Pavilion of Women

I

IT WAS HER FORTIETH birthday. Madame Wu sat before the tilted mirror of her toilet case and looked at her own calm face. In her mind she was comparing it with the face she had seen in this same mirror when she was sixteen. On that day she had risen from her marriage bed early, for she had always been an early riser, and putting on her new chamber robe she had come into this same room and had taken her place before the toilet table. She had sat in her quiet fashion, easily motionless, and had gazed at her young face.

“Can it be that I look the same today as yesterday?” she had asked herself on that first morning after her marriage.

She had examined her face minutely, broad low forehead, yesterday stripped of its girlhood fringe, long eyes, delicate nose, the oval of cheeks and chin and the small red mouth, that morning very red. Then Ying, her new maid, had hurried in.

“Oh, Miss — Oh, Madame,” she had faltered. “I thought today you would not be so early!” Ying’s cheeks had been bright with blushes.

Madame’s own cheeks were as pearly pale as usual, above the red mouth. “I like to get up early,” she had replied in her usual gentle voice, the voice which in the night the young man whom she had never seen before had told her was like the voice of a singing bird.

At this moment, twenty-four years later, as though she knew what her mistress was remembering, Ying spoke from behind the heavy redwood chair. Her hands were busy with the coils of Madame Wu’s shining, straight black hair, but she had now made these coils for so many years that she could lift her eyes from the task and look at the beautiful face in the mirror.

“Lady, you have changed not at all in these twenty-four years,” Ying said.

“Are you thinking of that morning, too?” Madame Wu replied. She met Ying’s eyes in the mirror with affection. Ying had grown stout in twenty years of being married to the head cook, but Madame Wu was as slender as ever.

Ying laughed loudly. “I was more shy than you that morning, Lady,” she said. “Ai ya, how shy I was then — with how little cause, eh, Lady? It’s only natural, what goes on between men and women, but then it seemed some sort of magic!”

Madame Wu smiled without reply. She allowed Ying complete freedom in all she said, but when she did not wish to carry on the conversation she made her smile fleeting and kept silence after it. Ying fell silent, too. She pretended dissatisfaction with a coil of the smooth black hair under her fingers, and pursing her lips, she let one strand down and put it up again. When it was finished she put two jade pins into the coil, one on either side, and wetting her hands with an oiled perfume, she smoothed Madame Wu’s already sleek head.

“My jade earrings,” Madame Wu said in her clear pretty voice. It was a voice so feminine that it concealed everything.

“I knew you would want to wear them today!” Ying exclaimed. “I have them ready.”

She opened a small box covered with flowered silk and took out the earrings and fastened them carefully through Madame Wu’s little ears. Twenty-four years ago young Mr. Wu had come into this room at the exact moment when she had dressed her mistress freshly in a soft wide-sleeved red satin coat over a pleated black satin skirt whose panels were embroidered, front and back, with birds and flowers. In his hand Mr. Wu had held this box. His handsome eyes were full of sleepy content. He had handed the box to Ying, being too well-mannered to speak to his bride before a servant. “Put these in your mistress’s ears,” he had said.

Ying had cried out over the flawless clarity of the jade and had held them before the bride’s eyes. Those eyes had lifted to her husband for one moment before she dropped the lids with graceful shyness. “Thank you,” she had murmured.

He had nodded, and then while the maid fastened them into her ears he had stood watching. Madame Wu had seen his face in this very mirror, the handsome full face of a willful and proud young man.

“Ai,’ he had said, in a sigh of pleasure. Their eyes met in the mirror and each took measure of the other’s beauty. “Go and fetch me hot tea,” he had said abruptly to Ying, and at the sound of his voice the maid had been startled and scuttled away.

They were alone again, as they had been in the night. He had leaned over her and put his hands on her shoulders. He stared into her face in the mirror.

“If you had been ugly,” he said, “I would have killed you last night on the pillow. I hate ugly women.”

She had smiled at this, without moving under his hands. “But why have killed me?” she had asked in her pretty voice. “To have sent me home would have been enough.”

She had been deeply excited that morning. Would he be intelligent as well as handsome, this husband of hers? That would be perhaps too much to ask. But if he were?

At this moment twenty-four years later, Ying now said, “Jade is as beautiful as ever against your skin. What other woman of forty can say this? It is no wonder that the master has never wanted another wife.”

“Do not speak quite so loudly,” Madame Wu said. “He is still asleep.”

“He should wake early on your fortieth birthday, Madame,” Ying replied. She rubbed her nose with the back of her hand. After all these years she felt she knew Mr. Wu, and of one thing she was certain: in spite of his fondness, he still did not appreciate enough his beautiful wife whom the whole house loved. Yes, of the sixty-odd souls under this roof, who did not love Madame Wu, from Old Lady down to the smallest grandchild and lowliest servant? If in the servants’ quarters a new maid dared to grumble because the mistress saw the dust swept behind a door, Ying jerked her ears.

“This is the house of the Wu family,” she said in her loud voice. “This is not a common house like Wang or Hua.”

The head cook always grinned at this. All his life as a husband he had known that against the mistress, he was nothing in Ying’s eyes. But indeed in this house even the two sons’ wives had no evil to speak. Those narrow hands which Madame Wu held so often lightly clasped on her lap, were firm and kind while they ruled.

“I will have my breakfast,” Madame Wu now said to Ying. “After I have eaten I will speak with my eldest son. You will dress me for the feast at noon. But keep watch over your master, and when he wakes let me know.”

“That I will do, of course, Lady,” Ying replied. She stooped to pick up a comb she had let fall. It was made of the fragrant sandalwood which was the scent Madame Wu used for her hair. Ying plucked a few long hairs from the comb and curled them carefully around her finger and put them in a small blue porcelain jar. She was saving these hairs against the day of her mistress’s great old age, when it was possible she might need to thicken even her coil with a switch.

Madame Wu rose from the chair. She was ready for this day. A woman’s fortieth birthday in a rich and old-fashioned family was a day of dignity. She remembered very well when her husband’s mother had passed such a day, twenty-two years ago. On that day Old Lady had formally given over to her son’s wife the management of the big house with its many members. For twenty-two years Madame Wu had held this management in her own hands, skillfully maintaining its outward habits so that Old Lady did not notice changes, and at the same time making many changes. Thus before Madame Wu had decided to do away with the overgrown peony bushes in the eastern garden, just outside these rooms, she had allowed the peonies to die one winter. When their strong red shoots did not push up as usual in the spring she called Old Lady’s attention to this and helped her to decide that the peonies must have exhausted the soil and air in this garden, and therefore something else had better be planted here for a generation or two.

“Narcissus?” Madame Wu, then eighteen, had suggested gently. “Orchids? Flowering shrubs? I am only anxious to please you, Mother.” But she had put orchids in the middle of the sentence. They were her preference. By putting them in the middle, Old Lady would think she did not care for them.

“Orchids,” Old Lady said. She was fond of her daughter-in-law, but she liked to show her own authority.

“Orchids,” Madame Wu had agreed. Within five years she had the finest orchid garden in the city. She spent a great deal of time in it. Now, in the early part of the sixth month of the year, the delicate silver-gray blossoms of the first orchids were beginning to bloom. By the eighth month the dark purple ones would be at their height, and by the ninth month the yellow ones.

She went from her own sitting room into this garden and plucked two of the scentless gray flowers and took them back with her into the room, where her breakfast was waiting. It was a slight meal, for she had never been able to eat much in the morning. Tea, rice congee in a small closed bucket of polished wood bound in silver, and two or three little dishes of dried salt meats stood on the square table in the middle of the room. She sat down and lifted her ivory chopsticks that at the upper end were held together by a thin silver chain.

A maidservant came in smiling. She carried in both hands a plate of long-life steamed rolls of bread, very hot. They were made in the shape of peaches, the symbol of immortality, and each one was sprayed with red dye.

“Long life, long life, Mistress!” the maidservant called in a coarse, hearty voice. “Mistress does not like sweet in the morning, I know, but we who are servants must bring these for good luck. The cook made them himself.”

