Pavilion of Women

III

IN THE MORNING, AFTER a full night’s sleep, Madame Wu woke. This was one of her blessings, that after sleep and when she waked, before her eyes she saw the path like moonlight upon a dark sea, the path she chose to walk. It lay clear before her now.

“I must choose the woman at once,” she told herself. The household could not be at ease in this waiting. She would therefore today send for the old woman go-between and inquire what young women, country bred, might be suitable. She had already brought to her own memory all others that she knew, but there was not one whom she wanted. All were either too high or too low, the daughters of the rich, who would be proud and troublesome, or so foreign-taught that they might even want her put away. Or they were the daughters of the poor who would be equally proud and troublesome. No, she must find some young woman who had neither too much nor too little, so that she might be free from fear and envy. And it would be better, she reflected, if the young woman were wholly a stranger, and her family strangers, too, and if possible, distant, so that when she came into the house she would take up all her roots and bring them here and strike them down afresh.

When Ying came in with the morning’s tea and sweetmeats she said after greeting, “As soon as I have eaten I will talk with that old Liu Ma.”

“Yes, Lady,” Ying said sadly.

In silence she helped Madame Wu to rise and dress. She brushed the long satin-smooth hair and coiled it, and then she went away and came back with Madame Wu’s breakfast. All this time she did not speak a word, nor did Madame Wu speak either. She let herself be dressed, her thin beautiful body as limp as a doll’s in Ying’s hands. But she ate well and felt content.

She had scarcely finished the last sup of tea when Ying brought Liu Ma. Be sure Liu Ma knew already why she had been called. She had her paid spies in every rich household to tell her when discontent rose between men and women. Her flat broad nose had as delicate a scent for mating man and woman as a hound’s has for wild flesh. Thus she knew that a concubine was to be found for Mr. Wu. But she was too knowing to let Madame Wu see that she had any such knowledge. Instead she pretended that of course the reason for this meeting was that Madame Wu must want to betroth Fengmo, her third son.

But Madame Wu was wise also in the ways of human beings, and she was sure that Liu Ma knew everything from servant’s mouth to servant’s ear, and so she allowed Liu Ma to think she was deceiving.

“You are early, Lady,” Liu Ma panted as she came in. She was a short fat woman who in her girlhood had been in a flower house. But she grew fat very early and found that she could earn more money by bringing other women to men than herself, and so she had married a small shopkeeper, giving him for dowry the money she had saved, and she took up the profession of go-between for good families.

“I like the early morning,” Madame Wu replied gently.

She did not rise since Liu Ma was her inferior, but she motioned the old woman kindly to a seat, and Ying poured tea for her and went away.

Liu Ma supped her tea loudly. She made no remark on Madame Wu’s having moved to this court. Instead she said in her hoarse voice, “You are more beautiful than ever. Your lord is very lucky.”

This she said by way of introducing the subject of concubines. For now, she thought, Madame Wu would sigh and say, alas, that her beauty stood her in no stead. But Madame Wu only thanked her.

Liu Ma took out a square of white cotton cloth and coughed into it. She knew better than to spit on the floor in this house. Everyone knew that Madame Wu was as particular as a foreigner in such matters. Then she began again.

“I thought that you might be wanting a fine young girl for your third son, and so I brought some pictures with me.”

She had on her knees an oblong package tied up in a blue cotton kerchief. This she untied. Inside was an old foreign magazine which had pictures of motion picture actresses. She opened this and took out some photographs.

“I have now three young girls, all very good bargains,” she said.

“Only three?” Madame Wu murmured, smiling.

This old Liu Ma always roused her secret laughter. Her merchandise was the passion between men and women, and she bartered it as frankly as though it were rice and eggs and cabbage.

“I do not mean to say three is all I have,” Liu Ma made haste to reply. “Surely I have as good clients as any other go-between in the city. But these are my very best. These three young girls have good families who are able to give money and the finest furniture and wedding garments.”

“Let me see that foreign book,” Madame Wu said. Now that the moment had come to choose a woman to take her place she felt half-frightened. Perhaps she had undertaken more than she knew.

“None of those young women are mine,” Liu Ma said. “They are only the electric shadow of women in America.”

“I know that,” Madame Wu said, laughing her soft laughter. “I am only curious to see what the foreigners think is beautiful in a woman.”

She took from Liu Ma the paper book she held out. It was soiled but not wrinkled, for Liu Ma prized it. Neither of them could read the foreigners’ language and so the names were unknown to them.

Madame Wu turned the pages and gazed at one gay face after another. “They all look alike,” she murmured, “but then all foreigners do look alike, of course.”

Liu Ma laughed loudly. “Certainly Little Sister Hsia does not look like these,” she said. “I could marry off these, but not Little Sister Hsia!” Everybody in the city knew Little Sister Hsia, and jokes about her were told over counters, in shops, and in courtyards and teashops. All declared her good at heart, but they relished their laughter nevertheless. Only her one servant, an old man, defended her.

“Do not tell me you can understand what she says,” a fish man at the market had teased the old man, while he weighed a small fish for Little Sister’s noon meal.

“I can,” the old man had sworn. “If I know what she is going to say, I can even understand her easily.”

“Little Sister Hsia is a nun,” Madame Wu replied to Liu Ma. “A foreign nun. Nuns are not women. Where did you get such a book as this?”

“I bought it,” Liu Ma said proudly. “A friend was going to Shanghai some five or six years ago, and I said I wanted such a book and he brought it back. I paid five dollars for it.”

