. Besides, foot-binding is no longer in fashion. Does that move you?” He smiled slightly and looked at me not unkindly.

But I drew my feet hastily under my chair. I was stricken at his words. Not beautiful? I had always been proud of my tiny feet! All during my childhood my mother herself had superintended the soaking in hot water and the wrapping of the bandage — tight and more tight each day. When I wept in anguish she bid me remember that some day my husband would praise the beauty of my feet.

I bowed my head to hide my tears. I thought of all those restless nights and the days when I could not eat and had no desire to play — when I sat on the edge of my bed and let my poor feet swing to ease them of their weight of blood. And now after enduring until the pain had ceased for only a short year, to know he thought them ugly!

“I cannot,” I said, choking as I rose, and, unable to keep back my weeping, I left the room.

It was not that I cared over-much about my feet. But if even my feet in their cunningly embroidered shoes did not find favor in his sight, how could I hope to win his love?

Two weeks later I left for my first visit to my mother’s home, according to our Chinese custom. My husband had not spoken of unbinding my feet again. Neither had he again addressed me by my name.

V

YOU WEARY NOT, MY Sister? I will proceed, then!

Although I had been away so short a time, it seemed when I entered the familiar gate that a hundred moons had waned since I passed through in my bridal chair. I had hoped not a little then, and feared much. Now, although I came back a married woman, with my braid wrapped into a coil and my forehead bare of its girlhood fringe, still I knew that, after all, I was the same girl, only more afraid and more lonely and far less hopeful.

My mother came to the first courtyard to meet me, leaning on her long bamboo and silver pipe. She looked tired, I thought, and a little more worn than before; or perhaps it was only because I had not seen her daily. At any rate the added touch of sadness in her eyes drew me to her, so that, after bowing to her, I ventured even to take her hand. She responded with a light pressure and together we walked back to the family courtyard.

Oh, how eagerly I gazed at everything! It seemed that somehow there must be a great change. But everything was its natural self, ordered and quiet and accustomed in the courtyards, except for the laughter of the concubines’ children and the bustling of busy servants, smiling and shouting in greeting as they saw me. The sunshine of early autumn streamed across the flower walls and glazed tiles in the courts, and shone upon the shrubs and pools. The latticed doors and windows on the south side of the rooms were thrown wide to catch the warmth and light, and the sun, filtering through, caught the edge of carven wood and painted beams within. Although I knew my place was no longer there, my spirit in spite of this rested in its true home.

I missed only one thing, one fair, teasing face.

“Where is the Fourth Lady?” I asked.

My mother called a slave to fill her pipe and then answered casually,

“La-may? Ah, I sent her to visit in the country for a change of air.”

From her tone I knew better than to question further. But afterwards in the evening when I was preparing for sleep in my childhood room, old Wang Da Ma came in to brush out my hair and braid it as she always used to do. Then in her gossip of many things she told me that my father was thinking of taking a new concubine, a Peking girl who had been educated in Japan, and the Fourth Lady, when she heard of it, had swallowed her best jade earrings. She told no one for two days, though she suffered greatly, and then my mother discovered it.

The girl was at the point of death, and the old doctor who was called in could do nothing, although he pierced her wrists and ankles with needles. A neighbor suggested the foreign hospital, but my mother did not consider such a thing a possibility. We knew nothing of foreigners. Besides, how could a foreigner know what was wrong with a Chinese? Foreign doctors may understand the diseases of their own people, who are quite simple and barbarous in comparison with the highly complex and cultivated Chinese. My brother, however, happened to be at home just then for the Eighth Moon Festival, and he himself asked the foreign woman doctor to come.

She brought a very curious instrument with a long tube attached. This she thrust down the Fourth Lady’s throat, and instantly the rings came up. Everyone was much astonished except the foreigner, who packed her instrument and walked calmly away.

The other concubines were very angry with the Fourth Lady that she should have swallowed her good jade earrings. The fat one asked,

“And could you not have eaten a box of match heads, then, which may be bought for ten small cash?”

The Fourth Lady had nothing to say to this; they say that no one saw her eat or heard her speak while she was recovering. She lay on her bed with her curtains drawn. She has lost a great deal of face by being unsuccessful in her attempt. Indeed, it was for this my mother pitied her and sent her away to escape the taunts of the women.

Such matters, however, were mere small household gossip and had no place in the conversations I held with my mother. It was only because I loved the home so well that I felt I must know the details of everything, and so I listened to the chatter of Wang Da Ma. She has been with us so long that she knows all our affairs. Indeed, she came with my mother from her distant home in Shansi when my father was married, and she it is who received into her arms my mother’s children at birth. When my mother dies she will go to my brother’s wife and care for my mother’s grandsons.

Only one matter heard thus was of more than passing importance. My brother has determined to go abroad, to America, for further study! My mother said nothing of it to me, but Wang Da Ma told me in whispers, when she brought the hot water the first morning after my return, that my father had laughed at his son’s new ideas but in the end had given his consent to his going because it has become fashionable to send one’s sons abroad for study, and his friends are doing it. My mother was greatly distressed when she heard of it — more distressed than she has been over anything in her life, Wang Da Ma said, except when my father took his first concubine. When she saw that my brother was really going she refused food for three days and spoke to no one. At last seeing that he would go at any cost across the Peaceful Sea, she begged him to be married first to his betrothed, that she might bear a son. My mother said,

“Since you will not perceive that your flesh and blood are not yours alone, since you are willful and careless and run into the dangers of that barbarous country without consideration for your duty, at least transmit to another the sacred line of your ancestors, so that if you die — O my son! — at least I may behold my grandson!”

But my brother replied obstinately,

“I have no desire for marriage. I wish only to study more science and learn all concerning it. Nothing will happen to me, my mother. When I return — but not now — not now!”

Then my mother sent messages to our father, urging that he compel his son to marry. But my father was careless in the matter, being absorbed in the arrangements for the new concubine, and my brother had his own way.

I sympathized with my mother. This generation is the last of my father’s line, since my grandfather had no other sons than my father. My mother’s other sons died young, also, and it is therefore imperative that my brother as quickly as possible have a son, in order that my mother’s duty may be performed to the ancestors. For this he has been betrothed since childhood to the daughter of Li. Although I have not seen her, it is true I have heard that she is not beautiful. But what is that in comparison to our mother’s desires?

