Pavilion of Women

VII

ON A PLEASANT DAY near the end of the ninth month, Linyi came to the house, a bride. The season was a good one for marriages, for the harvest was ready to be cut and the rice was heavy in the ear. Summer had paused and autumn had not yet begun.

The two families came together in mutual joy for this second union between them. Liangmo and Meng were especially full of joy. Meng’s little body was swelling with her child. She was hungry day and night, and her sickness had left her. She looked beautiful and ripe with happiness as she welcomed her sister. The two mothers talking together had decided to follow the children’s wishes, and they did not have the old-fashioned long wedding which they had given to Liangmo and Meng. Three days’ feasting was too long for these impatient two, Fengmo and Linyi. They wanted the swift marriage of the new times, a promise made before the elders and that was enough.

So it was done, and Madame Wu made amends to the townspeople, who were dismayed by the loss of the feasting, by hiring a restaurant for three days. This saved the trouble of crowds passing through the house.

“There are some good things about these new ways,” Madame Kang said at the end of the marriage day. Again the men were in Mr. Wu’s court and the women in Madame Wu’s. Sweetmeats of the most delicate kinds were served to the women and heartier meats to the men. Fengmo and Linyi had withdrawn to their own court. Luckily an old cousin had died about a month before and left two rooms empty, and by Madame Wu’s command these had been repaired and painted.

“Certainly we do not have broken furniture and filthy floors as we did after Liangmo’s marriage,” Madame Wu agreed.

She felt happy tonight, as she always did when some member of the household was settled. Her freedom grew yet more complete. For a week Fengmo by his own will had taken no lessons and Brother André had not come. Madame Wu did not object. This was the hour of the flesh. She did not fear Brother André’s power now. Whether he came any more or not was nothing to her. She had saved Fengmo for the family.

The court was lit with red-paper lanterns, and these drew the moths out of the darkness. Many of them were only small gray creatures, dusty wisps. But now and again a great moth would flutter forth with pale green-tailed wings, or wings of black and gold. Then all the women cried out, and none could rest until it was imprisoned and impaled upon the door by a pin where all could exclaim at its beauty while they sat in comfort and ate their sweetmeats. Old Lady especially enjoyed this sport and clapped her hands with pleasure.

One such moth had just been caught when Ch’iuming came into the court. Madame Wu saw her instantly, as she always did whenever she entered, and as always she made no sign. The young woman had taken her place in the house day by day, in grave silence. None spoke of her, either good or ill, in Madame Wu’s presence. But Madame Wu was conscious of her always. Sometimes at night when she woke, she wondered — and put the wonder away.

Now as Ch’iuming came in she saw her. The girl looked thin and a little too pale, but prettier in her delicacy.

“I must inquire how she is,” Madame Wu thought in unwilling self-reproach. “After the wedding is over, I will send for her.”

Again, as always she did, she put Ch’iuming aside and out of mind, and Ch’iuming made herself quietly busy pouring hot tea for the guests. She had taken part in the day but half-hidden and quietly busy about the food or the children or some such thing. Now and again some would call to her, “Second Lady, rest yourself!” But Ch’iuming replied always with the same words, “I do only this one thing more.”

Now, as they were all looking at the new moth, she, too, went to look at it. It was of a creamy yellow color, like the yellow of the lemon called Buddha’s Hand, and it had long black antennae. These quivered as it felt itself impaled. The wide wings fluttered and dark spots upon them showed green and gold for a moment. Then the moth was still.

“How quickly they die!” Ch’iuming said suddenly.

They all turned at the sound of her voice, and as though she had surprised herself by speaking, she shrank back, smiling her half-painful, half-shy smile. She stood waiting until all were seated again. Then in silence she slipped behind the others and, coming to Madame Wu, she felt of her tea bowl.

“Your tea is cold,” she said. “I will warm it.”

“Thank you,” Madame Wu said. She sat quite still while Ch’iuming leaned to perform the task. And as the girl leaned she smelled the fragrance of sandalwood, and as she smelled it she looked into the girl’s face. A look of humility was there.

“May I have some talk with you tonight, Elder Sister?” she asked in a low voice.

“Assuredly you may,” Madame Wu replied. She did not know how to answer otherwise, for how could she refuse? But she felt mirth go out of her. What new trouble cast its shadow on her? She sipped her tea and was silent until the guests were gone.

When they were gone, Ch’iuming waited alone, except for Ying.

“Go away,” Madame Wu told Ying, “and come back a little later.”

She did not want to take Ch’iuming into the house. The air in the court was still and cool. The late purple orchids were blooming under the lanterns. Meng today had brought her the first seedpods of lotus. The white flesh inside the pods was scentless and the taste bland.

She sat down after the guests were gone and took up one of the big soft pods. Ch’iuming stood half drooping, hesitating.

“Please seat yourself,” Madame Wu said. “I have been thinking of these lotus seeds. While we talk we will eat them.”

But Ch’iuming said, “I will not eat, I thank you.”

“I will eat then and listen,” Madame Wu replied. Her delicate hands tore the pod apart. These hands of Madame Wu’s always looked as though they had no strength in them. But they had strength. The pith inside the pod was tough fiber, yet it gave way beneath her fingers and she plucked out of it one of the many seeds it hid. With her small sharp teeth, which were as sound today as they had been when they grew, she peeled the green skin from the white flesh.