“Why did you want a book of foreign women?” Madame Wu inquired.

“Some men like to look at such faces,” Liu Ma explained. “It rouses their desire and gives me business. Then also there are the new men who want modern women, and they point to one of these and say ‘I want one like this.’ I find a girl somewhere who will make herself look as near as she can to the one chosen.”

Madame Wu closed the book quickly and gave it back to Liu Ma. “Let me see the three photographs,” she said.

She took them without touching Liu Ma’s dirty old hand and looked at them, one by one.

“But these three faces also look alike,” she objected.

“Do not all young girls look alike?” Liu Ma retorted. “Bright eyes, shining hair, little noses and red lips — and if you take off their clothes what difference is there between one woman and another?” Her belly shook with laughter under her loose coat of shoddy silk. “But we must not tell the men that, my precious, else my business will be gone. We must make them think that each young girl is as different from another as jade is from pearls — all jewels, of course!” Her belly rumbled with her laughter.

Madame Wu smiled slightly and put the photographs down on the table. The young faces, all pretty, all set in smooth black hair, looked up at her. She turned them over, faces down.

“Have you any girls whose families live at a distance?” she asked.

“Tell me exactly what you want,” Liu Ma said. She felt now that they were coming to the heart of this hour, and she put her entire shrewd mind upon the matter.

“I seem to see the woman I want,” Madame Wu said, half-hesitating.

“Then she is as good as found,” Liu Ma said eagerly, “if she is on the earth and not already gone to Heaven.”

“A young woman,” Madame Wu said, still in the same half-hesitating voice. She had not faltered at all before her family in speaking of the young woman, but before this hard old soul who dealt in men and women as her trade, she knew she could hide nothing.

Liu Ma waited, her sharp small eyes fixed on Madame Wu’s face. Madame Wu turned her head away and gazed into the court. It was a fine morning, and the sun lay on the newly cleaned stones, and they showed faint colors of pink and blue and yellow.

“A pretty woman,” Madame Wu said faintly, “very pretty but not beautiful. A girl — a woman, that is — about twenty-two years old, round-cheeked and young and soft as a child, ready in her affection to love anybody and not just one man — someone who does not, indeed, love too deeply any man, and who will, for a new coat or a sweet, forget a trouble — who loves children, of course, good-tempered — and whose family is far away so that she will not be always crying for home—”

“I have exactly what you want,” Liu Ma said in triumph. Then her round face grew solemn. “Alas,” she said, “no, the girl is an orphan. You would not want one of your sons to marry an orphan who does not know what her parents were. No, no, that would be to bring wild blood into the house.”

Madame Wu brought back her gaze from the court and let it fall on Liu Ma’s face. “I do not want the girl for Fengmo,” she said calmly. “For him I have other plans. No, this girl is to be a small wife for my own lord.”

Liu Ma pretended horror and surprise. She pursed her thick lips and took out the square of cotton again and held it over her eyes.

“Alas,” she muttered, “alas, even he!”

Madame Wu shook her head. “Do not misjudge him,” she said. “It is entirely my own thought. He is very unwilling. It is I who insist.”

Liu Ma took down the cloth from her eyes and thrust it into her large bosom again. “In that case,” she said briskly, “perhaps the orphan is the very thing. She is strong and useful.”

“I do not want a servant for myself,” Madame Wu interrupted her. “I have plenty of servants for the house, and Ying has always taken care of me and would poison another. No, if she is a servant she will not do.”

“She is not a servant,” Liu Ma said in alarm. “What I mean is only that she is so willing, so soft, so gentle—”

“But she must be quite hearty and healthy,” Madame Wu insisted.

“That she is,” Liu Ma replied. “In fact, also, she is quite pretty and had she not been an orphan I could have married her off long months before this. But you know how it is, Lady. Good families do not want wild blood for their sons, and those who are willing to have her are somewhat too low for her. She is strong, but still she is not low. In fact, Lady, I had thought of putting her in a flower house for a while for the very purpose of finding some older man who might want her for a small wife. But Heaven must have been watching over her, that at this very moment when she is at her best you should be looking for just such a one as she is.”

“Have you a picture of her?” Madame Wu inquired.

“Alas, no, I never thought of taking her picture nor she of having a picture,” Liu Ma said. “The truth is”—the cotton cloth came out and she coughed into it—“the girl’s one fault is that she is simple and ignorant. The worst I had better tell you. She cannot read, Lady. In the old days this would have been considered even a virtue, but now, of course, it is fashionable for girls to read even as boys do. It is the foreign way that has crept into our country.”

“I do not care if she cannot read,” Madame Wu said.

Liu Ma’s face broke into wrinkles of pleasure. She struck both her fat knees with her palms. “Then, Lady, it is done!” she cried. “I will bring her whenever you say. She is in the country with her foster mother on a farm.”

“Who is this foster mother?” Madame Wu inquired.

“She is nothing,” Liu Ma said eagerly. “I would not even tell you who she is. She found a child, Lady, one cold night, outside the city wall. Someone had left it there — a girl not wanted. The old woman was walking home after a feast meal with her brother who that day was thirty years old. He keeps a little market at— No, I will not even tell of it. It is nothing where he is or what his market. She heard a baby cry and saw the girl. Now, she would not have taken another mouth home, for she is poor, but the truth is she had a son, and when she saw this girl she thought it might serve her one day as a wife for her son, and she would be saved the cost of finding one outside. How could she know her one son would sicken and die before they could marry? Plague took him. She has the girl now and no husband for her.”