For several days I was troubled for my mother because of my brother’s disobedience. But she never spoke of it to me. She buried this sadness, like all others, in the unseen places of her spirit. It has always been her way, when she perceived suffering to be inevitable, to close her lips upon it forever. Therefore I, surrounded by the familiar faces and walls, and accustomed to my mother’s silences, gradually thought no more of my brother.

Of course the first thought I saw in all eyes was the one I feared and expected — what were my prospects of a son? Everyone asked the question, but I parried them all, merely accepting, with a grave inclination of my head, the good wishes given. No one should know that my husband did not care for me — no one. And yet I could not deceive my mother!

One night, after I had been at home for seven days, I sat idly in the doorway that opened into the large courtyard. It was twilight, and the slaves and the servants were bustling about the evening meals, and the odors of baked fish and brown duck were fragrant upon the air. It was just at the late edge of twilight, and in the courtyard the chrysanthemum plants were heavy with promise. The love of home and of old surroundings was warm within me. I laid my hand, I remember, upon the very carving of the door panel, loving it, feeling safe there where my childhood had passed so gently that, before I was aware, it was gone. It was all well beloved; the still dusk falling over the curved roofs, the candles beginning to gleam in the rooms, the spicy smell of food, and the voices of the children and the soft sound of their cloth shoes upon the tiles. Ah, I am the daughter of an old Chinese home, with old customs, old furniture, old well-tried relationships, safe, sure! I know how to live there!

Then I thought of my husband, sitting alone now at the table in the foreign house, wearing his western clothes and looking an alien in every way. How could I fit into his life? He had no need of me. My throat was stiff with tears I could not shed. I was so lonely, so much more lonely than I had ever been as a girl. Then, as I have told you, My Sister, I looked forward to the future. Now, the future had come to pass. There was only bitterness in it. The tears would force themselves out. I turned my head away toward the twilight lest the candle light fall upon my cheeks to betray me. Then the gong rang, and I was called in to the meal. I wiped my eyes secretly and slipped into my place.

My mother withdrew early to her room, and the concubines went to their quarters. As I sat alone, drinking my tea, suddenly Wang Da Ma appeared.

“Your honorable mother commands your presence,” she said.

I wondered and said,

“But my mother has already told me she would retire. She said nothing to me of any further speech.”

“Nevertheless, she commands you. I have just come from her room,” rejoined Wang Da Ma; and she passed on without further explanation.

When her footsteps had receded into the courtyard I put aside the satin curtain and entered into my mother’s room. To my surprise she was lying on the bed with a single tall candle lit on the table beside her. I had never seen her there in my life before. She looked exceedingly frail and tired. Her eyes were closed and her lips pale and drawn down. I went softly to the bedside and stood there. Her face was absolutely colorless, a grave, delicate face and very sad.

“My mother,” I said gently.

“My child,” she answered.

I hesitated, not knowing whether she wished me to sit or to remain standing. She put out her hand then, and motioned me to seat myself on the bed beside her. I obeyed and waited in silence until she wished to speak. I said within myself, “She is grieving for my brother in far countries.”

But it was not of my brother she was thinking; instead she turned her face to me slightly and said,

“I perceive that all is not well with you, my daughter. Ever since you returned I have observed that your usual manner of quiet content is gone. You are restless in spirit, and tears come too easily to your eyes. It is as though some secret grief clung to your thoughts, although your lips do not speak of it. What is wrong? If it is that you are not yet with child, have patience. It was two years before I gave your father a son.”

I did not know how to tell her. There was a bit of silk thread loosened from the embroidered curtain of the canopy, and this I twisted back and forth between my thumb and finger as, within, I twisted my thoughts.

“Speak!” she said somewhat sternly to me at last.

I looked at her, and oh, foolish, foolish tears! I could not utter a word for them. They welled up and welled up until I thought I had no breath with which to live. Then they burst forth in one hard sob and I buried my face in the quilt that covered my mother’s body.

“Oh, I don’t know what he means!” I cried. “He tells me to be equal with him, and I do not know how! He hates my feet and says they are ugly and draws such pictures! Although how he knows I cannot say, for I have never, never let him see them.”

My mother sat up.

“Equal with him?” she said mystified, her eyes growing large in her pale face. “What does he mean? How can you be equal with your husband?”

“A woman is, in the West,” I sobbed.

“Yes, but we are people of understanding here. And your feet? Why does he draw pictures of them? What do you mean?”

“To show me they are ugly,” I whispered.

“Your feet? But surely you have been careless, then. I gave you twenty pairs of shoes. You have not chosen wisely.”

“He does not draw the outside — it’s the bones he draws, all crooked.”

“Bones! Who has seen the bones in a woman’s foot? Can a man’s eyes pierce the flesh?”

“His can because he is a western doctor, he says.”

“Ai-ya, my poor child!” My mother lay back again, sighing, and shook her head. “If he knows western magic—”

And then I found myself telling it all — all, until I whispered even these bitter words,

“He does not even care whether we have a son. He does not love me. O my mother, I am still a maid!”

There was a long silence. I hid my face again in the quilt.

I think I felt my mother’s hand fall lightly on my head and remain for an instant — I cannot be sure; she was never one for outward signs. But at last she sat erect and began to speak.

“I cannot think that I have made a mistake in the manner in which you have been reared. I cannot think that you could fail to please a true Chinese gentleman. Can it be that you are married to a barbarian? Yet he is of the family of K’ung! Who could suspect it? It is the years abroad. I prayed to see your brother dead before he went to the outer countries!” She closed her eyes and lay back. Her thin face grew sharper.

When she spoke again, her voice was high and weak as though she were exhausted.

“Nevertheless, my child, there is only one path in this world for a woman — only one path to follow at all costs. She must please her husband. It is more than I can bear that all my care for you must be undone. But you no longer belong to my family. You are your husband’s. There is no choice left you save to be what he desires. — Yet, stay! Put forth once more every effort to beguile him. Clothe yourself in the jade green and black. Use the perfume of water-lilies. Smile — not boldly, but with the shyness that promises all. You may even touch his hand — cling to it for an instant. If he laughs, be gay. If he is still unmoved, then there is nothing left but to bend yourself to his will.”

