Pavilion of Women

XIII

TSEMO CAME HOME ON the fifth day of the ninth moon month. The news of his coming was brought by electric letter to the city and by foot-messenger to the house of Wu, and Mr. Wu himself took the letter to Madame Wu. He did not often enter her courts now for any cause, and when she saw him she knew that it had to do with one of the sons. He held out the sheet of paper. “Our second son comes home,” he said with his wide smile. She took the letter and read it and turned it over and over in her hands. It was the first time she had ever seen an electric letter. She knew, because once André had explained it, that the paper itself was not blown over the wires as she had imagined it. Not even words were spoken. Symbols were beaten upon a machine, and by these the messages were carried.

“The drums of savages, beaten in the jungle,” she had remarked.

“Much that man does is only the refinement of savagery,” he had replied.

She recalled these words as she mused over the electric letter. “We must prepare a welcoming feast,” she said aloud.

“I shall invite all my friends,” Mr. Wu declared.

She proceeded to plan. “We ought also to give a secondary feast for the shop clerks and the farm workers.”

“Everything — everything,” he declared in his large lordly manner.

She looked at him from under her half-veiled eyes. He had returned to his old self. Jasmine had done him good. He was reassured of his own worth. His failure with herself, for in his own way he had been mortified that she had rejected him, and his failure with Ch’iuming had done him harm. He was the sort of man who had constantly to feel himself successful with his women. How well she knew, who had for so many years made his success her duty! But Ch’iuming was young and ignorant, and she had not understood these things, and Jasmine was, in the midst of all her falsity, sincere enough in this business by which she earned her rice and roof. Madame Wu felt her secret heart grow light, and also cool and scornful. She felt somewhat ashamed of such malice, although once she would have accepted it as her share of human nature.

“I am not a woman without sin,” she had once told André. “That is, if I am to accept your measure of sin — the secret thought, the hidden wish. Outer rectitude I can attain, but who can control the heart?”

“A few can also do it,” he had replied. “You are one of those few.”

She knew that if she were to continue near him she must attain the heights where he lived. He would not come down to her.

So now she spoke patiently with Mr. Wu, who was the father of her sons. “Let everything be as you wish.”

He leaned forward, his hands on his fat knees, smiling. He lowered his voice to speak to her in confidence. “It may be you do not know that Tsemo is my favorite son. For that reason I have always been disturbed that his wife is an angry woman. Tsemo should have married someone soft and reasonable.”

Madame Wu could not conceal all her barbs. “You mistake Tsemo somewhat,” she said. In her own ears she heard her voice too silvery sharp. “He is intelligent. Rulan is also intelligent. I find I think better of her as time goes on.”

Mr. Wu looked alarmed, as he always did at the mention of intelligence, and hastily he withdrew. “Well, well,” he said, in his usual voice, “I dare say you are right. Then will you arrange matters or shall I?”

“I will order what is to be within the house, and you shall invite the guests and decide the wines,” she said.

They bowed and parted, and she knew as he went away that what had been between them was only of the flesh. He was repulsive to her. Yet had they not fulfilled the very duty of which she had spoken to Rulan? They had carried on the family through their generation, they had fulfilled the instincts of their race, and they had freed themselves from each other when this was done. Now she knew that, even as André had discovered for her the residue of her individual self, Jasmine had done the same for Mr. Wu. No ties had been broken, the house continued as before, and their position in it was the same. She felt the wisdom of bringing Jasmine under the roof, this roof wide enough for all of the least of the house of Wu. The supreme sin of giving birth to a nameless and illegitimate child would not be theirs. Jasmine’s children would have their place in the human order.

She felt peace upon her as she proceeded to the day’s duty. She had no time today for herself. She sent for cook and steward and head-waiter, she sent for the cleaning maids and the seamstresses. The children’s clothes must be inspected, and those who needed new garments must have them made. Yenmo, her youngest son, must come in from the country.

“It is time,” she told the land steward, “that my fourth son return to the home. Affairs are now clear in the family.”

The steward laughed. “Madame, this son will be the one to manage the land after you. Our eldest young lord does well in the shops, but the little fourth lord is made for the land.”

Madame Wu had not seen her fourth son in many months, and now she felt some wonder in her about him. During the years of change from child to man all males were the same, she had always said. They needed only to be fed, to be taught the same things, to live much in the open air, to be kept away from gambling places and brothels and family dissensions. For this reason she had sent Yenmo into the country to live with country cousins and farmers. Now he must come back and let her take his measure.

“Prepare the two small rooms in my eldest son’s east court,” she commanded Ying, “They are full of boxes and waste now, and used by no one. Let them be furnished for Yenmo. They shall be his until he marries.”