Madame Wu listened to this without moving her eyes from Liu Ma’s face. “Will she give the girl up altogether?” she now asked.

“She would be willing,” Liu Ma said. “She is very poor, and after all the girl is not her bone and flesh.”

Madame Wu turned her back to the court. The sun had crept over the wall and shortened and thickened and blackened the shadows on the bamboos on the stones. “I had better see her,” she said musingly. She put her delicate finger to her lip as she did when she was thoughtful. “No, why should I?” she went on. “It would not be to your interest to deceive me, and as you say, one girl is like another, after we have decided on her nature.”

“How much would you pay, Lady?” Liu Ma now inquired.

“I should have to dress her, of course,” Madame Wu said thoughtfully.

“Yes, but since the old woman is not her mother, she would not care what you did for that,” Liu Ma said. “She would only want heavy silver in her hand.”

“One hundred dollars is not too little for a country girl,” Madame Wu said calmly. “But I will pay more than that. I will pay two hundred.”

“Add fifty, Lady,” Liu Ma said coaxingly. Sweat burst out of her dark skin. “Then I can give the two hundred whole to the woman. She will let the girl go today for that.”

“Let it be then,” Madame Wu said so suddenly that she saw a greedy sorrow shine in the small old eyes that were fastened on her anxiously. “You need not grieve that you did not ask more,” she said. “I know what is just and what is generous.”

“I know your wisdom, Lady,” Liu Ma said eagerly. She fumbled the pictures together. Then she paused. “Are you sure you don’t want a pretty wife for your son, too, Lady? I would take off some cash for two girls at once.”

“No,” Madame Wu said with a sort of sternness. “Fengmo can wait. He is very young.”

“That is true,” Liu Ma agreed. Now that the bargain was made she was half-tearful with joy, and she wanted to agree with everything that Madame Wu said. “Yes, yes, Lady, it is the old that cannot wait. The old men must be served first, Lady. You are right always. You know all hearts.”

She tied the picture book into the kerchief again and rose to her feet. “Shall I fetch the girl here at once?”

“Bring her this evening at twilight,” Madame Wu said.

“Good,” Liu Ma said, “good — the best of times. She will have the day in which to wash herself and her clothes and clean her hair.”

“Tell her to bring nothing,” Madame Wu said, “nothing in her hands, nothing in a box. She is to come to me empty-handed, clad only in what she wears.”

“I promise you — I promise you,” Liu Ma babbled, and bowing and babbling she hurried away on her feet that had been badly bound in her childhood and now were like thick stumps.

Almost immediately Ying came into the room with fresh tea. She did not speak, and Madame Wu did not. She watched in silence while Ying wiped the table and the chair where the old woman had sat and took up the tea bowl she had used as though it were a piece of filth. When she was about to leave with this bowl Madame Wu spoke.

“Tonight about twilight a young woman will come to the gate.”

Ying stood motionless, listening, the dirty bowl between her thumb and finger.

“Bring her straight to me,” Madame Wu directed, “and put up a little bamboo bed for her here in this room.”

“Yes, Lady,” Ying muttered. Her voice choked in her throat and she hurried away.

The day moved on toward the night. It was Madame Wu’s habit to retire to her bedroom after her noon meal and rest for an hour. But on this day when she went into the big shadowy bedroom she found that she could neither sleep nor rest. It was not that the room was still strange to her. Indeed, she had already come to feel so at home in the rooms that she wondered at her own comfort in them. Her restlessness was not a matter of the room but of her inner self.

“I will not lie down today,” she said to Ying.

Ying stared at her with foreboding in her faithful eyes. “You had better sleep this afternoon, Lady,” she said. “I doubt you sleep well tonight with a stranger here in our house.”

“I seem to need no sleep,” Madame Wu said. At the sight of Ying’s foreboding her mood changed. She felt mischievous and willful. She put out her hand and gave Ying a soft touch on the arm that was half a push. “Go — leave me, Ying,” she commanded. “I will find a book — I will amuse myself.”

“As you choose,” Ying replied, and with unusual abruptness she turned and left Madame Wu standing in the middle of the room. But Madame Wu did not notice her. She stood, her finger on her delicate lip, half smiling. Then she gave a quick nod and moved across the room toward the library. Her footfall fitted into the hollowed stone before the door where before her scores of feet now dead had fitted too.

“But they were all men,” she thought, still half smiling, feeling that hollow under her foot.

She felt free and bold as she had never felt in her life before. Not a soul was here to see what she did. She belonged wholly to herself for this hour. Well, then, the time had come for her to read one of the forbidden books.

Old Gentleman had never made it a secret from her where these books were on the shelves. Indeed, after he had discovered that she could read and write, he had led her one day into the library and himself had showed her the shelf where they lay, packet by packet, in their blue cotton covers. “These books, my child,” he had said to her in his grave way, “these books are not for you.”

“Because I am a woman?” she had asked.

He had nodded. Then he had added, “But also I did not allow my son to read them until he was fifteen and past childhood.”

“Has my lord read them all?” she had then inquired.

Old Gentleman had looked embarrassed. “I suppose he has,” he said. “I have never asked, but I suppose all young men read them. That is why I have them here. I told my son, ‘If you must read these books, wait until you are fifteen and read them here in my own library and not slyly hidden in your schoolbooks.’ ”

She had then put another of her clear questions to him. “Our Father, do you think my mind will never be beyond that of my lord’s at fifteen?”

He had been further embarrassed at this question. But he was an honest old man, although a scholar, and he wrinkled his high pale yellow brow.