“Thank you,” Madame Wu said mildly, “thank you all.”

Out of courtesy she took one of the steaming rolls and broke it open. A dark sweet filling was inside, made of crushed beans and red sugar, “It is delicious,” she said, and began to eat.

The woman was encouraged and leaned forward. “I ought not to tell you,” she said in a loud whisper, “but I do it because I think of the good of the house. That old head cook, he is charging our Mistress three times the price in the fuel grass. Yesterday at the market I heard the price — it is high now, true, because the new grass is not in yet — but eighty cash a catty will buy as good as can be found. Yet he charges two hundred cash! He thinks he can do anything because Ying is your maid.”

Madame Wu’s clear black eyes took on a look of distance. “When he brings in the accounts, I will remember,” she said. Her voice was cool. The woman remained an instant, then went away.

Madame Wu put down the roll at once and with her chopsticks picked up a bit of salt fish. She resumed her thoughts. She had no intention on this day of resigning her position to Meng, the wife of her eldest son. In the first place, she had four sons, two of whom already had wives. Old Lady had had only the one, and so there had been no question of jealousy between young wives. Her eldest son’s wife, moreover, was very young. Liangmo had been married according to old-fashioned ways. She had chosen his wife for him, and this wife had been the daughter of her oldest friend, Madame Kang. It had not been her intention to marry Liangmo so quickly, since he had been only nineteen; but her second son, Tsemo, who had gone to a school in Shanghai, had loved a girl two years older than himself, and had insisted upon marriage at eighteen. This meant that Rulan was older than her sister-in-law, who was nevertheless her superior in the house. Out of this embarrassment, for which Madame Wu blamed herself in not having kept better watch over Tsemo, her only refuge now was to keep her own place for another few years, during which time anything might happen.

She would therefore announce no changes in the house today. She would accept their gifts and the great feast which was planned. She would be kind to the grandchildren, whom she warmly loved, and in all that was done she would defer to Old Lady, who was getting out of bed at noon especially to be at the feast.

For Madame Wu herself this was a day to which she had long looked forward with a strange mingling of relief and quiet sadness. The first part of her life was over and the second part about to begin. She did not fear age, for age had its honors for her. She would with each year gain in dignity and in the respect of her family and her friends. Nor was she afraid of losing her beauty, for she had allowed it to change with the years so subtly that it was still more apparent than her years. She no longer wore the flowering colors of her youth, but the delicacy of her face and skin were as clear now as ever against the soft silver blues and gray greens of her costumes. The whole effect of age upon her was one of refining and exalting rather than loss. Because she knew herself still beautiful, she was ready to do today what she had planned to do. A woman who had lost her looks might have hesitated through feelings of defeat or even jealousy. But she had no need to be jealous and what she was about to do was of her own clear, calm will.

She finished her breakfast. Everyone else in the family was still sleeping except the grandchildren, whom the amahs would be amusing in some corner of the vast compound until the parents awoke. But the children were never brought to her except when she called them. She was a little surprised, therefore, when in a few moments she perceived something like a commotion in the court just beyond her own. Then she heard a voice.

“It is not every day that my best friend is forty years old! Does it matter if I am too early?”

She recognized at once the voice of Madame Kang, the mother of Meng, her elder daughter-in-law, and she made haste to the door of the court.

“Come, please,” she exclaimed, and held out both her hands, in one of them the two silver-gray orchids which she had taken again from the table.

Madame Kang lumbered across the court toward her friend. She had grown fat in the same years during which Madame Wu had remained exquisite, but she was too generous not to love her friend in spite of this.

“Ailien,” she exclaimed, “am I the first to wish you long life and immortality?”

“The first,” Madame Wu said, smiling. Servants, of course, did not count.

“Then I am not too early,” Madame Kang said and looked reproachfully at Ying, who had tried to delay her. It was a rule in the house that no one should disturb Madame Wu while she took her breakfast because at a disturbance she would eat no more. Ying was not abashed. No one was afraid of Madame Kang, and Ying would have defied even the magistrate to gain an hour of peace for her mistress in the morning.

“I had rather see you than anyone,” Madame Wu said. She linked her slender fingers into her friend’s plump ones and drew her into the orchid garden with her. Under a drooping willow tree two bamboo chairs stood, and toward these the ladies moved. A small oval pool lay at their feet. At its bottom a clump of water lilies was rooted. Two blue lilies floated on the surface. Madame Wu did not care for lotus. The flowers were too coarse and the scent was heavy. Very minute goldfish darted in and out among the blue lilies, and paused, their noses quivering at the surface. When they found no crumbs there, they snatched themselves away and sprang apart, their misty tails waving behind them in long white shadows.

“How is your eldest son’s son?” Madame Wu asked her friend. In the years when Madame Wu had borne her four living sons, and three children, who had died, of whom only one was a girl, Madame Kang had borne eleven children, six of whom were girls. There was none of the peace in Madame Kang’s house that was here in this court. Around her fat, good-natured person was a continuous uproar of children and bondmaids and servants. Nevertheless, in spite of everything, Madame Wu loved her friend. Their mothers had been friends, and when one went to visit the other, each had taken her small daughter along. While the mothers had gambled all day and late into the night, the two little girls had come to be as close as sisters.

“He is no better,” Madame Kang said. Her round red face which had been beaming like a lit lantern was suddenly woeful. “I am considering whether I should take him to the foreign hospital. What do you think?”

“Is it a matter of life and death?” Madame Wu asked, considering the matter.

“It may be, within a few days,” Madame Kang replied. “But they say that the foreign doctor does not know how to tell what a sickness is without cutting people open to see. And Little Happiness is so small — only five, you know, Sister. I think his life is still too tender for him to be cut open.”

“At least wait until tomorrow,” Madame Wu said. “Let us not spoil today.” Then, fearing lest she were selfish, she added, “Meanwhile I will send Ying with a bowl of broth made after an old recipe of my great-grandmother for just such a cough as he has. I have used it often on my first and third sons and more than once on their father. You know he has been troubled with a cough for the last two winters.”

“Ailien, you are always kind,” Madame Kang said gratefully. It was early and the garden was cool but she took a small fan from her sleeve and began to use it, laughing while she did so. “I am hot as soon as the snow is gone,” she said.

They sat for a moment in silence. Madame Kang looked at her friend lovingly and without jealousy. “Ailien, I did not know what to bring you for a birthday gift. So I brought you this—”

She reached into the loose bosom of her wide blue satin robe and brought out a little box. This she handed to her friend.

Madame Wu recognized the box as she took it. “Ah, Meichen, do you really want to give me your pearls?”

“Yes, I do.” Across Madame Kang’s plain good face a flicker passed as of pain.

“Why?” Madame Wu asked, perceiving it.

Madame Kang hesitated, but only for a moment. “The last time I wore them, my sons’ father said they looked like dewdrops on a melon.” Madame Kang smiled. Then tears came to her eyes. She paid no heed to them, and they rolled slowly down her cheeks and splashed on the thick satin over her bosom without penetrating it.

Madame Wu saw them without appearing to do so. She did not move in her chair. In her hands she held the box of pearls. She had often let Madame Kang talk of her difficulties with Mr. Kang. Neither of them had ever talked of Mr. Wu, beyond a word or two put in by Madame Kang.

“Ah, Ailien,” she would say, “your sons’ father is so little trouble to you. So far I have never heard of his even entering a house of flowers. But my man — well, he is good, too. Yes, only—”

At this point Madame Kang always paused and sighed.

“Meichen,” Madame Wu had once said many years ago, “why not allow him to enjoy himself so long as he always comes home before morning?” She had never forgotten the look of shame that came into her friend’s honest eyes. “I am jealous,” Madame Kang had declared. “I am so jealous that my blood turns to fire.”

Madame Wu, who had never known what jealousy was, became silent. This was something in her friend which she could not understand. She could understand it less when she remembered Mr. Kang, who was an ordinary wealthy merchant and not even handsome. He was shrewd but not intelligent. She could not imagine any pleasure in being married to him.

