Pavilion of Women

II

BUT IT IS MORNING which sets the seal upon what the night has made. Right or wrong is clear only by the sun. Madame Wu woke on this day after her fortieth birthday with a new feeling of lightness. Her eyes fell upon the known but unfamiliar room. This room was very different from the one in which she had slept for years. That one had been decorated for a young woman, a woman who was wed to a man and was expected to bear him children. The embroideries upon the curtains of that bed were of fruits and signs of fecundity. That room she had left last night was just as it had been when Old Lady had sent her into it as a bride for her only son. Old Lady had bought such strong satins and such fast-colored silks for the embroidered canopy that there was still no excuse after twenty-four years to buy a new one. The only object which Madame Wu had added to the room was the picture of the human creature struggling up the mountain. She missed this picture now. Today she must have it brought here with her clothes and her toilet articles. Beyond that, her old room would be very suitable for a new young concubine. Let the fruits and fecund signs be for that one!

Madame Wu lay in her new bed alone. It was an even vaster bed than the one she had left, and as she lay in it she delicately probed her heart. Did she suffer to think that another would lie under the rose-fed satin covers of her marriage bed? She did feel some sort of faint, distant pain, but it was neither close nor personal. It was a large pain, the pain which one must suffer when Heaven in its impenetrable wisdom decrees against the single soul. Thus she knew it would have been ineffably good and comforting to her had it been possible for Mr. Wu to have been ready to enter into the latter half of life with her. It would have been a miracle of content for her if out of his own fulfillment, and without sacrifice, he could have reached the same point of life that she had at the same time that she did.

She pondered for a long time. Why had Heaven not made women twice as long-lived as men, so that their beauty and fertility might last as long as man lived and fade only with the generation? Why should a man’s need to plant his seed continue too long for fulfillment in one woman?

“Women,” she thought, “must therefore be more lonely than men. Part of their life must be spent alone, and so Heaven has prepared them.”

Her reason recalled her from such futile questioning. Could anyone change what Heaven had decreed? Heaven, valuing only life, had given seed to man, and earth to woman. Of earth there was plenty, but of what use was earth without seed? The truth was that a man’s need went on even after his bones were chalk and his blood water, and this was because Heaven put the bearing of children above all else lest mankind die. Therefore must the very last seed in a man’s loin be planted, and that this last seed might bear strong fruit, as the man grew old the seed must be planted in better and stronger soil. For any woman, therefore, to cling to a man beyond the time of her fertility was to defy Heaven’s decree.

When she had thus reasoned, the distant large pain melted away in her, and she felt released and calm. She felt, indeed, restored to herself and almost as she had been as a girl. How strange and how pleasant it would be to lie down at night and know that she could sleep until morning, or if she were wakeful that she could be wakeful and not fear waking another! Her body was given back to her. She pushed up her sleeve from her arm and contemplated her flesh. It was as firm and as sound as ever. Nourished and cared for and infused now with new freedom, she would live to be a very old woman. But that she might live happily she must be careful in all her relationships, but most of all with him. She must not allow herself to be cut off from him. Certainly this would not be easy when the tie between them would no longer be of the flesh, but of the mind and the spirit. Then she must consider new ways of his dependence upon her, yet ways which would not in fairness divide him from the newcomer.

“I must somehow do my duty toward all,” she murmured, and pulled the sleeve down again over her pretty arm.

Who was this young woman to be? Madame Wu had thought a great deal about her. Now she began thinking about her again. Clearly she should be someone very different from herself. She must be young, yet not younger than the daughters-in-law, for that would bring trouble into the house. The proper age would be twenty-two. She must not be too well-educated, for Madame Wu herself had learning. She must not be modern, for a modern young woman would not be satisfied to be a concubine and in a short time she would be pushing Madame Wu out of the way and demanding Mr. Wu’s whole time and heart, and this would be shameful in the house before the sons. An older man may take a concubine in dignity, but he must not be possessed by her. Pretty of course she must be, but not so pretty that she would distract young men in the house, or indeed Mr. Wu himself. Pleasantly pretty would be enough. And since Madame Wu’s own beauty had been of one sort, this young woman’s should be of another. That is, she should be plump and rosy, and it would not matter if she were somewhat thick in the bones.