“Your mind is an excellent one for a woman,” he had said at last. “I would even say, my daughter, that had your brains been inside the skull of a man, you could have sat for the Imperial Examinations and passed them with honor and become thereby an official in the land. But your brain is not in a man’s skull. It is in a woman’s skull. A woman’s blood infuses it, a woman’s heart beats through it, and it is circumscribed by what must be a woman’s life. In a woman it is not well for the brain to grow beyond the body.”

Had she not been so dainty a creature her next question might have seemed indelicate. But she knew Old Gentleman loved her and comprehended what she was. Therefore she asked again, “Is this to say, Our Father, that a woman’s body is more important than her brain?”

Old Gentleman had sighed at this. He had sat down in the big redwood chair by the long library table. Thinking of him, she now sat down there, too, while her memory mused over that day so long gone. He had stroked his small white beard, and something like sorrow had come into his eyes. “As life has proved,” he said, “it is true that a woman’s body is more important than her mind. She alone can create new human creatures. Were it not for her, the race of man would cease to exist. Into her body, as into a chalice, Heaven has put this gift. Her body therefore is inexpressibly precious to man. He is not fulfilled if she does not create. His is the seed, but she alone can bring it to flower and fruit in another being like himself.”

She had listened carefully. She could see herself now as she had looked that day when she was sixteen, standing before the wise old man. She had put another question.

“Then why have I a brain, being only a woman?”

Old Gentleman had shaken his head slowly while he looked at her. A rare twinkle came into his eyes. “I do not know,” he had answered. “You are so beautiful that certainly you do not need a brain also.”

They had both laughed, her laughter young and rippling and his dry and old. Then he was grave again.

“But what you have asked me,” he went on, “is a thing about which I have thought much and especially since you came into my house. We chose you for our son because you were beautiful and good and because your grandfather was the former viceroy of this province. Now I find that you are also intelligent. To a pot of gold have been added jewels. Yet I know that in my house you do not need so much intelligence — yes, a little is good so that you can keep accounts and watch servants and control your inferiors. But you have reasoning and wonder. What will you do with them? I cannot tell. In a lesser woman I should be alarmed, because you might be a trouble inside these four walls which must be your world. But you will not make trouble because you also have wisdom, a most unusual wisdom for one so young. You can control yourself.”

She had stood before him motionless. He had remembered this. “Sit down, child,” he had said. “You will be weary. Besides, you need no more stand in my presence.”

But she had scarcely heard him, so absorbed was she in what they were saying to each other. She continued standing before him, her hands clasped loosely in front of her. Her next question was formed and ready.

“Will my lord love me less because I am what you say?”

Old Gentleman had looked very grave at this. His hand wandered back to his white beard. She could see that old hand now, narrow and thin, the skin stretched like gold leaf over the fine bones.

“Ah, that is what I, too, have asked myself!” he had replied. He had sighed deeply. “This matter of intelligence — it is so great a gift, so heavy a burden. Intelligence, more than poverty and riches, divides human beings and makes them friends or enemies. The stupid person fears and hates the intelligent person. Whatever the goodness of the intelligent man, he must also know that it will not win him love from one whose mind is less than his.”

“Why?” she had asked. A strange fright had fallen upon her. She was at that time a little arrogant in herself. She knew the quality of her own mind and trusted to it. Now Old Gentleman was saying she would be hated for it.

“Because,” Old Gentleman said without sign of emotion in his face or voice, “the first love in a man’s heart is love of self. Heaven put that love first in order that man would want to live, whatever his sorrows. Now, when self-love is wounded, no other love can survive, because when self-love is too much wounded, the self is willing to die, and that is against Heaven.”

“Will my lord hate me, then?” she had asked again.

Without his putting it into words, it was clear to her that Old Gentleman knew that she was more intelligent than his son, and he was warning her.

“My child,” Old Gentleman said, “there is no man who can endure woman’s greater wisdom if she lives in his house and sleeps in his bed. He may say he worships at her shrine, but worship is dry fare for daily life. A man cannot make of his house a temple, nor take a goddess for his wife. He is not strong enough.”

“Our Father, had I not better read the wicked books?” she had asked so suddenly that Old Gentleman had started. She was surprised and then even a little shocked to see a certain diffidence in his eyes. He had been looking at her with his usual mild directness. Now to evade her he turned to the teapot on the table.

She had stepped forward. “Let me pour it for you,” she had said and did so. He sipped his tea for a moment before he answered. Then he said, still not looking at her, “Child, you will not understand me, perhaps. But believe me without understanding. It is better that you do not read these books. Men love women when they are not too knowing. You are so wise already, so very wise for your youth. You do not need these books. Apply your own mind, now fresh and pure, to the task of making my son happy. Learn love at the source, my child, not out of books.”

For a moment it had seemed to her that this was no answer at all. Then, standing there by the table, leaning on her hands as she looked at him, she perceived that he was the wisest soul in all the world, and that until her wisdom matched his she had better believe him.

“I will obey you, my father,” she had said, and so she had obeyed him for twenty years and more.

But today, alone in this room where they had once been, sitting in the chair which had once been only his, it seemed to her that now her wisdom did match his and her obedience had been fulfilled. She was free of Old Gentleman, too, at last.

So she rose and went, her heart beating strangely, toward the forbidden books. She knew the names of some of them, the names of novels and stories which she had always been taught the true scholar never reads because they are beneath him. Only the low and the coarse, who cannot bear the high ether of spirit and thought, can be allowed the diversion of such books. Yet all men read them, yes, even the scholars, too! Old Gentleman himself had read them and he had allowed his son to read them, knowing that if he did not, his son would read them anyway.

