Pavilion of Women

VI

LITTLE SISTER HSIA WAS always acute to her duty, but Madame Wu had not expected such promptness, for seven or eight days later Ying came running in. Her little round eyes were glittering with surprise.

“Lady, Lady!” she cried.

Madame Wu was walking among her orchids, and she stopped in displeasure. “Ying!” she said firmly. “Close your mouth. You look like a fish on a hook. Now tell me what is the matter.”

Ying obeyed her, but almost immediately she began again, “The largest man — I ever did see — a foreigner! He says you sent for him.”

“I?” Madame Wu said blankly. Then she remembered. “Perhaps I did,” she said.

“Lady, you said nothing to me,” Ying reproached her. “I told the gateman by no means to let him in. We have never had a foreign man in this house.”

“I do not tell you everything,” Madame Wu replied. “Let him come in at once.”

Ying retired, stupefied, and Madame Wu went on walking among her orchids. Even in so short a time the plants had revived after their transplanting. They would do well in this shadowy court. She wondered if the new peonies were doing as well. At this moment she heard a deep, resonant voice from the round gate into the court.

“Madame!”

She had been expecting the voice but was not prepared for the quality of its power. She looked up from the orchids and saw a tall, wide-shouldered man in a long brown robe which was tied about the waist by a rope. It was the priest. His right hand clasped a cross that lay on his breast. She knew that the cross was a Christian symbol, but she was not interested in that. What interested her was the size and strength of the hand which held it.

“I do not know how to address you,” she said in her light silvery voice, “otherwise I would return your greeting. Will you come in?”

The priest bent his great head and came through the gate into the court. Ying followed behind him, her face pale with fright.

“Come into my library if you please,” Madame Wu said. She stood aside at the entrance for the priest to enter ahead of her. But he loosened his hand from the cross and made a slight gesture toward the door. “In my country,” he said smiling, “it is the lady who enters first.”

“Is it so?” she murmured. “But it is true that I had perhaps better lead the familiar way.”

She went in and sat down in her accustomed seat and motioned toward the other chair across the table. Ying crept to the door and stood staring, half hidden. Madame Wu saw her. “Ying, come out,” she commanded her. Then she turned to the priest with a slight smile. “This silly woman has never seen a man of your size, and she cannot keep from looking at you. Pray forgive her.”

The priest replied with these curious words, “God gave me this immense body perhaps for the amusement of those who look at me. Well, laughter is a good thing.” His great voice rumbled around the room.

“Heaven,” Ying said faintly, looking up into the beams above her, “it is like thunder.”

“Ying, go and fetch hot tea,” Madame Wu commanded to calm her, and Ying scuttled away like a cat.

The priest sat motionless, his huge body filling the big carved chair. Yet he was lean to thinness, Madame now saw. The cross on his breast was of gold. He was dark-skinned, and his large dark eyes lay very clear and sad in their deep sockets. His hair was neither short nor long, and it curled slightly. He wore a beard, and the hair of it was black and fine. In this dark beard his lips showed with unusual redness.

“How am I to address you?” Madame Wu inquired. “I forgot to ask Little Sister Hsia your name.”

“I have no name of my own,” the priest replied. “But I have been given the name of André. It is as good as another. Some call me Father André. I should prefer, Madame, that you called me Brother André.”

Madame Wu neither accepted nor rejected this wish. She did not pronounce the name or the title. Instead she asked another question. “And your religion?”

“Let us not speak today of my religion,” Brother André replied.

Madame Wu smiled a little at this. “I thought all priests wanted to talk of their religion.”

Brother André gave her a long full look. In spite of the power in his eyes, there was no boldness in this look, and Madame Wu was not startled by it. It was as impersonal as a lamp which a man holds up to show someone an unknown path.

“I was told you wanted to speak to me, Madame,” Brother André said.

“Ah, so I do,” Madame Wu said. But she paused. She now perceived that Ying had scattered the news of a monster as she went to the kitchens. She heard whisperings and flutterings at the door. From where she sat she saw glimpses of children. She called in an amiable voice, “Come, children — come and see him!”

Immediately a flock of the children crowded about the door. They looked like flowers in the morning sunshine, and Madame Wu was proud of them.