All this, Madame Wu reflected, pointed to a young woman country bred. Moreover, a country woman would have health and no bad habits and would be likely to have sound children. Children, of course, must be had, for no woman is content without children, and where there are none the woman grows peevish and dwells upon herself and fastens her demands upon the man. Mr. Wu must not be made less happy, certainly, by his concubine. “And she must be a little stupid,” Madame Wu reflected, “in order that she will be content with what he gives her, and not wonder what is between him and me.”

She now began to have a clear picture in her mind of this young woman. She saw a healthy, slightly stupid, pretty young woman, one fond of food, one who had not lived before in a rich house so that she would be a little fearful of this house, and one not stubborn or proud, so that she would not seek to overcome her fear by temper and noise.

“There must be many such common young women,” Madame Wu thought cheerfully.

She decided as soon as she had risen and had tended to the duties of the day that she would send for the old woman who had been go-between for Meng. For Madame Wu had employed a go-between even with her friend, lest Madame Kang in her kindness demand too little, and later the marriage would suffer because it had not been just. “This old Liu Ma must be called hither,” Madame Wu thought, “and I will tell her plainly just what is wanted. It is as definite as an order for merchandise.” So she thought and without cynicism.

Then she let her mind drift to these rooms in which she now would live the rest of her life. She would make very few changes here. She had always been fond of the old man who had been her father-in-law. Since he had never had a daughter, he had been good to her and when he found that she was intelligent and learned as well as beautiful, he had been very pleased indeed. He had put aside the convention which forbids an old man to speak to his son’s wife. Many times he had even sent for her that he might read to her something from the old books in his library. She had learned to come to this library herself during his lifetime and read the books. Certain of these books he had put aside as unfitting for a woman, and she had never touched them. Now, however, since the first half of her life was over and she was alone, she could read them all.

It gave her pleasure to think of the library full of books now hers. She had not had time in these middle years of her life to look much into books. Mr. Wu did not enjoy reading, and therefore he did not like to see her with a book in her hand. Today, after years of giving body and mind to others, she felt that she needed to drink deeply at old springs.

These rooms became every moment more her own. Old Gentleman had been so long dead that he had ceased to exist for her as flesh and blood. Today when she thought of him he was a wise old mind, a calm old voice. There was therefore nothing in these rooms which she wanted changed, since she felt no flesh and blood were here. The bed curtains were of a thin dark-blue brocaded silk, speaking neither of passion nor of fecundity. The walls were whitewashed and creamy with age. The beams of the roof were unceiled. Doors and windows, chairs and tables were heavy and smooth and of plain, polished wood dark with Ningpo varnish, that stain and oil which last generations in a house. The floor was of big square gray tiles, so old that they were hollowed beside the bed and at the door into the library. The bedroom was one of the three rooms, and the third was the long sitting room which opened upon a court. Only in the court would she perhaps make a little change. The trees had grown together and did not let enough sun through, and the stones beneath them were slippery with moss.

Someone knocked at the door. “Come!” she called.

Ying came in, looking frightened. “I did not know where you were,” she stammered. “I went everywhere. I went into your old room and waked the master, and he was angry with me.”

“You will find me here now every morning until I die,” Madame Wu said calmly.

The news filtered through the household while the day went on. Son told wife, and one wife told another, and Ying told the cook, and the head cook told his undercook, and so by the end of that day there was not a soul who did not know that Madame Wu had moved into Old Gentleman’s rooms. Through servants the news was taken to Old Lady’s own maid, and so to Old Lady, who would not believe it. Madame Wu had purposely not told Old Lady. She knew that Old Lady would hear it from her maid, and this was well, for then Old Lady’s first temper would be spent on someone who was only a servant. After this was over, Old Lady would be torn by not knowing whether to quarrel first with her son or with her son’s wife. If she came first to Madame Wu, this would mean she blamed her. If she came first to her son, this meant she felt her son was at fault.

Toward noon, when Madame Wu was reckoning the month’s accounts in the sitting room which was now hers, she saw Old Lady’s maid leading her across the court. The trees had already been cut and carried away, and the moss-covered stones were scraped and cleaned of moss. Old Lady paused to see what had been done. She leaned on her maid’s arm with one hand, and in the other hand she held her long dragon-headed staff. The sun poured down into the once shadowy court, and the fish in the central pool, blinded by the light, had dived into the mud, so that the water was empty. But a pair of bright blue dragonflies danced above the water, drunk with the new sun.