“Let me peel them for you,” Ch’iuming begged.

But Madame Wu felt a distaste for Ch’iuming’s hands against the meat she wanted in her own mouth. “Let me do this for myself,” she said, and as though Ch’iuming read something beyond the words, she did not offer again.

And while Ch’iuming sat watching this tearing apart of the pod, and this peeling of the nuts within, and while she heard Madame Wu’s teeth breaking the crisp meats, neither spoke. Then suddenly as though her hunger were assuaged, Madame Wu threw down the ruined seedpod upon the stones.

“You are with child,” she said abruptly. She used the common words of the common woman.

Ch’iuming looked up at her. “I have happiness in me,” she acknowledged. She used the words which women in a great house use when an heir is expected.

Madame Wu did not correct herself nor did she correct Ch’iuming. She said in the same clear sharp voice, “You are very quick.”

To this Ch’iuming replied nothing. She drooped her head and sat with her hands lying apart on her lap, the palms upward, the fingers listless.

“I suppose he is pleased,” Madame Wu said in the same sharp way.

Ch’iuming looked at her with her large honest gaze. “He does not know,” she said. “I have not told him.”

“Strange,” Madame Wu retorted. She was angry with Ch’iuming and amazed at her own anger. She had brought Ch’iuming into the house for a purpose and the girl had fulfilled it. Why should she feel angry with her? But the anger lay coiled in her like a narrow green serpent, and it sprang up and its poison lay on her tongue. “Concubines,” she said, “usually hasten to tell the men. Why are you different from other women?”

Ch’iuming’s eyes filled with tears. By the light of the flowered lantern above her head Madame Wu could see the tears glisten.

“I wanted to tell you,” Ch’iuming said in a low, half-broken voice. “I thought you would be pleased, but you are only angry. Now I would like to destroy myself.”

These desperate words brought Madame Wu to her right mind. It was common enough for concubines in great houses to hang themselves or swallow their rings or eat raw opium, but this was always held a shame to the house. She was quick now, as ever she was, to guard the house. “You speak foolishly,” she said. “Why should you destroy yourself when you have only done your duty?”

“I thought if you were glad, that I could then be glad, too,” the girl continued in the same heart-broken voice. “I thought I could warm my hands at your fire. But now, at what fire shall I warm myself?”

Madame Wu began to be frightened. She had taken it for a matter of course that Ch’iuming was a common girl, country-bred, who would welcome as a beast does the signs of its own fertility. The cow does not think of the sire, but of the calf. If ever she had thought at all of Ch’iuming’s own life, she had comforted herself because, she thought, Ch’iuming would be rewarded with a child and with a child would be satisfied.

“What now?” she asked. “Are you not glad for your own sake? You will have a little toy to play with, someone to laugh at, a small thing of your own to tend. If it is a boy, you will rise in your place in the house. But I promise you that if it is a girl, you will suffer no reproaches from me. Male and female I have made welcome in my house. When my own daughter died before she could speak, I wept as though a son were gone.”

The girl did not answer this. Instead she fixed her sad eyes on Madame Wu and listened.

“You must not talk of destroying yourself,” Madame Wu went on briskly. “Go back now and climb into your bed. Tell him, if he comes, that you have good news.”

She spoke coldly to bring the girl back to her senses, but in her own heart she felt the chill of the mountain peak coming down on her again. She longed to be alone and she rose. But Ch’iuming sprang forward and clutched the hem of her robe.

“Let me stay here tonight,” she begged. “Let me sleep here as I did when I first came. And you — you tell him for me. Beg him — beg him to leave me alone!”

Now Madame Wu was truly afraid. “You are losing your mind,” she told Ch’iuming severely. “Remember who you are. You came to me without father and mother, a foundling, picked out of the street by a farmer’s wife. You were widowed without having been wed. Today you are second only to me in this family, the richest in the city, a house to which any family in the region longs to send its daughters. You are dressed in silk. Jade hangs in your ears and you wear gold rings. You may not return to my court. How could I explain it to the house? Go back at once to that court where you belong, for which you were purchased.”

Ch’iuming let go the hem of Madame Wu’s robe. She lifted herself to her feet and fell back step by step toward the gate. Madame Wu’s hardness cracked suddenly at the sight of her desperate face.

“Go back, child,” she said in her usual kind voice. “Do not be afraid. Young women are sometimes afraid and unwilling with the first child, although I had not expected it of you, who are country bred. Fall asleep early and do not wake if he comes in. I know that if he finds you unwilling to wake he will let you sleep. He is good enough, kind enough. Do I not know him? Why fear him? And I will do this for you — tomorrow I will tell him. That much I will do.”

As though restored by this kindness, Ch’iuming whispered her thanks and slipped out of the court. Madame Wu put out the lanterns one by one until the court was dark. Wearily she went to her room, and Ying came and made her ready to sleep. She dared not ask her mistress anything when this lady wore the look on her face which she had tonight, a look so sad and so cold.