“Unbind my feet?” I whispered.

My mother was silent a space.

“Unbind your feet,” she said wearily. “The times are changed. You are dismissed.” And she turned her face to the wall.

VI

HOW SHALL I TELL of my heavy heart, My Sister?

The day of my departure dawned gray and still. It was near the end of the tenth moon, when brown leaves are beginning to drift silently to earth, and the bamboos shiver in the chill of dawn and sunset. I walked about the courtyards, lingering in the places I had long loved best and impressing their beauty freshly and more sharply upon my memory. I stood beside the pool listening to the faint wind crackling the dead pods and leaves of the lotus plants. I sat an hour beneath the gnarled juniper tree which for three hundred years has stood in the rock garden in the third court. I plucked a branch of the heavenly bamboo trees in the court of the great gate, delighting in the vivid scarlet berries hanging against the dark green leaves. And then, that I might have something to keep of all the beauty of the courts, I chose eight pots of chrysanthemums to take back with me. They were at the moment of perfection, and I thought their red and gold and pale purple might mitigate a little the bareness of the house. Thus I returned to my husband.

He was not at home when I entered the little hall. The servant told me he had been called at sunrise by an urgent message, she did not know whither. I placed the chrysanthemums carefully about the little parlor, meditating how to dispose them to good advantage as a surprise for him. But when I had done my best I was disappointed. Richly as they had glowed in the old courtyard, against the black carvings of the passageways, here against whitewashed walls and yellow paint they faded to a mere artificial prettiness.

Ah, and so it was with me as well! I put on the jade satin trousers and coat and the black velvet sleeveless jacket. I dressed my hair with the jade and onyx ornaments, and I hung jade in my ears. I wore black shoes, made of velvet and cunningly wrought with tiny beads of gold. I had learned from La-may, the Fourth Lady in my mother’s house, the guile of colorless cheeks and a lower lip touched with vermilion, and the witchery of scented, rosy palms. I spared no pains for that first evening with my husband. I saw that I was beautiful.

When I was dressed, I sat waiting to hear his step on the threshold. If I could have pushed aside a scarlet satin curtain and appeared before him in the subtle light of an old Chinese room, I might have succeeded. But I had to come unsteadily down the creaking stairway and then join him in that parlor. There was nothing there to help me. I was like the chrysanthemums — merely pretty.

As for my husband, he came in late and looked very tired. By that time my own freshness had gone, and although he greeted me kindly enough, his eyes did not cling to me. He only asked that the servant should hasten with the evening meal, because he had been working all day with a sick person and had had no food since morning.

We ate in silence. I could scarcely swallow for the stupid tears, and he finished his rice hastily and then sat frowning over his tea, with an occasional sigh. At last he rose wearily and said,

“Let us go into the parlor.”

We seated ourselves and he asked perfunctorily about my parents. He paid so little heed to my answers that I faltered in my endeavor to interest him and finally fell silent. At first he scarcely noticed that I had ceased to speak. Then he roused himself and said more kindly,

“I beg that you will not mind me. I am truly glad that you have returned. But this whole day I have been fighting against superstition and sheer stupidity, and I have lost. I can think of nothing else but that I have lost. I keep asking myself — did I do all that could be done? Was there an argument that I did not bring forward to save that life? But I think — I am sure — that I did everything — and still I lost!

“Do you remember the Yu family next to the Drum Tower? Their Second Lady tried to commit suicide to-day by hanging herself! It seems she could no longer endure the viperish tongue of her mother-in-law. They called me in and, mind you, I could have saved her! She had only just let go the rope when they found her — only just! I prepared the remedies at once. Then in came the aged uncle who is a wine merchant. Old Mr. Yu, you remember, is dead, and the wine merchant is the head of the family now. He came in blustering and angry and at once demanded that the old methods should be used. He sent for the priests to beat the gongs to call the woman’s soul back, and her relatives gathered about and placed the poor unconscious girl — she is not twenty yet — into a kneeling position on the floor; then they deliberately filled her nose and mouth with cotton and cloth and bound clothing around her face!”

“But — but—” I said, “it is the custom — it is what is always done. You see, so much of the spirit is already escaped that they must keep the rest in by closing the orifices.”

He had begun to walk around the room in his agitation. Now he stopped before me, his lips pressed together. I could hear his quick breathing. He actually glared at me.

“What!” he shouted. “You, too?”

I shrank back.

“Did she die?” I whispered.

“Die? Would you die if I did this long enough?” and he seized my hands in one of his and placed his handkerchief roughly over my mouth and nose. I twisted free and tore it away. He gave a laugh as hard as a dog’s bark and sat down with his head in his hands, and we remained in silence as heavy as pain. He never saw the chrysanthemums I had arranged with such care about the room.

I sat watching him, bewildered and a little frightened. Could it be that he was right, after all?

That night I laid the jade ornaments sorrowfully in their silver case and put the satin garments away. I had been taught all wrong, I began to realize. My husband was not one of those men to whom a woman is as distinctly an appeal to the sense as a perfumed flower or a pipe of opium. The refinement of beauty in body was not enough. I must study to please him in other ways. I remembered my mother, with her face turned to the wall, and her weary voice, saying,

“The times have changed.”

Still I could not bring myself easily to the unbinding of my feet. It was really Mrs. Liu who helped me. She was the wife of a teacher in a new foreign school. I had heard my husband speak of Mr. Liu as his friend. She sent word the day after my return that if it pleased me she would call the following day.

I made great preparations for she was my first caller. I directed the servant to buy six kinds of cakes as well as watermelon seeds and sesame wafers and the best Before-the-Rains tea. I wore my apricot pink satin and placed pearls in my ears. Secretly I was very much ashamed of the house. I feared she would think it ugly and wonder at my taste. I hoped that my husband would not be at home so that I might at least place the chairs and table more formally and thus show distinctly which was the place of honor.

But for once he did not go out. He sat reading and glanced up with a smile as I entered the room a little nervously. I had planned to be seated when the guest came and as the servant ushered her in, to rise and bow her to the best seat. But with my husband there I had no chance to arrange the room, and when the bell rang, my husband himself went to the door. I was most chagrined and wrung my hands and wondered what to do. I heard a cheerful voice then, and I could not help peeping into the hall. I beheld a strange thing. My husband had taken the guest’s hand and was shaking it up and down in the most peculiar manner. I was amazed.