“You have cut down the Pride of China tree,” Old Lady said accusingly.

Madame Wu, who had risen and come to her side, smiled. “Those trees spring up so easily,” she said, “and they grow so quickly. This one was not planted. It had only pushed itself up between two stones.”

Old Lady sighed and walked on toward the door. When Madame Wu took her elbow she pushed her half spitefully. “Don’t touch me,” she said peevishly. “I am very angry with you.”

Madame Wu did not answer. She followed Old Lady into the sitting room. “You didn’t tell me you were moving in here,” Old Lady said in her harsh high old voice. “I am never told anything in this house.” She sat down as she spoke.

“I should have told you,” Madame Wu agreed. “It was very wrong of me. I must ask you to forgive me.”

Old Lady grunted. “Have you quarreled with my son?” she asked severely.

“Not at all,” Madame Wu replied. “Indeed, we never quarrel.”

“Do not make words for me,” Old Lady commanded. “I am able to hear the truth.”

“I will not make words, Mother,” Madame Wu replied. “Yesterday I was forty years old. I had long made up my mind that when that day came I would retire from my duties as a female and find someone for my lord who is young. He is only forty-five years old. He has many years left him yet.”

Old Lady sat with her lean hands crossed on the dragon’s head and peered at her son’s wife. “Does he love someone else?” she demanded. “If he has been playing in flower houses, I will — I will—”

“No, there is no other woman,” Madame Wu replied. “Your son is the best of men, and he has been nothing but good to me. I am selfish enough to want to keep fresh between us the good love we have had. This cannot be if I am ridden with fear of a belated child, and surely it cannot be if my own fires slacken while his burn on.”

“People will say he has played the fool and you have revenged yourself,” Old Lady said sternly. “Who will believe you have of your own will withdrawn yourself — unless indeed you have ceased to love him?”

“I have not ceased to love him,” Madame Wu said.

“What is love between a man and woman if they don’t go to bed together?” Old Lady inquired.

Madame Wu paused for a long moment before she answered this. “I do not know,” she replied at last. “I have always wondered, and perhaps now I shall find out.”

Old Lady snorted. “I hope that we will not all suffer from this,” she said loudly. “I hope that a new trouble-maker will not come into this house!”

“That must be my care,” Madame Wu admitted. “I should blame myself entirely were such a thing to happen.”

“Where is this new woman?” Old Lady demanded. She was still aggrieved, but she felt anger melting out of her against her will. It was true that no woman wanted to conceive after she was forty. She herself had had this misfortune, but luckily the child had died at birth. Yet she remembered with clarity, as though it were yesterday instead of more than thirty years ago, her deep shame when she knew that at such an age she was pregnant. She had longed for more children until then, and yet when she was forty she wanted no more, and she had quarreled with her husband through all those months of discontented waiting.

“Go and find yourself a whore,” she had told the distressed man. “Go and find yourself some young girl who is always ready!”

Old Gentleman had been deeply pained at such remarks, and he had never come near her again. But he had never loved her so well again, either. She had often been teased by his reticence, for he was gentle and shy as too many books can make a man, but after that he became almost totally silent toward her. Yet she knew that the whole thing had been only an accident, and that he wanted a child of her no more than she did of him. Even now when she remembered her anger against him she felt a vague guilt. What had happened had been merely an act of nature, no more, and why should she have blamed her good old man?

Old Lady sighed. “Where is this woman?” she demanded again, forgetting that she had already asked this.

“I have not found her yet,” Madame Wu said.

The bondmaid was listening to everything while she pretended to serve her old mistress by now pouring tea and now fanning her and now moving a screen so that the sun did not fall on her. But Madame Wu had considered this and had told herself that it was well that all the servants should know everything from the source,

“She will be hard to find,” Old Lady said stubbornly.

“I think not,” Madame Wu replied. “I know exactly what she should be. It remains only not to take any other.”

“Nevertheless,” Old Lady went on, “I still feel I should blame my son.”

“Please do not,” Madame Wu begged her. “To blame him for anything would make him feel he is at fault in some way, and indeed there is no fault in him. He must not be made to feel self-reproach merely because I am forty years old. It would be most unjust.”