She drew the curtains about the silent figure and went into the noisy servants’ courts. There the men and women and children were still eating what remained of the wedding feast, and Ying loved her food. She filled her bowl with many meats and she went and sat on a doorstep and ate with pleasure, listening as she ate to all the chatter of servants in the great house. She was above them all except for Peng Er, who was servant to the master. Peng Er sat eating, too. His fat face was glistening with sweat. At his knee stood his youngest child, a small thing of some two or three years. Whenever he stopped for breath she opened her mouth and shrieked, and he held the bowl to her mouth and pushed food into it with his chopsticks.

“Peng Er!” a woman’s loud laughing voice shouted out of the dusk. “Does the master sleep in the Peony Court every night?”

“I take tea there every morning,” he shouted back.

“Ying!” The same loud mirthful voice shouted. “How is it in the Orchid Court?”

But Ying disdained to reply to this. She finished her bowl quickly and dipped cold water out of a jar, rinsed her mouth, and spat the water into the darkness whence the voice had come.

Men and women and children scattered at the sign. They were all afraid of Ying. In this house she sat too near the throne.

Madame Wu woke at dawn. She felt a load upon her, and under this load she struggled toward wakefulness. The night had not been a good one. She had slept and waked and slept again, never wholly forgetful. Living in the center of the house, there were such nights when she felt the whole family as the heart feels the body. Now she remembered. It had been Fengmo’s wedding night. Any wedding night was an anxious one. Were the two mated? Had the mating gone well or ill? She would not know until she saw them. Nor could she hasten to see them. Not until the matter took its own course and the day turned to the right hour could she know.

She sighed and then remembered the second weight. She had given a promise to Ch’iuming which she would like to have had back. Yet how could she take it back? Doubtless the girl had clung to it as a hope throughout the night. Then, as though she had not trouble enough, Ying came in when she saw her mistress awake.

“Old Lady is ill,” Ying told her. “She says she feels she has eaten a cockroach in the feast yesterday, and it is crawling around in her belly. She feels it big as a mouse, sitting on her liver, and scratching her heart with its paws. Of course it can be no cockroach. My man, whatever his faults, would never be so careless as that.”

“Heaven,” Madame Wu murmured, “as if I had not enough without this!”

But she was dutiful above all else, and she hastened and Ying hastened, and in a few minutes she went into the court next hers where Old Lady lay high on her pillows. She turned dim sockets of eyes toward her daughter-in-law. “Do something for me quickly. I am about to die,” she said in a weak voice.

Madame Wu was frightened when she saw the state in which Old Lady was this morning. Yesterday she had been as lively as a mischievous child, boasting because she had won at mah jong and eating anything at hand.

“Why was I not called earlier?” she asked Old Lady’s maid.

“It is only in the last hour that our Old Lady has turned so green,” the woman said to excuse herself.

“Has she vomited and drained?” Madame Wu inquired.

Old Lady piped up for herself, “I have vomited enough for three pregnancies, and all my bowels are in the nightpot. Fill me up again, daughter-in-law. I am all water inside — water and wind.”

“Can you eat?” Madame Wu inquired.

“I must be filled somehow,” Old Lady declared in a faint but valiant voice.

Thus encouraged, Madame Wu directed that thin rice soup be brought, and she herself grated fresh hot ginger root into it, and took up a spoon and fed the mixture to Old Lady.

Old Lady was always touching when she was ill. Her withered old mouth was as innocent and helpless as a baby’s. Madame Wu looked into it with each spoonful. Not a tooth remained, and the gums were pink and clean. How many words had come from that pink tongue, now shrunk so small! Old Lady had always had a violent temper, and when she was angry she had hurled curses on anyone she saw. That tongue was her weapon. Old Gentleman had been afraid of it. But doubtless he had heard other words from her, too, and Mr. Wu, who had always been the core of Old Lady’s life, had learned childish rhymes and laughter out of this same old mouth.

“I am better,” Old Lady sighed at last. “I need only to be kept filled. At my age the body has no staying power. Life now is like a fire of grass. It burns only when it is fed.”

“Sleep a little,” Madame Wu said soothingly.

Old Lady’s eyes opened very sharply at this. “Why do you keep telling me to sleep?” she demanded. “I shall soon sleep forever.”

Madame Wu was shocked to see tears well into Old Lady’s eyes and dim their sharpness. Old Lady was crying! “Daughter, do you think there is any life after this one?” she muttered.

She put out a claw of a hand and clutched Madame Wu’s hand. The old claw was hot and full of fever. Madame Wu, who had risen, sat down again. Old Lady all her life long had been nothing but a lusty body. She had been a woman, happy enough, dismissing from herself anything she could not understand. Rich, well-clothed, powerful in this great house, what had she lacked? But since she had lived entirely in her flesh, now she was frightened when she saw the flesh wither. Where would she go when the body failed her?

“I hope there is a life beyond this one,” Madame Wu said carefully. She might have deceived Old Lady as one deceives a child, but she could not do it. Old Lady was not a child. She was an old woman, about to die.

“Do you believe that I shall be born again in another body as the priests tell us in the temple?” Old Lady demanded.

Never had Old Lady talked of such things before. Madame Wu searched herself for honest answer. But who could penetrate the shades ahead? “I cannot tell, Mother,” she said at last. “But I believe that life is never lost.”

She did not say more. She did not say what she believed, that those who had lived entirely in the body would die with the body. She could imagine Brother André alive with no body, but not Old Lady.