“They want to look at you,” she explained.

“Why not?” he replied and turned himself toward them. They shrank back at this, but when he remained motionless and smiling, they came near again.

“He does not eat little children, doubtless,” Madame Wu said to them. “Indeed, perhaps he is like a Buddhist and eats only fruits and vegetables.”

“That is true,” Brother André said.

“How are you so big?” a child asked breathlessly. He was the son of a younger cousin in the Wu family.

“God made me so,” Brother André replied.

“But I suppose your parents were also large,” Madame Wu said.

“I do not now remember my parents,” Brother André said gently.

“What is your country?” a lad inquired. He was old enough to go to school, and he knew about countries.

“I have no country,” Brother André said. “Wherever I am is my home.”

“You have been here for many years,” Madame Wu said. “You speak our language perfectly.”

“I speak many languages in order to be able to converse with all people,” he replied.

“But you have lived long in our city?” she persisted. She was beginning to be exceedingly curious about this man.

“Only a year,” he replied.

By now the children were bold, and they came quite close to him. “What is that on the chain around your neck?” one of them asked. He pointed his delicate golden little forefinger.

“That is my cross,” Brother André said. He took up the heavy plain cross as he spoke and held it toward them.

“Shall I hold it?” the child asked.

“If you like,” Brother André said.

“No,” Madame Wu spoke sharply. “Do not touch it, child.”

Brother André turned to her. “But, Madame, it is harmless.”

“He shall not touch it,” she replied coldly.

Brother André let the cross drop upon his breast again and folded his big hands on his knees and kept silent.

Ying came in with the tea, pushing her path among the children. “Your mothers are calling you,” she said loudly. “All your mothers are calling!”

“Return to your mothers,” Madame Wu said without lifting her voice. Immediately the children turned and ran away.

Brother André looked at her with sudden appreciation in his deep eyes. “They do not fear you, but they obey you,” he said.

“They are good children,” she said, and was pleased with his understanding.

“You are also good,” he said calmly. “But I am not sure you are happy.”

These words, said so calmly, struck Madame Wu as sharply as though a hidden knife had pierced her without her knowing exactly where it had struck. She began at once to deny them. “I am, on the contrary, entirely happy. I have arranged my life exactly as I wish it. And I have sons—”

He lifted his deep and penetrating eyes, but he did not speak. Instead he listened attentively. It was the quality of this silent and absolute attention which made her falter. “That is,” she went on, “I am entirely happy except that I feel the need of more knowledge of some sort. What sort I do not know myself.”

“Perhaps it is not so much knowledge as more understanding of that which you already know,” he said.

How did it come about that she was speaking to this stranger of herself? She considered this a moment, and then put aside her reply. “It was not for myself that I have invited you to come hither,” she said. “It is for my third son. I wish him to speak a foreign language.”

“Which language?” he inquired.

“Which is the best?” she asked.

“French is the most beautiful,” he said, “and Italian is the most poetic, and Russian the most powerful, German the most solid. But more business is done in English than in any other.”

“He had better study English then,” Madame Wu said with decision. She lifted her eyes to his dark face. “What is your fee?”

“I take no fee,” Brother André said quietly. “I have no use for money.”

“A priest with no use for money?” Her smile held a fine irony.

“I have no use for money,” Brother André repeated with emphasis upon himself.

“But you put me into a lower position if you compel me to take something for nothing,” Madame Wu said. “Shall I not give money to your religion then — for good works?”

“No, religion is better without such gifts,” Brother André replied. He considered a moment and then went on, “It may be that from time to time there will be things which ought to be done in this your own city — such, perhaps, as a place for foundlings to be housed. I have taken some of these foundlings myself until I could find good parents for them. When there are such things to be done, I will come to you, Madame, and your help will be my reward.”

“But these things in our own city are not for you,” she said. “Is there nothing I can do for you?”

“This is to do for me, Madame,” he replied. His voice tolled through the room, and she did not contradict it. Ying, who had withdrawn into the court, came and looked in and went away again when she saw them sitting there as they had been.

“When shall we begin the lessons?” Madame Wu asked. She felt unable to contradict this man.