Old Lady groaned. “O Heaven, that has made man and woman of two different earths!”

Madame Wu smiled at this. “You may blame Heaven, and I will not deny it.”

There seemed nothing to say after that. Old Lady kept remembering the acuteness of her own like situation many years ago. She would have been angry if her son’s father had taken a younger woman, even when she had cried at him to do so. This woman, her son’s wife, was perhaps wiser.

Her mind slipped a little, as it did often now that she was old, and she looked about her. “Are you changing everything in these rooms?” she asked.

“I shall change nothing,” Madame Wu said, “except that I have brought in that painting from my old room. I was always fond of it.” The picture already hung opposite where she sat, for this morning immediately after she had eaten, she had bade Ying tell a manservant to bring it and hang it here. She had decided not to put it in the bedroom where it had hung before. In this bedroom she would only sleep.

Old Lady rose and went to the scroll and stood before it, leaning on her staff. “Is that a man or woman climbing the mountain?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” Madame Wu said. “It does not matter perhaps.”

“Lonely!” Old Lady muttered. “Lonely in the midst of all those mountains! I have always hated mountains.”

“I suppose the person wouldn’t be there if he minded loneliness,” Madame Wu said.

But Old Lady whenever she felt sad immediately felt hunger also. The picture had made her sad.

She turned to Madame Wu with a piteous look. “I am hungry,” she said. “I haven’t eaten anything for hours.”

Madame Wu said to the maid, “Take her back to her own rooms and let her eat anything she wants.”

When Old Lady had gone, she sat down again to her reckoning. For the rest of the day no one came near her. The household was unhappy and silent. She wondered whether Mr. Wu would come to see her, and was surprised to find in herself some sort of shyness at the thought of him. But he, too, did not come near her. She understood exactly what was happening in the great house. The sons and sons’ wives would have been talking half the day, arguing as to what should be done and said, and consulting with cousins and cousins’ wives. Since they had reached no agreement none had come to her, and since elders did not come, children were kept away. As for the servants, it was only natural prudence which kept them quiet and at work until the air in the house had cleared. Only Ying served her all day long, and she said little, although her eyes were freshly red every time she came in. But Madame Wu pretended to see nothing. She spent the entire day on her accounts, which she had allowed to gather in the preparation for her birthday.

Now she studied one book after another, first the house accounts which the steward kept, then the clothing accounts, repaired and new, then the house repairs and replacements, always heavy in so large a family, and finally the land accounts. The ancestral lands of the Wu family were large and productive, and upon them and the shops the family depended. Neither Mr. Wu nor any of his sons had ever gone away to work. Some of the remoter cousins, it is true, had settled in other cities as merchants or in banks and trade, but even these, if they were temporarily out of work, came back to the land for a while to recover themselves. Madame Wu administered these lands as she did the house. It had been many years since Mr. Wu did more than read over the accounts once a year just before the old year passed into the new one. But Madame Wu studied the house accounts twice monthly and the land accounts every month. She knew exactly what the harvests of rice and wheat, eggs, vegetables, and fuel were. The land steward reported to her any change or disaster. Sometimes she talked this over with Mr. Wu and sometimes she did not. It depended on how tired she was. If she were tired she settled a matter herself.

This day she had spent in such work from early morning until dark, pausing only to supervise the hanging of the picture and the cutting away of the trees. Around her the house was as silent as though she were the only soul in it. The silence was restful to her. She would not, of course, want it every day. That would have been to enter too soon into death. But after forty years it was pleasant to spend one day entirely alone, without a single voice raised to ask her for anything. The accounts were accurate and satisfying. Less had been spent than had been taken in. The granaries were still not empty and soon the new harvests would be reaped. The larders were full of food, both salted and fresh. Watermelons had ripened and were hanging in the deep wells to be cooled. The steward had written down in his little snakelike letters, “Nineteen watermelons, seven yellow-hearted, the rest red, hanging in the two north wells.” She might have one drawn up tonight before she slept. Watermelons were good for the kidneys.