Old Lady was already falling asleep in spite of all her will to stay awake. Her eyelids, wrinkled as an old bird’s, fell over her eyes, and she began to breathe deeply. Her bony hand fell out of Madame Wu’s soft one. Madame Wu went away, staying only to whisper to the servant, “She will recover this time. But try to keep rich foods out of her sight so that she will not crave them.”

“Our Old Lady is willful,” the servant murmured to defend herself, “and I do not like to make her angry.”

“Obey me,” Madame Wu said sternly.

But as she approached Mr. Wu’s court, she was pleased with this one good thing out of evil, that Old Lady’s illness gave her a reason to come here beyond the real one. She had sent Ying ahead to announce her. When she came to the gate of the court she found Ying waiting for her to tell her that Mr. Wu had gone out on some business and had only just returned. He sent word by Ying to beg her to sit down while he changed his outer garments.

So to wait she went into the familiar court where she had spent so many years of her life. The transplanted peonies were growing there most heartily. The blooms were over, the petals dropped, but the leaves were dark and thick. In the pool someone had planted lotus roots, and the great coral flowers lay open on the surface of the water. In the center of each flower ripe stamens quivered, ready and covered with golden dust. Their fragrance drenched the air of the court, and Madame Wu took out her handkerchief and held it before her face. The scent was too heavy.

She passed through the court into the main room. The furniture was as she had left it, but certain things had been added. There were too many potted trees. Some framed foreign pictures were on the wall. Nothing was quite as clean as it used to be. She was displeased to see dust swept under chairs and into corners. She rose and went to the heavy carved doors, set with lattices, and now wide open. She looked behind one of these doors.

Mr. Wu came in, buttoning his gray silk jacket. “Is there something behind the door, Mother of my sons?” he asked in his hearty voice.

She looked at him and flushed faintly. “Dust,” she said. “I must speak to the steward. This whole room needs cleaning.”

Mr. Wu looked about it as though he saw the room for the first time. “Perhaps it does,” he said. “It needs you,” he said, after another moment. But he said it gaily and with a sort of teasing laughter. She grew grave and did not answer.

They seated themselves. She examined his face without seeming to do so. He looked well fed, and the curves of his mouth were cheerful again. This was what she wanted and what she had planned. Then why did she feel in herself a cruel desire to hurt him?

“Your mother is ill,” she said abruptly. “Have you been to see her?”

He dropped his smile. “Alas, no,” he said. “I should have gone the first thing this morning, but what with one thing and another—”

“She is very ill,” she repeated.

“You don’t mean—” he said.

“No, not this time,” she said. “But the end is not too far off. Her soul is beginning to wonder what is to come next, and she asked me if I believed in another life after this one. Such questions mean that the body is beginning to die and the soul is afraid.”

“What did you tell her?” he asked. His face turned suddenly solemn.

“I said I hope, but how can I know?” she answered.

He was inexplicably angry. “Now, how cruel you are!” he cried. “To an old soul how can you show your doubt?” He unbuttoned his jacket at his full throat and took his fan out of his collar at the back of his neck and began to fan himself with energy.

“What would you have said?” she asked him.

“I would have assured her,” he cried. “I would have told her that nothing but happiness waits for her at the Yellow Springs. I would have said—”

“Perhaps you had better go and say it,” she said. When she was angry she never raised her voice. Instead she poured into it molten silver. Now it flowed and flamed.

But he thrust out his underlip. “I will tell her indeed,” he retorted.

They sat in silence for a moment, each struggling for calm again. She sat perfectly still, her hands limp in her lap, her head drooping a little on her slender neck. He sat solidly motionless except for the fan in his hand which he moved constantly. Each wondered at being angry with the other, and neither knew why it was.

She was the first to speak. “I have another matter to mention.” Her voice was still silvery.

“Speak on,” he said.

She chose straight truth again. “Ch’iuming came to me last night and asked me to tell you that she is pregnant.” Again she used the common word. She did not lift her head nor look at him, but continued to sit, motionless and graceful.

She heard the fan drop and brush against the silk of his garments. He was silent for so long that at last she looked up. He was staring at her, a clownish sheepish smile on his face, and his right hand was rubbing the crown of his head, rubbing round and round in a gesture she perfectly understood. It was a mixture of amusement, shame, and pleasure.

When he met her eyes, he laughed aloud. “Poison me,” he said. “Put bane into my rice — or ground gold into my wine. I am too shameless. But, Mother of my sons, I was only obedient to you — nothing else.”

Against her will laughter came creeping up out of her belly. The corners of her mouth twitched, and her eyelids trembled. “Don’t pretend you are not pleased,” she said. “You know you are proud of yourself.”

“Alas — I am too potent,” he said.

Their laughter joined as it had so many times before in their life together, and across the bridge of laughter they met again. In that laughter she perceived something. She did not love him! Meichen had been right. She did not love him, had never loved him, and so how now could she hate him? It was as though the last chain fell from her soul. Time and again she had picked up those chains and put them on. But now no more. There was no need. She was wholly free of him.

“Listen to me,” she said when their laughter was over. “You must be kind to her.”

“I am always kind to everybody,” he insisted.

“Please,” she said, “be grave for a moment. It is her first child. Now do not plague her. Stay away from her for as long as she turns her face to the wall.”

He wagged his head at her. “It may be that one concubine is not enough,” he teased, and put the tip of his tongue out to touch his upper lip.