“Now, if you like,” he replied. “All times are alike to me.”

“Will you come every evening?” she asked. “My son goes to the national school by day.”

“As often as I am wanted,” he replied.

She rose then and summoned Ying. “Tell Fengmo to come here.” She stood on the threshold of the door, the garden on one hand, the library on the other. She had for a moment a strange sense of being between two worlds. She stepped into the court and left the priest sitting alone. She stood listening as if she expected him to call. But she heard nothing. On the encircling wall a nightingale alighted as it did every evening about this hour. Very slowly it sang four clear notes. Then it saw her and flew away. She was nearly sorry she had invited this foreigner to come here. What strange things he might teach in foreign words! She had been too quick. She walked to the door again and glanced in. Would he think it rude that she had left him alone? But when she looked in she saw his great head sunk on his breast and his eyes closed. He was asleep? No, his lips were moving. She drew back in a slight fear and was glad to see Fengmo approaching through the gate opposite where she stood.

“Fengmo!” she called.

She turned her head and saw the man’s head lift, and the dark eyes opened and glowed.

“Fengmo, come here!” she called again.

“I come, Mother,” Fengmo replied. He was there in an instant, very young and slight in comparison to the great priest. She was surprised to see how small he was, he who she had always thought was tall. She took his hand and led him into the library.

“This is my third son, Fengmo,” she said to Brother André.

“Fengmo,” the priest repeated. In courtesy he should have said Third Young Lord, but he simply repeated his name, Fengmo. “I am Brother André,” he said. He sat down. “Sit down, Fengmo,” he said. “I am commanded to teach you a foreign language which your mother has said must be English.”

“But only the language,” Madame Wu stipulated. Now that the lessons were to begin, she asked herself if indeed she had done wrong in giving the mind of her son to this man. For to teach a mind is to assume the power over it.

“Only the language,” Brother André repeated. He caught the fear in Madame Wu’s words and answered it at once. “You need not be afraid, Madame. I am an honorable man. Your son’s mind will be sacred to me.”

Madame Wu was confounded by this foreigner’s comprehension. She had not expected such delicate instincts in so hairy a body. She had known no foreigner — except, of course, Little Sister Hsia, who was only a childish woman. She bowed slightly and went away into the garden again.

An hour later the priest appeared at the door of the library. He was talking to Fengmo in unknown syllables. He pronounced them clearly and slowly, and Fengmo listened as though in all the world he heard nothing else.

“Have you taught him so quickly?” Madame Wu asked. She was sitting in her bamboo chair under the trees, her hands folded in her lap.

“Madame, he does not understand them yet,” Brother André replied. “But I teach by speaking only the language to be learned. In a few days he will be using these words himself.” He turned to Fengmo. “Tomorrow,” he said and bowing to Madame Wu, he strode through the gate with his long, unhurried steps.

With the passing of this huge priest everything took its proper shape and proportion again.

“Well, my son?” Madame Wu said.

But Fengmo seemed still dazed. “He taught me a great deal in this one hour.”

“Speak for me the words he taught you,” she urged him.

Fengmo opened his lips and repeated some sounds.

“What do they mean?” she asked.

Fengmo shook his head and continued to look dazed. “I do not know — he did not tell me.”

“Tomorrow he must tell you,” she said with some sternness. “I will not have words said in this house which none of us can understand.”

All through the great house the word went on wings of the big foreign priest, and Mr. Wu heard them, too. It was about midafternoon of the next day when Madame Wu saw him coming toward her. She was matching some silks for the sewing woman, who was about to embroider new shoes for the children.

“Send this woman away,” Mr. Wu said when he came near.

Madame Wu saw that he was annoyed. She pushed the silks together and said to the woman, “Come back in an hour or two.”

The woman went away, and Mr. Wu sat down and took out his pipe and lit it. “I have heard that you have engaged a foreign tutor for Fengmo without telling me a word about it,” he said.

“I should have told you, indeed,” Madame Wu said gently. “It was a fault in me. But somehow I did not think you could want to be disturbed, and yet I felt it necessary that Fengmo have his eyes turned toward Linyi.”

“Why?” Mr. Wu inquired.

