Pavilion of Women

XII

THE HOUSE OF KANG was all in turmoil. This Madame Wu heard and saw the moment her sedan was lowered in the outer court. The young slave girls and the bondmaids were running everywhere, crying and reproving one another, and men servants stood silent and distraught. When the head steward saw Madame Wu he ran forward and, bowing, he begged her to come at once to the inner court. She followed him, and at the sight of her the confusion grew quiet. All eyes were fixed on her with fresh hope. Her wisdom was known, and her deep affection for the mistress of the house was trusted.

“She reads many books,” one woman whispered to another. Out of these books, they hoped, she might know what to do.

In the main room of the inner court Mr. Kang sat weeping. Madame Wu had seen him often through many years, but never had she spoken a word to him nor heard his voice directed to her. They had bowed across rooms to each other, and at the weddings of Meng and Linyi they had bowed as outer relatives do. But she knew him only through her friend, his wife.

Yet this meant she knew him very well. She knew what he liked to eat, how he liked duck seasoned with wine and garlic, and that he did not like limed eggs, and that he could eat seven pork-stuffed rolls at a meal, and that it took two catties of wine to make him drunk, and that when he was drunk he only went to sleep and was never fierce. She knew that he was proud of the number of his children, but that if any of them cried in his presence he sent it away. She knew that he left his slippers at his wife’s bedside every night, and when he did not it meant he was at a flower house and so his wife cried half the night through, and this made him angry. She knew that he had a black mole over his heart, which was a sign of long life, and she knew he suffered from wind in his bowels, and she knew that when storms blew from the north bringing sand from the deserts, his eyelids itched, and she knew that his cheeks broke into a red rash when he ate crabs but still he ate crabs. That is, Madame Wu knew everything about this man who sat with his fat hands on his knees weeping because his wife was dying. But of her he knew nothing except what all the town knew, that she had chosen a concubine for her husband when she was forty years old.

He rose when he saw her come in, and the yellow tears ran down his round cheeks. “She is — is—” he began.

“I know,” Madame Wu said, looking away from him. Again she would have marveled at her friend, that she could love this man, except now she knew how strange love could be. She moved quickly to the satin curtains that hung between this room and the bedroom. “I will go in at once, if you will allow me,” she said.

“Go in — go in — save her life,” he blubbered.

She went in quickly to Madame Kang’s bedroom. The smell of wasted blood was hot in the air. A lighted oil lamp flickered in the cavern of the great bed where she lay, and over her body an old woman bent. Two servant women hovered near, one at her foot and one at her head. Madame Wu brushed away the one at her head and looked down into the deathlike face of her friend.

“Meichen,” she said softly.

Slowly Madame Kang opened her eyes. “You,” she whispered, “you’ve come—” Her face wrinkled piteously. “I’m dying—”

Madame Wu had her friend’s wrist between her fingers. The pulse was very faint indeed, and she did not answer this.

“Stop pulling at the child,” she commanded the midwife.

The old woman looked up. “But it is a boy!” she cried.

“Leave us alone,” Madame Wu commanded. “Go out, all of you.” She straightened her slender figure.

All the women stared at her. “Do you take responsibility?” the old midwife cried, and pursed her lips.

“I take responsibility,” Madame Wu said.

She stood waiting while they went out. Then in the stillness she leaned again over her friend. “Meichen, do you hear me?” she asked clearly.

Madame Kang’s eyes had closed, but now with great effort she opened them. She did not speak, but Madame Wu saw consciousness in their depths.

She went on: “You will lie here quietly while I go and fetch some broth for you to drink. You will drink it and you will rest. Then you will feel strong again. When you are strong I will help you give birth to the child. Between us it will be easy.”

The eyelids flickered and closed. The faintest of smiles touched Madame Kang’s lips. Madame Wu covered her warmly and went into the other room. The midwife had gone away angry, but the servant women were there, pouring tea for Mr. Kang, fanning him, begging him to rest himself. They turned as she came in, but she did not speak to them. She spoke to Mr. Kang.

“I need your help,” she told him.

“Will she live?” he cried at her.

“If you help me,” she replied.

“Anything, anything!”

“Hush.” She stopped his babbling.

Then she commanded a servant, “Bring me a bowl of the best soup you have ready.”

“Cow’s-flesh broth we have ready and chicken broth and special fish soup.”

“The fish soup,” she decided, “and put into it two spoonfuls of red sugar. Have it hot.”

She turned again to Mr. Kang.

“You are to bring it in — not one of the maids.”

“But I—” he sputtered, “I assure you I am clumsy.”

“You will bring it in,” she repeated.

She went back again into the shadowy room, and once more she took Madame Kang’s wrist between her fingers. The pulse was as it had been, but not weaker. She stood waiting, and soon she heard Mr. Kang’s heavy footsteps tiptoeing into the room. In his two hands he held the jar of hot soup.

“We will put the soup into the teapot,” she decided. Swiftly she emptied the tea into a brass spittoon and, taking the jar from him, she poured the soup into the teapot.

Then she turned again to the bed.