“I have been wanting for a long time to tell you something,” she said now after a moment. “At first, when I began thinking about it I thought I would ask your advice. But — I have not. Now I think it is beyond advice. It has already become certainty.”

Madame Kang sat waiting while she fanned herself. The slight breeze from the fan dried her tears. She wept and laughed easily out of the very excess of her goodness. In this friendship she knew humbly that she took the second place. It was not only that she was not beautiful, but in her own mind she did nothing so well as Madame Wu. Thus with all her efforts her house, though as large and as handsome as this one, was seldom clean and never ordered. In spite of her every endeavor, the servants took charge of it, and convenience rather than good manners had become the habit. When she came here she felt this, although living in her house she did not see it. But she often told herself that anyone who came into Madame Wu’s presence grew better for it, and this was perhaps the chief reason why she continued to come ten times to this house to Madame Wu’s one visit to her own house.

“Whatever you want to tell me,” she now said.

Madame Wu lifted her eyes. They were long and large, and the black irises were very distinct against the white, and this gave them their look of ageless youth. She spoke with cool clarity. “Ailien, I have decided that today I shall ask my sons’ father to take a concubine.”

Madame Kang’s round mouth dropped ajar. Her white small teeth, which were her one beauty, showed between her full lips. “Has — he — has he, too—” she gasped.

“He has not,” Madame Wu said. “No, it is nothing like that. Of course, I have never asked what he does at his men’s feasts. That has nothing to do with me or our home. No, it is only for his own sake — and mine.”

“But how — for you?” Madame Kang asked. She felt at this moment suddenly superior in her own relationship to Mr. Kang. Such a step would never have occurred to her, nor, she was sure, to him. A concubine always in the house, a member of the family, her children fighting with the other children, she contending with the first wife for the man — all this would be worse than flower houses.

“I wish for it,” Madame Wu said. She was gazing now into the depths of the clear little pool. The orchids she had plucked an hour ago lay on her knee, still fresh. So quiet was she that in her presence flowers lived many hours without fading.

“But will he consent?” Madame Kang asked gravely. “He has always loved you.”

“He will not consent at first,” Madame Wu said tranquilly.

Now that she had received this news, Madame Kang was full of questions. They poured out of her, and the fan dropped from her hand. “But will you choose the girl — or he? And, Ailien, if she has children, can you bear it? Oh, me, is there not always trouble in a house where two women are under one man’s roof?”

“I cannot complain of it if at my wish he takes her,” Madame Wu said.

“Ailien, you would not compel him?” Madame Kang asked with pleading.

“I have never compelled him to do anything,” Madame Wu replied.

Someone coughed, and both ladies looked up. Ying stood in the doorway. On her round cheerful face was a mischievous look which Madame Wu at once recognized.

“Do not tell me that on this day of all days Little Sister Hsia is here!” she exclaimed. Her lovely voice was tinged with rueful mirth.

“It is she,” Ying said. She stopped to laugh and then covered her mouth with her hand. “Oh, heaven, she will hear me,” she whispered. “But Lady, I swear she does not understand a no. I told her you were having guests—”

“Not that it was my birthday!” Madame Wu exclaimed. “I do not want to have to invite her.”

“I am not so stupid as that,” Ying replied. “But I told her that Madame Kang was here.”

“I am going,” Madame Kang said with haste. “I have no time to listen to foreign gospel today. Indeed, Ailien, I came here when I should have been directing the affairs of the house, only to give you my gift.”

But Madame Wu put out her slender hand. “Meichen, you may not go. You must sit here with me, and together we will be kind to her and listen to her. If she does not leave at the end of a half an hour, then you may rise and say farewell.”

Madame Kang yielded, as she always did, being unable to refuse anything to one she loved. She sat down again in great good nature, and Ying went away and came back bringing with her a foreigner, a woman.

“Little Sister Hsia!” she announced.

“Oh, Madame Wu — oh, Madame Kang!” Little Sister Hsia cried. She was a tall, thin, pale woman, now nearly middle-aged, whose birthplace was England. The scanty hair on her head was the color of sand, and she had fish eyes. Her nose was thin and high, and her lips were blue. In her Western dress of striped gray cotton she looked older than she was, but even at her best she could never have been pretty. Long ago the two Chinese ladies had come to this conclusion. But they liked her for her goodness and pitied her for her lonely life in the city where there were so few of her kind. They did not, as some of their friends did, put her off with excuses when she came to see them. Indeed, in this both Madame Wu and Madame Kang were much too kind. But since Little Sister Hsia was a virgin, there could be no talk in her presence of concubines.

“Please sit down, Little Sister,” Madame Wu said in her pretty voice. “Have you eaten your breakfast?”

Little Sister Hsia laughed. She had never, in spite of many years of living in the city, learned to be wholly at ease with the ladies. She laughed incessantly while she talked. “Oh … I get up to box farmers,” she said. She studied Chinese faithfully every day, but since she had a dull ear she still spoke as a Westerner. Now she confused the sounds of two words. The two ladies looked at each other with a faint bewilderment, although they were accustomed to Little Sister’s confusions.

“Box farmers?” Madame Kang repeated.

“Resemble farmers,” Madame Wu murmured. “The two words are much alike, it is true.”

“Oh, did I say that?” Little Sister cried, laughing. “Oh, please, I am too stupid!”

But Madame Wu saw the red rush up from her neck and spot her pale skin, and she understood the tumult in this uneasy foreign heart.

“Ying, bring some tea and some little cakes,” she said. “Bring some of the long-life cakes,” she added, and relented. “Why should I not tell my foreign friend that it is my birthday?”

“Oh, your birthday!” Little Sister Hsia cried. “Oh, I didn’t know—”

“Why should you know?” Madame Wu asked. “I am forty years old today.”

Little Sister Hsia gazed at her with eyes that were wistful. “Forty?” she repeated. She fluttered her hands and laughed her meaningless shy laughter. “Why,” she stammered, “why, Madame Wu, you look twenty.”

“How old are you, Little Sister?” Madame Kang asked politely.

Madame Wu looked at her with gentle reproach. “Meichen, I have never told you, but it is not polite, according to the Western custom, to ask a woman’s age. My second son’s wife, who has lived in Shanghai and knows foreigners, told me so.”

“Not polite?” Madame Kang repeated. Her round black eyes looked blank. “Why not?”

“Oh, ha, ha!” Little Sister Hsia laughed. “It doesn’t matter — I have been here so long, I am so used—”

Madame Kang looked at her with mild interest. “Then how old are you?” she asked again.

Little Sister Hsia was suddenly solemn. “Oh — thirtyish,” she said in a low quick voice.

Madame Kang did not understand her. “Thirty-six,” she repeated amiably.

“No, no, not thirty-six, not so much,” Little Sister Hsia was laughing again, but there was protest in the laughter.

Madame Wu heard this protest. “Come,” she said, “what does age matter? It is a good thing to live life year by year, enjoying each year.” She understood, by her gift of divining others, that the matter of age touched this Western woman because she was still a virgin. An old virgin! She had once seen this before in her own mother’s family. Her mother’s mother’s youngest sister had remained an old virgin, because the man she had been about to marry had died. The family had admired her and at the same time had been irritated daily by an elderly unmarried woman withering under their roof. At last, for her own peace, she had become a nun. In a fashion this Western woman was also perhaps a nun.

In her great kindness Madame Wu now said, “I have guests coming in a short time, Little Sister, but before they come preach a little gospel to us.” She knew that nothing pleased the foreign woman so much as to preach.

Little Sister Hsia looked at her with gratitude and reached her hand into a deep black bag she carried with her always. Out of this she brought a thick book with a worn leather cover and a black spectacle case. She took out the spectacles and put them on her high nose and opened the book.

“I was guided today, dear Madame Wu,” she said in an earnest and touching voice, “to tell you the story of the man who built his house on sand.”