She had long since learned that nothing is so useful at all times for a woman as the truth toward a man. She had not deceived Mr. Wu at any time, and she did not do so now. “Fengmo happened to see Ch’iuming the other day while she was here,” she said. “I do not think anything lit between them, but Fengmo is at the moment in his youth when such a thing might happen with any woman young and pretty. Therefore I have fanned the flame from another direction. It would be awkward to have trouble in the house.”

Mr. Wu was as usual confounded by the truth, and she saw his telltale sweat begin to dampen the roots of his hair. “I wish you would not imagine such things so easily,” he said. “You are always pairing men off to women. You have a low opinion of all men. I feel it. I feel you have made even me into an old goat.”

“If I have made you feel so, then I am a clumsy person, and I ought to beg your pardon,” she said in her silvery voice. She sat with an ineffable grace that made her as remote from him as though she were not in the room. She perfectly understood this. Long ago she had learned that to seem to yield is always stronger than to show resistance, and to acknowledge a fault quickly is always to show an invincible rectitude.

But she saw he was still hurt, and secretly she did feel humiliated that she had indeed been so clumsy as to hurt him. “I wish you could see the way you look today,” she said with her charming smile. “It seems to me I never saw you so handsome. You look ten years younger than you did a few days ago.”

He flushed and broke into a laugh. “Do I, truthfully?” he asked.

He caught the tenderness in her eyes and leaned toward her across the table between them. “Ailien, there is still nobody like you,” he exclaimed. “All women are tasteless after you. What I have done has been only because you insisted.”

“I know that,” she said, “and I thank you for it. All our life together you have only done what I wished. And now when I asked so much of you, you have done that too.”

His eyes watered with feeling. “I have brought you a present,” he said. He put his hand into his pocket and brought out a handful of tissue paper which he unwrapped. Inside were two hair ornaments, made in the shape of butterflies and flowers of jade and seed pearls and gold. “I saw these yesterday, and they made me think of you. But I am always thinking of you.” He wiped his bedewed forehead. “Even in the night,” he muttered, not looking at her.

She was very grave at this. “You must not think of me in the night,” she said. “It is not fair to Ch’iuming. After all, her life is now entirely in you.”

He continued to look unhappy.

“Is she not pleasant to you?” she asked in her pretty voice.

“Oh, she is pleasant,” he said grudgingly. “But you — you are so far away from me these days. Are we to spend the rest of our lives as separately as this? You who have always lived in the core of my life—” His full underlip trembled.

Madame Wu was so moved that she rose involuntarily and went over to him. He seized her in his arms and pressed his face against her body. Something trembled inside her, and she grew alarmed, not of him but of herself. Was this moment’s weakness to defeat all that she had done?

“You,” he murmured, “pearls and jade — sandalwood and incense—”

She drew herself very gently from his clasp until only her hands were in his. “You will be happier than you have ever been,” she promised him.

“Will you come back to me?” he demanded.

“In new ways,” she promised. The moment was over, now that she could see his face. The lips with their lines of slight petulance were loosened. At the sight of them she felt her body turn to a shaft of cool marble. She withdrew even her hands.

“As for Fengmo,” she said, “do not trouble yourself. As to the tutor, it seems Linyi wants him to speak English. She says he is too old-fashioned otherwise. He will be ready to marry Linyi in a month. See if he is not!”

“You plotter,” Mr. Wu said, laughing. “You planner and plotter of men’s lives!” He was restored to good humor again and he rose and, laughing and shaking his head, he went away.

A few minutes later when Ying came in she found Madame Wu in one of her silences. When she saw Ying she lifted her head.

“Ying,” she said, “take some of my own scented soap and tell Ch’iuming to use no other.”

Ying stood still, shocked.

“Do not look at me like that,” Madame Wu said. “There is still more you must do. Take her one of my sandalwood combs for her hair, and put my sandalwood dust among her undergarments.”

“Whatever you say, Lady,” Ying replied sourly.

It was at this moment that Madame Wu saw Mr. Wu’s pipe. He had put it on a side table as he went out. She perceived instantly that he had left it on purpose as a sign that he would return. It was an old signal between man and woman, this leaving of a man’s pipe.