Properly Yenmo should have been placed near his father, but that she would not allow. Neither did she want him too near herself, this hearty lusty growing youth. But Liangmo and Meng would be kind to him, and the children would enjoy him.

Thus everything was prepared. Last of all did Madame Wu herself inspect Rulan. It was the very day of the return. Tsemo would come sometime after midday, but none could tell when, for he must come by boat. It was a pity that the motorcar could not be sent for him, but the road was too narrow and the farmers cried to Heaven if its great wheels ran on their soil. It remained therefore in the special room by the gate where it was kept, a thing for wonder and amazement to all who saw it, but of little real use. Yet Mr. Wu would have felt himself very backward and old-fashioned had he not bought it, and it was comfort even to Tsemo to say carelessly in company, “My father’s foreign car—”

So Rulan stood before Madame Wu, very docile and even shy. She had put on a new robe of a clear dark red, and this firm color suited her pale skin and red mouth. Madame Wu approved its close cut, its length, and did not mention the shortness of the sleeves, since Rulan had beautiful arms and hands. She bade Ying open her jewel box and from it she selected a thick gold ring set with rubies. This ring she put on the middle finger of Rulan’s right hand, and Rulan lifted her hand to admire it. “I dislike rings usually, Mother,” she said, “but this one I like.”

“It suits you,” Madame Wu replied, “and what suits a woman makes her beautiful.”

Rulan had washed her hair freshly, but she had not oiled it and it lay on her shoulders as soft as unwound silk. Ying had cut its edge even and smooth. It was a very new fashion for young women to let their hair go unbound, and Madame Wu did not like it. She would have complained had Meng copied it. But today she saw that the softness set off Rulan’s face, and again she did not speak against it. Whatever made a woman more beautiful was to be accepted.

“Open your mouth,” she commanded Rulan. The girl opened her mouth and Madame Wu peered into it. It was red and clean as a child’s, and the teeth were white and sound. From this mouth came a sweet fresh breath.

She lifted the girl’s skirts and examined the inner garments. All were clean as snow, all scented, and prettily embroidered.

She lifted the girl’s hands and smelled the palms. They were scented, and her hair was scented, and from her body came the delicate scent which once she herself had used.

“You will do well enough, my child,” Madame Wu said kindly. “I find no fault with your body. I cannot examine your heart and your mind — these you must examine for me. The body comes first, but the residue is what lasts.”

“I have forgotten nothing you told me,” Rulan said solemnly.

Now Tsemo was expected any time within four or five hours, but who could know that while all this was going on in the house of the Wu family he was approaching by sky and not by water? Thus, instead of coming to the land by the river, he came down out of the sky and touched earth just outside the low wall on the south side of the town. When his superior officer in the capital had heard of his return home, the weight of the Wu family in that province was such that he had sent him with a government plane and pilot.

The pilot was concerned when he dropped his passenger upon a field, with no one near to meet him. But Tsemo laughed at him.

“This is my home town,” he said. “I can find my own way.”

So the pilot took off again into the sky, and Tsemo walked calmly homeward, everybody staring and greeting him as he went and asking him how he came, and goggling and silenced by wonder when he said, “I came by empty air.”

Children and idlers ran ahead to tell them at the house of Wu that the Second Lord was coming, but Tsemo walked in such long strong steps that he was very close behind. Thus Madame Wu and Rulan had barely heard the gateman’s wife, who had run in to gasp out her news, when Tsemo himself was at her heels. By right he should have gone first to his father, but be sure Liangmo had written him who was in his father’s courts, and he had no mind to see a strange woman before he saw his mother. Therefore he went first to Madame Wu and was confounded to see with her Rulan, his own wife.

It was an awkward moment, for by old tradition he should not greet his wife before his mother. To his surprise Rulan helped him. She fell back gracefully and gave him time and space.

“My son, you have come at last.” This was Madame Wu’s greeting.

She put out her hands and felt of his arms and his shoulders as mothers do. “You are thinner than you were but sounder,” she said. “Harder and healthier,” she added, looking at his ruddy face.

“I am well,” he said, “but very busy — indeed, busy half to death. And you, Mother, look well — better than when I went away.”

This and more passed between them, and still Rulan stood waiting, and Tsemo wondered very much at this patience. It was not like her to be patient. To his further surprise, his mother now stepped back and put out her hand and took Rulan’s and drew her forward.

“She has been very good,” Madame Wu said. “She has been obedient, and she has tried hard and done well.”