“Meichen,” she said, “you have only to swallow.” She tested the heat of the soup in her own mouth, and then she put the spout of the teapot to Madame Kang’s lips and allowed the soup to trickle into her mouth. Madame Kang did not open her eyes, but she swallowed again and again as many as five or six times.

“Now rest,” Madame Wu commanded.

She did not speak to Mr. Kang. No, she kept him there standing, watching. She set the teapot on the table, and she turned back her satin sleeves and tied around her waist a towel that was hanging on a chair. He watched her, his eyes staring in horror.

“I ought not to be present,” he whispered.

But she motioned to him to come nearer, and in deep horror he obeyed her. He had begotten many children, but never had he seen what his begetting did. In carelessness and pleasure had he begotten.

Madame Wu turned back the covers, and she leaned over her friend.

“Meichen,” she said clearly, “give yourself no trouble. Allow your body to rest. I will work for you.”

But in spite of her words, the moment she touched the sore flesh, Madame Kang groaned. Mr. Kang clapped his hands to his mouth and turned his head away.

“Hold her hands,” Madame Wu said to him. “Give her your strength.”

He could not disobey her. Her great eyes were fixed on him with stern power. He stepped forward and took his wife’s hands. And this, this alone, could have made Madame Kang open her eyes. She, feeling her hands in those she knew so well, opened her eyes.

“You,” she gasped, “you — Father of my sons!”

At this moment of recognition Madame Wu slipped her strong narrow hands around the child, and Madame Kang screamed.

Mr. Kang burst into sweat. He groaned and clenched his hands around his wife’s. “If you will only live now,” he muttered through his teeth, “I swear, I swear—”

“Swear — nothing,” she gasped. “I am glad — your child.”

“Children are nothing to me beside you,” he shouted. “If you die I will hang myself.” The sweat ran down his face.

“Then you do — love me?” Her voice was so faint, it came in such breaths, that for a moment Madame Wu was afraid of what she had undertaken.

“Heart of my heart,” Mr. Kang was crying. “Don’t die — don’t die—”

“I won’t die,” Madame Kang said aloud.

At this moment Madame Wu moved he child out of her body. A gush of blood flowed but Madame Wu stanched it with handfuls of cotton that the midwife had put by the bed.

Mr. Kang still clutched his wife’s hands. “Is it over?” he mumbled.

“All over,” Madame Wu said.

“The child?” Madame Kang whispered.

Madame Wu wrapped the small torn body in the towel she took from her waist “The child is dead,” she said quietly, “but you two do not need this child.”

“Certainly not,” Mr. Kang babbled. “Meichen, I beg you — no more children. Never, never, I promise you—”

“Hush,” Madame Wu said sternly. “Make no promises you cannot keep.” She felt the teapot and it was still hot. She put the spout to her friend’s lips. “Drink,” she said. “You have promised to live.”

Madame Kang drank. Her eyes were closed again, but the pulse in her wrist, when Madame Wu felt it, was stronger by the least possible strength.

Madame Wu motioned to Mr. Kang to loose his wife’s hands. “She must sleep,” she directed. “I will sit here beside her. Do you take the child away for burial.”

She took the burden of the dead child and put it into Mr. Kang’s arms, and he held it.

“Let this child be the proof of what you have told her,” Madame Wu said. “Remember forever his weight in your arms. Remember that he died to save the life of his mother — for you.”

“I will remember,” Mr. Kang promised. “I promise you I will remember.”

“Make no promises you cannot keep,” Madame Wu said again.

Through the day she sat there and through the night that followed. Servants brought her food and hot tea, but she allowed them to come only to the door. Mr. Kang came in to thank her and to look at his wife while she slept. For Madame Kang slept, not opening her eyes even when she drank hot broth. Into this broth Madame Wu put the herbs which thicken the blood so that it will not flow, and she put in the dust of certain molds which prevent poisoning. These things she knew from her ancient books, and they were not common knowledge.

Meng and Linyi had come back to their mother, but even them she would not allow to enter this room. She let in only so much air through the window as she needed for her own breathing and for her friend’s, for the wind was cool and she did not want a brazier brought, lest charcoal fumes foul the air.

Under her silken quilts Madame Kang slept, washed and clean and fed every hour or two with the medicines and the broth, and hour by hour she returned again to life.

On the morning of the second day, when Madame Wu was certain of the pulse in her friend’s wrists, she left the room at last. Outside the door Mr. Kang still sat waiting alone. He had not washed himself, nor had he eaten or slept, and all pretense and courtesy and falsity had left him. He was tired and frightened and worn down to his true being. Madame Wu saw this and took pity on him and sat down in another chair.

“I owe her life to you,” Mr. Kang said, hanging his head.

“Her life must not be put into this danger again,” Madame Wu said gently.

“I promise—” Mr. Kang began, but Madame Wu put up her hand.

“Can you keep that promise when she is well again?” she asked. “And if you can, how will you keep it? Have I brought her back to life only to be sad and sorrowful because you run hither and thither to flower houses? Will it be any comfort to her that you spare her children only to sow wild seed elsewhere? It is unfortunate that she loves you so much, unless you also love her.”