Madame Kang rose. “Excuse me,” she said in her loud somewhat flat voice. “I left my family affairs unsettled.”

She bowed and walked out of the court with her heavy solid footsteps.

Madame Wu, who had risen, sat down again as soon as she was gone, and calling Ying to her side she gave direction that the broth she had promised was to be sent after Madame Kang for her grandson. Then she smiled faintly at Little Sister Hsia. “Tell me what your lord said to this man who built his house on sand,” she said courteously.

“Dear Madame Wu, he is your Lord, too,” Little Sister Hsia breathed. “You have only to accept Him.”

Madame Wu smiled. “It is very kind of him, and you must tell him so,” she said, still courteously. “Now proceed, my friend.”

There was something so unapproachable in Madame Wu’s dignity as she said this that Little Sister Hsia began to read nervously. Her broken accent made the story difficult to follow, but Madame Wu listened gravely, her eyes fixed on the darting goldfish. Twice Ying came to the door of the court and made signs over Little Sister’s bent head, but Madame Wu shook her head slightly. As soon as Little Sister Hsia was finished, however, she rose. “Thank you, Little Sister,” she said. “That was a pleasant story. Please come again when I have time.”

But Little Sister Hsia, who had also been planning a prayer, rose unwillingly, fumbling with her bag and her spectacles and the heavy book.

“Shall we not have a little prayer?” Her mistaken accent really said “cake” instead of “prayer,” and for a moment Madame Wu was confused. They had had cakes, had they not? Then she understood and in kindness did not smile.

“You pray for me at home, Little Sister,” she said. “Just now I have other duties.”

She began walking toward the door of the court as she spoke, and Ying suddenly appeared and took over Little Sister Hsia, and Madame Wu was alone again. She returned to the pool and stood looking down in it, her slender figure reflected in it quite clearly from head to foot. The orchids, she discovered, were still in her hand, and she lifted that hand and let the flowers fall into the water. A swarm of goldfish darted up and nibbled at the orchids and swerved away again.

“Nothing but flowers,” she said, and laughed a little at them. They were always hungry! A house built on sand? But she could never be so foolish. This house in which she lived had already stood for hundreds of years. Twenty generations of the Wu family had lived and died here.

“Mother, I should have come before to wish you long life.” She heard her eldest son’s voice from the door. She turned.

“Come in, my son,” she said.

“Long life, Mother!” Liangmo said with affection. He had bowed before his mother half playfully when he came in. The Wu family was not quite old-fashioned enough to keep the ancient custom of kneeling obeisance to elders on birthdays, but the bow was in memory of that old custom.

Madame Wu accepted his greeting with a graceful receiving bow. “Thank you, my son,” she said. “Now sit down. I want to talk to you.”

She sat down again in one of the bamboo chairs and motioned him to the other, and he sat down on the edge of it in deference to her.

“How well you look, son,” she said, examining his handsome young face. He was, if possible, more handsome than his father had been at the same age, for she had given him something of her own delicacy, too.

He wore this morning a long robe of summer silk, the color of pale green water. His dark short hair was brushed back, and his dark olive skin was smooth with health and good food. His eyes were quiet with content.

“I have married him happily,” Madame Wu told herself. “And the little child, my grandson?” she asked aloud.

“I have not seen him this morning,” Liangmo replied. “But had he been ill I would have heard of it.”

He could not keep from answering his mother’s smile. There was great affection between them. He trusted her wisdom far more than he did his own, and because of this when she had asked him to marry in order that there would not be confusion in the family because of the marriage of his younger brother ahead of him, he had said at once, “Choose someone for me, Mother. You know me better than I know myself.” He was completely satisfied with Meng, his pretty wife, and with the son she had given him within a year of their marriage. Now she was pregnant again.

“I have been saving some good news for this day, Mother,” he said at this moment.

“It is a day for good news,” Madame Wu replied.

“My son’s mother is to have her second child,” he announced proudly. “Her second moon cycle has passed, and now she is sure. She told me three days ago, and I said we would wait until our mother’s birthday to tell it to the family.”

“That is good news indeed,” Madame Wu said warmly. “You must tell her that I shall send her a present.”

At this moment her eyes fell on the little box of pearls that she had put on a small porcelain table. “I have the gift,” she exclaimed. She took up the box and opened it. “Her own mother gave me, an hour ago, these pearl earrings. But pearls are for young wives, I think, and it would be fitting for me to give them to our daughter. When you return to Meng— No, I will go to her with you. But first, my son, is there anything I should do in regard to our guests today and the feast?”

“Nothing, Mother,” he replied. “We are doing everything for you. Your children want to give you a day of idle joy. You shall not even ask about anything — only enjoy. Where is my father?”

“I doubt he can rise before noon even on my birthday,” Madame Wu said, smiling. “But I told him he must not, indeed. He enjoys the day so much more when he does not get up early, and he will be fresh and happy at the feast.”

“You are too good to us all,” Liangmo said.

She surveyed him with her steady beautiful eyes as though she did not hear this. “My son,” she said, “since doubtless we will be interrupted soon, I will speak at once of what I am planning to do. I have decided upon a thing, and yet I feel it is due you, as my eldest son, to tell you what I plan. I have decided to invite your father to take a concubine.”

She said these stupendous words in her calm, pretty voice. Liangmo heard them without understanding them. Then they crowded his mind and deafened him like thunder. His handsome full face paled to the color of cream.

“Mother!” he gasped. “Mother, has he — has my father—”

“Certainly not,” she said. But it struck her with a touch of pain that Liangmo, too, had first asked this question. Was it possible that her husband could so seem to all the sort of man who might …? She put away the unworthy thought. “Your father is still so youthful, although forty-five years old, and he is still so handsome, that it is no wonder that even you, his son, should put that question,” she said. “No, he has been and is most faithful.”

She paused, then with the nearest to diffidence that her son had ever seen in her calm manner, she went on, “No, I have my own reasons for the decision. But I should like to be assured that you, my eldest son, would accept her coming and help the house to accept it when it is known. It is natural that there will be talk and some disturbance. I must not hear the disturbance. But you must hear it and maintain the dignity of your parents.”

By now, although his cheeks were still cream pale, Liangmo had recovered himself. His black eyebrows settled themselves above his eyes, which were like his mother’s. “Of course, the matter is between you and my father,” he said. “But if you will let me step beyond my place, I beg you that if my father has not this wish you will not ask it of him. We are a happy family. How do we know what a strange woman will bring into the house? Her children will be the same age as your grandchildren. Will this not be confusing the generations? If she is very young, will not your sons’ wives be jealous of her position with my father? I can foresee many sorrows.”

“Perhaps you cannot understand, at your age, the relationship between men and women of my generation,” Madame Wu replied. “But it is because I have always been happy with your father, and he with me, that I have decided upon the step. Please, my son, return to your place. I require of you only to obey your mother in this as you have in all things. You have been the best of my sons. What you say will influence your younger brothers. What Meng says will influence the young wives. You must help her, too.”

Liangmo struggled against this in his own mind. But so deep was his habit of obedience to his mother that he obeyed her now. “I will do my best, Mother, but I will not pretend that what you have told me does not sadden this day.”

She smiled slightly. “I am really saving you greater sadness on other days,” she said. And then she saw that what she said was an enigma to this man so much younger than she, and so she rose and took up the box of pearls. “Come,” she said. “We will go and see Meng and I will make my gift.”

He had risen when she did, and now he stood beside her, young and strongly built as his father was, head and shoulders above her. She put out her little hand and rested it on his arm for a moment in a gesture of affection so rare that it startled him. She did not easily endure the touch of another human being, even her own children’s. He looked down at her and met her clear upward look.

“In you,” she said distinctly, “I have built my house upon a rock.”

Meng was playing with her little boy in the courtyard of her own house within this great house. She was alone with him except for his wet nurse, who squatted on her heels, laughing and watching. Both young women, mother and nurse, adored this little boy all day long. At night he slept in the nurse’s arms. In this common adoration the two women found a deep companionship. They poured out, in happy sacrifice, the love and attention the child demanded.