Nothing could have pleased Tsemo so much as this commendation of his wife by his mother. Like all sons of strong mothers, he needed her praise of what he had done. She had never praised Rulan before, and it had been one of the causes of his anger against Rulan that his mother had not praised her. This Madame Wu now understood. She saw the pleasure in his handsome face, in his free smile, in his brightening eyes. He spoke a few words to Rulan, cool as such words should be in the presence of the older generation.

“Ah — you are well?”

“Thank you, I am well — and you?”

These were the few words they spoke with their lips, but their eyes said more. For Rulan lifted her eyes to his, and he saw her more nearly beautiful than he had ever seen her, the red cloth of her gown close fitting about her neck and lending depth to her golden pallor.

He withdrew his eyes and turned to his mother, stammering and blushing. “Mother, thank you very much for taking time to teach her — for taking time to — to — to—”

Madame Wu understood and answered him. “My son, at last I will say, ‘You have chosen well.’ ”

She saw tears come into Rulan’s eyes, and a tenderness she had never known before filled her being. How helpless were the young and in spite of all their bravery, how needy of the old to approve them!

“Be tender to the young, they did not ask to be born,” André had once said to her. She remembered it well, for on that day she had been angry with Fengmo because he came late.

“Nor did I ask to be born,” she had retorted.

He had looked at her with that large deep gaze of his. “Ah, because you have suffered is the one reason why you should never make others suffer,” he had said. “Only the small and the mean retaliate for pain. You, Madame, are too high for it.”

She had accepted this in silence, swallowing anger. He had gone on, escaping from her into the universe. “And of what meaning is suffering,” he had mused, “if it does not teach us, who are the strong, to prevent it for others? We are shown what it is, we taste the bitterness, in order to stir us to the will to cast it out of the world. Else this earth itself is hell.”

Now, remembering his words, she felt an immeasurable longing to make these two happy in her house. She took Rulan’s hand and Tsemo’s hand and clasped them together.

“Your duty to me is done, my son,” she said. “Take her to your own courts and spend your next half-hour with her alone. It will be time enough then to go and greet your father.”

She watched them go away, hand still in hand, and sat down, smiled, and smoked her silver pipe awhile.

For the next ten days the house was a turmoil of feasting. Every relative near and far wished to see Tsemo and talk with him and ask his opinion concerning the new war and the removal of the seat of government inland and what he thought the price of rice would be as a consequence of the disturbances, and whether the foreign white people would fight with the East Ocean dwarfs or against them. No one thought of defeat by the enemy. The only question was whether there should be the open resistance of arms or the secret resistance of time. Tsemo, being young, was for open resistance. Mr. Wu, knowing nothing of such things, followed his mind.

But Madame Wu, sitting among the family, listening, smoking her little pipe, saying nothing except to direct a child to be taken out to make water, or to be put to bed to sleep, or bidding a servant be quiet in filling the tea bowls, or some such thing, knew that for herself she believed that only by secret resistance of time could they overcome this enemy as they had overcome all others. In her own mind she did not favor allowing foreign peoples to come in to help them. Who in this world helped another not of his blood without asking much in return? It was beyond justice to give without getting, outside the family.

But she kept silence. Here she was only a woman, although the most respected under the roof. Long ago in that freedom which she had known only with André, they had argued human nature.

“You believe in God and I believe in justice,” she had declared. “You struggle toward one and I toward the other.”

“They are the same,” he had declared.

Today, sitting among her family, she felt deeply lonely. Here André had never come and could not come.

“Those foreigners,” she said suddenly to Tsemo, “if they come here on our soil can we drive them out again?”

“We can only think of the present, day by day,” he declared.

“That is not the way of our people,” she replied. “We have always thought in hundreds of years.”

“In hundreds of years,” he replied, “we can drive them all out.”

“In this residue of the individual creature,” she had once asked André, “are there color and tradition and nationality and enmity?”

“No,” he had replied. “There are only stages of development. At all levels, you will find souls from among all peoples.”

“Then why,” she had asked, “is there war among people and among nations?”

“Wars,” he had replied, “come between those of the lowest levels. In any nation observe how few actually join in war, how unwillingly they fight, with how little heart! It is the undeveloped who love war.”

She pondered these things while Tsemo talked briskly of regiments and tanks and bombing planes and all these things which for her had no meaning. At last she forgot herself and yawned so loudly that everyone turned to look at her, and she laughed.

“You must forgive me,” she said. “I am getting old, and the youthful pastimes of war do not interest me.” She rose, and Ying hastened to her side and, nodding and smiling her farewells, she returned to her own courts.