She pointed toward it as Ying turned and her pretty voice was sharp.

“Ying!” she called. “He forgot his pipe. Take it back to him.”

Ying turned without a word and picked up the pipe and took it away.

When Madame Wu had finished matching the silks, it was too dark to see the colors. She was about to have the candles lit when Fengmo came in from the twilight. He had taken off his school uniform and put on a long gown of cream silk brocaded in a pattern of the same color. His short hair he had brushed back from his square forehead. Madame Wu when she had greeted him praised him for his looks.

“A robe looks better than those trousers,” she said. She studied his brow as she spoke. It was a handsome brow, but one could not tell from it what was the quality of the brain it hid. Fengmo was only beginning to come into his manhood.

“Can you remember the words you learned last night?” she asked him, smiling. He had lit a foreign cigarette, of which he and Tsemo smoked many. The curl of rising smoke seemed somehow to suit him. He did not sit down but walked restlessly about the library, and he stopped and repeated the foreign words clearly.

“Can you understand them yet?” she asked.

He shook his head. “No, but tonight I shall ask him what they mean,” he replied.

He paused to listen. “He comes now,” he exclaimed.

They heard the long powerful footsteps of leather shoes upon stones. Then they saw Brother André at the door, escorted by the gateman, who fell back when he saw Madame Wu rise.

“Have you eaten?” Madame Wu asked in common greeting.

“I eat in the middle of the day only,” Brother André said. He was smiling in a pleasant, almost shy fashion. Again as he stood there Madame Wu felt the whole room, Fengmo, even herself, shrink small in the presence of this huge man. But he seemed unconscious of his own size or of himself.

“Fengmo was repeating the foreign words you taught him last night, but we do not know what they mean,” Madame Wu said as they sat down.

“I gave you words once spoken by a man of England,” Brother André said. “That is, he was born in England, and he lived and died there. But his soul wandered everywhere.”

He paused as though he were thinking, then he translated the words in a sort of chant.

“And not by eastern windows only When daylight comes, comes in the light.

In front the sun climbs slow, how slowly!

But westward, look, the land is bright!”

To this Madame Wu and Fengmo listened, drinking in each word as though it were pure water.

“This is not religion?” Madame Wu asked doubtfully.

“It is poetry,” Fengmo said.

“I teach you the first English words that were taught me,” Brother André said, smiling at him. “And I did not understand them either at first, when I was a little boy in Italy.”

“So this same sun lights the whole world,” Madame Wu said musingly. She laughed. “You will smile at me, Brother André, but though I know better, my feeling has always been that the sun has belonged only to us.”

“The sun belongs to us all,” Brother André said, “and we reflect its light, one to another, east and West, rising and setting.”

The four walls of the room seemed to fade; the walls of the courts where she had spent her whole life receded. She had a moment’s clear vision. The world was full of lands and peoples under the same Heaven, and in the seven seas the same tides rose and fell.

She longed to stay and hear the next lesson which Brother André would give, but she knew that Fengmo, would not feel at ease if she stayed. She rose. “Teach my son,” she said, and went away.

“How does Linyi feel now that Fengmo is learning English?” Madame Wu asked Madame Kang. Her friend had come to see her late one evening, after the day’s turmoil was past. Here was a symbol of the friendship between the two women, that a few times a year Madame Wu went to Madame Kang, but twice and thrice in seven days Madame Kang came to Madame Wu. To both this appeared only natural.

“I am surprised at my child,” Madame Kang replied. “She says she will marry Fengmo if she likes him after she has talked with him several times, and after he has learned enough English to speak it. How shameless she is to want to see him! Yet I remember when I was a young girl, I yielded to a mischievous maidservant who enticed me one New Year’s Day when Mr. Kang came with his father to call at our house. I peeped through a latticed window and saw him. I was married and our first son born before I dared to tell him. And all that time the shame of it weighed on me like a sin.”

Madame Wu laughed her little ripple of mirth. “Doubtless the damage was done, too, by that one look.”

“I loved him all in one moment,” Madame Kang said without any shame now.