Then suddenly my astonishment and all thought of the guest dropped from me, for I looked at his face. O my husband, never had thy face worn that look for me, thy wife! It was as if at last he had found a friend.

O My Sister, had you been here you might have taught me what to do! But I was alone. I had no friends. I could only ponder and grieve within myself and wonder what I lacked to please him.

And the while she was there I examined my guest closely to see if she were beautiful. But she was not beautiful or even pretty. Her face was large and red and good-humored, and her eyes, though kindly and crinkling with smiles, were round and bright like glass beads. She wore a coat of plain gray cloth over a black unflowered silk skirt, and her feet were shod like men’s. Her voice was pleasant, however, and her speech came swiftly and readily, and her laughter was warm and quick. She talked a great deal with my husband, and I sat listening with drooping head. They spoke of things of which I had never heard. Foreign words flew back and forth between them. I understood nothing except the pleasure on my husband’s face.

That night I sat silent with my husband after the evening meal. My mind returned again and again to the look on his face during the visit. Never before had I seen on it an expression like that — so eager, so alight! He was full of words for her — he poured them out as he stood before her. He remained in the room throughout her visit as though she were a man.

I rose and went to his side.

“Yes?” he asked, looking up from his book.

“Tell me about the lady who called to-day,” I asked.

He leaned back in his chair and looked at me reflectively.

“What about her? She is a graduate of a big western college for women called Vassar. She is clever and interesting, as one likes a woman to be. Besides, she is rearing three magnificent boys — intelligent, clean, well cared for. It does my heart good to see them.”

Oh, I hate her — I hate her! Oh, what can I do? Is there only one way to his heart? — She was not pretty at all—

“Do you think her pretty?” I whispered.

“Well, yes, I do,” he answered stoutly. “She is healthy and sensible and walks on sound, steady feet.”

He stared into space. I thought desperately for a few minutes. There was only one way for women. How could I — and yet my mother’s words were, “You must please your husband.”

My husband sat staring thoughtfully across the room. I did not know what was in his mind. But I knew this; although I wore peach-colored satin and had pearls in my ears, although my hair was smooth and black and shining in cunningly arranged coils, although I stood at his shoulder so close that a slight motion of his body would have brought his hand to mine, yet he was not thinking of me.

Then I hung my head lower and gave myself into his hands. I renounced my past. I said,

“If you will tell me how, I will unbind my feet.”

VII

WHEN I LOOK BACK now, I realize that my husband’s interest began in me that evening. It seemed as though before this we had nothing to talk about. Our thoughts never met. I could only watch him wondering and not understanding, and he never looked at me at all. When we spoke it was with the courtesy of strangers to each other, I with shyness towards him, he with careful politeness that overlooked me. But now that I had need of him he saw me at last, and when he spoke he questioned me and cared to hear my answer. As for me, the love that had been trembling in my heart for him steadied into adoration then. I had never dreamed that a man could stoop so tenderly to a woman.

When I asked him how I could unbind my feet, I thought, of course, that he would merely give me directions from his medical knowledge. And so I sat astounded when he himself fetched a basin of hot water and a roll of white bandage. I was ashamed. I could not endure having him see my feet. No one had seen them since I was old enough to care for them myself. Now, when he set the basin on the floor and knelt to take my feet, my whole body burned.

“No,” I said faintly. “I will do it myself.”

“You must not mind,” he answered. “I am a doctor, you remember.”

Still I refused. Then he looked me steadfastly in the face.

“Kwei-lan,” he said gravely, “I know it costs you something to do this for me. Let me help you all I can. I am your husband.”

Without a word then, I yielded. He took my foot, and gently he withdrew the shoe and the stocking and unwound the inner cloth. His expression was sad and stern.

“How you have suffered!” he said in a low, tender voice; “how wretched a childhood — and all for nothing!”

The tears came into my eyes at his words. He was making useless all the sacrifice, and even demanding a new sacrifice!

For when my feet had been soaked and bound again more loosely, intolerable suffering set in. Indeed, the unbinding process was almost as painful as the binding had been. My feet, accustomed to constriction, gradually stretched a little, and the blood began to circulate.

There were times in the day when I tore at the bandages to unfasten them and bind them more tightly to ease me; and then the thought of my husband and that he would know at night made me replace them with trembling hands. The only slight respite I could get was to sit on my feet and rock back and forth.

No longer did I care how I appeared before my husband, or look in the mirror to see if I were at least fresh and neat. At night my eyes were swollen with weeping, and my voice rough with sobs I could not control. Strange that when my beauty could not move him, my distress did! He would comfort me as though I were a child. I clung to him often without realizing in my pain who or what he was.

“We will endure this together, Kwei-lan,” he said. “It is hard to see you suffer so. Try to think that it is not only for us but for others, too — a protest against an old and wicked thing.”

“No!” I sobbed, “I do it only for you — to be a modern woman for you!”

He laughed and his face lighted a little, as it had when he talked to that other woman. This was my reward for pain. Nothing seemed quite so hard afterwards.

And indeed, as the flesh grew more healthy, I began to know a new freedom. I was young, and my feet were yet sound. Often in older women bound feet will mortify and sometimes even drop away. But mine were only numbed. Now I began to walk more freely, and the stairs were not so difficult. I felt stronger all over my body. One evening I ran without thinking into the room where my husband was writing. He looked up in surprise, and his face broke into a smile.

“Running?” he exclaimed. “Ah, well, we are over the worst then, and the bitterness is eaten.”

I looked at my feet in surprise.

“But they are not yet as large as Mrs. Liu’s,” I said.

“No, they never can be,” he replied. “Hers are natural feet. Yours are as large as we can get them, now.”

I felt a little sorrowful that my feet could never be as large as hers. But I thought of a way. Since all my little embroidered shoes were useless now, I determined to get some new leather ones like Mrs. Liu’s. The next day, therefore, I went with a servant to a shop and bought a pair of shoes the length I wished. They were two inches longer than my feet, but I stuffed the toes hard with cotton. When I put on the shoes no one could tell I had had bound feet.