On the eleventh day Tsemo went away. The airplane returned for him, and this time a great conclave of people from the house and the town gathered to see him fly up. Madame Wu was not one of these. All that he had said during these ten days had fatigued her very much. She felt that it was only folly for a young man to spend his life at these matters of war and death. There was no value here, either for the family or for himself. Life was the triumphant force, and the answer to enemy and to death was life and more life. But when she said this he was impatient, with her. “Mother,” he cried, “you do not understand.”

At this universal cry of youth she had smiled and returned to silence. She bade him good-by sweetly and coolly, received his thanks, and let him go. She was not sorry to see him gone again. His talk had made the whole house restless, and especially it had made his younger brother afraid. Yenmo had come back, brown and fat as a peasant boy and taller by inches than when he had gone away. She had not spoken to him beyond the ordinary greetings, preferring to wait until the turmoil was over and she could discover him in quiet. But she saw he was afraid.

So she sat alone in her court, and there Rulan came to her after Tsemo was gone. She came in and knelt at Madame Wu’s side and put her head on the elder lady’s knees. Madame Wu felt a warm wetness creep through the satin of her robe.

“What are these tears?” she asked gently. “They feel warm.”

“We were happy,” Rulan whispered.

“Then they are good tears,” Madame Wu said. She stroked the girl’s head softly and said no more, and after a while Rulan rose, wiped her eyes, smiled, and went away.

If life were known one moment ahead, how could it be endured? The house which had been filled with feasting and pleasure was plunged in the same hour into blackest mourning. Who can know what happened in the clouds? In less than half an hour after Tsemo had climbed toward the early-rising sun on that day, the steward came hot foot into the gates and behind him followed all the tenants and farmers of the Wu lands, wailing and tearing their garments and the women loosening their hair. Such noise filled the courts that even Madame Wu heard it. She had just gone into the library to be alone awhile, after Rulan left her, and she heard sobbing and shouting of her name. Instantly she knew what had happened.

She rose and went out of the room and met them at the gate of her court. Mr. Wu was first, the tears streaming down his cheeks. Even Jasmine was there behind others, and the orphan children and the old woman and every servant and follower and neighbor from the street were crowding into the gates left open.

“Our son—” Mr. Wu began, and could not go on.

The steward took up his words. “We saw fire come whirling down out of the sky above the farthest field,” he told Madame Wu. “We ran to see what it was. Alas, Madame, a few wires, a foreign engine, some broken pieces of what we do not know — that is all. No body remains.”

These words fell upon her heart. But she knew them already.

“There is nothing left even to bury,” Mr. Wu muttered. He looked at her bewildered. “How can what was alive and our son, only an hour ago, now be nothing?”

She grieved for him, but first she thought of Rulan. “It is of his young wife we must think now,” she reminded Mr. Wu.

“Yes, yes,” all agreed. “It may be she has happiness. What a mercy they had ten nights together! If there is a child you will be comforted, Madame, Sir—”

Mr. Wu’s tears dried in this new hope. “Go to her,” he commanded Madame Wu. “Comfort her — we leave her with you.”

So Madame Wu went alone to the court where Tsemo had so lately lived with his young wife, and slowly the crowd disappeared. Mr. Wu returned to his own court with Jasmine and shut the gate, and the steward bade the workers return to the land. As for him, he said, he would wait until he had his orders from Madame Wu. He sat down in the gatehouse to wait until such time as she sent for him.

The children went back to the temple, and there the old priest lit incense and muttered prayers for the dead son.

“In these days,” he told the ancient gods, “affairs happen too quickly for us. There is no time to pray for the dying. They live, and they live no more, and it is all we know. Seek for his soul, O you who live in heavenly spaces! Find him among the many and lead him to the ones who will know him and comfort him. And when he is born again, grant that he may be born once more into this family, where he belongs.”

So prayed the old priest.

In the court where she had been so happy, Rulan sat crouched on the floor beside Madame Wu, her forehead pressed against Madame Wu’s hand, which she held. Both were silent. What was there to say? These two women were knit together in love and sorrow. Madame Wu longed to tell Rulan of herself, and how she had looked on André, dead. But she could not tell it, now or ever. Rulan’s sorrow was worse than hers. She had buried André’s body, and of Tsemo there was nothing left. The winds had taken his fresh ashes and scattered them over the land. The winds had buried him where they would. And what else of Tsemo was left? She, the mother, had the memory of his birth and his babyhood, his boyhood, his young manhood. She had the memory of his voice, arguing, declaring, of his face ardent, confident, handsome; and now she had the knowledge of his death. What had been between her and the son was altogether of the flesh, and it was no more except in the memory of her own flesh.

But for Rulan what was left? Had they, in these ten days, gone beyond the flesh? Did the young wife now hold fast what the mother had not?