“Ah, those moments,” Madame Wu went on. “You see why it is wise to be ready for them. The hearts of the young are like fires ready to burn. Kindling and fuel are ready. Yet how can we arrange a meeting between our two, or several meetings?”

The two friends were sitting in the cool of the evening. On a table near them Ying had put a split watermelon. The yellow heart, dotted with glistening black seeds, was dewy and sweet. Madame Wu motioned to the portion at her friend’s side.

“Eat a little melon,” she said gently. “It will refresh you. You look tired tonight.”

Madame Kang’s plump face was embarrassed as she heard these kindly words. She took out a flowered silk handkerchief from her bosom and covered her face with it and began to sob behind it, not hiding her weeping, since they were alone.

“Now, Meichen,” Madame Wu said in much astonishment, “tell me why you weep.”

She put out her hand and pulled the handkerchief from her friend’s face. Madame Kang was now laughing and crying together. “I am so ashamed,” she faltered, “I cannot tell you, Ailien. You must guess for yourself.”

“You are not—” Madame Wu said severely.

“Yes, I am,” Madame Kang said. Her little bright eyes, so merry, were now tragic, too.

“You, at your age, and already with so many children!” Madame Wu exclaimed.

“I am one of those women who conceive when my man puts even his shoes by my bed,” Madame Kang said.

Madame Wu could not reply. She was too kind to tell her friend what she thought or to blame her for not following her own example.

“The strange thing,” Madame Kang said, twisting and folding the big handkerchief now spotted with tears, “is that I do not mind any of them so much as Linyi. Linyi is so critical of me. She is always telling me I am too fat, and that I should comb my hair differently, and that it is shameful I cannot read, and that the house is dirty, and that there are too many children. If Linyi stays with me and I have to tell her—”

“Linyi must come here quickly,” Madame Wu said. In her heart she asked herself whether it was well to bring into her house a stubborn, willful young girl who judged her own mother.

“You can teach her,” Madame Kang said wistfully. “I think she is afraid of you. But she fears neither her father nor me.” She laughed suddenly through her tears at the thought of her husband. “Poor man,” she said, and wiped her eyes. “When I told him this morning he pulled his hair out in two handfuls and said, ‘I ought to go and set up a business alone in another city.’ ”

Madame Wu did not answer this, and as though her friend found her silence cool she looked at her and said, half shrewdly, half sadly, “Perhaps you are lucky, Ailien, because you do not love your husband.”

Madame Wu was pierced to the heart by these words. She was not accustomed to sharpness from this old friend. “Perhaps the difference is not in love, but in self-control,” she replied. She picked up a slice of the frosty golden melon, “Or,” she said, “perhaps only it is that I have never liked to be laughed at. You, after all, are stronger than I am, Meichen.”

“Don’t quarrel with me,” Madame Kang pleaded. She put out her plump hand, and it fell hot upon Madame Wu’s cool narrow one. “We have the same trouble, Ailien. All women have it, I think. You solve it one way, I another.”

“But is yours solution?” Madame Wu asked. She felt her true and steady love for her friend soften her heart as she spoke, and she wound her slender fingers around the thick kind hand she held.

“I could not bear — to do what you have done,” Madame Kang replied. “Perhaps you are wise, but I cannot be wise if it means somebody between — my old man and me.”

Who could have thought that at that moment Madame Wu’s heart would be wrenched by an inexplicable pain? She was suddenly so lonely, though their two hands clasped, that she was terrified. She stood on top of a peak, surrounded by ice and cold, lost and solitary. She wanted to cry out, but her voice would not come from her throat. Twilight hid her. Madame Kang could not see the whiteness of her face and, engrossed as she was, she did not see the rigidity of Madame Wu’s body through her tightening fright.

In the midst of this strange terror, Madame Wu saw Brother André. The priest’s huge straight figure appeared upon her loneliness, and it was dispelled in the necessity of speaking to him.

“Brother André,” she said gratefully, “come in. I will send for my son.”

She loosed her hold on Madame Kang’s fingers as she spoke and rose. “Meichen, this is Fengmo’s teacher,” she said. “Brother André, this is my friend, who is a sister to me.”