When the account books were closed she sat steeping herself in the sweet silent loneliness. She felt the weariness begin to seep from her like a poison breathed out of her lungs. She had been far more weary than she knew, a weariness not so much physical as spiritual. It was hard to define even where in the spirit it lay. Certainly her mind was not weary. It was hungry and alert and eager to exercise itself. It seemed to her that she had not really used her mind for a long time except in such things as reckoning accounts and settling quarrels and deciding whether a child should go to one school or another. No, her weariness was hid somewhere in her innermost being, perhaps in her belly and in her womb. She had been giving life for twenty-four years, before the children were born and after they were born, and now they would themselves give birth to other children. Mother and grandmother, she had been absorbed in giving birth. Now it was over.

At this moment she heard a footstep. It was clear and decided, clacking on the stones lightly as it approached. She wondered for a moment — leather shoes? Who wore leather shoes among the women? For it was a woman’s footsteps. Then she knew. It was Rulan, the Shanghai wife of Tsemo, her second son. She sighed, reluctant to yield even for a moment her silence and loneliness. But she rebuked herself. No one must think she had withdrawn from the house. Rather, let them think of this as the center of the house because she was here.

“Come hither, Rulan,” she called. Her pretty voice was cheerful. When she looked up she saw the girl’s dark eyes searching her face. The young woman stood in the doorway, tall and slender. Her straight long robe was pinched in at the waist after the half-foreign fashion of Shanghai. Her bosom was flat. She was not beautiful because of her high cheekbones. Madame Wu’s own face had the egg-shaped smoothness of classical beauty. Rulan’s face was wide at the eyes, narrow at the chin. Her mouth was square and sullen.

Madame Wu ignored the sullenness. “Come in and sit down, child,” she said. “I have just finished our family accounts. We are fortunate — the land has been kind.”

The girl was plain, and yet she had flashes of beauty, Madame Wu thought, watching her as she sat down squarely upon a chair. She had none of the polish and courtesy which all the other young women in the house had. Instead it seemed that this girl even took pleasure in being rude and always abrupt. Madame Wu looked at her with interest. It was the first time she had ever been alone with Rulan.

“You must be careful of your beautiful mouth, my child,” she now said in that gentle dispassionate manner which all young persons found disconcerting, since it was neither chiding nor advising.

“What do you mean?” Rulan stammered. Her lips quivered when they parted.

“It is a lovely trembling mouth now,” Madame Wu said. “But women’s mouths change as they grow older. Yours will become more lovely as it grows firm, or it will become coarse and stubborn.”

Her cool voice conveyed no interest, merely the statement of what was to be expected. Rulan might have declared, had there been any interest, that she did not care what her mouth became. But confused by the coolness, she merely pressed her red lips together for a moment and drew her black brows together.

“Did you come to speak to me about something?” Madame Wu inquired. She had changed her seat to one more comfortable than the straight wooden chair by the table. This one was wooden, too, but the back was rounded. Yet she did not lean against it. She continued to sit upright while she filled her little pipe. She lit it and took her two customary dainty puffs.

“Our Mother!” Rulan began impetuously. She was pent and disturbed, yet she did not know how to begin.

“Yes, child?” Madame Wu said mildly.

“Mother,” Rulan began again, “you have upset everybody.”

“Have I?” Madame Wu asked. Her voice was full of music and wonder.

“Yes, you have,” Rulan repeated. “Tsemo said I wasn’t to come and talk with you. He said that it was Liangmo’s duty as the oldest son. But Liangmo won’t. He said it would be no use. And Meng does nothing but cry. But I don’t cry. I said someone must come and talk with you.”

“And no one came except you.” Madame Wu smiled slightly.

Rulan did not smile in reply. Her too-serious young face was agonized between shyness and determination. “Mother,” she began yet again, “I have always felt you did not like me, and so I ought to be the last one to come to you.”

“Child, you are wrong,” Madame Wu said. “There is no one in the world whom I dislike, not even that poor foreign soul, Little Sister Hsia.”

Rulan flinched. “You really do not like me,” she argued. “I know that. I am older than Tsemo, and you do not like me for that. And you never forgive me that we fell in love in Shanghai and decided ourselves to marry instead of letting you arrange our affairs.”

“Of course I did not like that,” Madame Wu agreed. “But when I had thought about it, I knew that I wanted Tsemo’s happiness, and when I saw you I knew he was happy, and so I was pleased with you. That you are older than he you cannot help. It is annoying in the house, but I have managed in spite of it. One can manage anything.”