“What all men know,” Madame Wu now asked herself, “ought not a woman to know?”

She chose a book at random. It was a long book. Many thin volumes lay in the clothbound box. The name of the book she had heard. Among the many women in a house as large as her mother’s and as large as the Wu house, there were always some who were coarse in their talk. The story of Hsi Men Ch’ing and his six wives all had heard in one way or another. Plum Flower in a Vase of Gold—the letters were here delicately brushed on the satin cover of this first volume.

“The books look often read,” she thought and smiled with a fleeting bitter mirth. Generations of men of the Wu house had read them, doubtless, but perhaps she was the first woman who had ever held them in her hand.

She took them to the table and looked first at the pictures. An artist had drawn them. There was profound art in the sensuous lines. She studied especially the face of Hsi Men Ch’ing himself. The artist had outdone himself in describing through pictures the decay of man. The young handsome joyous face of Hsi Men Ch’ing, who had found the expression of his youth in love of women’s flesh, had grown loathsome as the face of a man dead by drowning and bloated with decay. Madame Wu gazed thoughtfully at each picture and perceived the deep meaning of the story. It was the story of a man who lived without his mind or spirit. It was the story of a man’s body, in which his soul struggled, starved, and died.

She began to read. The hours passed. She heard Ying stirring about in the other room, but she did not know that Ying looked in at the door and stared at her and went away again. She became aware of the time only when darkness stole into the room and she could no longer see. Then she looked about as though she did not know where she was.

“I ought not to have obeyed Old Gentleman,” she murmured half-aloud. “I should have read this book long ago.” But now she had stopped reading she did not want to begin it again. She was surfeited and sick. She bound the volumes together into the box and slipped the small ivory catch into its loop and set it on the shelves again. Then she put her hands to her cheeks, and thus she walked back and forth the length of the room. No, it was better, she thought, that she had not read this book when she was young. Now that she had put it into its cover again she saw that it was a very evil book. For such was the genius of the writer that the reader could find in this book whatever he wanted. For those who wanted evil, it was all evil. For those who were wise, it was a book of most sorrowful wisdom. But Old Gentleman was right. Such a book ought not to be put into the hands of the young. Even she, had she read it twenty years ago, could she have understood the wisdom? Would she not rather have been so sickened that she could not have gone willingly to bed at night? Old Gentleman was still the wisest soul. The very young are not ready for much knowledge. It must be given to them slowly, in proportion to their years of life. One must first live before he can safely know.

It was at this moment of her musing that Ying stood at the door again. Her solid shadow was black against the gray of the twilight. In the court behind her was another shadow.

Ying spoke. “Lady, the old woman Liu has come — the girl is here.”

Madame Wu’s hands flew to her cheeks again. For an instant she did not answer. Then she took her hands away. She moved to the chair and sat down.

“Light the candle,” she commanded Ying, “and bring her here alone. I will not see the old woman.”

Ying moved aside in silence, and at the door Madame Wu saw the girl. The candlelight fell on her full but gently. Madame Wu saw almost exactly the face she had imagined and almost exactly the figure. A healthy, red-cheeked girl gazed back at her with round childlike eyes, large and very black. Her black hair was coiled at her neck and fell over her forehead in a fringe, in the fashion of a countrywoman. She held a knotted kerchief in her hand.

“What is that in your hand?” Madame Wu asked. “I told them you were to bring nothing.” The girl looked so innocent, so childlike, that she could only speak these simple words.

“I brought you some eggs,” the girl answered. “I thought you might like them, and I had nothing else. They are very fresh.” She had a pleasant voice, hearty but a little shy.

“Come here, let me see the eggs,” Madame Wu said.

The girl came forward somewhat timidly, tiptoeing as though she feared she might make a noise in the intense quiet of the room. Madame Wu looked down at her feet. “I see your feet have not been bound,” she said.

The girl looked abashed. “There was no one to bind them,” she replied. “Besides, I have always had to work in the fields.”

Ying spoke. “She has very big feet, Lady. Doubtless she has gone barefoot as country children do, and her feet have grown coarse.”

The girl stood looking anxiously from Ying’s face to Madame Wu.

“Come, show me the eggs,” Madame Wu commanded her again.

The girl came forward then and put the bundle on the table carefully. Then she untied the kerchief and picked up each egg and examined it. “Not one is broken,” she exclaimed. “I was afraid that I might stumble in the darkness and crush them. There are fifteen—”

She paused, and Madame Wu understood that she did not know what or how to address her.

“You may call me Elder Sister,” she said.

But the girl was too shy for this. She repeated, “Fifteen eggs and not one is older than seven days. They are for you to eat.”

“Thank you,” Madame Wu said. “They do look very fresh.”

She had already perceived several things about this girl as she stood near her. Her breath was sweet and clean, and from her flesh there came only the odors of health. Her teeth were sound and white. The hands that had untied the kerchief were brown and rough but well-shaped. Under the washed blue cotton coat and trousers, the girl’s body was rounded without fat. Her neck was smooth, and her face was innocently pretty.

Madame Wu could not keep from smiling at her. “Do you think you would like to stay here?” she asked. She felt a little pity for this young creature, bought like an animal from a farmer. She discovered in her something delicate and good in spite of her sunburned cheeks and rough garments.