“I do love her,” Mr. Kang protested.

“But how much?” Madame Wu pressed him. “Enough to make her life good?”

He stared at her, and she gazed back at him, her eyes very great and dark. “Better that she die if she is to be always sorrowful,” she said calmly.

“I will not make her sorrowful,” he said.

His look faltered, he pulled his lip with his two fingers. “I didn’t know—” he began. “I never thought — she never told me—”

“What?” Madame Wu asked. She knew, but for the good of his soul she forced him to say on.

“I never knew about life,” he mumbled. “How hard it comes — it costs too much.”

“Too much,” she agreed. “But she has loved you more than it cost.”

“Has she suffered like this each time?” he asked.

“Like what?” she pressed him again.

“Near to death—”

“Birth for any woman is always near to death,” she replied. “Now for her it has become either birth or death. You must take your choice. You can no longer have both.”

He put his hand over his eyes. “I choose her life,” he muttered, “always — always—”

She rose silently while he hid his eyes and went out of the room. She would never perhaps see him again. In their life men and women remained apart from each other, and she might never come into his presence. It was not necessary. This coarse simple man was now terrified by love, his own love for his wife.

So Madame Wu went home, very tired and not a little sickened by all she had seen and done. To step again into her own court, clean and still, was to bathe her soul. Here André had been with her, here he had walked and talked. Could the communion she felt with him now have anything in common with the crude heart of Mr. Kang and his love for his wife?

She went into the library and warmth wrapped her about. Ying had lit the brazier, and the heat from it shimmered above the coals. At the far window sunlight poured through the lattices.

Had she not known the warmth of love in her own heart, she could not by any means have saved Meichen’s life. The horror of the flesh would have overwhelmed her, the smell of blood, the stench of death, the ugliness of Mr. Kang’s fat weeping face, the disgust of his thick body, the sordidness of his mind. But she knew that love had lifted her out of herself.

Ying came in, scolding. “You,” she cried, “Lady, Lady — look at your coat — why, there’s blood on it — and you’re so pale—”

She looked down at herself and saw blood on her satin garment. She who was so fastidious now only murmured, “I forgot myself.”

It must not be thought that Madame Wu understood fully the change that had taken place in her being. She felt, indeed, that she did not know from one moment to the next where her path lay. She had no plan. But she felt that she was walking along a path of light. While she kept her feet in that path, all would be well with her. Should she step into the shadows on either side of the path, she would be lost. And the light that lit this path was her love for André. Did she need to know what step must next be taken, she had only to think of him and then she knew.

Thus the next day when Ying brought her the little girl to whom Ch’iuming had given birth, she felt a great tenderness for the child. Through this child she had knit Ch’iuming, a stranger, into the house of Wu. Whereas before she had felt this child a new burden, and the whole matter of Ch’iuming nothing but a perplexity, now she felt that there was no burden and no perplexity. She must deal with both mother and child as André would have her do.

“Where is Ch’iuming?” she asked Ying.

“She busies herself about the kitchen and the gardens,” Ying said.

“Is she happy?” Madame Wu asked.

“That one cannot be happy,” Ying replied. “We ought to send her away. It is bad luck to have a sad face everywhere. It curdles the milk in the breasts of the wet nurses and it makes the children fretful.”

“Let Ch’iuming come here to me,” Madame Wu said.

This was the next morning after she had been to Madame Kang’s. As soon as she had risen, she had sent a messenger to ask how her friend did, and good news had come back. Madame Kang had slept well through the night, the blood in her wounds had clotted without fresh flow, and this morning she had eaten a bowl of rice gruel mixed with red sugar. Now she slept again.

The day was still and gray. Yesterday’s sunshine was gone, and the smell of mist from the river was in the air. Madame Wu sniffed it delicately into her nostrils.

Near her in a basket bed the little girl lay playing with her hands. She lost them every now and again, and a look of surprise came over her tiny face. Then she saw them again as she waved them, and she stared at them and lost them again. Watching this play, Madame Wu laughed gently.

“How small are our beginnings,” she thought. “So I once lay in a cradle — and André also.” She tried to imagine André a child, a little child, and she wondered about his mother. Doubtless the mother knew from the first what her son was, a man who blessed others through his life.

Out of the gray and silent morning Ch’iuming came slipping between the great doors that were closed against the coldness. Madame Wu looked up as she came in. The girl looked a part of the morning mist, all gray and still and cold. Her pale face was closed, and her lips were pale and her eyelids pale and heavy over her dark eyes.

“Look at this child of yours,” Madame Wu said. “She is making me laugh because she loses her hands and finds them and loses them again.”

Ch’iuming came and stood beside the cradle and looked down, and Madame Wu saw she did not love the child. She was alien to her.

Had it been another day, another time, Madame Wu would have refused to speak of it, or she would have turned her head away, declaring to herself that it was not her affair whether this ignorant girl loved the child. But now she asked, “Can it be you do not love your own child?”

“I cannot feel her mine,” Ch’iuming answered.

“Yet you gave birth to her,” Madame Wu said.