I was anxious to have Mrs. Liu see them, and I asked my husband when I might return her call.

“I will go with you to-morrow,” he said.

I was surprised that he would be willing to go on the street with me. It is certainly not good custom, and it embarrassed me not a little, but I have grown more used now to his doing strange things.

We went the next day therefore, and my husband treated me most kindly in her presence. True, he confused me greatly once or twice, as for instance, when he made me precede him into the room where Mrs. Liu was. I did not know his meaning at the time. After we came home, he explained that it was the western manner.

“Why?” I asked. “Is it because, as I have heard, that men are inferior to women over there?”

“No,” he answered, “that is not true.”

Then he explained it to me. It is grounded, he said, in an old system of courtesy which began in ancient times. This was very astonishing to me. I did not know that there were ancient people except ours, that is, civilized people. But it seems that foreigners also have a history and a culture. They are therefore not wholly barbarian. My husband promised to read me some books about them.

I felt happy that night when I went to bed. It was interesting to be a little more modern. For not only had I worn my leather shoes that day, but I had not painted my face or put ornaments in my hair. I looked very much like Mrs. Liu. I am sure my husband noticed it.

It seemed that, once I was willing to change, a complete new life poured in upon me. My husband began to talk to me in the evening, and I found his conversation very exciting. He knows everything. Yoh! The queer things he has told me about the outer countries and their inhabitants! He laughed when I exclaimed,

“Oh, funny — oh, strange!”

“No more strange than we are to them,” he said, for some reason greatly amused.

“What!” I cried in fresh astonishment. “Do they think we are funny?”

“Of course,” he replied, still laughing. “You should hear them talk! They think our clothes are funny and our faces and our food and all that we do. It does not occur to them that people can look as we do and behave as we do, and be wholly as human as they are.”

I was astounded to hear this. How could they consider their curious looks and clothes and behavior as human as ours? I answered with dignity,

“But we have always done these things and had these customs and looked as we do, with black hair and eyes—”

“Exactly! So have they!”

“But I thought they came over here to our country to learn civilization. My mother said so.”

“She was mistaken. In fact, I believe they come over here thinking to teach us civilization. They have a great deal to learn from us, it is true, but they don’t know it any more than you realize what we have to learn from them.”

Certainly it was all very novel and interesting, what he had to say. I never grew weary of hearing about the foreigners, and especially did I like to hear of all their marvelous inventions: of turning a handle and getting hot or cold water out of it, and of a stove with no fuel that one could see, and yet having heat — self-coming water and self-coming heat, these are called. And how amazed was I at his stories of machines on the sea and of others flying in the air and floating under the water and many like marvels!

“You are sure it is not magic?” I asked fearfully. “The old books tell of miracles of fire and earth and water but they are always the magic tricks of creatures partly faërie.”

“No, of course it is not magic,” he replied. “It is all quite simple when you understand how it is done. It is science.”

That science again! It made me think of my brother. For the sake of that science he is still in these foreign countries, eating their food and drinking their water to which his body is not accustomed by birth. I became very curious to see this science and know what it looks like. But when I said this my husband laughed a great deal.

“What a child you are!” he cried, teasing me. “It is not a thing you can handle or touch or take in your hands to examine like a toy.”

Then seeing that I perceived nothing of what he meant, he went to the bookcase and brought forth some books with pictures upon the pages, and he began to explain to me many things.

Thereafter, every evening he taught me concerning this science. No wonder my brother became entranced of it so that he would not heed even his mother’s desires, but would go across the Peaceful Sea in search of it. I was enchanted of it myself and began to feel myself growing marvelously wise. So much so that at last I felt I must tell someone, and having no one else, I told our old cook-woman.

“Do you know,” I asked her, “that the world is round and that our great country is, after all, not in the middle, but only a patch of earth and water on the skin, together with the other countries?”

She was washing the rice in the small pond in the kitchen yard, but she stopped shaking the basket and looked at me suspiciously.

“Who says this?” she demanded, in no hurry to be convinced.

“Our master,” I said firmly. “Now will you believe me?”

“Oh,” she replied doubtfully, “he knows a great deal. Still, you can tell the world is not round just by looking at it. See, if you climb to the top of the pagoda on the Hill of the North Star, you can see for a thousand miles of mountain and field and lake and river, and it is all as flat as sheets of dried bean curd, except for the mountains, and no one could call them round! As for our country, it must be in the middle. Else why did the wise ancients, who knew everything, call it the Middle Kingdom?”

But I was eager to proceed.

“More than that,” I continued, “the earth is so large that it takes the whole length of a moon to reach the other side, and when it is dark here the sun is over there giving light.”

“Now I know you are wrong, my mistress,” she cried triumphantly. “If it takes a moon of days to get to those other countries, how can the sun do it in an hour when he spends a whole day in traveling the short space here between Purple Mountain and the Western Hills?”

And she fell to shaking the basket of rice in the water again.

But really I could not blame her for her ignorance; for of all the curious things my husband told me the most curious is this, that the western peoples have the same three great lights of heaven that we have — the sun, the moon, and the stars. I had always thought that P’an-ku, the creator god, had made them for the Chinese. But my husband is wise. He knows all things, and he speaks only what is true.

VIII

HOW MAY I PUT into words the beginning of my husband’s favor towards me, My Sister? How did I know it myself when his heart stirred?

Ah, how does the cold earth know when the sun at spring-tide draws out her heart into blossoming? How does the sea feel the moon compelling her to him?

I do not know how the days passed. Only I knew that I ceased to be lonely. Where he was became my home, and I thought no more of my mother’s house.

During the lingering hours of the day in his absence I pondered over all my husband’s words. I remembered his eyes, his face, the curve of his lips, the casual touch of his hand against mine as he turned the page of the book on the table before us. When night came and he was there before me, I glanced at him secretly, and I fed my heart upon his looks as he taught me.

Day and night I thought of him until, like the river in spring-time flowing richly into the canals empty with the drought of winter, like the river flowing into the land and filling everything with life and fruition, so did the thought of my lord become to me, filling my every loneliness and need.