But he could not hurt her or harm her any more. She only smiled. “Now,” she said, “you can go to your mother. And better than talking about her soul, tell her that you are to have another son.”

But Old Lady was not cheered even by the news which her son brought to her. Madame Wu had scarcely reached her own court, she having stopped along her way to play with children, when Ying came running in to call her.

“Old Lady is worse,” she cried. “Old Lady is frightened and is calling for you, Mistress! Our lord is there and he begs you to come.”

Madame Wu turned herself instantly and hastened to Old Lady’s bedside. There Mr. Wu sat stroking his mother’s half-lifeless hand.

“She has made a wrong turn!” he exclaimed when he saw her. “My old mother has chosen a downward path!”

A flicker lighted Old Lady’s glazed eyes, but she could not speak. Instead she opened her mouth and puckered up her face as though she were about to weep. But neither sound nor tears came as she gazed piteously at her daughter-in-law.

Madame Wu understood at once that Old Lady was now more afraid than ever. “Fetch some wine,” she murmured to Ying, who had followed her. “We must warm her — she must feel her body. Fetch the Canton wine. Heat it quickly. And send the gateman to call the doctor.”

Old Lady continued to look at Madame Wu, begging her for help, her face fixed in the piteous mask of weeping.

“Ying will fetch some hot wine,” Madame Wu said in her sweet and soothing voice. “You will feel better and stronger. Do not be afraid, Mother. There is nothing to fear. Everything is as usual around you. The children are playing outdoors in the sunshine. The maids are sewing and tending the house. In the kitchens the cooks are making the evening meal. Life goes on as it has always gone, and as forever it will. Our forefathers built this house, and we have carried on its years, and our children will come after us. Life goes on eternally, Mother.”

Her singing, soothing voice sounded full and rich through the silent room. Old Lady heard it, and slowly the lines of her face softened and changed and the mask of weeping faded. Her lips quivered again and she began to breathe. While the mask had been fixed on her face, her breathing had seemed to stop.

And soon Ying hurried in with the hot wine in a small jug with a long spout, and this spout Madame Wu held to Old Lady’s parted lips and she let the wine drip into Old Lady’s mouth. Once and twice and three times Old Lady swallowed. A faint pleasure came into her eyes. She swallowed again and muttered a few words.

“I can feel—”

Then a look of surprise and anger sprang out of her eyes. Even as she felt the hot wine in her belly, her willful heart stopped beating. She shuddered, the wine rushed up again and stained the quilt, and so Old Lady died.

“Oh, my mother!” Mr. Wu moaned, aghast.

“Take the jug,” Madame Wu commanded Ying sharply. She leaned over and with the fine silk handkerchief she pulled from her sleeve she wiped Old Lady’s lips and she lifted Old Lady’s head with both her hands. But the head was limp, and she laid it down again on the pillow.

“Her soul is gone,” she said.

“Oh, my mother!” Mr. Wu moaned again. He began to weep openly and aloud, and she let him weep. There were certain things which must be done quickly for the dead. In a creature such as Old Lady had been, the seven spirits of the flesh could not be expected to leave the body at once. Old Lady must be exorcised and confined, lest these spirits loosed out of the flesh do harm in the house. Priests must be called. In her innermost heart Madame Wu did not believe in those priests nor in their gods. She stood looking down while Mr. Wu continued to fondle his mother’s hand as he wept. She was surprised to find in herself the urgent wish to call Brother André here and give him the task of exorcising evil from the house. Yet this could scarcely satisfy the family. If even a year from now a child fell ill under this roof there would be blame because Old Lady’s fleshly spirits had not been cared for. No, for the sake of the family, she must follow the old ways.

She turned to Ying. “Call the priests,” she said. “Let the embalmers come in their time.”

“I will attend to everything,” Ying promised and went away.

“Come, Father of my sons,” Madame Wu said. “Let us leave her for a little while. The maids will wash and dress her, and the priests are coming to exorcise her, and the embalmers will do their duty. You must come away.”

He rose obediently, and they went out together. She walked along slowly by his side, and he continued to sob and to wipe his eyes with his sleeves. She sighed without weeping. It had been many years since she had wept, and now, it seemed, her eyes were dry. But when he heard her sigh he put out his hand and took hers, and thus hand in hand they walked to his court. There she sat down with him and let him talk to her of all he remembered about his mother, how she used to save him from his father’s punishment, and how when his father compelled him to study his mother would steal into his room and bring him wine and sweet cakes and nuts, and how on holidays she took him to theaters, and when he was ill she called in jugglers and showmen to amuse him at his bedside, and when he had the toothache she gave him a whiff from an opium pipe.

“A good mother,” he now said, “always gay and making me gay. She taught me to enjoy my life.”

To all this, Madame Wu listened in silence, and she persuaded him to eat and drink and then drink a little more. She despised drunkenness, but there were times when wine had its use to dull the edge of sorrow. So he drank the fine hot wine she ordered, and as he drank his talk grew thicker and he said the same thing over and over again until at last his head dropped on his breast.

Then she rose and on quiet feet went into the room which had once been hers. She peered under the satin curtains of the bed. There, rolled against the inner wall, she saw the back of a dark head, the outline of a slender shoulder.

“Ch’iuming,” she called softly. “Are you sleeping?”