“It was against my will,” Ch’iuming said.

The two women were silent, and each watched the unknowing child. In other days Madame Wu would have reproached the mother for not loving the child, but love was teaching her while she sat silent.

Once, André had told her, there had been a child born of a young mother and an unknown father, and there had been such a radiance about that child that men and women still worshiped him as a god because he was born of love.

“And why was the father unknown?” she had asked.

“Because the mother never spoke his name,” André had replied.

“Who cared for and fed them?” she had asked.

“A good man, named Joseph, who worshiped them both and asked nothing for himself.”

“And what became of the radiant child?” she had asked.

“He died a young man, but other men have never forgotten him,” André had replied.

Remembering what he had said, she felt herself illumined. Why did Ch’iuming not love this child, except that she did not love the father, Mr. Wu? And how did she know she did not love Mr. Wu except that she knew one whom she did love?

“Whom do you love?” she asked Ch’iuming suddenly.

She was not surprised to see the young woman’s face flush a bright red. Even her small ears grew red.

“I love no one,” she said and lied so plainly that Madame Wu laughed.

“Now how can I believe you?” she said. “Your cheeks and your very ears tell the truth. Are you afraid to let your lips speak it, too? You do not love this child — that means you do not love the father. Well, let that be. Love cannot be forced, love cannot be coaxed and teased. It comes out of Heaven, unasked and unsought. Shall I blame you for that? I know my wrong that I did. But when I brought you here, I myself did not understand love. I thought men and women could be mated like male and female in the beasts. Now I know that men and women hate each other when they are mated only as beasts. For we are not beasts. We can unite ourselves without a touch of the hands, or a look of the eyes. We can love even when the flesh is dead. It is not the flesh that binds us together.”

This was such strange talk, so monstrous from Madame Wu, whose words were always plain and practical, that Ch’iuming could only look at her as though she looked at a ghost. But Madame Wu assuredly was no ghost. Her eyes were bright and her whole frame vigorous in spite of its delicacy. She had a new life of some sort, Ch’iuming could see.

“Come,” Madame Wu said, “tell me the name in your heart.”

“I die of shame,” Ch’iuming said. She folded the edge of her coat between her thumb and finger.

“I will not let you die of shame,” Madame Wu said kindly.

Thus persuaded, and with much hesitating and doubtfulness, Ch’iuming spoke a few words at a time. “You gave me — as concubine to the old one — but—” Here she stopped.

“But there is someone else to whom you would rather have been given.” Madame Wu helped her so far, and Ch’iuming nodded.

“Is he in this house?” Madame Wu asked.

Ch’iuming nodded again.

“Is he one of my sons?” Madame Wu asked.

This time Ch’iuming looked up at her and began to weep. “It is Fengmo,” Madame Wu said and knew it was, and Ch’iuming went on weeping.

What a tangle was here, what a confusion between men and women, Madame Wu told herself. This was all the fruit of her own stupidity, without love!

“Do not weep any more,” she said to Ch’iuming. “This is all my sin, and I must make amends somehow. But it is not clear to me yet what must be done.”

At this Ch’iuming fell on her knees and put her head on her hands on the floor. “I said I should die of shame,” she murmured. “Let me die. There is no use for a creature like me.”

“There is use for every creature,” Madame Wu replied and lifted Ch’iuming up. “I am glad you told me,” she went on. “It is well for me to know. Now I beg you, wait patiently here in this house. Light will be given me, and I shall know what I ought to do for you. In the meantime, help me to care for the foundlings that I have taken. It will be of great use to me if you will care for them for me. They are here, and I have not enough time to look after them.”

At the mention of them Ch’iuming wiped her eyes, “I will tend the foundlings, Lady,” she said. “Why not? They are sisters of mine.” She stooped and lifted her child out of the cradle. “I will take this child with me — she is a foundling, too — orphan, I suppose, since her mother cannnot love her, poor toad.”

Madame Wu did not answer. Where happiness could be found for Ch’iuming she did not know. Time must discover it.

From the central courts of the house Madame Wu considered the family as the days passed into weeks and months.

“Were I evil,” she thought one day, “I could be likened to a spider weaving my web around all these in our house.”

A bird sang in the bamboos. She heard its unfamiliar voice and knew what it was. Twice a year the brown bulbul from India passed this way. Its voice was tuneful but harsh. It marked the coming of spring, and that was all.

She mused on. “And how do I know that I am not evil? How do I know that what I consider good is truly good?”

As was her habit she put this question to her memory of André.

One day, she remembered very well, they had been sitting here in the library where she now sat, he on one side of the great carved table and she on the other, not opposite so that they had to look into each other’s faces, but with the table between and both facing the open doors into the court. It was a day as fine as this, the air exceedingly clear and the sunshine so strong that the colors in the stones that floored the court, usually gray, showed tints of blue and rose and veins of silver. Her orchids were blooming a dark purple. In the pool the goldfish darted and flung themselves against the sunbeams slanting into the water.

André had been telling her an ancient legend of the fall of man into evil. It came about, he said, by the hand of a woman, Eve, who gave man forbidden fruit.