It was too soon to ask. She sat silent and motionless, and the warmth from her being flowed into the girl who crouched beside her.

It was Rulan who first moved, who stood, who wiped her face and ceased weeping. “I shall thank you forever, Our Mother,” she said, “for in these ten days we did not quarrel once.”

“Are you able now to be alone?” Madame Wu asked. She admired the girl very much, she felt her love grow exceedingly strong.

“I am able,” Rulan said. “When I have been alone awhile, Mother, I will come and tell you what I must ask for myself.”

“My doors are always open for you,” Madame Wu replied. She rose, accepting the help of Rulan’s hand. It was hot but strong, and the fingers did not quiver. “Night and day,” Madame Wu said, “my doors are open for you.”

“I shall not forget,” Rulan said.

Madame Wu, walking away, heard the door of Tsemo’s court close behind her. She halted and half turned. The girl was not going to shut herself up for some damage? No, she decided, this would not be Rulan’s way. She would sit alone and lie alone and sleepless on her bed and alone she would come to life again, somehow. Had Tsemo lived, Madame Wu told herself, they would have quarreled again and again. The grace of the ten days could not have held. They were too equal, and they loved each other too fiercely. Each wished to subdue the other, and neither could allow freedom. But now they would live forever in peace.

“In peace!” she murmured. It was the sweetest word upon the human tongue.

Even though there was no dead body over which to mourn, nevertheless mourning went on for the needful number of days in the house of Wu. A coffin was brought and prepared, and into it were put Tsemo’s possessions which he had loved best, and it was closed and sealed. The day of the burial was decided upon by the soothsayers of the town with all that was necessary for grief, and on that day the funeral took place. Tsemo’s coffin was buried in the family graveyard on the ancestral lands, and his tablet was set up in the ancestral hall, among those who had died for the hundred years before him.

While this was being done, Madame Wu allowed grief everywhere to go on unchecked. She mourned, also, and in her mourning she accepted the help of her friend Madame Kang. There had been little and less going to and fro between the houses. Madame Wu had been aware of it throughout the months, but she had not been inclined to mend it. Her own inner concern, her constant remembering of André, had weaned her away from her friend. Moreover, she still thought of that birth night with repulsion.

But the loss of a son is too grave for any breach, and the two ladies came together again, though never closely, and Mr. Kang himself came to the funeral. Had there not been the death, Madame Kang could not have entered the house with such good will. But she put aside all else and came with her old hearty way to Madame Wu’s court, crying aloud as she came.

“Our children grew up together,” she exclaimed, “and I feel as though a son of my own were gone.”

Madame Wu knew this was true, and she welcomed her friend, and they sat together in the old way for a while, and Madame Kang insisted on wearing mourning in the funeral procession.

Nevertheless Madame Wu knew that this friendship had passed. She had entered too deeply into the private life of her friend. Madame Kang could never quite forgive her for this, in spite of gratitude. This gratitude she spoke out freely.

“Had you not come that night, my sister, I would have died. My life is yours.”

But there was shyness in her look even when she spoke, and Madame Wu knew that, while she was thankful to be living, yet she was unthankful that her friend had been there at the hour of her greatest weakness. There was a little jealousy somewhere in Madame Kang toward Madame Wu, and Madame Wu knew this. She did not blame her friend, but inwardly she withdrew from her. She perfectly understood that, although Madame Kang sincerely grieved because Tsemo was dead, she did not altogether grieve that the Wu house had lost a son. In such sorrow she could be somewhat superior to her friend. Once Madame Wu would have been angry, but now no more. She comprehended the weakness of Madame Kang and gave her no blame.

“Are we to tolerate the stupidity and malice of the small?” she had asked André long ago.

“Yes, because to destroy them would be to destroy ourselves,” he had replied. “None of us is so much better or wiser than any other than he can destroy a single creature without destroying something of himself.”

“How shall we endure them, then?” she had asked. She remembered with a pang of the heart a child once born to a servant in the house who had been put out of life with her own consent. The child was a girl, deformed and imbecile. She had been told of the birth by Ying, and then Ying had lifted her hand, with the thumb outstretched, and Madame Wu had nodded.

“No one of us can afford to take the life of the least one,” André had replied.

She had not had the courage then to tell him of the child. Now, sitting in her sedan, in the procession of her son’s funeral, she wished she had told André. The burden of the dead child lay on her at this moment when she had lost her son. She felt a dart of superstition that somehow the early evil had brought the later one. Then she dismissed superstition. She believed in no such causes. Beyond the soul itself, all was chance. In the soul alone was there cause and effect. What was the effect of the child’s death upon her? None, she concluded, since at that time she had not understood what she did. Now, understanding, she would not hate her old friend, however small she was in mind.