“But if I were like Meng and the others,” Rulan said in her stormy impetuous way, “I would not feel so badly now over what you have done. Mother, you must not let Father take another woman.”

“It is not a matter of letting him,” Madame Wu said, still mildly. “I have decided that it is the best thing for him.”

The color washed out of Rulan’s ruddy face. “Mother, do you know what you do?”

“I think I know what I do,” Madame Wu said.

“People will laugh at us,” Rulan said. “It’s old-fashioned to take a concubine.”

“For Shanghai people, perhaps,” Madame Wu said, and her voice conveyed to Rulan that it did not matter at all what Shanghai people thought.

Rulan stared at her in stubborn despair. This cool woman who was her husband’s mother was so beautiful, so perfect, that she was beyond the reach of all anger, all reproach. She knew long ago that against her she could never prevail with Tsemo. His mother’s hold upon him was so absolute that he did not even rebel against it. He was convinced that whatever his mother did was finally for his own good. Today when the women were storming against the idea of the new woman and Liangmo had only been silent, Tsemo had shrugged his shoulders. He was playing chess with Yenmo, his younger brother.

“If our mother wants a concubine,” he said, “it is for a reason, for she never acts without reason. Yenmo, it is your turn.”

Yenmo played without heeding the turmoil. Of all his brothers he loved Tsemo best, for he played with him every day. Without him Yenmo would have been lonely in this house full of women and children.

“Reason!” Rulan had cried with contempt.

“Guard your tongue,” Tsemo had said sternly, not lifting his eyes from the chessboard.

She had not dared disobey him. Though he was younger than she, he had something of his mother’s calm, and this gave him power over her storm and passion. But she had secretly made up her mind to come alone to Madame Wu.

She clenched her hands on her knees and gazed at her. “Mother, it is now actually against the laws for a man to take a concubine, do you know that?”

“What laws?” Madame Wu asked.

“The new laws,” Rulan cried, “the laws of the Revolutionary party!”

“These laws,” Madame Wu said, “like the new Constitution, are still entirely on paper.”

She saw that Rulan was taken aback by her use of the word Constitution. She had not expected Madame Wu to know about the Constitution.

“Many of us worked hard to abolish concubinage,” she declared. “We marched in procession in the Shanghai streets in hottest summer, and our sweat poured down our bodies. We carried banners insisting on the one-wife system of marriage as they have it in the West. I myself carried a blue banner that bore in white letters the words, ‘Down with concubines.’ Now when someone in my own family, my own husband’s mother, does a thing so old-fashioned, so — so wicked — for it is wicked, Mother, to return to the old cruel ways—”

“My child,” Madame Wu asked in her sweet reasonable voice, “what would you do if Tsemo one day should want another wife, someone, say, less full of energy and wit than you are, someone soft and comfortable?”

“I would divorce him at once,” Rulan said proudly. “I would not share him with any other woman.”

Madame Wu lit her little pipe again and took two more puffs. “A man’s life is made up of many parts,” she said. “As a woman grows older she perceives this.”

“I believe in the equality of man and woman,” Rulan insisted.

“Ah,” Madame Wu said, “two equals are nevertheless not the same two things. They are equal in importance, equally necessary to life, but not the same,”

“That is not what we think nowadays,” Rulan said. “If a woman is content with one man, a man should be content with one woman.”

Madame Wu put down her pipe. “You are so young,” she said reflectively, “that I wonder how I can explain it. You see, my child, content is the important thing — the content of a man, the content of a woman. When one reaches the measure of content, shall that one say to the other, ‘Here you must stop because I am now content?’ ”

“But Liangmo told us our father does not want another one,” Rulan said doggedly.

Madame Wu thought, “Ah, Liangmo has been talking to his father today!” She felt a moment’s pity for her husband, at the mercy of his sons for no fault of his own.

“When you have lived with a man for twenty-five years as his wife,” she said gently, “you have lived with him to the end of all knowledge.”

She sighed and suddenly wished this young woman away. And yet she liked her better than she ever had before. It took courage to come here alone, to speak these blunt, brave, foolish words.