Ch’iuming turned, and Madame Wu saw her eyes staring out of the shadows.

“Ch’iuming, you need not sleep here tonight,” Madame Wu said. “Our Old Lady is gone to the Yellow Springs, and he is drunk with wine and sorrow. Rise, child.”

Ch’iuming came creeping out of the bed, silent, obedient.

“Where shall I go?” she asked humbly.

Madame Wu hesitated. “I suppose you may go to my court,” she said at last. “I myself shall not sleep tonight. I must watch over Old Lady.”

“Oh, let me watch, too,” Ch’iuming whispered. “I do not want to sleep.”

“But you are young, and you ought not, for the sake of what is within you, stay awake all night,” Madame Wu replied.

“Let me be with you,” Ch’iuming begged.

Madame Wu could not refuse. “Well, then let it be,” she said.

So when she had seen Mr. Wu helped into his bed and had herself drawn the curtains about him, Madame Wu moved to take her place in the house this night. Those who had been sitting in watch now went to bed, but the servants did not sleep, nor the elder cousins. Old Lady was washed and dressed, and Madame Wu stood by to see that all was done as it should be, and Ch’iuming stood near, silent but ready to pick up this and hand her that. The girl had deft hands and quick eyes, and she read a wish before it was spoken. Yet Madame Wu saw clearly enough that Ch’iuming felt no sorrow. For her this was no death. Her face was grave but not sad, and she did not pretend to weep, as another might have done.

“Her heart is not yet here in this house,” Madame Wu thought, watching her. “But when the child comes, he will tie it here.”

So one generation now was fulfilled and passed from the house, and Madame Wu became the head within these compound walls as Mr. Wu was the head outside. Old Lady was not buried at once. When the geomancers were consulted they declared that a day in midautumn was the first fortunate day. Therefore, when the rites were finished and Old Lady slept within her sealed bed of cypress wood, the coffin was carried into the quiet family temple within the walls. No one, not even the children, felt that Old Lady was far away. Often in their play they ran to the temple and looked in.

“Great-grandmother!” they called softly. “Great-grandmother, do you hear us?”

Then they listened. Sometimes they heard nothing. But oftentimes, were the day gusty with wind, they told one another that they did hear Old Lady answer them from her coffin.

“What does she say?” Madame Wu once asked a small girl, the daughter of a first cousin.

The little child looked grave. “She says, ‘Little children, go and play — be happy.’ But, Elder Mother, her voice sounds small and faraway. Is she content in the coffin?”

“Quite content,” Madame Wu assured her. “And now obey her — go and play — be happy, child.”

After Old Lady was gone, for a time stillness seemed to come over the family. It was as though each generation, with her passing, knew itself further on in time and place. With her death life leaped ahead, and so all were nearer to the end. Mr. Wu when he had finished his first mourning and had taken off his garments of sackcloth was not quite what he had been. His full face looked older and more grave. Now sometimes he came to Madame Wu’s court, and together they talked over the family of which they were the two heads. He worried himself because he fancied he had not been so good a son as he should have been. When they had discussed the crops and the evil taxes of overlords and government, and whether they should undertake an expense of one sort or another, and when they had talked over children and grandchildren, then Mr. Wu would fall into brooding about his mother.

“You were good to her always,” he said to Madame Wu. “But I forgot her much of the time.”

Then to comfort him Madame Wu answered thus: “How can a man forget his mother? She gave you breath, and when you breathe it is to remember her. She gave you body, and when you eat and drink and sleep and however you use your body, it is to remember her. I do not ask of my sons that they come running always to me to cry, ‘Ah, Mother, this,’ and ‘Ah, Mother, that.’ I am rewarded enough when they live and are healthy and when they marry and are happy and when they have sons. My life is complete in them. So is it with our Old Lady. She lives in you and in your sons.”

“Do you think so?” he said when he had listened, and he was always comforted so that he went away again and left her.

She, left alone, pondered on many things. Now more than ever her life was divided into two — that part which was lived in the house and that part which was lived inside herself. Sometimes one prevailed and sometimes the other. When the household was at peace she lived happily alone. When there was trouble of some sort she went into it and mended it as she could.

About the middle of that autumn she saw a little trouble begin in the house which she knew would swell big if she did not pinch it off, like an unruly gall bud on a young tree. Linyi and Fengmo began to quarrel. She saw their ill-temper one day by chance when she made her inspection of the house. For all her pert beauty, Linyi was slatternly in her own court. At first Madame Wu had not wanted to speak of this, because Linyi was her friend’s daughter and she knew that Madame Kang, with her great family, could not keep to constant neatness and cleanliness. It could only be expected that her daughters also might be less careful than Madame Wu was herself.

But Meng was Madame Kang’s daughter too, and rather than reproach Linyi, Madame Wu went to the elder sister to take counsel with her.

She found Meng combing her long hair in the middle of the morning. It was a soft gray morning, and the house lay half asleep. Madame Wu did not reproach Meng that she was only now combing her hair, but she thought that it would perhaps aid the elder sister if she knew the younger was reproached.

Meng hastily caught her hair in her hand when she saw Madame Wu. “Is it you, Mother?” she called. “How ashamed I am that I have not combed my hair! I will twist it up.”