“And how was this woman to know that the fruit was forbidden?” Madame Wu had inquired.

“An evil spirit, in the shape of a serpent, whispered it to her,” André had said.

“Why to her instead of to the man?” she had next inquired.

“Because he knew that her mind and her heart were fixed not upon the man, but upon the pursuance of life,” he had replied. “The man’s mind and heart were fixed upon himself. He was happy enough, dreaming that he possessed the woman and the garden. Why should he be tempted further? He had all. But the woman could always be tempted by the thought of a better garden, a larger space, more to possess, because she knew that out of her body would come many more beings, and for them she plotted and planned. The woman thought not of herself, but of the many whom she would create. For their sake she was tempted. For their sake she will always be tempted.”

She had looked at him. How well she remembered the profound and sad wisdom in his dark eyes! “How is it you know women so well?” she had asked.

“Because I live alone,” he had replied. “Early I freed myself.”

“And why did you free yourself?” she asked. “Why did you remove yourself from the stream of life? Do we not all belong in it? Can it be right for any to free himself from it?”

For the only time in the months she had known him she had seen him in doubt. “You have put the one question which I have never been able to answer,” he had replied. “I freed myself first out of vanity. Yes, that I know and acknowledge. When I was like other men, about to marry and beget children, I thought myself loved by a woman. But God gave me a sight into human beings too quick for my own happiness. I saw her like Eve, planning for other human beings whom she was to create — with some small help from me, of course, but which nevertheless she would make in her own body. And I saw my small part, so brief a satisfaction of the flesh, and all my life then spent in digging and delving, like Adam, in order that our garden might be bigger and the fruits more rich. So I asked myself if it was I she loved, and the answer was, perhaps — but only for the moment, because she needed to be served. So I said to myself, ‘Shall I not rather serve God, who asks nothing of me except that I do justly and walk humbly before him?’ On that day I became a priest.”

“And have you been happy?” she had asked him with a little malice.

“I have possessed myself,” he had replied. …

Now, alone in the library where nowadays she always sat because his presence was there, too, she pondered upon the man and the woman. The woman Eve, she considered, must not be blamed because into her had been put the endless desire to carry on life. The man left to himself would never go further than himself. He had made the woman a part of himself, for his own use and pleasure. But she, in all her ignorance and innocence, used him in her endless creation of more life. Both were tools, but only the woman knew she was a tool and gave herself up to life.

“Here,” she told André, “is the difference between man and woman, even between you and me.”

The air came in mild and soft as she sat alone, and no wind blew. A small blue-tailed lizard came out from the crevice between the brick wall and the stone floor, and lay basking in a bar of sunlight. She sat so still it thought her part of the room, and in its meager way it made merry, turning its flat head this way and that and frisking its bright tail. Its eyes were shining and empty. She did not move. It was good luck to have small harmless animals about a house. They felt the house eternal and made their home in it.

She mused on, motionless while the lizard played. Such, then, was the unhappiness that lay between men and women. Man believed in his own individual meaning, but woman knew that she meant nothing for herself, except as she fulfilled her place in creating more life. And because men loved women as part of themselves, and women never loved men except as part of what must be created, this was the struggle that made man forever dissatisfied. He could not possess the woman because she was already possessed by a force larger than his own desire.

Had she not created even him? Perhaps for that he never forgave her, but hated her and fought her secretly, and dominated her and oppressed her and kept her locked in houses and her feet bound and her waist tied, and forbade her wages and skills and learning, and widowed her when he was dead, and burned her sometimes to ashes, pretending that it was her faithfulness that did it.

Madame Wu laughed aloud at man and the lizard rushed into hiding.

Once, when André had sat in the chair across from hers, she had said to him, “Is man all man and is woman all woman? If so, they can never come together, since he lives for his own being and she lives for universal life, and these are opposite.”

André had answered gravely enough, “God gave us each a residue for our own; that is, a part simply human, and neither male nor female. It is called the soul. It is unchanging and unchangeable. It can comprehend also the brain and its functions.”

“But a woman’s brain is not the same as a man’s?” she had asked.

“It is the same only when it is freed from the needs of the flesh,” André had replied. “Thus a woman may use her brain only for her female duties, and a man may use his only in pursuing women for himself. But the brain is a tool, and it may be put to any use that the creature wishes. That I cut cabbages with a fine knife is not to say that I cannot use that knife to carve an image of the Son of Man. If the Son of Man is in my heart, and within the vision of my soul’s sight, then I will use my tool, the brain, to make him clear.”

“The soul, then, is a residue neither male nor female,” she had repeated.

“It is so,” André had replied.

“And what is the soul in its stuff?” she had pressed him on.

“It is that which we “do not inherit from any other creature,” he had said. “It is that which gave me my own self, which shapes me a little different from all those who came before me, however like to them I am. It is that which is given to me for my own, a gift from God.”

“And if I do not believe in God?” she had inquired.