“Child,” she said, leaning toward Rulan, “I think Heaven is kind to women, after all. One could not keep bearing children forever. So Heaven in its mercy says when a woman is forty, ‘Now, poor soul and body, the rest of your life you shall have for yourself. You have divided yourself again and again, and now take what is left and make yourself whole again, so that life may be good to you for yourself, not only for what you give but for what you get.’ I will spend the rest of my life assembling my own mind and my own soul. I will take care of my body carefully, not that it may any more please a man, but because it houses me and therefore I am dependent upon it.”

“Do you hate us all?” the girl asked. Her eyes opened wide, and Madame Wu saw for the first time that they were very handsome eyes.

“I love you all more than ever,” Madame Wu said.

“Our father, too?” the girl inquired.

“Him, too,” Madame Wu said. “Else why would I so eagerly want his happiness?”

“I do not understand you,” the girl said after a moment. “I think I do not know what you mean.”

“Ah, you are so far from my age,” Madame Wu replied. “Be patient with me, child, for knowing what I want.”

“You really are doing what you want to do?” Rulan asked doubtfully.

“Really, I am,” Madame Wu replied tenderly.

Rulan rose. “I shall have to go back and tell them,” she said. “But I do not think any one of them will understand.”

“Tell them all to be patient with me,” Madame Wu said, smiling at her.

“Well, if you are sure—” Rulan said, still hesitating.

“Quite sure,” Madame Wu said.

She was glad once more of the loneliness and the silence when Rulan had gone. She smiled a little to think of the family gathered together without her, all in consternation, all wondering what to do, because for the first time in their knowledge of her she had done something for herself alone. But as she smiled she felt full of peace. Without waiting for Ying, since she was two hours before her usual time for bed, she bathed and put on her white silk night garments and lay down in the huge dark-curtained old bed. When Ying came in an hour later she was frightened at the silence and ran to the bedroom. There behind the undrawn bed curtains she saw her mistress lying small and still upon the bed. She ran forward, terror in her heart, to gaze upon that motionless figure.

“Oh, Heaven,” Ying moaned, “Our Lady is dead!”

But Madame Wu was not dead, only sleeping, although Ying had never seen her sleep like this. Even her outcry did not wake the sleeping lady. “She whom the flutter of a bird in the eaves wakes at dawn!” Ying marveled. She stood for a moment looking down on the pure beauty of Madame Wu’s face, then she stepped back and drew the heavy curtains.

“She is tired to the heart,” Ying muttered. “She is tired because in this great house all feed on her, like suckling children.”

She paused at the door of the court and looked fiercely right and left. But no one was coming, and certainly not Mr. Wu.

In Liangmo’s court the two elder sons and their wives talked together until the water clock had passed the first half of the night. The two young husbands were silent for the most part. They felt confused and shy for their father’s sake. He, too, was a man, as they were now. When they were in their middle years, would it be so with themselves and their wives? They doubted themselves and hid their doubt.

Of the two young wives, Meng was the more silent. She was too happy in her own life to quarrel with anyone for anything. Liangmo she held to be the handsomest and best of men, and she wondered continually that she had been so fortunate as to be given him for life. There was nothing in him which was not to her taste. His strong young body, his good temper, the sweetness of his ways, his endless kindness, his patience, his ready laughter, the way his lips met each other, the flatness of his cheeks, the heavy smoothness of his black hair, the firm softness of his hands, his dry cool palms — she knew and rejoiced in all. She found no fault in him. She was lost in him and content to be lost. She wanted no being of her own. To be his, to lie in his arms at night, to serve him by day, to fold his garments, to bring his food herself, to pour his tea and light his pipe, to listen to his every word, to busy herself with healing any slight headache, to test the flavor of a dish or the heat of the wine, these were her joys and her occupations. But above all was the bearing of his children. To bear him many children was her sole desire. She was his instrument for immortality.

Now as always when he was present she thought of him and heard the voices of others through the golden haze of her joy in him. That his father might take a concubine only made Liangmo more perfect in her eyes. There was no one like Liangmo. He was better than his father, wiser, more faithful. And Liangmo was content with her.

While Rulan talked, Meng listened, thinking of Liangmo. When Rulan demanded of her, “Meng, you are the eldest son’s wife — what do you think?” then Meng turned to Liangmo to know what she thought.