Meng’s body was made to bear children, and her breasts had been full of milk. But no one, not even she herself, had thought of allowing the baby to pull at her lovely small breasts and spoil their firmness. Lien had been hired to provide milk. She was the young wife of one of the farmers on the Wu lands. Her own child, also a boy, had been fed flour and water and rice gruel by his grandmother, instead of his mother’s milk. For this reason he was now thin and small and yellow, while Lien’s nursling was fat and rosy. Lien was allowed to go home once a month, and when she saw her child she wept and put him to her great breast. Her full nipples dripped milk, but the child turned away his head. He had never tasted this milk, and he did not know how to suckle. Lien could never stay out her day because of her aching breasts. By midafternoon she must hasten back to the Wu house. There her nursling waited for her, shouting with rage and hunger.

At the sight of him she forgot the thin yellow child. She opened her arms, laughing, and the big fat boy screamed for her from his mother’s knees. Then Lien ran to him, snatching open her coat as she ran. She knelt beside him at Meng’s side, and with both hands the child grasped her breast like a cup and drank in great gulps. Together Meng and Lien laughed, and each felt in her own body the child’s satisfaction.

Now, to see the two women as they watched the child, it would have been hard to tell from the two faces which was the mother. Indeed, the child made no difference. He smiled radiantly on both. He was learning to walk, and he took the few steps from one to the other, laughing and falling upon each in turn.

Meng was always happy, but she had been deeper in happiness the last few days than she had ever been. She had told no one except Liangmo of the coming of the second child. Servants, of course, knew it. Her own maid had first reminded her that her second moon cycle had passed without sign. In the servants’ rooms there was already secret rejoicing. But in a great house servants were like furniture, used without heeding.

Lien knew, and knowing it was more gay than ever. A house with many young wet nurses was a lucky house. She had gradually ceased to love her own child. All her rich animal love was transferred to her nursling. Her own home was poor and hard, the food scanty. The mother-in-law had a bitter tongue and a hand greedy for the wages Lien brought home. Although Lien had loved her home once and had wept all day and all night when her husband’s mother had sent her to the Wu house, now she had come to love the good food, the ease, the idleness. Beyond nursing this healthy boy, nothing was asked of her. She was urged to eat, to drink, to sleep. Her young, pleasure-loving body responded quickly. This was now her home, and she loved her nursling more than her child.

She longed, in the soft fullness of her content this morning, to tell her young mistress how rejoiced she was at the promise of a second birth, but she hesitated. These rich, idle, soft young women allowed anything, it seemed, and yet sometimes they flew into anger not expected and causeless. She continued only to laugh, therefore, and to praise the little boy.

“A little godling,” she said fondly. “I never see one like him anywhere, Mistress.”

Before Meng could do more than smile, they heard footsteps. The child ran to Lien, and from her arms stared at his grandmother and father. Meng rose.

“Here you are, Meng,” Madame Wu said. “Sit down, child. Rest yourself, please. Come here to me, son of my son.”

Lien pushed the little boy forward and inched herself along on her heels so that he was always in the shelter of her arms. Thus he stood at Madame Wu’s knee and stared at her with large black eyes whose corners were tucked in. He put his fingers in his mouth, and she took them gently away.

“A lovely boy,” she murmured. “Have you raised a name for him yet?”

“There is no haste,” Liangmo replied. “He does not need it until he goes to school.”

She looked down at the little boy. He stood in their midst, the center of them all. And yet, she thought musingly, it was not he himself, not this simple creature, who so held their hopes in him. Were he to die, another would take his place. No, he was a symbol of continuing life. It was the symbol which held all their dreams.

She turned her eyes from the charming little face and remembered why she had come.

“Meng, Liangmo tells me you have added happiness,” she said. “I have come to thank you and to bring you a gift.”

Meng blushed her ready peach bloom and turned her little head. The one defect in her beauty was her hair, which tended to curl in spite of the fragrant wood oil with which she continually smoothed it. Now her pleasure was mingled with fear lest her hair was curling again before Liangmo’s mother’s eyes. She loved Madame Wu, but she feared her. No one ever saw a hair misplaced on Madame Wu’s graceful head. Then she put out both hands to receive the gift and forgot her fears.

“My mother’s pearls!” she breathed.

“She gave them to me, but I am too old for pearls,” Madame Wu said. “Now everything happens for good in this house. You declared your happiness today, and I had these pearls ready to give you.”

“I have always craved these pearls,” Meng said. She opened the box and gazed down at the jewels.

“Put them on,” Liangmo commanded her.

Meng obeyed. Her soft cheeks blushed more deeply. They were all watching her, even the little boy. But her slender fingers did not fumble as she fastened the pearls in her ears.

“I used to put them in my ears and beg my mother to let me keep them,” she confessed.

“Now you have earned them,” Madame Wu said. She turned to her son. “See how rosy the pearls have become. They were silver gray.”

It was true. The pearls looked rose pink against Meng’s soft flesh.

“Ai ya,” Lien cried. “She must not look too pretty or the baby will be a girl!”

They laughed, and Madame Wu closed the laughter by saying as she rose to depart, “I would welcome a girl. After all, there must be female in the world as well as male. We forget it, but it is true, is it not, Meng?”

But Meng was too shy to answer such a question.

It was the hour of the birthday feast. Madame Wu had taken her place at the left of Old Lady, who because of her age and generation had the highest seat. Mr. Wu sat on his mother’s right, and on the other side of him sat Liangmo. Tsemo, the second son, sat on Madame Wu’s left, and on Tsemo’s left the third son, Fengmo. Yenmo, the fourth son, was still a child of seven. But he had come to live in his father’s rooms, and now he stood in the circle of his father’s arm. Thus one by one each member was in his place, and below the sons the two sons’ wives sat, Meng with her child on her knee, and a maidservant stood near to take it away if it became troublesome. Old Lady was proud of her great-grandchild but easily impatient, whereas Madame Wu had endless patience.

Indeed, nothing seemed to fret her. Her smooth pearl-colored face looked with pleasure on this great gathering of her family. At six other tables, of eight places each, there were uncles and aunts and cousins and friends and their children, and at one table Madame Kang presided. All had sent gifts to Madame Wu before this day. These gifts were of many kinds — pairs of vases, packages of dates, boxes of soft cakes and sweets, scrolls of silk upon which were pasted characters cut out of gold paper, each carrying a good wish. There were many other gifts. Mr. Wu had added two bolts of heavy brocaded silk, and Old Lady had added two boxes of fine tea for her personal gift.

The family gift had been expensive. They had ordered a painting, by the best artist in the city, of the Goddess of Long Life. All the guests agreed as to its beauty when they came to offer their first greetings to Madame Wu. The picture hung in the place of honor, and even its details were correct. The goddess held the immortal peach in her hand. By her side was a stag, red bats flew about her head in blessing, and from her girdle hung the gourd containing the elixir of life. Even long-lived herbs were not forgotten by the artist; he had tied them to her staff.

On the wall behind Madame Wu hung a square of red satin upon which were sewn the characters for long life cut out of black velvet. Against this bright satin Madame Wu’s dark head was dainty and austere.

To all the greetings and good wishes of the guests Liangmo responded for Madame Wu. Before the guests were seated, he and Meng had gone to each table and thanked the guests, for their mother, as the eldest son and daughter-in-law of the house.

Everything, that is, had been done with ease and yet with some formality, which showed that the Wu family valued the old ways and understood the new. Every now and again Madame Wu rose from her seat and moved among the guests to make sure that all had been properly served. Whenever she did this the guests rose and begged her not to trouble herself, and she in turn begged them to be seated again.

When she had so done twice, the third time Mr. Wu leaned across the corner of the table and said, “I beg you not to rise again, my sons’ mother. I will take your place when the sweet is served.”