The girl perceived this kindness and into her dark, clear eyes there sprang a light of instant devotion. “Liu Ma told me you are good. She said you are not like other women. She told me to please you first above all, and that is what I will do.” She had an eager, fresh voice.

“Then you must tell me all you can remember about your life,” Madame Wu replied. “You must hide nothing at all. If you are honest, I shall like you very much.” She perceived the devotion and felt, to her own surprise, a pang of something like guilt.

“I will tell you everything,” the girl promised. “But first shall I not take the eggs to the kitchen?”

“No,” Madame Wu said, hiding a smile at this. How astonished would the servants be at such a visitor! “Ying will take them to the kitchen. You must sit down there in that chair across from me, and we will talk.”

The girl tied up the eggs and sat down on the edge of the chair. But she looked somehow distressed.

“Are you hungry?” Madame Wu asked.

“No, thank you,” the girl said carefully. She sat straight, looking before her, her hands folded.

Madame Wu smiled again. “Come, you are to be honest,” she said. “Are you not hungry?”

The girl laughed suddenly, a quick burst of rippling laughter. “I am a bone,” she said frankly. “I cannot lie even to be polite. But Liu Ma told me I must say, ‘No, thank you’ if you asked me if I were hungry, lest I seem greedy at the first moment.”

“Did you not eat your supper before you came?” Madame Wu inquired.

The girl flushed. “We have not much food,” she said. “My foster mother said — my foster mother thought—”

Madame Wu interrupted her. “Ying!” she commanded, “bring food.”

The girl sighed. Her body relaxed, and she turned so that she might face Madame Wu. But she did not look at her.

If she had a fault, Madame Wu thought, it was that she was a little too big in frame. This must mean that she had come of northern blood. It might be that her family had been refugees from some disaster, a flood, perhaps of the Yellow River, or a famine, and they had been compelled to put a girl child out to die.

“Liu Ma told me you were an orphan,” Madame Wu said aloud. “Do you know anything of your own family?”

The girl shook her head. “I was newborn when they left me. I know the place where they laid me down, for my foster mother has pointed it out to me many times when we have come to the city market. But she told me there was no sign on me of any kind, except that I was not wrapped in cotton, but in silk. It was only ragged silk.”

“Do you have that silk?” Madame Wu asked now.

The girl nodded again. “How did you know?” she asked with naive surprise.

“I thought you would want to bring with you the only thing that was your own,” Madame Wu said. She smiled in answer to the girl’s round eyes.

“But how do you know the heart of a stranger?” the girl persisted.

“Show me the silk,” Madame Wu replied. She had no wish to tell this girl the ways of intuitive knowledge which were hers.

Without hesitation, as though she had indeed made up her mind to obey Madame Wu in all things, the girl put her hand in her bosom and brought out a folded piece of silk. It was washed and clean, but faded from its first red to a rose color. Madame Wu took it and unfolded it. It was a woman’s garment, a short coat, slender in width but long-sleeved.

“If this was your mother’s she, too, was tall,” Madame Wu observed.

“You know that!” the girl exclaimed.

Madame Wu examined the embroidery. The garment was old-fashioned, and a band of embroidery was stitched around the collar and down the side opening. The same bands went around the wide sleeves.

“It is delicate embroidery,” Madame Wu said, “and it is done in a Peking stitch of small knots.”

“You tell me more than I have ever known,” the girl said under her breath.

“But that is all I can tell you,” Madame Wu said. She folded the garment again and held it out to the girl.

But the girl did not put out her hands to receive it. “You keep it for me,” she said. “I do not need it here.”

“I will keep it if you like,” Madame Wu said. “But if you find later that you want it again, I will return it to you.”

“If you let me stay here,” the girl replied with pleading in her voice, “I shall never want it again.”

But Madame Wu was not ready yet to give her promise. “You have not even told me your name,” she said.

The girl’s face changed as plainly as a disappointed child’s. “I have no real name,” she said humbly. “My foster parents never raised me a name. They cannot read and write, and I cannot either.”

“But they called you something,” Madame Wu said.

“They called me Little Orphan when I was small and Big Orphan when I was big,” the girl said.

“That, of course, is no name,” Madame Wu agreed gently. “When I know you better I will give you a name.”

“I thank you,” the girl said humbly.

At this moment Ying came in with two bowls of food and set them on the table. Madame Wu looked into each bowl as she put it down. If Ying had brought servant’s food, she would have sent it back. But Ying had been sensible. She had brought dishes not quite good enough for the family, but certainly too good for the kitchen. She put down a bowl of broth with chicken balls in it and a dish of pork and cabbage. A small wooden bucket of rice she had brought also, and a pot of tea and a tea bowl and chopsticks. The chopsticks were not the family ones of ivory and silver nor the common bamboo ones of the kitchens. They were of red painted wood such as the children used.

“Serve her,” Madame Wu commanded.

Ying had hesitated, but now she obeyed, her lips tight and silent.

But the girl noticed nothing. She accepted the bowl of rice from Ying with both hands, rising a little from her seat in country courtesy, and thinking everything was too much. Indeed, Madame Wu soon saw the girl was torn between honest hunger and the wish to be polite, and so she rose and made an excuse to leave her alone.

“I shall return in a little while,” she said. “Meanwhile eat heartily.”