“It does not matter whether you believe or not,” he had answered. “You can see for yourself that you are like no other in this world, and not only you, but the humblest and the least beautiful creature also has this precious residue. If you have it, you know it exists. It is enough to know that. Belief in its giver can wait. God is not unreasonable. He knows that for belief we like to see with the eyes and hear with the ears, that we like to hold within our hands. So does the child also know only what its five senses can tell it. But other senses there are, and these develop as the being grows, and when they are fully developed we trust them as once we trusted only our senses.”

Remembering these words of his, she looked across the table. The chair was empty, and she heard no voice. But his face was as clear to her with its grave smile, his voice as deep as ever she had seen or heard.

“I only begin to understand,” she murmured. “But I do begin. And with my soul I thee love.”

Was it not possible that there could be love and friendship between souls?

“It is possible,” she told him.

Now, Madame Wu was a practical woman, and what she learned she put to use. Within this house, which was her world, there were two disordered beings — that is, two who were not in right relation to the house and therefore to the universe. These, two were Rulan and Linyi.

Without haste, and allowing many days to pass, she nevertheless approached the day when she chose in her mind to speak with them, and first she would speak with Rulan, who was the elder.

It had been many months since Tsemo and Fengmo had left the home. Letters came to Madame Wu regularly, for the two were good sons. These letters were addressed to their father and to her, and after she had read them first and pondered over them, she sent them to Mr. Wu. After he had read them, he sent them to Liangmo, who more and more was taking over all the duties of the lands and shops, in preparation for the day when he would be the head of the family, and he read them and then put them in the family records.

From these letters Madame Wu had discerned clearly that her two sons were growing in opposite ways. Fengmo had wished to go abroad to study. She had given her permission and had sent the money which he required. There was some haste, he said, for the ocean roads were closing because of approaching war, and were he not to be caught, he must set sail without taking the long inland journey back to his home.

Had he been an only son Madame Wu would never have allowed this, but since she had so many sons, she did not press him to return before he went. He had set sail on a late winter day, he had crossed the seas in safety, and his letters now bore a strange postmark and stamp. These were American, but for this Madame Wu cared nothing. All outer countries were equally interesting and even alike to her, if they lay beyond the four seas. Fengmo pursued the studies which André had begun. Madame Wu was relieved to see that they had nothing to do with priesthood and religions. They had nothing to do with gods, and everything to do with men.

But Tsemo had not asked to cross the waters. Instead, he had gone to the capital and there had found a good place through his family’s wealth and influence. This did not amaze either Mr. Wu or Madame Wu herself, for however large her mind was, still it seemed only natural to her that everywhere the family should be known. Then Tsemo wrote the real reason why he had been so fortunate. Were there to come the war which threatened, the government would retreat inland, and there it would depend very much on the highest citizens and their families, of whom in their province the Wu family was the greatest and most ancient. Tsemo was given much preference, therefore, and had to endure jealousy and envy and some malice from others who were put aside. But he was young and hard and drove his own way for himself.

Madame Wu could not discover from his letters what he was. Fengmo she understood better. In his own way he was opening his mind and heart even as she had done. He was growing into a man and, more than that, his own residue, as André had called it, was growing also. But Tsemo seemed possessed. What possessed him she did not know.

The matter of Tsemo was hastened by the sudden news of attack by the East Ocean people that year on the coast. Madame Wu heard this, and she sent for newspapers, which she never read usually, to discover what had taken place. What she read was common enough in the history of the country. So other attacks had been made in many previous centuries by other peoples, and the nation had always stood. It would stand now, and she was not troubled. It was not likely that enemies would pierce the hundreds of miles inland to this province where the house of Wu had stood so long. But she was grateful to the past generations in the family that they had not yielded, as so many had, to new times, and so had not pressed toward the sea to build new houses on the coast. The Wu family had built upon its ancestral lands and had remained there. Today they were safe. True, this enemy attacked also from the air. Yet there were no great cities near here, and it was not likely that the ignorant East Ocean people would know the name of one family above another. Madame Wu felt safe in her own house.

But the attack forced a swift change, nevertheless. The government was moved inland, and Tsemo came with it. He wrote one day in the next early autumn that he would come home for ten or twelve days.

With this letter, Madame Wu knew she must not delay the matter of Rulan. She sent for the young woman by Ying as messenger.

Now, it is not to be supposed that in all these months Madame Wu had not seen her daughter-in-law. She had seen Rulan often. At the table she had seen her among the others, and at the usual festivals of spring and winter Rulan was there, always quiet and sober in her dress. There were also times when Madame Wu had wished some writing done for the records of the family and for the harvests, and she had called upon Rulan for this, because of them all Rulan brushed the clearest letters. She had been kind to her young daughter-in-law at all times, and once she had even said, “It is well enough to have one daughter-in-law who is learned.”

To this Rulan had replied with only a few necessary words of thanks.

But at no time had Madame Wu drawn the girl out of her place in the family. Now, with Tsemo’s last letter in her hands, she knew the time had come.

Rulan walked quietly through the courts. She no longer wore the hard leather shoes which she had brought with her from Shanghai. Instead she wore velvet ones, cloth-soled. Madame Wu did not hear her footsteps, and when the tall shadow fell across the floor she looked up in surprise.