Madame Wu bent her head and smiled slightly in thanks, and then she saw that Old Lady had taken too large a piece of fowl and was dripping the broth from it upon her gown. She took her own chopsticks and held the bit until Old Lady could encompass it all in her mouth. As soon as she could speak Old Lady did so with her usual vehemence. “Ying!” she cried loudly.

Ying, waiting always near her own mistress, came near at once. “Ying!” the Old Lady cried, “you tell that piece of fat who is your man that he must cut the fowl smaller. Does he think we have the jaws of lions and tigers?”

“I will tell him, Ancient,” Ying replied.

But Old Lady felt quite happy now, being full of food, and she began to speak to everybody in her loud, flat old voice.

“Foreigners eat huge pieces of meat,” she said, looking around the room. “I have never seen it, but I have heard that the whole leg of a sheep or a lump of cow as large as a small child is set on their tables, and they hack it with knives and cut off pieces from it. They take it up with iron prongs and thrust it into their mouths.”

Everybody laughed. “You are in good spirits, Mother,” Mr. Wu said. He had never tried to correct the mistaken statements of his mother. In the first place, he did not wish to make her unhappy, and in the second place, it made no difference anyway and so was not worth the trouble.

At this moment the sweetened rice with its eight precious fruits came in, which was a sign that the feast was half over, and everyone looked pleased at the sight of the delicacy. At the door Ying saw her husband standing half hidden in order to hear the praises of the guests. Madame Wu saw him, too, and leaned toward Ying.

“Tell him to come here,” she commanded.

Ying’s pride rose in a flush to her plump cheeks, but out of good manners she pretended to belittle her husband.

“Lady, do not trouble yourself with my good-for-nothing,” she said in a loud voice.

“But it is my pleasure,” Madame Wu insisted.

So with false unwillingness Ying beckoned to her husband, and he came in and stood before Madame Wu, smoothing his filthy apron with pride, for no good cook has a clean apron and he knew it.

“I must thank you for this sweet rice and its eight precious fruits,” Madame Wu said in her kind way. “It is always delicious, but today it is better than ever. This I take as a sign of your faithfulness and goodness of heart. I will remember it before the day is over.”

The cook knew that she meant she would give gifts to the servants at the end of the feast, but in good manners he pretended otherwise. “Please do not think it good,” he said. “I do not deserve mention.”

“Go away, oaf!” Ying whispered loudly while her eyes shone with pride. And so he went away, well pleased, and behind his back Ying tried not to look too proud and beyond her station.

And now Mr. Wu must rise to fulfill his promise, and he went to every table and begged the guests to eat heartily of the sweet. Madame Wu followed him thoughtfully with her eyes. Did she imagine that he lingered a moment at Madame Kang’s table where the pretty young third daughter sat beside her mother?

“Pudding, pudding!” Old Lady complained, and Madame Wu put out her slender arm and, holding back her sleeve, she took up a porcelain spoon and dipped the pudding generously into Old Lady’s bowl.

“Spoon — where’s my spoon?” Old Lady muttered, and Madame Wu put a spoon into the old hand.

Then she continued to watch Mr. Wu thoughtfully while everybody at the table was silent in enjoyment of the dish. Mr. Wu was beyond doubt lingering beside Madame Kang’s pretty daughter. The child was modern, too modern, for her hair was cut to her shoulders and curled in the foreign fashion. She had been to school for a year in Shanghai before that city was taken by the enemy. Now she frequently made her mother and father wretched by her discontent in living in this small provincial city.

Madame Wu watched her as she lifted her head and replied pertly to something Mr. Wu had said. Mr. Wu laughed and went on, and Madame Wu took her spoon and dipped up a fragment of the glutinous sweet. When Mr. Wu returned she looked at him with her long clear eyes.

“Thank you, my sons’ father,” she said, and her voice was its usual music.

The feast went on its long pleasant course. The sweet was followed by meats, and then at last by the six bowls. Instead of rice the cook had made long fine noodles, because it was a birthday feast and the long noodles were a symbol of long life. Madame Wu, always delicate at eating, refused the meats, but it was necessary that she eat some of the noodles. They were made even longer than usual by the zealous cook, but she wound them with graceful skill around her chopsticks.

But Old Lady had no such patience. She held the heaped bowl to her mouth with her left hand and pushed the noodles into her mouth with her chopsticks, supping them in like a child. Old Lady ate everything heartily. “I shall be ill tonight,” she said in her penetrating old voice. “But it is worth it, daughter, on your fortieth birthday.”

“Eat to your own content, Mother,” Madame Wu replied.

One by one guests rose with small wine bowls in their hands, and toasts were drunk. To these Madame Wu did not reply. She was a quiet woman, and she looked at Mr. Wu, who rose in her place and accepted the good wishes of all. Only Madame Kang, catching her friend’s eye, silently lifted her bowl, and as silently Madame Wu lifted hers and the two drank together in secret understanding.

By now Old Lady was full of food, and she leaned against the high back of her chair and surveyed her family. “Liangmo looks sick,” she declared.

Everybody looked at Liangmo, who indeed smiled in a very sickish fashion. “I am not ill, Grandmother,” he said hastily.

Meng gazed at him with troubled eyes. “You do look strange,” she murmured. “You have been strange all morning.”

At this, brothers and brothers’ wives all looked at him, and he shook his head. Madame Wu did not speak. She quite understood that Liangmo was still unable to accept what she had told him today. He looked at her at this moment with pleading in his eyes, but she merely smiled a little and looked away.

It was when she turned her head away that she caught the shrewd, too-intelligent gaze of her second daughter-in-law. Tsemo’s wife, Rulan, had not said one word all during the feast, but speech was never necessary for this girl’s comprehension of what was happening about her. Madame Wu perceived that she had seen the son’s pleadings and also the mother’s reply. But Tsemo himself paid no heed to what went on. He was an impatient young man, and he sat back from the table, tapping his foot restlessly. For him the birthday feast had lasted long enough.

Somewhere an overfed child vomited suddenly on the brick floor with a great splatter, and there was a fuss among the servants.

“Call in the dogs,” Madame Kang advised, but Ying, hastening to the scene of the disaster, begged her pardon.

“Our Lady will not allow dogs under the tables,” she explained.

“You see, Mother,” Madame Kang’s pretty third daughter pouted. “I told you nobody does — it’s so old-fashioned. I’m always ashamed when you do it at home.”

“Well, well,” Madame Kang said, “be quiet now about your shame in the presence of others.”

“Too much talk from girls,” Mr. Kang said, but he was fond of this Linyi, because she was the prettiest of all his daughters, and he smiled at her.

Old Lady staggered to her feet. “I am going to bed,” she said. “I must prepare to be ill.”

Madame Wu rose. “Do go, Mother,” she said. “We will remain with the guests in the other room.”

She waited while two servants led Old Lady out, and all the guests stood. Then she looked at Mr. Wu.

“Will you take your guests to the main hall?” she directed gently. “The ladies will come into my own sitting room.” She moved away as she spoke and the women followed her, and the men went with Mr. Wu in dividing streams. Children were taken to the courts and held by their nurses while they slept.

Madame Wu paused at the door. “Take the sick little one to the bamboo bedroom,” she directed its nurse, “it is cool there. He must sleep awhile.” The child who had been wailing stopped suddenly at the sound of her voice.

The feast was over, but in her sitting room Madame Wu maintained her delicate dignity before the women. She spoke little, but her silence was not noticed because she was by habit a silent woman. Only when some decision had to be made did they turn to her by instinct, for they knew that in this house she made all decisions. Then whatever she had decided she made known in a few simple, clear words, her voice always pretty and smooth and gentle as water slipping over stones.

Around her the talk ebbed and flowed. A small troupe of actors had been hired for entertainment, and they performed their tricks. The children watched with pleasure, and the elders watched while they talked and sipped hot tea of the finest leaves plucked before summer rains fell. In the presence of younger women there was no talk possible between the older women, and Madame Kang slept a little. Once Madame Wu said to Ying, “Go and see if our Old Lady is ill.”