With these words she went away into her sitting room. There stood the bamboo bed which Ying had prepared for the girl. Madame Wu looked down on it thoughtfully. She would let the girl sleep here a few nights. She ought even, perhaps, to keep her here until the girl understood her place in the family and until she, too, understood the girl. There must be some deep accord established between them before she released her from this court to enter the other, else trouble might arise in the house. She was doing a delicate and difficult thing, and it must be done skillfully. She stood, her thumb and finger at her lower lip. When she had been a girl she had liked in the spring to help with the making of silk on the family lands. After the silkworms had spun their cocoons, there came a certain moment, sure but swiftly passing, when the cocoons must be put into tubs of hot water lest they turn to moths and gnaw the cocoons. She could divine that moment. The farm wives had marveled at her discernment. She remembered now the size of her certainty, out of nothing and yet of everything.

“Now,” she would declare, and the sprays of rice straw to which the cocoons clung were plunged into the tubs. Then she, too, with her delicate, feeling fingers would find the wet fine end of the silk and unwind the cocoons. The old divination stirred again. Her delicacy must not fail her, lest Mr. Wu reproach her as long as she lived.

She moved from this room into her own bedroom and walked slowly back and forth, her satin-shod feet noiseless on the smooth tiles.

The girl seemed as open as a child. All her heart and nature lay revealed to anyone. But this meant she was undeveloped, and how would she develop? She was not a fool. Her eyes were quick with intelligence. Her lips were tender in their fullness. Was she perhaps too intelligent? There was also the silk garment and the fine embroidery. Her blood was not common, unless perhaps the mother had been a maidservant in a rich family. Yes, there was a possibility that this girl was the child of a maidservant in such a family, gotten with child by one of the sons, perhaps, and this garment had been given out of the discard of her mistress. Or it might be that some teahouse girl had worn such a garment and had given it to a child, unwanted.

“It is impossible to tell what this girl is,” Madame Wu murmured to herself.

Did she want to take into her house so unknown a being? She could not answer this. She went back after a while to the library. The girl was sitting there alone, looking frightened in the big, shadow-filled room. She held her hands clasped on her knees. The meal was finished, and Ying had taken away the bowls. When she saw Madame Wu she rose, and relief beamed on her face.

“What shall I do now, Elder Sister?” she asked. The name came to her lips trustfully and warmed Madame Wu against her will. She was wary of giving affection too soon.

“What do you usually do at this hour?” she asked.

“I always go to bed as soon as I have eaten at night,” the girl replied. “It wastes candlelight to sit up after it is dark.”

Madame Wu laughed. “Then perhaps you had better go to bed,” she said. She led the way into the room where the narrow bed lay waiting. “There is your bed, and beyond that door yonder is the room where you may make yourself ready.”

“But I am ready,” the girl replied. “I washed myself clean before I came here. I will take off my outer clothes and that is all.”

“Then I will see you tomorrow,” Madame Wu replied.

“Until tomorrow,” the girl replied. “But I beg you, Elder Sister, if you want anything in the night, please call me.”

“If I need you I will call,” Madame Wu said, and went out of the room to her own.

Long after she had gone to bed herself she could not sleep. Toward midnight she rose and went into the other room and lit the candle and looked at the girl while she slept. She had not tossed nor even stirred. She lay on her right side, one hand under her cheek. She breathed easily, her mouth closed, her face rosy. In her sleep she was even prettier than when she was awake. Madame Wu observed this. She observed also that the girl did not move or snore. The covers were drawn neatly to her waist. She slept in her cotton undergarments, but she had unfastened her collar so that her round neck showed and part of her breast. One breast Madame Wu could see quite clearly. It was young and round and firm.

She slept deeply, still without stirring. This was good. Madame Wu herself had always been a light sleeper, waking instantly if Mr. Wu so much as turned in the bed and then unable to sleep again. But this girl would sleep soundly all night and wake fresh in the morning. Madame Wu shielded the candle with her hand and bent near to the girl’s face. Still the same sweet breath! She straightened and went back to her own room and pinched out the candle between her thumb and finger and lay down again.

She was awakened before dawn by small sounds from the other room. The bamboo bed creaked, something rustled. She woke, as she always did, to the full, and lay listening. Was the girl preparing to run away at this hour? She rose and put on her robe and lit the candle and went out again. The girl was sitting on a stool brushing out her long hair. She was dressed, even to her shoes and white cotton cloth stockings.

“Where are you going?” Madame Wu asked.

The girl was startled by the sound of her voice and dropped the big wooden comb she was using. Her black hair hung about her face.

“I am not going anywhere,” she said. She got to her feet and stared at Madame Wu. Her dark eyes shone out of the flying shadows of her hair. “I am getting up.”

“But why are you getting up at this hour?” Madame Wu asked.

“It is time to get up,” the girl said in surprise. “I heard a cock crow.”

Madame Wu laughed sudden and unusual laughter. “I could not dream to myself why you were getting up, but of course you are a country girl. There is no need, child, for you to get up here. Even the servants will not be awake for an hour yet. And we do not rise for an hour after that.”

“Must I go back to bed?” the girl asked.

“What else can you do?” Madame Wu asked.

“Let me sweep the rooms,” the girl said, “or I will sweep the court.”

“Well, do as you like,” Madame Wu replied.

“I will be quiet,” the girl promised. “You go back, Elder Sister, and sleep again.”

So Madame Wu went back to her bed, and she heard the sound of a broom which the girl had found in the corridor. She used it on court and floor, and her footsteps were light and guarded as she moved about. Then, without knowing, Madame Wu fell asleep again, and when she woke it was late. The sun was shining across the floor, and Ying stood waiting by the bed.

She rose quickly and the rite of dressing began. Ying did not mention the girl, and Madame Wu did not speak. The rooms were silent. She heard nothing.