“No, child, do it properly,” Madame Wu replied and sat down, and the maid went on combing Meng’s long soft black hair. Rulan and Linyi had short hair, but Meng kept her hair old-fashioned.

“How many more days have you?” Madame Wu asked.

“Eleven, by the moon,” Meng answered. “I hope, Mother, that you will give me your counsel. You know I suffered very much with the first one.”

“When I had my children,” the maid said cheerfully, “I had them in the field where I was helping my man to plow.”

The maid was a woman from the Wu lands, and they had known her always. Even now in summer she went back to the land, and only when the harvests were reaped did she return to the house to serve for the winter. This she did because she was a widow and must be cared for, and yet she loved the land and must go back to it once a year.

“You will not suffer so much with the second one,” Madame Wu said to Meng. “But it cannot be expected that women reared behind walls will bear their children so easily as those who live freely.”

“Will Linyi bear her children better than I do?” Meng asked innocently.

“No, she will do no better,” the woman said. “She is too learned.”

Madame Wu laughed. “That is scarcely true, good soul,” she said. “I have perhaps as much learning as Linyi, but my children came easily. But I have had much fortune in my life.”

“Ah, you are one of the ones that Heaven marks,” the woman agreed.

“Linyi says she wants no children,” Meng said suddenly. “Linyi says she wishes she had not married Fengmo.”

Madame Wu looked up, startled. “Meng, be careful of your words,” she exclaimed.

“It is true, Mother,” Meng said. She stamped her foot at the maid. “You pull my hair, dolt!” she cried.

“Blame your sister, who frightened me,” the woman replied. “I never heard of a woman who did not want a child, except a concubine who was afraid her shape would be spoiled. But in this house even the concubine bears.”

Madame Wu did not listen to this talk with servants. “Meng, I came here to speak of your sister’s being a slattern and to ask you what I should say to her, but what you tell me is more grave than dust under a table. I should have inquired earlier into the marriage. But I have been busy with Old Lady’s death affairs. Tell me how you know.”

“Linyi told me herself,” Meng said. Neither of the two ladies took thought of the woman servant. Indeed, what was there to be hidden? Whatever life brought about in this house was there for all to see and heed, and servants had their place here, too.

“Say what Linyi told you,” Madame Wu commanded.

“She says she hates a big house like this one,” Meng said. “She says she wishes she had not married into it. She says Fengmo belongs to the family and not to her, and she belongs to the house against her will, too, and not to him She wants to go out and set up a house alone.”

Madame Wu could not comprehend what she heard. “Alone? But how would they be fed?”

“She says Fengmo could work and earn a salary if only he knew more English.”

“She wants him to know more English?”

“So that he could get some money for the two of them to live alone,” Meng replied.

“But no one disturbs them here,” Madame Wu declared. She felt outraged that under her roof there should come out this spot of dark rebellion.

“Well, she means the family ways,” Meng said. “The feast days and the death days and the birthdays and the duties of daughters-in-law and the servants who take over the children and all such things. She says Fengmo thinks of the family before he thinks of her.”

“So he should,” Madame Wu declared, “and so should she. Is she a prostitute that she does not belong to this house?”

Meng kept silent, seeing that Madame Wu did not like what she heard. The woman, too, knew that the matter was too deep for a servant to speak about. She finished her young mistress’s hair, put in two pearl ornaments, and cleaned the hair out of the comb and wound it around her finger and went outside and blew it off.

Madame Wu and Meng were alone. “Have you such thoughts as these, too?” Madame Wu asked severely of this round pretty creature.

Meng laughed. “Mother, I am too lazy,” she said frankly. “I like living in this house. It is kept clean and ordered without my two hands. And I am glad when a servant takes my child if he cries, and I am happy all day. But then I never went to school, and I do not care if I read books or not, and my son’s father tells me everything I ought to know, and what more do I want to know than what he wants me to know?”

“Liangmo is good to you?” Madame Wu asked.

Meng’s soft cheeks turned very pink. “He is good to me in everything,” she said. “There was never so good a man. Thank you, Mother.”

“Is Fengmo not good to Linyi?” Madame Wu asked.

Meng hesitated. “Who can tell which is the hand that slaps first when two take up a quarrel?” she asked. “But I think it is Rulan’s fault. She is always with Linyi. She and Linyi talk together about their husbands, and each adds the faults of the other’s husband to her own.”

Madame Wu remembered Rulan’s sobbing on that night now long past. “Is Rulan also discontented?” she now asked.

Meng shrugged her shoulders. “Linyi is my sister,” she replied, after hesitating for a second or two. “I have no talk with Rulan.”

“You do not like Rulan!” Madame Wu exclaimed. It seemed to her that she was pursuing her way through a maze and sinking deeply into something which she had not suspected in her house. How monstrous it was for these to quarrel who should be the next after herself and Mr. Wu!

“I do not like Rulan,” Meng said without change or hint of hatred in her voice.

“Must women always quarrel?” Madame Wu said severely.

Meng shrugged her shoulders again. “Not liking somebody is not to quarrel with them,” she said. “I do not like Rulan because she is always behaving as though she were right and others wrong. And she behaves so to Tsemo, too, Mother, and I wonder you have not seen it. I have told Liangmo he should tell you, but he always says he does not want you to be troubled. But Old Lady knew — she used to slap Rulan.”