“Neither can I be compelled to love her any more,” she thought with some rebellion.

This rebellion reminded her of André again, and of a passage between them. He had been reading some words from his holy book.

“Love thy neighbor as thyself,” he read slowly.

“Love!” she had exclaimed. “The word is too strong.”

She had always been exceedingly critical of his holy book, jealous, perhaps, because he read it so much and depended upon it for wisdom. But he had agreed with her. She saw the sudden lifting of his mighty head.

“You are right,” he had said. “Love is not the word. No one can love his neighbor. Say, rather, ‘Know thy neighbor as thyself.’ That is, comprehend his hardships and understand his position, deal with his faults as gently as with your own. Do not judge him where you do not judge yourself. Madame, this is the meaning of the word love.” He had gone on reading in his immense deep soft voice, whose sound was forever in her hearing.

The day of this funeral was too fair for young death. The water in ponds was clear and the sunlight was warm and many birds sang. Through the glass window of her sedan Madame Wu saw it all and was made more sad. She thought of Rulan, whose sedan was behind hers, and she looked through the back pane of glass to see if she looked out, too. But the curtain was drawn over Rulan’s window, and her mind went back to her dead son. And how had it been for him to meet death in the sky, among the clouds? Did he know whom he met? She felt herself in Tsemo, rejoicing in the swiftness and the freedom above the earth. Then the machine failed. He had trusted too much in machines.

She had said anxiously before he left her, “Can you be safe with only that foreign machine to hold you up?”

He had laughed at her ignorance. “Mother, they are magic!”

So he had cried at her, but the magic had failed. He had been given perhaps a few seconds in which to compress all that was his life. She saw his terror and his rage and then his end. Against the sky’s infinity his body hurtled to the earth. She bowed her head and covered her eyes with her hand.

The funeral went on its usual way. There had been many funerals in the family, and she must endure one more, even of her own son. On a day last summer Old Lady’s coffin had been taken out of the temple where it waited and had been brought here, too, to the family lands. A marble stone had been set up, smaller than Old Gentleman’s but like it. A space lay on Old Gentleman’s left for Mr. Wu, and beside that space another for herself, and beyond that space for Liangmo and Meng. Still beyond that was now dug the pit for Tsemo’s empty coffin, and it was lowered to the bottom, the white cock killed and its blood spilled out, and the paper utensils burned. A paper airplane had been made, and it too was burned to ashes. When all was done the grave was covered and under the top of it, shaped from a great clod of turf, white paper streamers were fastened. The funeral was over, and the family returned and left the hired mourners wailing behind them.

Alone in her room in the night, Madame Wu pondered her sorrow. She had not wished to be with anyone when they came home. Mr. Wu would, she knew, immediately seek diversion. Rulan must suffer until she was healed. But Madame Wu lay in her bed and thought of her second son and of his empty place in the house of Wu and of all the sons that would have come from his body and now would never be born. These she mourned for. She sorrowed deeply for all the empty places in the generations. When a young man dies many die with him. She cursed the dangerous machines of foreigners and all wars and ways which take the lives of young men. She blamed herself that she had not kept all her sons in this house to live out their lives.

Against the dark curtain of her mind she saw André’s great shape. They had been once arguing the matter of Fengmo’s learning. “Teach my third son,” she had told André, “but teach him nothing that will divide his heart from us.”

“Madame,” André had exclaimed, “if you imprison your son, he will most surely escape you, and the more you hold him the further from you he will go.”

“You were wrong,” she now told the remembered face, so clear against the blackness of her hidden brain. “I did not imprison him, and he has gone the furthest of them all.”

The morning woke her early as it always did, and the day was as clear as the one before. She got up restless. Yesterday the countryside had been so beautiful in the midst of her sorrow that she longed to reach beyond the walls. But what excuse had she to leave the house of mourning? She moved about her rooms, not wanting to leave and not wanting to stay. The house was silent, and all slept late after the weariness of yesterday. Ying came in late, pale and without her chatter, and her eyelids were red. She did her duty, and Madame Wu sent her away again and went into her library and took down her books.

The air came in through the open windows with such sweetness that she felt it upon her skin like fragrant oil.

It was midmorning when she was roused by footsteps, and she looked up and saw Yenmo, her fourth son, in the court.

He greeted her sturdily, in a half-rude fashion, but she did not correct him, knowing that he had learned his ways from peasants.

“Come in, my son,” she said kindly.

She took him by the hand and felt in her soft palm his young rough hand. He was as tall as she was now, to her amazement.