Who can understand this power in a man and a maid? It begins with a chance meeting of the eyes, a shy and lingering glance, and then suddenly it flames into a fixed and burning gaze. There is a touch of fingers at first quickly withdrawn, and then heart rushes to heart.

But how may I tell even you, My Sister? It was the time of my great joy. These words I speak now are scarlet words. On the last day of the eleventh moon I knew that when the rice harvest came, in the fullness of the year, my child would be born.

When I told my husband that I had fulfilled my duty towards him in conception, he was very happy. He gave formal notice to his parents first and then to his brothers, and we received their congratulations. My own parents of course were not immediately concerned in the matter, but I determined to tell my mother when I visited her at New Year.

Now began a most difficult time for me. Hitherto I had been person of little importance in my husband’s family. I had been merely the wife of one of the younger sons. I had had almost no share in the family life since we moved away from the great home. Twice I had gone at stated seasons to pay my respects and serve tea to my husband’s mother, but she had treated me negligently, although not unkindly. Now suddenly I became as a priestess of destiny. Within me I bore the hope of the family, an heir. My husband was one of six sons, none of whom had male offspring. Should my child be a son, therefore, he would rank next to my husband’s eldest brother in the family and the clan, and he would be the heir of the family estates. Oh, it is the sorrow of a mother that her son is hers but the first few brief days! Too soon he must take his place in the great family life. My son can be mine such a short, short while! O Kwan-yin, protect my little child!

The ecstasy of the hour when my husband and I first spoke of the child was soon gone in the anxiety that pressed upon us. I have said it was a difficult time for me. It was because of the much advice I received from everyone. Most important were the words I received from my revered mother-in-law.

When she heard of my joy, she sent for me to come to her. Hitherto when I had visited her I had been received formally in the guest-hall, for she had been a little haughty towards us since we moved away. This time, however, she had evidently commanded the servant to lead me to the family room behind the third court.

There I found my mother-in-law seated by the table, drinking tea and waiting for me. She is a majestic old lady, very fat, with tiny feet long since inadequate for her great weight. Now if she walks so much as a single step, she leans heavily on two stout slave-girls who stand ever ready behind her chair. Her hands are small and covered with gold rings and so plump that the fingers stick out stiffly from the mound of dimpled flesh. She holds always a long pipe of polished silver, which her slaves keep filled for her and light from a twist of paper, smoldering and ready to be blown into a flame in an instant for her use.

I went to her immediately and bowed before her. She smiled so that her narrow lips disappeared into the fullness of her heavy cheeks, and then she took my hand and patted it.

“Good daughter — good daughter,” she said in her husky voice. Long since her neck has disappeared in rolls of flesh, and her voice is always asthmatic.

I knew I had pleased her. I poured out tea into a bowl and presented it to her with both hands, and she received it. Then I sat down upon a small side seat. But she would not allow such humbleness in me now, although before she had not cared where I sat. Smiling and coughing, she beckoned me to sit in the seat next her on the opposite side of the table, and at her command I did so.

She sent then for her other daughters-in-law, and they all came in to congratulate me. Three of them had never conceived, although married several years, and to these I was an envy and a reproach. Indeed, the eldest one, a tall, yellow-faced woman always ailing and ill, began to wail loudly now and to rock back and forth and bemoan her fate.

“Ai-ya — ai-ya — a bitter life — an evil destiny!”

My mother-in-law sighed and shook her head gravely and allowed her eldest daughter-in-law to comfort herself with weeping for the space of two pipes of tobacco. Then she bade her be still, since she wished to speak with me. Later I learned that my husband’s eldest brother had just taken a second wife, since his first had never borne him any children. It was this that made acute the poor creature’s grief that day, because she loved her husband, and because she knew at last that her prayers and sacrifices to the gods were unnoticed by them.

My mother-in-law gave me much sound advice. Among other things she told me not to prepare any clothes before the child’s birth. This was the custom in her girlhood home in Anhwei, where people believed that it served to keep the cruel gods unaware of the approaching birth lest, seeing a man born into the world, they would seek to destroy him. But when I heard of the custom I inquired,

“What then shall he wear, a little naked, newborn child?”

“Wrap him,” she said ponderously, “in his father’s oldest clothes. It will bring luck to do that. I did it with my six sons and they lived.”

My sisters-in-law also bade me do many, many things, and each one gave me the custom of her home in these matters. Particularly did they advise me to eat a certain kind of fish after the child was born and to drink bowls of brown sugar and water. Thus did each one ease her own envy of me with advice.

When I returned to my husband in the evening happy in all this friendly interest of his family, I told him of these things they had bidden me do for the child. To my horrified surprise he suddenly became violently angry. He pushed his hair about with his hands, and he strode about the room.

“Nonsense — nonsense — nonsense!” he cried. “All lies — all superstition — never, never!” He stopped and took me by the shoulders and looked earnestly into my upturned face. “Promise me,” he said firmly, “that you will be guided wholly by me. Mind you, you must obey! Kwei-lan, promise me, or I swear there will never be another child!”

What could I do in my fright but promise?

When I had given my word dubiously he became more calm. He said,

“To-morrow I will take you to a western home, to see the family of my old teacher who is an American. I want you to see how westerners care for their children, not that you may copy them slavishly, but that you may enlarge your ideas.”

I tried to obey my husband. One thing only did I do in secret. Next morning at dawn I slipped out of the house with none but a servant to accompany me. I bought sticks of incense at the shop, where it was so early that only a yawning little apprentice boy was stirring in the dim misty morning. Then I went to the temple, and lighting the incense I placed it before the little dark Kwan-yin who gives sons and easy child-birth. I knocked my head upon the marble slab before her. It was still wet with the dews of night. I murmured what was in my heart and rose and looked at her, beseeching. She did not respond, and the urn was full of cold ashes of incense that other mothers had placed there before me, with prayers and longing like mine. I thrust into the ashes more firmly the sticks of incense I had lit, and left them there burning before her. Then I returned to my home.

True to his word, the next day my husband took me to visit the home of his foreign friends. I was not a little curious, and I was even a little afraid. I smile at that now, I who call you My Sister!