Be sure Rulan knew this and was contemptuous of Meng for having no mind of her own. She, too, loved her young husband, and she declared to Tsemo often enough when they were alone that she loved him more for not being a fool as Liangmo was. Secretly she grieved because Tsemo was not the elder son. He was stronger than Liangmo, keener, quicker, thin and sharp-tongued. Liangmo was like his father, but Tsemo was like his mother. Even while she quarreled with him she loved him well. But quarrel with him she did very often, hating herself for it while she did it. Every quarrel ended in her stormy repentance, and this repentance came from her constant secret fear, hidden even from herself, because she was older than Tsemo and because she knew that she had loved him before he loved her. Yes, this was her secret shame — that she had set her heart upon him in the school where they had met, and her heart had compelled her to seek him out with ill-concealed excuses of books she could not understand and lecture notes she had lost, and anything she could devise to bring him to her. Hers had been the first offer of friendship, and hers the hand first put out to touch his.

All this she had excused boldly to herself and to him because, she said, she was a new woman, not old-fashioned, not fearful of men, but believing, she said, that men and women were the same. But she knew, all the time, that Tsemo was the younger and that he had never known a woman before, and that he was hard-pressed by her love and had yielded to it, but not with his whole being. “You are afraid of your old-fashioned mother!” she had cried.

To this he had made answer, thoughtfully, “I am afraid of her because she is always right.”

“No one is always right,” Rulan had declared.

“You do not know my mother,” Tsemo had replied, laughing. “Even when I wish her wrong, I know she is right. She is the wisest woman in the world.”

These words he had said innocently, but with them he had thrust a dagger into Rulan’s heart, and there it stayed. She came to the Wu house ready to hate Tsemo’s mother and be jealous of her, and was angry because she could neither hate nor be jealous. For Madame Wu’s cool kindness to all alike gave no handle. If she felt Rulan’s hatred she did not show it, and the young woman soon saw that Madame Wu cared neither for love nor hate.

Nor could the young wife be jealous. In one of their quarrels she had flung this back at Tsemo, “Why do you love your mother so much? She does not love you so much.”

To this Tsemo replied with his usual coolness, “I do not want to be loved too much.”

Thus he flung the barb back again at Rulan and left it in her quivering flesh. But she was easily wounded, her heart always open and ready for hurt, and her pride quivering.

“I suppose you think I love you too much!” she had burst out at Tsemo then.

But this he would not answer. He was of a debonair figure, his shoulders broad, his waist narrow. All the sons were handsome except Yenmo, who was too fat yet, but Tsemo had a certain look more noble than them all. This noble look tortured Rulan. Was it a sign of his soul or only a trick of bones fitted together in his skull and covered with fine flesh and smooth golden skin? She did not know, and he hid the truth from her, or she thought he did.

“Tell me what you are thinking,” she demanded of him often.

Sometimes he told her, sometimes he would not. “Leave me a little privacy,” he said harshly then.

“You do not love me!” she cried too often.

“Do I not?” he would reply, and she cursed her nagging tearing tongue. Yet there were times when he did love her with all the kindness she demanded, and how was she to know what were those times? Alone she raged against his cheerfulness and put herself at the mercy of her own love and longed to be free of it because it made her less than he and dependent on him. But how could she be free of chains she had put upon herself? Her soul was all tempest. The dreams she had once had of her life were dead. She was in prison in the house. And yet who was her jailer except herself?

In this tempest she lived as secretly as she could, but she could not hide it all. Her temper was quick and her scorn hot. She blamed servants easily, and they were not used to discourtesy in this house and so they served her less well than the others in the family and laughed at her in the kitchens, and be sure one always told her of this laughter. And she was peevish often and thought everything inconvenient and old.

“In Shanghai we had self-come water and self-come light,” she would say, and complained against baths bucket-filled and against candles and oil lamps. But who heeded her? She was only one among sixty-odd souls under the Wu roof, and she had not even borne a child yet.

When, therefore, she complained too long this night against his father, Tsemo grew weary of her. He yawned and stretched himself and burst out laughing.

“Our poor father!” he said cheerfully. “After all, it is he whom we must pity, if we are to listen to you, Rulan. We will only see the woman in passing, but he must have her as his burden day and night. Come, girl, it is midnight. Go to bed and rest yourself — and give me rest.”

He rose, shook himself, rubbed his hands through his hair, whistled to her as though she were his dog, and went away. What could she do but follow him to their own court?