“Slap Rulan!” Madame Wu cried. “Why was I never told?”

“Tsemo would not let Rulan tell,” Meng said. She was now beginning to enjoy all this telling. “Rulan is too learned,” she went on. “She is more learned than Linyi, and so Linyi listens to her. She is always talking about things women should not know.”

“What things?” Madame Wu inquired.

“Constitution and national reconstruction and unequal treaties and all those things,” Meng said.

“You seem to know about them,” Madame Wu said with a hint of a smile.

“Liangmo knows, but I do not,” Meng said.

“Do you not want to know what Liangmo knows?” Madame Wu asked.

“There are too many other things for us to talk about together,” Meng replied.

“What things?” Madame Wu asked again.

But Meng did not answer this with words. Instead she dimpled her cheeks with a smile and looked away.

And Madame Wu pressed her no more. She rose after a little while and went back to her court with this new knowledge in her of fresh turmoil in the house. But some sort of weariness fell upon her that day. She felt as one does who must run a race without food. These young, these men and women whose lives were dependent upon her, she was not strong enough for them. Her wisdom was too ancient for them — the wisdom of the unchanging human path from birth to death. She thought of Brother André. He had a wisdom that went far beyond these walls. She would call Fengmo and suggest to him that he begin again his studies. Then when Brother André came she could share with him the troubles of these young who leaned upon her.

She sent Ying to call Fengmo to her, and he came at once, having nothing to do and happening at that moment to be at home. There was a look about him that Madame Wu did not like. Had he not been properly wed, she would have said he was dissolute. He looked sullen and dissatisfied and yet satiated and overfed.

“Fengmo, my son,” she said in her pleasant voice, “I have been too busy all these days since your grandmother left us. I have not asked how things have gone with you. I have seen you and Linyi in your places in the family, but I have not considered you alone. Now, son, talk to your mother.”

“There is nothing to talk about, Mother,” Fengmo said carelessly.

“You and Linyi,” she said, coaxing him.

“We are well enough,” he said.

She looked at him in silence. He was a tall young man, spare in the waist, fine in the wrists and the ankles. He was lightly made but exceedingly strong. His face was square, his mouth full and easily sullen.

She smiled. “How much you look as you did when you were a baby,” she said suddenly. “It is strange how little men change after they are born, while women change so much. Sometimes when I look at each of you, it seems to me that you are just as you were when you were first put into my arms!”

“Mother, why are we born?” he asked.

She had asked this question of herself often enough, but when her son asked it she was alarmed. “Is it not the duty of each generation to bring the next into being?” she replied.

“But why?” he persisted. “Why should any of us exist?”

“Can we cease to be, now that we are made?” she replied.

“But if I exist only to bring forth another like myself, and he but to bring forth another like us two, then of what use is this to me?” he went on. He did not look at her. His thin young hands were loosely clasped in front of him. “There is a me,” he said slowly, “that has nothing to do with you, Mother, and nothing to do with the child to come from me.”

She was frightened. Such questions and such feelings she herself had, but she had not dreamed to find them in a son.

“Alas,” she cried. “I have been a bad mother to you. Your father never had such thoughts. I have poured some poison into you.”

“But I have always had these thoughts,” he said.

“You never told me before,” she cried.

“I thought they would pass from me,” he replied. “Yet I continue to think them.”

She grew very grave. “I hope it does not mean that you and Linyi do not go well together,” she said.

He frowned. “I do not know what Linyi wants. She is restless.”

“You are with her too much,” she declared. “It is not well for husband and wife to be continually together. I see that she does not come and sit among the women as Meng does. She stays inside your court. Naturally she grows weary there, idle, restless—”

“Perhaps,” he said, as if he did not care.

She continued to look at him anxiously.

“Fengmo, let us invite Brother André here again. While you were with him it seemed to me you were happy.”

“I might not be now,” he replied listlessly.

“Come,” she said firmly. She had learned long ago that listlessness must be met with firmness. “I will invite him.”

He did not answer.

“Fengmo,” she began again, “if you and Linyi wish to go out of this house, I will not forbid it. I desire the happiness of my sons. You are right to ask why you should only be a link in the chain of the generations. I have other sons. If you wish to go out, speak and tell me so.”

“I do not know what I want,” he said again in the same listless fashion.

“Do you hate Linyi?” she asked. “This can only be you are entirely unhappy. How long have you been married to her? Only three little months. She is not pregnant and you are listless. What does this mean, Fengmo?”

“Mother, you cannot measure us by such things,” he declared.

But she was too shrewd. “By this alone I will not measure you,” she said, “but I know that if man and woman are not well mated in the body first, there is no other mating. If the body is mated, then other mating will come, or if it does not the two can still live as one. But the body is the foundation of the house the two build. Soul and mind, and whatever else, is the roof, the decoration, whatever one adds to a fine house. But all this fails without the foundation.”

Fengmo looked at her. “How does it happen my father has a concubine?”

She would not accept this rudeness. “There is a time for everything,” she said severely, “and one time passes into another.”

He knew that he had overstepped the boundaries of a son, and he rubbed his short-cut hair and passed his hands down over his cheeks.

“Well, let Brother André come,” he said at last. He thought again awhile and then he said: “He will be my only teacher. I shall stop going to the national school.”

“Let it be so, my son,” she said.