But then I had never been in a foreign house. I had no opportunity. I never walked abroad upon the streets, and no one in my mother’s home associated with foreigners. My father had seen them, of course, in his travels, and he considered them of no importance except to make him laugh with their coarse looks and abrupt, rude ways. Only my brother admired them strangely. He had often seen them in Peking, and in his school there were some foreigners who were his teachers. Once I had even heard it said before my marriage that he had been in the house of a foreigner, and I admired his daring then, very much.

But in my mother’s home there was no such intercourse. Sometimes a servant going forth to make a purchase would come back and say in excitement that she had seen a foreigner on the street passing by, and then there would be wondering talk of their strange livid skin and pale eyes. I always listened in the same curiosity and fear that I had when Wang Da Ma told me of the ghosts and devils of ancient times. The servants, indeed, even whispered about the black magic of these foreigners and their power of stealing the soul out of a person with a little machine in a black box, into which they peered with one eye. When something snapped inside the box, one felt a curious weakness in the breast, and then always soon after illness or accident would come bringing death.

But my husband laughed greatly when I told him of all these things.

“How then did I come back alive after twelve years in their country?” he asked.

“Ah, but you are wise — you learned their magic,” I replied.

“Come and see for yourself what they are like,” he answered. “They are men and women like all others.”

And so on that same day we went, and we entered into a garden with grass and trees and flowers. I was surprised that it was so beautiful and that westerners understood the value of nature. Of course the arrangement of all was very crude — no courts or gold-fish ponds, but trees planted in any way and flowers growing irregularly as they pleased. I must confess that when at last we stood before the door of the house, I should have run away had not my husband been there with me.

The door was opened suddenly from within, and a tall male “foreign devil” stood there, smiling all across his large face. I knew he was a man because he wore clothes like my husband’s, but to my horror, his head, instead of being covered with human hair, black and straight like that of other people, had on it a fuzzy red wool! His eyes were like pebbles washed by the sea, and his nose rose up a very mountain in the middle of his face. Oh, he was a frightful creature to behold — more hideous than the God of the North in the temple entrance!

My husband is brave. He did not seem at all disturbed by the sight of this man; he held out his hand, and the foreigner grasped it and moved it up and down. My husband was not surprised by this, and turning to me, he introduced me. The foreigner smiled his enormous smile and made as if to take my hand also. But I looked at his out-stretched one. It was large and bony, and upon it were long red hairs and black spots. My flesh shrank. I could not touch it. I placed my hands in my sleeves and bowed. He smiled still more widely then, and invited us to enter.

We went into a small hall like our own and then into a room. Beside the window sat a person whom I discerned at once to be a female foreigner. At, least, she wore a long cotton gown instead of trousers and had a flat string about her middle. Her hair was not as ugly as her husband’s, for it was smooth and straight, although of an unfortunate yellow color. She also had a very high nose, although it was not curved like her husband’s, and large hands with short square nails. I looked at her feet and saw that they were like rice-flails for size. I thought to myself,

“With parents like these, what must the little foreign devils be?”

I have to say, however, that these foreigners were as polite as they knew how to be. They made mistakes and at every turn betrayed their lack of breeding. They presented the bowls of tea with one hand and habitually served me before my husband. The man actually addressed me to my face! I felt it an insult. He should have courteously ignored my presence, leaving his wife to entertain me.

One cannot blame them, I suppose. Yet they have been here twelve years, my husband tells me. One would think that something must be learned in that time. Of course you, My Sister, have lived here always, and you are now one of us.

But the most interesting part of the visit came when my husband asked the foreign woman to let me see her children and their clothes. We were expecting a child of our own, he explained, so that he wished me to see western ways. She rose at once and asked me to go upstairs. I was afraid to go alone with her. I looked at my husband in appeal, but he only nodded to me to proceed.

I forgot about fear, however, as soon as I was upstairs. She took me into a sun-flooded room that was warmed with a black oven. It was curious that although they evidently wanted to heat the room, they left a window ajar so that cold air came in constantly. But these details I did not notice at once. I saw first, with the utmost sense of fascination, three little foreigners playing upon the floor. I had never seen such queer little creatures!

They were healthy in appearance and fat, but they all had white hair. This confirmed what I had heard, that foreigners reverse our nature and are born with snow-white hair which darkens as they grow older. They had very white skin. I supposed it was washed in some sort of medicine water until the mother showed me a room where they were all washed entirely every day. This then explained their skin. The tints of nature were faded out with so much washing.

The mother showed me also their clothes. All their underclothes were white, and, indeed, the youngest child was dressed in white from head to foot. I asked the mother if the child were in mourning for some relative, since white is the color of grief, but she replied that it was not this, but only that the child might be kept clean. I thought a dark color would have been better, since white is so easily soiled. But I observed everything and said nothing.

Then I saw their beds. They were also covered in white and were most depressing. I could not understand why so much white was used. It is the sad hue of mourning and death. Surely a child should be clad and covered only with the colors of joy, scarlet and yellow and royal blue! We clothe our babies in scarlet from head to foot for joy that they are born to us. But nothing about these foreigners is according to nature.

One of the surprising things I discovered was that the foreign woman nursed her own child at the breast. I had not thought of nursing mine. It is not customary among women of any wealth or position, since slaves are abundant for this task.

After we had come home I told my husband everything. At last I said,

“She even nurses her own child. Are they, then, so very poor?”

“It is good to nurse the child,” said my husband. “You shall nurse yours, too.”

“What, I?” I answered in great surprise.

“Certainly,” he replied gravely.

“But then I shall not have another child for two years,” I objected.

“That is as it should be,” rejoined my husband, “although the reason you give is nonsense.”

Perhaps he is right in this also. At any rate I perceive that since several children of every family must inevitably die and some must be girls, that I shall not have my house as full of sons as I had hoped. Do you marvel, My Sister, that I never ceased to find my husband strange?

The next day I went to see Mrs. Liu to tell her of my visit. Ah, if the goddess grants me a son like her children — straight and ruddy and shining-eyed! They were beautiful and golden-skinned, exquisite in their red and flowered clothes.

“You have kept to our old customs,” I said, observing the children with a sigh of pleasure.

“Yes — no — look!” she replied, and she pulled the eldest child toward her. “See, my white is all inside — linings which can be taken out and washed. Learn the good that you can of the foreign people and reject the unsuitable.”