Ying went away and came back laughing. “She has been ill and has cast up everything,” she told Madame Wu. “But she still says it was worth it.”

Everyone laughed, and at the sound of the laughter Madame Kang woke. “It is time we went home,” she said to Madame Wu. “We must not weary you, Sister, for you are to live a hundred years.”

Madame Wu smiled and rose as one by one the guests came to her to say good-by. Packets of sweetmeats and gifts and money from the guests had been prepared for the servants, and now Ying brought these in on a tray and servants came in to receive them. They bowed before Madame Wu, their hands clasped politely on their breasts, and Madame Wu replied to each one courteously and gave him his gifts. All these servants had feasted, too, in the kitchens.

So at last she was alone again, and she allowed herself to be weary for one moment. Small muscles that held her bones gracefully erect relaxed at throat and breast and waist, and for a moment she looked wilted as a flower and now almost her age. Then she straightened her slender shoulders. It was too soon to be weary. The day was not yet ended.

An hour later, after she had rested, she rose and walked up and down the room seven times. Then she went to the window and leaned on the low sill. The window was long and wide, and the lattices were thrown back. Outside was the court where she had sat this morning with Madame Kang and then with Liangmo. She recalled their horror at what she was about to do, and unconsciously she smiled her pretty smile which was neither sad nor gay.

Ying at this moment appeared at the round moon gate of the court and she caught the smile. “Lady, you look like a young girl there in the moonlight!” she called.

Madame Wu’s smile did not change, but she turned and sat down at the toilet table. Ying came in and took off her garments down to the fine white silk of her innermost ones. Then she let down Madame Wu’s long hair and began to comb it in firm strong strokes with the fine-toothed sandalwood comb. She saw the quiet face in the mirror and saw how large and black the eyes looked tonight.

“Are you tired, Lady?” Ying asked.

“Not at all,” Madame Wu replied.

But Ying went on, “You have had a long day. And now, Lady, you are forty and beginning another kind of life, and I think you ought not to work so hard. You should give over the government of the house and shops to your eldest son, and you should let your son’s wife direct the kitchens, and even your second son’s wife could attend to the supervision of the servants. Now you should sit in the court and read and look at your flowers and remember how good your life is under this roof, and how your sons’ wives are bearing sons.”

“Perhaps you are right,” Madame Wu replied. “I have been thinking of such things myself. Ying, I shall ask my sons’ father to take a small wife.”

She said this so calmly that for a moment she knew it was not comprehended. Then she felt the comb stop in her hair, and she felt Ying’s hand holding her hair together tighten at the nape of her neck.

“It is not necessary for you to speak,” Madame Wu said. The comb began to move again too quickly. “You are pulling my hair,” Madame Wu said.

Ying threw the comb on the floor. “I will not take care of any lady but you!” she burst forth.

“It is not asked of you,” Madame Wu replied.

But Ying went down on her knees on the tiled floor beside Madame Wu, and she sobbed and wiped her eyes with the corner of the new sateen jacket which she had put on for the day. “Oh, my mistress!” she sobbed. “Does he compel you, my precious? Has he forgotten all your goodness and your beauty? Tell me just one thing—”

“It is my own will,” Madame Wu said firmly. “Ying, get up from your knees. If he comes in he will think I have been beating you—”

“You!” Ying sobbed. “You who could never put out your hand to pinch a mosquito, even when it sucks your blood!” Nevertheless she rose and took up the comb from the floor and, sniffling in her tears, again she combed Madame Wu’s hair.

Madame Wu began to speak in her quiet, reasonable voice. “I tell you first, Ying, so that I may tell you how to behave among the servants. There is to be no loud talk among you and no blaming this one and that. When the young woman comes—”

“Who is she?” Ying asked.

“I do not know yet,” Madame Wu said.

“When does she come?” Ying interrupted again.

“I have not decided,” Madame Wu said. “But when she comes she is to be received as one honored in the house, a little lower than I am, a little higher than any sons’ wives. She will not be an actress or a singing girl or any of those persons, but a good woman. Everything is to be done in order. Above all, there is not to be a word spoken against my son’s father or against the young woman, for it is I who will invite her to come.”

Ying could not bear this. “Lady, since we have been together so many years, is it allowed for me to ask you why?”

“You may ask, but I will not tell you,” Madame Wu said tranquilly.

In silence Ying finished combing the long hair and scenting it and braiding it. She wound it into a coil for Madame Wu’s bath, and then she supervised the pouring of the water in the bathroom. There stood a deep round jar of green-lined pottery, and two water carriers brought in great wooden buckets of hot and cold water through an outer door and poured it in and went away again. Ying tried the water with her hand and dropped in scent from a bottle and then, holding fresh soap and silken towels, she went into the other room.

“Your bath is ready, Lady,” she said as she said every night.

Madame Wu took off her last garments and walked, as slender as a young girl, quite naked across the room and into the bathroom. She took Ying’s hand and stepped into the tub, and sat cross-legged in the water while Ying washed her as tenderly as though she were a child. The water was clear, and Madame Wu’s exquisite flesh was ivory white against the deep green of the porcelain. The water was about her shoulders and as she thus sat submerged she reflected on her own wisdom. Her body was actually as beautiful as it had ever been. Mr. Wu had not allowed her to suckle her children, and her little breasts looked like lotus buds under water.

When she stepped out Ying wrapped her in the silken sheet and pressed her flesh dry and put fresh silk night garments upon her, and tended the nails of her hands and her feet. Then when all was finished she opened the door of the bedroom. It was still empty, for Mr. Wu never came in until Ying had gone away. There were, of course, some nights when he never came at all, but these were few. Madame Wu stepped upon the long carved stool at the bedside, and from this into the high, silk-canopied bed.

“Shall I not draw the bed curtains?” Ying asked. “The moonlight is too bright.”

“No,” Madame Wu said, “let me see the moonlight.”

So the curtains remained behind the big silver hooks, and Ying felt of the teapot and of the little silver pipe which Madame Wu smoked sometimes in the night if she were sleepless, and she saw that the matches were beside the candle.

“Until tomorrow,” Madame Wu said.

“Until tomorrow, Lady,” Ying said and went away.

Madame Wu lay very still and straight under the silken sheet and the soft silk-stuffed summer quilt. The moonlight shone upon the wall opposite her bed. It was bright indeed, so bright that she could see the outlines of the picture on the scroll which hung there. It was a simple picture but painted by an artist. He had used space instead of much paint, and with only a few strokes of his brush he had suggested a cliff and a crest upon a mountain, and a small bent figure struggling upward. None could tell whether this was a man or a woman. It was only a human creature.

Sometimes, or so it appeared to Madame Wu, this small figure seemed higher on his climb than he did at other times. Sometimes he seemed to have fallen back many miles. She knew, of course, that this depended entirely upon how the light fell from the window. Tonight the edge of the window cut the picture with shadow and then light so that the human creature seemed suddenly to be very near the top of the mountain. But still she knew that he was exactly where he had always been, and neither higher nor lower.

She lay, not thinking, not remembering, but simply being all that she was. She was neither waiting nor expecting. If he did not come tonight she would presently fall asleep and tell him at another time. Times were chosen and appointed. If one forced them, they were wrong. All the quiet strength of her decision would gather around the opportune moment, and then it would become actually right.

At this moment she heard the footsteps of Mr. Wu coming solidly through the courtyard. He came through the outer room and into her sitting room. Then the door opened and he stood there in his bedroom. He had been drinking wine. Her sensitive nostrils caught the smell of heated wine as the alcohol distilled through his breath and his skin. But she was not disturbed, for he did not drink to excess at any time, and tonight of course he had been drinking with friends. What was more natural at the end of a feast day than such drinking? He had his pipe in his hand, and he was about to put it on the table. Then he delayed for an instant and stood holding it in his hand.

“Are you tired?” he asked abruptly.

“Not at all tired,” she replied tranquilly.

He put the pipe down and, loosening the curtains from their hook, he got into bed behind them.