“Daughter, how softly you walk,” she exclaimed after greetings.

“I put aside my leather shoes, Mother,” Rulan replied. She sat down, not sidewise, but squarely on her chair, which was against a sidewall and so was lower than the one Madame Wu used. They sat in the sitting room, not in the library.

Madame Wu did not at once approach what was in her mind to say. Instead she said courteously, “It has been in my thoughts these several weeks to ask about your family in Shanghai. When the enemy attacked, did they escape?”

“My father took the household to Hong Kong,” Rulan replied.

“Ah, a long way,” Madame Wu said kindly.

“But not long enough,” Rulan said with some energy. “I have told my father so.”

“You believe that the enemy will dare to attack so far?” Madame Wu inquired. She could not but be impressed with the girl’s quickness.

“It will be a long war,” Rulan replied.

“Indeed!” Madame Wu remarked.

“Yes,” Rulan went on, “for it has been long in preparation.”

“Explain this to me, if you please,” Madame Wu said. The girl’s certainty amused her.

So Rulan explained: “Mother, the East Ocean people have long been afraid, centuries afraid. And of what? Of foreign attack. They have seen one country after another attacked and possessed. Out of the West have the conquerors come. Even when Genghis Khan came and conquered our nation, the East Ocean people began to be afraid. Then men came out of Portugal and Spain, out of Holland and France, and took countries for themselves. And England took India, and we have been all but taken, too, again and again, by these greedy Westerners. ‘Why,’ thus the East Ocean people reason, ‘should we be spared?’ So out of fear they have set out to seize lands and peoples for their own, and we are their nearest neighbor.”

This was monstrous talk for a young woman, and Madame Wu was amazed by it. Even André had not said these things.

“Where did you get all this knowledge?” Madame Wu asked.

“Tsemo writes me every week,” Rulan said.

Madame Wu felt her heart loosen with relief. She smiled. “You two,” she said, “are you good friends again?”

Rulan’s cheeks grew red. By nature she was pale, except for her crimson lips, and the flush was plain enough, but she did not turn her head away.

“We agree wonderfully when we are not together,” she said. “As soon as he comes we will quarrel again — I know it. I have told him so. We both know it.”

“But if you know it,” Madame Wu said with laughter, “can you not guard against it? Which of you begins it first — you or he?” In spite of her amusement she was pleased that the girl did not try to hide anything.

“Neither of us knows,” Rulan said. “We have sworn to each other this time, in our letters, that whoever begins, the other will speak to stop it. But I have no faith in our ability. I know Tsemo’s temper. It comes up like thunder in the summer. Without reason it is there, and when he is angry, then I am angry.” She paused and frowned. She searched herself, and Madame Wu gave her time. She went on, “There is something in me which he hates. Now that is true. He says there is nothing, but there is. When we are parted he does not feel it. When we come together it is there. If I knew what it was I would take a knife and cut it out of myself.”

“Perhaps it is not something which is there, but something which is not there,” Madame Wu said gently.

Rulan lifted her head. Her eyes, which were her beauty, looked startled. “That I never thought of,” she said. Then she was downcast again. “But that will make it very hard. It would be easier to take something out of myself that I have than to put something in which I have not.”

“This need not be true,” Madame Wu told her. “It depends altogether on your love for Tsemo. If you think of your marriage as something only for your two selves, well, then you must always quarrel unless you can determine to stay apart from each other.”

“You mean—” Rulan said and could not finish. In the female part of her being she was very shy.

“I do mean that,” Madame Wu said. She went on speaking out of a wisdom which she knew came to her from her own knowledge of love. Now she knew that between men and women there is no duty. There is only love — or no love.

She reached for her silver pipe and began to fill it slowly. She did not look at her daughter-in-law for a while. Instead she gazed into her court, where the orchids were yellow at this season. The bamboos fluttered their leaves like tassels in the slight wind. It was the sort of day that she and André had loved best because of its peace.

“In the first place, you must know that neither of you owes anything to the other,” she began at last.

Rulan interrupted her with surprise. “Mother, this is the strangest thing I ever did hear said from a mother-in-law to her son’s wife.”

“I have learned it only recently,” Madame Wu said. She smiled with secret mischief. “Credit me, child, that I am still learning!”

She was pulling Rulan by the heart. The girl had come prepared for her mother-in-law’s anger and humbled to receive it. Now hope moved in her. It was not anger that she was to receive, but wisdom. She leaned forward like a tall lily waiting for rain.

“Trouble between men and women always arises from the belief that there is some duty between them,” Madame Wu went on. “But once having given up that belief, the way becomes clear. Each has a duty only to himself. And how to himself? Only to fulfill himself. If one is wholly fulfilled, the other is fulfilled also.”

She paused, lit her pipe, smoked two puffs, and blew out the ash. Then she went on, “And why is this true? Because, in the words of sages, ‘The husband is not dear for the husband’s sake but for the self’s sake, and the wife is not dear to him for her sake, but for his own sake.’ It is when the one is happy that the other is happy, and it is the only happiness possible for both.”