I went from her house to the cloth shop. I bought red and pink flowered silk of the softest quality, and black velvet for a tiny sleeveless jacket, and satin for a cap. It was hard to choose, since I would have nothing but the best for my son. I commanded the owner of the shop to pull down more and yet more of the silk he had folded away in dark paper covers and placed in the shelves that reached to the ceiling. He was an old man hard of breathing, and he grumbled when I cried,

“Show me yet more — a piece of silk with peach flowers embroidered upon it!”

I heard him mutter something of the vanity of women and hearing him I said,

“It is not for myself but for my son.”

Then he smiled crookedly and brought me the loveliest piece of all, the piece he had withheld until now.

“Take it,” he said. “I was keeping it for the magistrate’s wife, but if it is for your son, take it. She is but a woman after all.”

It was the piece I sought. Among the vivid piles of silks scattered over the counter it shone with a deep rosy luster. I bought it without questioning the price, although I know the cunning old man added to it, seeing my eagerness. I carried it in my arms to my home. I said,

“To-night I shall cut from this the little coat and trousers. I shall do it all alone. I am jealous of another’s touch upon my child.”

Oh, I was so happy I could have sewed the night through for my son! I have made him a pair of shoes with tiger faces. I have bought him a silver chain for his pleasure.

IX

IT IS YOU? I have great news! To-day my son leaped at my heart! It is as though he had spoken.

I have prepared his little clothes. The garments are complete even to the tiny gold Buddhas stitched about his satin cap. When all were finished and perfect I bought a sandalwood chest and placed the clothes in it that they might be filled with sweet perfume for my son’s flesh. Now I have no more to do, although the rice is still jade-green in the fields, and I have three more moons to wait. I sit and dream of how he will look.

O little dusky Goddess! Speed the winged days, I pray thee, until my golden one is in my arms!

At least for one day he shall be my own. I will not think beyond that. For my husband’s parents have sent us a letter telling us that the child must return to his ancestral home. He is the only grandson, and his life is too precious to be away from the sight of his grandparents, night and day. Already they hang on the thought of him fondly. My husband’s father, who has never spoken a word to me, sent for me the other day and talked with me, and I could see that to his aged mind it was as though his grandson were already born.

Oh, I long to keep him to ourselves! I am reconciled to the little foreign house and the strange ways if we can keep our son here, just the three of us. But I know the proper traditions of our people. It is not to be supposed that I may have my first-born for my own. He belongs to all the family.

My husband is most unhappy about it. He frowns and mutters that the child will be ruined by foolish slave-girls and overmuch feeding and harmful luxury. He paces the floor, and once he even grieved that the child was to be born. I was frightened then lest the gods grow angry at his ingratitude, and I begged him to be silent.

“We must endure what is the right custom,” I told him, my heart aching the while with longing to keep my child.

But now he has become quiet again and very grave. He speaks no more concerning his parents. I wonder what he has determined upon in his mind, that he does not speak! But as for me, I think no further now than that day when the little precious one shall be here for me to feast my eyes upon.

I know now what my husband has done. Do you think it wrong, My Sister? Oh, I do not know myself — I can only trust that it is right because he does it. He has told his parents that, even as he claimed his wife for himself alone, so now he requires that his son shall belong to his own parents only — to us!

His parents were angry, but we could bear their anger, answering nothing. But my husband said that at last his old father gave up his arguments and fell to weeping silently, and when I heard of that it seemed a piteous thing that a son should make his father weep. If it had been anything except this, except my son, my heart would have weakened in my breast. But my husband is braver than I, and he even bore the pity of his father’s weeping.

Ah, when we first moved away from his father’s house I reproached him for breaking the honored customs of the past. But now, selfish woman that I am, I do not care that the tradition is broken. I think only of my son. He will be mine — mine! I need not share him with twenty others — his grandparents, his aunts. I, his mother, may care for him; I may wash him and clothe him and keep him at my side day and night.

Now has my husband recompensed me for everything. I thank the gods that I am married to a modern man. He gives me my son for my own. All my life is not enough to repay my gratitude.

Daily I watch the rice grow yellow in the fields. The heads are full now and drooping. A little longer under this languorous sun and they will be bursting with ripeness and ready for the harvest. It is a good year in which my son is to be born — a full year, the farmers say.

How many more days of dreamy waiting?

I have ceased to think whether my husband loves me. When I have given birth to his son, my husband will know my heart and I shall know his.

O My Sister, My Sister! He is here, my son is here! He lies in the curve of my arm at last, and his hair is as black as ebony!

Look at him — it is not possible that such beauty has been created before. His arms are fat and dimpled, and his legs like young oak-trees for strength. I have examined his whole body for love. It is as sound and fair as the child of a god. Ah, the rogue! He kicks and cries to be at the breast, and he has eaten but an hour ago! His voice is lusty, and he demands everything.

Oh, but my hour was hard, My Sister! My husband watched me with fond and anxious eyes. I paced before the window in my joy and agony. They were cutting the ripe grain and laying it in rich sheaves upon the ground. The fullness of the year — the fullness of life!

I gasped at the snarling pain and then exulted to know that I was at the height of my womanhood. Thus I gave birth to my first-born son! Ai-ya, but he was a sturdy one! How he forced the gates of life into the world, and with what a mighty cry did he come forth! I feared to die with the pain of his impatience, and then I gloried in his strength. My golden man-child!

Now has my life flowered. Shall I tell you all, that you may know how complete is my joy? Why should I not say it to you, My Sister, who have seen thus far my naked heart? It was like this, then.

I lay weak and yet in triumph upon my bed. My son was at my side. My husband entered the room. He approached the bedside and reached out his arms. My heart leaped. He wished for the old custom of presentation.

I took my son, and I placed him in his father’s arms. I presented him with these words,

“My dear lord, behold thy firstborn son. Take him. Thy wife gives him to thee.”

He gazed into my eyes. I was faint with the ardent light of his regard. He bent nearer to me. He spoke,

“I give him back to thee. He is ours.” His voice was low and his words fell through the air like drops of silver. “I share him with thee. I am thy husband who loves thee!”

You weep, My Sister? Ah, yes, I know — I, too! How else how could we bear such joy? See my son! He laughs!