“You grow very fast,” she said in mock complaint.

He was not like any of her other sons. His words were not ready nor his smile. But she saw his eyes were calm, and that he was not shy. It was simply that he felt no necessity to please anyone. She dropped his hand, and he stood before her, dressed in a blue cotton robe, and on his feet were heavy cloth-soled shoes.

“Mother,” he said, “I want to go back to the farm. I will not live here.”

He looked so strong and fresh, his eyes were so round and black, his cropped hair so stiff, his teeth so white, that she wanted to laugh at him.

“How far have you read in books?” she asked.

“I am in fifth year of the New Readers, and I have read the Book of Changes,” he said.

It was well enough for his years. “But ought you now not to go beyond the village school?” she inquired.

“I hate books,” he said immediately.

“Hate books!” she repeated. “Ah, you are going to be like your father.”

He turned red and stared down at his feet. “No, Mother, I am not,” he declared. “I shall be like nobody. And if I am not to go back to the land, then I will run away.”

He looked up at her and down again, and in spite of sadness she laughed. “Have I ever told a son of mine he could not do what he wished?” she asked.

“These walls are so high,” the boy complained.

“They are very high,” she agreed.

“I want to go now,” Yenmo said.

“I will go with you,” she said.

He looked doubtful at this. “Where will you sleep?” he asked.

“Oh, I shall return tonight,” she declared. “But it will be well for me to go and see the land, and see for myself where you stay and talk with your teacher, and then my heart will rest about you.”

So he went to get his clothes ready, and she ordered her sedan and refused to take even Ying with her.

“In the country no one can harm me,” she said when Ying opened her eyes wide.

They set out together, she in her sedan and Yenmo on a gray pony which was his pet, and so they went through the streets, and everybody knew who they were and where they went, and fell back in respect before them as gentry.

As soon as they had passed beyond the city walls, Madame Wu felt the wide calm spirit of the countryside descend upon her, and slowly her restlessness left her. She put aside all else this day, and she watched the strong firm body of her fourth son astride his pony and cantering before her. The boy rode well, though without grace. He sat as hard in his saddle as though he were part of the beast, rising and falling with the pony’s steps. But he was fearless, and twirled his horsehair whip in his hand and sang as he went. Plainly he was happy, and she made up her mind that he should have what made him happy. She was thankful that for this son, as for Liangmo, happiness lay within the family’s boundaries.

So that day she spent in the main village, eating her noon meal in the steward’s house and listening to all those who came to call upon her. Some came with thanks and some with complaints, and she received them all. It was a good day. Her spirits were refreshed by the simplicity of the people. They were honest and shrewd and did not hide their thoughts. Mothers brought their children to see her, and she praised their health and good looks. She inspected the lands near the village and looked at the seed set aside for various crops. She peered down the well and agreed that it was too shallow and needed to be dug out again, and she counted the jars of ordure that were for the fertilizing of the cabbage fields. She went to the school and spoke to the old scholar who was the teacher and startled him and pleased him by her presence. She laughed when he tried to praise Yenmo’s faithfulness, and she told him that she knew her son did not love books. She inspected the room where Yenmo slept in the steward’s house, a comfortable earth-walled space with a wide bed and clean covers. Then before the sun sank too far she told him good-by and entered her sedan again.

Now when she was alone she did what she had long wanted to do. On the hillside she saw the great gingko tree under which André was buried. If she stopped without explanation, the news would be strange in the countryside and in the city and the house, for everyone told of her comings and goings, and nothing that went on in the Wu family could remain unknown. So she said boldly to the bearers, “Take me to the grave of the foreign priest who was teacher to my son. I will pay my respects to him, since he is here with none to mourn him, and I pass so near.”

They carried her there without wonder, for they admired this courtesy, and she came down from her sedan at some distance from the grave so that she might be alone. Alone she walked along a narrow path between the fields and mounted the low hill and came into the shadow of the gingko tree. The evening wind waved its small fanlike leaves and they dappled the shadows of the setting sun upon the grass. She knelt before the grave and bowed her head to the earth three times while at a distance the bearers watched. Then she sat down on the bank of earth encircling the grave and closed her eyes and let him come to her mind. He came in all his old swiftness, his robes flying about his feet, the winds blowing his beard. His eyes were living and alight.

“That beard,” she murmured half playfully. “It hid your face from me. I never saw your chin and your mouth for myself.”

But then he had always hidden his body. The brown cassock hid the broad lines of his huge frame, and his big shapeless cloth shoes hid his feet.

“Those feet of yours,” she murmured, smiling. “How the children laugh at them!”