After twenty-four years, there was, of course, a certain routine in their life. She would like to have varied it somehow, since this was the last night that he would spend with her. But she had already considered such variation and had decided against it. It would only be harder for her to convince him of the wisdom of her decision — that is, if he needed convincing. She had tried to prepare herself for the possibility that he might even be pleased. In that case it would be easier. But he might not be pleased. There was also the possibility that he would refuse to the end to accept her decision. But she thought he would not refuse, certainly not to the end.

She was careful, therefore, to be almost exactly the median of what she always was. That is, she was neither cold nor ardent. She was pleasant, she was tender. She saw to it that nothing was lacking, but that nothing was over and above. Fulfillment and not surfeit was her natural gift in all things.

She was, however, somewhat disconcerted to find that he himself was not quite as usual. He seemed disturbed and a little distracted.

“You were more beautiful today than you have ever been,” he murmured. “Everybody said so.”

She smiled up into his eyes that were above hers as she lay on the pillow. It was her usual pretty smile, but in the half-light of the single candle on the little table by the bed, she saw his dark eyes flicker and burn with a flame certainly more intense than she had seen for a long time. She closed her eyes, and her heart began to beat. Would she regret her decision? She lay as soft as a plucked flower for the next two hours, asking herself many times this question. Would she regret? Would she not regret?

At the end of the two hours, she knew she would not regret. When he slept she rose and went silently into her bathroom and bathed herself again in cool water. She did not go back to the bed where he lay outflung, sleeping in deep-drawn breaths. She picked up her own little pipe and filled its tiny bowl with sweet tobacco and lit it. Then she went to the window and stood watching the sky. The moon was almost down. In another five minutes it would have sunk behind the long lines of roofs of this ancient house. Peace filled her being. She would never sleep in this room again as long as she lived. She had already chosen her place. Next to Old Lady’s court was the empty one where Mr. Wu’s father had once lived. She would take that one, on the pretext that she could watch Old Lady by night as well as by day. It was a beautiful court in the very center of the great house. She would live there, alone and at peace, the single heart in all the life that went on about her.

From the big bed Mr. Wu suddenly yawned and woke. “I ought to go back to my own rooms,” he said. “You have had a long day and you should sleep.”

Whenever he said that, and he always said it, being a courteous man in love as well as in business, she always replied. “Do not move, I beg you. I can sleep very well.”

But tonight she did not say this. She replied, without turning her head, “Thank you, Father of my sons. Perhaps you are right.”

He was so astonished at this that he climbed out of the bed and fumbled for his slippers on the floor. But he could not find them, and then she came quickly and knelt and found them and still kneeling she put them on his feet. And he, like a big child, suddenly leaned his head on her shoulder and twined his arms about her body

“You are more fragrant than a jessamine flower,” he murmured.

She laughed softly in his embrace. “Are you still drunk?”

“Drunk,” he murmured, “drunk — drunk!”

He drew her toward him again, and she grew alarmed. “Please,” she said, “may I help you to rise?” She rose, suddenly steel-strong, and pulled him upward with her.

“Have I offended you?” he asked. He was now wholly awake. She saw his dark eyes clear.

“No,” she said. “How can you offend me after twenty-four years? But — I have come to an end.”

“Come to an end?” he repeated.

“Today I am forty years old,” she said. She knew suddenly that this was the moment, now, in the middle of the night when around them the whole house lay sleeping. She moved away from him as he sat there on the bed and lit the other candles with the one that burned. One after another they flared, and the room was full of light. She sat down by the table and he sat on the bed, staring at her.

“I have been preparing for this day for many years,” she said. She folded her hands on her knees. In her white silken garments, in the moonlight, her hands on her knees, she summoned all the strong forces of her being.

He leaned forward, his hands clasped between his knees, still staring at her.

“I have been a good wife to you,” she said.

“Have I not been a good husband to you?” he asked.

“That, always,” she replied. “As men and women go, there could not be better than we have had. But now the half of my life is over.”

“Only half,” he said.

“Yet the half of yours is far away,” she went on. “Heaven has made this difference between men and women.”

He listened as he listened to anything she said, as though he knew that her words always carried a weight of meaning beyond their bare frame and beyond, perhaps, his comprehension.

“You are a young man still,” she went on. “Your fires are burning and strong. You ought to have more sons. But I have completed myself.”

He straightened his lounging body, and his full handsome face grew stern. “Can it be that I understand what you mean?” he asked.

“I see that you do understand,” she replied.

They looked at each other across the twenty-four years they had spent together in this house where their children now slept, where Old Lady slept her light, aged sleep while she waited to die.

“I do not want another woman.” His voice was rough. “I have never looked at another woman. You have been more beautiful than any woman I ever saw, and you are still more beautiful now than any woman.”

He hesitated, and his eyes fell from her face to his hands. “I saw that young girl today — and I thought when I saw her, how much more beautiful are you than she!”

She knew at once what young girl he meant. “Ah, Linyi is pretty,” she agreed. Inwardly she renewed her decision. When the talk had proceeded to the matter of who should choose another woman for him, she would choose. It would be ill for the house if the generations were mingled, and Liangmo was already married to Meng, the sister of Linyi, who were both daughters of her own closest friend.

He pursed his smooth full lips. “No,” he said, “I will not agree to your plan. What would my friends say? I have never been a man to go after women.”

She laughed softly and was amazed as she laughed that she suffered a small pang in her breast, like the prick of a dagger that does not pierce the skin. If he could begin to think of how it would seem to his friends, then he would be soon persuaded, sooner than she had thought.

“It looks very ill for a woman over forty to bear a child,” she said. “Your friends would blame you for that, too.”

“Is it necessary for you to bear a child?” he retorted.

“It is always possible,” she replied. “I should like to be spared the fear of embarrassing you.”

He spoke of friends and she of shame. They had not yet come together. She must dig into his heart and pull her roots out of him, unless they were too deep.

He looked at her. “Have you ceased altogether to love me?” he asked.

She leaned forward toward him. This now was heart to heart. “I love you as well as ever,” she said in her beautiful voice. “I want nothing but your happiness.”

“How can this be my happiness?” he asked sadly.

“You know that I have always held your happiness in my hands,” she replied. She lifted her two hands as though they held a heart. “I have held it like this, ever since the moment I first saw your face on our wedding day. I shall hold it like this until I die.”

“My happiness would be buried with you if you should die before me,” he said.

“No, for before I die, I will put it into other hands, the hands which I will prepare for it,” she said.

She saw her power over him gaining its way. He sat motionless, his eyes on her hands. “Trust me,” she whispered, still holding her hands like a cup.

“I have always trusted you,” he said.

She let her hands fall.

He went on doggedly, “I do not promise, I cannot, so quickly—”

“You need not promise anything,” she said. “I shall not force you even if I could. When was force ever my way? No, we will put this aside now. Go back into the bed and let me cover you. The night is growing cool because it is so near dawn. You must sleep and do not wake early.”

She guided him by quick soft pressures on his shoulders, on his arms and hands. He obeyed her unwillingly, and yet he did obey her. “Mind you that I have promised you nothing,” he kept saying.

“Nothing,” she agreed, “nothing!” And she drew the covers over him and put back one curtain for air and let down the other against the morning light when it came.

But he held her hand fast. “Where will you sleep?” he demanded.

“Oh — I have my bed ready,” she said, half-playfully. “Tomorrow we will meet. Nothing will be changed in the house. We will be friends, I promise you, not separated by fears and shames—”

He let her go, lulled by her promising, beautiful voice. She could always lull him. He never believed the fullness of all she meant.

And when he had dropped into sleep she went away and walked softly and alone through the courts to the court next Old Lady’s. By her order it had been kept clean and ready through the years since Old Gentleman had died, and only a few days ago she had seen to it that fresh bedding was laid ready upon the mattress of the bed. Into this new bedding she now crept. It felt chill and too new, and she trembled for a moment with the chill and with a strange sudden deathlike fatigue. Then, as though it were a sort of death into which she had come, dreamlessly she fell asleep.