Rulan sat motionless, listening.

Madame Wu went on, “As for procreation, it is a duty not to him nor to you. It is your common duty to our kind. Where you have made your mistake is that you have confused the bearing of children with your love for Tsemo. And by your confusion you have confused Tsemo. That is why he is so easily angry with you.”

“Mother,” Rulan begged her, “speak on to me. You are coming into the heart.”

“You and Tsemo departed from the usual tradition,” Madame Wu said plainly. “You chose each other because you loved each other. This is dangerous because the chances of what may be called happiness are much lessened thereby. You and Tsemo thought only of yourselves, not of your children, not of your family, not of your duty to carry on your kind. You thought only of yourselves, as two beings separate from all others. But you are not separate, except in a small part of yourselves. Now you are trying to force all your lives into that small part of yourselves. The begetting, conceiving, and bearing of your children, the living together in all ways of eating and sleeping and dressing and coming in and going out — all you are trying to force into that small separate place. But it will not contain so much. It is crowded, and you are choking each other at your sources. You are too close. You will hate each other because that part of you which is you, yourselves — your residue, your soul — has no space left in which to breathe and to grow.”

Now she looked at Rulan. The girl’s whole being was listening.

“Separate yourself, my child,” she said. “Let him separate himself. Accept as a matter of course, as a duty to our kind, that you will bear children. They are not his children nor yours. They are the children of the race. Bear them as naturally as you breathe and eat and sleep and perform all your other functions as a physical creature. Begetting and conceiving have nothing to do with your souls. Do not test the measure of his love for you by the way in which he expresses his body’s heat. He is not thinking of you at those times. He is thinking of himself. Think you also of yourself. Does one man’s passion differ from another’s? It does not. And no more does one woman bear children differently from another. In such things we are all alike. Do not imagine that in this he or you is different from the commonest man and woman.” She paused, and a strange feeling of exhaustion came over her.

“You make me feel that marriage is nothing,” Rulan said in a low voice. “I might as well have been married to anyone as to Tsemo.”

Energy returned to Madame Wu. “I have not finished,” she said. “In one sense, you are right. Any healthy young woman can marry any healthy young man and both can fulfill their duty to life. For this reason it is well that our old traditions be maintained. Older persons can certainly choose better for the race than the young ones can for themselves. Consider Liangmo and Meng — they are happy. But certainly they have not absolute happiness, as you and Tsemo demand. They accept the bearing of children as their whole life. Liangmo has no other ambition than to be a good husband and father. Neither of them asks more. For this it is best that the elders choose the two who are to marry, if the two are like Liangmo, and Meng.”

“But we are not like them,” Rulan said with some heat.

“You are not,” Madame Wu agreed. “You wish friendship and companionship between your two individual selves. Ah, you ask very much of marriage, my child. Marriage was not designed for this extra burden.”

“What would we have done? Lived without marriage?” Rulan inquired without meaning rudeness.

“Perhaps — perhaps.” Madame Wu was surprised to hear herself say. “But that, too, is difficult, since you are man and woman and the body demands its own life.”

She paused, searching for words which were never in her before, and she found them. “You and Tsemo are very lucky. You love each other in all ways. Then love each other, my child! Life is too short for such love. Love one another and do not waste one hour in anger. Divide your love from your passion and let there be no confusion between the two. Some day, when the division is clear and established by habit, when your children are born and growing and your bodies are old, and passion gone, as, mercifully, it does go, you will know the best love of all.”

She was suddenly intensely lonely for André, and the knowledge that never again would she look upon his living face pierced her with an agony she had not yet felt. She closed her eyes and endured the pain. Then after a while she felt Rulan take her hand and press it to her cheeks. She felt one warm cheek and then the other. But still she did not open her eyes.

“And in secret the woman has to lead,” she said. “In secret the woman always has to lead, and she must, because life rests upon her, and upon her alone. I warn you, my son will be of no help to you in making your marriage happy.”

When she opened her eyes again the room was empty. Rulan had gone.

That night when Ying undressed her for bed Madame Wu spoke, after silence so long and deep that Ying had not dared to break it with her usual chatter. “Ying!”

“Yes, Mistress?” Ying looked into the mirror over Madame Wu’s head. She was brushing the long black silken hair that was only now beginning to show a few feathers of white at the temples. “I have a task for you.”

“Yes, Mistress?”

“In less than a month my second son will come home.”

“I know that, Mistress. We all know it.”

“This is the task. Every night when you have finished with me, you are to go to my second son’s wife and do for her what you used to do for me.”

Ying smiled into the mirror, but Madame Wu did not smile back. She went on, not meeting Ying’s eyes. “You are to forget nothing that I used to do — the fragrant bath, the scenting of the seven orifices, the smoothing with oil, the perfume in the hair.”

“I know, Lady.” Ying’s voice was warm and intimate. Then she stayed the brush. “What if she forbids me?” she asked. “That one cares nothing for her beauty.”

“She will not forbid you,” Madame Wu said. “She needs help, poor child, as all women need it. And she knows it now.”

“Yes, Mistress,” Ying said.