It was true. Sometimes when she went to visit the foundlings in the evening, for she tried to go very often, they would tell her how huge the soles had to be made for his shoes. They measured off space with their little hands.

“Like this — like this,” they told her, laughing.

The old woman had cut the soles and the sides from scraps and rags and found the whole cloth to cover them. “The hard stitching I did,” she had told Madame Wu.

“But we all helped,” the children reminded her.

“All put in stitches,” the old woman had agreed. “Even the very small ones pushed the needle through once or twice while I held the cloth.”

So she sat awhile and thought of him and then she went home again, and she felt her heart big with thankfulness. In her lifetime it had been granted to her to know, and even to love, one creature wholly good.

A few days later a craftsman came from a shop in the town and brought something which he had made. Upon a small piece of alabaster he had painted a portrait of André.

Madame Wu gazed upon it, half frightened. “Why have you brought it to me?” she demanded. She could not believe that her innermost life was known to others, and yet she knew the strange wisdom of the unlettered.

“I made it out of good will for that man,” the craftsman said innocently. “Once when we had trouble in the house and I lost my business, he fed us and cared for us until we were able to care for ourselves. I made this picture of him then, so that I might never forget his face. But yesterday my children’s mother said, ‘Ought we not to put this in the temple of the Wu House, where the foundlings now live, so that they may remember him as their father?’ For this reason I bring it.”

She let her heart down. It was not to her he brought the gift. She set the alabaster on the table. The man had made a carved wooden stand to hold it, and there the picture of André was. The man had caught his look, even though he had put in something not quite his, the eyes turned up a little at the corners, the hands were a trifle too fine, and the frame was too slender. But it was André, nevertheless.

“What shall I pay you for it?” Madame Wu asked.

“It is a gift,” the man said. “I cannot sell it.”

“I will receive it, then, for the children,” she said.

So she did, and the man went away. She kept the painting for a day with her, and then she took it at evening to the temple. The children were eating their night meal, and their table was set before the gods who guarded the gates. She paused at the door and admired the sight. High red candles flamed in the candlesticks beneath the gods, and the incense on the altar curled its length upward in a scented cloud. Out of the light and the smoke among the rafters the great gods of painted clay looked down upon the children at their feet.

By now the children were used to their home. At first they had feared the gods, but now they forgot them. They ate and chattered, and the old woman and the old priest served them, and the older ones helped the younger ones. When they saw Madame Wu they made a clamor, and she stood smiling and receiving their welcome. Here was a strange thing, that she had often shrunk from the touch of her own children when they were small, and she had sometimes disliked even their hands upon her. But these children she never put away from her. They were not of her flesh nor of André’s, but they were his by the choice of his spirit, and when she was with them she was with him. Whether she would ever add one to their number, she did not know. Perhaps she would, but perhaps she never would.

Now she held the portrait high so they could see it. “I have a gift for you,” she told them. They parted for her to walk, and she went and set the alabaster picture on the table below the gods and in front of the great pewter incense urn. So André stood, and he looked out at them, and the children looked at him. At first all was silence, for they wanted only to see him. Then they began to speak in sighs and murmurs and ripples of laughter. “Ah, it is our father. Ah, it is he—”

So they stood, gazing and longing, and she said gently, “There he will be always with you, and you can look at his face every day and at night before you sleep.”

Then she showed them what was on the other side. The craftsman had carved four words into the stone and had painted the lines black. These were the words: “One Honorable Foreign Heart.”

When she had showed them she set the picture in place again, and from that day on it stood in that place.

Now after she had gone back to her own courts it occurred to her that she had not seen Ch’iuming in the temple. She mentioned this to Ying that night. “I gave our Second Lady permission to live in the temple with her child, and yet I did not see her.”

To which Ying replied, “She does live there, Lady, but she goes often to sit with your second daughter-in-law. They have become friends and are like sisters, and they comfort each other, for since the coming of that third prostitute our Second Lady is as good as a widow. Our lord never leaves his pipe on her table.”

To this Madame Wu did not reply. She held her peace and pondered while Ying rubbed oils into her flesh after her bath. In a great house it was always true that those whose hearts were alike found one another and knit themselves together in a bond of their own making. If Ch’iuming could comfort Rulan, let it be so. It might be that Rulan, too, would be led to work for the temple children and find comfort in them. True it was the children should be educated somehow. André would want them taught to read and write, and they must learn sewing and cooking and be made ready for the ordinary life of men and women anywhere in the world. Madame Wu went to sleep that night making plans for these children and ready to set up a school for them under her own roof. But she was one who did nothing in haste. Whatever she did was planned and clear, and she let days pass.