This silence grew so deep that at last Madame Wu broke it. “Where is the girl?” she asked of Ying.

“She is out there in the court, sewing,” Ying replied. “She had to have something to do, and I gave her some shoe soles for the children.”

From the slight scorn in Ying’s voice Madame Wu understood that she did not think more highly of this girl for wanting to be busy, like a servant. Madame Wu did not speak again. She would not be led by Ying’s likes and dislikes.

Instead she ate her breakfast and then went out into the court. There the girl sat on a small three-legged stool, in the shade of the bamboo. She was sewing, her fingers nimbly pushing the needle through the thick cloth sole. On her middle finger she wore a brass ring for a thimble. She rose when she saw Madame Wu and stood waiting, not speaking first.

“Please sit down,” Madame Wu said. She herself sat down on one of the porcelain garden seats.

Now as it happened this seat was placed so that she sat with her back to the round gate of the court, but the girl sat facing the door. She had no sooner taken her seat on the stool again and lifted her needle, when she looked up and saw someone in that gate. Madame Wu saw her large eyes look up and fall and the peach-colored flush on her cheeks deepened. Madame Wu turned, expecting from this behavior to see a man, perhaps the cook.

But it was not the cook. It was Fengmo, her third son. He stood there, his hand on one side of the entrance staring at the girl.

“Fengmo, what do you want?” Madame Wu asked. She was suddenly conscious of a strange anger because he had come upon her unexpectedly. He was the son whom, she knew herself, she least loved. He was willful and less amiable than Liangmo or Tsemo, and less playful than little Yenmo. When he was small, he had preferred the company of servants to the company of the family, and this she had thought was a sign of his inferiority. She had treated him outwardly exactly as she treated the others, but inwardly she knew she loved him less. Doubtless he had felt this difference, for he seldom came to her, after he was fifteen, unless she sent for him.

“Fengmo, why have you come?” she asked again when he did not answer. He continued to stare at the girl, and she, as though she felt this, lifted her eyelids and glanced at him and let them fall again.

“I came to see — to see — how you are, Mother,” Fengmo stammered.

“I am quite well,” Madame Wu replied coldly.

“There was something else, too,” Fengmo said.

Madame Wu rose. “Then come into the library.”

She led the way and he followed, but neither of them sat down. Instead Fengmo moved his hand toward the girl. “Mother,” he said, “is that — the one?”

“Fengmo, why have you come here to ask me?” Madame Wu said severely. “It is not your affair.”

“Mother, it is,” he said passionately. “Mother, how do you think it is for me? My friends will laugh at me and tease me—”

“Is that what you came to tell me?” Madame Wu inquired.

“Yes,” Fengmo cried. “It was bad enough before. But now that I have seen her — she is so young and my father — he’s so old.”

“You will return at once to your own court,” Madame Wu said in the same cold voice. “It was intrusion for you to come here without sending a servant first to find if it was convenient for me. As for your father, the younger generation does not decide for the elder.”

She was accustomed to Fengmo’s stubbornness. She was therefore surprised when this stubbornness wavered. She saw his handsome face flush and quiver. Then without a word he turned and left the room and the court without one backward look.

But Madame Wu was deeply annoyed that these two had seen each other. In spite of many old customs which she had broken, and she did not hesitate to break them when she chose, she had steadfastly followed that one which separated male from female at an early age. In this house her sons had been separated from all women at the age of seven. She had not even rebuked the menservants for their ignorant replies to the questions of the boys. Once she had heard Fengmo ask the steward, “Why am I forbidden to play any more with my two girl cousins?”

“Boys and girls cannot play together or they will have sore feet,” the steward had said half jokingly.

Madame Wu, usually so quick to correct ignorance, had let this pass.

Now Fengmo had seen this girl before she had taken her place in the house and the girl had seen him. Who could tell what fire would blaze out of this? She walked back and forth in the library. Each time she passed the open door she could see the girl’s head bent industriously over the shoe sole and her hand pulling the needle in and out. Her mind was suddenly quite made up. The matter must be decided at once. She would keep this girl. But the girl must understand exactly what her duty was. She went out with a swifter step than was usual to her and sat down again.

“I have made up my mind,” she began abruptly. “You shall stay in this house.”

The girl looked up, held the needle ready to pierce the cloth, but she did not move to take the stitch. She stood up in respect to Madame Wu.

“You mean that I please you?” she asked in a low and breathless voice.

“Yes, if you do your duty,” Madame Wu said. “You understand — you come here to serve my own lord — to take my places — in certain things.”

“I understand,” the girl said in the same half-faint voice. Her eyes were fastened on Madame Wu’s face.

“You must know,” Madame Wu went on, “that our house is in some ways still old-fashioned. There is no coming and going between the men’s courts and the women’s.”

“Oh, no,” the girl agreed quickly. Her hands fell into her lap, but her eyes did not move.

“In that case,” Madame Wu said in the strange abrupt way which was not at all like her usual way of speaking, “there is no reason why the matter should not be concluded.”

“But ought I not to have a name?” the girl asked anxiously. “Shall I not have a name in this house?”

There was something pathetic and touching in this question, and Madame Wu found it so. “Yes,” she said, “you must have a name, and I will give it to you. I will name you Ch’iuming. It means Bright Autumn. In this name I set your duty clear. His is the autumn, yours the brightness.”

“Ch’iuming,” the girl repeated. She tasted the name on her tongue. “I am Ch’iuming,” she said.