Brother André bowed without looking at Madame Kang, but his face was kind. He went on into the library. There in the light of a candle they saw him sit down and take a book from his bosom and begin reading.

“What a giant!” Madame Kang exclaimed in a whisper. “Do you not fear him?”

“A good giant,” Madame Wu replied. “Come, in a moment Fengmo will be here. We should not seem to be speaking of him. Shall we go inside?”

“I must go home,” Madame Kang replied. “But before I go, shall Linyi speak with Fengmo or not?”

“I will ask him,” Madame Wu said, “and if he wishes it, I will bring him to your house first, and then one day you can come here and bring her. Twice should be enough for them to know their minds.”

“You are always right,” Madame Kang said and, pressing her friend’s hands, she went away.

Madame Wu delayed Fengmo that night after his lesson. The two men had sat long over their books. Madame Wu had walked past the door, unseen in the darkness, and had looked in. Something in Fengmo’s attentive look, something in Brother André’s deep gravity, frightened her. Was this priest witching the soul out of the boy by the very power of his own large being?

She sat down suddenly faint on one of the bamboo seats and was glad of the darkness. “How one tries,” she thought, “and how one fails! How could I imagine when I invited a priest to come and teach my son that this priest would be so full of his god that he glows and shines and draws all to him?”

She knew that Fengmo’s soul was at that moment of awakening when, if a woman did not witch it, a god might. She did not want him to be a priest, and this for many reasons; but most of all because a priest’s body is barren, and Heaven is against barrenness. When a god steals the soul out of a body, the body takes revenge and twists the soul and wrecks it and mars it. Body and soul are partners, and neither must desert the other. If twenty-five years from now, having begat sons and daughters, Fengmo should wish to turn priest, as many men living in temples had done, then let him serve his soul when his body had been served. But not now!

Should she enter and break the spell she saw being woven? She hesitated on the threshold, still unseen. Then she withdrew. She, the mother and only the mother, was not strong enough to withstand this great priest. To show himself independent of her, if for no other reason, Fengmo would turn against her. No, she must have a young woman, a gay girl, a lovely piece of flesh and blood, to help her. Linyi must come quickly.

When the lesson hour had passed, she called out from the darkness, “Brother André, my thanks for teaching my son so well. Until tomorrow, my greetings!”

She rose and came forward with these greetings. Both men stopped as though shocked by her presence. Brother André bowed and went swiftly away, his long robes flying shadows behind him. But Madame Wu put her hand into Fengmo’s elbow, and when he was about to follow she clung tightly to him.

“My son,” she said, “stay with me a little while. I have a very strange thing to tell you.”

She felt refusal stiffen in Fengmo’s arm, and she lifted her hand. “Dear son, I am sometimes quite lonely. Tonight is one of those times. Will you stay with me a little while?”

What son could refuse that voice? She had her hand on his arm again, pulling gently. “Come and sit down in this cool darkness,” she said. “Will you let me speak and answer me nothing until I have finished?”

“If you wish, Mother,” Fengmo said. But she could feel him wanting to leave her, longing to be free of her. Ah, she could read those signs!

“Fengmo,” she said, and her voice was music coming out of the darkness. He could not see her. There was only the lovely voice pouring into his hearing. “I do not know how to tell you,” she said. He heard a soft half-embarrassed laugh. “You are so grown now — a man. I suppose I must expect — Well, certainly I must not be selfish. Linyi wants to talk with you. Such a thing I would have said was impossible when Liangmo was your age. I do not think Meng would have thought of asking it. But Linyi is very different from Meng, and you are very different from Liangmo.”

The pretty voice poured all this into the night. It was difficult to believe that this was his mother’s voice, so young, so shy, half laughing, broken with pauses.

“How do you know?” he asked brusquely.

“Today her mother told me,” she replied.

Madame Wu leaning back in her chair, her face tilted up to the black soft sky, weighed and measured every tone of Fengmo’s voice. She felt an excitement, as though she were pitting herself against a force stronger perhaps than her own. But she would win. She had Fengmo by the body, and body is stronger than soul in a man.

“It is perhaps very wrong of me,” she said half plaintively now to Fengmo’s silence. “My first feeling is to say that if Linyi is so bold — I do not want her in the house.”

These were the right words. Fengmo answered hotly out of the darkness. He leaned toward her. She could feel his fresh young breath against her face.

“Mother, you don’t understand!”

“No?” She felt secure again at these familiar words of the young. So all sons say to all mothers.

“Many young men and women meet together these days,” Fengmo declared. “It is not as it used to be when you were young, or even when Liangmo was married.”

“Perhaps you are right,” she sighed. “I want you to be happy — that is all. I do not want you to see Linyi if you would rather not. I can tell her mother it is not convenient. Then she will know you care nothing for Linyi.”

“Of course I will see her,” Fengmo said in a lordly way. “Why should I object?”

“Fengmo,” she said in the same pleading voice, “do not lead Linyi to imagine things. There are many young women who would like to come into our house. Now that I think of Linyi, I remember that I have always thought she was a little cross-eyed.”

“If she is I will see it clearly,” Fengmo declared.

“Then shall I tell her mother that in a few days you and I will—”

“Why you, Mother?” he asked very clearly.

“Fengmo!” she cried sharply. “I will not yield too far. How can you see the girl alone?”

“Certainly I shall see her alone,” Fengmo said with some anger. “Must I be led by my mother like a small child?”

“What if I say you shall not go at all?” Madame Wu asked with vigor.

“Mother, do not say it,” Fengmo said with equal vigor. “I do not want to disobey you.”

Silence now fell between them. Madame Wu rose from her chair, “You insist, then, on going to see Linyi!”

“I will go,” Fengmo said doggedly.

“Go, then,” Madame Wu said and swept past him and into her own room. There she found Ying waiting for her. Ying had heard the loud voices. “Lady, what—” she began.

But Madame Wu put up her hand. “Wait!” she whispered, “listen!”

They stood listening, Ying’s mouth ajar. Madame Wu’s eyes were shining, and her face was lit with laughter. They heard Fengmo’s harsh and angry footsteps stride from the court. Madame Wu hugged herself and laughed aloud.

“Lady,” Ying began again, “what is the matter?”

“Oh, nothing,” Madame Wu said gaily. “I wanted him to do something, and he is going to do it — that is all!”

Fengmo did not come near her the next day, but the morning after Madame Kang came again. The two friends clasped hands quickly.

“Fengmo and Linyi have met,” she said.

“How was the meeting?” Madame Wu asked smiling.

“I laughed and wept,” Madame Kang replied, smiling back. “I sat far off, pretending not to be there. They wanted me gone and could not speak for wanting me gone. They were speechless, miserable together, and yet they could not keep from gazing at each other. I went away for only a few minutes, and when I came back again they were exactly as they had been. Neither had moved. They were only staring into each other’s faces. Then he rose and went away, and they said to each other, ‘Until we meet again.’ ”

“Only those common words?” Madame Wu asked.

“But how they said them!” Madame Kang replied. “Ailien, you will laugh, but it made me go and find my old man just to sit near him.”

“He thought you a simpleton, doubtless,” Madame Wu said, still smiling.

“Oh, yes,” Madame Kang said laughing, “and I didn’t tell him anything, for I didn’t want to stir him up again!”

“What damage could it do now?” Madame Wu asked mischievously.

“Ah, Ailien, don’t laugh!” Madame Kang said sighing. “When I saw those two young things — so much happiness — such troubles ahead — one dares not tell the truth to the young!”

“Let the wedding be soon,” Madame Wu said.

“The sooner the better,” Madame Kang agreed. “It is wrong to light the fire under an empty pot.”

Fengmo did not come near his mother that day nor any day. She did not see him until Brother André came again at night. She passed and repassed the door. Fengmo was asking him new words. He wanted to write a letter. She looked at Brother André’s face. It was kind and patient but bewildered. He spelled the words out for Fengmo over and over again and wrote them down. Madame Wu heard the letters without comprehending them, strange sounds without meaning. But whether she understood them did not matter. Fengmo understood, and Linyi would understand. He was eager to write her a letter in English. Madame Wu laughed silently in the darkness. Then she felt shamed before Brother André for the ease of her victory. She went away and did not see him that night. Instead she went early to bed and to sleep.